Column

In a fast-changing world, a common mistake is to keep fighting the last war.

For example, why would Republicans support sending more troops to Afghanistan, when that war was long over, or helping topple Moammar Gadhafi, who had become an ally in the war on terrorism? Some Republicans seem to support all military deployments just out of habit.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Here, where Titanic, the massive White Star Line luxury liner, was built -- the joke for years has been, "It was fine when it left here." This year marks the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the ship "Not even God himself could sink...." and the centenary is being observed in diverse ways.

There are solemn remembrances. A "Requiem for the Lost Souls of the Titanic" is scheduled for St. Anne's Cathedral and there's a Titanic Commemoration Service and Unveiling of the Titanic Memorial Gardens at City Hall.

In my column two weeks ago, "Not All Presidential Orders Are Created Equal," I discussed some specifics in President Barack Obama's March 16 executive order, "National Defense Resources Preparedness," and how it is a completely audacious overreach of presidential power, especially enacting peacetime martial law.

Here I will discuss why analysts are wrong for simply overlooking it as a benign order similar to other presidents' orders.

Can anyone think of an innocuous reason that President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder oppose state voter ID laws?

Obama and Holder appear to view almost everything through the prism of race or, at the very least, use race as an excuse to justify otherwise very dubious policies, from immigration enforcement to voter intimidation actions to strong-arming banks to make loans via allegations of racism.

As Mitt Romney assumes the role of presumptive Republican nominee, polls suggest a competitive general election matchup between the former Massachusetts governor and President Obama. Typically, both candidates poll in the mid-40s, while 10 to 12 percent remain uncommitted to either side.

Among these uncommitted voters, Rasmussen Reports polling shows that just 22 percent approve of the way the president is handling his job. Seventy-two percent (72 percent) disapprove. As for intensity, just 2 percent strongly approve, and 40 percent strongly disapprove.

There are some campaign advisers who would counsel former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney to jog on the campaign trail tirelessly, probably in short pants and with a catchy T-shirt emblazoned with some memorable phrase, say, "Fred Fna Ate Here," a la Al Gore and Bill Clinton. Jimmy Carter started the presidential candidates' jogging craze, and since him there have been a horde of presidential joggers, all wearing little boys' outfits, the notable exception being Ronald Reagan — possibly because, as he campaigned from 1976 on, he was considered too old to be president. On the other hand, the old cowboy had a sense of dignity that all other would-be presidents in recent years have lacked. Perhaps Romney should be photographed windsurfing as John Kerry was in 2004 and downing shots of firewater as Hillary Clinton did in 2008. Or he could filch a page from President-elect Vladimir Putin and campaign shirtless. Adopt the he-man look, Mitt!

Alas, Romney is a normal middle-aged American. He is the kind of man we all would like to have live next door. Facts are facts; all the aforesaid candidates save Reagan and now Romney are weird! Americans do not mind having them wearing funny hats and eating ethnic food on the campaign trail, but almost no American would want them as neighbors. Not so Romney. He would be welcome in our neighborhoods and maybe even trusted with a key to the house. Romney is NORMAL.

The reason tea partiers carried signs saying "Read the Constitution!" was that we were hoping people would read the Constitution.

Alas, we still have Rick Santorum saying Obamacare is the same as what he calls "Romneycare"; the otherwise brilliant Mickey Kaus sniffing that if states can mandate insurance purchases, then we're "not talking about some basic individual liberty to not purchase stuff" (no, just the nation's founding document, which protects "basic individual liberties" by putting constraints on Congress); and the former law professor, Barack Obama, alleging that a "good example" of judicial activism would be the Supreme Court (in his words, "a group of people") overturning "a duly constituted and passed law."

In his excellent daily Web news summary, "The Transom," Ben Domenech says that President Obama's speech at the Portland Museum of Art on Saturday "is likely to be Obama's campaign speech from here on out." He's probably correct, so let's take a look, with an eye to whether it's likely to work.

Obama's template is nothing new. He first repeats his claim as to the catastrophic conditions he inherited from President Bush. "It's hard to remember sometimes how perilous things were when I was sworn in."

Though I have concern that every American citizen has affordable health care, too, I have grave concerns about the opinion that the federal government holds the true solution.

History shows that whenever government oversees personal welfare (such as with Medicare, Medicaid, welfare and Social Security), the program is inept, broken, intrusive, impersonalized, oppressive or often bankrupt.

Right now, there isn't enough known about the circumstances surrounding the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a black, by George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old part-Hispanic, during his neighborhood watch tour in an Orlando, Fla., suburb. If evidence emerges that Zimmerman's actions were not justified, he should be prosecuted and punished; however, there's a larger issue that few people understand or have the courage to acknowledge, namely that black and young has become synonymous with crime and, hence, suspicion. To make that connection does not make one a racist. Let's look at it.

Twelve years ago, a black Washington, D.C., commissioner warned cabbies, most of whom were black, against picking up dangerous-looking passengers. She described "dangerous-looking" as a "young black guy ... with shirttail hanging down longer than his coat, baggy pants, unlaced tennis shoes." She also warned cabbies to stay away from low-income black neighborhoods. Did that make the D.C. commissioner a racist?

