No Oil for Pacifists

The laws of the Roman republic and empire greatly influenced modern governments and legal systems. The Romans were among the first to recognize justice for individuals.

No more:

Six Italian seismologists and one government official will be tried for the manslaughter of those who died in the earthquake that struck the city of L'Aquila on 6 April 2009.

The seven were on a committee that had been tasked with assessing the risk associated with recent increases in seismic activity in the area. Following a committee meeting just a week before the quake, some members of the group assured the public that they were in no danger.

In the aftermath of the quake, which killed 309 people, many citizens said that these reassurances were the reason they did not take precautionary measures, such as leaving their homes. As a consequence, the public prosecutor of L'Aquila pressed manslaughter charges against all the participants in the meeting, on the grounds that they had falsely reassured the public.

If convicted, the defendants could be in prison for up to 12 years.

As Instapundit quips, the Italians seem unclear "on the role of incentives." It's also the ultimate triumph of the nanny state. I can't wait to see the effect of Italian injustice on Italian insurance.

UPDATE: below


Amid the sensational and salacious details of charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn (and his subsequent resignation), it has been widely recognized that the "roots of the catastrophe" may have been in part the International Monetary Fund's lax attitude toward DSK's 2008 sexual harassment of an IMF employee. Less commented on is the media's double-standard treatment of that three year-old scandal as compared with its savage coverage of less serious controversy when the World Bank (a related institution, usually run by an American; the IMF traditionally is headed by a European) was headed by an internationally despised American neo-con.

Paul Wolfowitz became World Bank head in 2005, after serving as Deputy Defense Secretary under President Bush. A tireless advocate of African development, he also strengthened anti-corruption policies and emphasized "good governance." He spoke five languages, including Indonesian. But, as one of the principal authors of the preemption doctrine used to support the Iraq invasion, he was widely derided by Europeans and American liberals as an ideologue and war-monger.

Wolfowitz, who was divorced during his time at the Bank, became enmeshed in a furor about his long-time girlfriend Shaha Riza, a British subject born in Tunisia who had worked for the Bank since 1997. The relationship began well before Wolfowitz got the job, and was disclosed to the Bank Board upon his nomination. The Bank forced her to leave, after giving her a substantial raise and continuing to pay her salary in her new position at the State Department--requiring Wolfowitz to help negotiate her promotion and new job.

When the information became public in Spring 2007, Wolfowitz was forced to resign. This is despite the fact Riza wouldn't have worked directly for Wolfowitz, and the fact that two previous Bank chiefs had spouses working for the bank. France’s finance minister at the time, Thierry Breton, took the lead in challenging Wolfowitz, calling the Bank:

an institution whose governance and ethics must obviously be impeccable. I fully trust the governing board to draw the consequences it must draw.

Most other Europeans were similarly outraged.

The media labeled recent charges against Strauss-Kahn as France's "Anita Hill moment." That's risible for equating alleged harassment with alleged rape (we've seen this movie before). But it's also a startling contrast to the press reaction to the 2008 revelation that Strauss-Kahn pressured a female subordinate into sleeping with him, as the May 27th Wall Street Journal recounts:

The IMF board gave Mr. Strauss-Kahn merely a wrist slap for a "serious error of judgment," along with board assurances that the episode would "in no way affect the effectiveness of the Managing Director in the very challenging and difficult period ahead."

All this was dutifully reported by the press at the time as one of those nothing-to-see-here stories. It also made for a striking contrast to the media's overdrive when it came to trumpeting the unreal (in every sense) "scandal" that had brought down World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz the previous year. And one has to wonder why.

Remember that Mr. Wolfowitz's alleged sin was that he had arranged a job transfer, along with a substantial raise, for his companion Shaha Riza, a bank employee at the time Mr. Wolfowitz took the helm in 2005.

But any suggestion that favoritism had been involved quickly fell apart when it came to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had disclosed the relationship with the bank's board before taking the job; that he had sought to recuse himself from the matter; that the bank's ethics committee had forbidden him from recusing himself; and that the committee had also directed him to arrange a promotion and pay raise for Ms. Riza "on the basis of her qualifying record" and out of concern for the "potential disruption" to her career for a conflict of interest that was not of her own making.

That was it. Yet outside of these columns, few other news outlets could be bothered to report the facts. Was it because Mr. Wolfowitz, as one of the most prominent advocates for deposing Saddam Hussein, was such a convenient media villain? Or because the board and management of the bank were so resistant to Mr. Wolfowitz's aggressive anti-corruption agenda, and all too happy to leak selective and bogus information to suggestible journalists?

The answer was both. In the end, the bank board formally acquitted Mr. Wolfowitz of all charges of ethical misconduct, though it got what it most wanted, which was his resignation. Under successor Robert Zoellick the bank is out of the news and back to the business-as-usual of shoveling money out the door. How wonderful: Its annual claims on the American taxpayer now exceed $2 billion.

As for the IMF, his sexual pursuit of underlings forgiven, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was treated in the media as a hero for pushing vast sums on bankrupt economies like Greece. Even now, with the bailouts failing and their mastermind on bail, he is seen as a visionary brought low by his fatal flaw.

Yet what ought to be clear is that the reason Mr. Strauss-Kahn was so popular within the IMF (female company excepted) was that his own behavior was so in tune with the ethos of the institution. Here is a place where power can be exercised without electoral accountability, privileges can be enjoyed without scrutiny, salaries can be claimed without taxes, and other people's money can be spent with abandon.

He thrived because he enhanced the power of the IMF and did the political bidding of the same European countries that loathed Mr. Wolfowitz's independent streak.

For the media, "Anita Hill moments" are invoked mainly against conservatives, not socialist aristocrats. And the world is worse for it, as Kenneth Anderson says at Volokh Conspiracy:

On balance I regard the Bank as a valuable global organization, and the IMF as well. Still, wading through the tenured and untouchable staff commentary on l’affaire Wolfowitz as the staff lobbied in righteous anger against having had someone as horrible as Paul Wolfowitz imposed on them by the wicked George W. Bush caused me moments of doubt. One thing I am not in doubt of, however, is that the staff of international organizations, whether the IMF, the WB, or organs of the UN, would far rather be led by a DSK -- "errors of judgment" and what amounts to a droit de seigneur and $3,000 a night hotel suites and first class flights and all -- than a Paul Wolfowitz. Which is one reason why international organizations are what they are.

And will remain so long as the media treats liberals more favorably than conservatives.

