Ann Coulter

The New York Times caused a sensation with its kazillion-word, March 17 article by Michael Luo on the failures of state courts to get guns out of the hands of men in domestic violence situations.

The main purpose of the article was to tweak America’s oldest civil rights organization, the National Rifle Association, for opposing some of the more rash anti-gun proposals being considered by state legislatures, such as allowing courts to take away a person’s firearms on the basis of a temporary restraining order.

It’s a new position for liberals to oppose the rights of the accused. Usually the Times is demanding that even convicted criminals be given voting rights, light sentences, sex-change operations and vegan meals in prison.

Another recent Times article about communities trying to keep sex offenders out of their neighborhoods quoted a liberal saying: “It’s counterproductive to public safety, because when you have nothing to lose, you are much more likely to commit a crime than when you are rebuilding your life.”

But that was about convicted child molesters. This is about guns, so all new rules apply.

As is usually the case when liberals start proposing gun restrictions, they assume only men will be disarmed by laws taking guns from those subjected to temporary restraining orders. But such orders aren’t particularly difficult to get. It doesn’t occur to liberals that an abusive man could also get one against his wife, whether or not his accusations are true.

Rather than helping victims of domestic abuse, this — and other Times’ proposals on guns — only ensures that more women will get killed. A gun in the hand of an abused woman changes the power dynamic far more than keeping a gun out of the hands of her abuser, who generally can murder his wife in any number of ways…

Read it all.

Larry Elder:

Once upon a time, a group of people known as the “Democrats” expressed great fear of tyranny by government.This was a time long, long ago, when a man from a place called Texas, representing a people known as the Republicans, occupied the White House. Leaders of the Democrats feared tyranny by the Republicans and called the man from Texas racist, oppressive and tyrannical.

To refresh your recollection, we offer a few examples from the distant past:

Billionaire Democratic contributor George Soros. He said the George W. Bush White House displayed the “supremacist ideology of Nazi Germany” and that Bush’s administration used rhetoric that echoed his childhood in occupied Hungary. “When I hear Bush say, ‘You’re either with us or against us,’” Soros said, “it reminds me of the Germans.” Soros later said: “The Bush administration and the Nazi and communist regimes all engaged in the politics of fear. … Indeed, the Bush administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and communist propaganda machines.”

Former Vice President Al Gore. He said: “(George W. Bush’s) executive branch has made it a practice to try and control and intimidate news organizations, from PBS to CBS to Newsweek. … And every day, they unleash squadrons of digital brown shirts to harass and hector any journalist who is critical of the President.”

Former two-time Democratic presidential candidate and civil rights leader the Rev. Jesse Jackson. After Congress passed new anti-terrorism laws following 9/11, (more…)

WSJ:

…In the latest disdain for the Constitution’s checks and balances, the National Labor Relations Board has declared that it doesn’t like the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals Friday ruling that three board members were illegally appointed so it plans to ignore it.

“The Board respectfully disagrees with today’s decision and believes that the President’s position in the matter will ultimately be upheld,” Chairman Mark Pearce said in a statement. “It should be noted that this order applies to only one specific case, Noel Canning, and that similar questions have been raised in more than a dozen cases pending in other courts of appeals.

“In the meantime, the Board has important work to do. The parties who come to us seek and expect careful consideration and resolution of their cases, and for that reason, we will continue to perform our statutory duties and issue decisions.”

In thug speak: f-you!

So, let’s see. First, President Obama bypasses the Senate’s advice and consent power by making “recess” appointments while the Senate was in pro-forma session specifically to prevent recess appointments. Then when a federal court rules the recess appointments illegal, the NLRB declares that it will keep doing business as if nothing happened.

Without Mr. Obama’s illegal appointments, the board would have been without a quorum and unable to decide a single case. That lawless behavior means more than 200 of the NLRB’s rulings in the past year are in limbo. It’s bad enough to force those 200 litigants to appeal rulings that are sure to be overturned. But the board wants to keep issuing new rulings though it now knows that a unanimous appeals court has declared them illegal, pending a Supreme Court review that may never happen.

Mr. Obama can legally reconstitute the NLRB by getting his appointees confirmed by the Senate. Meantime, Nebraska Senator Mike Johanns is right to call on the illegal members to resign. If they won’t, Congress should stop funding the NLRB as soon as the continuing spending resolution expires in March.

Mark Steyn:

When President Obama, in his dronefest at the UN the other week, said that the future, on the one hand, will belong to those who empower women, but, on the other, must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam, he failed to foresee any potential contradictions between these goals. We Canadians are naturally miles ahead of you guys in this respect, so, in a current if near parodic Ontario “Human Rights” Commission case, a lesbian is suing a Muslim barber for refusing her custom.

A year or two back, I was proud to play a small role in clobbering Canada’s “human rights” racket, giving them the worst press in their history, and eventually getting a disgusting law repealed. But, as the great George Jonas writes in an excellent column, the bloodsucking vampires are once again stirring in their coffins. The current rationale is that, in a multicultural society, you need an all-powerful state to mediate the interests of competing identity groups. Get lost, creeps. There’s a word for that kind of state, and it’s nothing to do with human rights.

Regulators are not entitled to create their own laws or expand their own turf. But that doesn’t stop the liberal fascists from marching on.

Matt Cover

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski defended his agency’s role in regulating broadband Internet, saying that the FCC needed to act like a “cop on the beat.”

“We need to protect and promote competition,” Genachowski said at a speech to media firm Vox Communications in Washington on Tuesday. “We know from decades of experience that when it comes to competition in the communications sector, the FCC needs to be a cop on the beat.”

Genachowski said that part of this “cop on the beat” approach meant putting rules in place that “prevent anti-competitive practices.”

“Protecting competition sometimes means putting rules in place to prevent anti-competitive practices – rules we adopted last year by majority vote to ensure broadband data roaming is one example,” he said.

Genachowski also cited controversial net neutrality rules as one way the FCC prevents anti-competitive behavior.

“Sometimes government has to act to preserve platforms for innovation – that’s what the open internet/net neutrality debate was all about – doing it in a smart, market-oriented way that recognizes the realities of the marketplace, the fact that we really want an open platform for innovators and we also really want robust, fast networks that require capital investment.

We have it, and we have it because the government was not involved.

The FCC was created in 1934 to regulate the finite broadcast spectrum– a necessary role for the federal government. Those were radio days.

Now the FCC thinks it has authority to regulate the Internet. Despite a court ruling to the contrary, it has been formulating so-called network neutrality rules.

Now, it intends to tax broadband Internet access.

Poor us who thought only Congress possessed taxing authority.

And why the power grab?

