Go For The Trifecta

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by Smitty

Volokh has links to a debate on the repeal of the 17th Amendment. Let me take a broad, general swipe at lawyers and say that they often stand too close to the problem. If you consider the 16th & 17th Amendments, plus the Federal Reserve act in isolation, you can come up with one set of arguments. That’s the mathematical combination of three things, one at a time.

Now, if you blow away all three of these federal zombies in one one shotgun chorus (great name for a band there), then you can undo the 1913 Progressive triumph of Woodrow [censored] Wilson. He may have emoted well about the need for Progress, and the imperfections of the Founding Fathers, but his ideas have proven ruinous.

Let’s get some conservative candidates in 2012 who will ‘do the deed’ for the centennial of Wilson’s dubious achievement. What would be the effects? Well, if DC is no longer the Pockets of Infinite Federal Reserve Depth, then we could have, you know, forthright spending. States can pick up the tab for the social programs for their citizens that they feel like funding. Granted, this may not be so much as under the current vote buying scheme.

Having the states control their senators in a regime where the federal government isn’t a cornucopia would shift the balance of power away from DC. When a change of party in the governor’s mansion means that the same old tools will not be sent back to DC if their stint is up, the incumbency rate may well plummet to reasonable levels, retaining statesmen* of actual value, and affording the Reids more time to suck elsewhere.

Finally, having the income tax removed would let states be a blast shield for their citizens from federal financial overreach. The virtue of the 10th Amendment, currently hovering down around that of a slut in Toronto, could begin to recover.

What’s not to like? Well the crappy half of the economic distribution of these United States are going to look really, really crappy. They already kind of are, but stripping off the redistributionist veneer is going to front load the crappiness.

Then there is the huge, older demographic that is going to find out just how big a ripoff all this Progressive nonsense has been. Legitimate problem. I say, delegate it to the states. Not that that is going to lower the overall suction of the situation. Nothing will. The magic wand no worky-worky, sahib. Give it up.

However, consider this: our problems, in general, are the result of the substitution of Progress for liberty. I submit that any courses of action that don’t favor liberty over all else are just variations on the theme of suck.

Full circle, then: let’s consider repeal of the 17th Amendment, but also consider the broader systemic implications. Otherwise, we’re merely fannying about. Isn’t a century of fannying about a sufficiently worked example of suck?

* In the sense of ‘humans’, for the sexists out there.

A. Single Moms

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Q. Who could possibly think it’s harmless
to provide pole-dancing classes for 7-year-olds?

In her brilliant book Guilty, Ann Coulter called attention to how single mothers are celebrated by liberals as emblems of a form of saintly victimhood. (Somehow, Bristol Palin is exempted from this sense of sacredness, which goes to show how liberal “principles” become disposable when they conflict with the partisan political interests of the Democratic Party.) Nevertheless, Coulter is absolutely right: Single mothers are never to be criticized per se, and thereby liberals also exempt fornication, bastardy and divorce from criticism.

Nor can we be permitted to observe that single motherhood is not distributed randomly among the population, but rather tends to fall disproportionately upon Women Who Make Stupid Mistakes.

Helpful advice — “Don’t drink wine coolers in a pup tent!” and “Never have sex with Charlie Sheen!” — is either not offered or else is ignored, and thus otherwise promising young women find themselves in the Single Mom category, where they are idolized as symbols of virtue, possessed of that glorious victimhood status that everyone envies because it places them above all critical scrutiny in our politically correct culture.

So when we learn that pole-dancing classes are being offered to 7-year-olds, even a conservative like Cody automatically blames fathers for failing in their parental obligations. In fact, we have every reason to believe that the women who think there’s no harm in teaching pole-dancing to 7-year-olds are single mothers, and that the only role fathers have ever had in the lives of these young girls was (a) as sperm donors and (b) as payers of child-support.

And to our “young American” friend Cody, then, I offer this helpful advice: Read more Ann Coulter books!

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Not Saying That Stacy’s Slipping, But He Missed A Really Groovy Garcia Riff

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by Smitty

The other day Stacy alluded to that famous military archetype, Andrew Rowan, known for delivering A Message to Garcia. In today’s Army, of course, it would be A FRAGO to Garcia, if we were dealing more directly with folks south of the border.
Oh, wait: we are!
Yeah, so, I would like to declare formally that Fast and Furious will now be called:

An Automatic Weapon to Garcia

Let’s just work that into every mention of this abysmal domestic/foreign policy debacle. It makes Operation Eagle Claw seem a minor boo-boo in comparison. I mean, if Nixon went down over Watergate, then it’s a testament to the raw muscle of the propaganda media and the Dismalcratic Party that BHO is still cluttering the Resolute Desk.
(H/T Insty)

My Son-in-Law’s Law School in the News

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Readers will recall Martin — a/k/a, the Argentine Romeo — who married my daughter last year. He will attend University of Baltimore Law School this fall and, via Instapundit, we have the news that the UBLS dean just resigned:

University of Baltimore School of Law Dean Phillip J. Closius resigned today as a result of conflict over the university raking off 45% of law school revenues.