MORE:

May 31st NY Post:

Another international moneyman has been busted for sexually assaulting a maid at a luxury Manhattan hotel, cops said last night.

Mahmoud Abdel-Salam Omar -- the 74-year-old former chairman of Egypt's Bank of Alexandria -- allegedly groped and "gyrated" against the maid in Room 1027 at The Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue, a law-enforcement source told The Post.

He was wearing a bathrobe at the time, but it was not clear what, if anything, he had on under it.

(via Hot Air)

I'm taking the long weekend off--check back on Tuesday.

There's been lots of attention about increased oil company profits. Even President Obama is worried that consumers are being defrauded at the pump. So are oil company profits excessive?

No. According to the latest data, "Major Integrated Oil and Gas" companies (a group that includes Exxon, BP, Gulf, etc.) had a 6.5 percent net profit margin (profits/sales) in the most recent quarter. Considered among all industries, Carpe Diem says that the category ranks 114 out of 215. By contrast, Apple showed a 95 percent increase in profits in the last quarter -- though the Justice Department isn't investigating any other industry for price gouging.

It's politics, not economics--because Obama doesn't understand economics.

UPDATE: below


Prepared for this week's G8 Paris Forum by McKinsey Global Institute (page 16):

Over the past 15 years, the Internet accounted for 7 percent of our 13 countries’ combined economic growth. Its influence is expanding. Looking at the past five years, the contribution to GDP growth reaches 11 percent. When we look at mature countries, we see that the Internet contributed 10 percent of their growth over the past 15 years and doubled to 21 percent in the past five years. In the United Kingdom, which mirrors the typical experience of a mature country, the Internet contributed 11 percent to the country’s growth rate over the past 15 years and 23 percent over the past five years:

MORE:

I should have noted that the paper concludes that, in the 13 countries studied, the Internet accounts for 3.4 percent of GDP, 2.1 percent of GDP growth over the past five years, and 2.6 jobs created for every job lost.

From Tim Conley and Bill Dupor, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act: Public Sector Jobs Saved, Private Sector Jobs Forestalled (May 2011), an analysis of the effect of President Obama's Stimulus Package (at 2):

Our benchmark results suggest that the ARRA created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs. State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.

I'm not surprised.

(via Greg Mankiw)

UPDATE: there's a lively debate in the comments. And see also the Daily Caller.

FURTHER UPDATE: Heather MacDonald asks "How can women join special forces when they can’t even handle frat-boy pranks?"


Yale frat boys have been behaving badly, with obnoxious signs and chants:

In 2006, a group of frat boys chant "No means yes, yes means anal" outside the Yale Women's Center. In 2010, a group of fraternity pledges repeat this obnoxious chant outside a first-year women's dorm. In 2008, pledges surround the Women's Center holding signs saying, "We love Yale sluts." In 2009, Yale students publish a report listing the names and addresses of first-year women and estimating the number of beers "it would take to have sex with them."

Several students and alumni complained to the college and the Federal Department of Education. Last week, the Yale College Executive Committee prohibited the fraternity from any "activities on campus (including recruiting) for a period of five years" and punished some individual frat members. Given that the career of a Yale undergraduate is four years, this kills the frat's current chapter and makes any eventual replacement an entirely new organization.

Yale's undergraduate regulations underscore the value of free expression:

The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable. To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views necessarily also deprives others of the right to listen to those views.

We take a chance, as the First Amendment takes a chance, when we commit ourselves to the idea that the results of free expression are to the general benefit in the long run, however unpleasant they may appear at the time. The validity of such a belief cannot be demonstrated conclusively. It is a belief of recent historical development, even within universities, one embodied in American constitutional doctrine but not widely shared outside the academic world, and denied in theory and in practice by much of the world most of the time. . .

For if a university is a place for knowledge, it is also a special kind of small society. Yet it is not primarily a fellowship, a club, a circle of friends, a replica of the civil society outside it. Without sacrificing its central purpose, it cannot make its primary and dominant value the fostering of friendship, solidarity, harmony, civility, or mutual respect. To be sure, these are important values; other institutions may properly assign them the highest, and not merely a subordinate priority; and a good university will seek and may in some significant measure attain these ends. But it will never let these values, important as they are, override its central purpose. We value freedom of expression precisely because it provides a forum for the new, the provocative, the disturbing, and the unorthodox. Free speech is a barrier to the tyranny of authoritarian or even majority opinion as to the rightness or wrongness of particular doctrines or thoughts.

Yale's regulations also narrowly define impermissible harassment:

Sexual harassment consists of nonconsensual sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct on or off campus, when: (1) submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a condition of an individual's employment or academic standing; or (2) submission to or rejection of such conduct is used as the basis for employment decisions or for academic evaluation, grades, or advancement; or (3) such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work or academic performance or creating an intimidating or hostile academic or work environment.

Given the college's commitment to free expression, why was stupid speech that fell short of advocating immediate violence punished? Because of political correctness, and the threat of serious sanctions from the Obama Department of Education.

So-called "Title IX" (20 U.S.C. § 1681) states:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

Yale College qualifies, because of grants and student loans--meaning that the Education Department could withhold Federal funding. And that became much more likely as the result of an April 4th "Dear Colleague" letter from the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights sent to schools, colleges, and universities nationwide, lowering the standard of proof for harassment (page 11):

The "clear and convincing" standard (i.e., it is highly probable or reasonably certain that the sexual harassment or violence occurred), currently used by some schools, is a higher standard of proof. Grievance procedures that use this higher standard are inconsistent with the standard of proof established for violations of the civil rights laws, and are thus not equitable under Title IX. Therefore, preponderance of the evidence is the appropriate standard for investigating allegations of sexual harassment or violence.

I've long opposed using Federal courts to second-guess school decisions. But Title IX has turned campus sexual harassment into a legal issue. College tribunals can tarnish a person's reputation or culminate in expulsion--underscoring the importance of deference to free speech, and a proper burden of proof.

The Yale frat boys were boorish. Yet did they deprive anyone of equal access to education? Doubtful. But Obama's Department of Education is more interested in tilting the scales toward harassment accusers.

As a reminder, the First Amendment forbids the prohibition of photons or sound waves with which one disagrees, at least where there are other available remedies (such as contrary speech). But that principle has all but vanished from academia. As have conservatives. Notwithstanding Yale College's high-minded paean to free expression.

