Tuesday, January 27, 2015

“Professor Shocked, Shocked To Find Out Prominent Nazi Was An Anti-Semite”

“Professor Shocked, Shocked To Find Out Prominent Nazi Was An Anti-Semite”: "The reason why this is all so painfully awkward is that it all fits in a well-preexisting narrative, which is this: Heidegger was the godfather of the school of historicism, sometimes known as relativism, which holds that all truth is socially constructed and historically determined, and that therefore we have no access to capital-T Truth. Obviously, this idea has had a tremendous impact, both on 20th century academic philosophy, and in more debased form in the broader culture. And obviously, a critique of this idea as long as it has existed has been that if relativism is true, then morality is false, and if morality is false then all manner of evil is permitted. Indeed, all manner of evil might be inevitable, since in the absence of a recognition of transcendent truth, the only remaining way to resolve disputes is violence, and the only criterion of decision power. Which makes it really really tempting to point to Heidegger’s very life as exhibit A for the prosecution of relativism. And which makes things, again, quite awkward for all those who would use relativism as the thin end of the wedge of a happy-peppy progressivism."



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Conspicuous Compassion - WSJ

Conspicuous Compassion - WSJ: "Dan Calabrese argues that it is not Green over whom Kristof wishes to assert his higher status: “Kristof needed to let us know all the failures in Kevin Green’s life because he wanted to tell us something about Nicholas Kristof, which is: Kevin Green made all these mistakes and lived all these failures, but Nicholas Kristof did not judge him, unlike all you horrible people. Nicholas Kristof is morally superior to you.”

It seems to us Calabrese doesn’t quite hit the target here, though he comes close. Kristof’s ideal reader is one who shares his sense of moral superiority. The message is more like: Nicholas Kristof did not judge him, unlike all those horrible people. You are morally superior to them."



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Friday, January 23, 2015

The ‘American Sniper’ Freakout | The Weekly Standard

The ‘American Sniper’ Freakout | The Weekly Standard: "But Kyle’s flaws don’t begin to explain the knee-jerk negative reaction to the film on the left, which goes far beyond the predictable political complaints. Academy voters have been circulating a much-derided New Republic article by a Penn State professor of international affairs who denounced the film in spite of his admission that he had seen only the trailer. The Washington Examiner also reports that the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence had supporters venting about the film on its Facebook page. If Navy SEALs in combat zones can’t legitimately engage in gun violence, who can? 

Part of it is simply that the film portrays Kyle as a proud southern, rural, religious, patriotic jock and gun enthusiast who was much more anguished about the people he was unable to save in Iraq than about the 160 confirmed sniper kills that the Navy credits him with. All of these traits are anathema to the left, though nearly all of the great soldiers in American history possessed one or more of them. Leftists simply can’t digest the fact that their own safety is predicated on the willingness to fight of courageous men they openly disdain. "



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Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Video: The obligatory “Obama reminds the GOP he won” clip « Hot Air

Video: The obligatory “Obama reminds the GOP he won” clip « Hot Air: "The reason the media’s zeroed in on the “I won twice” zinger is, yes, because they enjoy watching the star quarterback from their hometown team spike the ball but mainly because it’s a rare colorful moment from the relentlessly dismal, programmatic State of the Union slog. The fact that O fired this ad lib off literally seconds after calling for more comity in politics feels like a goof on the scripted insincerity of the event. He and his team probably spent weeks reworking that passage about comity to get it just right and all it took for Obama to blow it up was some abortive hooting from the Republican gallery that wounded his pride. I hope lefties turn this into a Vine that gets 10 million views; the more popular it is, the more likely it is that the SOTU will gradually transform into a zingerfest by O’s successors, which would at least make the speech entertaining, or that it’ll be dropped entirely. Either outcome is better than what we have now."



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Sunday, January 18, 2015

Why 2015 is my year of 'cruel food' - Breitbart

Why 2015 is my year of 'cruel food' - Breitbart: "My colleague James Delingpole likes to say that the best fur is cruel, rare fur. The same law holds just as well for food. In fact, I feel confident he would agree with me that virtually all the most enjoyable experiences in life are based to some degree on annoying the right people, which is why hunting with hounds has experienced such a renaissance in popularity in recent years.

