Video: Is Jeb Bush inevitable? « Hot Air

Video: Is Jeb Bush inevitable? « Hot Air: "Ted Cruz talked about this at length but obliquely yesterday, warning conservatives of the consultant class that wants to produce a formulaic candidate designed to look only slightly to the right of Democrats in the mistaken belief that Democrats will choose a Republican carbon copy. That wasn’t specific to Bush, and Bush and his team would object to that characterization, but that is the conservative perception of Bush. The ham-handed tactics to force people to choose their allegiance this early in the cycle plays into that perception, as does the emphasis on locking up the very consultants to which Cruz referred."



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The double standard which allows Dana Milbank to call Scott Walker “a coward” « Hot Air

The double standard which allows Dana Milbank to call Scott Walker “a coward” « Hot Air: "If you want to take Giuliani to task, fine. Have at it. But since when has it become “necessary” for every member of a given party to respond to or disown what someone else has to say? The answer to that one is simple… since the media decided that it was their job to ensure Democrats get elected rather simply reporting on the events of the election. Since when is it the job of every candidate on the trail to monitor each and every syllable uttered by every person out there and either support, decry or disown it? This is no test of leadership, as Milbank implies, but rather a test of the port side media to see if they can sling enough gotcha questions at the wall that one will eventually stick."



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Rasmussen: Plurality of Democrats think Obama should be able to ignore court rulings if it’s “important” « Hot Air

Rasmussen: Plurality of Democrats think Obama should be able to ignore court rulings if it’s “important” « Hot Air: "I assume Rasmussen deliberately chose a phrase as open-ended as “important for the country” to nudge respondents about the potential for abuse. Once you tell the president it’s cool to ignore court rulings if it’s “important,” you might as well pass an enabling act and hand him supreme power. Forty-three percent of Democrats, an actual plurality, didn’t flinch, though. And the irony is, Obama’s own defenses of his power grabs aren’t much more sophisticated than that. His rationale for executive amnesty is that Congress is hopelessly gridlocked, the legal limbo that illegals find themselves in is intolerable, and we’ve now reached a point of crisis (a political crisis for the White House, not a policy crisis) that simply demands executive action. It’s crucially important that he act unilaterally and that he act now, even though he can’t quite explain — again, on policy terms — why that is. Just trust him. It’s important. And Democrats do, including and especially the core Democratic constituencies of women, young adults, and minorities.

If you’re looking for a silver lining here, you can find it in the fact that these numbers will move — probably within both parties — once a Republican’s back in the White House. Some GOPers will doubtless become more comfortable with executive action at that point, but I’d bet Republican opposition to the idea of the president defying court rulings doesn’t soften nearly as much as Democratic opposition will harden. That’s the state of the rule of law in the “progressive” party now. Separation of powers and check and balances are wonderful things, but only when they’re being used to restrain the right people."



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ISIS and the left's Vulgar Marxism problem

ISIS and the left's Vulgar Marxism problem: "Human beings are human beings — we are not just animals. We do not just want to feed and reproduce. We actually have beliefs and we actually make choices on the basis of those beliefs.

It's kind of crazy to have to point this out. We were made with an orientation toward ultimate truth, goodness, and beauty, and we seek it however we understand it — and how we understand it determines our actions.

The historian N.T. Wright talks about a worldview being like a set of glasses: not something you look at but something you look through; something that you don't think about — until there's a problem with it. Almost no progressive will make an explicit argument for Vulgar Marxism, but it's hovering in the background of much of their writing on almost every issue. And, in the case of ISIS, this mistaken worldview has almost certainly led to more bloodshed than there would have been had the progressives in the Obama White House actually tried to understand what ISIS believed, and why."



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National Review

National Review: "In the intolerance, I also saw hope. During one particularly memorable day, when radicals started shrieking when I questioned why our professor referred to an unborn child as a mere “clump of cells,” I remember speaking to a small group of students after class. They told me they were questioning some of their pro-choice views. “Why?” I asked. Because, they responded, if the leading pro-choice activists couldn’t debate the issue without shout-downs, then perhaps their positions weren’t as intellectually coherent as they led us to believe. Intolerance and intimidation do not breed affection and loyalty. Reasoned arguments and basic kindness have their own appeal, and often the barrier to greater influence lies more in the inability to speak (or to be heard) than in the perceived inadequacy of the ideas."



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Abandon ship: Southern Tier New York looks to defect to Pennsylvania over fracking ban « Hot Air

Abandon ship: Southern Tier New York looks to defect to Pennsylvania over fracking ban « Hot Air: "Despite the fact that it rests upon a wealth of resources, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is sticking by his pledge to ban the practice of the hydraulic fracturing of shale to extract natural gas (fracking) in the Empire State. He flipped on his opposition to the practice while seeking reelection after facing significant resistance from his environmentalist left flank.

As a political maneuver, Cuomo’s decision makes sense. In any other context, though, the decision to ban fracking in New York is asinine. For the party of science, opposition to fracking technology is strictly the result of adherence to an article of faith."



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The odd tale of Muslim violence that none dared call by its name « Hot Air

The odd tale of Muslim violence that none dared call by its name « Hot Air: "It seems a straightforward enough of a story, and one that has become lamentably familiar to observers of current affairs. A Detroit man, a self-described Muslim, walked up to a group of individuals at a bus stop and asked them if they, too, observe the Islamic faith. When they replied that they did not, he stabbed them multiple times. It seems prima facie about as cut-and-dried an incident of radical Islamic extremist violence as you can get unless you work in America’s newsrooms apparently.

