The Bystander President

What we have here is a government out of control and a president clueless about what is going on in that government

By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

No, this is not Watergate or Iran-Contra. Nor is it like the sex scandal that got Bill Clinton impeached.

The AP, IRS and Benghazi matters represent a scandal not of presidential wrongdoing, but of presidential indolence, indifference and incompetence in discharging the duties of chief executive.

The Barack Obama revealed to us in recent days is something rare in our history: a spectator president, clueless about what is going on in his own household, who reacts to revelations like some stunned bystander.

Consider. Because of a grave national security leak, President Obama’s Department of Justice seized two months of records from 20 telephones used by The Associated Press. An unprecedented seizure.

Yet the president was left completely in the dark. And though he rushed to defend the seizure, he claims he was uninvolved.

While the AP issue does not appear to have legs—we know what was done and why—it has badly damaged this president. For his own Justice Department treated the press, which has an exalted opinion of itself and its role, with the same contempt as the IRS treated the Tea Party.

The episode has damaged a crucial presidential asset. For this Washington press corps had provided this president with a protective coverage of his follies and failings unseen since the White House press of half a century ago covered up the prowlings of JFK.

The Benghazi issue is of far greater gravity. Still, Obama’s sins here as well seem to be those of omission, not commission.

Woolwich: a knife crime, not an act of war

In overreacting to the frenzied stabbing in Woolwich yesterday, politicians and the police risk doing the killers’ dirty work for them

by Brendan O’Neill 

What happened in Woolwich was horrific. However, there’s a real danger of overreacting. What we witnessed was a street murder, a frenzied knife attack carried out by two pathetic individuals claiming, in what sounded like South London accents, to be acting on behalf of aggrieved Muslims everywhere. It wasn’t a million miles away from those occasional senseless knife attacks by clinically insane people who claim to be Napoleon or Jesus Christ. Yet it’s being treated by politicians, the police and the media as an act of war, a terrifying challenge to Western civilisation. This elevation of an opportunistic murder to the level an all-out assault on our way of life graphically demonstrates how society itself can unwittingly do terrorists’ dirty work for them, by aggrandising their actions and amplifying their impact on politics and everyday life.

As hard as it may be, given the disgusting footage that exists, we must put yesterday’s events into perspective. Compared with the 7/7 bombings, which were also carried out by isolated, ridiculous individuals, the Woolwich stabbing was not a big or devastating act of terror, far less an act of war. It was a knife crime, and it should be treated as a knife crime. Also, far from representing an exotic foreign threat to our way of life, as claimed both by those who see the stabbers as representative of ‘Isalmofascism’ and those who think they express desperate Muslim anger with Britain’s foreign wars, in truth the men expressed some distinctly British trends. Their cries of ‘Film us!’ and ‘Take photos of us!’ spoke to today’s craven reality-entertainment culture, to a desire for instant fame, or perhaps instant infamy. And their claim to speak for all Muslims, for the people in ‘our lands’, surely springs from the politics of identity, from the backward belief that if you share cultural traits with certain people then you have the authority to speak for those people and their grievances. Grisly performers and self-righteous ‘community spokespeople’ – they seem to have been influenced by British rather than foreign phenomena.

Today’s Guardian front page

Yet rather than treating this as a knife crime committed by two deluded men, the authorities and media have treated it as a declaration of war. The powers-that-be have gone on to an actual war footing in response to it. PM David Cameron flew back from a political gathering in Paris, and is currently chairing a meeting of COBRA. It’s the second time COBRA - the government’s national emergency committee that convenes in the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms - has met since the stabbing occurred. Politicians say we will ‘stand firm’ in response to what happened, as if Britain had just been invaded by a foreign army rather than having witnessed a horrible knife attack. Meanwhile, the media have transformed the two stabbers into massive threats to Britons. ‘You people will never be safe’, screams the front page of the Guardian, quoting one of the bloodied knifemen, next to a massive blown-up picture of him. This transformation of two losers into mortal threats to Britain and its values somewhat overlooks that both are currently badly injured, and will never walk the streets again.

Bozza, bonking and the public interest

Why should three men in wigs get to decide whether or not us plebs can read about Boris's sexual shenanigans?

by Tim Black 

Yesterday, three appeal court judges decided that it was okay for us, ‘the public’, to know that London mayor Boris Johnson, the blustering blonde many swivel-eyed loons tip as a potential prime minister, is also a randy, prophylactic-averse shagger. 