Even after the Duke lacrosse case, Texaco executives allegedly using the N-word in private meetings -- which turned out to be "St. Nicholas" -- the Tawana Brawley case, not to mention virtual hailstorms of racist graffiti and nooses materializing on college campuses, all of which invariably end up having been put there by the alleged victims, the Non-Fox Media (NFM) didn't even pause before conjuring a racist plot in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin in Florida last month.

Like Captain Ahab searching for the Great White Whale, the NFM is constantly on the hunt for proof of America as "Mississippi Burning."

Now is the time for all good tea partiers to come to the aid of Wisconsin. Fiscally conservative leaders in the Badger State are under coordinated siege from Big Labor, the White House, the liberal media and the judiciary. The yearlong campaign of union thuggery, family harassment and intimidation of Republican donors and businesses is about to escalate even further. This is the price the Right pays for doing the right thing.

The most visible target is Gov. Scott Walker, who faces recall on June 5 over his tough package of state budget and public employee union reforms. Three state GOP legislators — Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, Sen. Van Wanggaard and Sen. Terry Moulton — also face recall. A fourth target, staunch union reformer and Second Amendment advocate Sen. Pam Galloway, announced she was stepping down last week — leaving the legislature deadlocked and Democratic strategists salivating.

If there has ever been a case that could vindicate the Supreme Court as a guardian of liberty or incriminate it as freedom's thief, it is the court's present consideration of the Affordable Care Act.

At the founding of the republic, the Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution warned that to grant the power to declare laws unconstitutional to an unelected and life-tenured Supreme Court could subvert the democratic republic and threaten our liberties.

In his typical duck-'n'-dodge fashion, President Barack Obama spewed his 115th executive order upon the American public on a late Friday afternoon, March 16. Cloaked in one of Obama's candy-coated, grandiloquent titles, the "National Defense Resources Preparedness" executive order set the blogosphere ablaze this past week.

Canada Free Press ran an article titled "Obama Executive Order: Peacetime Martial Law!" An Examiner.com article similarly declared that the order would "nationalize everything" and "allow for a civilian draft." And the Drudge Report ran a story headlined "Martial Law? Obama issues Executive Order: the National Defense Resources Preparedness."

There's a reason President Obama, Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and many others are touting tax reform these days. On the campaign trail, it taps into deeply held beliefs about the way American society ought to work and the role of government.

Seventy-seven percent think it's important to replace the entire federal tax code with something simpler. Seventy-one percent favor a tax code with lower tax rates and very few deductions.

Any Republican governor of a blue state who manages to balance the budget without raising taxes should be a nominee for Mount Rushmore, to say nothing of president.

Mitt Romney was governor of a state so blue, it's North Korea with more Irish people, and he balanced the budget without raising taxes.

Pond scum stinks. And so do the Obama administration's enormous, taxpayer-funded "investments" in politically connected biofuel companies. While the president embarks on a green rehabilitation tour this week to quell growing public outrage about big green boondoggles, the White House continues to cultivate a cozy algae racket.

Obama's promotion of algae as a fuel source at a campaign speech in Miami last month caught the nation's attention. But algae companies have been banking on administration support from Day One. In December 2008, when the White House announced the nomination of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the CEO of Florida-based biofuels startup Algenol, Paul Woods, exulted to Time magazine: "You see this smile on my face? It's not going away. Everyone is really excited by this."

The video that the late Andrew Breitbart released of Barack Obama during his Harvard days revealed one more link in the president's early chain of associations with radicals. But I watched a video a couple of weeks ago that I believe is far more incriminating for our president because it shows the present fallout from his radical agenda, including the redistribution of wealth.

Obama has been called the "food stamp president" because more federal grocery subsidies have been given out under his presidency than were under most others combined. But far more than that, this president is the sultan of socialist swing with his assault of federal government entitlement expansions (Obamacare), spending, accruing of national debt, interdictions, seizures, regulations, overreaches, unilateral legislation, czars, presidential orders, Chicago-style politics, etc., and he has the uncanny ability to make most people believe he's doing none of them.

If you read through the Washington Monthly's list of Obama's top 50 accomplishments, you'll quickly understand why my brother, Rush, properly wanted him to fail.

When Rush said he wanted Obama to fail, everyone knew he was talking about his policies, and for those few who pretended otherwise, he explained it a thousand times: He wanted his policies to fail because his policies are disastrous for America.

Next week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear three days of oral arguments in the healthcare lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, otherwise known as "Obamacare."

We now know the law was based on phony predictions about its cost. After promising the price would be under $940 billion over 10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has issued a correction of its initial estimate, which appears to have been based on sleight of hand accounting tactics by congressional Democrats and the White House. CBO now projects the measure will cost taxpayers at least $1.76 trillion over a decade.

Last month, at a Raeford, N.C., elementary school, a teacher confiscated the lunch of a 5-year-old girl because it didn't meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines and therefore was deemed nonnutritious. She replaced it with school cafeteria chicken nuggets. The girl's home-prepared lunch was nutritious; it consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, potato chips, a banana and apple juice. But whether her lunch was nutritious or not is not the issue. The issue is governmental usurpation of parental authority.