Julius Genachowski, the FCC’s chairman, has made expanding broadband access his top priority. He argues that a high-speed Internet connection is critical for succeeding in the 21st century economy and that expanding Internet access is the country’s next great infrastructure challenge.

Maybe, but it’s none of his fracking business! Still, he wants to tax those with broadband to subsidize those without it. Y’know, spread the bandwidth around.

I wish there were a television program where bureaucrats who fail to mind their own business are subjected to some form of public humiliation, say a spanking.

Of course the FCC would ban it.

The LA Times editorial page.

(My wife and I have adopted all of our dogs from shelters and loved them all.)

The Los Angeles City Council is expected to vote within a month on an ordinance to ban pet stores from selling dogs (as well as cats and rabbits) obtained from any supplier other than a shelter or rescue group. Though we are usually reluctant to support government-imposed constraints on what businesses can buy or sell — and we would ordinarily prefer to see the issue dealt with by tougher regulation — in this case we think the ordinance is justified.

Most dogs sold at commercial pet stores across the country come from large-scale commercial breeders, many or most of which are so-called puppy mills that put profit over the well-being of their dogs, according to animal welfare advocates.

Hearsay from partisans.

But something must be done! Let’s put pet stores out of business!

Such facilities are legal and must be licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but studies show that many meet only the minimally allowable levels of care, housing, exercise, veterinary attention and record-keeping set by the federal Animal Welfare Act, if that. Some of the most egregious of these operations — where dogs are injured or found dead or conditions are highly unsanitary — are closed down or cited by authorities. But many bad operators continue to exist, overbreeding females in back-to-back heat cycles to the point that their bones break and their teeth fall out. Dogs and puppies alike end up crammed into filthy cages with little opportunity for exercise or socialization. Even the USDA urges breeders to exceed the law’s standards.

What’s more, the federal law is woefully under-enforced, according to a 2010 audit by the USDA’s Office of Inspector General. Animal care inspectors failed to sanction appropriately, or quickly, breeders holding dogs variously infested with ticks or sores, suffering injured limbs, living in fetid cages, unsheltered from cold or hot weather, or using water and food dishes covered in vermin. During the three-year period of the audit, USDA officials made 8,289 inspections and found that 5,261 licensed dealers were in violation of the act. Since the audit, the USDA says the inspection program has been improved.

In the best of all worlds, federal and state laws governing breeding facilities would be overhauled to mandate better conditions for animals. But laws tightening up rules face powerful opposition from the pet industry and legislative allies of breeding businesses. Neither California nor Los Angeles, both of which have been early adopters of animal welfare laws and policies, have the ability to regulate out-of-state businesses.

So, then we’ll just trump the legal order and impose our will by fiat.

Until better laws can be passed, the only way for a city to thwart these operations is to stop the flow of their animals into local pet stores. Most stores list the provenance of the animals for sale on cards attached to the kennels — but without actually visiting those breeding facilities, it’s almost impossible to know what conditions are like there. Pet store industry representatives argue that some L.A. pet stores get their animals from small, relatively local breeders the retailers trust. Again, there’s no way to know for sure what kind of breeding operation it is without visiting it — something that responsible breeders welcome and even request. Reputable breeders rarely sell to pet stores.

Los Angeles’ measure is a drastic one, but it would expire in three years, giving officials an opportunity to monitor its effect and decide whether to extend the law, revise it or drop it altogether. If it passes, individuals would still be allowed to buy directly from breeders, and pet stores would be allowed to sell dogs, cats and rabbits that come from shelters, humane societies and registered rescue groups.

Each year the city’s shelters euthanize thousands of cats and dogs that might have made wonderful pets. Best Friends Animal Society, a national organization, has already helped some conventional pet stores transition to a humane model and is offering the same assistance to any L.A. stores if the ordinance goes into effect.

Ed Morrisey:

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel insists that he won’t back down from his suggestion that Chick-fil-A doesn’t meet his standard of “Chicago values,” although his staff has tried to backpedal a little since.  In a press conference yesterday, Emanuel sounded defiant as he defended “Chicago values”:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Monday he has no regrets about saying that “Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s values” because the company president opposes gay marriage.

“No. I don’t” regret it, the mayor said under questioning at an unrelated jobs announcement.

“And the simple reason is, when it comes to values, there’s a policy as it relates to gay marriage. The values of our city are ones that welcome and recognize that, and I will continue to fight for that.”

“Values that welcome”?  To have any meaning at all, “welcome” means open to those who disagree with you.  Tolerance means engaging with those whose religion or political beliefs differ.  Engaging with only those who march in lockstep with your own agenda is actually the antithesis of “tolerance” and “welcoming.”

We’ll get back to that in a moment.  First, a native Chicagoan who also happens to lead the Archdiocese of Chicago wrote an open letter to Emanuel asking for clarification on the meaning — and enforcement — of “Chicago values.”  Francis Cardinal George called this “a defining moment” for civil unions, and not the kind related to marriage:

Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval. Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.” …

People who are not Christian or religious at all take for granted that marriage is the union of a man and a woman for the sake of family and, of its nature, for life. The laws of civilizations much older than ours assume this understanding of marriage. This is also what religious leaders of almost all faiths have taught throughout the ages. Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.

Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.

In my column for The Week today, I argue that Emanuel’s intolerance — selective intolerance, actually — bears a lot more resemblance to the intolerance of noted 20th-century authoritarian systems than to traditional American ideas of freedom:

The past two weeks have brought to light a truly disturbing political demonstration — and it has nothing to do with presidential elections or generic congressional ballots. At least three mayors in some of America’s largest cities, as well as plenty of other city officials, have publicly demanded political orthodoxy as a condition of doing business in their metropolises. Political correctness has transformed into a strange American version of fascism — over a chicken filet sandwich and an opinion about marriage that even our Democratic president officially held as recently as two months ago. …

In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel declared that Chick-fil-A did not represent “Chicago values,” and suggested that Chick-fil-A invest its money elsewhere. Chicago, by the way, has the third-highest unemployment rate in the nation among major cities, so it seems odd that its mayor would tell Chick-fil-A to take a hike for having the exact same position on marriage that Emanuel’s former boss — President Barack Obama — held the entire time Emanuel worked at the White House. Even more odd, at the same time Emanuel declared Chick-fil-A fast-fooda non grata, he rolled out the red carpet for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to have his acolytes patrol Chicago neighborhoods. Not only is Farrakhan a well-known anti-Semite, he also opposes same-sex marriage. In fact, Farrakhan publicly blasted Obama for flip-flopping on the issue in May.

