For once, I agree with every word in a column by David Brooks:

In a democracy, voters get what they want, so the line tracing federal health care spending looks like the slope of a jet taking off from LaGuardia. Medicare spending is set to nearly double over the next decade. This is the crucial element driving all federal spending over the next few decades and pushing federal debt to about 250 percent of G.D.P. in 30 years....

Oswald Spengler didn’t get much right, but he was certainly correct when he told European leaders that they could either be global military powers or pay for their welfare states, but they couldn’t do both.

Europeans, who are ahead of us in confronting that decision, have chosen welfare over global power. European nations can no longer perform many elemental tasks of moving troops and fighting. As late as the 1990s, Europeans were still spending 2.5 percent of G.D.P. on defense. Now that spending is closer to 1.5 percent, and, amid European malaise, it is bound to sink further.

The United States will undergo a similar process. The current budget calls for a steep but possibly appropriate decline in defense spending, from 4.3 percent of G.D.P. to 3 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office....

Chuck Hagel has been nominated to supervise the beginning of this generation-long process of defense cutbacks. If a Democratic president is going to slash defense, he probably wants a Republican at the Pentagon to give him political cover, and he probably wants a decorated war hero to boot....

How, in short, will Hagel supervise the beginning of America’s military decline?

The Europeans, of course, had us to defend them.

Whom do we have?

There are few problems of greater complexity than developing a set of legal rules that allows for the effective integration of state regulation with individual choice. That problem came to bear on Monday, January 7, 2013 in the oral argument before the United States Supreme Court on the question of how to read the $5 million threshold that is contained in the 2005 Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA), which allows a defendant to remove a case from state court into federal court if the class has more than 100 members and the total amount at stake in the controversy exceeds $5 million.

The point of this limitation was to make sure that defendants were not trapped in certain state court hellholes, which could claim jurisdiction over a national dispute because some small fraction of class members had contact with the state in question.  The competition among certain state districts to bring these actions provoked a huge national outcry that eventually resulted in the passage of a complete statute that did afford much relief to corporations that were so stranded in state court.

All statutes, however, count only as the opening move in a complex series of strategic maneuvers.  More concretely, the question before the Court in The Standard Fire Insurance Company v. Knowles, is whether the plaintiffs can seek by stipulation to limit the class claims to under $5 million in order to avoid the removal into the chillier environment of a federal district court.  That one maneuver raises at least two concerns. 

The first is that it could signal the willingness of the plaintiff’s attorney to cut back on the size of recovery to potential class members in order to secure a more favorable forum for the class, which could be interpreted as a departure from its fiduciary duty. But the response to that is: if the class members are better off with a larger shot at a smaller pie, it is not a breach of duty for a lawyer to maximize potential recovery by reducing the litigation risk.

The second difficulty is harder to deal with. The stipulation to limit damages could be part of a larger plan whereby similar class actions are filed in state court, each class with fewer members than a larger class. The separate actions could proceed along parallel tracks, and perhaps be consolidated for trial down the road. The question is whether this division should be disregarded so that the several class actions should be treated as one for the purpose of the Class Action Fairness Act, at which point removal is again proper for all the related cases.

In the course of oral argument, Justice Elena Kagan took the strong position that the plaintiff Knowles was the master of his suit, which he could fashion in whatever way he pleased.  It was not, on her view, the job of any court to second guess the plaintiff.  “He gets to decide which claims to bring. He gets to decide how many years’ worth to ask for. He gets to decide which defendants to sue.” Justice Breyer was not so sure, noting that the language of CAFA might support that result, but that the purpose of the statute seems to cut in the opposite direction.

On this one, the Breyer position is correct. It is always the case that any party can choose its own claim in a world without regulation. But the regulation opens the doors to strategic behavior, and that abusive behavior must be closed down. If there is a valid statute that says that workers who are employed for 30 hours per week are entitled to health care benefits, an employer cannot duck that statute by splitting the job into two 15 hour contracts so as to avoid the regulation. The law is rife with cases that make sure that these contracts are bona fide, and not clever ruses.

Closer at hand is the situation dealing with a plaintiff’s cause of action in situations where subrogation rights are at issue. Those subrogation rights state that if the plaintiff wins the lawsuit, it must pay, out of those proceeds, a health care provider a sum to compensate it for the medical expenses that it incurred. A plaintiff cannot evade that restriction by deciding to sue the defendant only for pain and suffering damages, and then pocket the full amount in settlement by claiming that none of the money represents medical expenses. The recharacterization of the damage element to the case cannot be used to defeat third party rights. If medical expenses come first generally, then they do so no matter how the plaintiff pleads.

In this instance, the key question is whether that kind of evasion is at stake. I see little harm in allowing the plaintiff to waive damages in one case, so long as that action is done in isolation. But if it turns out the plaintiff splits a larger class into smaller components, there is an evasion that should be blocked, just as it is done in countless cases where persons by unilateral action or voluntary contract seek to defeat the role of the statute. In this case, it appears as though that second element is very much in the wings. 

At one point, Chief Justice Roberts asked whether the plaintiffs could file two class actions, one for persons whose last names begin with A to K, and the other for parties who last names begin with L through Z. He hit the nail on the head. Clearly the loophole is too large to be ignored. Put otherwise, the plaintiff should be allowed to limit the scope of one class action so long as there is no parallel class action waiting in the wings. At that point, the plaintiff has to give up something of value, which is not done when the second suit is filed on the heels of the first.

Let’s hope that the Supreme Court sees it this way.

Ricochet members have long followed the exploits of contributor Bill McGurn (at least, those that aren’t sealed in an FBI file…). His next pursuit, as Troy noted in December, will be helming the opinion pages of the New York Post. Bill’s farewell column in the Wall Street Journal ran today:

… this shall be my last Main Street column. Come Friday, I take up residence as editorial-page editor at the New York Post, another fearless newspaper whose own proud history dates back to Alexander Hamilton. As I bid farewell, I offer a few thoughts about what it is about The Wall Street Journal that has made it such a congenial home for me.

