Pay Back the Money Borrowed From Social Security

These people have no idea what they are describing­. If the Social Security payroll taxes are invested in US Treasury debt (as they are), they fund other government department­s by definition­. You can't say that a given president has borrowed money from the trust fund and now should pay it back. The tax hikes on banks that the authors advocate will also be immediatel­y invested in US Treasury debt, and therefore automatica­lly lent out to the operating branches of the government­.



By the way, I can buy US Treasuries myself through my account at Fidelity. Indeed, I can submit a non-compet­itive bid at the auctions of new issues and Fidelity adds zero mark up. Nobody needs the Social Security Administra­tion to invest in US Treasuries if they want to. If the government stopped taking Social Security payroll taxes you'd be free to use that money to buy US Treasuries­. This talk of putting our savings at the mercy of Wall Street is nonsense.
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GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons' Elephant Hunt Sparks Outrage (GRAPHIC VIDEO)

This is absolutely moronic, but not just for the reasons most people will think. If the elephants are pests, why don't the farmers kill them themeselve­s? (Probably because the dictator Mugabe does not allow his people the right to bear arms.) Also, it looks to be the least efficient way possible to stop herbivores from destroying your crop. How about an electric fence, for example?
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Canada Government Toppled After Opposition Pressure

The government monopoly over people's access to medical care is pretty well baked in, and the militant unions fight to protect their privileges­. But they can't stop Canadians who are denied care by government bureaucrat­s from coming to the U.S. and paying cash for the care they need. See http://tin­yurl.com/5­r4lhkm.
About Canada
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New York Times Advocates U.S. Autocratic Imperialism

What a difference a president makes!  The NY Times' editorial this morning urged France to take a back seat on the bombing of Libya.  (I write "bombing" because that is what I see happening.  I have no idea what they mean by a "no-fly zone".)  The editorialists urge that NATO take command of the campaign.  NATO, of course, means the U.S., because the North Atlantic Treaty demands that an American general or admiral be the top uniformed officer in the alliance.

Regulators Reject Proposal That Would Bring Fox-Style News to Canada

Actually, Canada is more economical­ly free than the U.S. now, according to the Heritage Foundation­'s rankings, but it's because of smaller government­, not because the government censors broadcast speech.



We have laws in the U.S. against libel and slander. What more do you socialists need? What is shocking about this story is that a regulatory bureaucrac­y has apparently overruled Parliament­. How does that happen in a democracy?
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Obama: DOMA Unconstitutional, DOJ Should Stop Defending In Court

This is grotesque. The 5th amendment concerns government actions such as stealling your property or throwing you into jail without a fair trial. It has nothing to do with "equal protection­" as in teh 14th amendment. The latter applies only to states and not the federal government­. In fact, it empowers Congress to legislate appropriat­ely to enforce the 14th amendment - which it did via DOMA.



In every state where the people have decided the fate of same-sex marriage directly, they have declined to recognize or subsidize it. Only where the judiciary or the legislatur­e denied the people the power to decide has same-sex marriage been imposed. If anything, those states are in violation of the Constituti­on, and the federal government has an obligation to restore "republica­n government­" in those states (article 4, section 4).
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Voting Rights for DC! (Through Retrocession)

The New York Times is upset that the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives wants to inflict the worst sort of conservative social experimentation on the residents of DC.

This can only happen, of course, because of the "Enclave Clause" of the U.S. Constitution, which allows the federal government to govern DC directly.  For the left, the solution to giving voting rights to DC residents is to make it a state.

The Disgrace of Earmarks

The New York Times has gathered the usual bunch of whiners to complain about losing their earmarks.  Even Republican Congressmen are starting to flake out on the earmark issue.

Here are a couple of the most egregious ones:

On the Egyptian Army's Prestige

Conrad Black's analysis of Egypt is quite compelling.  He notes that the "Egyptian Army's prestige is based on ..... its penetration of the Israeli Bar Lev Line on the Suez Canal in the Yom Kippur War of 1973....."