Emanuel later backed down, but not one of the local alderman, who still demanded a pledge from Cathy to quit associating with groups that oppose gay marriage as a prerequisite for a business permit. A councilman in New York made a similar threat. San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee kept his attack on freedom of thought to Twitter, noting that the closest Chick-fil-A outlet was 40 miles away — and that the company shouldn’t try to get any closer.

People can certainly choose not to eat at Chick-fil-A if they don’t like Cathy’s views on same-sex marriage.  That’s a free-market response to political activism, and comes from the liberty of individuals being able to choose for themselves the free associations that best fits their needs.  When government demands loyalty to a political agenda rather than compliance with the law as a prerequisite for businesses to operate in their jurisdiction, that’s not freedom or a free market: it’s fascism, plain and simple, as well as extortion, which always goes hand in hand with fascism.

Update: Aaron Walker concurs, and adds this:

[The] syllogism is simple, but it bears repeating:

1.         The right to vote implies the right to choose freely on every subject relevant to that vote.

2.         The right to choose implies the right to receive information and hear arguments about that choice.

3.         We cannot receive information and arguments about the choices we make in our democracy unless people are free to express themselves.

4.         Therefore freedom of expression is essentially to democracy.

And so when an official seeks not only to regulate behavior but even opinion and expression, then that person is seeking to create a very real tyranny, to strike at democracy itself.  And we should have absolutely no tolerance of that.

So yes, even if you support gay marriage—hell even if you are gay—get a sandwich at Chick-Fil-A.  Because this isn’t about gay marriage anymore.  This is about freedom of speech.

Exactly.

Mikey Bloomberg says, liberal fascism is so much fun!

The nanny state is going after moms.

Mayor Bloomberg is pushing hospitals to hide their baby formula behind locked doors so more new mothers will breast-feed.

Starting Sept. 3, the city will keep tabs on the number of bottles that participating hospitals stock and use — the most restrictive pro-breast-milk program in the nation.

Under the city Health Department’s voluntary Latch On NYC initiative, 27 of the city’s 40 hospitals have also agreed to give up swag bags sporting formula-company logos, toss out formula-branded tchotchkes like lanyards and mugs, and document a medical reason for every bottle that a newborn receives.

If only they could do what they know is best without that pesky thing known as debate!

Ed Morrissey

It’s bad enough to have a columnist at one of America’s most prominent newspapers regularly singing the praises of Chinese authoritarianism.  It’s worse when high-ranking members of the American government do it.  Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood griped at the Aspen Ideas Festival about having to deal with political opposition, and yearned for the ease in which Beijing could impose solutions without having to deal with dissent:

Echoing the laments of pundits like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood argued Saturday that China outpaces the United States in building major transportation infrastructure like high-speed rail because of its authoritarian system and because the Chinese don’t have the Republican Party holding up progress.

“The Chinese are more successful [in building infrastructure] because in their country, only three people make the decision. In our country, 3,000 people do, 3 million,” LaHood said in a short interview with The Cable on the sidelines of the 2012 Aspen Ideas Festival on June 30. “In a country where only three people make the decision, they can decide where to put their rail line, get the money, and do it. We don’t do it that way in America.” …

“Two years ago, between 50 to 60 Republicans were elected to the House of Representatives to come to Washington to do nothing, and that’s what they’ve done and they’ve stopped any progress. Those people don’t have any vision about what the government can do. That’s been a real inhibitor in our ability to think outside the box and think big,” he said.

Er, high-speed rail is outside the box?  Democrats have been pushing that idea for decades, even while our current passenger-rail monopoly eats government subsidies while delivering the kind of performance one would expect from an anachronistic transportation medium. Air travel surpassed fixed-rail transportation in the 1950s and 1960s, with its flexibility on routes and moderately free-market competition for passengers.

In California, for instance, the state and the federal government will spend $100 billion to build a route between San Francisco and Los Angeles that will consist of a government monopoly riding on tracks near one of the largest earthquake faults in the world for most of its length, all to deliver passengers slower and at greater overall cost between two fixed points.  Airlines give consumers a choice of carriers and airports on either end of that route, will deliver passengers more quickly, and probably with a much wider choice of departure and arrival times. That sounds a lot more “outside the box,” and since the infrastructure for that already exists, it won’t cost an additional $100 billion for a state chronically in ten-figure budget deficits year in and year out.

Furthermore, the people sent those “50 to 60 Republicans” not to do nothing, but specifically to block the Obama administration’s agenda on big-spending government.  That is how democracy works, and why we have midterm elections — so that voters can issue a corrective to Presidents and Congresses that defy public will.  LaHood tried to tell The Cable that “democracy is preferable” after his hosanna to China, but it’s not clear that LaHood even understands how democracy works.

James Lileks nails the attitudes of the food police.

I am not fat and I don’t drink sugared soda. If the Mayor of New York decided to regulate portion sizes for sugared drinks tomorrow it wouldn’t affect my life in the least -the idea is typical of the Mandatory Betterment class, and I expect nothing less. It’s all the people who are so gosh-darned impressed with the Bold Initiative who rankle up the humours.

Let’s get one thing clear: when the TV talk-show people lavish praise on the idea, it has nothing to do with some abstract notion of the costs of obesity. They just don’t like fat people. Fat people, at best, are a rebuke their own finicky vanity – I look good, why can’t you? – and at the worst, aesthetically unpleasant. If they all went away, the trim pert types woudl miss them after a while, and realize that people no longer came pre-packaged in a style that made them easy to dismiss.

A thin woman with three children by three men who can’t get by is an object of concern. A fat women with two kids who can’t get by is a toad, and probably a smoker.

A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self-definition – localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese – will find the casual carefree choices of the less-enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.

Business Insider on the rah-rahs:

“The panel on Morning Joe today was surprisingly positive about Mayor Bloomberg’s effort to ban large sugary drinks at food carts, stadiums, move theaters, etc.

Host Mika Brzezinski referred to the drinks as “poison” for their sugar content and applauded the mayor.

Poison.

Some helpful reminders seem to be required. Poison:

Follow the link. His illustration of the point is hilarious.

The left is angry (permanently to my eye) and they’re talking trash.

Powerline:

Just as you would expect, the Democrats kept it classy last night, flooding Twitter with calls for Scott Walker and his family to be murdered. Twitchy has collected dozens of death threats. A sampling:

Somebody gone kill Scott Walker man.

KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER KILL SCOTT WALKER! Ole Bitch Ass Pig Ass Nigga!!!!

Somebody need to Abe Lincoln Scott Walker cave frog lookin ass.

I wanna kill scott walker so fucking baddd!!!!! & the racist dumb assholes that voted for him #nbs

Please somebody kill Scott Walker.

Scott walker will die within the next week ive already payed for the hit

Scott walker needs fall down the capital stairs & die..

