Free markets may be efficient, but are they fair? Can any moral person really be for capitalism? Consumerism is an appalling spectacle, with Americans glutting themselves on all kinds of excess, while people in the developing world starve. The rich seem to be hogging far more than their share of the world's resources. Now, in Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy, Rev. Robert Sirico-a Catholic priest, former leftist associate of Jane Fonda, and now a longtime champion of the free market-answers all these objections. Download a free chapter here. |
NRO Newsletters . . . Morning Jolt . . . with Jim Geraghty
June 25, 2012
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I'm back. Much to come this week, including an appearance on Sean Hannity's Great American Panel Tuesday night. Jim |
| 1. Fast & Furious: One More Example of How Obama Is Exactly the Guy His Critics Said He Was
The Barack Obama sold to us in 2008 would have cared about how something like Fast and Furious happened on his watch. The fact that Obama invoked executive privilege to protect his guys at the Department of Justice is just one more big red flashing-neon-sign that when he said things like, "Make no mistake, we need to end an era in Washington where accountability's been absent, oversight has been overlooked," it was . . . well, just words. (That was on October 1, 2008.)
I'm one of those guys who thought that during the whole replaced-U.S. Attorneys brouhaha in late 2006, the president ought to at least give a reason for replacing a U.S. Attorney. The attorney, Congress, and the public don't have to like the reason, but considering the power and responsibility for those offices, the president ought to at least explain why a head federal prosecutor is being replaced, a process that presumably temporarily scrambles cases, investigations, and prosecutions.
Anyway, if you think Bush using his Constitutional authority to replace U.S. Attorneys is a giant scandal, but shrug your shoulders at the federal government sending guns to Mexico, where drug cartels use them to kill a U.S. Border Patrol agent, then you are a hopeless partisan hack who is literally willing to overlook murder to advance your political agenda. This weekend, our Michael Walsh took to the pages of the New York Post to lay out what we know about Fast & Furious, and what we need to know. A key point: By embracing his doomed attorney general, Obama has now forfeited plausible deniability and tied Fast and Furious directly to the White House, a decision he's likely to regret -- especially since he continues to assert that nobody in the West Wing were aware of the operation. Indeed, back in March 2011, Obama claimed he'd first learned of Fast and Furious "on the news" and said that Holder knew nothing. Yeah, right. A document dump in early December last year proved conclusively that Holder's chain-of-command subordinates knew all about it. Indeed, that knowledge now lies at the center of the contempt citation and Obama's executive privilege claim -- and of the mystery: how high does this go? Holder got slapped with a contempt charge by the House Oversight Committee owing to his refusal to turn over a tranche of subpoenaed documents relating to the now-notorious letter of Feb. 4, 2011, in which Justice categorically denied any knowledge of, or involvement with, Fast and Furious. This despite hair-raising whistleblower stories from brave ATF agents describing their feelings of helplessness as batches of weapons were transferred from the US to Mexico right under their noses -- and being ordered not to interfere. But that letter, by assistant attorney general Ronald Weich -- who conveniently announced his sudden retirement earlier this month -- was "withdrawn" last December. "Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies," wrote a Justice bigwig, wiping the egg from his face. Obama's executive privilege declaration covers the documents that directly pertain to the aftermath of the Feb. 4 letter, as Justice internally debated -- according to Holder -- "how to respond to congressional and related media inquiries into that operation." How to deal with potential perjury or obstruction charges is more like it. Meanwhile, on the Sunday shows . . . A letter sent to President Barack Obama will outline why his invocation of executive privilege over documents sought by lawmakers investigating the botched Fast and Furious gun-running sting is either "overbroad, or simply wrong," House Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa said Sunday. The letter will be sent later Sunday or Monday, Issa, R-California, told ABC's "This Week." The oversight committee voted Wednesday to refer a potential contempt citation against Attorney General Eric Holder to the full House, which is set to vote this week. "We're past that part of the discovery, relative to contempt, Issa said. "We know that there's a lot of wrong things and we want to fix it. What we're talking about now, when we get lied to, when the American people get lied to, there can't be oversight when there's lying. "The Supreme Court held pretty clearly there cannot be executive privilege over a criminal cover-up," he said. ". . . Lying to Congress is a crime. We have every right to see documents to say, 'Did you know?' 