The left-wing really does want to control everything about you, including what you eat.

TimesOnline has a left-wing environmentalist giving you a taste - of what you won't be allowed to eat in the future.


"GIVE up lamb roasts and save the planet. Government advisers are developing menus to combat climate change by cutting out “high carbon” food such as meat from sheep, whose burping poses a serious threat to the environment.

Out will go kebabs, greenhouse tomatoes and alcohol. Instead, diners will be encouraged to consume more potatoes and seasonal vegetables, as well as pork and chicken, which generate fewer carbon emissions.

“Changing our lifestyles, including our diets, is going to be one of the crucial elements in cutting carbon emissions,” said David Kennedy, chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change."

Cracks in the facade - Victor Davis Hanson looks at Obama

Victor Davis Hanson takes a hard look at Obama and sees, as the title suggest, cracks in the facade.

Rich left-wingers begin realizing that Obama is after their wealth

The Telegraph has an interesting column today about left-wingers waking up to realize that Obama wants to redistribute their wealth.

He warned that by the time he was done with them, Silicon Valley and Wall Street would remain large parts of the US economy, but not "half of our economy".

Mr Obama has also focused his sights on wealthy individuals who use offshore tax havens to evade tax and is hiring 800 inspectors to track them down.

Mr Obama needs to find a way to pay for the $750 billion spending spree Congress authorised after he took office to get the stalled economy going again.

Mark Steyn: Israel Today - the West Tomorrow - - - solid, depressing reading

Mark Steyn is at his illuminating, depressing best in this Commentary magazine article, entitled "Israel Today - the West tomorrow" on how creeping Islamization spells the end of first Israel and then the West.

On the heels of his call for the incorporation of Sharia within British law, the Archbishop of Canterbury gave an interview to the Muslim News praising Islam for making “a very significant contribution to getting a debate about religion into public life.” Well, that’s one way of putting it. The urge to look on the bright side of its own remorseless cultural retreat will intensify: Once Europeans have accepted a not entirely voluntary biculturalism, they will see no reason why Israel should not do the same, and they will embrace a one-state, one-man, one-vote solution for the land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean.

The Muslim world has spent decades peddling the notion that the reason a vast oil-rich region stretching thousands of miles is politically deformed and mired in grim psychoses is all because of a tiny strip of turf barely wider than my New Hampshire township. It will make an ever more convenient scapegoat for the problems of a far vaster territory from the mountains of Morne to the Urals. There was a fair bit of this in the days after 9/11. As Richard Ingrams wrote on the following weekend in the London Observer: “Who will dare to damn Israel?”

Well, take a number and get in line. The dust had barely settled on the London Tube bombings before a reader named Derrick Green sent me a congratulatory e-mail: “I bet you Jewish supremacists think it is Christmas come early, don’t you? Incredibly, you are now going to get your own way even more than you did before, and the British people are going to be dragged into more wars for Israel.”

So it will go. British, European, and even American troops will withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, and a bomb will go off in Madrid or Hamburg or Manchester, and there will be nothing left to blame except Israeli “disproportion.” For the remnants of European Jewry, the already discernible migration of French Jews to Quebec, Florida, and elsewhere will accelerate. There are about 150,000 Jews in London today—it’s the thirteenth biggest Jewish city in the world. But there are approximately one million Muslims. The highest number of Jews is found in the 50-54 age group; the highest number of Muslims are found in the four-years-and-under category. By 2025, there will be Jews in Israel, and Jews in America, but not in many other places. Even as the legitimacy of a Jewish state is rejected, the Jewish diaspora—the Jewish presence in the wider world—will shrivel.

Victor Davis Hanson on how Republicans can win

Victor Davis Hanson explains why Republicans lost and how they can win again.

