NYT:HobbyLobbypartof“thissummerof

NYT: Hobby Lobby part of “this summer of a violent God”

posted at 12:01 pm on July 22, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Just when we thought we’d heard the limit of hysteria over the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision, the Paper of Record reminds us that hysteria has no bounds … at least, no editorial bounds. The New York Times knew enough to carry Timothy Egan’s screed against religion on a Saturday, where fewer readers would notice it, but the sheer hilarity of Egan’s conclusion qualifies it for an award of some kind.

Most of the column consists of a dull recitation of arguments that all religious believers have heard throughout their lifetimes, which is that religion is the ultimate reason for all warfare — the 20th century experience to the contrary. Even some of the conflicts which Egan points out in his column are less about actual religious differences and more about tribalism, the current Gaza war in particular, and especially the “troubles” in Ireland which had much more to do with nationalism than with religion. Egan even reaches for the Boko Haram example, which implies some sort of equivalence between terrorism and religious faith in general that insults a vast number of believers all over the world. In essence, it’s just a more literate version of this argument.

Egan spends most of his time insisting that the world’s miseries can be reduced to simple blame on religious differences, including … the lack of an enforceable mandate for bosses to supply supposedly free birth control to their employees. Chalk it all up, Egan wrote, to “this summer of a violent God”:

The problem is that people of faith often become fanatics of faith. Reason and force are useless against aspiring martyrs.

In the United States, God is on the currency. By brilliant design, though, he is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders were explicit: This country would never formally align God with one political party, or allow someone to use religion to ignore civil laws. At least that was the intent. In this summer of the violent God, five justices on the Supreme Court seem to feel otherwise.

It’s difficult to know where to begin with this nonsense. The founders never envisioned political parties at all, and the Constitution explicitly forbids the establishment of a state religion, a practice that had caused two centuries of dissension and conflict in England since Henry VIII’s break with the Catholic Church. That’s the only “explicit” treatment of religion, except for the mention of the Creator in the Declaration of Independence, in the two foundational documents of the United States. Moreover, the First Amendment doesn’t force religious believers to obey any law Congress passes; it forbids Congress from passing laws that intrude on free religious expression, and not just “worship.” If anything, the founders envisioned a nation which would be as free of mandates and regulations as possible in order to make sure that intrusion would be unthinkable rather than part of a debate about legitimate state interests.

But ignorance of American civics is really the least of Egan’s intellectual sins. Equating the limited Hobby Lobby decision with Boko Haram and ISIS is so vapid, so knee-jerk, and so downright ignorant and insulting that it’s a wonder anyone published it, let alone the New York Times. Ramesh Ponnuru skewers the “relentlessly stupid” argument itself:

Egan packs a lot of misunderstandings into a few words. The founders were not “explicit” about either of the propositions Egan claims they were; neither proposition follows from the fact that the Constitution does not mention God; even if either did, it would be implicit rather than explicit; and the justices did not “formally align God with one political party.”

My colleague at The Week, Damon Linker, drives to the heart of Egan’s intellectual failure with biting sarcasm. After exploring the possibilities of columns in this open letter to NYT’s editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal about how all neocons are Nazis and all liberals are Stalinists, Damon offers to write the ultimate New York Times column in the Egan ouevre:

All of history’s wars have been started and prosecuted by human beings. These wars have produced incalculable human suffering and well over 100 million human deaths (not to mention the pain experienced by other species and damage to the ecosystem as a whole). Perhaps we’d all be better off if we put ourselves out of our misery.

That’s right: maybe mass suicide is the way to a better world.

Some will say that this is a cure far worse than the disease. But is that really true? We’re all fated to die anyway. So what’s the difference in bringing on the inevitable a few years early? Just think of all the human and non-human suffering it could help us to avoid. And really, isn’t any less radical proposal to improve the world likely to be merely cosmetic?

Only mass suicide gets to the heart of the matter. Humanity is the problem, so humanity must be the solution.

I understand if you want to pass on this. I admit it maybe goes just a little too far. Though I must say, after reading Egan on religion, I’m hard-pressed to say precisely where my proposal crosses a line.

It’s a modest proposal, one might say in the sarcasm business. Be sure to read it all.

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Tags: Constitution, demagoguery, freedom of religion, Hobby Lobby, hysteria, New York Times, religion, RFRA

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Reid: We’re not gonna let “five white men” have the last word on Hobby Lobby

Reid:We’renotgonnalet“fivewhitemen”

TwoPinocchiosforHillaryonHobbyLobby

Two Pinocchios for Hillary on Hobby Lobby

posted at 8:01 am on July 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Lawyers in politics seem to have great difficulty understanding the law these days. First, the “constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office” had his hat handed to him by the Supreme Court on a wide range of issues, and with unprecedented unanimity. Now the woman angling to succeed him, who is often described as an accomplished attorney herself, apparently can’t be bothered to familiarize herself with a case before rendering judgment on it. Hillary Clinton gets two Pinocchios from the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler for her remarks on the Hobby Lobby case, but probably deserved two more for sheer dishonesty.

