Why is freedom good — but exporting freedom bad?

The question that forms the title of this post first entered my mind when I put up a post about Martin Luther King a couple of months ago, around the King birthday celebration. People honor King for working to free his people — Americans of African descent — while I look at his other attempts — to interfere with our trying to extend freedom to the people of Vietnam — and see King a lot less favorably.

But more recently this same question has occurred to me in the context of two other people, politically far removed from King: Ron Paul and Gary Johnson. Paul and Johnson are both considered libertarians: Paul was the Libertarian nominee for the Presidency in 1988, though before and after that year he has been involved in Republican Party politics; Gary Johnson is seeking to be the LP's candidate in 2012, though, similarly to Paul, he has been an officeholder under the Republican banner. And both seem to feel that taking part in foreign wars to attempt to gain freedom for other people is a bad thing.

Ron Paul: The war mentality was generated by the Iraq war in combination with the constant drumbeat of fear at home. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, who is now likely residing in Pakistan, our supposed ally, are ignored, as our troops fight and die in Iraq and are made easier targets for the terrorists in their backyard. While our leaders constantly use the mess we created to further justify the erosion of our constitutional rights here at home, we forget about our own borders and support the inexorable move toward global government, hardly a good plan for America.

Gary Johnson: I would completely withdraw our military presence [in Afghanistan].

The question with which I titled this post applies to all these people. Why is freedom good — but exporting freedom bad?

The big problem in the "health care" debate

One of the big problems — I think the biggest problem — in discussing the health care situation is that the “uninsured” are all considered in one category, while there are a lot of different reasons that people are uninsured.

There are those — mostly young and healthy — who are pretty certain that they are not in the near future going to need medical care, so it is economically a stupid thing to do for them to get health insurance. They are certainly right, by and large. Most of them make little use of the health care that is available, and making them buy insurance, against their will, as Obamacare does, is clearly and simply a confiscation of their money that is the worst feature of the law.

There are people who have been denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions, and it is this group that Obamacare tries to help. But surely, the argument that you can't help this second group without forcing the first group to pay is specious. There must be a way of supporting the insurance companies — perhaps by a fund supported by general tax revenues — enough to compensate them for the additional cost associated with covering these people, without specifically hitting the young and healthy with a burden targeted at them.

Neither of these two groups, however, is the most important. There are those who simply do not have the kind of job that carries health insurance benefits. And the reason this is a problem is that we have uniformly depended on employers to provide health insurance, as a result of World War II wage controls! Yes, back in World War II, it was decided that wages had to be controlled, but to allow employers to provide health care benefits instead of increasing wages was all right, and tax benefits were put in place to encourage employers to do that. This leads to three bad results: (1:) Except for Federal employees (who have a plethora of choices!), people who are employed are locked into a single plan (or occasionally a small number of plans), without the ability to comparison-shop to pick the one that best suits them, (2:) People who change jobs have to go into a new plan, often needing to change their doctors, and (3:) people who are unemployed have no coverage, or can only buy it at a price far beyond their ability to pay, because they do not get a tax-subsidized rate like an employer or a group-based rate. This at a time when their income is reduced or eliminated!

It seems clear that the only way to fix our health insurance system is to detach it from employment. And Obamacare does not begin to consider this.

Obama with egg on his face

As I said in an earlier post, President Obama (who, by the way, I have found out was not a professor of constitutional law, but merely a senior lecturer, a far less exalted academic title) made the remark that a Supreme Court overruling of “a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress” would be “an unprecedented, extraordinary step.” Now, considering that ever since 1803 the Supreme Court has been recognizing that the Constitution trumps “law[s] that [were] passed by… a democratically elected Congress” (and the majority that passed PPACA was hardly “strong” — it was 7 votes in a House of 435 members!), it would seem that Pres. Obama's knowledge of constitutional law is rather deficient. (It would be deficient, even for someone who did not teach it at a law school!)

And he was called on it. A judge of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Judge Jerry Smith, ordered the Department of Justice to submit a three-page, single-spaced memo stating the administration's position on judicial authority to invalidate unconstitutional laws in response to the president's rather hostile comments. Attorney General Eric Holder filed that memo Thursday, which included the words: “The power of the courts to review the constitutionality of legislation is beyond dispute.”

Interestingly, while the Obama Administration conceded this point, some liberal lawyers (such as Laurence H. Tribe) think it was Judge Smith who overstepped the bounds. I guess Tribe could not see in Obama's words what most people did — a challenge to the Court's right to void the PPACA if they saw it as unconstitutional. I wonder what planet Tribe lives on!

Romney-Ryan?

With Mitt Romney at over 600 delegates, nobody but Rick Santorum seriously doubts that he will be the GOP nominee for President this year. And so, people have been discussing a vice-presidential candidate. Since Congressman Paul Ryan strongly backed Romney and campaigned with him in Wisconsin (probably helping him win that state's primary earlier this week), his name has come up a lot in the discussions recently.

There are certainly good reasons for this. Unlike Marco Rubio, Ryan has not been pointedly taking himself out of the running. And unlike Sarah Palin on 2008, Ryan has a lot of experience: seven terms in the Congress, recently becoming essentially the GOP leader on budget issues in the House of Representatives. And Ryan and Romney certainly seem to get along well with each other.

One thing that might by some be taken as a negative is President Obama's repeated wailing about the “Romney-Ryan budget.” But, in a sense, that is not a big problem. President Obama will blame Ryan's budget ideas for every economy-related evil that liberals regularly attribute to conservatives, whether he is Romney's VP candidate or not! So making him the official VP candidate does nothing to focus Obama's criticisms any more sharply on him than otherwise.

Actually, the only real negative point I would have against picking Ryan is that Ryan's strength is the economic area, and so is Romney's — you usually want the VP to be strong in areas where the President is weak (Dick Cheney on foreign/defense policy, where George W. Bush had little experience, for example).

Well, Mitt Romney has a long time to think it over. It will be interesting to see who is his pick.

1976, 1980, ... or 1964?

Rick Santorum has a pretty weird view of history. He looks back at the 1976 election, in which the GOP nominated Gerald R. Ford over the more extreme conservative Ronald Reagan, and seems to think that the reason the Republicans lost that year was Ford's moderation. He said recently:

“Let’s not make the mistake of 1976 again. Let’s bypass that era, and move straight to 1980, and let’s defeat a Democratic incumbent.”

In fact, after Richard M. Nixon was forced to resign and Ford pardoned him, the public disaffection for Nixon, more than anything else, was responsible for Ford's loss. And in any case, this is not 1976, and Santorum, in any case, is certainly no Ronald Reagan. Reagan was certainly a far more open man to the moderate wing of his party than Santorum has demonstrated himself to be. In 1976, Reagan had indicated that, if nominated, his vice-presidential candidate would be Richard Schweiker, about whom Santorum must have heard — he was a Senator from Pennsylvania, a post that Santorum himself has held. But Schweiker, unlike Santorum, was a moderate — and one well known as such. Reagan, in putting forth Schweiker's name, signaled that he wanted to include the moderate wing of the party in his vision of a Republican government. And in 1980, he did the same. Moderates in the party had favored George H. W. Bush, and Reagan named him as the vice-presidential candidate.

For that matter, Barack Obama is hardly a Jimmy Carter. Carter was, in 1976, a fairly obscure Governor of Georgia, whose record if anything was relatively conservative as Democrats go. Obama, by contrast, has pushed a hard left agenda for four years in the White House, with a clear record.

Ronald Reagan also embraced the ideas of libertarianism, which Santorum disdains. (Santorum was quoted as saying “I am not a libertarian, and I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.” You can't get more hostile to libertarianism than that! Reagan, on the other hand, said “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism” in 1975.)