In his letter of resignation, Dean Closius explained that when he took the job, he was “aware that, historically, the University retained a high percentage of the revenue generated by the law school.” However, the university president assured Closius he would work on the problem, which the dean saw as “the inequity of charging law students increasingly high tuition and fees if a significant percentage of those funds were not directly benefitting the law school.”

So, how bad was the problem? Dean Closius said he had difficulty obtaining financial data, but when he did, it showed the disturbing scope of the problem:

The financial data demonstrates that the amount and percentage of the law school revenue retained by the University has increased, particularly over the last two years. For the most recent academic year (AY 10-11), our tuition increase generated $1,455,650 in additional revenue. Of that amount, the School of Law budget increased by only $80,774. I do not know of any law school in the country receiving such a small percentage of its generated tuition revenue. A recent article in The New York Times noted that a 25-30% revenue retention by a university was considered high by national standards. As of academic year 2010-11, the University retained approximately 45% of the revenue generated by law tuition, fees and state subsidy.

Exactly what this means to my son-in-law’s legal education, I don’t know, but when the law school gets only 18% of the additional revenue generated by a tuition increase . . . yeah, that’s a problem.

VIDEO: The Man With No Plan Accuses House Republicans of Irresponsibility

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“President Snippy Pants,” as William Teach calls him, evidently believes what America needs is more lectures from him:

While accusing the House GOP of wasting time by, y’know, passing legislation, our Lecturer-in-Chief uses his weekly address to issue yet another iteration of Democrat Party talking points:

Republicans in the House of Representatives just spent precious days trying to pass a plan that a majority of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate had already said they wouldn’t vote for. It’s a plan that wouldn’t solve our fiscal problems, but would force us to re-live this crisis in just a few short months. It would hold our economy captive to Washington politics once again. If anything, the past few weeks have demonstrated that’s unacceptable.
Any solution to avoid default must be bipartisan. It must have the support of both parties that were sent here to represent the American people — not just one faction of one party. . . .
Now all of us — including Republicans in the House of Representatives — need to demonstrate the same kind of responsibility that the American people show every day. The time for putting party first is over.

One hesitates to spend “precious days” (or even precious minutes) fisking this, as the hypocritical falseness of Obama’s rhetoric really ought to be self-evident.

Let us first have done with Obama’s bogus insinuation that he represents the credible voice of “responsibility.” He hasn’t put forward any detailed plan of his own. Instead of providing a budget, he gave a speech — April 13 at George Washington University — in which he dishonestly used the phrase “my budget,” and rolled out the focus-group-tested phrase “balanced approach” (i.e., code for “tax increases”).

In his GWU speech, the president recycled the old-and-busted partisan talking-point that ObamaCare “will reduce our deficit by $1 trillion” (laughably false), and then infamously asserted that his “balanced approach” would “achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over twelve years.”

I say he “infamously” made this assertion, because it stands as a historic milestone in the annals of deceptive political rhetoric. Continue reading VIDEO: The Man With No Plan Accuses House Republicans of Irresponsibility →

Already Getting Pushed Around

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by Smitty


Mrs. Other Smitty and I haven’t slept more than two hours in a row since the World’s Youngest Blogger arrived. This is not a complaint. We’re strangely exhilarated. He starts off at the top of the newborn range, and already thinks swaddling is some form of Socialism.
God bless all the readers and well-wishers, here and on Twitter. Also, go have more children, as opportunity presents. This is a blast.

The Fort Hood Bomber

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Eric Dondero of Libertarian Republican has been all over the story of Army Pfc. Naser Abdo, who evidently sought to imitate accused Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hassan:

Like Hasan, Abdo may have taken some of his inspiration from Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born Islamic cleric who is among the leaders of the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). One senior U.S. official told ABC News that after Abdo was arrested at a Killeen, Texas hotel Wednesday, Abdo mentioned the name of al-Awlaki.
Nidal Hasan had exchanged emails with Awlaki, according to U.S. authorities. Al-Awlaki is believed to have inspired several other terror plots in the U.S. as well, including the bungled Christmas Day underwear bombing of Northwest flight 253.

Abdo was active in the War Resisters League, and is the son of a Jordanian who was deported after being caught in an online sting operation for attempting to solicit a 15-year-old girl.