We know this because Helen Mcintyre, a one-time fling of Johnson’s in the late 2000s, had been trying to persuade the Court of Appeal that details of her affair with Bozza, and the resulting ‘love child’, should be the subject of a press injunction (despite the fact that the details are already out there in print and digital). Still, her case centred on the claim that her daughter’s paternity was ‘exceptionally sensitive and delicate’ and the child would therefore be devastated to learn who her father was in the national press. (It is likely, of course, that the child would simply be devastated to learn who her father was.)

Mcintyre’s chief antagonists, the Daily Mail, which first ran with the story in July 2010, and its publishers, Associated Newspapers, understandably disagreed with Mcintyre. They claimed that the child-bearing infidelities of a figure occupying an important elected role are matters of public interest. And, as it turned out, the appeal court judges concurred: ‘The core information in this story, namely that the father had an adulterous affair with the mother, deceiving both his wife and the mother’s partner and that the claimant, born about nine months later, was likely to be the father’s child, was a public interest matter which the electorate was entitled to know when considering his fitness for high public office.’

Tyranny Around the Corner

Land of the Formerly Free

by Andrew P. Napolitano

A few weeks ago, President Obama advised graduates at Ohio State University that they need not listen to voices warning about tyranny around the corner, because we have self-government in America. He argued that self-government is in and of itself an adequate safeguard against tyranny, because voters can be counted upon to elect democrats (lowercase "d") not tyrants. His argument defies logic and 20th-century history. It reveals an ignorance of the tyranny of the majority, which believes it can write any law, regulate any behavior, alter any procedure and tax any event so long as it can get away with it.

History has shown that the majority will not permit any higher law or logic or value – like fidelity to the natural law, a belief in the primacy of the individual or an acceptance of the supremacy of the Constitution – that prevents it from doing as it wishes.

Under Obama's watch, the majority has, by active vote or refusal to interfere, killed hundreds of innocents – including three Americans – by drone, permitted federal agents to write their own search warrants, bombed Libya into tribal lawlessness without a declaration of war so that a mob there killed our ambassador with impunity, attempted to force the Roman Catholic Church to purchase insurance policies that cover artificial birth control, euthanasia and abortion, ordered your doctor to ask you whether you own guns, used the IRS to intimidate outspoken conservatives, seized the telephone records of newspaper reporters without lawful authority and in violation of court rules, and obtained a search warrant against one of my Fox colleagues by misrepresenting his true status to a federal judge.

James Rosen, my colleague and friend, is a professional journalist. He covers the State Department for Fox News. In order to do his job, he has cultivated sources in the State Department – folks willing to speak from time to time off the record.

One of Rosen's sources apparently was a former employee of a federal contractor who was on detail to the State Department, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. Kim is an expert in arms control and national defense whose lawyers have stated that his job was to explain byzantine government behavior so we all can understand it. When he was indicted for communicating top secret and sensitive information, presumably to Rosen, his lawyers replied by stating that the information he discussed was already in the public domain, and thus it wasn't secret.

Why is Italy in political stalemate?

Italy is still looking for its De Gaulle

BY FRANCESCO GIUMELLI AND DAVIDE MANESCHI

International observers are looking at the Italian political situation with the same sense of wonder one might have when looking at a Picasso.

On the face of it, it does not make sense: how could political parties refuse to co-operate when Italy is at risk of economic disaster?

The February elections have produced a stalemate: an almost equal split between the centre-left, led by the Democratic Party (PD), the centre-right, led by the People of Freedom (PdL) party and the 5Star Movement (M5S) of Beppe Grillo.

In normal times, the political parties would co-operate to bring the country out of the quagmire, but these are not normal times for Italy.

PD won the majority of the seats in the lower house, but it does not control the senate and further support is needed.

The PD says that it does not intend to ally with the PdL because its leader, Silvio Berlusconi has a bad reputation, even though both parties have jointly supported the technocratic government of Mario Monti for the past 18 months.

At the same time, M5S does not want to enter into a coalition with the PD and such an alliance was never proposed during the recent electoral campaigns.

Why is it so difficult to form a government?

Understanding a Picasso painting requires patience and imagination, to look past one's first impression and to see the meaning behind it.

The three parties are the product of a special historical moment.