The biggest analogy to a 2012 in which the GOP might nominate Santorum is 1964, in which Barry Goldwater read the moderates out of the party in his acceptance speech: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” (Though, in fact, unlike Santorum, Goldwater's conservatism was very close to libertarianism.)

And we know what happened in 1964.

Memo to Barack Obama: We have a Constitution in this country!

President Barack Obama seems to think that this is a country like Britain, where Parliament is all powerful, rather than a country with a Constitution that limits what Congress can do. He is quoted as having said, about the so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” better known as “Obamacare”:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example.

Why is this an “unprecedented, extraordinary step”? the Court has ruled lots of laws unconstitutional that were passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.” The first time was in 1803, for heaven's sake!

President Obama used to teach constitutional law. If he thinks that ruling Obamacare unconstitutional would be an “unprecedented, extraordinary step” because it was “passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” I wonder what he taught his students when he was a law professor. It would be interesting to know.

And now, some more waiting

This morning I went to the polls, as today was Maryland's primary day. Mitt Romney is expected to win big here today, and of course, he'll win even bigger in the District of Columbia, where Rick Santorum is not even on the ballot. So the real wait will be till late tonight when the results come in from Wisconsin, which is supposed to be closer.

Voting for Romney required me to make seven X's on the screen (we have touch-screen voting machines here); one vote for Romney himself, three for the three Romney delegates in my district, and three more for the three alternates pledged to Romney. It's not like the electoral college, where you vote the name of your preferred candidate, and it's automatically counted for all the electors pledged to that candidate. I did also vote for a candidate for Senate and one for the House of Representatives — I ignored the judgeship elections, which were uncontested, and the contests for the Board of Education, for reasons I've given before. So I voted nine times — seven of which votes were for Romney!

Romney already has more than half the delegates he needs for the nomination — more than twice as many as Santorum — but Santorum is still not convinced. Will he really have to get all the necessary delegates before Santorum concedes? That will be an even more frustratingly long wait.

The best case against Obama in 2012

Yesterday, in a posting on “The Daily Beast,” Michael Medved suggested that one of the reasons that Barack Obama may be vulnerable in this year's election is that he was elected on a “pledge to unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences.” Medved begins his post:

In the last 100 years, every U.S. president who lost his bid for a second term did so because he abandoned his principal promise to the American people. If Republicans can persuade the public that Barack Obama similarly shattered the pledge at the very core of his presidency, they will succeed in denying him the new lease on the White House he insists he deserves.

Four elected chief executives in the past century failed in their reelection campaigns—and each of them flopped by landslide margins. For William Howard Taft in 1912, Herbert Hoover in 1932, Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H.W. Bush in 1992, broken promises doomed their chances for another four-year term.

He goes into some detail, which you can read on his post but which I am deleting for brevity, but the most important point he makes is:

If Republicans want to see history repeat itself in 2012, with a once-popular incumbent turned out of office by a deeply disillusioned electorate, they must persuade the public that Barack Obama has continued the big-loser pattern of broken promises. That means reminding voters of the most important theme associated with his rise to power: the pledge to unify the nation and put aside petty, partisan differences. Whatever happens with the unemployment rate or gas prices, the president’s failure to live up to these assurances remains both painful and apparent.

In the speech that made him a national figure overnight, Illinois Senator Barack Obama gave the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention in 2004. “Alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga. A belief that we are connected as one people,” he intoned. “The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states; red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”

In his Inaugural Address four-and-a-half years later, the newly elected president sounded strikingly similar themes. “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

Can even the most devoted Obama admirer plausibly claim that this new day of harmony and cooperation actually dawned in Washington?

Low approval ratings for all federal officials suggest that Americans recognize that the “conflict and discord” have become more bitter than ever before and that the president, despite his soaring rhetoric, plays a prominent part in the squabbling. He may attempt to blame conservatives exclusively for the small-minded gamesmanship, but he’s compiled his own long record of below-the-belt, straw-man attacks, sliming his opponents as greedy and corrupt, claiming that they place plutocrats and corporate power above the public welfare.

Instead of the fresh era of “unity of purpose,” President Obama must acknowledge that his signature legislative achievement, health-care reform, passed both houses of Congress without a single Republican vote, and led elected officials in the majority of states to challenge its constitutionality before the Supreme Court.

And furthermore, Medved reminds us:

When challenging Barack Obama’s claim on a second term, the Republicans should remind the American people why we entrusted him with the presidency in the first place. Beyond any specific expectations about jobs, taxes, and health care, the public welcomed the prospect of an end to the bickering with a new politics of common-sense reform.

The GOP candidate can expose the president’s spoiled promise by renewing the same pledge more credibly, and demonstrating in the campaign itself the coalition-building, pragmatism, and bipartisanship the people expected from the incumbent. Reinvigorated hope for unity and cooperation provides the best chance to highlight this president’s most fatal failure and to add his name to the melancholy list of discredited one-termers who broke faith with the American people.

No better reason to turn Barack Obama out on his ear in 2012. And there is an obvious choice as to who should replace him. Mitt Romney was a productive Governor in a State where the legislature was overwhelmingly under the control of the opposite party. And they were not conservative Texas Democrats, such as served in the legislature that George W. Bush had to work with. (He thought he could be “a uniter, not a divider,” but he'd never had to deal with Democrats luike Nancy Pelosi as Texas Governor.) These were liberal Massachusetts Democrats. And yet he found a way to work with them. Mitt Romney can be the force for harmony that Barack Obama said he could be.

A fight next door

While the Democrats have a cut and dried choice for their Presidential nominee, there is a nasty, bitter fight in the congressional district next to the one I'm in that has led to my Democratic-enrolled wife (who does not live with me) receiving an amazing number of campaign leaflets.

First, some background. The westernmost district of Maryland (the Sixth) has long been represented by a Republican, Roscoe Bartlett. A couple of decades ago, then Governor Parris Glendening, horrified at the fact that Democratic-majority Maryland had a 4-4 division in its Congressional delegation, pushed through a gerrymander which would have made Elbridge Gerry proud. And it worked. Maryland's delegation has been either 6-2 or 7-1 in favor of the Democrats since then. (The one time it went 7-1 was after a bitter Republican intra-party fight in one district that left the incumbent Republican, defeated in the primary, endorsing the Democrat.) But the current Governor, Martin O'Malley, thought he could go Glendening one better. He took Roscoe Bartlett's district and remodeled it so it extends all the way into relatively urbanized Montgomery County, hoping to put in just enough Democrats to defeat Bartlett. The new Sixth District ranges from the very rural western end of the state to the dense Washington suburbs, stopping just a few blocks away from my home.

Some say the new district was drawn especially for State Senator Rob Garagiola, who has decided to move to the federal scene. Certainly, Garagiola figured so. But a serious challenger showed up: John Delaney, a businessman who has never held political office, but who seems, in the eyes of many people, to be a better choice. (The fact that he actually does not live in the Sixth District is no barrier. The Constitution only requires Congressmen to live in the same State that they represent, not the same district. In fact, it does not even require States to divide themselves into districts.) Delaney has the support of many powerful local politicians, including Douglas Duncan, who was the County Executive for years. And even former President Bill Clinton for some reason got into the act. You do not often hear of an ex-President endorsing a candidate in a local race in a State where they do not live, but he has officially endorsed John Delaney.

Each of the two (there are actually three other candidates in that primary, but nobody bothers to talk about any of the other three) has been slinging as much mud as you could imagine at the other. Garagiola brought up a six-year-old article in Forbes Magazine talking about how Delaney's business practices were heartless, and Delaney was termed a “loan shark” in Garagiola's campaign material. Delaney, in turn, points to Garagiola's work as a paid lobbyist for organizations ranging from banks to labor unions, something that Garagiola has tried to hide. Local newspapers have come out for Delaney. So, although the district may have been drawn up for Garagiola, Delaney seems to be the candidate of everyone who might be called “establishment,” or at least the “Democratic establishment.”