It begins with an approach to life utterly at odds with the cliché of economics as "the dismal science." That's no coincidence. "The dismal science" was coined by Thomas Carlyle, a 19th-century Scottish intellectual who excoriated the free-market advocates of his day (along with their evangelical allies). Their sin? The conviction that men are created equal—and that wealth and progress would come to any society whose law and institutions upheld human liberty.

This same spirit animates The Wall Street Journal. At its heart, the spirit is simply confidence in the ability of ordinary men and women to better themselves if given the freedom to do so. Every Journal newspaperman for whom I have labored shared this disposition: Bob Bartley, Seth Lipsky, Gordon Crovitz, George Melloan, Dan Henninger and now Paul Gigot, the editor who so graciously invited me to write this column.

It’s a terrific column, and it offers a sense of what’s to come at the Post. As Bill notes, he learned at the knees of one of the finest newspapermen of our era:

Thus one of my earliest Journal memories is of Mr. Lipsky assigning me to read a speech by Robert McNamara. Here was a man whose disastrous handling of the Vietnam War as secretary of defense was perhaps exceeded only by the damage he would later inflict as president of the World Bank. When Robert Strange McNamara looked out at the poor, he saw menace. In language soaked in the imagery of nuclear holocaust, he predicted global doom unless governments addressed the "mushrooming cloud of the population explosion."

My editors made it clear they were guided by a very different idea: that human beings ought to be seen as minds rather than mouths.

Having worked with both Seth and Bill, I can attest that Seth’s journalistic lessons were learned well. These two men share the same love of the craft of newspapering—the deliciousness of a juicy scoop; the deep satisfaction of a really gripping story. And even when writing in different venues, neither has lost the basic sensibility of the reporter.

And that makes all the difference. Today, “commentators” are a dime a dozen; repackaged conventional wisdom, and this or that person’s “take” on the same news story, are more abundant than paternity-test reveals on daytime TV. In exceedingly rare supply are the opinion writers who get ahead of the news, and who in fact break news. It takes much more work (and talent) to think three steps ahead of the pack; to not pop off on the topic everyone is writing about, but to investigate the topic no one is writing about; to call sources, put quotes on the record, and carefully verify every last detail. Readers of Bill’s WSJ column and his other writing (including scoops reported on Ricochet) will appreciate that they’re reading the work of a true newspaperman.

Of course, one way to find the stories that everyone else overlooks is to approach the world with a different perspective than everyone else (or at least most everyone else in the profession). Bill explains why he’s long felt at home at the Wall Street Journal:

I believe that this same disposition—to see potential where others see only problems—is what leads these pages to welcome the immigrant and the refugee; to fight for the inner-city schoolchild stuck in a rotten public school; to champion the guy who scrapes and saves for a hot-dog stand only to have some pol try to force him out in favor of something more chic; and to look beyond the noble intentions of a new tax or regulation to the unintended consequences for those least able to afford them.

Writing informed by this disposition requires men of great decency, unafraid to put themselves on the line—emotionally, professionally—to advance a just cause. Men with the compassion to be legitimately infuriated when a president who sends his own children to Washington’s toniest prep school denies the same opportunities to his daughters’ classmates. Men with the courage to take on the least fashionable cause, writing consistently in defense of the least powerful Americans—the unborn. And men with the humility and good cheer not to take themselves too seriously in their writing (and thus become insufferable bores).

Newspapermen like Bill and Seth believe that, done right, journalism is an honorable profession—one that seeks to illuminate timeless truths, to remedy injustices, and, in this country, to preserve America’s distinctive ideals of liberty—of, to use the phrasing of their former employer, “free markets and free people.” It’s easy to lose sight of the honor in journalism today—very easy, in fact—which makes it all the more important to recognize those places where it can still be found. 

So cheers to Bill as he moves to his next adventure. I know he’s looking forward to working with the very talented writers and editors at the Post’s opinion section (among them other Lipsky protégés). So check out the original views and smart reporting in the Post in the days and weeks to come. And when you have a minute, read today’s reflections from a fine newspaperman—and an even finer man.                                                                                                   

Amid the sleepless nights and the spit-up covered laundry that threatens to swallow me – or trip me down the stairs -- as I tote around our new three-week-old infant, I have found the time and energy to be obsessed over the baseball Hall of Fame voting.

Results will be announced tomorrow.

Among the new names on the ballot this year are some doozies: Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa.

Remaining on the ballot, among many others, are Mark McGwire and Rafael Palmeiro. (Full list of all names are at the end of this post.)

Some interesting guys to consider and debate their worthiness of the Hall are, in my view, Alan Trammell, Tim Raines, Mike Piazza, Craig Biggio, Curt Schilling, and Edgar Martinez.

A baseball columnist I’ve always liked personally and admired professionally – Bob Klapisch of New Jersey's Bergen Record– wrote this whopper of a column a few weeks ago which I’ve been chewing on for a while.

Do I agree? Not sure. Do you agree? Please let me know.

Here’s his opening:

I’ve always felt that major-leaguers who used steroids were like NBA stars playing on a 9-foot basket – the game isn’t supposed to be that easy. Or, imagine their cheating through another prism:

Two race cars line up, one uses regular fuel, the other loads up with an illegal, supercharged potion. Guess which one wins? Not only does the law breaker finish first, it sets a world record. Who would call that a legitimate feat?

That’s the easiest way to frame the steroids debate. Now comes the more complicated task of punishing those who (we think) juiced – specifically, keeping them out of the Hall of Fame. Any discerning fan would put Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens on that list. They’re the tip of the spear of a generation of players who tried to pull a fast one on what Americans used to call The Beautiful Game.