Most people dread going to the DMV; that such a state-run blueprint will now be superimposed on manufacturing, energy, health care, and banking should scare the landscaper and the roofer alike. Precisely by showing to gays, women, minorities, and the young that none of us gets an exemption from the iron laws of nature — you cannot spend what you don’t make; you can’t apologize to unsavory characters and end up respected and safe; you can’t expect government bureaucrats to make better decisions than private executives — conservatives can become inclusive.

Conservatives should remind the electorate that the very wealthy, the Wall Street big money, and the elite in the universities and foundations are now consistently voting Democratic. It was the nexus between Wall Street financiers and lax liberal Democratic congressional overseers — the former wanting profits, the latter able to cloak lavish campaign contributions with populist rhetoric about caring for the poor — that got us into the financial mess.

The reason Sarah Palin earned real hatred was the populist nature of her appeal. Her rallies did not draw many of the government-dependent poor, true; but they also did not draw the rich and liberal elite. If Palin had survived the press demonization, she might have been able to show the electorate why the current leadership of the Democratic Party is at odds with the middle classes, who do not require most of the government entitlements that liberals love to dispense, and yet don’t share the aristocratic tastes that the elite in the media, foundations, universities, and Wall Street see as requisites for paternal governance.

If the Republicans can offer a sane alternative of balanced budgets to the current mega-deficits; if they demonstrate the nexus between those who don’t pay taxes and those who have so much money that they don’t worry about taxes; and if they can talk without braggadocio of the tough choices abroad that are not solved by apologies, then they will win again in 2012.

Conservatism is the political belief that best mirrors human nature across time and space; but because its precepts are sometimes tragic and demand responsibility rather than ever-expanding rights, it requires adept communicators — not triangulators and appeasers whose pleasure is only for the moment.

Your government will protect you just like it protected the Moon rocks

I suppose this Gizmodo story about the theft of Moon rocks is supposed to be funny.

But what it reminds me of is the fact that government can't do anything well, whether it is guarding invaluable Moon rocks, delivering medical care, running automobile companies, etc.

Thomas Sowell warns about Obama's Supreme Court nominees

Thomas Sowell warns us about Obama's Supreme Court nominees:

Appointing to the federal courts — including the Supreme Court — judges who believe in expanding the powers of the federal government to make arbitrary decisions, choosing who will be winners and losers in the economy and in the society, is perfectly consistent with a vision of the world where self-confident and self-righteous elites rule according to their own notions, instead of merely governing under the restraints of the Constitution.

If all this can be washed down with pious talk about “empathy,” so much the better for those who want to remake America. Now that the Obama administration has a congressional majority that is virtually unstoppable, and media that are wholly uncritical, the chances of preventing the president from putting someone on the Supreme Court who shares his desire to turn America into a different country are slim or none.

The only thing on the side of those who understand this, and who oppose it, is time. Reshaping the Supreme Court cannot be done overnight, the way Congress passed a vast spending bill in two days.

Jew hating in France

Instead of burning and looting jewish owned stores as their Nazi ancestors did, French Jew haters simply walk through a grocery removing all Israeli products. Most chilling is that the site where this anti-Semitic demonstration was filmed is that it is less than a mile away from Drancy, where the Germans and their French allies detained the Jews before shipping them to extermination centers.

Oh, in case you forgot, the Obama administration is iving about $900 million to Hamas.

This item and its accomanying video are important viewing.

Sowell on "'Empathy" Versus Law, Part II": one smart guy

Thomas Sowell adds an installment to "'Empathy Versuas Law" with a vignette of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes:

The great Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is not the kind of justice who would have been appointed under Pres. Barack Obama’s criterion of “empathy” for certain groups.

Like most people, Justice Holmes had empathy for some and antipathy for others, but his votes on the Supreme Court often went against those for whom he had empathy and in favor of those for whom he had antipathy. As Holmes himself put it: “I loathed most of the things in favor of which I decided.”

Justice Department's Torture Hypocrisy

Andrew McCarthy pens an illuminating expose of Obama's Justice Department's hypocrisy on the torture issue.