Obviously, I'm not going to favor either of one — first of all, I'm not in the district; second of all, I hope that whoever wins the primary loses to Bartlett in November — but Delaney seems the more honorable candidate (even if he's far too much of a liberal Democrat for me to like him, and even if he has the endorsement of Bill Clinton, whom I despise!) But it will be interesting to see who wins, and whether the supporters of the loser can back the winner, or whether the beneficiary of all this infighting will be Roscoe Bartlett.

A good sign

The Republican Party supports a lot of things that I do as well, and that is one reason I remain a Republican, even though there are some things that Republicans tend to favor that appall me. For example, the fact that Michele Bachmann was, and Rick Santorum still is, considered a serious candidate for the Republican nomination, testifies that enough bigoted homophobes inhabit the Republican Party that the kind of appeal to that kind of hostility can work in the party. Closer to home, gay District of Columbia Councilman David Catania, originally elected as a Republican, found the party so uncomfortable a political home that he became an independent a few years ago. That this sort of thing exists in the Republican Party saddens me, as I feel some grief that the party I consider my political home can be charged with such an intolerant stance. And therefore, I was happy to read a posting in The Daily Beast (under David Frum's name, but by Ryan Prior) entitled “A Strong Republican for Congress… Who Just Happens to be Gay.” (The posting was made 3 days ago, but I just saw it today.)

It seems that Richard Tisei, an openly gay Massachusetts state senator, is running for the GOP nomination for Congress in a district where the incumbent Democrat, Rep. John Tierney, just might lose because of his wife's possible involvement in a gambling scandal. And though Tisei has a primary to get through in September, he has the support of the most important Republicans in Massachusetts, especially popular Senator Scott Brown. While there have been two openly gay Republicans that have served in the House of Representatives, Steve Gunderson and Jim Kolbe, they were originally closeted and were involuntarily outed. If Tisei wins the nomination in the September primary and goes on to win the election in November, both of which seem likely, he becomes the first openly gay Republican elected to Congress. And that may send a message to gay Americans that they don't have to choose between being gay and being Republicans. Which is a very good thing.

There is absolutely no reason why there is any incompatibility between supporting conservative economic ideas and being gay. But gay people have felt that the GOP is hostile to them, and have flocked to the Democratic Party for that reason. I think that the election of Richard Tisei would be a great thing, not just because it may be a Republican takeover of a Democratic seat, but because it would place in the Congress the kind of Republican that is sorely needed: someone who does not share the “social” agenda of the Bachmanns and Santorums, but still hews to Republican ideas on the things that matter. Let's hope he wins.

Of course, I wonder how Michele Bachmann will take it, sitting in the same caucus with him!

Now it's "wait and see"

The Supreme Court has heard all the arguments, and it's a matter of waiting to see what they decide. But the prospects look good. When someone like Jeffrey Toobin, CNN's legal expert, who had predicted beforehand that the health care law would survive the Supreme Court, now calls it a “train wreck for the Obama administration,” I think that's a good sign. Obviously, people who are on one side or the other would tend to see the prospects as pointing their way. So when someone finds that it looks as if he has been wrong, that counts for a lot. But, it is not in the bag. And we won't really know until June.

Reports I hope are true

Today the Supreme Court heard the actual arguments on the individual mandate in the health care law. (Yesterday, they only considered the question as to whether the law was subject to the terms of the Anti-Injunction Act, which would, if so, mean challenges could not be filed for a few years. And yesterday it appeared that just about all the Justices, liberal as well as conservative, agreed that it was not.) And reports seem to show that there is at least a majority (including Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose decision is often the one that makes a majority) that will declare the individual mandate unconstitutional. (See also this report.)

I hope those reports are accurate. If ever there was a case of overreaching by the Congress, this seems to be one.

(David Frum disagrees. And usually I agree with a lot of Frum's ideas. But he's dead wrong here.)

And now the final test of "Obamacare"

One thing that is very special about the United States is the importance placed in compliance with our Constitution. We have a Constitution that is over two centuries old, and it is agreed that all brabches of our government must abide by it. (By contrast, in the United Kingdom, Parliament is all-powerful. It has been said that the only thing that Parliament cannot do is “make a man a woman, or make a woman a man.”) The constitutionality of laws enacted by Congress and signed into law by the President is always open to challenge before the Supreme Court. And the court began today to take up the so called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” of 2010 — frequently called “Obamacare.” Whatever this court decides, it is certain to be as controversial as Roe v. Wade, and all of us are waiting with bated breath to see what they decide, since there are a substantial number of lower court judges who have made conflicting decisions on the question.

To me, there is no question; the law is clearly unconstitutional. Congress cannot make people buy a private product like health insurance. The argument that states make drivers buy auto insurance is irrelevant — Congress is bound by the strictures of Art. I, Sect. 8 of the Constitution (and a few additional paragraphs in some of the amendments that give Congress the right to enforce those amendments by appropriate legislation), while the States have powers, by virtue of the Tenth Amendment, to do a lot of things that the Federal Government cannot. But some people claim that the commerce clause of Art. I, Sect. 8, or perhaps the taxation clause of the same article, gives Congress the power. And the Supreme Court does not always rule in conformity with the way I would read the Constitution: one recent example is Heller v. District of Columbia, where the Court invalidated D. C.'s gun control laws based on its reading of the Second Amendment. So we have a nervous three months or so to wait before the Court's actual decision comes out. Perhaps, though, people attending these hearings will be able to discern, from the questions the Justices ask the lawyers arguing the case, how they are likely to rule — or more specifically, how Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to rule, since the others, by their general ways of reasoning, are almost certain to divide 4—4.

It is going to be a long wait.

Article IV - and marriage

Article IV of the United States Constitution states: “Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.” And this clause generally has been taken to mean that if you have a driver's license issued by one state, you can use it in another, or if you get married in one state, you are married everywhere else, too. But this clause has been strained by the fact that different states have decided differently with regard to the issue of same-sex marriage.

Jessica Port and Virginia Anne Cowan, though living in the District of Columbia at the time, went to San Francisco in 2008 to take advantage of the fact that same-sex marriage was legal in California at the time. They married, and eventually bought a home in Maryland. But in 2010, they decided their marriage wasn't working, and filed for divorce. Since they remained on amicable terms, with nobody contesting the divorce, one might think this would be easy — as undoubtedly it would be if one of the women were a man. But the judge in the case decided that since Maryland did not allow same-sex marriage (a law has been passed to allow it, and signed by Governor O'Malley, but it will not take effect till next year, and still could be overturned in a referendum), the marriage was not valid, and thus he could not grant a divorce! You might think that, since the marriage was invalid, they might be satisfied — they would, in effect, have the same result as if they were divorced, namely the women were unmarried under Maryland law. But it has been pointed out that if one of them wanted to marry again in a state which legalizes same-sex marriage, she'd run the risk of being considered a bigamist.

The whole thing is very confusing. One same-sex couple has been granted a divorce in the very same courthouse where Port and Cowan were denied one. And other judges have gone both ways on the issue. So the Maryland Court of Appeals will have to decide the matter. But if this were not a same-sex couple, I'm certain that no judge would rule that a California marriage would be invalid in Maryland.

What really does Article IV mean in such a case? Will the U. S. Supreme Court eventually have to rule?

Rick Santorum - closet Democrat?

Today I read this post in Tom Bowler's blog, Libertarian Leanings:

Rick Santorum now says he would just as soon have Barack Obama win a second term if Mitt Romney beats him out for the Republican nomination, which at this point seems assured.


“You win by giving people a choice,” Santorum said during a campaign stop in Texas. “You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there.”

Santorum added: “If they're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”

Santorum was referring to an unfortunate statement by Romney campaign adviser Eric Fehrnstrom who said that the fall campaign would be a new start, “almost like an Etch A Sketch.” Santorum jumped all over it, promoting it as evidence that Romney will say anything to win the presidency.