For America’s editors, however, relating this story in a manner that they subjectively determined to be responsible enough proved vexing. Their readers cannot be trusted not to draw the conclusion that the world is facing an epidemic of Islamic violence, particularly given the mounting empirical evidence that makes this condition plain. So, for many media outlets, an agonizing and public display over how to present this story unfolded yesterday."



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Just when you thought ISIS couldn’t get any worse, they’re allegedly harvesting organs now « Hot Air

Just when you thought ISIS couldn’t get any worse, they’re allegedly harvesting organs now « Hot Air: "If you invented a fictional terrorist organization as recently as two years ago that takes and holds territory, enslaves minorities and children, destroys 2,000-year-old religious shrines, burns people alive for sport, and sells civilian organs on the black market, you couldn’t have sold it to a publisher. They’d have called your personification of evil hackneyed. Life is often stranger than fiction.

While the organ harvesting allegations have been floating around the rumor mills for some time, they have never been confirmed. This claim remains disputed, but now the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations is alleging that ISIS is killing civilians and selling their organs in order to finance terrorism."



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More Marie Harf: I notice people don’t talk much about Joseph Kony’s Christian terror group anymore « Hot Air

More Marie Harf: I notice people don’t talk much about Joseph Kony’s Christian terror group anymore « Hot Air: "I don’t know where to begin. For starters, I guess, the only reason most people ever talked about Kony was because he became a hashtag fad on Twitter for 10 minutes in early 2012. Remember KONY2012? It was a lot like BringBackOurGirls, which went so viral that it made it all the way to the First Lady’s office. Hashtag activism is the laziest, most disposable form of activism there is, but it’s a smash hit on social media precisely because it makes moral posturing easy. Almost a year after BringBackOurGirls went viral, the girls still haven’t been brought back and Boko Haram is killing Nigerians by the thousands. And yet you don’t hear people talking much about that either. That’s the nature of hashtag activism, as ephemeral as a fart. If Harf has a problem with it, maybe she shouldn’t participate in it."



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Harf Truths and Whole Lies - WSJ

Harf Truths and Whole Lies - WSJ: "At any rate, the administration’s response, this time from the White House press secretary, made no mention of crusaders or even Christians. It begins: “The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens.” Are we supposed to believe the killers were angry about immigrants’ taking their jobs?

By contrast, last week when three Muslims were murdered in Chapel Hill, N.C., that merited a statement from the president himself. Although the investigation has not concluded (and the suspect appears to be a left-wing atheist), the president seemed sure this killing was anything but random: “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.”

All this is consistent with political correctness and its hierarchy of identity groups. Muslims are “oppressed,” meaning their status is higher, while Christians are “privileged,” meaning theirs is lower. (Vox.com last week supplied a helpful color-coded chart, in which Muslims are—we kid you not—beige.) Jews are somewhere in between, so that Christian anti-Semitism is oppression while Muslim anti-Semitism is “random” at worst."



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Schieffer: Yeah, I’m bothered by Obama’s optics in hostage death « Hot Air

Schieffer: Yeah, I’m bothered by Obama’s optics in hostage death « Hot Air: "Strassel is wrong about one point. What Republicans should do is pass an AUMF that removes all the restrictions that Obama included in his proposal and replace them with a commitment to fight with all options on the table until ISIS is destroyed, and then let him veto it. That would make the point of Obama’s attempt even more clear."



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More Obama: Freedom of speech obligates us to condemn insults to religion « Hot Air

More Obama: Freedom of speech obligates us to condemn insults to religion « Hot Air: "Lots of questions flow from this. An obvious one: Who decides what qualifies as an insult? Islamist fanatics in various countries protested Charlie Hebdo’s post-attack cover of Mohammed shedding a tear and holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign. There’s nothing derogatory about that image; it’s the magazine’s decision to violate Islamic taboos prohibiting images of Mohammed that is itself the “insult.” Does O think we have a moral duty to condemn any depiction of Mohammed, whether insulting or not, because it offends Islamic sensibilities? Another obvious question: What other sorts of insults do we have a moral duty to condemn? Lots of secular liberals out there wouldn’t care if I insulted a religion but they’d be deeply insulted if I said progressivism was a philosophy favored by authoritarian lowlifes posing as populists. Why should we allow rough-and-tumble political criticism like that but join hands in condemnation of religious criticism? The Free Exercise Clause says you have a right to practice your faith, not that it enjoys some special moral prophylaxis from affront. You’d think a liberal, whose base includes so many atheists, would be more reluctant to pander on that."



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Poll finds “regular folks” frequently disagree with scientists « Hot Air

Poll finds “regular folks” frequently disagree with scientists « Hot Air: "There are areas of hard science where we can do comprehensive testing and move ideas from the realm of pure theory to fairly well established facts. (Though such facts should always remain open to challenge.) Water freezes at a given temperature and pressure absent the addition of other soluble compounds. You can repeat that test over and over again and get the same results. But there are many other areas under study where complex systems can produce mixed results and serious challenges in drawing conclusions. When scientists with a political bent get involved in the conversation, their own beliefs can leave the realm of the laboratory and enter the halls of their own new church. This sort of science can and should rightly be challenged, even by those without a string of degrees on their resume, and the best proof should be required before everyone toes the line. (I could go into an entire rant on Dark Matter here, but I’ll spare you.)"



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