Remember when lefties loved Obama's supposed commitment to freedom of speech? In Atlantic magazine, self-described "civil libertarian feminist" Wendy Kaminer decries the "loss of political freedom" caused by the widespread trend toward "censoring offensive or hurtful speech":

Obama's OCR appointees . . . seem to be operating under the influence of the repressive disregard for civil liberty that began taking over American campuses nearly 20 years ago. . . Concern about social equality and the unexamined belief that it requires legal protections for the feelings of presumptively vulnerable or disadvantaged students who are considered incapable of protecting themselves has generated not just obliviousness to liberty but a palpable hostility to it.

Sad to say, but feminism helped lead the assault on civil liberty and now seems practically subsumed by it.

Agreed.

Senator Susan Collins (R-Me) in the May 19th Washington Post:

Here is the message the Obama administration proposes sending to businesses: Whether you are a small, family-owned company or a large corporation, if you want to do business with the federal government, you had better think twice before you contribute to political candidates or causes.

The White House has proposed an executive order that would discourage some businesses from competing for government contracts and chill the First Amendment rights of executives and directors. A draft of the order, titled "Disclosure of Political Spending by Government Contractors," would in fact infuse politics into the contracting process.

In true Orwellian fashion, the draft order suggests that the only way to keep politics out of the contracting process is to include political information with every contract offer. If the White House gets its way, federal agencies would have to collect information on the campaign contributions and other political expenditures of potential contractors before a contract could be awarded. This far-reaching order would apply not only to contributions made by the contracting company but also to contributions made by its directors, officers and affiliates. . .

It simply doesn’t pass the straight-face test for this administration to suggest that such a dramatic change is needed to remove politics from the federal contracting process. Requiring disclosure of one’s political activities and leanings as part of that process would make it inevitable that politics would play a role in the award of federal contracts.

If more transparency is truly the goal, why don’t these requirements apply to organizations receiving federal grants? Campaign contributions to candidates and political committees already are required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission and, with a click of a mouse, can be viewed on FEC.gov.

A proposal that stifles First Amendment rights and politicizes the contracting process is a dangerous and costly step backward as we work to ensure that American taxpayers get the best value in the marketplace.

I couldn't have said it better.

Moving to Canada has a different appeal--

Sun News (Canada), May 19th:

Conservatives have kiboshed a carbon tax, Environment Minister Peter Kent confirmed Thursday.

"It's off the table," he told reporters Thursday after accepting an award from World Wildlife Fund International on behalf of Parks Canada.

"There's no expectation of cap-and-trade continentally in the near or medium future."

Ottawa Citizen, May 19th:

The Conservative government wants to postpone pulling the plug on incandescent light bulbs, saying it needs more time to allow for technological innovations and to deal with concerns about compact fluorescent lamps.

In a notice of a proposed regulatory change, quietly given in the middle of the election campaign on April 16, the Natural Resources department proposed pushing back the deadline for phasing out incandescent bulbs by two years.

Ahh, aren't elections wonderful?

(via Watts Up With That?)

California is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Over-spending, prompting ever-increasing taxes, is the reason, and there's no better illustration than this:

In one of Orange County’s most desirable beach destinations, Newport Beach, lifeguards are compensated all too well; especially compared with the county annual median household income of $71,735.

It might be time for a career change.

According to a city report on lifeguard pay for the calendar year 2010, of the 14 full-time lifeguards, 13 collected more than $120,000 in total compensation; one lifeguard collected $98,160.65. More than half the lifeguards collected more than $150,000 for 2010 with the two highest-paid collecting $211,451 and $203,481 in total compensation respectively. Even excluding benefits like health care and pension, more than half the lifeguards receive a total salary, including overtime pay, exceeding $100,000. And they also receive an annual allowance of $400 for "Sun Protection." Many work four days a week, 10 hours a day.

This being California, some are protesting proposed lifeguard layoffs.

When I was 16, I was a lifeguard for the summer. Who knew I shouldn't have bothered with student loans for law school?

(via Greg Mankiw)

UPDATE: below


President Obama, in his January 25, 2011, State of the Union address:

[L]ast month, we finalized a trade agreement with South Korea that will support at least 70,000 American jobs. This agreement has unprecedented support from business and labor, Democrats and Republicans -- and I ask this Congress to pass it as soon as possible.

Gene Sperling, Director of President Obama's National Economic Council, on a May 16, 2011, press call:

The administration will not submit implementing legislation on the three pending free-trade agreements until we have a deal with Congress on the renewal of a robust, expanded TAA [Trade Adjustment Assistance, a worker-aid program].

As the Wall Street Journal observed:

Translation: Hand over more than $2 billion a year to its union allies or the White House will block trade deals that would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. Those familiar with the tactics of this White House won't be surprised to learn that beneficiaries of the program that Mr. Obama wants to resurrect include union workers whose job losses had nothing to do with foreign competition. . .

Congress killed the 2009 program in February and TAA has reverted to the benefits from 2002, saving $800 million. This is not exactly hardship--for example, health-care benefits are still subsidized at 65%. But Mr. Obama has nonetheless decided to link ratification of the three trade deals to restoring the 2009 "stimulus" TAA.

The big business lobbies, which won't foot this bill, are pushing Republicans to agree to Mr. Obama's demands. But TAA ought to be debated on its own merits. Even the scaled-down version costs more than $1 billion annually--not counting the health-care subsidy--and only about 1% of the unemployed can blame foreign trade for their job losses. At least three economic studies have found that beneficiaries of TAA subsidies don't tend to secure better-paying jobs after retraining. A 2006 Government Accountability Office study concluded the same. . .

Republicans--and business--should tell Mr. Obama that Democrats no longer run the House, and that if he wants to hold jobs and taxpayers hostage to union payoffs, he'll be responsible for the failure.

Like the Boeing complaint, it's another Obama Administration play for union votes--sticking us with the check. And with a new definition of "as soon as possible."

MORE:

George Will:

President Obama is sacrificing economic growth and job creation in order to placate organized labor. And as the crisis of the welfare state deepens, he is trying to enlarge the entitlement system and exacerbate the entitlement mentality.

William Kristol:

Not running: Mike Huckabee, the 2008 runner-up; John Thune, the likeliest candidate from the Senate, the body that has produced the out-party candidate in 2008, 2004, and 1996; Mike Pence, who could lay as much claim as anyone to represent the conservative movement; and Haley Barbour and Mitch Daniels, effective two-term governors with impressive D.C. experience as well.

Pretty amazing.