This is what Clinton said at the Aspen Ideas Festival:

“It’s very troubling that a salesclerk at Hobby Lobby who needs contraception, which is pretty expensive, is not going to get that service through her employer’s health-care plan because her employer doesn’t think she should be using contraception.”

Actually, the case doesn’t involve Hobby Lobby’s position on what its employees do. The case hinges on what Hobby Lobby has to provide to its employees as part of regulation from HHS. As Kessler points out, Hobby Lobby covers 16 of the 20 required contraception methods, but objects to four abortifacients. Hobby Lobby has never taken the position that its employees should not use contraception; in fact, as their attorney said shortly after their victory at the Supreme Court, they’d really prefer not to be part of that decision at all.

Anyone who spent even a brief period of time studying this case would know these basic facts of the Hobby Lobby challenge. A competent attorney who didn’t do even that small amount of research would know not to comment on it without first checking the facts. An attorney who’s also prepping a run for the presidency who comments on the case without knowing it is engaging in deliberate demagoguery.

Hillary Clinton isn’t alone in that effort, either. We’ve heard plenty of shrieking from the Left over the supposed setback this decision creates for women, but that’s sheer nonsense. Nothing’s changed, as I note in my column for The Fiscal Times, and the court ruled properly on the RFRA:

[O]ne cannot expect to get off the hook by simply claiming that a federal regulation impedes on one’s religious belief. Congress specifically addressed this balancing act between religious liberty and the need for regulatory authority in 1993 with the Restoration of Religious Freedom Act (RFRA), on which the Hobby Lobby case largely hinged.

Congress passed it unanimously in the House and 97-3 in the Senate after the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v Smith decision refused unemployment benefits to two Native Americans fired for having used peyote in their rituals.  Religious expression should only be “substantially burdened,” Congress responded in nearly one voice, “in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest,” and then only by “the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

That applies to health decisions as well. As Justice Samuel Alito noted in his Hobby Lobby decision , other mandates for coverage meet this test, explicitly noting items such as vaccinations and blood transfusions. Blood transfusions are necessary for survival in some cases, while vaccinations are not just critical for individual health but also communal health, as thousands of studies confirm.

These examples show, though, just how silly and insubstantial the contraception and sterilization coverage mandate is in terms of compelling government interest. Contraception in almost all of its forms is inexpensive and widely available. Furthermore, although HHS considers contraception preventive medicine, it doesn’t prevent disease or block the spread of contagion, unless one considers babies a plague.

Besides, there is no crisis in accessing contraception. As noted above, the CDC’s 26-year study of unplanned pregnancies (1982-2008) shows that 99 percent of all sexually active women seeking to avoid pregnancy accessed contraception. Access to contraception is such a non-issue that the word “access” only appears once in the entire report, and that in a footnote about access to health insurance. So despite all of the shouts of doom, nothing in this decision impacts the already-universal access to contraception Americans have had for the last four decades.

Returning to Kessler, one claim of his should get a review by the fact-checker. He may have missed the reports on rulings handed down after Hobby Lobby, because he concludes by saying that it’s not clear how the decision will impact other employers who object to covering any kind of contraception:

In the specific case, the company on religious grounds objected to four of 20 possible options, leaving other possible types of contraceptives available to female employees — though not necessarily the most effective or necessary at the moment. It remains to be seen whether the lower courts will interpret the ruling as allowing some companies to institute a broader ban on coverage, so Clinton was leaping to an assumption about the impact on employees.

Actually, we have seen how the court has interpreted it. Kessler needs to amend his conclusion, but only to the extent that the Supreme Court has signaled that Hobby Lobby allows for a broad conscience exemption. In all of those cases, though, the status quo has remained constant — and there still is no access crisis in contraception in the US.

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Tags: contraception, demagoguery, Hillary Clinton, Hobby Lobby, Pinocchio

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Surprise!WhiteHousegenderpaygapjustas

Surprise! White House gender pay gap just as bad as ever

posted at 10:11 am on July 2, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Remember when the White House declared war on the gender pay gap? The Obama administration has actually declared war on it a couple of times in 2014, only to take the field and have everyone else point out that the enemy was themselves. The media took some time this spring to point out both the hypocrisy and the dishonesty that went into the White House argument.

Last week, Obama tried resurrecting the argument in his latest pivot to the economy. In a speech at Minnesota’s Lake Harriet bandshell, Obama said that the idea that his daughters might not get paid the same as his sons was “infuriating”:

I’ve got two daughters.  The idea that they would not be paid the same or not have the same opportunities as somebody’s sons is infuriating.  And even if you’re not a dad, those of you who have partners, spouses — men — this is not a women’s issue.  Because if they’re not getting paid, that means they’re not bringing home as much money, which means your family budget is tighter.  (Applause.)  So this is a family issue and not a gender issue.