Europe's Quantitative Easing

The singular hope here is for growth and when none commences very bad things could happen

by Mark J. Grant

Most people do not think that Europe engages in Quantitative Easing. They know that the United States engages in it, that Britain engages in it and now that Japan engages in it but they think that Europe has so far refused to be involved. They think this because this is what they have been told. Unfortunately this is inaccurate.

The European Quantitative Easing takes place every day just not in the manner utilized by America and others. However, it takes place all the same and it is done in a manner to circumvent the rules of the European Union. This is also why the ECB has such a massive balance sheet.

What Europe has done is gotten around their own regulations which forbid the ECB from lending money directly to nations. This is supposed to be handled by the ESM and approved by the various parliaments. Since this is either politically impossible in some countries or politically a nightmare in others the ECB has concocted a scheme to bypass the political rules with all of Europe’s politicians blinking and nodding in silent agreement.

In Spain, as one example, the ECB lent the banks $172 billion. This was done by the country of Spain guaranteeing the debt of the banks and various bank securitizations and then the bank debt and the bank securitizations were pledged to the ECB who handed them back the cash. The money, in large part, has been used to buy the debt of Spain which, in fact, hands the sovereign back the cash. A good trick, an interesting ruse which is the major reason, perhaps the only reason, why the yield of Spain’s debt has declined.

In Greece, as another example, the same game has gone on. Not only does the EU not count contingent liabilities as part of a country’s debt to GDP ratio, where Greece has guaranteed the debt of their banks, but no inclusion is made of the money handed to the sovereign as a result of assets pledged at the ECB and funneled back to the sovereign nation. One more good trick!

“Terminal State of Broken”

Terminally, as hopelessly, as in unfixable

By Monty Pelerin

As markets continue to confound, it is useful to reflect on this quote from Jim Sinclair, particularly the last sentence:

The world has taken on a “virtual reality” with no reference to what really is. This is the biggest market power play of smoke and mirrors in history. It is happening because the financial system is in a terminal state of broken.

I could not agree more. This same view has been expressed since the inception of this website (over three and a half years ago). Mr. Sinclair’s wonderfully clever and colorful phrase,”terminal state of broken,” captures matters well. He used it with respect to financial markets, but it applies to much more.

The terminal state of broken also applies to government and the institutions contained therein. Furthermore, these areas have infected non-governmental institutions, especially those which derive their existence and/or success from a close association with government. These include the educational system, defense industry, highly regulated industries like medicine and finance and a host of others.

The common denominator in all of this is government. It is the modern day equivalent of typhoid Mary, infecting all that it comes in contact with duplicity, dishonesty and corruption. This “brokeness” now infects the very morality and civility of society. Institutional behavior provides the moral guidelines (or lack thereof) for society. Corruption, deceit and theft are not virtues, yet if they are practiced openly they cease to become vices.

Immorality in higher institutions weakens the social and moral fabric of a society. Incivility and coarseness is the least of the problems. Justice Brandeis commented on the “trickle down” effect of institutional behavior, focusing on that of government itself:

In a government of laws, the existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipotent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. If government becomes a lawbreaker it breeds contempt for law: it invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.

Brandeis’ warning was early enough to head off our current condition, but it went unheeded. Instead, our “omnipotent teacher” chose to ignore ethics and morality as they stood in the way of the desire for power and wealth.

Government increasingly took on the Nockian (Albert J. Nock) description:

Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.

From boxing to jihad.

Jihad Abhors a Vacuum

By mark steyn

Post-9/11, we in the omniscient pundit class were all Afghan experts. Post-Boston, we are all Chechen experts.
Strictly between us, I can count what I know about Chechens on one leg. A couple of years ago, while I was in Copenhagen picking up an award from the Danish Free Press Society, a one-legged Chechen prematurely self-detonated in the Hotel Jørgensen while assembling a bomb. His device, using the same highly volatile TATP as in the London Tube bombings, was intended for my friends at Jyllands-Posten, publishers of the famous Mohammed cartoons, to whom I chanced to be giving an interview. All things considered, I'm glad the poor fellow pre-activated in his hotel room rather than delivering his package in the midst of my photo shoot. His name was Lors Doukaiev, and he had traveled from his home in Liège, Belgium, in order to protest the Mohammed cartoons by exploding a bomb on September 11. Got that? A citizen of Belgium is blowing up a newspaper in Denmark on the anniversary of a terrorist attack on America.