But while it’s easy to assume Bonds and Clemens were part of the brotherhood of the syringe, proving it is another matter. That’s what makes this ballot problematic, deciding the guilt or innocence of two men who were exonerated by the legal system.

I urge you to read Klapisch to the end. He admits he’s changed his mind on the steroid situation himself. I follow his thought process, but I'm not sure I agree. This is where I stopped short:

We all fell for the futuristic leap, until we realized it was fake. Peel away the layers of steroid magic and what’s underneath is a con. That’s why an admitted user such as Mark McGwire won’t get my vote. Nor will Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez and Rafael Palmeiro, ever. Still, it’s not up to the Baseball Writers’ Association of America to police the rest of the field; that’s Bud Selig’s job.

Refusing a vote to someone who was honest (McGwire), but giving it to someone who seems, so clearly, to be lying (Clemens/Bonds)?

I tend to see Clemens, especially, as a sort of Bill Clinton-esque character who lied straight up, and kept lying, forcefully, in our faces, until we decided to give up on it, exhausted by the nonsense, and move on with our lives, essentially absolving him. I feel like he may have inspired Lance Armstrong's similar approach. But maybe I’m wrong! Maybe these are the choir boys of sports! And I'm well-rested, well-dressed, and well-tressed!

But Klapisch's point is that there are few guidelines to follow to enable a voter to be consistent. I get that. A difficult choice for the writers, no doubt.

Another entertaining, thought-provoking read is by Joe Posnanski, the former Sports Illustrated columnist who writes this for the site Sports on Earth.

Here’s his take on Bonds, in particular:

Would Ty Cobb have used steroids? I want you to think about that question for a minute. Would Ty Cobb have used steroids? While you think, take a look at a handful of Cobb quotes:

"Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest."

"I may have been fierce, but never low or underhand."

"Baseball was 100 percent of my life."

"Many a writer has said that I was 'unfair.' Well, that's not my understanding of the word. When my toes were stepped on, I stepped right back."

"I regret to this day that I never went to college. I should have been a doctor."

"In legend, I am a sadistic, slashing, swashbuckling despot who waged war in the guise of sport."

So what do you think? Would Cobb, who famously needed to win but who held himself to principles that few others really understood, have used steroids?

Answer: We have no bleeping idea.

See, that's the trap of this whole PED Hall of Fame discussion -- it's tempting to start thinking you know more than you know, understand more than you understand and can get inside the heart of someone else.

What we do know is that Ty Cobb was obviously a rough player, disliked by many, involved in too many controversial incidents to count here, including a well-publicized gambling accusation and numerous violent encounters. And what we do know is that on the first Hall of Fame ballot -- with the so-called character clause already in place -- Ty Cobb received more votes than anyone else, including Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson and Honus Wagner.

Why? He was widely viewed by the sportswriters as the best player of all time. In the end, character clause or not, the writers understood their mission was to honor the best who ever played the game. I think that's still our mission. I don't think it's right to pretend that the steroid and PED stuff never happened -- it absolutely did happen and should be part of the evaluation of a baseball player's career. But I don't see how steroid use in an era when there was no testing, no policing and (I believe) tacit encouragement to use PEDs can or should be, on its own, a Hall of Fame disqualifier.

Barry Bonds is the greatest player I ever saw. How much of it was unnatural? I don't know -- some of it. How much of it was a taint on the game? I don't know -- some of it. I don't take his career numbers at face value, especially the home run numbers. But I do believe he's one of the best to ever play the game.

I am quite convinced by most, if not all, of Posnanski’s arguments on a lot of the on-the-fence-type guys. Read him all the way through. You won't be disappointed.

Still torn on the steroid-y stuff.

You?

* * *

Returning on the ballot: Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell, Lee Smith, Tim Raines, Alan Trammell, Edgar Martínez, Fred McGriff, Larry Walker, Mark McGwire, Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, Rafael Palmeiro, Bernie Williams                      

First-timers: Sandy Alomar, Jr., Craig Biggio, Barry Bonds, Jeff Cirillo, Royce Clayton, Roger Clemens, Jeff Conine, Steve Finley, Julio Franco, Shawn Green, Roberto Hernández, Ryan Klesko, Kenny Lofton, José Mesa, Mike Piazza, Reggie Sanders, Curt Schilling, Aaron Sele, Sammy Sosa, Mike Stanton, Todd Walker, David Wells, Rondell White, Woody Williams

*Clemens photo by AP/Charles Dharapak

So we all know that single American women have embraced the dependency dream of Julia and have been persuaded that big government is the key to happiness. It wasn't even close -- or as the New York Times drilled down on Obama's 11-point margin of victory with women:

This election, women were 10 points more likely to support Mr. Obama than men were; four years ago women were 7 points more inclined to vote for him. But in this cycle an even starker imbalance — the marriage gap — eclipsed gender. Unmarried women went for Mr. Obama by 23 points over married women, up from 18 points in 2008.

On January 16, I'll be joining some of my favorite writers and thinkers as we discuss how to show women the strengths of limited government and economic liberty.

The panel will include Sabrina Schaeffer -- executive director of the Independent Women’s Forum & co-author of the new Liberty Is No War on Women, Veronique de Rugy -- senior research director at Mercatus Center and expert on taxation and budget issues, and Karlyn Bowman -- senior fellow and public opinion and polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute.

First off, you're all invited to attend the event in Washington, D.C. Here are the details:

Date: January 16 ** Wine & Cheese Reception 5:30 ** Panel Begins 6:00pm

Location: 1706 New Hampshire Avenue NW ** Second Floor

RSVP to events@iwf.org

I have my own thoughts on what I'll be saying on January 16 but I'm curious is there are any really good points you think should be shared.

Last Sunday, the New York Times featured a piece by Susan Jacoby on "The Blessings of Atheism."   It marks yet another milestone in what seems like a concerted effort by non-believers to publicize and validate their beliefs.  Yet (like most such pieces) especially in two particulars, I found it far from convincing.

