Victor Davis Hanson: Our 21st-century political correctness can have us behaving like 20th-century denizens of Leningrad or Moscow.

National Review "...we know that Israel is supposed to be culpable and that we are asked to praise the “aspirations” of the Palestinians, but if we were to go to the Middle East we most certainly would not stay in Gaza or the West Bank or visit unescorted a Christian shrine. We would wish to dine with people like the Fogels, but not their killers or the people who ordered them to kill."

Krauthammer: The Obama doctrine: Leading from behind

Charles Krauthammer  "Who truly reviles America the hegemon? The world that Obama lived in and shaped him intellectually: the elite universities; his Hyde Park milieu (including his not-to-be-mentioned friends, William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn); the church he attended for two decades, ringing with sermons more virulently anti-American than anything heard in today’s full-throated uprising of the Arab Street.
"It is the liberal elites who revile the American colossus and devoutly wish to see it cut down to size. Leading from behind — diminishing America’s global standing and assertiveness — is a reaction to their view of America, not the world’s."

The Birth Certificate

Richard Fernandez "That is all most of us have: an assertion of authenticity by normally trusted authorities. Obama’s supporters will argue that any demand for further proof — tests that we ourselves would not routinely be subjected to — is tantamount to treating him like a felon. It springs from a pre-existing bias. They would be right. The reason people have been looking for the birth certificate isn’t because they mistrust official birth certificates in general. It is because they mistrust Obama."

Andrew C. McCarthy:   Birth Certificate: Where Are the Indignant Questions to Obama?
 "So, assuming as we should the legitimacy of the long-form birth certificate produced yesterday, the only thing that makes sense is that Obama knows the mainstream media is in his hip pocket. That is, he knew that he would not be held to the same standard as other politicians, and that if he acted in an unreasonable manner by withholding basic, easily available information that any other person seeking the presidency would be expected — be compelled — to produce, the media would portray as weirdos those demanding the information, not Obama and his stonewalling accomplices."



http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/danasummers





http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/mikelester



(PJM Exclusive) Holder’s DOJ Scuttled More Terror-Related Prosecutions

Pajamas Media   "But with Eric Holder blaming the Bush administration for this decision, it will be interesting to see how he explains the fact that, under his leadership, the DOJ has been responsible for scuttling other terror-related investigations — according to congressional investigators looking at the possible political motivations for dropping prosecutions of American Islamic leaders for terrorism support."

Holder: DOJ nixed CAIR leader's prosecution  ""I think the attorney general's hands should be involved in any case involving CAIR and a possible terrorism indictment," King told the Main Justice website. "He should not be hiding behind the decision of the Bush administration, because that decision was made before the Holy Land Foundation was convicted. Once the Holy Land Foundation was convicted, that would make it easier to get an indictment and conviction of CAIR.""

Card check: More NLRB Overreach?

Volokh Conspiracy  "The New York Times and Associated Press are reporting that the National Labor Relations Board intends to sue Arizona and South Dakota over state-level labor law reforms.  Both states recently adopted constitutional amendments that prohibit unionization other than by secret ballot, as have Utah and South Carolina."

What IS card check?  ""Card Check" is any process by which an employees' right to a federally supervised private ballot election is taken away. This can occur by union organizers coming to a business and asking workers to sign a card in public, or by having mail-in cards; the union, your co-workers and your employee will still know how you voted. "

Bob McCarty

Card Check – A Column, A Cartoon "You wake up one morning, eat breakfast and go to work as usual. About mid-morning, a union official walks into your office and informs you that your employees have successfully unionized your company."

Tunnel Dwellers on the road

We leave for Portage, Indiana, Thursday morning to stay with our youngest son and his family, so posting will be more sporadic. We do prefer the morning posting because the news is fresh, but since the TW concentrates on commentary rather than breaking news, we should still be timely. Besides, we tend to post all during the day anyway.
Since Mr. Obama likes to make news during the Rush Limbaugh program, the evening posts may be more current.
The Tunnel Dweller

Come November 2012, independents will remember the president's earlier appeals to the hard left..

Karl Rove  "It's clear Mr. Obama likes campaigning more than governing. And for this president, campaigning means knocking down straw men and delivering a steady stream of misleading attacks. It means depicting opponents as indecent, heartless people who take special delight in targeting seniors and autistic children. It means basking in the adulation of a partisan crowd rather than engaging in the difficult work of passing bipartisan legislation.