So whatever was bugging him didn't have a lot to do with Chechnya. In Boston, before he was run over by his brother and found himself committing the jihadist faux pas of greeting his 72 virgins with tire tracks from head to toe, young Tamerlan Tsarnaev had apparently put on his Amazon wish-list the book The Lone Wolf and the Bear: Three Centuries of Chechen Defiance of Russian Rule. Yet while the Chechen-nationalist struggle has certainly become more Islamic in the last two decades, it's a bit of a mystery what it has to do with Jutland newspapers and Massachusetts marathons. Lors Doukaiev and Tamerlan Tsarnaev were young men in their mid twenties who had lived in the West for much of their lives. Both were boxers. Aside from the fact that Lors was one-legged and Tamerlan wasn't, the quotes their friends and neighbors offered in the wake of their sudden notoriety are more or less interchangeable: "He was perfectly integrated. He was jovial and very open." That was Fabian Detaille, young Doukaiev's trainer at the Cocktail Boxing Club in Droixhe, speaking to Belgian radio, but it could just as easily have been one of Tamerlan's boxing buddies on NPR in Boston.

The Washington Post covered much of the Tsarnaev narrative under the headline "A Faded Portrait of an Immigrant's American Dream." The story is about what you'd expect from the headline but the "faded portrait" is fascinating — a photograph of the family before they came to America: young Mr. and Mrs. Tsarnaev with baby Tamerlan, and Uncle Muhamad with a Tom Selleck moustache and Soviet military uniform. If you only know Ma Tsarnaeva from her post-Boston press conferences as a head-scarfed harpie glorying in her sons' martyrdom and boasting that she'll be shrieking "Allahu akbar!" when the Great Satan takes her out too, the "faded portrait" is well worth your time: Back then, just before the U.S.S.R. fell apart, the jihadist crone looked like a mildly pastier version of an Eighties rock chick — a passable Dagestan doppelgänger for Joan Jett, with spiky black hair and kohl-ringed eyes. She loves rock 'n' roll, so put another ruble in the jukebox, baby!

The Lessons of the Berlin Wall

Berlin Wall story shows people are key to democracy

by Nina Khrushcheva

History's milestones are rarely so neatly arrayed as they are this summer. Fifty years ago this month, the Berlin Wall was born. After some hesitation, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union's leader, allowed his East German counterpart, Walter Ulbricht, to erect a barrier between East and West Berlin in order to ensure the survival of communism in the entire Soviet bloc.

By that point, East Germany had lost three million people - including many of its most talented - as hundreds each day peacefully walked into the zones of Berlin that were controlled by the United States, Great Britain and France.

And 20 years ago this month, hardliners in the Soviet government attempted to overthrow president Mikhail Gorbachev, who, two years after US president Ronald Reagan called on him to "tear down this wall," had done just that.

Mr Gorbachev's hard-line Politburo adversaries were determined to preserve the decrepit system that the Wall symbolised.

But, in August 1991, ordinary Muscovites stood their ground. They defied the coup makers, and in the end carried with them much of the Russian Army. With their defiance, the coup was doomed.

Berliners never stood a similar chance in the face of Soviet power. Mr Khrushchev had assented to Mr Ulbricht's plea that only a physical barrier would maintain the viability of the East German state.

Mr Khrushchev's response was reminiscent of how he dealt with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, a time when he was consolidating his rule and needed to keep Kremlin hardliners at bay.

A bug-eyed view of culinary pleasure

Eating beetles and wasps to save the planet is enough to put you right off your food

by Rob Lyons 

Entomophagy. We should, apparently, be doing more of it - at least according to a report published last week by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). The trouble is that the case the report makes for entomophagy - eating insects - is hardly inspiring.

Apparently, lots of people around the world eat bugs. In Mexico, there are 250 different kinds of insects consumed. In Thailand, the FAO report assures us, crispy-fried locusts and beetles are popular, adding:

More than 1,900 insect species have been documented in literature as edible, most of them in tropical countries. The most commonly eaten insect groups are beetles, caterpillars, bees, wasps, ants, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, cicadas, leaf and planthoppers, scale insects and true bugs, termites, dragonflies and flies.’