Hmmm. Pot, meet kettle. It's a stunning statement by Santorum which he made while campaigning in front of conservatve crowds in Texas. If it has any effect at all, though, it may just hasten his departure from the race. Quite frankly, I'm in favor of that. With his strongest support coming from the most conservative of us, Santorum strikes me as a candidate most unlikely to win in the general election.

South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, it seems, doesn't disagree. While Rick Santorum was turning the Romney campaign gaffe into a major gaffe of his own, DeMint stepped up to say, it's time for the Santorum and Gingrich campaigns to reassess.

“They can drag it out to the convention if they want, but I think if some of them look at where they are, the best thing they can do is maybe look at throwing their support behind the one who might be our nominee — and that’s beginning to look like Romney,” he said.

Even though he has so far steered clear of making any 2012 endorsements, Senator DeMint is not at all uncomfortable with the Romney as the Republican candidate. He was, after all, national co-chairman of Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential bid. Now, his focus is on defeating President Barack Obama.

“What I can tell conservatives from my perspective is that I’m not only comfortable with Romney, I’m excited about the possibility of him possibly becoming our nominee,” DeMint told reporters on Capitol Hill.

Santorum as the conservative savior is an image that looks less and less realistic the further along we go. He's now gone so far overboard campaigning to save us from Mitt Romney, that he offers an Obama second term as a viable alternative to himself. Could he have come up with something dumber to say? Senator Santorum, please go away.

It is clear that Rick Santorum has no business putting himself forward as a Republican. His campaign is clearly designed to do one of two things: either win the nomination and lose to Obama because 75% of the American public hates everything Santorum stands for, or lose the nomination and make sure Mitt Romney loses to Obama. Either way, Rick Santorum is clearly simply a closet Democrat, running so that Obama's winning is assured. I concur with Tom Bowler's “Senator Santorum, please go away” comment.

Whatever happened to freedom of the press?

It's not clear as to whether this is White House censorship (one more assault on the Constitution by our President!) or media being so subservient that they'll just roll over and play dead at Obama's command, but this interesting post just appeared on Dylan Byers' blog on Politico's site:

The White House is now confirming that it asked media organizations to pull a report about Malia Obama's school trip.

“From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest,” Kristina Schake, communications director to the first lady, told me via email. “We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.”

On Monday, the AFP reported that Obama's daughter was on a school trip along with a number of friends and 25 Secret Service agents. The story was picked up by Yahoo, The Huffington Post, and the International Business Times, as well as U.K. publications like the Daily Mail and The Telegraph and other overseas publications like The Australian.

But on Monday night, the story had been removed from those sites. The AFP page for the story now links to a story titled "Senegal music star Youssou Ndour hits campaign trail," as does the Yahoo page. The Huffington Post page now links directly back to The Huffington Post homepage. The Daily Mail, Telegraph, and Australian stories now lead to 404 error pages, reading "page not found." The International Business Times story also links to the IBT homepage, though a version of the original story still exists online.

Nobody made the press scrub stories on Amy Carter or George W. Bush's twin daughters. But Obama's girls are off limits.

Thanks to Tom Bowler, whose blog, Libertarian Leanings, posted a note about this and thereby called my attention to it.

The Illinois result

At first last night, it looked as if Mitt Romney would actually get twice as much of the Illinois vote as Rick Santorum. I suppose that was because the Chicago area vote came in faster than the downstate vote. But the final result was a bit closer. As I read the results, with 99% counted, it was 46.7 percent to 35 percent, and that is still a landslide.

Santorum wins the rural vote; Romney the urban and suburban. And this is just like Ohio and Michigan — except, because Chicago is such a big part of the Illinois electorate, Romney's win was bigger in Illinois than in those other two Midwestern states. Everything falls into pattern. This is the way it is in the Midwest. (In the Northeast, Romney wins everyone's vote. And in the South, Santorum wins — except in Gingrich's home state of Georgia and next-door South Carolina.)

Mitt Romney now has a big lead in the delegates — more than double Santorum's total mdash; and it is going to be just impossible for Santorum to make up this deficit. And this is the way I like it.

Other primaries that are coming up

In the first week of next month, the primaries will be held in Maryland. And for the presidency, my task will be particularly easy as far as choosing how to vote, though I need to make six selections: I just have to look for the three delegates and three alternates whose name is coupled with the "(ROMNEY)" tag on the ballot.

There will be other races, as well, though. Four people are running for the 8^th District Congressional seat now held by Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen. The district has been redrawn (mainly because Governor Martin O'Malley tried to pack enough Democrats into the neighboring 6^th District to defeat Roscoe Bartlett, the incumbent Congressman there). Perhaps this makes the 8^th more competitive, though I wouldn't bet on it. But anyway, I have to choose one of the four who are trying to get the GOP nomination. Only one has sent me any campaign literature, Ken Timmerman. So I had to go combing the Web to find out something about the candidates. And it's not Timmerman who will get my support, but Shelly Skolnick.

Skolnick's Website description (he doesn't seem to have his own website, but he was interviewed by the Frederick News-Post) has one thing I like. He is one of the few Republicans who is not afraid to call himself a “moderate.” And that is good reason to support him. I'm still open for suggestions, but it looks as though he will get my vote April 3.

A pattern is appearing

It happened in Michigan. And in Ohio. And it appears to be happening in Illinois, where tomorrow is Primary Day as well. In the large states, as the actual primary approaches, people begin to realize that it's important to have an electable Republican candidate, and swing toward Mitt Romney.

According to Real Clear Politics, the Chicago Tribune poll taken March 7-9, showed Romney leading Rick Santorum by only 35% to 31% -- almost a tie. The Fox poll, on the 14th, showed Romney's lead growing to 37-31. The Rasmussen poll on the 15th had it 41-32, and the most recent poll, by Public Policy Polling, shows Romney beating Santorum in a rout, 45 to 30! Romney's lead is biggest in urban and suburban areas, and this is typical as well — it was those areas that he won in Ohio.

But these, of course, are not the final poll — that will come, at least in Illinois, tomorrow. As they used to say in old-time radio, stay tuned for the result!

The way we vote: why it's not good, and how to fix it

Over on his blog, “The Least of All Evils,” Dale Sheldon-Hess just put up a posting called “The Tyranny of the Majority Weak Preferences,” which really goes to the heart of the problems we have with our plurality voting system. Our voting system tends to favor extremists, as we are seeing now. (And some people who advocate “instant runoff voting” don't seem to realize that it favors extremists, if anything, more strongly than plurality does.)

Please read that post. And if you want to know what kind of a system might eliminate this bias toward the extremes, read William Poundstone's book, “Gaming the Vote.” It describes even more of the flaws of our plurality voting systems, and points the way to fix them.

Since Gingrich stays in, what does this mean?

Well, Newt Gingrich remains in the race, as mentioned in the previous post. So what does this mean? Probably, it hurts Rick Santorum, since some of the people who really dislike Mitt Romney and would be voting for Santorum will instead vote for Gingrich in the later primaries. Gingrich isn't going to take away many votes from Romney — most people whose first choice is Gingrich and second is Romney (are there any?) will vote for Romney since it's obvious Gingrich is out of the race. So Romney, if anything, has an easier path to the nomination. His opposition remains fragmented. Any attacks by Gingrich on Romney, obviously, don't help, but he's got to be concentrating his fire on Santorum, not Romney, since it is prospective Santorum voters he's looking to get. And any effort by either Santorum or Gingrich to hurt the other means that much less effort can be devoted by Santorum to attacking Romney — and that much less effort is needed by Romney to defend himself from the Right instead of attacking President Obama's record.

Thus, as one who favors Romney's nomination, I think that Gingrich's staying in is actually a plus.