So what can we do?  First bill I signed was called the Lily Ledbetter Act, that allowed folks to sue if they found out that they had been discriminated against, like you found out.  Back then, Lilly Ledbetter, this wonderful woman, she had been paid less than her male counterparts for the same job for over a decade.  When she finally finds out, she sues, and the Supreme Court says, well, the statute of limitations has run out; you can’t sue for all of that back pay.  She says, well, I just found out — well, that doesn’t matter.  So we reversed that law, allowing people to sue based on when you find out.

Most recently what I did was we made it against the law, at least for federal contractors, to retaliate against employees for sharing job — or salary information.  Because part of the problem — part of the reason that it’s hard to enforce equal pay for equal work is most employers don’t let you talk, or discourage talk about what everybody else is getting paid.  And what we’ve said is women have a right to know what the guy sitting next to them who’s doing the exact same job is getting paid.  So that’s something we were able to do.

Just how infuriating is this to Obama? It’s so infuriating that, er, his White House still has the same gender pay gap that it’s had since the beginning of his term. Despite all of the attention to Obama’s hypocrisy on this particular point, and despite all of the transparency there is on salaries at the White House, women still earn 13% less than men on the staff that Obama directly controls:

The average male White House employee currently earns about $88,600, while the average female White House employee earns about $78,400, according to White House data released Tuesday. That is a gap of 13 percent.

In 2009, male employees made an average of about $82,000, compared to an average of $72,700 earned by female employees — also a 13 percent wage gap.

Why does it persist? Because men get more positions of authority in the Obama administration:

One of the key reasons is that more men hold the highest-paying, senior jobs in the White House, and more women hold the lowest-paying, junior jobs. Today, there are 87 male White House officials who make more than $100,000, compared to 53 female White House officials. The gap narrows, but persists, at the highest echelons of the White House.

And yet again, the White House wants to argue that its own practices should be held to a different standard than the White House applies to everyone else:

White House officials say that even if the aggregate statistics show a gap, men and women in the same roles at the White House are paid similar amounts. “At the White House, we have equal pay for equal work,” said White House spokeswoman Jessica Santillo. “Men and women in equivalent roles earn equivalent salaries, and over half of our departments are run by women.”

That’s true. However, while pushing this issue as a crisis everywhere else outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Obama and his team use aggregate statistics to support the claim that a substantial pay gap exists for equal work and equal experience. Using the standard the White House wants to use for itself, that gap all but disappears — and the White House actually lags on that measure.

Obama says he needs Congress to act. Maybe Congress needs to act a lot less than Obama needs to take care of his own house, or admit that he’s demagoguing this issue as part of the larger “war on women” demagoguery.

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Tags: Barack Obama, demagoguery, equal pay, gender, hypocrisy, War on Women, White House

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AretheClintonsinthetop1%of

Are the Clintons in the top 1% of the top 1%?

posted at 5:31 pm on June 28, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Live by the class-warfare sword, die by the class-warfare sword. The One Percenter argument that effectively painted Mitt Romney in 2012 as an out-of-touch patrician in a nation full of populists has boomeranged on Bill and Hillary Clinton in 2014, thanks in large part to Hillary’s own declarations of poverty and struggle. With Democrats paving the way two years ago to attacks on wealth, the Wall Street Journal’s Tim Hanrahan looks at financial disclosures and other public records and concludes that the Clintons aren’t just One Percenters — they’re among the top One Percent of the One Percenters:

The nationwide level to make the top 1% of households in 2012 was $567,719,according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center,  a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. And the level for the top 0.1% was about $2.9 million, a bar the Clintons easily surpassed.

The Tax Policy Center data stop there, at the top 0.1% — or the top 10% of the top 1% of Americans.

Did the Clintons reach the top 1% of the top 1%, based on their 2012 income? A different measure offers a strong clue. The Tax Policy Center says that IRS data for 2011, the most recent numbers available, show 11,500 total tax returns with adjusted gross income over $10 million that year, out of 145 million total returns. So a $10 million adjusted gross income puts one in the top 0.007% of all tax returns, and the Clintons’ income was well above that — likely putting it into the top 1% of the 1%.

The AP noted yesterday that the last public disclosure of the Clinton’s net worth was in 2012, when it ranged from $5 million to $25 million. That’s not exactly hereditary peerage level, but it’s far from “not truly well off,” let alone “struggling.” That’s apart from their earnings, which have surpassed the nine-figure mark over the last thirteen years; Bill Clinton by himself has made over $100 million just in speeches. Every speech either gives can be measured in multiples of annual average household incomes for Americans. For instance, two speeches at UCLA brought in more than 10 times the annual US household income, the Washington Post reported yesterday:

Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton was paid $300,000 to speak to students and faculty at the University of California Los Angeles in March, the university confirmed Friday.

UCLA spokesman Jean-Paul Renaud said Clinton’s fee was paid through a private endowment established for a lecture series by Meyer Luskin, an investor and president of Scope Industries, a food waste recycling company.