NBS I Know What School Scott Walker Son Go To

AND If Scott Walker Got A Wife Imma Fuck Her Face—
Tj Fucked Yo Bitch (@iWusGetnSumHead) June 06, 2012

Ah yes, the modern Democratic Party. The liberals’ rhetorical violence contrasts with Walker’s own restrained and dignified victory speech last night:

The degree to which Walker has remained calm and civil through months of crazed attacks from the Democrats–culminating over the weekend in the “love child” smear–is remarkable.

So far no Democrat has come forth to denounce the threats.

An ex-Marine, pro-Walker man named Dave Willoughby is rousted and arrested for carrying a sign the union thugs didn’t like.

Funny how intolerant the supposedly tolerant progressives can be.

Here is what happened afterward:

Without being told what I had done, I was handcuffed and escorted off premise. Placed in a squad car and taken to a police station. I asked if I should have my rights read to me and was told “You’re not being arrested.” My personal property was taken from me, I was fingerprinted, mug shot taken and locked in a dark jail cell (lights off) still handcuffed.

I sat in that jail cell, looking out of a meshed wire window, at a large American flag flying in the background. Where am I? How can this be happening? What did I do wrong? I prayed for strength.

When I swore the oath to protect and defend the Constitution, I never realized until recently, how vulnerable our precious freedoms actually are.

I did nothing wrong. There were literally hundreds of cameras at this event. I challenge all media to find one shred of evidence, which would support the actions of the Milwaukee PD officers.

The list of things once known to be true (consensus!) but later proven wrong keeps growing. Remember when eggs were bad, then good? Margarine good, then bad?

Now, salt is off the hook.

Gary Taubes in New York Times:

…and yet, this eat-less-salt argument has been surprisingly controversial — and difficult to defend. Not because the food industry opposes it, but because the actual evidence to support it has always been so weak.

When I spent the better part of a year researching the state of the salt science back in 1998 — already a quarter century into the eat-less-salt recommendations — journal editors and public health administrators were still remarkably candid in their assessment of how flimsy the evidence was implicating salt as the cause of hypertension.

“You can say without any shadow of a doubt,” as I was told then by Drummond Rennie, an editor for The Journal of the American Medical Association, that the authorities pushing the eat-less-salt message had “made a commitment to salt education that goes way beyond the scientific facts.”

While, back then, the evidence merely failed to demonstrate that salt was harmful, the evidence from studies published over the past two years actually suggests that restricting how much salt we eat can increase our likelihood of dying prematurely. Put simply, the possibility has been raised that if we were to eat as little salt as the U.S.D.A. and the C.D.C. recommend, we’d be harming rather than helping ourselves.

In 2010, known food Nazi Mayor Michael Bloomberg declared war on salt in New Yorkers’ diets.

I can hear the chant already.

Bernard Goldberg

You hear the one about the guy who is so fat he doesn’t have an address. He has a zip code!

How about this: Yo mama so fat when she walks outside in a yellow dress, people yell “TAXI!”

I’m guessing New Yorkers hear a lot of fat jokes, since more than half the people who live in the city are overweight or downright obese. I didn’t know that until I read the New York Times today. So the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has come up with a plan to fight the problem: He’s going to ban “the sale of large sodas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts, in the most ambitious effort yet by the Bloomberg administration to combat rising obesity,” as the Times explained it.

My sources tell me there are more rules on the way.

I understand that the mayor will make the sale of Ding Dongs and Ho Hos a felony.

He’s also going to ban apple pie, hot dogs, salt, cheesecake and margarine. Anyone caught selling any of these soon-t0-be illegal substances will be sent to re-education camp on Staten Island.

And if a black market pops up to provide New York’s fatsos with illegal stuff to shove down their throats, the mayor has a contingency plan to force everyone over a government specified weight to join a health club – or be expelled to New Jersey, where they should feel more at home since the governor is fat.

Okay, I made a lot of that up. But the ban on large sodas is not a joke.

“Obesity is a nationwide problem, and all over the United States, public health officials are wringing their hands saying, ‘Oh, this is terrible,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg told the Times.

“New York City is not about wringing your hands; it’s about doing something,” the mayor said. “I think that’s what the public wants the mayor to do.”

This raises a question: Where is Ron Paul when you really need him?

According to the proposed ban – it has to be approved by the city’s Board of Health, which is a virtual certainty since the mayor appointed the board members – “The sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than 16 fluid ounces — about the size of a medium coffee, and smaller than a common soda bottle — would be prohibited under the first-in-the-nation plan,” according to the Times…

I like that term,  Green Shirts, which fits nicely with Green Scare.

Tyler Durden on eco-Fascists finally getting around to the point: people are the problem.

I am not exaggerating.

This is Finnish writer Pentti Linkola — a man who demands that the human population reduce its size to around 500 million and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth — in his own words.

He likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

He sees America as the root of the problem:

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.

He unapologetically advocates bloodthirsty dictatorship:

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical growth.

We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her…

Read the whole appalling thing.

Newsbusters

Touting new recommendations from an Institute of Medicine panel on obesity on Tuesday’s NBC Nightly News, science correspondent Robert Bazell proclaimed to viewers: “…a sea change in how we perceive obesity. No longer a question of individual responsibility, but a need to change what’s called an ‘obesity-promoting environment.’ Calling on corporations, government and individuals to act.”

At the top of the broadcast, anchor Brian Williams sounded the alarm: “Weight of the nation. An American health crisis out of control, and tonight a reality check on what it might take to turn things around.” Later teasing the upcoming story, he declared: “Getting past the question of will power, what’s really to blame for a nation of exploding waistlines? Tonight, there is a surprising new answer.”

New? Surprising? I bet it’s the same one: government!

In his report, Bazell proceeded to detail the dictates of the health panel: “…requiring at least 60 minutes a day of physical activity in schools. Public and workplace policies that encourage people of all ages to exercise more. Industry-wide guidelines on marketing food to children, including healthier choices for kids in restaurants and having healthy food available at all public events.”

Bazell further pushed the findings: “With the cost of treating obesity-related illnesses approaching $200 billion a year, many on the panel say the nation is ready to act.” The panel’s vice chair, Dr. M.R.C. Greenwood implored: “It takes a lot of leadership. We need our mayors to step up to the plate, we need our school superintendents to step up to the plate.”

NBC itself is in a perfect position to do so, by refusing all advertising from beer manufacturers, fast-food retailers and junk food purveyors. Not to mention banning coverage of sporting events where these products are sold by concessionaires.