'What did you know?' including even the president." However, he added, "If we get documents that do show, cast some doubt, or allow us to understand this, we'll at least delay contempt and continue the process. We only broke off negotiations when we got a flat refusal when we asked to get information needed for our investigation." If the documents say what Holder claims they say, "we might dismiss contempt," he said. Gee, if Holder is telling the truth, that would seem to be a strong motivation to disclose the withheld documents, huh? Send the document to Issa and the committee, it checks out, the contempt charge goes away . . . Is the administration really going to tell us that Holder is taking the contempt charge out of principle? That he is sitting on evidence that verifies what he says, enhances his credibility, and defends the good name of him, his staff and the administration, and that he won't reveal it out of dedication to the legally iffy notion of "deliberative-process privilege"? Or is it just that Holder is lying? Again? |
2. I See Morsi, You See Morsi, Let's All See More of Morsi
Meanwhile, over in Egypt . . . Egypt's military rulers on Sunday officially recognized Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood as the winner of Egypt's first competitive presidential election, handing the Islamists both a symbolic triumph and a potent weapon in their struggle for power against the country's senior generals. Mr. Morsi, 60, an American-trained engineer and a former lawmaker, now stands ready to become the first non-military figure to lead Egypt in generations. But 16 months after the military took over at the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Mr. Morsi's victory is an ambiguous milestone in Egypt's promised transition to democracy. After a week of doubts, delays and fears of a coup since a public ballot count showed Mr. Morsi ahead, the generals have showed a measure of respect for some core elements of electoral democracy -- they have accepted a political opponent over their ally, former Gen. Ahmed Shafik, after a vote that international monitors said was credible. At Powerline, Paul Mirengoff writes: We shouldn't be too sanguine that the military will successfully control Morsi. My wife lived through the Iranian revolution. At that time, the Iranian elites were confident that that the feared and seemingly formidable military wouldn't permit the Khomeini forces to run wild. We all know how that worked out. Part of the problem in Iran was that the generals became demoralized by lack of support from the Carter administration. Once they concluded that the U.S. -- a major source of support for three decades -- was not really on their side, the generals folded. Some paid with their lives. The U.S. is less influential in Egypt than it was in Iran during the time of the Shah, and the Egyptian generals are not "suspended by a cable" from Washington. But we do provide Egypt with vast amounts of financial assistance, and therefore we count. Let's hope that the Obama administration doesn't follow the Jimmy Carter playbook for dealing with revolutions in strategically vital Islamic nations. At Legal Insurrection, William Jacobson sounds pretty pessimistic: Now we'll find out if they still plan on marching on Jerusalem. Remember, when the protests against Mubarak broke out in January 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood said it would not run a presidential candidate in order to dupe Western useful idiots like The NY Times and the Obama administration into believing the revolution was heading someplace other than Islamist control. We saw this coming back then, but the mainstream media fell in love again, and covered up what really was going on. The story is not over, but it is written. |
3. Fore More Years, Once Again Your contrasting news stories of the weekend: CNBC: "Companies are hiring all the time, but it's mainly just replacements," says Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of TheLadders, a job recruiting service. "We're not seeing a substantial amount of new positions. It's worrisome to say the least." Cenedella is just one of the executives attending the annual Society for Human Resource Management Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. It's a three-day confab at the end of June for HR and recruiting personnel to discuss hiring practices and the state of employment. "There's a lot to worry about. We've got a slow economy and the crisis in Europe. There's little room for optimism when it comes to jobs," Cenedella says. The Hill: President Obama waited for the temperature to cool just a bit before heading to the golf course on Sunday. Obama is golfing at the Fort Belvoir course, according to a White House pool report. The president is golfing with White House chef Sam Kass, staffer Mike Brush and White House trip director Marvin Nicholson, a frequent golf partner of Obama's. . . . This will be the president's 101st round of golf since entering office according to a count kept by CBS News's Mark Knoller. He was last on the course on Father's Day. |
4. Addendum Congressional wannabe Joe Kennedy III picked up a BIG endorsement yesterday from his grandmother Ethel Kennedy. "I feel sorry for, so sorry for, anybody thinking of running against him," laughed Joe's gran, who was here at the Nantucket Film Festival for a screening of "Ethel," a documentary and oral history of the Camelot clan by her youngest daughter, Rory. Hear that, Sean Bielat? You're toast, Herb Robinson! I guess he's running as a "favorite grandson" candidate. |
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