Gingrich won't give up

Apparently, even though Rick Santorum beat him in both Alabama and Mississippi yesterday, Newt Gingrich remains in the race. He's really an irrelevancy, of course, but he takes votes from Santorum, helping Mitt Romney. And I can't be unhappy about that. The real story is that even Santorum is far behind Romney in the thing that counts: delegates. The estimate is that Romney has nearly twice Santorum's delegate count — 494 to 251. And big states that Santorum has no chance in have yet to vote. Things don't look all that bad for Mitt Romney.

My take on some recent columns

Regular readers of this blog know that many of my posts are prompted by columns I read in the Washington Examiner, which is, for me, a local paper. The Examiner is a conservative paper, and its columnists all hew to that line to one or another degree (although not always agreeing with everything that each other says). In this way the Examiner differs from the Washington Post, which often prints columns by Charles Krauthammer, probably the columnist in all the papers I see with whom I most agree. But getting back to the Examiner: two columns that appeared earlier this week particularly caught my eye.

Most of the time, it seems Gregory Kane's columns prompt my disapproval. This time was a rare exception. He wrote the column Sunday, and it appeared in Monday's paper under the title: “Rush Fluke apology came too late” I will not quote the whole column in detail, but only the first paragraph; I do recommend that you read it all on the Examiner's site:

If indeed, as some media reports have indicated, Republicans are now “on the defensive” in the contraception controversy, they have one Rush Limbaugh to thank for putting them there.

The main point was that, by using such offensive language, Limbaugh (if anything) attracted support to the woman he criticized. There was a good case to be made — based on religious freedom and the First Amendment — to oppose President Obama's contraception mandate. But Limbaugh's way — to insult the woman who spoke in favor of the mandate — poisoned the air. Mr. Kane, this time you and I agree.

The second column I want to write about came from a columnist with whom I more usually find myself in agreement: Noemie Emery. And while my agreement with Gregory Kane is out of the usual, the fact that Ms. Emery's column agrees with my thought is more typical. Her column appeared in Wednesday's paper under the title “Back to the what, Mr. Will?” and in it, she takes George Will to task. Again, I will not quote the whole column but advise you to read it all on the Examiner's site. But the one thing she said that particularly caught my eye was this piece:

Romney is poised exactly at the midpoint of the Republican Party, strong with those to the right or the left of this center, very strong with the "somewhat conservative," while being conservative enough not to enrage or discourage the base.

This is the best reason why Mitt Romney should be the 2012 GOP nominee, and I like the way she put it.

"Super Tuesday" results

The results are in, and the big one, Ohio, was slow in coming because it was close. The first returns showed Mitt Romney ahead, then Rick Santorum led for most of the night; when I went to bed, Romney was leading, but it was too close to be certain whether that lead would hold. The final difference is still so close that Santorum can claim a tie. And so there will not yet be pressure for him to withdraw, and the contest will go on.

And the pattern of the results is interesting. Romney won all the counties that were anywhere near the biggest three cities, Santorum won the rural vote (and smaller cities like Toledo). Yet, because the delegates were awarded by a formula that was not strictly proportional, although there was only a 1 point difference in their percentages, Romney gets almost twice as many delegates.

Of course, nine other states voted as well. In some cases, the results were predictable. Neither Santorum nor Newt Gingrich was on the ballot in Virginia, so it was just Romney and Ron Paul. Apparently, Paul got some of the vote from people protesting the ballot restrictions — I can't believe he would really get 40% of the vote in a more open election. But Romney got 60%, and might win just about all the Virginia delegates because of the way they were apportioned.

And two states were “home turf” for candidates — Massachusetts for Romney, where he used to be Governor, and he ended up with almost ¾ of the vote, and Georgia for Gingrich, where he was a Congressman (although representing just one district, of course), and he won nearly half the vote, a big win in a 4-man race. Vermont went to Romney, who seems to be solid all over New England, and Tennessee and Oklahoma to Santorum, who can claim that Romney is not conservative enough to win anywhere in the South (though Romney did win Florida a month or so ago, but that state is geographically in the South but demographically more Northern.)

And that leaves two small, relatively inconsequential states. Idaho was a state some were saying might go to Ron Paul, because it's a caucus and he was working hard there; in fact it was Romney's biggest win, in percentage points, after Massachusetts. And Santorum picked up North Dakota.

In delegate totals, Romney seems to have picked up abouit the same proportion of the delegates at stake yesterday as he had up to then. Santorum will probably say he won enough to keep slogging on. Gingrich got a bunch of delegates, but mainly from one state — Georgia — so his run seems quixotic, as does Paul; yet I can't see any of the three trailing candidates wihdrawing yet. So while yesterday solidified Romney's command, it didn't seem to make much difference in the process.

Mitt Romney is rich. Very rich. So what?

Some people point to Mitt Romney's comments about his wife's two Cadillacs or his mentioning that he “didn't make much” from speaker's fees (which exceeded most people's total income last year) as something to be counted against him as a Presidential candidate. Of course, those people would never say a negative thing about John F. Kennedy or Franklin D. Roosevelt, both of whom were certainly fabulously rich by the standards of their day. Some of these people probably even voted for John Kerry, whose fortune certainly was nothing to sneeze at. (And at least Romney earned his fortune. Kerry just married into his.)

So Mitt Romney is rich. Very rich. But I do not see why this should be a disqualification. The real question is, would his ideas for the direction of our government be better than those of the current occupant of the White House? And it is clear to me that the answer is a very strong yes.

More on Reagan, libertarianism, Santorum, etc.

It seems that the Reagan quote in yesterday's post is genuine. In The Daily Caller, there was a nice posting dated January 7, which I just discovered, including the words:

When Rick Santorum’s nephew endorsed Ron Paul in an op-ed in The Daily Caller this week, he wrote: “If you want another big government politician who supports the status quo to run our country, you should vote for my uncle Rick Santorum.” Santorum respectfully and lovingly dismissed his young nephew’s endorsement. The senator said his nephew was just “going through a phase,” and later added: “I am a Reagan conservative. I am not a libertarian. And the people who are calling me a big government guy are libertarians.”

In an interview with Reason magazine in 1975, Ronald Reagan said:

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism … The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.

Says Santorum: “I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement.”

Santorum is not a Reagan conservative. Not even close.

Now Jack Hunter, who wrote those words, describes himself with the words:

It surprises people when they learn I’m not a libertarian. As Ron Paul’s official campaign blogger, I’m often perceived as being a libertarian and I am no doubt sympathetic to many libertarian views. But ultimately I’m a traditional conservative — a limited-government constitutionalist of the Barry Goldwater variety. That said, I’m no more offended at being called a libertarian than a heavy metal fan is when called a rock and roller — both terms represent far more synthesis than antithesis. Santorum has no comprehension of this basic philosophical and historical truism.

Being against big government does not represent the totality of American conservatism, but it does represent what Reagan called the “heart and soul” of conservatism. Reagan recognized that the “desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom” was indeed libertarianism but that it was also conservatism. This observation was fairly commonplace on the right during Reagan’s time, when “conservatism” was still more of a substantive philosophy than a Republican marketing tool. For example, in his book “Flying High,” a memoir about the 1964 presidential campaign, William F. Buckley repeatedly refers to Goldwater’s philosophy as “libertarian” and his famous book “The Conscience of a Conservative” as a “libertarian tome.”

In 1960, the first year I could vote for President, I refused to vote for either Goldwater or Johnson. (Under today's rules, when 18-year-olds can vote, I would have been able to cast a vote in 1960. But in those days you had to be 21 except in two States — Georgia and Kentucky — and I lived in neither.) I hsd seen a lot of propaganda about Goldwater, and I had been turned off by his dismissal of Nelson A. Rockefeller (my favorite politician at the time) with the words “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!” So I did not see, at that time, the value of much of Goldwater's ideas. But now, after nearly fifty years, I wish I could go back and vote for him — though my one vote would, of course, not have made a difference.