And little gets aloof city-dwellers, who know nothing of country life and imagine foxes to be sweet, dog-like companions rather than the odious, disease-carrying vermin they really are, like a bit of so-called “animal cruelty.” Newsflash, idiots: it’s a scary old world out there, and sometimes one animal eats another. Humans are not exempt from this natural order."



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Surprise: Obama to back tax hikes in State of the Union « Hot Air

Surprise: Obama to back tax hikes in State of the Union « Hot Air: "The president is also positioning himself vis a vis congressional Republicans when negotiations over tax code reform begin in earnest. Many of the above proposals will be nonstarters for the Republican-dominated 114th Congress, but the administration is banking on broad public support to help overcome that opposition. They may just get it. It will be incumbent on Republicans to make the case for why the White House’s tax increases without sufficiently comprehensive offset are counterproductive. For the last six years, the GOP has not done an effective job of communicating this to the public in a compelling manner."



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Okay, kids. Stay in school, don’t do drugs, don’t blow up your house, but make moonshine « Hot Air

Okay, kids. Stay in school, don’t do drugs, don’t blow up your house, but make moonshine « Hot Air: "Let’s face it, the danger of blowing up your still is real if you put it under cover in an unventilated area or allow the fumes too near open flames. But if you’re stupid enough to do that, one might argue that you had it coming. Alcohol has been legal in most places since the 21st Amendment was passed in 1933. It’s still prohibited to distill your own shine. But the moment we legalize pot people can start making hash oil? We’ve long known that the bootlegging laws have almost nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with making sure Uncle Sam collects his sin taxes. If we’re going to venture into this brave new world of marijuana we deserve a fresh look at the bootlegging laws."



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Far-right French politician tells Russian paper the West was behind the Charlie Hebdo attack « Hot Air

Far-right French politician tells Russian paper the West was behind the Charlie Hebdo attack « Hot Air: "Much like Marine Le Pen, Sen. Rand Paul’s biggest obstacle to holding office is his father. Like Rand Paul, Le Pen shares many of her father’s views on foreign affairs but can articulate them in a fashion that is both reasonable and compelling. Also like Rand Paul, Le Pen is unlikely to advance farther in French politics than she already has so long as her father keeps talking.

Rand Paul shares his father’s suspicions of America’s hands-on approach to foreign affairs challenges and, if he had is way as president, would embark on a campaign of retrenchment and disengagement. In that project, Paul would have the support of millions of Americans – possibly even a majority — who believe that this would be a productive course of action. But so long as Ron Paul continues to blame the West for virtually all foreign aggression, ranging from Islamist terrorism to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, American’s won’t trust Rand Paul to serve as a capable manager of America’s foreign affairs."



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Saturday, January 17, 2015

The campus sexual assault narrative hits rock bottom « Hot Air

The campus sexual assault narrative hits rock bottom « Hot Air: "The girl had nothing to do with it. She objected to the case being taken up. This was a non-incident that could have taken place anywhere in the country on any given day and resulted in nothing more than a person being surprised (and perhaps startled) for a moment, followed by some embarrassed laughs and everyone going on their way.

We can say with some legitimacy that this is the college’s fault, but only to a certain extent. If they had some convictions regarding common sense and the courage to back them up they wouldn’t find themselves in the middle of this awkward media circus. But given how closely Uncle Sam is monitoring every campus on the nation for the slightest hint of evidence that young men at college are all as evil as Rolling Stone and the feminist movement make them out to be, combined with their reliance on funding from various sources, they are acting with a dangerous overabundance of caution. It doesn’t make it noble or right, but it’s a fiscal reality of running a college, I suppose."



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Governments shovel money to radical abortion agenda « Hot Air

Governments shovel money to radical abortion agenda « Hot Air: "How much of the public treasury are Baltimore, Austin, New York, and San Francisco politicians willing to spend to help their friends in the abortion industry shut down pro-life competitors?

This is a question taxpayers may want to ask in light of new information this week showing that the Montgomery County Council spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars in a failed effort to harm crisis pregnancy centers — on behalf of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

According to e-mails uncovered in an investigative report by LifeSiteNews, for whom I work as a reporter, NARAL’s Maryland chapter engaged in a straightforward case of crony capitalism in 2009 when it pushed County officials to pass a law requiring pro-life clinics — NARAL’s competitors — to disclose if they do not have a doctor on-site."