In 2012, former president Bill Clinton was paid $250,000 to deliver the inaugural address in the Luskin lecture series, Renaud said.

Meyer Luskin is a diffident Democratic donor, but apparently enough of a fan of the Clintons to cough up more than a half-million dollars for a couple of hours’ worth of speeches.

There’s nothing wrong with making a living off of the speaking circuit, of course. Ronald Reagan did that for years to hone his political craft before running for governor in California and then President, unsuccessfully in 1976 and successfully in 1980. Even the amount of money wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that Hillary and her apologists (now including Bill) have to shoehorn it into the demagoguery of the class-warfare strategies of their party — a class warfare strategy that worked in 2o12 but looks like it will backfire in 2014 and 2016 if Hillary runs for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Ruth Marcus has some advice for Hillary Clinton today. Either shut up entirely — including a retirement from the six-figure fees on the speaking circuit — or retire from politics, and pronto:

The issue isn’t that you’re rich, or even that you and your husband became rich after leaving office. American voters don’t have a problem with wealthy candidates or even wealthy ex-presidents and ex-officials.

They have a problem with wealthy candidates who are whiny and/or defensive about their wealth; who are greedy and/or ostentatious in their acquisition and display thereof; or whose wealth makes them, or makes them appear to be, out of touch with the concerns of everyday people. Your difficulties, at the moment anyway, appear to be chiefly in the first two categories: defensiveness and greed. …

Madam Secretary, enough already. This behavior borders on compulsion, like refugees who once were starved and now hoard food. You’re rich beyond your wildest imaginings! You don’t need any more! Just. Stop. Speaking. For. Pay.

In the midst of a book tour (and with the ample cushion of a multimillion-dollar advance), you don’t need to be hustling for another $200,000 or so from the United Fresh Produce Association and Food Marketing Institute. On the verge of a potential presidential bid, please feel free to say yes to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas if you want to speak there. But you don’t have to hit its foundation up for a $225,000 fee, even one you plan to donate to the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

Fix this now, or decide not to run. Then you can rake in the fees to your heart’s content.

I suspect that Marcus is not alone in this sentiment on the Left, not even among Hillary’s supporters. The more Hillary Clinton talks, the more the media will keep dissecting her remarks and compare them to the reality of the overwhelming Clinton earnings and wealth, and the more ridiculous the class-warfare arguments from Democrats will look.

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Tags: 2014 election, 2016 election, Bill Clinton, class warfare, demagoguery, Hillary Clinton, one percenters, wealth

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Reid:Billionaires?Wedon’thavenostinkingbillionaires,

Reid: Billionaires? We don’t have no stinking billionaires, or something

posted at 12:41 pm on June 19, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

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Aaaaaaaaa-hem. Today’s two-minute hate on Emmanuel Goldstein, er, the Koch brothers from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid offers up this fact-check bait on the poverty of the Democratic Party. We need to amend the First Amendment, Reid argues, to address the Billionaire-Balance of Power. Call this Cowboy B-BOP instead of cowboy poetry, if you will:

Well, every cowboy sings a sad, sad song, but not usually one as laughably false as this. (Okay, El Paso might qualify.) Let’s not forget that Reid essentially rented out the Senate for an evening to billionaire activist Tom Steyer to promote action on global warming that Democrats weren’t taking anyway. They’ve lined up deep pockets in Hollywood for decades, plus tons of money from the unions, which occupy the top slots for outside-money in election cycle after election cycle. Crying poverty now on the Senate floor is Reid’s version of Hillary Clinton’s claim to have been “dead broke” in 2001.

Coincidentally, Matt Bai wrote a pre-emptive takedown of this very argument earlier today:

So you’re a liberal member of the 1 percent, and you’ve decided to wrest control of the Democratic agenda from change-averse insiders. You want to free the capital from the grip of powerful interest groups. You want to inspire a new set of policies to help America meet the challenges of a fast-transforming economy. Where do you turn for leadership and innovation?

To the teachers union, of course!

At least that’s how it seems to have played out at the Democracy Alliance, the group of superrich Democrats who have funneled more than half a billion dollars into liberal groups over the past decade. Earlier this month, the alliance announced that John Stocks, executive director of the National Education Association, would become the chairman of its board. …

The Silicon Valley and Wall Street contributors who were most focused on modernization started to drift away, exhausted by the endless conference calls and the knee-jerk resistance to any rethinking of the liberal agenda. The remaining “partners,” as the alliance calls them, were overwhelmingly aging boomers who clung to 1960s orthodoxies.

Eventually, the alliance became, essentially, a convener and funder of the party establishment. It welcomed several big unions to the table and took up side collections for candidates. And now it’s formalized that role by electing Stocks as its chairman, replacing Rob McKay, heir to the Taco Bell fortune.

Be sure to read it all, as Bai criticizes both the hypocrisy of currying favor with One Percenters in the midst of Kochsteria, but also the betrayal of innovation by the decision to suck up to the unions rather than outside-the-box thinkers. Reid is making his bid for the most hypocritical and dishonest demagogue in Washington history, and that’s really an ambitious bid indeed.