Yet, even as the OPR report is being finalized, even after Obama declared himself open to the possibility of criminal prosecution against the Bush officials, and even after Holder promised to conduct an investigation that would “follow the evidence wherever it takes us, follow the law wherever that takes us” (emphasis added), the Obama Justice Department is relying on the very same legal analysis in order to urge a federal appeals court to reject torture claims. In fact, as the Obama Justice Department argued to that appeals court a little over a week ago, the torture law analysis in question has already been adopted by another federal appeals court.

The legal analysis was first developed in 2002 by two lawyers from the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC): Jay Bybee, the former OLC chief who is now a federal appeals court judge in California, and John Yoo, Bybee’s deputy who is now a law professor at Berkeley. Construing federal anti-torture law — which is derived from the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT) — Bybee and Yoo’s memoranda stressed that torture is a “specific intent” crime. As the lawyers concluded after studying the relevant history, this means it was narrowly drawn by Congress and the ratifiers of CAT to make certain that only those who had an evil motive to inflict severe pain and suffering could be prosecuted. That is, even if the victim of government abuse would surely feel severe pain and suffering, there could be no finding of torture unless the responsible government official was acting with a deliberate and conscious purpose to torture him. It is this theory that has provoked howling on the antiwar Left, which alleges that it was the lawyers’ clever way of green-lighting unlawful prisoner abuse.

Yet, this very theory is now being advanced by the Justice Department under Attorney General Holder. On April 23 of this year, only a day after Holder — taking his lead from the president — promised to investigate Bybee, Yoo, and other government lawyers, the Justice Department filed a brief in a case called Demjanjuk v. Holder in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Ohio. The brief urges the federal courts to consider the same torture analysis over which Holder is targeting the Bush lawyers with such fanfare. You can read the brief here. [A PDF will have to do: After discussing the Justice Department’s hypocrisy on NRO’s Off the Page, I can no longer locate the brief on the site where I first found it on Sunday.]

Obama's gangster government

What's mine is mine; what's yours is mine too couold be the mantra of the Obama administration. Michael Barone explains in the Washington Examiner how Obama is employing Chicago mob tactics in expropriating property:

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

A must-read.

One reason why American public education sucks.

Talk about unexpected: the LA Times takes a swipe at lousy teachers and their unions here. Be sure to also see the chart showing what it takes to fire a teacher.

But L.A. Unified doesn't pursue as many firings as other major districts, considering its size. The district, which has about 30,000 tenured teachers, fires 21 a year -- well under 1 per 1,000 -- according to district statistics for the last five years. Long Beach fires 6 per 1,000, and San Diego fires about 2 per 1,000.

Evidence suggests that L.A. Unified does a poor job of tracking teacher performance overall, making it tough to prove anyone is a bad apple.

A one-time study of teacher evaluations from the 2003-04 academic year, for instance, showed that 98.9% of all tenured teachers were said by supervisors to have "met standards."

The only categories in which a substantial percentage were said to have needed improvement concerned punctuality and attendance. Five percent had difficulty showing up on time.

Even some teachers union representatives said they do not believe the evaluations accurately portray the quality of teacher performance. Joshua Pechthalt, a United Teachers Los Angeles vice president, said the process is "fraught with problems" and results in teachers, especially young ones, not getting the guidance they need.

"I don't know any workplace where 98% of the people are doing a good job," Pechthalt said.

Not only are they corrupt, but they want protection from prosecution

It is well known that many of the Democrat Party are corrupt. It is also well known that Nancy Pelosi is, uhm, odd.

Well, corruption has met Nancy Pelosi - and apparently corruption has met a friend.

This Washington Times editorial says it well:

Irvin B. Nathan, general counsel of the House of Representatives, sent a letter to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday about establishing a protocol on how to handle "hopefully rare searches and electronic surveillance involving members of Congress." Mr. Nathan previously failed to negotiate such an agreement with the George W. Bush administration when Republicans controlled the House. His return to this effort isn't surprising given the number of congressional Democrats facing accusations of ethical misconduct.