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Maher: Islamophobia Kills? Or Maybe It's More The AK-47s, Beheadings, And The Planes Into Buildings | Video | RealClearPolitics

Maher: Islamophobia Kills? Or Maybe It's More The AK-47s, Beheadings, And The Planes Into Buildings | Video | RealClearPolitics: "Maher even defended Rush Limbaugh from campaigns in recent years to boycott him and get companies to pull their advertisements from his show.

"This may surprise you, but I am not a big fan of Rush Limbaugh," Maher said. "However, if you're one of the people with a website devoted to making him go away, you are part of the problem. Ironically you're not even a proper liberal because you don't get free speech. You're just a baby who can't stand to live in a world where you hear things that upset you. Oh, you're not alone.""



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Wednesday, January 14, 2015

NYT editor: Cartoons blaspheming Mohammed are different from anti-semitic cartoons « Hot Air

NYT editor: Cartoons blaspheming Mohammed are different from anti-semitic cartoons « Hot Air: "I don’t know if it’s categorical. As I read it, he’s not saying that cartoons of Mohammed are objectively more offensive than anti-semitic cartoons, he’s saying that the amount of rage they evoke in Muslims and Jews, respectively, is evidence that the former are more offensive to the aggrieved group than the latter. If Jews want the Times to take their feelings seriously, they can prove the depth of their injury by grabbing some AK-47s and machine-gunning a group of cartoonists. This moron is actually providing an incentive to overreact to blasphemy. Which is probably the closest he’ll come to acknowledging the real calculus in all this: To the extent that Times editors have more to fear from angry Muslims than they do from angry Jews, yes, it’s quite true that cartoons that offend each group don’t parallel each other."



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Media celebrates massive success of Charlie Hebdo’s defiant new issue by refusing to publish the cover « Hot Air

Media celebrates massive success of Charlie Hebdo’s defiant new issue by refusing to publish the cover « Hot Air: "Normally CH’s circulation is 60,000 copies. They printed three million of the new one to try to meet expected demand after the massacre, but sales are so hot in France this morning that they’ve already had to bump the print run up to five million. The issue’s been condemned by Sunni authorities, in the form of Egypt’s grand mufti, and Shiite ones, via Iranian state media. All of which is to say, this feels newsy. Go look at how the AP is handling photos of Parisians on line, though. Everyone who ventures out publicly to buy the issue is taking a risk that some Kouachi sympathizer will copycat the Charlie Hebdo attack by shooting up a newsstand. Given the denunciations from Islamic clerics and the fact that French security suspects the Kouachis had accomplices, that risk is real. Basic solidarity with France in defense of free speech today should mean, at the very least, showing at least as much balls as the average Frenchman strolling around Paris with a copy of the offending issue on full display in his own hands."



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Thursday, January 8, 2015

Mark Steyn: Charlie Hebdo was a target only because the rest of the media wouldn’t share the risk « Hot Air

Mark Steyn: Charlie Hebdo was a target only because the rest of the media wouldn’t share the risk « Hot Air: "A necessary corrective to the well-meaning but impotent “Je suis Charlie” cris de coeur. Yesterday that was a social media phenonemon, hashtag solidarity in the spirit of the “Bring Back Our Girls” phrase that circulated months ago after the Boko Haram kidnappings. Months later, the girls still aren’t back. And we — particularly our major media outlets — are most emphatically not Charlie. As Matt Welch said, “few of us are that good, and none of us are that brave.” If you doubt him, pay close attention to the many, many cartoon tributes to Charlie Hebdo appearing today in newspaper op-ed pages or being favorited on Twitter and Facebook. Most are variations on “the pen is mightier than the sword,” which is nice but hollow in this case for the simple reason that virtually none of these tributes takes the bold extra step of featuring Mohammed in the cartoon. The trend is towards stronger anti-blasphemy norms, not vice versa. Let’s keep what’s left of our dignity by acknowledging that, at least."