The thought of eating bugs will make many people want to barf. Even if they taste okay - my limited experience suggests that they are a bit nutty but don’t really taste of very much - they sure don’t look appetising. That said, squeamishness should be no barrier to trying something new. My first experience of eating octopus was in a Hong Kong sushi bar. Looking down at the three mini octopi in the dish I had mistakenly selected, their little rubbery tentacles wobbling, was utterly unappealing. But, being a Brit alone in a strange town, I forced them down, almost gagging at the thought of chewing through their bodies.

How times change. The day the FAO report came out, I found myself in a trendy new eaterie in London’s grimy-but-fashionable Hoxton district ordering… octopus. And it was delicious. The problem wasn’t the wriggly sea creature, it was me.

Eating insects isn’t that far removed from eating crustaceans, either. Prawns, crayfish and other crustaceans are arthropods. Just like insects, they are all jointed legs, exoskeletons and segmented bodies. If you’ve scoffed a prawn cocktail, maybe you should consider trying some chunky caterpillar in a marie rose sauce instead.

The Show Trial State

Why Russia's ludicrous attempt to silence Alexey Navalny is a throwback to the bad old times of Stalin and Khrushchev

BY NINA KHRUSHCHEVA

"Russia is like a tub full of dough. You push your hand all the way to the bottom, pull it out, and right before your eyes, the hole disappears, and again, it is a tub full of dough," Nikita Khrushchev once said, assessing the country he ruled.

The former premier -- my great grandfather -- who 60 years ago denounced Joseph Stalin and his pervasive security apparatus, must be turning in his grave. Russia's legal institutions are still run along the lines of Stalin's "show trials."

Following the politically motivated prosecutions of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and feminist punk rock agitators Pussy Riot, the latest of these affairs is the ongoing sham trial of anti-corruption lawyer, opposition activist, and blogger Alexey Navalny. A few years ago, Navalny began speaking out against Russia's ruling party of "crooks and thieves" -- President Vladimir Putin's United Russia. A charismatic leader, Navalny headlined protests against rigged parliamentary elections in 2011 and Putin's presidential victory in 2012. Once an advisor to the governor of the Kirov Region with alleged access to state property, in April Navalny was charged with defrauding state-run Kirovles timber company of 16 million rubles ($530,000) and now faces up to ten years in prison. Last year, the investigators deemed the charges bogus, but recently reinstated them, perhaps because of Putin becoming increasingly fearful of Navalny's growing political clout. His popularity now stands at almost 40 percent and last month Navalny announced he would run for president in at attempt to unseat Putin. No doubt the current president is not pleased. And it seems he's resorted to the old handbook: after all, accusing anti-corruption activists of corruption has long been a favorite Kremlin tactic.

The trial has been on and off for the past month, but the last few days of the procedure have been an embarrassment for the prosecution -- featuring a damning testimony from its own witness, a Kirov region official, who said that Navalny could not have stolen lumber from Kirovles as he didn't have the power to do so. The court in turn declined Navalny's request to declare last week's warrantless search of his Kirov office illegal. Another witness, the company's former deputy director, said Navalny was guilty of advising on the unfair contracts, but once again (in testimony humiliating to the state) admitted that Kirovles voluntarily agreed to his proposals. As the audience began to chuckle, the ex-director angrily replied, "Are you in the circus?" Most in the room indeed felt they were, as several other witnesses had already testified they could not remember dealings with Navalny at all. In any law-abiding state, one such statement should have been enough to drop charges.

Oklahoma: a swirling storm of anti-human prejudice

As people in Oklahoma heroically dealt with their tornado disaster, observers were busy pinning the blame for it on greedy mankind

by Sean Collins 

A huge, 190 miles-per-hour tornado hit the suburbs of Oklahoma City on Monday afternoon, killing 24, injuring hundreds, and leaving the area looking like a wasteland. Survivors may have their lives, but not their homes, cars or belongings.

People across America were stunned to see such images of devastation. We watched heroic rescue workers search under rubble to try to find people feared trapped. It seemed especially cruel that the epicenter of the destruction was in Moore, Oklahoma, whose people had suffered one of the most violent tornadoes not that long ago, in 1999.

The discussion in response to this natural disaster was revealing of a prevailing doom-and-gloom tendency to expect the worst today, as well as a strange desire to blame ourselves for the destruction brought about by nature.