In a number of states, pregnant teenage girls may be given abortions without the notification or the permission of parents. The issue is neither abortion nor whether a pregnant teenager should have an abortion. The issue is this: What gives the government the authority to usurp parental authority?

Did I miss the deadline for alternative opinions on Sandra Fluke?

What with liberal women constantly talking about their vaginas suddenly pretending to be offended by the word "slut," and conservatives pretending to be as pussified as liberals about the nasty names they've been called, I never got an answer to the most pressing question about Sandra Fluke: Who are you again?

You've got to hand it to Democrats and the Obama re-election campaign. Like a quarterback who looks left to draw the defense away from his intended target on the right, Democrats have managed to divert our attention. Instead of debating President Obama's dreadful record on just about everything, Democrats have managed to get Republicans talking about sex and morality. Rather than figuring out what to do about Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons, Democrats have put Republicans on the defensive over the use of vulgar words applied to liberal women. For their use of equally offensive or similar words applied to conservative women, they mostly get a pass, because this isn't about the words; it's about politics.

The strategy seems to be working. After a week of debating, discussing and deploring what Rush Limbaugh said about Sandra Fluke, the Democrat-friendly Washington Post ran a front-page story last Saturday announcing "GOP gains dwindling among women." They must be toasting each other at President Obama's 2012 national headquarters in Chicago.

There's no escaping Solyndra Syndrome. Here in my home state of Colorado, citizen journalists have uncovered our own gaping government green loan sinkhole. The stench of Chicago-on-the-Potomac is fouling the fresh Rocky Mountain air.

Meet Loveland-based Abound Solar, the lucky winner of a $400 million federal loan guarantee from the Obama administration. Earlier this month, the thin-film cadmium telluride solar module-maker announced layoffs of nearly 300 employees (70 percent of its workforce). In addition, the firm froze plans to build a new factory in Indiana. Abound says it will ride out bad market conditions and "hopefully" survive until the market recovers.

President Barack Obama's energy plan involves radically increasing gas prices to the European rate of about $10 a gallon. And he's well on his way, as gas prices have more than doubled since he took office in January 2009, when gasoline was only $1.79 per gallon. And he's scheming to double prices again in his second term, with you footing the bill.

It's no secret that we're being gouged at the pumps. The reason for soaring gas prices? According to Obama, it's not because of anything he has done — not his devaluing the dollar via his disastrous economic decisions, his closing federal lands for oil production opened by his predecessor, his passing cap-and-trade legislation in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression or his refusing to stand strong against the regime in Iran, which controls 20 percent of the world's oil supply via the Strait of Hormuz.

Many Republicans talk of an entitlement mentality that threatens the character and finances of the United States. In their view, the problem is that too many voters feel entitled to goodies provided by the government and financed by taxpayers.

It is true that so-called entitlement programs are growing as a share of the federal budget and the national economy. Along with spending on national defense and interest on the federal debt, spending on entitlement programs consumes the overwhelming majority of the federal budget. But a close look at the data shows that it's not a voter sense of entitlement that is driving the process. Quite the contrary.

The first apology by Rush Limbaugh, posted on his website over the weekend, sounded forced, qualified, almost defensive. The second, broadcast live on his Monday show, sounded sincere and heartfelt.

Rush Limbaugh did something not usually associated with either himself or bombastic talk radio. He apologized for calling a woman a "slut" and a "prostitute."

The issue of rising costs at the gas pump is a reality many American families are fighting with daily. Americans drive to visit family, friends, or to go to work every day to help provide the American dream for their family. The cost to fill up their cars has a great effect on their daily lives. The national media’s coverage of the rising costs has been anything but balanced. The national media should report the facts about the rise in gas prices objectively and let the people make their own decisions.

Instead, the national media repeatedly downplays and defends the rising cost of gasoline. A recent study by the Business and Media Institute (BMI) found that news coverage of gas prices are four times less likely under this administration than under the previous.

Mitt Romney won more than twice as many delegates on Super Tuesday as Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum. The Non-Fox Media's take-away is that Romney suffered a major setback Tuesday night.

No matter what happens, Barack Obama's boosters in the NFM portray it as a debilitating blow to Romney. On Nov. 7, The New York Times' headline will be: "Romney ekes out narrow electoral victory, leaving race uncertain."
To explain the widening gulf in delegates won by Romney compared to the others -- he now has more delegates than all other candidates combined -- the media claim that a vote for any candidate other than Romney is an explicit vote against Romney.

I'm sorry Rush Limbaugh called 30-year-old Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke a "slut." She's really just another professional femme-a-gogue helping to manufacture a false narrative about the GOP "war on women." I'm sorry the civility police now have an opening to demonize the entire right based on one radio comment — because it's the progressive left in this country that has viciously and systematically slimed female conservatives for their beliefs.

We have the well-worn battle scars to prove it. And no, we don't need coddling phone calls from the pandering president of the United States to convince us to stand up and fight.