It would be unfair to call the current field a vacuum. But it doesn't exactly represent an overflowing of political talent. And insofar as politics abhors even a near-vacuum, others are bound to get in. I now think the odds are better than 50-50 that both Rick Perry and Paul Ryan run. I also now think they (and others--Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, John Bolton) may not feel they have to decide until after Labor Day--or maybe even until October or even November. The field could well remain open and fluid until Thanksgiving.

Byron York:

At the moment, it appears certain that Rep. Michele Bachmann will enter the race, but the advisers do not appear to view her as a potentially major presence like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, or House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.

Hugh Hewitt:

[T]he top two contenders -- Romney and Pawlenty -- have essentially locked up the campaign talent and the money commitments necessary to mount a traditional campaign.

(via Michael Barone, who reminds: "Only one of the In or Probably In candidates holds public office, and that is Ron Paul who in the House of Representatives is often on the minority side of 422-1 roll calls.")

From the Financial Post (Canada):

When different energy sources are measured on an apples-to-apples basis, nonconventional natural gas is the big cost winner, while renewables require oil prices well above $100 a barrel to produce the same amount of energy.




The chart measures the cost of developing 11 different types of energy projects to receive the same amount of energy as a barrel of light oil, or $/boeenergy. The cost includes CO 2 emissions, which are priced at $50/tonne. For example, offshore wind becomes viable at about $342/boe-energy and solar voltaic becomes viable at about $429/boe-energy.

As the lowest-cost source of energy and the most environmentally friendly of the hydrocarbons, abundant natural gas is well placed to become the largest source of energy on the planet.

What they don't tell you about renewables[:] Solar power is generated only when the sun shines, wind energy is generated only when the wind blows and there is no practical way to store the electrical energy they generate to balance a broad-based electrical grid.

To replace the current global oil production of 84.4 million barrels per day with corn ethanol production, it would take a corn field the combined size of the United States, China and India -- an area that is greater than the currently used arable land in the world.

To replace the coal-fired electricity in the United States, it would take solar panels that would cost $4.4 trillion. The limiting factor is the inability to store the power generated during sunny periods for use throughout darkness and times of cloud cover. There is no current technology to store this amount of electricity.

Some 149 million people per year could be fed with the feedstocks now being used for ethanol production in the United States.

Agreed. Advantage: shale!

(via Maggie's Farm)

Busy at work = light blogging.

From the May 19th Economist:

In matters of sex, as of war, Europeans are from Venus. They mock Americans’ puritanism about the sex lives of public figures. For a politician to cheat on his wife in America is a sign of dishonesty. Witness the opprobrium heaped on Arnold Schwarzenegger over the new revelation that he had fathered a child out of wedlock. In much of Europe, affairs can be a badge of virility. That is the insinuation of an interview given by none other than Mr Strauss-Kahn’s wife, Anne Sinclair. Asked in 2006 whether she minded her husband’s reputation, she replied: "No, I’m rather proud of it! It’s important for a politician to seduce. As long as he seduces me and I seduce him, that’s enough for me."

Why is this considered sophisticated?

Remember when nutty progressives, crazy congressmen and ambitious Senators claimed Bush's War on Terror violated the 1973 War Powers Resolution? This was wrong because the Resolution is unconstitutional and unenforceable. But remember more recently when those arguments instantly evaporated when President Obama bombed Libya?

Well, yesterday was final confirmation of the irrelevance of the War Powers Resolution. That's because it requires (50 U.S.C. § 1544(b)) Congressional approval for Presidential use of force overseas within 60 days, and termination of hostilities within 30 days thereafter if no approval is obtained. The President notified Congress about the Libya strikes on March 21st and never got approval -- though Friday was the 60th day:

history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned to a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate warmaking.

Finally, the left has moved on -- but only because President Obama embraced "his inner Bush."

Related: Obama's State Department affirms lawfulness of OBL killing.

(via Instapundit)

As reported by Yuval Levin at The Corner:

It seems that nursing homes are asking HHS for waivers from Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide health coverage to their workers. Nursing homes, even though they are in the health-care business, often don’t provide insurance to their employees. They can’t afford to. And why is that?

Mark Parkinson, president of the American Health Care Association, the largest trade group for nursing homes, says the problem is that reimbursement rates for Medicaid and Medicare, set by government agencies, do not pay them enough to offer their employees medical coverage. "We do not have much ability to increase prices because we are so dependent on Medicaid and Medicare" for revenue, he said.

Yes, that’s right. They can’t afford to give their own workers health insurance because they are dependent on government-provided health insurance programs for their own revenue, and the arbitrary price controls in those programs don’t allow them to make much of a profit.

If Nursing homes can't profitably offer employee medical insurance -- because government price-controlled rates are too low! -- how exactly is Obamacare supposed to help? Never mind--so long as the nursing home made the appropriate campaign contributions, I'm sure some Democrat will procure a waiver.

(via reader Warren)

Dominique Strauss-Kahn now is an ex-IMF boss, less than a week after his sensational arrest for attempted rape, assault, etc., at JFK airport in the First Class cabin of a Paris-bound plane. The investigation's similarly sensational.

I make no presumptions about Dominique Strauss-Kahn's guilt or innocence. But I am sure the French are crazy, and -- the accuracy of the title of Pajamasmedia's Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd latest video -- the "Mainstream Media's French Kiss to Alleged IMF Pervert Dominique Strauss-Kahn":

Bernard Henri-Levy:

I do not know--but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, and without delay-how a chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a "cleaning brigade" of two people, into the room of one of the most closely watched figures on the planet. . .

I am troubled by a system of justice modestly termed "accusatory," meaning that anyone can come along and accuse another fellow of any crime--and it will be up to the accused to prove that the accusation is false and without basis in fact.

So this French intellectual fancies himself an expert on New York Hotel cleaning. And, by the way, Bernard: She's called a "victim." As Matt Welch quips: "another reminder that BHL is 10 times the national embarrassment to France than Jerry Lewis or even Johnny Hallyday ever was."

Luis de Miranda:

Libération carried a curious article by a novelist called Luis de Miranda, titled "A philosophical hero." It is only in France -- no, only in Paris, and only in certain arrondissements of Paris at that -- that such an article could be published. The author takes DSK’s guilt for granted, but does not condemn him for it, quite the reverse. "We bet," said the author, "that in his depths Dominique Strauss-Kahn is joyful. Perhaps he doesn’t admit it to himself yet. But behaving thus at this point in his biography could only have been voluntary. I add that it is heroic."