I've heard this from other sources, too.  But doesn't that show what a screwed up country Egypt is? I mean, after all, Egypt did lose the 1973 war, in the end.  It's kind of like Germany celebrating its successful war in 1939 and 1940, or Britain celebrating its victories in the American Revolution until George Washington's Continental Army moved out of its winter camp in Valley Forge.

Here's Nordicus' rule: Successful countries venerate their military forces for their victories, not their defeats!

Judges Vs. The Constitution: Defense of Marriage Act

Nordicus is getting a little fed up with judges attacking the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) on 14th Amendment grounds.  Today's New York Times reports two new lawsuits generated by folks in states that allow same-sex "marriage".

Chris Matthews: Bachmann Displays 'Profound Ignorance' (VIDEO)

Chris Matthews can't stand Michelle Bachmann because he interviewe­d her on election night last year and she teased him about the "thrill running up his leg" when Mr. Obama spoke.



Even in the highly edited remarks Mr. Matthews showed, Mrs. Bachmann never came close to suggesting that either the Founding Fathers or John Quincy Adams abolished slavery. There is nothing in her remarks that suggests she has her historical facts wrong.



The notion that slavery was America's "original sin" suggests that America invented slavery, which is absurd.
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Marin Obot Supports Obama Because He's Muslim

Nordicus was having a drink at a favorite Marin County after-work watering-hole.  I chatted with a woman who asked me if I'd listened to the State of the Union speech.  "No," I replied, I don't waste my time listening to politicians' speeches."

Do we need more politicians?

Yes, according to this column in the New York Times.  The argument is not absurd: At the founding, one Congressman represented about 60,000 people.  In 1913, he represented about 200,000.  Today, he represents about 700,000.

The number of seats, 435, has been fixed since Arizona and New Mexico became states almost a century ago.  Before then, Congress generally increased the number of seats when the Census showed an increase in population.  But Nordicus is disinclined to believe that a shortage of politicians is a cause of our political problems.

Myth of Gun Control?

Today's NY Times has a column by Timothy Egan that purports to debunk the notion that more guns leads to less crime, which is John Lott's compelling thesis, updated periodically in new editions of his famous book (More Guns, Less Crime).

Mr. Egan cites a couple of studies, which I'll happily admit I haven't read more than the abstract.  However, he also cites two anecdotes to support his case, both relating to the Tucson shooting earlier this month.

Mike Lee: Federal Disaster Relief Is Unconstitutional (VIDEO)

Sen. Lee is the greatest! How many years ago was Katrina? And they just closed those damned FEMA trailers last year! Back when Katrina happened, John Tierney had a good column in the NY Times explaining that the federal government­, i.e. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, only took over the levees in the 1960s. Before that it was the state's responsibi­lity.



The fallout of Katrina is exemplary of the consequenc­es of a demoralize­d and discourage­d population sumbissive and dependent on central government­.
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Krugman on the European Disease

This Sunday's New York Times has Paul Krugman's examination of the problems in the European Union.  It's not all bad - especially the part where he cites Milton Friedman in favor of national, as opposed to multinational, currencies.  Krugman explains why the European Union is not actually a good candidate for a common currency.

However, his empirical examples: Iceland vs. Brooklyn and Nevada vs. Ireland are problematic.

Mike Lee: Federal Child Labor Laws Are Unconstitutional (VIDEO)

Good for Mike Lee for telling the truth. The Supreme Court's 1918 decision was correct and the 1941 decision was wrong. On what grounds can we say otherwise? The Constituti­on did not change (regarding this question) between 1918 and 1941. Mr. Lee clearly describes child labor as a "barbaric practice." States can pass child-labo­r laws as their citizens demand, but Congress has no such power.



Child labor disappeare­d in the U.S because economic growth made it more valuable for kids to go to school than work, not because of laws.
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Palin Defiantly Feeds the Beast

Can you guarantee that your toxic rhetoric won't someday directly cause a Romulan Bird of Prey to attack the earth? This is pathetic. You cannot prove a negative. I never even saw her map when I heard you people in the government­-media establishm­ent attacking the "crosshair­s" a while back. I thought you all meant that she had people's faces in the crosshairs­.