The sense from the media coverage was that Oklahoma showed that the US is exceptionally vulnerable to, and unprepared for, violent weather disasters. Terms like ‘post-apocalyptic’ were used to describe the post-storm situation in Oklahoma. Many seemed to jump to the conclusion that it was the worst tornado of all time. The original report of the number dead on Monday was 91, but then we learned by Tuesday that this was overstated, and the number was reduced to 24. Of course, even one death is tragic, and the toll may rise over time, but it seems somewhat odd that there was an expectation of much worse than actually occurred.

Almost on cue, environmentalists and politicians tried to pin the blame for the tornado on human-caused climate change, and started calling for their favoured actions to address it, such as cutting emissions (in other words, de-industrialisation).

California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer said to the Senate floor after hearing of the Oklahoma tornado, ‘This is climate change. We were warned about extreme weather, not just hot weather but extreme weather.’ Another Democrat, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, made similar comments, and later apologised.

This has now become the kneejerk response to any storm. After Hurricane Sandy, New York state governor Andrew Cuomo said he told President Obama it seemed like ‘we have a 100-year flood every two years now’. He added: ‘These are extreme weather patterns. The frequency has been increasing.’

Except they haven’t been increasing - neither hurricanes nor tornadoes. ‘Tornado data does not reveal any clear trends in tornado occurrence or deaths that would suggest a clear tie to global warming, at least not yet’, writes Andrew Freeman of Climate Central. Even Rajendra Pachauri, head of the UN-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and not one to be shy about promoting climate change fears, said of the Oklahoma tornado: ‘One really cannot relate an event of this nature to human-induced climate change. It’s just not possible. Scientifically, that’s not valid.’

Undoing the Brainwashing

The young are the future, and the propaganda of today can become the government policies of tomorrow

By Thomas Sowell

This time of year, as college students return home for the summer, many parents may notice how many politically correct ideas they have acquired on campus. Some of those parents may wonder how they can undo some of the brainwashing that has become so common in what are supposed to be institutions of higher learning.

The strategy used by General Douglas MacArthur so successfully in the Pacific during World War II can be useful in this very different kind of battle. General MacArthur won his victories while minimizing his casualties — something that is also desirable in clashes of ideas within the family.

Instead of fighting the Japanese for every island stronghold as the Americans advanced toward Japan, MacArthur sent his troops into battle for only those islands that were strategically crucial. In the same spirit, parents who want to bring their brainwashed offspring back to reality need not try to combat every crazy idea they picked up from their politically correct professors. Just demolishing a few crucial beliefs, and exposing what nonsense they are, can deal a blow to the general credibility of the professorial pied pipers.

For example, if the student has been led to join the crusade for more gun control, and thinks that the reason the British have lower murder rates than Americans have is because the Brits have tighter gun control laws, just give him or her a copy of the book Guns and Violence by Joyce Lee Malcolm.

As the facts in that book demolish the gun control propaganda fed to students by their professors, that can create a healthy skepticism about other professorial propaganda.

From the Obama Ministry of Truth

When does it ever stop?

By Ben Stein

Monday. Now, let’s see what we are supposed to believe today from the Obama Ministry of Truth….

First, that Hillary Rodham Clinton could possibly be taken seriously as a Presidential contender or a President. This is the woman who traveled one million miles with no positive accomplishments as Secretary of State. This is the woman who masterminded one of the great foreign policy catastrophes of all time… aiding the “Arab Spring” in which governments friendly to the west in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia were replaced with Islamists bent on destroying all human rights and the main repository of human rights on earth, The United States of America.

This is the woman who said, in what was supposedly total stone cold sobriety, “What does it matter how four Americans died in Benghazi? Whether they were killed by people walking down the street or by terrorists? They’re dead. So, what?” That’s a paraphrase.

Apparently, this future first female President does not realize that it matters because 1.) The killings themselves show that Mrs. Clinton was not doing her job properly, and 2.) Her lying about it was contempt of Congress and perjury and obstruction of justice.

So, we are supposed to believe that a supposedly non-inebriated person made these comments and they are worthy of a President.

What else.…

Well, we are supposed to believe that a massive assault by the IRS on a popular uprising called the Tea Party was known to the higher ups at the IRS, at the Justice Department, and at the White House.