I still am more of a Rockefeller Republican than a Goldwater or Reagan Republican. But more than anything else, a Rick Santorum who can say “I fight very strongly against libertarian influence within the Republican Party and the conservative movement” is the antithesis of what I want to see in the GOP's direction. And should he be the nominee, I could scarcely support him. (I am not very sympathetic to Hunter's preferred candidate, Ron Paul, either. But this is not due to his libertarianism, but other things about which I have written before.)

Reagan's view of conservatism?

On another blog, I read a comment to a posting there, quoting Ronald Reagan as saying: “The very heart and sole [I presume Reagan actually said soul] of Conservatism is libertarianism.” If Reagan said this, it is easier to align with conservatives. But certainly, people like Rick Santorum refuse to accept this: “social conservatives” are quite hostile to people's liberty when it comes to things they deem to be “immoral.”

If Reagan actually said this — I'd like to find out if he did — I'm more aligned with Reagan's type of conservatism than I thought.

Olympia Snowe's retirement

News has come out that Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine will retire rather than run for re-election when her term is up. While this is certainly her decision to make, it saddens me. Sen. Snowe was one of the few voices of moderation in the Congress, and she will be missed.

Maine, for some reason, has sent more than its share of outstanding women to the Senate, going back to the days of Margaret Chase Smith. And one will still remain when Sen. Snowe retires: Susan Collins. But the Republican Party does not have many good, moderate Senators left, and even the loss of one is a major setback.

It was great having you in the Senate, Sen. Snowe. As I said, you will be missed.

And two more states have spoken

Well, now we have heard from Michigan and Arizona. And the news is good from my point of view: Mitt Romney won both.

Of course, in Arizona, the results are not a big surprise. The state has a lot of Mormons, for whom Romney's religion — which counts against him in some states — is a plus. And both Governor Jan Brewer — still very popular in Arizona, even if (or perhaps because) demonized by President Obama — and Senator John McCain of that state have endorsed him. But the size of that victory is a good sign: Romney won nearly as many votes as all the other candidates combined.

Michigan was closer. Once upon a time, this State was expected to be solid Romney territory — it was where he was born, and his father was a very popular governor there. But there were some polls recently that showed Rick Santorum winning the State. However, clearly, as they got a better look at what Santorum stands for, they began to reject him. Romney's margin over Santorum is only about four percentage points, but since Santorum was leading in some Michigan polls by as much as 15 points earlier this month, this is a good showing for Romney.

Hopefully, this is a forecast of more to come. Mitt Romney is clearly the best hope to replace President Obama in November's election, and it is important that he be the nominee.

Every cloud has a silver lining ... and vice versa!

I certainly cannot be unhappy that the economy is finally starting to improve. But one consequence of this improvement is not so good: People are increasingly approving of President Barack Obama.

Just as “every cloud has a silver lining,” (even bad occurrences can have good consequences) the reverse can also be true. One of the worst Presidents we have had may be re-elected because, in the last few months before the election, the country's economy finally starts to improve.

Of course, a lot can happen between now and November, even if the economy continues to improve. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the Obama health-care law in March, and issue its ruling in June. Military actions in the Middle East may make Obama's withdrawing of troops from the area look as bad as it really was. I cannot predict the happenings of the next 8½ months. But, at least for now, this silver news on the economy has a cloudy lining of increases in Obama's approval.

The prospect of a Santorum nomination

There are polls that say that in Michigan — the state where Mitt Romney was born — the primary might be won by Rick Santorum — a man who stands 100% against most of what I believe in. And this causes me to contemplate — with fear and loathing — the prospect of Santorum's actual winning of the Republican nomination this year.

This poses a severe problem to me. I cannot support Santorum; as I said, he and I are diametrically opposed on many important issues. And I certainly cannot support Barack Obama; he and I are opposed on about as many important issues. So what will I do in November, if it is Santorum vs. Obama? Well, the first thing is: Neither of these two will get my vote. I will look to see who the Libertarians nominate — if they are on the Maryland ballot, since Maryland makes it well-nigh impossible to vote for a write-in candidate. If it is someone like Gary Johnson, I might consider voting for him. And I will look to see who Americans Elect nominate (if they actually nominate someone and make it onto the Maryland ballot), and whatever other third parties are on the ballot here in Maryland. My last resort is to do what I did in 1964 — vote for nobody for President, but in order to be counted, vote straight Republican for all other offices on the ballot. In none of these cases will my vote help to elect someone to the Presidency, but I am resigned to that, since Maryland will probably be won by Obama anyway, and my vote cannot help elect someone to the Presidency anyway because of our electoral college method of choosing the President.

Any of these is an unpleasant alternative, but that's where I am left if the GOP nominates Santorum.

Maryland's gay marriage vote

And now, on this Friday, the Maryland House of Delegates (the lower house of the State legislature) voted to permit gay marriage. Last time, it passed the Senate but failed in the House, so (since no Senator has voiced any intention to change his vote) it will pass the Senate and be signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, who this year has gotten behind the bill as he did not last time. The forces of bigotry will try to put it up for a referendum, and I don't know how successful they will be, but since they will at least try, it will probably hold up the effective date of the law. But there is a good chance Maryland will be the next state to permit it.

This time, what got the bill through the House was two Republican Delegates' changing their votes — a good thing, because it means that what I consider my party is moving toward the right side of this question. The Democrats have far more delegates than they need to pass any legislation, but in this case there are a substantial number of African-American members who seem to believe, as I mentioned recently, that discrimination is only discrimination if it's directed against African-Americans. They should be ashamed about themselves, but until they understand that anti-gay discrimination is as bad as anti-black discrimination, it is necessary to make progress within the Republicans who are not Religious Right fanatics. And some progress has been made, as shown by this vote.

An interesting blog post

The Urban Right is a blog by an African-American Republican named D. R. Tucker. I do not always agree with what I have seen him post, but a posting dated Thursday takes a position which I would like to echo.

What do Republicans say to their gay friends?

How do they explain the fact that so many in the GOP’s base seem to be enthralled by Rick Santorum, who has never said one positive word about an LGBT person in his entire political career?

How do they justify the party’s history of denigrating the gay rights movement and characterizing same-sex marriage in apocalyptic terms?

How do they excuse the talk-radio tirades, the religious right’s ridicule, the punditocracy’s prejudice?

I can’t speak for every Republican, but I know I've made plenty of excuses for the GOP’s homophobia. My logic was pretty simple: to denounce GOP gay-bashing would be to help “the left,” and helping “the left” was simply out of the question.

So I didn’t complain when George W. Bush exploited fears about same-sex marriage to renew his lease on the White House. I didn’t speak up when self-righteous senators and reactionary representatives made noises about passing a Federal Marriage Amendment. I didn’t turn the dial when conservative radio and television personalities insisted that gays and lesbians were grotesque and loathsome.

I kept my mouth shut. For the team.

I am convinced that there are millions of Republican voters opting to keep their mouths shut for the team despite knowing in their hearts that homophobia is not morally right. They are so fixated on having Republicans win federal elections that they have chosen to ignore the reckless rhetoric those Republicans are relying on to win.

They need to speak up. Right now.

Ignoring homophobia is a fundamentally senseless act. Think about it: the Republicans who kept their mouths shut about Bush’s gay-bashing and supported his re-election effectively gave Bush the opportunity to thoroughly wreck the GOP, thus clearing a path for Barack Obama. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to speak out before it was too late?

There’s no downside to standing up against Republican homophobia—but the pain of remaining silent is tremendous. The hurt of conscience is more intense than any physical suffering. It’s a hurt I feel every time I recall the days when I said nothing as Republicans came after gay and lesbian families and denounced them in the cruelest terms possible.