Update: Harry Reid, your PAC is on the red emergency line:

In April, billionaire liberal mega-donor Tom Steyer dumped $5 million into Harry Reid’s Senate Majority PAC. The PAC reported receipts of $5.7 million from April 17 to April 30 — almost all of which came from the liberal mega-donor. This donation was twice as large as the one given to the PAC by fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg earlier this year.

Other notable billionaires who back Democrats include: George Soros, Warren Buffet, Stephen Spielberg, Haim Saban, etc.

“Your winnings, sir!”

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Tags: demagoguery, George Soros, Harry Reid, Koch Brothers, Kochsteria, Thomas Steyer, unions

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ManchintoReid:LayofftheKochbrothers

Manchin to Reid: Lay off the Koch brothers

posted at 10:41 am on April 10, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

This may be one reason why Republicans could woo Joe Manchin to the GOP after the midterms. Would Angus King ever go on Fox to defend Charles and David Koch from Harry Reid’s asinine demagoguery? Doubtful, but the West Virginia Democrat did just that earlier today (video via the Free Beacon):

“People want jobs. You don’t beat up people. I mean, I don’t agree with their politics or philosophically, but, you know, they’re Americans, they’re doing— paying their taxes,” Manchin said on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends.”

“They’re not breaking the law. They’re providing jobs,” he added. …

“If you’re trying to rally the base, the bases have already been rallied. The right and left bases have been rallied,” Manchin said. “It’s us in the middle that have to start making something happen here in Washington to move this country forward.”

So far, Reid hasn’t taken Manchin’s advice. In fact, the Senate Majority Leader went on the Senate floor to announce that the upper chamber might be able to take its recess later today, and oh by the way did you know Koch money stinks?

Another campaign attack from Reid against Kochs: Koch money "stinks. … The two richest brothers in the world want to be richer."

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) April 10, 2014

Mitch McConnell offered a jab in return:

While Sen. Reid's speech is focused on attacking two Americans for disagreeing with him, Sen. McConnell's speech will focus on #jobs

— Stew (@StewSays) April 10, 2014

National Journal’s Ron Fournier warns that Senate Democrats will pay a high price for Reid’s “lies” and demagoguery — and so will the media, if they don’t do a better job of pointing those out. “Shame on us” if that happens, says Fournier:

Shame on us if we in the media let him get away with this. First of all, his PAC has its own wealthy billionaires who are donating to him. Second of all, the ad is false, outright false. Representative Cassidy actually fought against the Koch brothers here — that’s not pointed out in the ad. The ad is a lie. Third, this is the third time in a row that Harry Reid’s PAC has had an ad that’s been labeled patently false by the Washington Post. He is making facts up. He is lying. Eventually it’s going to come around and get you. Even in this media environment we have now, I’ve got to believe that Stephen [F. Hayes of theWeekly Standard] is wrong and the Democrats will pay a high price for lying in these Senate ads. They’re lying.

That might be another good reason for Manchin to rethink his affiliation after the midterms.

Tags: demagoguery, Harry Reid, Joe Manchin, Koch Brothers, Kochsteria, Ron Fournier

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DidReid’sKochsteriapageviolateSenateethicspolicy?

Did Reid’s Kochsteria page violate Senate ethics policy?

posted at 2:01 pm on April 3, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Perhaps the better question is this: would the Senate Majority Leader care about ethics and rules in the first place? After all, the subject in question had no compunction calling Mitt Romney a tax cheat in the 2012 election based on his stated claim of inside information, and has given a crash course on neo-McCarthyism on the Senate dais itself in regard to Charles and David Koch. Anyone who thinks Harry Reid will repent of breaking a few Senate ethics eggs to make his Kochsteria omelet clearly doesn’t know Harry Reid very well:

The Senate maintains strict rules on what kind of content can be posted on Senate.gov sites–rules that the anti-Koch hit piece at least appears to violate:

The use of Senate Internet Services for personal, promotional, commercial, or partisan political/campaign purposes is prohibited.

It is the responsibility of each Senator, Committee Chairman (on behalf of the committee), Officer of the Senate, or office head to oversee the use of the Internet Services by his or her office and to ensure that the use of the services is consistent with the requirements established by this policy and applicable laws and regulations.

Senators are allowed to directly post content to their pages, while other staffers must first obtain permission from the Committee on Rules and Administration.

The Daily Caller reached out to the committee to determine whether anyone in Reid’s office had cleared the anti-Koch post, and whether the post did indeed violate the rules.

The issue here is the definition of “partisan political/campaign purposes.” Obviously, Reid is doing what Allahpundit called “stroking their [the progressive base] political erogenous zones often and early.” Reid needs to build massive progressive credibility now before his re-election campaign in 2016, when he’ll have to revert back to Gun Loving Fiscal Conservative Moderate Harry Reid. However, that description is probably elastic enough to provide Reid cover, at least for a little while.