Restrain the Abusive Administative State

Reforming the IRS won’t make sense otherwise

By Doug Bandow

Few Americans dread anything more than receiving a letter from the IRS. But imagine a full field audit, with intrusive questions about your activities and spending habits. From suspicious agents convinced that you’ve violated the law. That’s essentially what political activists on the Right have been enjoying recently, courtesy the Obama administration.

Who knew what when is the question du jour, but political abuse by the IRS is not new. As investigative journalist Jim Bovard has detailed, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy did not let their public-spirited rhetoric interfere with their use of public institutions for partisan benefit. Richard Nixon more recently directed the agency to target his enemies. As White House Counsel John Dean explained, the objective was to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”

President Barack Obama undoubtedly remembers the latter example — as well as Nixon’s fate — and is not so stupid to similarly set himself up for criminal charges. The scandal likely will claim a few mid-level scalps and divert the administration’s attention from some of its more harmful initiatives. But the crisis will be wasted, to paraphrase Rahm Emanuel, if it is not used to advance the cause of liberty. 

Far more than partisan politics is at stake in the latest scandal. The real issue is the expansive, expensive bureaucratic state and its inherent threat to any system of limited government, rule of law, and individual liberty. Obama adviser David Axelrod blamed big government for the controversy, but in order to absolve the president of responsibility: “Part of being president is that there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast.”

That’s true, but it also was true ten and 50 and probably 100 years ago. More relevant is the fact that the broader the government’s authority, the greater its need for revenue, the wider its enforcement power, the more expansive the bureaucracy’s discretion, the increasingly important the battle for political control, and the more bitter the partisan fight, the more likely government officials will abuse their positions, violate rules, laws, and Constitution, and sacrifice people’s liberties.

Cameron outmaneuvered by Merkel

Berlin plans to streamline EU but avoid wholesale treaty change 

By Peter Spiegel and Quentin Peel in Berlin

Berlin is drawing up plans for treaty changes to streamline decision-making in the eurozone, while stopping short of any wholesale renegotiation that would allow the UK to repatriate powers from Brussels.

Although Angela Merkel, German chancellor, has expressed her desire to keep the UK inside the EU, the move being discussed in Berlin would thwart a plan by David Cameron, UK prime minister, to piggyback on eurozone reforms to renegotiate the British relationship with Brussels.

The strategy would take as a model two recently adopted standalone treaties – one creating the new €500bn eurozone rescue fund and the other enshrining budget discipline in a “fiscal compact” – that were written and ratified in a matter of months.

Mr Cameron had hoped to exploit renewed interest in Berlin for wholesale EU treaty changes as a way to renegotiate the UK’s membership terms. But Berlin’s strategy for a new, narrowly focused treaty could force the UK premier into a repeat of the dilemma he faced in December 2011, when Mr Cameron rejected the fiscal compact treaty but most other EU countries went along without him.

Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, has been increasingly public about his desire to change the EU treaties to provide better legal underpinning for the bloc’s new “banking union” – particularly a new Europe-wide bank bailout system, which Mr Schäuble said cannot be completed without a treaty-based shift in power to Brussels.

Spain's Angry and Unemployed Young Men

Time is running out

By George Friedman

Spain invites endless historical considerations, but on this trip I was struck by something more immediate and prosaic. We were on the road from Granada, near the coast, to Madrid, the capital in the center of the country. It was a four-lane highway, what Americans would call an interstate. The road was clean, well maintained and, as we moved north, nearly empty. Every few kilometers a car would pass in the opposite direction, or we would run alongside another car heading north.

It was not the paucity of cars that struck me; it was the almost complete absence of trucks. This was, after all, the road from the coast to the capital, not the only road but still a significant one. It was early afternoon on a weekday. The oddest moment came when we reached a tollbooth not too far from Madrid. There was only one booth open and when we pulled up there was no one in it and no coin or credit card slot. We waited, then we left. Perhaps the attendant was in the bathroom. Perhaps the revenue didn't justify paying a toll taker. Perhaps this was one of the austerity measures they had taken.

I will never know. What I do know is that the drive had a sort of post-apocalyptic feel, except that it was very clean. We marveled at it and then realized that there was nothing that ought to have surprised us about it. The unemployment rate in Spain is more than 27 percent. Gasoline costs 1.4 euros a liter (more than $6.50 a gallon). At that price, a drive is no longer a casual undertaking; it has to justify itself. As for trucks, when that many people are out of work -- and have been for many months -- the demand for goods declines to the point that trucks will be rare on the road.