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Bill Maher to Jimmy Kimmel: Hundreds of millions of Muslims support this Charlie Hebdo attack « Hot Air

Bill Maher to Jimmy Kimmel: Hundreds of millions of Muslims support this Charlie Hebdo attack « Hot Air: "It’s not what he’s saying that’s novel — he’s made this point before, and seems to be making it more often lately — but the forum in which he’s saying it. I wonder if there was anyone else featured across the four broadcast networks’ news/current events programming yesterday to raise the point that the “tiny minority of extremists” isn’t so tiny when you consider the raw numbers. Kimmel is uncomfortable from the start, partly because Maher went out there with a point to make rather than engage in the usual dreary late-night banter and partly because he’s violating a liberal taboo in noting that jihadi fanatics are sustained by a larger, decidedly illiberal culture. Criticizing the tiny minority on TV is okay provided that you emphasize their tiny-minority-ness. When, however, you try to connect up the actions of the worst offenders to the cultural fishbowl they swim in — a practice the left not only engages in but insists upon in every other context except Islamic fanaticism — then you’re over the line. Watch Kimmel scramble for a commercial break as Maher tries to get going on that point. Listen to how silent the audience is throughout, as if they dare not disrespect their host, ABC, by encouraging him. No wonder Maher had to move his own show from broadcast TV to pay cable."



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Audio: Hugh Hewitt versus Bill “Those Charlie Hebdo attackers were right to be angry” Donohue « Hot Air

Audio: Hugh Hewitt versus Bill “Those Charlie Hebdo attackers were right to be angry” Donohue « Hot Air: "Hewitt asks the correct question in response: What do you do when people defy that norm? How far are you willing to go to enforce it? Donohue’s against criminalizing the practice, he claims, but is that because he genuinely opposes penalties or because he suspects people won’t hear him out if he takes too harsh of an approach to blasphemy at this point in the public debate? His logic is conspicuously similar to the collectivist logic used by fans of “hate speech” laws, including his creepy reference to “abuse of freedom”: We should protect free speech up to the point that it’s not hurting society, at which point it’s time to start carving out exceptions. It’s the “heckler’s veto” as social ideal. Provocative speech, which is hurtful to some slice of the public almost by definition, would have a tough time surviving in that moral ecosystem. In fact, years before jihadis decided to escalate the sanction, Charlie Hebdo was sued in French courts on grounds of “racism” for publishing the Danish Mohammed cartoons. They did survive, but as the entire world now knows, Charlie Hebdo was unusually dogged in its willingness to take risks for satire. Hewitt’s rightly suspicious here that Donohue’s system of “moral” sanction for blasphemy would calcify into a system of legal sanction. And you know what? Given the polling, he’s right to be."



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Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Howard Dean: These terrorists are about as Muslim as I am « Hot Air

Howard Dean: These terrorists are about as Muslim as I am « Hot Air: "I’ve never understood why some western pols, usually but not always liberals, feel it’s necessary to go that extra yard and start pronouncing on what is and isn’t authentically Islamic. It reeks of sweaty doth-protest-too-much reassurance. If you feel obliged to remind Americans for the thousandth time that it’s unfair to punish one individual Muslim for the actions of another — and if you do still feel that need after the first 999 iterations, you should probably reflect on your own prejudices — then just say that. Shifting into Imam Dean mode and issuing a fatwa rendering the Charlie Hebdo terrorists haram looks ridiculous, a reminder that the first impulse of the political class after people have been murdered by terrorists is to worry about Muslims. A roomful of satirists gets machine-gunned by a pair of jihadi degenerates and this is Howard Dean’s gut reaction?"



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Discourse and Destruction - WSJ

Discourse and Destruction - WSJ: "That is a reasonable argument, one with which we are inclined to agree. But unless Robinson has changed his mind about Tucson, it is not one that he believes as a matter of principle."



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Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Johann Hari is Sliming His Way Back into Public Life, but is He Sorry for What He Did? - Breitbart

Johann Hari is Sliming His Way Back into Public Life, but is He Sorry for What He Did? - Breitbart: "Imagine my dismay when, late last night, having located a copy of the Mail on Sunday here in the Bahamas, where I am putting the finishing touches to my book about GamerGate, I turned to the comment pages to see the byline JOHANN HARI. Yes, the very same: disgraced plagiarist and online bully Johann Hari, who bullied and lied about journalist Cristina Odone and made up nonsense for the pages of national newspapers for nearly a decade.

The Guardian, too–perhaps more understandably–has given the formerly flabby fabulist a free pass to act contrite on its pages this week, in a profile written by a close friend, exquisitely carefully worded so as to avoid any serious admissions, contrition or attempt to do right by the people he hurt. Which includes his readers, lest these esteemed organs, so eager to welcome him back, have forgotten."