Besides, when has the Senate Ethics Committee last acted against one of the club, and especially its Chief Grand Poobah? Reid has made a joke out of the upper chamber’s sense of ethics and is busy destroying its reputation as the greatest debating society with his cheap character assassinations and pandering to the paranoid from the dais. If the Ethics Committee had any intention to rein in Reid, they wouldn’t have waited for a silly web page that had to be edited immediately on publication for its false accusations — again about allegations of tax cheating.

Charles Koch responded to Reid’s character assassination in the Wall Street Journal last night:

Instead of encouraging free and open debate, collectivists strive to discredit and intimidate opponents. They engage in character assassination. (I should know, as the almost daily target of their attacks.) This is the approach that Arthur Schopenhauer described in the 19th century, that Saul Alinsky famously advocated in the 20th, and that so many despots have infamously practiced. Such tactics are the antithesis of what is required for a free society—and a telltale sign that the collectivists do not have good answers.

Rather than try to understand my vision for a free society or accurately report the facts about Koch Industries, our critics would have you believe we’re “un-American” and trying to “rig the system,” that we’re against “environmental protection” or eager to “end workplace safety standards.” These falsehoods remind me of the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s observation, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” …

Instead of fostering a system that enables people to help themselves, America is now saddled with a system that destroys value, raises costs, hinders innovation and relegates millions of citizens to a life of poverty, dependency and hopelessness. This is what happens when elected officials believe that people’s lives are better run by politicians and regulators than by the people themselves. Those in power fail to see that more government means less liberty, and liberty is the essence of what it means to be American. Love of liberty is the American ideal.

If more businesses (and elected officials) were to embrace a vision of creating real value for people in a principled way, our nation would be far better off—not just today, but for generations to come. I’m dedicated to fighting for that vision. I’m convinced most Americans believe it’s worth fighting for, too.

The contrast between Reid’s shrieking and Koch’s measured response couldn’t be more striking. It should shame voters in Nevada who sent Reid to Washington in the first place, and the Senate Ethics Committee for not doing its job.

Tags: character assassination, Charles Koch, demagoguery, Harry Reid, Koch Brothers, Kochsteria, Senate Ethics Commitee

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RNCchairtoEbonymagazine:Apologize;Update:

RNC chair to Ebony magazine: Apologize; Update: Ebony apologizes

posted at 12:01 pm on March 28, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday, a Twitter fight exploded when Ebony senior editor Jamilah Lemieux dismissed RNC deputy press secretary Raffi Williams as “a white dude trying to tell me how to do this Black thing.” However, Raffi is not a “white dude,” as those of us who know him can attest, but is African-American. Lemieux later offered an apology of sorts for not checking his Twitter profile more closely, but as Twitchy noted, that was hardly the salient issue at hand.

Today, the RNC decided to escalate the situation. RNC chair Reince Priebus wants an apology from Ebony, and has published an open letter to editor-in-chief Amy Barnett to demand one:

Over the years, the writers and editors at EBONY have done great work in promoting civil rights and diligently covering issues of race and politics in America. That’s why I was shocked to learn that one of your senior editors, Jamilah Lemieux, repeatedly attacked black conservatives on Twitter yesterday for their political views.

When one of the Republican National Committee’s staff members challenged her assumptions and attempted to engage in a dialogue, she dismissively referred to him as “a white dude.” That staffer, our Deputy Press Secretary Raffi Williams, is black. She went on to deride those who were criticizing her as “a house full of roaches.”

Attacking someone for his or her race, heritage or political views is the very thing EBONY has worked to discourage, and actions like those of Ms. Lemieux are far below the basic standards of journalism. She did not even attempt to show journalistic objectivity. And I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s unacceptable to refer to those who disagree with you as “roaches.”

Raffi deserves an apology from Ms. Lemieux and from EBONY—not just for making assumptions about his race but more importantly for dismissing black Republicans and the validity of their opinions in public discourse.

In their Twitter exchange, Ms. Lemieux said she had “no interest” in a conversation about encouraging diversity of thought. I’m hopeful, however, that she does not speak for the entire magazine and that we can use this unfortunate episode as a catalyst for greater engagement and understanding between the Republican Party and the black community.

Some might wonder how wise it is for the RNC to escalate a fight with Ebony, but there are a couple of points in Priebus’ favor. First, as Lemieux’s outburst shows, the risk of alienating Ebony readers is probably minimal. Second, it’s a good idea to defend African-American conservatives and to make a point of doing so now, rather than slog through an entire election cycle having media outlets demonize and degrade them. It may not win Priebus and Raffi an apology, but it draws attention to the marginalization and demagoguery that these conservatives experience. If nothing else, it demonstrates in  public manner that any failure in engagement of African-American media and voters does not entirely originate within the GOP.