First, like many atheists, Jacoby dates the advent of her rejection of God to experiencing a terribly sad tragedy befalling a good, innocent person.  But isn't basing disbelief in the divine on such a circumstance really insisting on a pretty narrow, circumscribed view of God as some sort of cosmic Superman -- who must prove His existence by acting in conformity with Susan Jacoby's view of how He should behave? And by insisting that a real God would act in accordance with her standards, isn't Jacoby sort of setting herself up as  God? (This last is a problem with any attempt to establish a non-religious "moral code." Whose morals or standards are to prevail and why?)

Second, Jacoby argues that secular humanists can and should offer a meaningful alternative to religion, by showing up to offer comfort at times of deepest human suffering.  She notes that at the death of a child, an atheist could observe that the child is at rest and will never suffer again. But it strikes me this is actually cold comfort to grieving parents.  After all, presumably the child was not suffering in their care -- and at the core of their grief is the loss of their child's companionship.  Belief in an afterlife and reunion with loved ones therefore provides a sense of hope and solace that atheism simply cannot.

Atheists are certainly entitled to their beliefs.  But it seems to strain a notch to characterize those beliefs as a "blessing." Am I missing something?

Yesterday, I posted about the ratings released by Michelle Rhee's StudentsFirst organization, awarding letter grades to states based on the reform efforts they had made in public education. As was noted there, 11 states received Fs, California unsurprisingly among them. The Golden State was probably the only one to generate this kind of reaction, however. From an editorial in today's Wall Street Journal:

... Richard Zeiger, chief deputy superintendent for California, ... says a negative critique of the Golden State's policies is a "badge of honor." ...

Mr. Zeiger claimed to be elated by the failure. He called StudentsFirst "an organization that frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing," adding to the New York Times that "I would have been surprised if we had got anything else."

Let's assume for a minute that Zeiger's criticisms of StudentsFirst are accurate (they're not -- StudentsFirst is far from the first organization to rank California as one of the worst states in the nation for public education. Unless the criteria is pay and benefits, you'll usually find California towards the bottom of any such list). What kind of public official responds this way? Who glories in being criticized by "the right people" rather than addressing explicit concerns about the health of the state's schools? Well, a hack, that's who.

Last year, I wrote a piece for City Journal that garnered a fair amount of attention (and earned me a tremendous amount of hate mail) for its portrayal of the systematic corruption that's resulted from the power of the California Teachers Association, easily the most powerful teachers union in the nation. Every time that I did an event around the piece, I would get the same question: "How do these people defend what's happened to the schools?" My answer: They don't. Because they don't have to. Since there's no consequence for failure, why bother justifying your behavior when you can just pound the table and berate your critics? When you have monopoly power, moral suasion is a frivolity.

An example: At one point during the early 90s, the union actually had members physically intimidating people who were signing petitions to put a school choice initiative on the state ballot, as well as forging signatures to throw the whole process into chaos. When the CTA president at the time was called on it, his response was "there are some proposals so evil they should never go before the voters."

This is why the efforts of education reform organizations like Rhee's -- and policy leaders like Bobby Jindal -- are so important. Without them, the system is all too often left in the hands of people who only value the kids insofar as they are a mechanism for acquiring more political power.

For most of the fall, the Washington, D.C. area was subjected to an ongoing freakout over the Nationals’ unwillingness to have star pitcher Stephen Strasburg, fresh from Tommy John surgery, pitch in the playoffs. The team was unexpectedly very good, maybe even World Series good, and yet their coaches were determined to cap Strasburg’s work due to medical advice that was roundly criticized by fans, former players, and the local and national media – there were even calls for firings in management over the decision to “coddle” Strasburg and miss out on the chance at winning.

So it’s interesting, just four months later, to see the opposite effect in place in the case of Robert Griffin III, the ludicrously talented star quarterback, who insisted on being put back in the Redskins home playoff game Sunday even after reinjuring his previously strained knee. While I think Griffin should’ve been shut down at halftime given his limited ability, I imagine what the calls would be had that happened and the game ended with the same result (“A 75% RG3 is better than a 100% backup” would’ve been the likely chorus). Everyone regrets taking out the Lamborghini after it gets scratched.

What’s more interesting to me is the outrage at Griffin for “lying” about his injury and trying to play through pain … something that traditionally has been lauded as emblematic of toughness in sports. I still remember, as an eight-year-old kid, watching some quarterback with the odd name of Favre, weeks removed from having 30 inches of small intestine pulled out of his body after a near-fatal car accident, lead Southern Mississippi to a comeback victory over Alabama. In the age of the concussion, the progressive criticism of sports has taken on a louder tone in recent years, though there are still a few defenders. But there’s a deeper question here: do we think these traits are still laudable? Or should we teach kids that getting injured for a game just isn’t worth it?

Part of this begins with understanding the inherent cussed appeal of violence in sports like football and hockey, which some critics simply don’t. Pro athletes are nearly all risk takers, for whom violence is a challenge to be overcome, a mountain that demands climbing. Patrick Hruby explains it best:  

If you want to understand why Redskins coach Mike Shanahan allowed his quarterback to play for most of a 24-14 NFL wild-card loss to the Seattle Seahawks at FedEx Field, despite an obvious knee injury – and why Griffin demanded as much – it helps to start with a story.

Once upon a time, there was a player at Eastern Illinois, a Division II school as far from the bright lights and big money of professional football as, well, the surface of Mars. One spring day during a practice scrimmage, the player was speared in the ribs, so hard he could barely breathe. He stayed in the game. Went home. Urinated blood. Began throwing up. He went to the emergency room, where doctors couldn’t figure out what was wrong -- because his ruptured kidney had been jammed behind his spine. The player passed out from the pain. His heart stopped. He was revived with a defibrillator. A priest administered last rites. Following kidney removal surgery, his football coach told him he would never play again. He was lucky to be alive. He responded by petitioning the school to be allowed to suit up. The player’s name? Mike Shanahan.

