Last Thursday Baltimore County police shot and killed one man and arrested two others shortly after midnight as they were leaving their Pikesville, MD, hotel room. The three men had been under police surveillance for some time, and the two who were arrested were charged with — get this — counterfeiting currency, a federal crime.

What does this have to do with SB1070, the Arizona immigration law that was scheduled to take effect today? You know, the law that the Obama administration got a compliant federal judge to emasculate yesterday, if only temporarily?

Just this. Recall that the Obama administration’s argument for asking a federal court to invalidate Arizona’s law is that requiring local law enforcement personnel to ask about the immigration status of people who come to police attention on other matters preempts federal authority. And the judge mostly backed them up on this point, enjoining enforcement of the provision

requiring that an officer make a reasonable attempt to determine the immigration status of a person stopped, detained or arrested if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person is unlawfully present in the United States, and requiring verification of the immigration status of any person arrested prior to releasing that person

on the grounds it most likely will be struck down. Read more »

Unless Congress acts before the end of this year, the largest tax increase in American history is due to take effect when the Bush tax cuts expire at midnight December 31. According to the Tax Foundation, in the absence of Congressional action we can expect:

• The two “marriage penalty elimination” provisions will expire, so that:
  • The standard deduction for married couples will fall, no longer double what it is for single filers; and
  • The ceiling of the 15 percent bracket for married couples will fall, no longer double what it is for single filers.
• The 10 percent tax bracket will expire, reverting to 15 percent.
• The child tax credit will fall from $1,000 to $500.
• The tax rate on long-term capital gains earned by middle- and upper-income people would rise from 15 to 20 percent.
• The tax rate on qualified dividends earned by middle- and upper-income people would rise from 15 percent to ordinary wage tax rates.
• The 25 percent tax rate would rise to 28 percent.
• The 28 percent rate would rise to 31percent.
• The 33 percent rate would rise to 36 percent.
• The 35 percent rate would rise to 39.6 percent.
• The PEP and Pease provisions would be restored, rescinding from high-income people the value of some exemptions and deductions
• The estate tax would be restored with an exemption level of $1 million and rates that top out at 55 percent. Read more »

Let’s try a little thought experiment.

Pretend you’re the Democratic Party. You’ve controlled both houses of Congress since 2007 and the White House since 2009. You came to power during a recession which, most voters agree, you only made worse. You also inherited a budget with a huge deficit, and you made that worse, too. You rammed through an unpopular stimulus package that paid off your political supporters but did nothing to improve the economy, and an even more unpopular health care package that will make us all pay more for health care while giving us less of it. Despite overwhelming voter demand to do something about illegal immigration, you refuse to secure the border, and when a state acted to do what the Federal government won’t do, you sued.

You can’t run on this record. Six in ten Americans no longer trust you to govern, and an even larger number think you’re taking the country in the wrong direction.

So what do you do? You change the subject, that’s what you do.

This is the only way to understand why the Left and their media allies have been heaping so much abuse on the Tea Party movement. When citizens gather in huge rallies around the country to protest out-of-control government spending, then just accuse them of RACISM! Read more »

There’s hardly anything I like about the Left. Their economic views are naive in the extreme, their political views are statist, their attitude is elitist and arrogant, their books are boring, and, to be blunt — if politically incorrect — I don’t find their women very attractive. In short, they suck. But there’s one area where they’ve always had it all over the Right: their music.

Back in the 1960s I knew more than a few conservatives and libertarians — and even some students of Objectivism (the term followers of the novelist Ayn Rand used to describe themselves) — who attended civil rights demonstrations and antiwar rallies just for the music. And what music! You might get to hear superstars like Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Peter, Paul and Mary, or, in the later part of the decade, rock groups like Jefferson Airplane or Crosby, Stills and Nash — and all for free!

Some of the protest songs of the era became megahits on the mainstream charts. The most memorable of these were songs by Bob Dylan, although what charted were usually other artists’ covers of Dylan’s songs — Dylan’s nasal, almost whiny voice did not hold much appeal for mass audiences.

In contrast, the music of the Right — well, there wasn’t any that I can recall. (Yes, I remember Staff Sgt. Barry Sadler’s “Ballad of the Green Berets”; as I said, there wasn’t any music that I can recall!). If you went to a conservative rally, if there was any music at all it was usually something like “God Bless America” (not, I hasten to add, that there’s anything wrong with that). The songs performed by any folk musicians or rock bands that appeared consisted mostly of parodies of the Left’s most popular protest songs. Read more »

A reader recently sent me a link to the following article that appeared in t r u t h o u t, an on-line publication its editors describe as “devoted to equality, democracy, human rights, accountability and social justice” — in other words, devoted to promoting a secular, leftist political agenda.

The article was about a member of t r u t h o u t ‘s board of advisers, a former Air Force lawyer named Mikey Weinstein, who had founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). MRFF recently received a lot of attention after forcing the Defense Department to rescind its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham (son of Rev. Billy Graham) to speak at the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer event in May.

According to the article, that and other recent victories MRFF has won “have earned Weinstein the enmity of the hardcore Christian Right and the mentally unstable”. When I got to that line, I almost stopped reading. Any alleged journalist who airily dismisses anyone who disagrees with his one-sided view as “mentally unstable” has, in my opinion, taken himself out of the debate and is worthy of no further attention. However, I read on.

Weinstein, who likens Christians to “vampires” and is fond of using violent metaphors to describe what he’s going to do to his opponents (“Wherever I see unconstitutional religious predators in the U.S. military, of any stripe, I don’t care if I live or die. Someone’s gonna get a beating and we’re going to do it.”), began the organization after suing the Air Force Academy over alleged anti-semitic harassment experienced by his son and other Jewish cadets. Read more »