"Since Mr. Obama can't make an affirmative case for his re-election, he has decided to try convincing voters that Republicans are monstrous. As a result, America is likely to see the most negative re-election campaign ever mounted by a sitting president."

As an empty suit, just what is this man good for?  He will have left this nation bitter and divided with his time in office nothing but dark ages from which the electorate may never heal.

About.com



Ann Coulter: "Obama's Budget: More Waste, Fraud, and Self-Abuse"

Ann Coulter Quoting Milton Friedman:

"In January 1975, a typist in the Environmental Protection Agency was so consistently late for work that her supervisors demanded she be fired. It took 19 months to do it, and this incredible 21-foot-long chart lists the steps that had to be gone through to satisfy all the rules and all the management and union agreements.

"The process involved the girl's supervisor, his deputy director, his director, his director of personnel operations, the agency's branch chief, an employee relations specialist, a second employee relations specialist, a special office of investigations and the director of the office of investigations. This veritable telephone directory, need I add, was paid with taxpayers' money. Who could invent a better protected job than this one -- before it came to its end?"

About.com

Lisa Benson on offshore drilling permits



http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/lisabenson



Thomas Sowell: The Trump Card

Townhall  "What Trump has that so many other Republicans are so painfully lacking is the ability and the willingness to articulate his positions clearly, forcefully and in plain English. Too many Republicans talk like the actor of whom a critic once said, "he played the king like he was afraid that someone else was going to play the ace."
"What electrified so many Republicans about Sarah Palin in the 2008 election campaign was that she was such a contrast to the usual mealy-mouth talk that was more common among other Republican candidates, including Senator John McCain."
I think Republicans fear any frank talk will be demagogued by the Democrats and the liberal media. And it will.

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/garyvarvel

Newsweek's Evan Thomas: Democrats Will Demagogue Paul Ryan All the Way to Reelection

This is going to be one of the most demagogic campaigns we have ever seen. I think it’s incredibly irresponsible, but I think it might actually work. I think that if you are a Democrat, you want to get reelected in 2012 as Obama does, I, I will bet he will sit back and ride the anti-Ryan demagoguery all the way into reelection.            Quoting Charles Krauthammer

The Democrats' Tactic: Fearmongering  "Voters this past November have spoken: they want government to cut the federal budget and they want it to happen now. GOP legislators who are determined to return our country to a culture of fiscal discipline have nothing to fear but fearmongering itself. "

That birth certificate: Obama distracts from his other distractions

We anxiously await the cartoons that will follow this.

Jennifer Rubin  "But he was on a roll with zingers like this: “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”And then he flew off to do the Oprah show in Chicago.Yeah." ....

"Obama is apparently impervious to sound advice. For what other explanation could there be for his decision to join the carnival? I mean, there had to have been people in the White House who thought this was a daft idea, right?"

Video: Obama explains timing of birth-cert release  "Via Tommy Christopher at Mediate, be prepared to see Barack Obama the happiest he’s been in public in a long while, perhaps since taking office. And why not? In one fell swoop, Obama gets to paint his opponents as nutcases, tweak the press for their sudden obsession over the circumstances of his birth while we move from one government-shutdown deadline to the next, and act like the grown-up in the room.

The Birth Certificate – A Teaching Moment  "This doesn’t mean I don’t think the press haven’t hidden or deliberately been disinterested in plenty of important details about Barack Obama (his education, political relationships, etc.) that we should know about, but stick to those that have true policy implications. Here’s one we have all known about for a few years – the unreleased Khalidi tapes, currently in the hands of the LA Times. With the Middle East in turmoil, that would be particularly interesting now."

The Complainer-in-Chief just hijacked the airwaves for another moment of presidential petulance:
"The president needs to understand that the problem is not that the press is nonserious. It is that he has failed utterly to give it something serious to cover. The controversy over his birth certificate was more substantive than the impact of his plan because there was no plan."

White House releases Obama birth certificate

CNN  "A new CNN investigation revealed earlier this week what most analysts have been saying since the "birther" controversy erupted during the 2008 presidential campaign: Obama was born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961."
So there. That wasn't so much to ask, now was it?

Birth Certificate, page one
Birth Certificate, page two

Why didn't he do this two years ago? Did he enjoy his "amusement" that much?

Arrogant –adjective

1. making claims or pretensions to superior importance or rights; overbearingly assuming; insolently proud: an arrogant public official.

2. characterized by or proceeding from arrogance: arrogant claims.

 Condescending –adjective

showing or implying a usually patronizing descent from dignity or superiority: They resented the older neighbors' condescending cordiality.