This post was adapted from today's edition of The Transom, Ben Domenech's indispensable daily news round up and commentary email. Subscribe here. 

In my column this week for the Hoover publication Defining Ideas, I argue that James Madison would have supported a flat tax. 

To Madison, the chief mission of government is to develop permanent institutional restraints to guard against factions On this point, it is necessary to insist, as a constitutional matter, that all taxes be flat, as yet another protection against the risks of redistribution of wealth through faction. This can be done through a consistent application of the Takings Clause. There is, in principle, no watertight distinction between taxes and takings. In both cases, the government is allowed to take so long as it supplies compensation. Without a flat tax, popular groups can isolate and outvote persons of property in ways that will give Congress more resources to spend money on special programs whose costs are high and benefits are dubious…I explain further over at Defining Ideas. 

Before there was Medved or Beck, before there was Levin or Hannity, before there was Limbaugh, there was Boortz. And after 42 years in the business, syndicated talk show host Neal Boortz is retiring. If, for some inexplicable reason, you haven't heard this phenomenal host, you still have a few days left, as he will be broadcasting for another nine days before his final show which, appropriately enough, will be on Inauguration Day. Afterwards, he and his wife will board what Neal calls the, "Boortz Bus," and travel into the sunset, happy that his days of earning income for the further aggrandizement of Barack Obama have come to an end.   

I first listened to him while visiting my Dad in Atlanta. The "mother ship" for Boortz's show is WSB in Atlanta. I had just returned to the states following a year's tour in Korea when Dad said, "You're going to love this." And he was right. Here was a host every bit as compelling as Limbaugh, but with a unique blend of humor, irreverence, and an ability to destroy liberal arguments that is without equal in my experience. This is the guy who said that re-electing Barack Obama would be, "…like strapping on an economic suicide vest and giving the detonator to your ex-wife." Or, try out this exchange between Neal and Phil Donahue: 

DONAHUE: I would argue the reverse. Conservatives don’t want to debate anybody. A tip of the hat to Mr. Boortz for stepping forward here. Conservatives drop their tools and run when they’re asked to debate anything. In fact, Rush Limbaugh has a policy. He doesn’t debate. Oh, OK. That is nice and convenient. I would like to go through life like that, offering my opinions and disallowing any debate. I disagree with you, Sean. I think the liberals are out there in the arena much more bravely, openly, and not covertly than are many conservatives. 

BOORTZ: Ah, but I have a different point of view. Let me tell you how liberals operate. They write columns and hide in their offices. They do commentaries on TV and hide in their offices. Why do you think talk radio is so... 

DONAHUE: It’s the only thing left for you, is that it? You have been shut out of everywhere else? 

BOORTZ: No, it is a format liberals can’t survive in. 

DONAHUE: Why would that be? You make a point. There are not a whole lot of liberal voices on AM radio. Make your case here. 

BOORTZ: OK. The reason that liberal bed-wetters can’t survive in talk radio is because they have no place to hide, Phil. 

DONAHUE: Is that the reason? 

BOORTZ: Look, you can write a column in “The New York Times” and then you sit up there in your office overlooking, have they taken over those poor people’s property yet? You can write a column and sit there. And if somebody wants to call and argue, you say, oh, I’m not talking calls today. If you are on the radio and you express those opinions, then you have... 

DONAHUE: You get immediate feedback. 

BOORTZ: Then you get the feedback. And most left-wingers can’t stand up to that feedback. That is why Mario Cuomo-that is why these people fail at talk radio. They aren’t prepared to deal with the reaction. 

Oh yes, and I did mention the humor, didn't I? What to make of a person who, back before such things would get you arrested, went to the snack area in the tourist-class lounge on a 747, during a flight to Hawaii, and carefully removed the innocuous paper "fortune" from one of the fortune cookies and then replaced it with one that read, "This plane will never make it to Hawaii"? As the kid who put a whoopee cushion on the preacher's chair one Sunday morning before church, I am mightily impressed. This is the guy who not only referred to his friend, Sean Hannity, as "Cutie-Pie," and, "The Baby Jesus," but who completely surprised Hannity during one of his live appearances by walking on stage, with two other gentlemen, dressed up as the Wise Men (or was it the Three Kings?) to present gifts.  

His new book, Maybe I Should Just Shut Up And Go Away! is a laugh-inducing romp through a stellar career and a fascinating life, and I would caution against drinking anything while reading it that isn't easy to clean up. Written in large part for his young granddaughter, the book takes us through his start in radio (it has something to do with a radio show host dying), and goes on to provide insights into a remarkable mind and anecdotes about the remarkable people with which he has surrounded himself. From his talented and devoted staff (including the singular Royal Marshall, who tragically died of a heart attack in 2011), to his gracious wife, Donna, whom he affectionately calls "The Queen," and who, as he points out, takes every penny from the sales of Neal's books and uses them to operate The Donna Boortz Foundation, which actively seeks out people in truly difficult circumstances and gives them a helping hand, Neal has an extended family of good-hearted people.  

But lest you think Neal is a push-over, he isn't called "The High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth," for no good reason. This is the guy who has gone on the record saying, "Wallow too much in sensitivity and you can't deal with life, or the truth." Ultimately a realist, he predicted Barack Obama's re-election, and has gone on record saying that, as much as he regrets it, the America we grew up knowing is more likely than not, toast. While driving in Michigan today, I heard him predict that, "When the honest history of this country is written, Barack Obama will have done more damage than Al Qaeda, Adolph Hitler, and Tojo."  

Last week, following the "fiscal cliff," Neal read some relevant quotes from Frederick Douglas on the air. "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose," he read, wondering how much more we will endure. Then, as if describing Barack Obama's playbook, Boortz read the following nugget from Douglas, to wit: "Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them."  