Think they’ll do so? Well, much like the wealthy who call on the IRS to raise their taxes, and yet refuse to voluntarily mail in larger checks, I don’t recall the network stopped airing Sunday Night Football games in klieg light-illuminated stadiums in addition to calling on individuals to turn their household lights off at the peak of the global warming scare of 2007

WSJ

The Chronicle of Higher Education has fired our former editorial-page colleague, Naomi Schaefer Riley, for a blog posting on the Chronicle’s website that offended 6,500 professors. Well, they’re not all professors yet, but they are members of what calls itself the “higher-education community,” for which the Chronicle is its trade paper.

As best we can make out, the Chronicle’s editor, Liz McMillen, fired Naomi Riley for doing what she was hired to do—provide a conservative point of view about current events in academe alongside the paper’s roster of mostly not-conservative academic bloggers. We should point out that Naomi is married to Journal editorial-board member Jason Riley.

In a piece nearby, Naomi describes the sequence of events that led to her dismissal. After she posted an item critical of contemporary black studies on the Chronicle’s ironically named blog—Brainstorm: Ideas and Culture—a petition drive instantly demanded her dismissal. It came and quickly.

Ms. McMillen’s Note to Readers explaining the dismissal is itself worthy of note. “I sincerely apologize,” she writes, “for the distress these incidents have caused our readers and appreciate that so many of you have made your sentiments known to us. One theme many of you have sounded is that you felt betrayed by what we published.”

As such things go, the McMillen apologia will enter the higher-ed Hall of Fame for Cravenness. Anyone with a passing interest in university life the past 25 years knew that editor McMillen’s commitment to diversity of opinion would vanish the moment the “betrayed” staged an online sit-in outside her office.

It is hard not to note the context in which Ms. McMillen dismissed Naomi Riley for committing speech. Now more than ever, too many college graduates discover that their expensive higher educations send them into a modern workplace with skills that few employers want or need. The graduates sit home, unemployed and unemployable. Meanwhile, back inside the school walls, the Chronicle of Higher Education stands ready to eliminate any writer who causes distress to the modern generation of scholars who teach these students.

A 6-year-old boy was suspended from his school for three days after school officials say he told a girl “I’m sexy and I know it,” a line from a popular song.

D’Avonte Meadows, a first-grader at Sable Elementary School in Aurora, is accused of sexual harassment and disrupting other students, according to a letter the school district sent to the boy’s mother after he was sent home Wednesday.

School officials issued a statement saying they couldn’t discuss the case, but they pointed out a school board policy that defines sexual harassment as any unwelcome sexual advance. There is no age limit.

Sexual harassment used to mean the boss made a demand on female employees: put out or else.

Then it was expanded to include things that would create a hostile work place, such as men telling raunchy jokes or putting raunchy posters on the wall.

Fine.

But a six year old makes a “sexual advance” by quoting a lyric?

Suppose it was a 30-year old in an office, quoting the same line to a female staffer. Would she be helpless and collapse into a puddle of tears? Faint?

No, she’d more likely come back with a wisecrack such as, “Glad you know it because no one else does.” And he’d slink away. (Unless he was Bill Clinton — he’d go find someone to fondle.)

The Democrats invented a fake “war on women.” Infantilizing them into shrinking violets inflicts true damage.

As for D’Avonte, perhaps he’s learned a valuable lesson: there are jerks in charge where you’d least expect it.

Now he knows.

We have laws to protect endangered species from going extinct, which is good. It’s wrong for the last few of anything to be hunted into extinction.

But suppose you imported a few endangered animals, bred them into thriving herds, growing their numbers, then allowed limited hunting in order to pay the costs of maintaining the herd?

Can’t do it, thanks to a self-righteous busybody who used the levers of government to stop something she just doesn’t like. Her opinion, her rules. Period. (By her reasoning, vegetarianism should be federal law because killing animals is “unethical.”)

Liberal fascism, folks.

For background, here is the “60 Minutes” report from Jan. 29.

This week, it became official– the feds say the hunting has to stop. So there will be no economic basis for preserving the endangered animals.

Nice one.

It’s of a piece of Obama wanting to raise capital gains rates for reasons of fairness, even though it will be mean less revenue to the treasury.

The root of liberal fascism is a sense of arrogant righteousness.

Protein Wisdom:

…Stanley Fish, who — because he has spent an academic career immersed in the insular logic of the linguistic turn — is able to comfortably slide into a description of benevolent “liberal” tyranny that he counsels his fellow travelers (satirically?) to embrace.

To which I answer, well, at least he’s honest about what it is progressives are doing. Fish:

If we think about the Rush Limbaugh dust-up from the non-liberal — that is, non-formal — perspective, the similarity between what he did and what Schultz and Maher did disappears. Schultz and Maher are the good guys; they are on the side of truth and justice. Limbaugh is the bad guy; he is on the side of every nefarious force that threatens our democracy. Why should he get an even break?

There is no answer to that question once you step outside of the liberal calculus in which all persons, no matter what their moral status as you see it, are weighed in an equal balance. Rather than relaxing or soft-pedaling your convictions about what is right and wrong, stay with them, and treat people you see as morally different differently. Condemn Limbaugh and say that Schultz and Maher may have gone a bit too far but that they’re basically O.K. If you do that you will not be displaying a double standard; you will be affirming a single standard, and moreover it will be a moral one because you will be going with what you think is good rather than what you think is fair. “Fair” is a weak virtue; it is not even a virtue at all because it insists on a withdrawal from moral judgment.

I know the objections to what I have said here. It amounts to an apology for identity politics. It elevates tribal obligations over the universal obligations we owe to each other as citizens. It licenses differential and discriminatory treatment on the basis of contested points of view. It substitutes for the rule “don’t do it to them if you don’t want it done to you” the rule “be sure to do it to them first and more effectively.” It implies finally that might makes right. I can live with that.

Fish’s single standard, distilled and properly understood, is that liberals are (they’ll claim) morally superior by virtue of their very belief in their own political identities — which identity is tied to an ideology that, manifested politically, privileges governmental theft, sanctioned inequality as a function of tribal identity, and a giant foundational question beg: namely, that moral superiority comes from being on the left, so therefore being on the left means you can really do no fundamental moral wrong. Progressivism, as Fish sees it, is the “non-formal” — that is, I suppose, situationally free-floating — antidote to restrictive “conservative” or classically liberal universalism*.

That that restrictive conservative/classical liberal universalism is, as we know from the Declaration and Constitution, the foundation upon which this country was imagined and later framed, well, that’s irrelevant. Those documents are hoary totems, and their impulses Enlightenment fantasies. And we can “fundamentally transform” the country simply by denying it its institutionalized powers by force of will.