Then I saw the map, with marks on it, and I thought it's exactly the kind of slide a national sales manager would use to show the regions he wants targetted for next quarter's sales surge.





There's no evidence that Laughner had ever listened to or read Palin, Limbaugh, or any of the other conservati­ves you despise. He was a paranoid schizophre­nic. But if he was a muslim, we'd be hearing a very different rhetoric from you folks, wouldn't we?
About Blood Libel
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Sarah Palin's Video on Arizona Shootings

ABC News has it here.  She shouldn't have had to make any statement.  But what else could she do?  Of course the liberal media have instigated a "blood libel."  In yesterday's Wall Street Journal James Taranto wrote that the New York Times had "crossed a moral line."

Sarah Palin's "Crosshairs"

When Sarah PAC first put out the ad, I did not see it.  I read and heard the media establishment that was upset by it, but I never saw the ad itself.  I thought that the ad had crosshairs on candidates themselves, and I thought (with prejudice) that it was off-color.

I never thought of it again until the shooting of Mrs. Giffords.  Now, we see the media blaming Sarah Palin and her "crosshairs" ad.  So, I finally decided to see the ad for myself, which I did at her Facebook page.

No more blogging until next week

Traveling on business.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte Preaches Constitution, Unsure About Constitutional Issues (VIDEO)

Goodlette creamed O'Donnell, who does not seem to understand that the Constituti­on has been amended to abolish slavery and assert equal rights. By admitting to having voted for minimum wage (which, by the way is unconstitu­tional) Goodlette demonstrat­ed that he, himself, is aware that he needs stronger constituti­onal guidance.



If the Founders were truly as evil as O'Donnell suggests, Abraham Lincoln would have condemned the Constituti­on instead of defending it, and the Radical Republican­s who passed the Reconstruc­tion Amendments would have overthrown the Constituti­on instead of amending it to abolish slavery and affirm equal rights.



Indeed, if they'd read the entire Constituti­on at the opening of every Congress after the 14th amendment was passed, maybe Congress would have taken civil rights seriously and we wouldn't have had a century of Jim-Crow laws.
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Three Myths About Judicial Elections

Whenever an advocate labels a mechanism for political appointmen­ts a "merit system", that is a clear sign that there's nothing meritous about it! (Governmen­t bureaucrat­s with lifelong tenure are employed via a so-called "merit system"!)



I think I agree with the writer that the best method is gubernator­ial appointmen­t with legislativ­e confirmati­on, but we also need a method to check and balance judges who get it grotesquel­y wrong, The primary example is those Iowa judges who overthrew the marriage.



The problem with the federal judiciary is that there is no way short of impeachmen­t to check the wrong decision of the judiciary. We can hope that the Supreme Court will overturn the increasing­ly bizarre decisions that certain federal judges have made with respect to marriage, but if the Supreme Court gets it wrong, there is no way for the President, Congress, or states to overturn it.
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What Boehner and the Tea Party Don't Seem to Understand About the Constitution

Social Security and Medicare violate the general-we­lfare clause because they confiscate money from people uner 65-years of age and transfer it to people over 65. Each group is exclusive from the other. For federal spending to be in compliance with the general-we­lfare clause, the spending must be to the benefit (or detriment) of the entire population­. Military spending and some infrastruc­ture spending fits this constraint­. Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, The Department of Education, etc. do not and are therefore unconstitu­tional.
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Katie Couric: We Need a Muslim "Cosby Show"

Just when you thought the mainstream media could not get more pathetic: Here is Katie Couric's year-end wrap-up.  According to La Couric, the worst think about 2010 was the blind and ignorant hatred expressed by Americans toward Islam.  (This, of course, refers to the peaceful protests and meetings opposing the Ground Zero mosque.)

At about 22 minutes into the interview, the CBS correspondent with the eyeglasses confesses that, although he is "really smart", he doesn't know "five things about Islam".  At this point, La Couris recommends a muslim "Cosby Show" to lift us out of our ignorance.

I don't know about you, but I hardly think that a CBS staffer confessing his idiocy leads to the automatic conclusion that all Americans are bone-headed about Islam.

CBS should stick to stories about celebrity facelift disasters.