The feelings of the woman don’t seem to count for very much in the opinion of the author, at least by comparison with DSK’s heroic renunciation of the prospect of supreme power in his country. "If the cleaning woman has been attacked, the woman worker had violence done to her, then we are touching on the sublime, in the Kantian sense."

As the Economist sneers, you have to admire "the use of the phrase 'in the Kantian sense'".

Gilles Savary, Socialist member of the European Parliament:

Everyone knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a libertine, and that he is distinguished from others by the fact that he doesn’t try and hide it. In puritanical American, infiltrated by rigorous Protestantism, financial misdeeds are far more tolerated than pleasures of the flesh.

As Ann Coulter says:

The New York Times reports that as far back as 2007, Brussels journalist Jean Quatremer remarked on Strauss-Kahn's troubled behavior -- "close to harassment" -- toward women, saying the press knew all about it, but never mentioned it because "we are in France."

When Strauss-Kahn was appointed to the I.M.F., Quatremer sardonically warned that the international institution was not the same as France, but instead had "Anglo-Saxon morals."

This is the predictable result of multi-culti making everything, including attempted rape, "relative."

Time magazine:

A Paris attorney who specializes in defending victims of sexual violence, who didn't want to be named, says he has "an entire pile of complaints" from women who say they were attacked by Strauss-Kahn. Like Pierrat, he says last weekend's news evoked déjà vu. And like Pierrat, he says he has a consistency of accusations against Strauss-Kahn. "It's all so similar," he says. "The lock thrown on the door, the pulled or ripped undergarments, the physical force that turned violent as resistance mounted, all of it. And frankly, this isn't at all incompatible with the skirt-chaser stories and reputation of an incorrigible ladies' man. [Strauss-Kahn's] defenders tend to say his conquests are seduction, and that while perhaps condemnable as adultery, they don't constitute rape.

Depends on the definition of "seduction."

According to the Wall Street Journal:

[T]here has been more criticism of what many see as America's excessively media-friendly and trigger-happy judicial process. U.S. use of the death penalty is a topic followed closely in countries such as Germany and France, where capital punishment is illegal and often described as barbaric.

A number of commentators not only in France--where images of Mr. Strauss-Kahn in a "perp walk" have offended many--but in other European countries have criticized the way the IMF chief was marched before television cameras.

In contrast to the civilized French press, which (unlike U.S. media) printed the name of the alleged victim.

Reports Rachel Marsden:

Parti Radical advisor Dominique Paille hinted at a possible setup, or DSK "slipping on a banana peel." The idea has since been echoed by Socialist Party members and commenters on French websites. It's also the most prevalent comment I've heard from people in the streets of Paris. Not to say that the details of the case as they've currently been laid out favor a conspiracy theory. But the French equate convoluted complexity with a high level of intelligence. That a man of such prominence could simply get caught with his pants down isn't the first likelihood that comes to the mind of an "intelligent" Frenchman. Occam's razor is reserved for Anglo-Saxon simpletons. So I've been regaled with various theories related to the possible perpetrators: the Greeks upon whom DSK was just about to foist deep austerity through the IMF; Nicolas Sarkozy; DSK's potential opponents for the Socialist Party presidential ticket within his own party; the Freemasons; the Illuminati; the "globalists"; the Bilderbergs.

Uh, DC Mayor Marion Barry once tried this defense--with mixed success.

All the more reason why Iowahawk's parody is a triumph:

I do not know -- no one knows -- because can there or cannot there be such a knowing? I do not know. All is but existential abyss. For who is to know this mocking mime which taunts us by its cruel appellation, "reality"? Even reality itself cannot know, because have been no leaks regarding the declarations of the man in question, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. We have only the leaks regarding the leaks of his so-called "DNA." Was he was guilty of the acts he is accused of committing there, or if, or at which why, as was stated, he was having a mud bath in Baden-Baden with his daughter? Reality, you are a cruel mistress.

I do not know--but, on the other hand, it would be nice to know, if knowing were indeed a matter of conceptual possibility--how a mere proletarian chambermaid could have walked in alone, contrary to the habitual practice of most of New York’s grand hotels of sending a "cleaning brigade" to remove to the myriad of empty Dom Perignon bottles and half-smoked Gauloise crushed into beignets they should have expected from one of the most closely watched figures on the planet. In protest I have written to the Michelin guide and demanded they be demoted to 3 stars.

And I do not want to entertain the considerations of dime-store psychology that claims to penetrate the mind of the subject, thrusting remorselessly and without consent into his libido, observing, for example, that the number of the room (2806) corresponds to the date of the coming liberation of France by the Socialist Party (06.28), in which he is the uncontested favorite to storm the Normandy beaches, march triumphantly into Paris, free it from its Sarkozian captors, seduce to the grateful lovesick coquettes with his Hershey bars, and thereby concluding that this is all a Freudian slip, a subconsciously erotic role-play, and blah blah blah. Sometimes a baguette is only a baguette. . .

This morning, I hold it against the jejune American judge who, by delivering him to the crowd of photo hounds, dared treat this man of nobility as subject to the justice of the peasant.

I am driven to ennui by a system of justice modestly termed "accusatory," meaning that anyone can come along waving a stained hotel towel and accuse another fellow of any crime--even when the one accused has a pied-a-terre on the Left Bank and sits on several film prize juries.

I resent the New York tabloid press, a disgrace to the profession, that, without the least precaution and before having effected the least verification, has depicted Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a sicko, a pervert, borderlining on serial killer, a psychiatrist’s dream. In Europe such tabloidists would be thrashed, their backs writhing and glistening with sweat and blood from each stinging kiss of Dominique's beloved cat-o-nine-tails, until they had learned not to jump to such salacious conclusions. . .

Enough is enough, I say. I will not stand idly by as the uncultured puritanical prudes of Les Etats-Unis and their mad inspector Javerts hound another hero of the French nation -- as they did Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, Ira Einhorn, and Theodore Bundy -- for the mere sin of intellectual virility, and listening to the "oui" in a woman's eyes instead of the "non" in her screams of ecstasy.

As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto concludes, "maybe French "sophistication" thinly masks a deep sexual confusion that produces such oddities as boys named Dominique."

(via reader Doug J., reader Warren)

Assistant Village Idiot dissecting Noam Chompsky and other deranged progressives:

Whatever happens, it is the West, especially America, especially capitalism that is at fault. There is never even a 1% deviation from this line, and as I have noted, an inability to see even a 1% reasonableness in another POV is itself pathological.