“Progressivism” is, as Fish notes — and as I’ve spent years on protein wisdom demonstrating through my various discussions of identity politics and language — a belief system that, once its kernel assumptions are adopted, will lead fundamentally and inexorably to tyranny. Fish doesn’t call it such, of course. He chooses “might makes right.” But there is no difference. Tyranny and authoritarianism — when lorded over by the “liberal” — is, by virtue of the adopted morality of those running it, both moral and good.

And it is because of this — the progressives’ fidelity to a belief system that is fundamentally at odds with the idea of equality of the individual before the law — that I’ve said time and time again that modern progressivism / “liberalism” is nothing like the classical liberalism upon which this country was founded, and is in fact antithetical and hostile to the very notion of individual autonomy, and a foundational “fairness” that comes about as a result of a system of law that seeks to create an even playing field. That is, it is in a very real and strict sense un-American.

To the progressive, your social and political worth — in fact, your very claim to morality — comes from your various identity politics alliances. That is, your morality is a function not so much of what you do, but rather of where you claim to stand, and with whom.

Progressivism cares not about fairness or equality in the sense those words are used under a political paradigm that adheres to classical liberalism; instead, it seeks to redefine “fairness” and “equality” (and “tolerance”) as based on the outcomes it desires, a deconstructive procedure it then justifies by tying those outcomes to its own self-serving descriptions of what comes to count as moral. It is circular reasoning made perfect. Might makes right. The ends justify the means.

Fish says he can live with that. I’ve spent a decade on my site showing you precisely why, if you believe in the American experiment, you cannot and should not wish to “live with that.”

The choice may soon be yours.

Liberal fascism rears its ugly head. Dan Riehl at Breitbart

…a trio of feminists, led by Jane Fonda, is calling for Rush Limbaugh to be banned by the FCC.

Editor’s note: Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem are the Co-Founders of the Women’s Media Center.

Ironically, the misogyny Rush Limbaugh spewed for three days over Sandra Fluke was not much worse than his regular broadcast of sexist, racist and homophobic hate speech:

One of Rush’s comments featured in their editorial and explicitly identified as having been taken from “his regular broadcast of sexist, racist and homophobic hate speech” is this one:

–[Said to an African American female caller]: “Take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

That’s false and misleading. If you click through to Snopes and scroll down, or see the screen cap, you’ll find the comment was not made on his popular radio program. Limbaugh himself actually confessed to making the statement in a 1990 Newsday article. The comment was made in the early 1970’s under a pseudonym, “Jeff Christie.”

Recalling a stint as an “insult-radio” DJ in Pittsburgh, he admits feeling guilty about, for example, telling a black listener he could not understand to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back.”

In contrast to Limbaugh, here is what Jane Fonda was broadcasting into North Vietnam during her visit in 1972, while American troops were fighting and dying in Vietnam. At the source page, you will find images of Fonda joking and laughing with North Vietnamese troops. Given these comparisons, if either of the two is to be banned, it should be Fonda, not Limbaugh. That Fonda and her comrades totally mischaracterized the quote for CNN’s readers only compounds the offense. Given the editor’s note at top, that a CNN editor presumably reviewed the posting suggests they were complicit in falsely smearing Limbaugh, as well.

Another student had requested the transcript of Jane Fonda’s radio address which she had broadcast in North Vietnam.  This transcription, dated August 22, 1972 was made from her Hotel Especen broadcast in Hanoi at 7:11 p.m.

The following  was submitted in the U.S. Congress House Committee on Internal Security, Travel to Hostile Areas. [HR16742, 19-25 September 1972, page 761]

This is Jane Fonda. During my two week visit in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, I’ve had the opportunity to visit a great many places and speak to a large number of people from all walks of life- workers, peasants, students, artists and dancers, historians, journalists, film actresses, soldiers, militia girls, members of the women’s union, writers.

I visited the (Dam Xuac) agricultural coop, where the silk worms are also raised and thread is made. I visited a textile factory, a kindergarten in Hanoi. The beautiful Temple of Literature was where I saw traditional dances and heard songs of resistance. I also saw unforgettable ballet about the guerrillas training bees in the south to attack enemy soldiers. The bees were danced by women, and they did their job well.

In the shadow of the Temple of Literature I saw Vietnamese actors and actresses perform the second act of Arthur Miller’s play All My Sons, and this was very moving to me- the fact that artists here are translating and performing American plays while US imperialists are bombing their country.

I cherish the memory of the blushing militia girls on the roof of their factory, encouraging one of their sisters as she sang a song praising the blue sky of Vietnam- these women, who are so gentle and poetic, whose voices are so beautiful, but who, when American planes are bombing their city, become such good fighters.

..

Steve Landsburg. a professor at the University of Rochester, was publicly rebuked by his own college president for debating the merits of Sandra Fluke’s argument for subsidized contraception.

He was also subjected to loud disruptions in this classroom by thugs students outraged at an academic voicing a contrary opinion. So much for the free exchange of ideas.

Full background here.

Here is the professor’s 4th blog post on the topic.

Joel Seligman, the president of the University of Rochester, has, in his words, exercised his right to express his views with a dissent from my recent posts about contraceptive subsidies.

Several news organizations have asked me for a statement. Here is what I sent them. (Below the fold is a copy of my email response to President Seligman.)

President Seligman says that the mission of the university is to promote the free exchange of ideas and lively debate, and I agree. That mission is undermined whenever a member of the academic community elevates raw self-interest over the exchange of ideas.

That’s what Sandra Fluke did. She observed that contraceptives are expensive, and therefore demanded that somebody other than herself and her fellow students pick up the tab. She didn’t even pretend to be interested in debating any of the serious issues raised by the question of when some of us should pick up the tab for others’ expenses.

Sometimes we should, sometimes we shouldn’t, and there’s a lot to be said, discussed, and debated about the particulars. An emotional appeal for one’s preferred outcome, ignoring all the substantive issues, is the
exact antithesis of the free exchange of ideas that President Seligman claims to endorse.

I’ve had three blog posts on this subject, here, here, and here. The commenters have offered many bright and lively arguments and observations, some of which have led me to modify some of my views.
This is a wonderful thing. It’s also the very opposite of Sandra Fluke’s approach, which amounts to a contemptuous dismissal of the very possibility of engaging these issues through intellectual discourse. I’d have expected a distinguished academic to feel the same way.

And now, my letter to President Seligman:

Dear President Seligman:

I do appreciate your right to express your views, but I don’t think you have a right to misrepresent mine.

You wrote: “Landsburg…characterized those who disagreed with his view as `contraceptive sponges’”. This is the exact opposite of the truth. I offered several good and bad arguments for and against subsidized contraception, dissected them with respect, applauded commenters who differed from me intelligently, and in some cases bowed to their insight.