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When is a filibuster not a filibuster? « Hot Air

When is a filibuster not a filibuster? « Hot Air: "In this one case I can overlook Kilgore’s knee-jerk response of attributing the Times’ description to laziness rather then normal, business as usual bias. But it is yet another reminder of the challenge that Democrat supporting media outlets are going to face over the next two years. As we’ve discussed here before, the double edged sword of governmental obstruction charges turned around 180 degrees after the midterm elections. The shoe isn’t just on the other foot here.. it’s a steel toed boot.

For several years the press has developed an entrenched level of comfort in blaming the low approval ratings of Congress on the fact that they steadfastly refused to get the work of the people done. It was the do nothing Congress. It was the least productive Congress in history. And despite the fact that the House passed literally hundreds of bills which Harry Reid refused to put up for a vote, the overwhelming message broadcast to the American people was that it was Republican obstructionism."



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The fire sale at Gitmo continues « Hot Air

The fire sale at Gitmo continues « Hot Air: "When it comes to balancing national security against the President’s legacy, it seems to have been a fairly easy call. Now the only remaining question is which tax we will need to increase this year to pay the next set of five million dollar rewards for whichever of these guys heads back to the battlefield next."



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Shock: Coast Guard seeing sharp uptick in Cubans fleeing workers’ paradise « Hot Air

Shock: Coast Guard seeing sharp uptick in Cubans fleeing workers’ paradise « Hot Air: "Despite its status among progressives as a veritable model for health care reformers and proponents of egalitarianism, the joint announcement by President Barack Obama and Cuban dictator Raul Castro of the normalization of bilateral relations has resulted in a sharp uptick in the number of Cubans desperately fleeing the island in makeshift dinghies. Who could have possibly seen this coming?

The Coast Guard is reporting an 117 percent spike in December in the number of Cubans fleeing the island nation by boat. On Monday alone, the Coast Guard returned 121 Cubans back to the custody of authorities in Havana. They were all intercepted at sea in seven separate incidents in just the past week."



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Jeb Bush on gay marriage: The states should decide « Hot Air

Jeb Bush on gay marriage: The states should decide « Hot Air: "Marco Rubio, another social conservative from the very purple state of Florida, also thinks gay marriage should be left to the states notwithstanding his personal support for traditional marriage. So does tea-party champion Ted Cruz, who’s been praised by no less than Barney Frank for taking a federalist approach that would allow blue states to legalize SSM instead of backing a (doomed) Federal Marriage Amendment that would ban the practice coast to coast. For Republican candidates across the spectrum, this issue is virtually no upside and all downside. Public support nationally for legalization continues to climb, and Obama’s already proved that backing gay marriage is no obstacle to winning a presidential election handily. The obvious play, even for righty stalwarts like Cruz, is to do your best to please your base while also doing your best not to alienate swing voters wary of a top-down “values” crusade against the tide of public opinion. Hence Bush’s stance."



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Progressives: Stop laughing at Harvard « Hot Air

Progressives: Stop laughing at Harvard « Hot Air: "Well, yes and no … but mostly no. Conservatives wanted to restore pricing signals, it’s true — as did Harvard’s faculty, about which more later — but not coercively, and certainly not with a universal mandate to buy comprehensive health coverage. The conservative solutions to pricing signals were to incentivize the use of health-savings accounts, move the industry to hospitalization coverage, and encourage the growth of retail-care clinics for routine care on a competitive fee basis. That would have protected people against serious illness while alleviating costs for both insurers and providers. It also would have reduced prices by eliminating insurance overhead on most routine care and forcing providers to compete on price. That works in the Lasik and plastic-surgery markets, neither of which usually deals with insurance, and both of which have seen prices controlled through market forces without government interventions and mandates."



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Finally: Big Apple takes on epidemic public-transit threat of … « Hot Air

Finally: Big Apple takes on epidemic public-transit threat of … « Hot Air: "It’s curious, and somewhat suspicious, that this effort has been targeted at only men. If the issue is seat space, what about purses, shopping bags, backpacks, and the like that impact both genders more or less equally? The immediate solution to an egregious manspread would be to sit down in the space that the hips allow and claim some normal space. Bags and backpacks don’t allow for that. Are those no problem on New York’s subways?

Mostly, though, this looks like another strange priority for a city increasingly defined by them. The Big Apple wants to crack down on your leg spread and ability to buy a soft drink, but has nothing much to say about people hijacking restaurants to harass patrons about their pet political causes. Remind me again why anyone would want to live there."