He was right, of course, and was working himself  into a most righteous rant when he blurted, "Belinda, button your blouse!" Evidently, his very talented and astute producer, Belinda Skelton, had a button pop or something, and that was all it took. "How am I supposed to rant with…."  Next thing I knew, he was questioning whether there were any recent endowments, so to speak, and asked, "were those your Christmas presents?" I'm not sure what happened after that, as it was tough to hear over the laughter in my truck. I think he got back to his rant, but my concentration went Tango Uniform (which means "totally undone," if you're wondering).  

In 2005, he worked with Congressman John Linder to write The Fair Tax Book, the central proposition of which was to eradicate the federal income tax, corporate tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax, gift tax, estate tax, and the IRS itself, and replace them all with a single national sales tax of 23 percent that would be levied at the retail level only. The compelling argument was that such a tax would actually be cheaper than the accumulated taxes and fees that are passed along to the retail level, and would provide sufficient revenue to the government while freeing the private sector from the punishing progressivity that is suffocating job and wealth creation. It was a compelling argument, but one that elected officials didn't take seriously since it threatened their own power, which is the life blood of the political class.  

In his latest book, Neal maintains that his job for 42 years has been to keep listeners on board so they will listen to the advertisements, and surely this is true. But no one who listens to him can dismiss what he does as some sort of "schtick." From his impassioned defense of libertarian principles (minus the suicidal foreign policy), and his articulate advancement of the nation's foundational ideas, his love of this country absolutely illuminates his commentary and infuses his mischievous wit and fun. His constant presence on the air has been reassuring to this listener, and will be sorely missed. I wish him the best.  

The UK Daily Mail has run a thought-provoking piece by A. N. Wilson, deploring the damage wrought by the sexual revolution (an assessment with which I agree, and about which I have written).  What I found interesting in the piece was the explicit linkage between polls finding a decline in overall levels of happiness since the 1950s and the "new normal" of sexual liberation.

The piece notes that in a recent survey, more than half the respondents answered that being in a stable relationship makes them happy. Obviously, the incidence of committed relationships has radically decreased since the sexual revolution's onset.

The author argues that the rising generation of young people will behave "more sensibly" than the baby boomers did (a low standard, to be sure!). That's probably true. Certainly, it's devoutly to be hoped -- because it won't be long before  the moral codes that yielded a more traditional way of life completely fade from popular memory. It's hard enough to re-establish more stringent behavior codes even when a society can remember them; it's nearly impossible once they have faded from living memory.

So is it true, readers, that the sexual revolution succeeded in changing our behavior without changing our essential natures, and the decreased level of happiness is our natural response to that phenomenon? And do you think a more traditional moral code will ever again prevail?

The Houston Chronicle's "Texas on the Potomac" blog looks at the opening of the new legislative session in Austin through the prism of a certain governor's potential presidential ambitions:

The legislative session that opens Tuesday will give Gov. Rick Perry a chance to burnish his credentials if he chooses to make another run for president in 2016.

But some are hard-pressed to imagine a session — or anything else — good enough to make voters forget his disastrous White House race that limped to an end just about a year ago ...

Perry turned into a punch line after a series of campaign missteps punctuated by his inability to remember all the federal departments he wanted to shut down, a debate lapse that entered the big leagues of embarrassing moments when he gave up with an “oops.”

So, can he pull it off? For my money, the answer is no. As much as I respect Perry's accomplishments as Governor of Texas -- and as fervently as I hoped he might be the conservative white knight in last year's presidential race -- it seems to me that there's a clear trend where tarnished reputations are concerned: you can come back from scandal ... but not from becoming an all-purpose joke.

It's the reason Dan Quayle, even as a former Vice President, was never able to mount a presidential campaign that anyone took seriously. It's the reason that a majority of the country would never consider pulling the lever for Sarah Palin. And, lest our friends on the left think it a partisan affair, it's the reason that a Joe Biden presidential campaign will never amount to anything more than the world's longest SNL sketch. Once people have decided you're not a serious enough figure to be president -- rightly or wrongly -- they don't tend to change their minds.

Of course, I could be wrong. Do you think he could pull it off?

In his Wall Street Journal interview with John Boehner, writer Steve Moore didn’t bury the lede:

What stunned House Speaker John Boehner more than anything else during his prolonged closed-door budget negotiations with Barack Obama was this revelation: “At one point several weeks ago,” Mr. Boehner says, “the president said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.’”

On the face of it, such a statement is completely ridiculous — and a bit scary. Just have a look at the alternative fiscal scenario from the Congressional Budget Office.

In it, the CBO assumes a) Medicare’s payment rates for physicians remain unchanged from the current amounts, and b) the sequester’s automatic spending reductions required by the Budget Control Act don’t take effect — although the original caps on discretionary appropriations in that law remain in place.

Under this scenario, federal spending would average 23% of GDP over the next decade — climbing as the decade drew to a close. Not only is that level of spending three percentage points higher than average federal spending from 1987-2007, it represents a sustained level of spending unheard of in US history. The only comparable period outside of World War Two was the 1980s military buildup, when spending averaged 22.7% of GDP from 1981-1986. But at least that budget binge set the stage for lower defense spending in the future. It was temporary.

The current spendathon shows no end in sight. As long as the US can keep borrowing, it goes on and on and on — and up and up and up. The CBO:

Indeed, when you look at what drives US budget deficits over the next decade, it’s spending that’s above normal vs. tax revenue right at its historical average of around 18%.

Now, we find out later in the piece that President Obama does qualify his curious statement:

The president’s insistence that Washington doesn’t have a spending problem, Mr. Boehner says, is predicated on the belief that massive federal deficits stem from what Mr. Obama called “a health-care problem.” Mr. Boehner says that after he recovered from his astonishment—”They blame all of the fiscal woes on our health-care system”—he replied: “Clearly we have a health-care problem, which is about to get worse with ObamaCare. But, Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.” He repeated this message so often, he says, that toward the end of the negotiations, the president became irritated and said: “I’m getting tired of hearing you say that.”