Republicans of conscience—the ones that are still left, that is—must stand up now and call out Santorum and every other Republican who refuses to give the minimum standard of respect to gays and lesbians. The hatred must stop, and it must stop today.

The ends of an electoral outcome cannot justify the means. When a Republican pundit or politician opens his or her mouth to denounce gay rights, they should immediately hear millions of voices responding, “Stop it!”

By doing so, we will hasten the day when openly homophobic figures like Santorum won’t even think of running for President. We will hasten the day when both political parties recognize the importance of appealing to gays and lesbians. We will hasten the day when equality is the guaranteed winner of every election.

I will die regretting the years I declined to speak out against Republican homophobia. I should have realized that any GOP victory dependent on the denigration of gays and lesbians will go down in history as a stolen victory.

I can’t change the past, but I can certainly learn from it. The most important lesson to be learned is the moral necessity of calling out homophobia and opposing the vicious vision of those don’t believe in treating gays and lesbians as equals. Thus, let me be the first to say: “Rick Santorum, shut up already!”

I think we need people to speak up within the GOP who are willing to express sentiments like these.

Chris Christie's bad decision

Generally, I like Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. But nobody is perfect. And Christie seems to have caved in to the social conservative wing of the GOP. Perhaps he wants to run for President in 2016 and figures he needs their votes, perhaps he's really anti-gay (though I doubt it). But he's decided that he will veto a bill on gay marriage that just passed the New Jersey Senate. Obviously, the people of New Jersey want this bill. A Senate that turned it down the last time passed it, with the votes of some Senators that had been negative last time. The only thing that can reverse votes on such a hot-button issue as this is the perception that the people of New Jersey do want it.

I guess even someone like Chris Christie cannot fight the social conservatives and still expect support from the party. Too bad.

Marion Barry, Dave Catania, and the District of Columbia electorate

Today, have to apologize to those who look to this blog for observations of nation-wide import; I'm dealing with a very local thing. But it actually has national relevance, so read on.

David Catania is gay. Marion Barry is African-American. Both are Council members of the District of Columbia. Catania's sexual orientation, and Barry's race, should not matter. But they do — as was shown in a recent event. The D. C. Council has 12 members — usually 13, but one, Harry Thomas, has resigned over a criminal indictment (which in itself helps to make the point that this post will get around to!) There was a retreat for Council members, at which Catania and Barry got into a shouting match. Barry suggested that Catania was prejudiced against black men, something for which there is absolutely no evidence. (But it seems that many African-American politicians cannot accept that there are groups, such as gay people, who also have been the targets of discrimination. For them, discrimination against African-Americans is an evil that must be stamped out, while discrimination against anyone else is a fiction that doesn't exist. So Barry — as well as many African-American members of the Maryland General Assembly [State legislature], voted against gay marriage when the issue came up before them.) And Catania, who might have been excused for losing his cool, still went, in my opinion, too far, shouting, “F— you, Marion!”

What a dysfunctional legislative body! Yet Marion Barry — who was caught in a crack sting while he was Mayor — gets elected time after time to the Council. And it's not just the current members of the D. C. Council. Shortly after I first came into this area, a Council member named Douglas Moore got upset at a truck driver who parked in an area reserved for Council members, and ended up biting the driver!

Yet the voters of the District keep voting for people like these. And they complain that they do not have the political rights that residents of the 50 States do. Well, when the Senators and Representatives look at the kind of people that D. C. voters elect to office, it does not surprise me that they do not consider the District of Columbia as worthy of giving full and equal political rights to. A voting public that elects people like Thomas, Barry, and Catania, and has elected Moore in the past, has not shown their worthiness.

Gregory Kane, gay marriage, and religious freedom

A column appeared by Gregory Kane in today's Washington Examiner entitled “No reason to trust Maryland liberals on marriage.” In it, Kane seems to think that even though Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley has promised clergymen who would not preside over same-sex weddings that they would not have to, they will have to in the end. He says:

I have the sneaking suspicion that the forces hankering to legalize same-sex marriage won't rest until pastors like Hickman and Coates are compelled, by law, to perform same-sex marriages in their churches. Here's the plan I see developing.

The CMPA passes. Within a year, maybe two, maybe three, a same-sex couple or couples challenges that portion of the law that lets pastors like Hickman and Coates decide if they want to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies or not. That part of the law will be challenged because it's "unconstitutional."

The lawsuit winds its way through Maryland's courts, where it would take only one activist judge to rule for the plaintiffs, nullify the clause protecting churches that choose not to perform same-sex marriages and thus compel them to do so.

And yes, call me a cynic, but I do believe that the same-sex couple or couples who will make the challenge have already been selected.

But Kane is having unnecessary nightmares. There are clergymen now, this very day, who will not conduct certain kinds of marriages sanctioned by law: rabbis who will not conduct a marriage between a Jew and a non-Jew, Catholic priests who will not officiate at a marriage where one of the parties involved is divorced, etc. And if Kane has one example he can demonstrate that a clergyman has been forced by a court to conduct a marriage that he will not sanction for religious reasons, I will accept his argument. But I believe I am safe in saying that this has never happened — in Maryland or any other State. So why is Gregory Kane worried?

Obama and the contraception mandate

Well, President Barack Obama thought he could make a compromise with the Catholic Church on the contraception mandate. And the Catholic bishops have spoken, and to a man, they have said it was unacceptable.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: there is a First Amendment issue here. I don't agree with the Catholic Church's position on contraception, or for that matter on abortion. But they have a right to their beliefs. And forcing Church-related employers to pay for insurance to cover what they believe is against God's will is a violation of their beliefs. And disguising it by saying the employer will not be paying for it doesn't cut it. Somebody is going to pay for it, and if it's not the employee, the insurance company is going to factor it into the premium, so the employer is paying for this coverage.

President Obama calls it a compromise — the bishops obviously do not. And while I find myself usually opposed to Catholic bishops on lots of issues, and indeed on the underlying issue here — the sinfullness of contraception — I defend their rights to hold their beliefs and not be forced into subsidizing that with which they disagree on religious grounds.

Conservatives can support Romney

It was nice to see the news that the Conservative Political Action Conference, being held now here in Washington, D. C., took a straw poll and the results were Mitt Romney 38%, Rick Santorum 31%, Newt Gingrich 15%, and Ron Paul 12%. It shows that, although some conservatives consider Romney too moderate for their tastes, enough will support him that the recent Santorum wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri will not sidetrack Romney's course to the nomination. Maine, today, also gave him some good news, though, since neither Santorum nor Gingrich even bothered to campaign there, and Romney is from nearby Massachusetts, it is not an unexpected win. (Also, Maine, like Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri, did not really choose any delegates at its caucuses today.) But the CPAC straw poll is big news. It demonstrates that even conservatives will vote for Romney. And well they should. If a far-out conservative like Santorum would be nominated, he would certainly lose to Barack Obama in November. And I am certain that conservatives would prefer a Mitt Romney who beats Obama to a Rick Santorum who loses to him. Electability is important!

"Defense of Marriage" -- how does it defend? And WHAT does it defend?

Opponents of same-sex marriage often couch their opposition in terms which imply that they are “defending” traditional marriage — in fact, one piece of anti-gay legislation has been entitled the “Defense of Marriage Act.” But how can they make this claim? I simply do not understand how expanding the right of marriage to same-sex couples in any way negatively impacts the marriages of opposite-sex couples. This is one point that has never been explained in any way that I can find.