Yesterday, I interviewed Raffi (a friend of mine) onto The Ed Morrissey Show to discuss the kerfuffle. Rather than focus on the issue of racial authenticity as Lemieux attempted to frame it, for which I have no particular expertise, we chose instead to talk about the impulse to demonize rather than engage. Raffi, whose father Juan Williams serves as a frequently dissenting voice on Fox News, has plenty of experience engaging those with differing political perspectives, at home and at work — as does his father, for that matter. That’s the greater issue in this sterling example of “ignorant demonization,” as I described it on Twitter yesterday, more so than just the basis for this particular ignorance. Here’s the segment in its entirety:

 

Video streaming by Ustream

Update: Give Ebony credit for responding positively:

Yesterday, the spirit of this mission was disregarded by EBONY.com Senior Editor Jamilah Lemieux in a personal Twitter exchange between herself and RNC Deputy Press Secretary Raffi Williams. In part of the exchange, Lemieux responded to an attempt at discourse from Williams with words that curtly dismissed him and his suggestion that she be interested in the “diversity of thought.” She also misidentified him, unintentionally, as White. Williams is Black.

EBONY strongly believes in the marketplace of ideas. As the magazine of record for the African American community, Lemieux’s tweets in question do not represent our journalistic standard, tradition or practice of celebrating diverse Black thought. …

EBONY acknowledges Senior Editor Jamilah Lemieux’s lack of judgment on her personal Twitter account and apologizes to Raffi Williams and the Black Republican community.

Tags: black conservatives, demagoguery, Ebony, Raffi Williams, rnc

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RNCchairtoEbonymagazine:Apologize posted

RNC chair to Ebony magazine: Apologize

posted at 12:01 pm on March 28, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Yesterday, a Twitter fight exploded when Ebony senior editor Jamilah Lemieux dismissed RNC deputy press secretary Raffi Williams as “a white dude trying to tell me how to do this Black thing.” However, Raffi is not a “white dude,” as those of us who know him can attest, but is African-American. Lemieux later offered an apology of sorts for not checking his Twitter profile more closely, but as Twitchy noted, that was hardly the salient issue at hand.

Today, the RNC decided to escalate the situation. RNC chair Reince Priebus wants an apology from Ebony, and has published an open letter to editor-in-chief Amy Barnett to demand one:

Over the years, the writers and editors at EBONY have done great work in promoting civil rights and diligently covering issues of race and politics in America. That’s why I was shocked to learn that one of your senior editors, Jamilah Lemieux, repeatedly attacked black conservatives on Twitter yesterday for their political views.

When one of the Republican National Committee’s staff members challenged her assumptions and attempted to engage in a dialogue, she dismissively referred to him as “a white dude.” That staffer, our Deputy Press Secretary Raffi Williams, is black. She went on to deride those who were criticizing her as “a house full of roaches.”

Attacking someone for his or her race, heritage or political views is the very thing EBONY has worked to discourage, and actions like those of Ms. Lemieux are far below the basic standards of journalism. She did not even attempt to show journalistic objectivity. And I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s unacceptable to refer to those who disagree with you as “roaches.”

Raffi deserves an apology from Ms. Lemieux and from EBONY—not just for making assumptions about his race but more importantly for dismissing black Republicans and the validity of their opinions in public discourse.

In their Twitter exchange, Ms. Lemieux said she had “no interest” in a conversation about encouraging diversity of thought. I’m hopeful, however, that she does not speak for the entire magazine and that we can use this unfortunate episode as a catalyst for greater engagement and understanding between the Republican Party and the black community.

Some might wonder how wise it is for the RNC to escalate a fight with Ebony, but there are a couple of points in Priebus’ favor. First, as Lemieux’s outburst shows, the risk of alienating Ebony readers is probably minimal. Second, it’s a good idea to defend African-American conservatives and to make a point of doing so now, rather than slog through an entire election cycle having media outlets demonize and degrade them. It may not win Priebus and Raffi an apology, but it draws attention to the marginalization and demagoguery that these conservatives experience. If nothing else, it demonstrates in  public manner that any failure in engagement of African-American media and voters does not entirely originate within the GOP.

Yesterday, I interviewed Raffi (a friend of mine) onto The Ed Morrissey Show to discuss the kerfuffle. Rather than focus on the issue of racial authenticity as Lemieux attempted to frame it, for which I have no particular expertise, we chose instead to talk about the impulse to demonize rather than engage. Raffi, whose father Juan Williams serves as a frequently dissenting voice on Fox News, has plenty of experience engaging those with differing political perspectives, at home and at work — as does his father, for that matter. That’s the greater issue in this sterling example of “ignorant demonization,” as I described it on Twitter yesterday, more so than just the basis for this particular ignorance. Here’s the segment in its entirety:

 

Video streaming by Ustream

Tags: black conservatives, demagoguery, Ebony, Raffi Williams, rnc

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Source from: hotair

Poll:NewKochattacksnotexactlysellingin

Poll: New Koch attacks not exactly selling in battleground states

posted at 5:21 pm on March 25, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Democrats have conducted a full-court press in North Carolina, not against Republicans or a GOP candidate, but against two libertarian billionaires. Just as Harry Reid demonized David and Charles Koch on the Senate floor and the Democratic Party got four Pinocchios for its own attack two weeks ago, the party started flooding some battleground states with fundraising pitches and attack ads going after the Koch brothers for their free-market activism. National Journal looks at a non-partisan poll and calls the strategy a flop — at least for now:

After absorbing millions of dollars in outside spending from groups connected to the Koch brothers, congressional Democrats have made the conservative billionaires the star villains in a messaging counteroffensive. But a new nonpartisan poll highlights a problem with the plan: A majority of likely 2014 voters have never even heard of the Kochs.

