This discussion/interview between Ezra Klein and Rep. Paul Ryan is the best thing I’ve seen in the health care debate in months.  Given Ryan’s position as a GOP point man on health care reform, his comments on Wyden-Bennett ought to give hope that maybe it could get enough GOP support to pass if the Dem leadership were willing to push it.  Regardless, the entire back-and-forth is interesting on both sides.  Even if you disagree with Ryan, I think you’ll also find it refreshing to hear a semi-prominent GOP politician speak knowledgeably and seriously about health care reform.

A hot topic the last few months here at the League has been the issue of government accountability reform, and how best to loosen the grip of narrow interest groups over the federal government.  In connection with that discussion, I had the good fortune to get in touch with regular League reader Paul Fidalgo, who is currently the communications director for FairVote, a non-partisan think tank dedicated to electoral reforms whose Board of Directors includes personalities ranging from former GOP Congressman and third-party Presidential candidate John Anderson to former Nirvana bassist/activist/author/Washington state politician Krist Novoselic, who was appointed the chairman of FairVote in January 2008.

One of FairVote’s principal initiatives is the National Popular Vote (NPV), which seeks to convince states to give their electoral votes to whichever Presidential candidate wins the popular vote.  NPV legislation would not become binding until states representing a majority of electoral votes passed it.  Paul was kind enough to answer some questions about why the NPV represents an important piece of the accountability puzzle.

Mark: Let’s start with the basics.  What is the National Popular Vote initiative, and why is it important?

Paul Fidalgo: Let me answer the second point first. It is commonly understood that the Electoral College is a little bit odd. No matter who you supported in 2000, it can’t sit well with folks that we have a system in which the guy who got fewer votes than his opponent gets to be president. Plenty of well-meaning people see a lot of good in the Electoral College system, but its all theoretical and academic, and primarily ideological (not in the red-blue sense but in the states’ rights sense). 

Von at Obsidian Wings:

Today’s outrage is the fact that Rahm Emanuel called some of President Obama’s supporters “f-cking retarded.”  Sarah Palin wants him to step down.  That’s not unexpected, coming from her.  Sarah Palin is an expert on quitting, particularly when the going gets tough.  Why not recommend it to Emanuel? 

The rest of Von’s post is also well worth a read.

It would seem that among his other grievances against the American Left, James O’Keefe has also adopted the long-standing charge that American academia is dominated by left-wing relativists, etc., specifically charging that this was true of the Rutgers University Philosophy Department, where he majored. [Read more →]

In addition to the continued absurdity of escalating the War on Drugs Meth Sniffles by requiring a prescription for basic cold medicine, I’m pretty sure that this is a really good way of ensuring our health care costs go through the roof even more.   So now, in order to treat one’s otherwise [Read more →]

I’m a firm believer in the Second Amendment and all, but what the hell has that got to do with whether you’re allowed to open carry into a private dining establishment?  It’s pretty simple – [Read more →]

I’m fairly annoyed by the brouhaha that has erupted over President Obama’s deeply inaccurate attack on the Citizens United decision.  One of the weird aspects of my annoyance, though, is that I find myself in deep disagreement with one of my favorite libertarian legal minds, Randy Barnett, and one of my favorite liberal legal minds, Jack Balkin. 

My general feeling on the matter is that clearly Obama has strong feelings about the correctness of the Court’s decision in Citizens United.  As much as I may find the hyperventilating over that decision silly, I can’t deny that the passions it has engendered are real.  Of course, I also have no idea what kind of a legislative fix Obama could possibly have in mind, but that’s neither here nor there.  The notion, advanced by Barnett, that such attacks are unprecedented is simply untrue, even if Obama’s attack was unusually harsh and, insofar as he mischaracterized the actual holding in the case, highly inaccurate.  The fact is that, like it or not, Supreme Court decisions have long been fair game for politicians to attack, particularly when those politicians want to overturn the decision via a legislative fix.  If the goal of the State of the Union is for the President to set the agenda for the year, then there’s no real reason to demand that the President avoid discussing parts of his agenda that involve overturning Supreme Court decisions. 

But this brings me to Balkin.  In refuting Barnett’s broadside against Obama, Balkin cites to a long quote from FDR’s 1937 State of the Union address.  Balkin points out that FDR spent fully a quarter of that State of the Union delivering a blistering attack on the Supreme Court’s repeated overturning of various New Deal programs.  Unfortunately, I cannot think of a worse example to show the appropriateness of a President attacking the Court than FDR’s 1937 State of the Union.  That attack was more than mere words, and more than merely attempting to chastise the Court for a decision the President found problematic.  Instead, its line that “means must be found to adapt our legal forms and our judicial interpretation to the actual present national needs of the largest progressive democracy in the modern world,” was a veiled threat to the Court’s political independence.  This veiled threat became overt just a few weeks later when FDR introduced the Judiciary Reorganization Bill of 1937 – better known as FDR’s court packing scheme.  Shortly thereafter, Associate Justice Roberts changed his voting habits in the “switch in time that saved nine.”