Marriage has sometimes been tied to procreation, and it is true that science has not yet found a way to combine two sperm cells to create a new human being. But not every opposite-sex couple is capable of procreation either. I have never heard of an opposite-sex couple being denied a marriage license because the woman has had a hysterectomy, or the man a vasectomy; nor has any law been enacted that would restrict marriage to couples in which the woman has not yet reached menopause. So there is certainly no reason that lack of the ability to procreate can be cited as a reason to deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

I have held the opinion in the past that “civil unions are enough” — and I still think that this is so if a civil union carries all the privileges of a marriage. But in states like Virginia, those opposed to same-sex marriage also oppose civil-union legislation, so that, if the purpose of instituting civil unions is to quiet those who are upset with calling it a “marriage,” it has failed that task. Therefore, since no concessions can be obtained from the opposite side, pro-same-sex-marriage forces can hardly be faulted from seeking the whole deal. And once more I pose the question: “What are anti-gay-marriage forces ‘defending’?”

The 9th Circuit Court's ruling on gay marriage

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued an opinion (Perry v. Brown) on California's Prop. 8 anti-gay-marriage vote. In keeping with a Supreme Court doctrine that judicial rulings should be as narrow as possible, covering only what is absolutely necessary, the ruling didn't try to establish a Constitutional right to marriage — which supporters of gay marriage would have liked to see — but merely stated that Prop. 8 was invalid simply because it took away rights that had already been possessed by gay people (as a result of a California court decision). And they referred to another decision, Romer v. Evans, by the Supreme Court, that prevented Coloradans from voiding already-passed anti-discrimination laws affecting gay people. And therefore it applied to California, but no other state.

The Religious Right will, of course, appeal, but even assuming they lose and the 9th Circuit Court's decision stands, nobody outside California can gain much from it. But it is an incremental win for equality. And that's a plus.

One thing is clear: By citing Romer v. Evans, the Court has made a clear appeal for the support of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. He is often the deciding Justice in 5-4 decisions, and he wrote the opinion in Romer v. Evans.

Is Newt Gingrich's star falling?

The results of Minnesota's caucus show Newt Gingrich dead last: Rick Santorum won his second state (like Iowa, it seems to show he seems to do better in caucuses than in primaries), and Ron Paul did well there too (though not as well as one prediction I saw, which said he might actually win Minnesota). It was not a good state for Mitt Romney, either: he finished a poor third, with only 17%. But Gingrich got only 10%.

There were also caucuses in Colorado, and Santorum won those caucuses as well, although beating Romney more narrowly: 40% to 35%, with Gingrich and Paul far back, both only a bit over 10%.

And in Missouri, Gingrich was not even on the primary ballot. Santorum got an absolute majority — this clearly was a good day for him, with Missouri joining Minnesota and Colorado. (However, the Missouri primary chooses no delegates, so it only got Santorum some bragging rights.)

All in all, this was, I have to admit, not a great day for Mitt Romney. But it was an even worse day for Newt Gingrich. It will certainly energize Santorum — an unfortunate thing, as Santorum represents the worst of the Religious Right. It is certainly turning out to be a long primary/caucus season.

The Obama administration, the Catholic Church, and contraception

Normally, I'm not very much in favor of the ideas put forth by the Catholic Church on things like abortion, contraception, and such. But let's face it — they have a First Amendment right to believe as they choose. And certainly the Obama Administration's decision that unless they serve only Catholics, the Church's institutions have to cover contraception in any health insurance they provide to their employees violates that First Amendment right. As much as I disagree with the Catholic Church, I have to admit that their rights are being trampled on by the Administration.

Now, some time ago someone claimed, in a comment to this blog, that, by recognizing gay marriage, the State of Massachusetts was also interfering with the rights of Catholic institutions. In particular, he pointed out that many of the State's adoptions were facilitated by Catholic Charities. But that was a different story, as I see it. A person who wants to get married has no alternative but to be married under State law. He (or she) ought to be able to get married to anyone he desires to, without considering the wishes of someone else who might not want to allow that couple to adopt a child — the couple does not need to go to Catholic Charities to adopt; they can take another route. (And, as it turns out, Catholic Charities had placed children with gay couples in Massachusetts. So their position seems to be that it's OK for a gay couple to adopt a child, as long as they don't claim the title of “married.” I cannot understand this position at all.) On the other hand, a person who wants to get contraceptives does not need to work for a Catholic Church-related organization. And such a person perhaps should not work for such an organization. He (or she) is obviously at odds with Catholic doctrine here. It's just like the fact that someone like me should not try to get a job working for the Democratic Party. (Or, for that matter, for People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, the anti-meat-eating, anti-pet organization.) I would never want to work for an organization whose core principles I oppose. It's entirely a different question.

So here, I defend the Catholic Church's position. They have their First Amendment rights, and the Obama Administration needs to recognize this.

The Nevada caucuses

Nevada's caucus results are in, and almost a carbon copy of the Florida primary result: Mitt Romney won big, with more votes than any two of his competitors combined, and only a few percentage points short of an absolute majority. Once more, Romney has gotten the votes of people who see the 2012 nomination fight as a contest to determine who will be more likely to defeat Barack Obama, as do I.

So far, none of the other candidates seems ready to drop out, though — those who were going to if they saw they could not win have already dropped out. So it looks like a long wait until we get to the Tampa convention to ratify the GOP primary/caucus voters' decision to nominate Mitt Romney. But that's the way it is going.

Indiana's right-to-work law

Yesterday, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels signed a right-to-work law for that state. Hurray for Indiana, but we really need a national law.

Years ago, Federal law outlawed the “closed shop,” where a worker had to be a member of a union to be hired, but allowed “union shop” contracts, where a worker might be forced to join the union after he was hired. Unions love these contracts, because workers can be forced to pay dues to corrupt unions that do nothing worthwhile for their workers. (Any union that really serves the workers it supposedly represents should be able to convince the workers to join voluntarily.)

Typically these days, the only workers who benefit by union contracts are the ones who do a substandard job — because any worker who wants to do a good job gets harassed by the union (since he's showing up the others!) Good workers, as well, are prevented from having their talents recognized, because union contracts typically require a worker to be paid the same whether he performs well or not: either all the workers get the same pay, or their pay is only dependent on seniority. In non-union shops, by contrast, workers get evaluated as individuals, and their pay depends on the job they do. A good worker will not be underpaid, because the employer wants to keep him.

Once upon a time, unions performed a necessary function — there were sweatshops, and workers needed the unions to make their jobs safe and adequately compensated. Those days are gone, at least in the USA. And this is shown by the precipitous drop in union membership — in the 1950s, unions enrolled more than a third of all workers, while now it is only slightly more than 10%. And in the private sector, it is far less than that — less than 7%. Clearly, most workers only belong to a union if they have to. And this is why we need a national right-to-work law: a law that will clearly state that nobody has to belong to a union unless he really wants to.

Newt Gingrich - a strange candidate

Newt Gingrich puzzles me. On the one hand, he seems to characterize Mitt Romney as a liberal, and says he will win the nomination because the GOP will not nominate a liberal Republican. but if he is the conservative alternative to Romney, why is he acting like the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, between attacking Romney for outspending him 5 to 1 in Florida and quoting the “of the people, by the people, for the people” line of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address? You can almost hear him saying “I am of the 99%!”

Sometimes he appeals to the memory of Ronald Reagan, forgetting that Reagan was the originator of the “big tent” philosophy and created the “Eleventh Commandment”: “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.” His attacks on Romney would certainly not have been approved by Reagan.

And how can Gingrich think he will win, if he blames Romney's win in Florida on outspending him 5 to 1? Does Gingrich think that Floridians are more susceptible to advertising than people in other states? If it was really because Romney outspent him that he lost Florida, how can he ignore the fact that that Romney can equally well outspend him in every other state? And can he really believe that the “people” are on his side, when Floridians voted for Romney over him by a 3 to 2 margin? And even if Santorum's votes were added to his, to produce a total “conservative” vote, Romney still beat their total.

Gingrich earlier ran a “high road” campaign, not attacking the others. Now he is getting down in the gutter to attack Romney. Isn't he afraid he will give Barack Obama some ammunition to use against Romney in the general election campaign?