If there is a rape, then America was wearing short skirts, unless they were the active party, in which case they were violent and conscienceless rapists. If America is trading with a country and it does something evil, it was because of their contact with America, but if we don't trade with them, that is the cause. If we are on good terms with a government, then we are complicit in any of its evil acts. If we do not support it, then it is still not at fault, because we have driven them to extremism in opposition.

Agreed--and, as I have said, "such legislated self-loathing presumes everyone a victim; infants without the free will to be assigned blame or the responsibility to better one's self or society."

Rich Lowry:

Newt Gingrich hadn't been in the Republican presidential race a week before embroiling himself in his first damaging, inadvertent controversy.

On Meet the Press, the former House speaker excoriated the Medicare provisions of the Paul Ryan budget as "radical" and "right-wing social engineering." As a presidential hopeful who will have to appeal to elderly and near-elderly voters, Gingrich's hesitation about the Ryan plan is understandable and shared by other potential GOP candidates. Only Gingrich, though, felt compelled to take a rhetorical flamethrower to the document endorsed by almost every House Republican.

That's Newt being Newt. When he went to Iowa and predictably plugged ethanol subsidies, he inveighed against "folks in big cities" who "decide what should happen to people in rural America." Every candidate in Iowa endorses ethanol. Only Gingrich makes it a grand sociological clash between different regions of the country.

He can't help himself. Gingrich prefers extravagant lambasting when a mere distancing would do, and the over-arching theoretical construct to a mundane pander. He is drawn irresistibly to operatic overstatement - sometimes brilliant, always interesting, and occasionally downright absurd.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is reputed to have said FDR had a first-class temperament but a second-class intellect. Gingrich flips the Holmes formulation around: He has a first-class intellect but his temperament belongs in steerage.

I don't support candidates for the Republican nomination running against their own party. For me, the question is whether Gingrich falls in to the Sarah Palin category: if nominated, I may not vote.

(via reader Doug J.)

From Nate Beeler in the Washington Examiner:

UPDATE: below.


On the one hand, lefties and lawyers blame the housing crisis on fraudulent lending practices that forced loans on poor borrowers unable to afford the payments. This wrongly inflates the relatively small contribution of out-right criminality.

Instead, I've faulted the easy-money practices of Fannie and Freddie, which were manipulated for political purposes, becoming "too big to fail"--until they did, costing taxpayers over $350 billion. At the same time, I've not blamed the Community Reinvestment Act's preference for minority lending.

But I'm alarmed by the Obama Administration's latest idea--forcing increasing mortgage loans to minorities:

The Federal Reserve has cited one of the group's targets, Midwest BankCentre, a small bank that has been operating in St. Louis's predominantly white, middle-class suburbs for over a century, for failing to issue home mortgages or open branches in disadvantaged areas. Although executives at the bank say they don't discriminate, Midwest BankCentre's latest annual report says it is in the process of negotiating a settlement with the U.S. Justice Dept. over its lending practices.

Lawyers and bank consultants say regulators and the Obama Administration are scrutinizing financial institutions for a practice that last drew attention before the rise of subprime lending: redlining. The term dates from the 1930s, when the Federal Housing Administration drew up maps using red ink to delineate inner-city neighborhoods considered too risky for lending. Congress later passed laws banning lending discrimination on the basis of race and other characteristics. "The agencies have refocused on redlining because, in the wake of the subprime explosion and sudden implosion, they are looking at these disadvantaged neighborhoods and not seeing any credit access," says Jo Ann Barefoot, co-chair at Treliant Risk Advisors in Washington, D.C., which consults with banks on regulatory issues.

The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) requires banks to make loans in all the areas they serve, not just the wealthy ones. A Bloomberg analysis found the percentage of banks earning negative ratings from regulators on CRA exams has risen from 1.45 percent in 2007 to more than 6 percent in the first quarter of this year.

At the Justice Dept., a new 20-person unit dedicated to fair lending issues received a record number of discrimination referrals from regulators in 2010 and has dozens of open cases, according to a recent agency report. Potential penalties can reach into the millions of dollars. "We are using every tool in our arsenal to combat lending discrimination," Thomas E. Perez, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Div., told a conference of community development advocates in Washington in April.

This is wrong for several reasons. First, while minority borrower mortgage loans have declined, that is consistent with the drying up of sub-prime/Alt-A/interest-only loans. Studies have shown that the correlation between higher interest rates and race reflects risk, not discrimination as sometimes claimed. (Contrary studies often are flawed by considering only income and credit score, not wealth.)

Second, in the wake of the mortgage meltdown, promoting stricter lending practices should not be discouraged. Why encourage another crisis? Especially if the actions are, again, prompted by politics?

Third, as MaxedOutMama observes, stepped-up CRA enforcement will disproportionately impact small banks serving near minority markets. Large, nationwide banks can "average" over a bigger population and area. Advantage: too big to fail!

I would never condone discriminatory lending. But mere differences in interest rates or number of loans aren't proof. If easy money was a problem, more credit isn't the answer.

MORE:

A_Nonny_Mouse in comments, "it was never about Hope and Change, it was all 'Hoax and Chains'." And MaxedOutMama on her blog:

The original focus of CRA was to prevent banks from opening branches, taking deposits, and moving the money outside the area to where it could be lent for higher returns. That would be terribly harmful!

This article describes a very different tactic - forcing banks to open branches in areas in which they would not normally choose to do so as a price of opening branches where they want to.

It's the Boeing thing all over again.

Charles Krauthammer in Thursday's Washington Post:

[Obama's] El Paso speech is notable not for breaking any new ground on immigration but for perfectly illustrating Obama’s political style: the professorial, almost therapeutic, invitation to civil discourse, wrapped around the basest of rhetorical devices -- charges of malice compounded with accusations of bad faith. "They’ll never be satisfied," said Obama about border control. "And I understand that. That’s politics."

How understanding. The other side plays "politics," Obama acts in the public interest. Their eyes are on poll numbers, political power, the next election; Obama’s rest fixedly on the little children.

This impugning of motives is an Obama constant. "They" play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration. It is ironic that such a charge should be made in a speech that is nothing but politics.