Democrats facing scrutiny include the chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania, for his close ties to the defense lobby firm PMA Group, which is under federal investigation; House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New York about a number of tax issues; Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois over his reported effort to persuade ousted Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich to appoint him to fill President Obama's former Senate seat; and Rep. Jane Harman of California, who reportedly was taped in 2005 by the National Security Agency purportedly agreeing to help seek leniency for two accused Israeli spies in exchange for help in lobbying her appointment to chair the House Intelligence Committee.

Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, on Thursday invoked the separation of powers as justification for the move. Mrs. Pelosi, who has acknowledged being aware previously of Mrs. Harman's controversial dialogue, claims the stance is a matter of principle. "Whether it's invading an office or wiretapping a conversation, it's important for us to have the separation of powers and the respect for individual liberties, again, while not harboring information that would be useful under the speech [or] debate clause," she said.

"A lawless president looks for a lawless Supreme Court Justice"

The folks over at Powerline turn out some truly perceptive posts. Being perceptive in this era is very important to our ultimate survival. Here they look at some Obama said about his prospective Supreme Court nominee and it just plain frightening.

President Obama made a short statement about the retirement of Justice Souter in which he outlined what he will be looking for in Souter's replacement. He stated, in part:

I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives -- whether they can make a living and care for their families; whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.

I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving as just decisions and outcomes

(emphasis added)

By indicating that his concern is not just with just decisions but also just outcomes, Obama reveals the lawless quality of his thinking. The legitimate function of a judge is to reach just decisions, full stop. Once judges, or the president who appoints them, start thinking about just outcomes, we are well down the path to judicial tyranny. And once just outcomes are defined as those that display empathy for "the people," we could be starting down the road to banana republic status.

Obama apparently wants outcomes that will make people feel welcome in their own nation. It's not clear to me what he's referring to here. But whatever it is, the extent to which people feel welcome must be determined by how their neighbors view them and, to the extent (limited, one hopes) the law becomes involved, the rights and benefits conferred by the language of the laws in question.

If Obama wants to appoint a Justice who has run or worked in a soup kitchen, that's fine. But it looks to me like he wants to appoint a Justice who will reach outcomes that establish "soup kitchens" regardless of whether that's the best view of the legal provision he or she is interpreting.

Expect the worst, not just from this judicial nomination but from all subsequent ones.

Imagine that. Obama not only lied about Churchill, but he relied on a left-wing blogger.

From Powerline:

Looks Like He Made It Up
May 1, 2009 Posted by John at 9:34 AM

In his press conference Wednesday evening, Barack Obama invoked Winston Churchill in support of his anti-waterboarding position, quoting Churchill to the effect that "we don't torture," even during the extremities of World War II. We expressed skepticism about Obama's invocation of Churchill here. Now, Churchill student Richard Langworth confirms that Obama was wrong:

In his press conference of 29 April, in response to a question on the disclosure of top secret memos on the use of "enhanced interrogation methods," Mr. Obama said:

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' when the entire British--all of the British people--were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat....the reason was that Churchill understood -- you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what's best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

While it's nice to hear the President invoke Sir Winston, the quotation is unattributed and almost certainly incorrect. While Churchill did express such sentiments with regard to prison inmates, he said no such thing about prisoners of war, enemy combatants or terrorists, who were in fact tortured by British interrogators during World War II.

The word "torture" appears 156 times in my digital transcript of Churchill's 15 million published words (books, articles, speeches, papers) and 35 million words about him--but not once in the subject context. Similarly, key phrases like "character of a country" or "erodes the character" do not track. ...

Churchill spoke frequently about torture, mostly enemy murders of civilians. His daughter once told me, "He would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things--but they didn't unman him." But if Churchill is on record about "enhanced interrogation," his words have yet to surface.

Obama apparently relied on left-wing internet crank Andrew Sullivan for the fake Churchill quote, which is a bit worrisome in itself.

Via Jonah Goldberg at The Corner.