Youth Unemployment and Desperation

I should have been prepared for this. We stayed in a very nice hotel in Granada. In the morning when we left the hotel, there was a beggar sitting on the sidewalk, his back to the wall, to our right. We paid little attention. Beggars are not uncommon in Europe or the United States. But there is an aesthetic to beggars. They look a certain way, owing to alcohol, madness or a very long time in trouble. When we returned in the late afternoon, he was still there. He was in his mid-to-late 20s, wearing glasses and reading a book. He was dressed in khakis and a decent shirt. He wasn't mad, he wasn't drunk and he wasn't like the hippies of my youth. He wasn't playing an instrument. He was sitting, absorbed in a book and begging. There were other beggars in Granada of the more conventional sort but also several more who looked like this one.

Death by Media

President Obama’s current woes and his cozy relationship with the press

by Clark Whelton

Revelations concerning Benghazi, the IRS, and government probing of the Associated Press make it increasingly clear that Barack Obama was led astray by his friends in the media. They intended no harm to the president, needless to say. But by withholding the criticism that prods public officials into doing a better job, by choosing not to print negative stories and commentaries about the Obama administration, the press corps tempted the president and his staff with visions of invincibility. The pro-Obama news crew—with a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee—confirmed the president’s exalted view of himself. They are in part responsible for encouraging Obama to think that he could tamper with the truth about Benghazi and get away with it.

Through two presidential campaigns and Obama’s first term, mainstream editors, editorial writers, and journalists served as de facto auxiliaries for the White House press office. Certain that they were serving a noble cause, they soft-pedaled bad news about the economy and ignored or played down the president’s gaffes. Aided by one-liners from late-night talk-show hosts, they attacked and ridiculed Fox News or any reporter, radio commentator, writer, or blogger not riding Obama’s bandwagon. They hounded and harassed Sarah Palin—author Joe McGinnis even moved next door to her home—determined to destroy someone they perceived as a threat to Obama’s power. They rode shotgun as Obamacare made its way through Congress. And they led the chorus of derision that greeted early reports of political corruption inside the IRS.

Last September, when Mitt Romney raised questions about Benghazi, the mainstream media accused the Republican presidential challenger of “politicizing” the issue. Taking their leads from Democratic press releases, they kept the spotlight on Romney’s supposed missteps, giving the Obama administration time to camouflage a murderous terror attack as a spontaneous riot. And with each alibi they provided, with each news story they slanted to assist Obama at the polls, they deprived the president of the honest feedback that public officials may not want but desperately need. A biased press corps steadily pushed the president closer to the precipice where he now precariously stands.

It feels like the Right has split irrevocably

Cameron’s carelessness has mixed with public contempt for politicians to create a toxic brew

There is now a serious chance that Nigel Farage will smash the existing party system and usher in a very different structure at Westminster

By Iain Martin

Nigel Farage is a most unlikely revolutionary. In his covert coat and pinstripes, with a pint in one hand and a fag in the other, the leader of Ukip looks like a Conservative archetype: the over-taxed Tory of the shires who has nipped outside for a smoke before he begins the long commute home after toiling all day in the City.

Yet he stands on the verge of pulling off a remarkable coup. If he succeeds in his mission – if Ukip does not blow up on the launch pad before the next general election – there is now a serious chance that Mr Farage will smash the existing party system and usher in a very different structure at Westminster.

Of course, the realignment of the British party system has been predicted, wrongly, on many occasions since the Second World War. Most commonly, the mooted redrawing of the tribal map has involved the parties of the centre-Left reconfiguring themselves in order that they might stand a better chance of defeating the once-mighty Tory machine.

There was even a time, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it was fashionable to say that there might never be another Labour government, and that to stand a chance the party would require a pact with the Liberals and (for a while) their erstwhile colleagues in the SDP.

Indeed, the creation of the SDP, a breakaway of moderates from embattled Labour in the early 1980s, was said to have “broken the mould”. The new party scored the kind of stratospheric poll ratings of which Mr Farage can only dream. It did have a major influence, although not in the way that its four founders intended: its main contribution was to create the climate in which Tony Blair could emerge as Labour leader. Then the SDP vanished. Labour, written off for more than a decade, came roaring back in 1997 and won three successive general elections. Once again, one of the two old parties had reasserted itself following an existential crisis.