The latest Social Security Trustees Report:

Social Security expenditures exceeded the program’s non-interest income in 2010 for the first time since 1983. The $49 billion deficit last year (excluding interest income) and $46 billion projected deficit in 2011 are in large part due to the weakened economy and to downward income adjustments that correct for excess payroll tax revenue credited to the trust funds in earlier years. This deficit is expected to shrink to about $20 billion for years 2012-2014 as the economy strengthens. After 2014, cash deficits are expected to grow rapidly as the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers. Through 2022, the annual cash deficits will be made up by redeeming trust fund assets from the General Fund of the Treasury. Because these redemptions will be less than interest earnings, trust fund balances will continue to grow. After 2022, trust fund assets will be redeemed in amounts that exceed interest earnings until trust fund reserves are exhausted in 2036, one year earlier than was projected last year. Thereafter, tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2085.

Under current projections, the annual cost of Social Security benefits expressed as a share of workers’ taxable wages will grow rapidly from 11-1/2 percent in 2007, the last pre-recession year, to roughly 17 percent in 2035, and will then dip slightly before commencing a slow upward march after 2050. . .

Medicare costs (including both HI and SMI expenditures) are projected to grow substantially from approximately 3.6 percent of GDP in 2010 to 5.5 percent of GDP by 2035, and to increase gradually thereafter to about 6.2 percent of GDP by 2085.

The projected 75-year actuarial deficit in the HI Trust Fund is 0.79 percent of taxable payroll, up from 0.66 percent projected in last year’s report. The HI fund fails the test of short-range financial adequacy, as projected assets drop below one year’s projected expenditures early in 2011. The fund also continues to fail the long-range test of close actuarial balance. Medicare’s HI Trust Fund is expected to pay out more in hospital benefits and other expenditures than it receives in income in all future years. The projected date of HI Trust Fund exhaustion is 2024, five years earlier than estimated in last year’s report, at which time dedicated revenues would be sufficient to pay 90 percent of HI costs.

Who knew? And why are reporters treating this as a distant problem?

There is a young man in a Connecticut high school, he was punished for breaking the school rules. But, some people had a problem with his punishment.

Two state lawmakers -- and more than 170,000 people on social networking sites -- have lined up to support a Connecticut teen who remains banned from his senior prom following Thursday's announcement that the decision to keep him out will not be reversed.

So eventually 193,000 people joined in support, and eventually the administration reversed its decision.

What is wrong with you people?

Was the punishment fair? No. Guess what -- the punishment never fits the crime. Ever. Please tell me when it does.  Carl explores this topic in his review of Canadian and United States expulsion policies.  (Oh yes, if you are a Sikh feel free to threaten your classmates with a dagger.)

So now that the kid gets to go to his prom after all, what did he learn? Maybe that the squeaky wheel gets the grease... but I doubt it... he probably thinks he got justice or something stupid like that.

Instead, he could have learned any of the following lessons:

1. If you break the rules, there will be consequences.
2. Life isn't fair, sometimes you lose for no good reason.
3. Respecting authority is important.

The whole thing stinks. Look, the child isn't a minor, he is 18 years old. So he should be able to handle some consequences of his actions.  Even  if a minor, he is old enough to know right from wrong.  He deliberately broke the rules, and now he got away with it.  Actually now I think he is more likely to claim temporary insanity in committing a felony. Work the system! What a horrible example the administration is. They buckled under the pressure.

Basically everyone in this story is exhibiting what is wrong with America. People if you don't like the public schools, put your kids in a private one. Lawmakers, if you don't like the administration's policies then pass a law to change them, but back up the public school administration no matter what. Kids, if you break the rules, expect to pay the price.  Oh Yes, if you are one of the 193,000 supporters, think of all the poor children that cant afford to go to prom this year.

I haven't read a story that disgusted me more about everyone concerned in a long time.

In the May 4th Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius addressed "A cautionary tale for Mideast peace". The article was prompted by the just-published posthumous memoir of Jack O’Connell, once an Amman-based CIA agent and, later, Washington counsel for Jordan's King Hussein. In urging President Obama to promote a land-for-peace deal in the Middle East, Ignatius says:

What anguished O’Connell was watching Hussein struggle in vain for four decades to recover the West Bank from Israel. The sorry tale began with the king’s foolish decision to ally with Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser on the eve of the June 1967 war, which gave the Israelis a reason to attack. O’Connell warned the king that Israel would strike, and the king passed the intelligence to Nasser. But they were too infatuated with Arab propaganda to take the warning seriously.

Tennessee Williams wrote in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, "There ain't nothin' more powerful than the odor of mendacity." By that measure, Ignatius's article stinks.

The June 1967 Six-Day War began as a result of two events. First, on May 22, 1967, Egypt's President Nasser blocked the Straits of Tiran (Gulf of Aqaba) to Israeli shipping. That shut Israel's sole access to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, cutting Israel's primary oil supply route. This was widely viewed as a violation of the international law of the freedom of the seas. Indeed, in 1957, Israel warned that it would consider a closing of the straights as hostile--a long-standing casus belli for war. After the war, President Johnson condemned Nasser's blockade:

If a single act of folly was more responsible for this explosion than any other, I think it was the arbitrary and dangerous announced decision that the Strait of Tiran would be closed. The right of innocent maritime passage must be preserved for all nations.

The blockade, thus, was a legitimate reason for war.

Second, and more controversially, on June 5th, Israel attacked and destroyed the Egyptian Air Force to preempt a forthcoming assault on Israel by several Arab states. Nasser had been saber-rattling for some time, and mis-informed by the Soviets of an imminent Israeli attack. He moved troops to the Israeli border. On May 30, President Nasser and King Hussein signed a mutual defense pact; on June 4, Iraq signed a similar agreement with Cairo. All such forces were consolidated under Egyptian joint command.

So, on this matter, Ignatius elides the point: King Hussein's alliance with Egypt formed part of the case for war. Even scholars critical of Israel typically acknowledge that the combination of threats on multiple fronts warranted preemptive action. But the reason was the threat of armed and mobilized Arab troops able "to cut Israel in two," not the pact itself. Hussein may have been a reluctant participant in war--but he made the decision to join an Egyptian firebrand, and both badly miscalculated.

The King wasn't just "foolish"; his stupidity can't be dismissed as providing Israel a "reason" that Ignatius implies was spurious. The "reason" for the 1967 Six-Day war was a plan to eradicate Israel. That was, and meant, war--the choice wasn't made by Israel but by Egypt (especially its blockade), Jordan, Syria and Iran. And mistakes about the causes of prior wars will lead to flawed strategies for peace.

One of the books I've read was Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, a historical novel of Henry VIII (and More and Cromwell)--highly recommended.

Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park:

By Clay Jones:


source: Slate

As previously mentioned, I'm on vacation, two handfuls of timezones from the Middle East:



Blogging will be light all week.