A few thoughts on that:

1. It reaffirms that health care reform was about creating an new entitlement, not getting health care spending under control.

2. I assume what Obama means is that the long-term debt problem is due to Medicare and Medicaid, not discretionary spending. And he’s more or less right about that. According to CBO’s alternate fiscal scenario, the US will spend 35.7% of GDP in 2037 vs. 22% in 2012. Where does that 13.7 percentage point rise come from?

– Medicare spending increases by 3.0 percentage points, from 3.7% to 6.7%

– Medicaid spending increases by 2.0 percentage points, from 1.7% to 2.7%

– Social Security spending increases by 1.2 percentage points, from 5.0% to 6.2%

– Interest on the debt increases by 8.1 percentage points, from 1.4% to 9.5%

And discretionary spending? It actually falls by 2.0 percentage points, from 11.6% to 9.6%.

3. But health care spending by the government is still spending. Obama’s rhetorical legerdemain is unhelpful. It obscures the reality that how the federal government spends health care dollars — such as through fee-for-service Medicare — contributes to health care cost inflation by encouraging overuse of pricey health care services. It’s not some exogenous factor. We should be injecting choice and competition into the system wherever possible.

4. If Washington wants Main Street to trust it on entitlement reform, it should use discretionary spending as a proof-of-concept that it can improve the efficiency of government programs. Don’t just cut it across the board, reform and modernize it. Bring on the Romney Commission.

Is spending a problem? It sure is, Mr. President.

Remember how during the Bush administration, Democrats and the port side in general mobilized against efforts to reform Social Security by telling us that there is no crisis?

Sure you do. Anyway, you will be displeased to know that the reassurances are just not true:

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, Social Security ran a deficit in 2010: It spent $49 billion dollars more in benefits than it received in revenues, and drew from its trust funds to cover the shortfall. Those funds — a $2.7 trillion buffer built in anticipation of retiring baby boomers — will be exhausted by 2033, the government currently projects.

Those facts are widely known. What’s not is that the Social Security Administration underestimates how long Americans will live and how much the trust funds will need to pay out — to the tune of $800 billion by 2031, more than the current annual defense budget — and that the trust funds will run out, if nothing is done, two years earlier than the government has predicted.

We reached these conclusions, and presented them in an article in the journal Demography, after finding that the government’s methods for forecasting Americans’ longevity were outdated and omitted crucial health and demographic factors. Historic declines in smoking and improvements in the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease are adding years of life that the government hasn’t accounted for. (While obesity has rapidly increased, it is not likely, at this point, to offset these public health and medical successes.) More retirees will receive benefits for longer than predicted, supported by the payroll taxes of relatively fewer working adults than projected.

Remarkably, since Social Security was created in 1935, the government’s forecasting methods have barely changed, even as a revolution in big data and statistics has transformed everything from baseball to retailing.

This omission can be explained by the fact that the Office of the Chief Actuary, the branch of the Social Security Administration that is responsible for the forecasts, is almost exclusively composed of, well, actuaries — without any serious representation of statisticians or social science methodologists. While these actuaries are highly responsible and careful and do excellent work curating and describing the data that go into the forecasts, their job is not to make statistical predictions. Yet the agency badly needs such expertise.

With considerable help from the actuaries and other officials at the Social Security Administration, we unearthed how the agency makes mortality forecasts and uses them to predict the program’s solvency. We learned that the methods are antiquated, subjective and needlessly complicated — and, as a result, are prone to error and to potential interference from political appointees. This may explain why the agency’s forecasts have, at times, changed significantly from year to year, even when there was little change in the underlying data.

A number of solutions are offered to solve the Social Security crisis, but unfortunately, none of them encompass allowing for even the partial use of alternative individual investment accounts. Yes, it can be risky to invest your money in the stock market, as the financial crisis has shown. But over the long run, people who invest in the market have seen excellent returns. Closing our eyes and ears to this fact when considering how to reform Social Security all but guarantees that our response to the crisis will be wholly inadequate.

Michelle Rhee, the gutsy former chancellor of Washington D.C. schools, has a tendency to make the education establishment's life harder by doing something all too rare: holding them to account.

Now out of Washington and living here in California with her husband, Sacramento Mayor (and former NBA star) Kevin Johnson, Rhee runs an organization called Students First, which advocates for education reform based around the needs of the kids rather than the unions or the bureaucracy. 

Students First has just released its first state policy report card, which evaluates the states based on a wide variety of reformist criteria -- emphasizing teacher excellence (read: having the ability to let the underperformers go), meaningful teacher evaluations, educational choice, correlation between pay and performance, accountability measures, and pensions among them. The news is sadly, but predictably dismal.

Judging on an A-F scale, not a single state in the union received an A grade. Only two fell in the B range: Florida (thank you, Jeb Bush) and Louisiana (thank you, Bobby Jindal). The vast majority fell into the C and D range, while an unconscionable 11 received Fs: California, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Alabama, West Virginia, Vermont, and New Hampshire.

What are conditions like in your state's schools? Have any accountability measures been proposed or implemented? And what could be done to make your state's schools better? 

The Zeitguide keeps track of these things so you don't have to.  There's a neologism emerging, and I think it's pretty good.  From Zeitguide:

ADD VUCA —volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity—to SNAFU and FUBAR as the latest military acronym to work its way into the civilian vocabulary. It’s in vogue particularly among business leaders, and given the fiscal cliff, the euro crisis, shrinking Chinese GDP, flash stock crashes, and DOA IPOs, it’s easy to see why.

Problem is, there’s no VUCA operating template. The only consistent corporate behavior we’ve seen: hunkering down, reflected in a hesitation to invest, hire, or buy into anything. But hemming and hawing doesn’t help the bottom line, either. As Winston Churchill noted: “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.”