Nonetheless, the fact is that Presidents and legislators have been viciously and publicly attacking the courts for a very long time, whether it be over Roe v. Wade, Ledbetter, Terry Schiavo, or Dred Scott.  Sometimes they’ve been right, sometimes they’ve been wrong, but as long as we insist on viewing the President as the nation’s agenda-setter, the judiciary’s actions are fair for the President to attack with that agenda.

On the other hand, judges – even Supreme Court justices! – are human.  One might even imagine that they take pride in their work and care pretty deeply about what they do.  So when the President stands up just a few feet in front of a Justice and announces to the entire nation that his work product is actively evil, while misrepresenting what that work product actually said and did, it’s perfectly understandable that the Justice might exhibit a little emotion in their expressions, and maybe mutter some things under their breath. 

That’s not to say that I think it’s a good thing that Alito was caught on camera expressing that emotion – it’s not.  Regardless of whether we expect judges to forget their humanity, we do invest quite a bit in the notion that federal judges are supposed to be politically independent.  Yet the State of the Union is an inherently political event, and not only inherently political, but also inherently partisan.  Any appearance of taking sides during that event cannot be good optics for the public’s perception of judicial independence, whether or not the judge’s actions in creating that appearance are completely understandable and appropriate.  So to me, then, Alito’s mistake wasn’t in reacting the way he did – it was in attending an inherently political and partisan event like the State of the Union in the first place.

UPDATE: An exit question on Citizens United:  Let’s say a guy sees a big market for T-Shirts that say “Cut Bait With Senator Wormtongue.”  Because he wants to run this as a business, he incorporates to take advantage of limited liability.  The resulting corporation then seeks to market his wares on TV, the radio, or in print – whatever.  Should it be prohibited from doing so, given that it cannot market its product without advocating the defeat of Senator Wormtongue?  More importantly, should potential voters be prohibited from hearing such advocacy simply because the sponsoring entity is incorporated?  That is essentially the question that was before the Court in Citizens United.

This piece by Jared Diamond provides a fantastic amount of insight into why Haiti is so much poorer than even other poor Caribbean nations, including its neighbor the Dominican Republic.  I think it [Read more →]

Over at the Liberty Papers, Quincy offers a distinctive take on Obama’s attack on the Citizens United ruling.  Money quote:

It is not the thought of special interests influencing politics that scares the ruling class. It is the thought of special interests influencing politics without them that does.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Memo to the conservatives who suddenly discovered that they were in favor of limited government when George Bush left office: if you want people to believe that your conversion is real, it would probably help if you don’t whine and complain about Big Government Obama (see also: Ed Driscoll, AJ Strata) when he actually proposes a cut to a program that you just so happen to like.  Either you’re for limited government, or your not.  You don’t get to pick and choose the areas where you think limited government is good and bad and still claim to be an advocate for limited government on the whole. 

Say what you will about the various proposals for health care reform, at least they have a goal in mind that is intended to help people in the here and now that are, in fact, hurting.  But what, exactly, is a mission to the moon supposed to accomplish in the here and now that makes it so necessary to keep in the federal budget at a time when we’re running unprecedented budget deficits? 

Either you’re for limited government, or you’re against it.  Being for it only when the Democrats try to create a program you don’t like, and against it whenever they cut a program that you do like….well, it kinda sends a mixed message.  It also has a tendency to result in y’all not caring too much about fiscal restraint when you actually do return to power, one day.  And, one day, you can rest assured, you will in fact return to power, probably even one day soon.  It would be rather helpful to the cause of limited government if, when you return to power, you didn’t seem to care more about expanding the programs that you do like than about cutting the programs that you don’t.  It kinda makes it a bit more difficult to fight the Democrats when they’re in power on limited government grounds when you insist on fighting for the expansion of government when we’re talking about your pet projects.  And right now: YOU’RE NOT HELPING!

Sincerely,

The Libertarians

So, I was looking forward to joining the rest of the country in rooting for the Saints in two weeks.  Really, I was.  Then this &#$#(@!$)% had to open his mouth and remind me why I can never, ever root for a team with him involved in any way.  Stay classy, Gregg.