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Open thread: New Congress to be sworn in, vote on Speaker forthcoming; Update: Boehner elected Speaker, loses 25 votes « Hot Air

Open thread: New Congress to be sworn in, vote on Speaker forthcoming; Update: Boehner elected Speaker, loses 25 votes « Hot Air: "Odd coincidence that enough people voted against Boehner to firm up their conservative credentials, not enough to actually unseat him. Hmm."



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Monday, January 5, 2015

The shadow of Eric Garner on the race to replace Michael Grimm « Hot Air

The shadow of Eric Garner on the race to replace Michael Grimm « Hot Air: "As we discussed last week, the resignation of Michael Grimm from his seat in New York’s 11th congressional district following a guilty plea on tax evasion charges has set in motion a strange chain of events, thanks to New York’s rather arcane election laws. The first question to be settled is when the special election will take place. We’ve had more than a few unfortunate experiences here on that score so the media is used to some odd comings and goings. New York Election law says that the Governor must call a special election between 70 and 80 days from the date that he declares the vacancy of the seat. Unfortunately, due to a lack of foresight on the part of our political ancestors, there is nothing which specifies when he must declare the vacancy. So Andrew Cuomo could do it immediately and have a true special election before the end of April, or he could essentially pretend that the seat isn’t vacant until this summer and then declare that the election will take place along with the regular off year festivities in November."



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Rich, Harvard experts mad they have to spend more thanks to their own Obamcare recommendations « Hot Air

Rich, Harvard experts mad they have to spend more thanks to their own Obamcare recommendations « Hot Air: "First, I thank the New York Times for covering this as NYT reporters are so very skilled at covering mind-blowingly self-absorbed conflicts between various factions of the upper-class liberal and un-self-aware. It’s basically the beat of the entire NYT staff.

The basics: Harvard faculty were more than happy to make recommendations about reforming health care, which were then adopted in the Affordable Care Act— among them, children on parents’ insurance until 26, comprehensive preventive care, cost-sharing, and the Cadillac tax on high-cost insurance. But living by those recommendations and their attendant costs is a whole other matter."



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State: Yeah, we don’t know if Cuba has released the 53 prisoners we required they release « Hot Air

State: Yeah, we don’t know if Cuba has released the 53 prisoners we required they release « Hot Air: "At the risk of being facile, it appears as usual, that our president gave away a bunch and got just about nothing in return other than his own satisfaction. This apparent prerequisite of normalizing relations with Cuba has now become something that will “take a long time” because reversing a long-time “broken policy” doesn’t happen overnight. Except, when you negotiate to have political prisoners released, that can literally happen overnight. And should. Huzzah."



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Belgium, which abolished capital punishment, will “euthanize” serial rapist and murderer this week « Hot Air

Belgium, which abolished capital punishment, will “euthanize” serial rapist and murderer this week « Hot Air: "He’s not terminally ill, he just finds the prospect of life in prison unbearable, so Belgium’s going to put him down and call it a mercy killing. Fun fact: They haven’t executed anyone as punishment for a crime in more than 60 years and haven’t executed anyone for a crime committed during peacetime in nearly 100. The death penalty was formally abolished there almost 20 years ago. But they’re killing upwards of 1,800 people a year, including children, for “compassionate” reasons. Again: Terminal illness not required."



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Sunday, January 4, 2015

The Elizabeth Warren Veto - WSJ

The Elizabeth Warren Veto - WSJ: "Despite adhering to such liberal Democratic orthodoxy, Mr. Weiss now finds himself the target of a campaign by Senator Elizabeth Warren to block his nomination to become President Obama ’s Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance. We doubt this is what Mr. Weiss anticipated when he was using his status and riches on Wall Street to bundle campaign cash for Mr. Obama.

The Massachusetts progressive has framed her war on Mr. Weiss as resistance to Wall Street influence in Democratic policy making. The 48-year-old spent more than 20 years at Lazard, a firm that includes or has included such Democratic luminaries as Felix Rohatyn, Vernon Jordan and Steven Rattner . Now it’s apparently a Scarlet L.

In one sense this is curious since as recently as 2013 Ms. Warren voted to confirm Jack Lew to be Treasury Secretary. Mr. Lew’s job in 2008 was presiding over mortgage disasters at Citigroup , which needed one of the largest federal bailouts. Mr. Weiss succeeded on Wall Street as an investment banker, and Lazard didn’t need a bailout. Is financial competence now disqualifying in Democratic administrations?"



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