A 52 percent majority of respondents in the new George Washington University Battleground Poll said they had never heard of the Koch brothers, with an additional 11 percent saying they had no opinion of the conservative industrialists. Of the small slice who registered an opinion of the Kochs, 12 percent viewed them favorably and 25 percent viewed them unfavorably. The survey is one of the first to test opinions about the Kochs since they became a big subject of political conversation in the last few years.

In other words, this is red meat for the base. Most everyone else could care less, mainly because the “look — billionaires!” scare tactic is so blatantly hypocritical. Republicans used it with George Soros after the trader made public his desire to spend his fortune to keep George W. Bush from winning a second term.  Reid and Senate Democrats just hijacked the Senate chamber for an all-night stunt on behalf of billionaire Thomas Steyer’s global-warming agenda without bothering to even propose a single piece of legislation … even though Democrats control the Senate. Republcians haven’t done anything remotely close to that to advance any particular agenda item for the Kochs.

This led to an interesting conversation on Twitter with Sam Stein, ABC’s Rick Klein, CNN’s Jake Tapper, the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, and myself. Sam suggested that it’s too soon to judge whether the Koch attack is effective, comparing to the Bain attacks on Mitt Romney. That, I replied, was apples to oranges:

March 25, 2014 — 52% unaware of Koch bros http://t.co/ckFZDJQjm4 May 22, 2012 – 53% unaware of Bain Capital http://t.co/ypxDK6dRCO

— Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) March 25, 2014

@samsteinhp I don't think Bain really resonated either, though. I think it was the "47%" remark.

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) March 25, 2014

@samsteinhp Also, Bain related directly to the candidate. Kochs=Soros. People shrug because billionaires are on both sides (see: Steyer).

— Ed Morrissey (@EdMorrissey) March 25, 2014

Rick and Jake pointed out that the Bain attacks did resonate in Ohio, though, and that it still pushes the narrative into the direction Democrats want:

@samsteinhp @EdMorrissey key voters heard about Bain in states like Ohio — not about national absorption

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 25, 2014

@samsteinhp @jaketapper @EdMorrissey using Kochs as opening to have the debate Dems want to have

— Rick Klein (@rickklein) March 25, 2014

@rickklein @samsteinhp @jaketapper @EdMorrissey yep, exactly.it's about a contrast in economic values/priorities (see Benenson, 2012)

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 25, 2014

I’m inclined to agree more with Ed Goeas, a Republican pollster participating in this bipartisan survey, correctly diagnoses this as a fund-raising ploy rather than a serious attempt to argue the issues, and notes that it will be just as effective as GOP attacks on George Soros. North Carolina Democrat strategist Thomas Mills also agrees, and would like to see Democrats stop going off on tangents:

When I was growing up, there was a joke about a priest, a hippie and then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in an airplane. The plane’s engines gave out but there were only two parachutes. Kissinger quickly said, “Well, I’m the smartest man in the world and the world needs me.” He grabbed a pack and jumped out of the plane. The priest looked at the hippie and said, “Go ahead, my son. I’ve already lived a long and good life.” The hippie replied, “No worries, Father. The smartest man in the world just jumped out of the plane wearing my backpack.”

That’s how I feel about the consultants who’ve decided the way to keep the Senate in Democratic hands is to try to wrap every Republican candidate around the Koch brothers. I’m just dismayed that candidates like Kay Hagan are following them and not finding real parachutes. If some group wants to take it on themselves to discredit the Kochs, fine but the guilt-by-association strategy seems so obviously flawed that watching the resources go into it is disheartening.

In North Carolina, we’ve built a cottage industry attacking Art Pope and wrapping Republican policies and candidates around him. So far, it’s succeeded in getting us the first Republican governor in 20 years and a Republican legislature with veto proof majorities. Now, the Washington Democrats are adopting the model.

We’ll see just how much the Koch attacks resonate as the election draws near; Democrats don’t seem inclined to drop it, especially when they’re getting cover from the media through blatantly biased and false reporting.  Voters, however, will probably continue to be more interested in the candidates than which billionaire is contributing to which party, and have ObamaCare and five years of economic stagnation and stalled job creation prioritized over nonsense attacks on side issues.

Tags: 2014 election, demagoguery, Democrats, Koch Brothers, polls

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