I reserved the phrase `contraceptive sponges’ very clearly and specifically for people who demand subsidies without offering any reasons beyond the fact that they’d prefer to be subsidized. In other words, the targets of this phrase are people who have not actually stated any views on the matter at hand, namely how do we know when a subsidy is justified.

People who express actual views on this matter do not deserve to be mocked or ridiculed, and I never once said or implied that they do; indeed the considerable respect I’ve shown to opposing views throughout the comments section (and in the posts themselves) belies this interpretation.

Again, my objection is to people who think we ought to draw policy conclusions based on nothing more than their own personal preferences—that is, people who think that ideas don’t matter. I’d have hoped that a distinguished academic would share that objection.

Steve Landsburg

Progressives have plans for you. They want to dictate:

• what you eat
• how much water pressure you can have in your shower
• the car you drive (actually what bus or train to take)
• your choice of light bulbs
• where you live (not the suburbs)
• and in what kind of house (small, multifamily)

This explains their stubborn support for a massive bullet train boondoggle.

Ralph Varabedian in the LA Times

The bullet trains that would someday streak through California at 220 mph are, in the vision of their most ardent supporters, more than just a transportation system. They are also a means to alter the state’s social, residential and economic fabric.

But those broader ambitions are triggering an increasingly strident ideological backlash to the massive project.

The fast trains connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco would create new communities of high-density apartments and small homes around stations, reducing the suburbanization of California, rail advocates say. That new lifestyle would mean fewer cars and less gasoline consumption, lowering California’s contribution to global warming.

The rail system also would reduce the economic and transportation isolation of the Central Valley, which would grow by 10 million or even 20 million people, according to Gov. Jerry Brown.

“We are going to have to live closer together” and accommodate growth in more environmentally sustainable ways, Brown said in a recent interview. “The high-speed rail will be built in that vein.”

California is broke and chasing businesses away in droves with taxes and regulation. So Governor Moonbeam Choo-Choo, chooses to make financial matters worse to accommodate the “growth.”

Opponents, most of whom are political conservatives, regard the ambitious project as a classic government overreach that will require taxpayer subsidies. But they also see something more sinister: an agenda to push people into European or Asian models of dense cities, tight apartments and reliance on state-provided transportation.

Ya think? (Europeans drive tiny cars and live in tiny spaces because they inhabit a tiny space. They don’t sprawl because they can’t.)

“It is a real movement in California of controlling the masses, controlling land use, deciding where people should live,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare). “I oppose that absolutely, because it is a form of left-wing social engineering.”

…”What are all of these 10 million additional people going to be doing for a living in the Central Valley?” asks USC historian and author Kevin Starr. “You have to ask are these going to be 10 million more taxpayers or 10 million people who have to be supported by other taxpayers?”

Stephen Adams at the UK Telegraph

Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending their lives is no different to abortion, a group of medical ethicists linked to Oxford University has argued.

The article, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics, says newborn babies are not “actual persons” and do not have a “moral right to life”. The academics also argue that parents should be able to have their baby killed if it turns out to be disabled when it is born.

The journal’s editor, Prof Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, said the article’s authors had received death threats since publishing the article. He said those who made abusive and threatening posts about the study were “fanatics opposed to the very values of a liberal society”.

The article, entitled “After-birth abortion: Why should the baby live?”, was written by two of Prof Savulescu’s former associates, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva.

They argued: “The moral status of an infant is equivalent to that of a fetus in the sense that both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual.”

Rather than being “actual persons”, newborns were “potential persons”. They explained: “Both a fetus and a newborn certainly are human beings and potential persons, but neither is a ‘person’ in the sense of ‘subject of a moral right to life’…

Assuming this isn’t a put-on: Does this not argue for capital punishment? After all, what “moral status” does a murderer have?

Reading the original paper, I came across this:

Nonetheless, to bring up such children [Down's syndrome] might be an unbearable burden on the family and on society as a whole, when the state economically provides for their care. On these grounds, the fact that a fetus has the potential to become a person who will have an (at least) acceptable life is no reason for prohibiting abortion. Therefore, we argue that, when circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible.

Decisions about the potential burden of a newborn are guesses.

What about adults who have proved themselves to be burdens? Why not execute people who have been on welfare more than five years? We’d save a bundle!

The Food Police State is rumbling.

A. Barton Hinckle at Reason

“It may be better to live under robber barons,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep…but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” Now there was a fellow who knew a thing or two.

Lewis would not be surprised by a recent jeremiad in the journal Nature, arguing that sugar is just as bad for you as tobacco and alcohol, and we all ought to be forced to eat a lot less of it. The authors think it would be grand if the government slapped hefty taxes on foods with added sugar, and outlawed the sale of sugary drinks to minors, and kept sugary-drink-selling stores away from schools and any place inhabited by people who are poor and fat and therefore, presumably, stupid. (Well—“low-income areas plagued by obesity” is how the news stories put it. But we all know what they meant.)

Self-appointed food police have been pitching Twinkie taxes, soda taxes, and so on for years. And like advocates of every stripe, they are sometimes prone to exaggerating.

Last month researchers (including one at Virginia Tech) claimed slapping a penny-per-ounce tax on soft drinks would raise $13 billion in revenue, save $17 billion in health costs, and prevent (kid you not) 2,600 premature deaths a year—all because it would lead the average adult American to cut nine calories a day. Nine.

The road to a svelte figure begins with the first calorie, no?

Meanwhile, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has ginned up some good publicity by erecting a couple of anti-cheese billboards in Albany, New York—dairy country, that is. The billboards show a man’s fat gut and a woman’s hamhock thighs and say it’s all cheese’s fault.

The FDA, for its part, continues to move forward with plans to restrict salt. The agency started studying the issue five years ago. By last December it had published a proposal in the Federal Register seeking comments on “current and emerging approaches designed to promote sodium reduction.”

But the FDA will have to work faster if it wants to keep up with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His administration already is spearheading a “nationwide effort to reduce salt in restaurant and packaged foods.” It also has banned trans-fats and smoking in bars, launched a P.R. campaign against occasional smoking, and is in the process of restricting alcohol sales and advertising in the city.

Bloomberg is doing this with the approval of his own conscience: As he said at a U.N. conference last fall, making “healthy solutions the default social option” is “ultimately government’s highest duty.” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer evidently agrees and wants to get in on the action. He has asked the FDA to review and possibly ban powdered caffeine. He’s worried a new product called AeroShot could become the next “club drug.” No word yet on Schumer’s thoughts about NoDoz or coffee.