I'm heading back to the States--but to an undisclosed location for a week off. I'll post some pics early next week.

From the Peninsula May 5th:

Only women to get driving license for automatic cars

With a rapid rise in the number of people seeking a licence to drive automatic cars, the Traffic Department has once again restricted such licences to women, according to driving school sources.

Those who obtain a licence to drive automatic cars are not permitted to drive cars with manual gears. When this licence was first introduced in the country, it was limited to women but the Traffic Department later relaxed the rules allowing men to obtain a similar licence.

The Washington Post's economic columnist Robert Samuelson:

Obama has no plan to balance the budget -- ever. He asserted "every kind of spending [is] on the table." But every kind of spending is not on the table. He virtually ruled out cutting Social Security, the government’s biggest program (2011 spending: $727 billion). For example, Social Security is excluded from a proposed "trigger" that would automatically reduce spending and raise taxes if certain deficit targets weren’t met. He also put Medicare (2011 spending: $572 billion) largely off-limits.

The president keeps promoting an "adult conversation" about the budget, but that can’t happen if the First Adult doesn’t play his part. Obama is eager to be all things to all people. He’s against the debt and its adverse consequences, but he’s for preserving Social Security and Medicare without major changes. He’s for "tough cuts," but he’s against saying what they are and defending them. He pronounces ambitious goals without saying how they’d be reached. Mainly, he’s for scoring political points against Republicans.

Deficit politics are inherently unpopular. One way -- maybe the only way -- to break today’s deadlock is to alter public opinion so that some government benefits are seen as unnecessary or illegitimate and some taxes are seen as fair burden-sharing.

Given better health, longer life expectancy and wealthier elderly, why shouldn’t Social Security and Medicare eligibility ages be raised and means-testing broadened? The president doesn’t broach this debate. Farmers receive about $15 billion a year in crop subsidies to help offset the insecurities of weather and fluctuating prices. Considering that volatile markets impose similar insecurities on many Americans, why do farmers deserve special protection? The president doesn’t engage that debate. Might not a higher gasoline tax reduce budget deficits and oil imports? Obama is silent there, too.

Agreed.

(via reader Doug J.)

President Obama famously committed his Administration to "an unprecedented level of openness in Government." He hasn't always delivered. But his latest initiative flies the false flag of transparency and would be worse:

President Obama is considering an executive order that would force government contractors to disclose their donations to groups that participate in political activities. . .

White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the administration has a draft proposal and would not offer details. But he said Obama thinks it is crucial to allow taxpayers to learn more about contractors who seek federal funds.

The provision is similar to one in a bill that Democrats pushed before the midterm elections called the Disclose Act.

The "Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light on Spending in Elections Act" (H.R. 5171) was the bill:

introduced last year by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Chris Van Hollen to overturn the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The bill had onerous requirements that were duplicative of existing law and burdensome to political speech. It never passed Congress because of principled opposition to its unfair, one-side requirements that benefited labor unions at the expense of corporations. Democratic commissioners at the Federal Election Commission then tried to implement portions of the bill in new regulations. Fortunately, those regulations were not adopted because of the united opposition of the Republican commissioners.

The recent draft executive order would require government contractors to disclose all "contributions or expenditures to or on behalf of federal candidates, parties or party committees" over $5,000 annually per recipient. Yet, Federal contractors, or companies negotiating for Federal contracts, already are barred from contributing "to any political party, committee, or candidate for public office or to any person for any political purpose or use." 2 U.S.C. § 441c(a)(1). Obama's draft also covers the officers and directors of corporate contractors. Yet campaign and party committees already are required to report all contributions greater than de minimis amounts. 2 U.S.C. § 434. So half the proposal would be redundant of existing law at best; its only possible rationale, as lawyer David Martson and law prof John Yoo observe, is "to dangle the specter of retaliation" by political opponents of the Federal contractor. Or, as reader Doug J. quips, "Nice contract ya got there; be a shame if anything happened to it."

But wait; there's more. The scary provisions of Obama's draft executive order cover contractor contributions to third parties expected "to make independent expenditures or electioneering communications." This is an attempt to address the Citizens United ruling recognizing the First Amendment protection of such activities. Note that Citizens United, and the draft executive order, cover speech, not campaign contributions. No law or action of the President could overturn the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution.

So instead, President Obama is contemplating limiting the effectiveness of Citizens United via disclosure. Sounds harmless enough, right?

Wrong. As I addressed previously, forced disclosure of funds spent on speech about issues or elections, as opposed to reporting contributions to candidates, violates First Amendment freedom of association. This isn't about increased transparency, as liberals and the White House claim. Rather, it's about privacy, a right progressives otherwise cherish.

Don't believe me? Well, would you believe a unanimous Supreme Court decision blocking compelled disclosure of the NAACP's membership list?:

It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association as the forms of governmental action in the cases above were thought likely to produce upon the particular constitutional rights there involved. This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one's associations. . . Compelled disclosure of membership in an organization engaged in advocacy of particular beliefs is of the same order. Inviolability of privacy in group association may in many circumstances be indispensable to preservation of freedom of association, particularly where a group espouses dissident beliefs. . .

We think that the production order, in the respects here drawn in question, must be regarded as entailing the likelihood of a substantial restraint upon the exercise by petitioner's members of their right to freedom of association. Petitioner has made an uncontroverted showing that on past occasions revelation of the identity of its rank-and-file members has exposed these members to economic reprisal, loss of employment, threat of physical coercion, and other manifestations of public hostility. Under these circumstances, we think it apparent that compelled disclosure of petitioner's Alabama membership is likely to affect adversely the ability of petitioner and its members to pursue their collective effort to foster beliefs which they admittedly have the right to advocate, in that it may induce members to withdraw from the Association and dissuade others from joining it because of fear of exposure of their beliefs shown through their associations and of the consequences of this exposure.

NAACP v. Alabama, 357 U.S. 449, 462-63 (1958).

Conventional civil libertarians haven't complained about the President's plan--perhaps because the draft executive order covers corporations, not unions. Yet, it's a slippery slope, as Martson and Yoo observe:

Imagine the outcry we'll hear from self-described First Amendment supporters when every professor applying for a government research grant has to disclose his political donations.

Meanwhile, a group of liberals called "Priorities USA" will be funneling undisclosed contributions into Obama's re-election campaign. Another example of lefties abandoning neutral principles for political advantage.

(via readers Doug J., Warren)