As Lewis said, such paternalism “stings with intolerable insult.” It stings all the more because in some cases the government has exacerbated the very problem supposedly requiring redress. Take high-fructose corn syrup, which the Nature piece urges regulating more tightly and which is widely used as a sweetener in the U.S.

Why is it widely used? Blame Washington’s import quotas on foreign sugar – and its massive subsidies for corn. Corn is the run-away winner in the farm subsidy Olympics: The Environmental Working Group estimates Americans have shelled out nearly $80 billion in corn subsidies over the past decade and a half.

So first we’re forced to pay on the front end for the overproduction of corn, thereby encouraging the use of high fructose corn syrup, and now we’re supposed to pay again on the back end, through soda taxes and the like, to prevent ourselves from drinking too much of it. Brilliant…

Okay, it’s a big stretch to link this directly to Obama. But this is a state mandate at work (using USDA guidelines), one of Obama’s nanny tools.

A mother in Hoke County complains her daughter was forced to eat a school lunch because a government inspector determined her home-made lunch did not meet nutrition requirements. In fact, all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home.

NC Pre-K (before this year known as More at Four) is a state-funded education program designed to “enhance school readiness” for four year-olds.

The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter a lunch that contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips. A state inspector assessing the pre-K program at the school said the girl also needed a vegetable, so the inspector ordered a full school lunch tray for her. While the four-year-old was still allowed to eat her home lunch, the girl was forced to take a helping of chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement her sack lunch.

The mother says the girl was so intimidated by the inspection process that she was too scared to eat all of her homemade lunch. The girl ate only the chicken nuggets provided to her by the school, so she still didn’t eat a vegetable.

The mother says her daughter doesn’t like vegetables and – like most four year olds – will only eat them at home under close supervision.

In an interview with the Civitas Institute the mother said “I can’t put vegetables in her lunchbox. I’m not a millionaire and I’m not going to put something in there that my daughter doesn’t eat and I’ve done gone round and round with the teacher about that and I’ve told her that. I put fruit in there every day because she is a fruit eater. Vegetables, let me take care of my business at home and at night and that’s when I see she’s eating vegetables. I either have to smash it or tell her if you don’t eat your vegetables you’re going to go to bed.”

The mother added, “It’s just a headache to keep arguing and fighting. I’ve even wrote a note to her teachers and said do not give my daughter anything else unless it comes out of her lunchbox and they are still going against me and putting a milk in front of her every day…

Jonah Goldberg

If you’re not with us, you’re against us. President Bush popularized this expression after 9/11 to describe his foreign policy doctrine: Countries couldn’t support or indulge terrorists and be our friends at the same time. But his detractors quickly turned it into a fairly paranoid vision of domestic political life, as if Bush had been talking about domestic opponents and dissenters.

The irony is that few worldviews better describe the general liberal orientation to public policy and the culture war. The left often complains about the culture war as if it’s a war they don’t want to fight. They insist they just want to follow “sound science” or “what works” when it comes to public policy, but those crazy knuckle-dragging right-wingers constantly want to talk about gays and abortion and other hot-button issues.

It’s all a farce. Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war (and not always for the worse, as the civil rights movement demonstrates). What they object to isn’t so much the government imposing its values on people — heck, they love that. They see nothing wrong with imposing their views about diet, exercise, sex, race and the environment on Americans. What outrages them is resistance, or even non-compliance with their agenda. “Why are you making such a scene?” progressives complain. “Just do what we want and there will be no fuss.”

To conservatives and libertarians who prefer to be left alone, progressives come off as a secular version of the Church Lady — judgmental, self-righteous and nagging.

Mark Steyn on the Liberal Enforcers:

As Senator Obama said during the 2008 campaign, words matter. Modern “liberalism” is strikingly illiberal; the high priests of “tolerance” are increasingly intolerant of even the mildest dissent; and those who profess to “celebrate diversity” coerce ever more ruthlessly a narrow homogeneity. Thus, the Obama administration’s insistence that Catholic institutions must be compelled to provide free contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients. This has less to do with any utilitarian benefit a condomless janitor at a Catholic school might derive from Obamacare, and more to do with the liberal muscle of Big Tolerance enforcing one-size-fits-all diversity.

The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: In Sweden, expressing a moral objection to homosexuality is illegal, even on religious grounds, even in church, and a pastor minded to cite the more robust verses of Leviticus would risk four years in jail. In Canada, the courts rule that Catholic schools must allow gay students to take their same-sex dates to the prom. The secular state’s Bureau of Compliance is merciless to apostates to a degree even your fire-breathing imams might marvel at…

George Will

…Obama, an unfettered executive wielding a swollen state, began and ended his address by celebrating the armed forces. They are not “consumed with personal ambition,” they “work together” and “focus on the mission at hand” and do not “obsess over their differences.” Americans should emulate troops “marching into battle,” who “rise or fall as one unit.”

Well. The armed services’ ethos, although noble, is not a template for civilian society, unless the aspiration is to extinguish politics. People marching in serried ranks, fused into a solid mass by the heat of martial ardor, proceeding in lock step, shoulder to shoulder, obedient to orders from a commanding officer — this is a recurring dream of progressives eager to dispense with tiresome persuasion and untidy dissension in a free, tumultuous society.

Progressive presidents use martial language as a way of encouraging Americans to confuse civilian politics with military exertions, thereby circumventing an impediment to progressive aspirations — the Constitution and the patience it demands. As a young professor, Woodrow Wilson had lamented that America’s political parties “are like armies without officers.” The most theoretically inclined of progressive politicians, Wilson was the first president to criticize America’s founding. This he did thoroughly, rejecting the Madisonian system of checks and balances — the separation of powers, a crucial component of limited government — because it makes a government that cannot be wielded efficiently by a strong executive.

Franklin Roosevelt agreed. He complained about “the three-horse team of the American system”: “If one horse lies down in the traces or plunges off in another direction, the field will not be plowed.” And progressive plowing takes precedence over constitutional equipoise among the three branches of government. Hence FDR’s attempt to break the Supreme Court to his will by enlarging it.

In his first inaugural address, FDR demanded “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.” He said Americans must “move as a trained and loyal army” with “a unity of duty hitherto evoked only in time of armed strife.” The next day, addressing the American Legion, Roosevelt said it was “a mistake to assume that the virtues of war differ essentially from the virtues of peace.” In such a time, dissent is disloyalty.

Yearnings for a command society were common and respectable then. Commonweal, a magazine for liberal Catholics, said that Roosevelt should have “the powers of a virtual dictatorship to reorganize the government.” Walter Lippmann, then America’s preeminent columnist, said: “A mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead.” The New York Daily News, then the nation’s largest-circulation newspaper, cheerfully editorialized: “A lot of us have been asking (more…)