I like VUCA.  I don't like the way it sounds, but I'll get used to it.  Just as I'll get used to a world that's a lot more vuca than ever.

As expected, President Obama has nominated former U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel, a Republican, to be Secretary of Defense. The media are trumpeting this pick as a bold, in-your-face move from Obama. ABC News:

Hagel is in many ways an ideal pick for Obama, giving nod to bipartisanship while appointing someone with a demonstrated commitment to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan and to retooling and economizing the Pentagon bureaucracy for the future.

But the nomination of Hagel to replace outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is also politically charged, expected to trigger a brutal confirmation fight in the Senate, where a bipartisan group of critics has already lined up against the pick.

Now, I'm one of those right-leaning folks who opposed the Iraq War. Hagel supported it but opposed the surge effort and that's a big reason that some conservatives began to distrust him. He's also under fire for referring to U.S. supporters of Israel as "the Jewish lobby" and some anti-gay comments made about the appointment of a homosexual ambassador during the Clinton administration. The media keep referring to Hagel as a bipartisan pick. He's only really bipartisan in the sense that he has opponents on both sides of the aisle.

The joke about Hagel, even in Nebraska, was that he was the Senator from France. But I knew folks who worked for him back in the Senate and I always found it interesting that they really didn't like him as a person.

What I'm worried about, as Daniel Larison puts it over at the American Conservative, is "The Ever-Shrinking Republican Foreign Policy Tent." Is there really not room in that party for folks who oppose widespread intervention in global conflicts?

But what do the Ricochetti think? I'm far more disappointed that the joke John Kerry is nominated for Secretary of State, to be honest.

The other big nominee is counterterrorism advisor John Brennan as the new CIA director, replacing David Petraeus.

David Cameron apparently thinks that the Beatles celebrated the taxman:

The world’s most powerful leaders must mount a concerted effort to prevent multinational companies such as Starbucks and Amazon legally avoid large corporation tax bills, David Cameron will urge in his role as president of the G8.

The Prime Minister vowed to make “damn sure” that multinational firms paid their fair share of tax on their UK operations.

He is to use Britain’s presidency of the G8 group of the most industrialised nations, which began this week, to discuss ways of stopping global companies moving their money through different jurisdictions to minimise tax payments.

HM Revenue & Customs has been accused of being “too lenient” towards big businesses that indulge in aggressive tax planning. The credibility of HMRC and the tax system rests on it becoming “more aggressive and assertive in confronting corporate tax avoidance”, the chair of the Public Accounts Committee, Margaret Hodge, said last month.

Mr Cameron says a crackdown can only be effective if countries around the world act collectively to tackle abuses. Britain, along with Germany and France, has asked the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development to investigate whether tax loopholes can be closed.

He signalled his determination to confront global corporations during an appearance in Lancashire before business leaders and entrepreneurs. Asked why “Starbucks and Amazon” were allowed to avoid paying large corporation tax bills despite their extensive British presence, he replied: “We have got to crack that, you’re absolutely right.

I’m sure that this kind of bluster makes Britons happy, but a smart government would look at the efforts being expended by large companies to avoid paying corporation taxes and wonder whether perhaps that kind of behavior is a sign that corporation taxes are too high. A smart government might consider lowering corporation taxes so as to remove incentives for companies to go through Rube Goldbergesque machinations in order to lessen their tax liabilities, thus possibly attracting the presence of more companies—and coincidentally, more jobs—into the country being governed by that smart government. A smart government might be struck by the idea that lowering corporation taxes could make it less necessary for that government to spend so much time, money and resources in enforcing the tax laws, because if taxes are lowered to a reasonable level, companies will find it easier and cheaper to pay the taxes instead of trying to find ways around the tax laws.

Can companies abuse tax laws? Certainly. Should pro-free market governments be instinctively pro-corporation/company/big business? Of course not; we don’t want government to enable corporate subsidies and rent-seeking on the part of business. But that doesn’t lessen the burden on Cameron’s government—and on other governments for that matter *coughObamaadministrationcough*—to be smart in how they craft and implement tax laws.

....to kill his son's on-line character.  Apparently, that was the only way to get the kid to join the real world.  From The Next Web:

What would you do if your adult son was playing video games all day instead of looking for work? Well, one Chinese father resorted to desperate measures when he reportedly hired in-game hitmen to attack his son whenever he logged on to his favorite game, according to the People’s Daily.

After being killed repeatedly in an online game, 23-year-old Xiao Feng figured out that the high-level griefers had been put up to the task by his dad, who says he hoped the trick would cause his son to lose interest in the game. Xiao Feng maintains that he’s not going to settle for just any job and that he hasn’t found the right fit yet.

Two immediate responses:  1) It's rather brilliant of the father, and suggests that the time has arrived when both parent and child are on-line game enthusiasts.  And 2) It's enormously comforting to hear that in China, young people are just as feckless and entitled as they are here.  He hasn't "found the right fit yet?"  Doesn't sound very Confucian to me.  Sounds, in fact, like the Chinese-American trade balance is tipping in our favor:  they send us iPhones, we send them the feel-good vocabulary of indolence.

We might win this trade war after all.  

• 
  Lawmakers in Washington averted the fiscal cliff at the last minute, when Vice President Joe Biden intervened to shepherd negotiations – which is a bit like an action movie where everyone looks doomed until Abe Vigoda sweeps in to save the day.

• Police in Washington D.C. announced that they are investigating “Meet the Press” host David Gregory after he brandished an illegal gun magazine on an episode of the Sunday morning talk show. In response, a number of CNN hosts began firing off RPGs on air in a desperate attempt for someone, somewhere to pay attention to them.

• The French Conseil Constitutionnel declared President Francois Hollande’s sweeping tax increases on the rich unconstitutional. While critics reveled in Hollande’s defeat, legal analysts noted that the ruling hinged on a technicality, with the Council calling for any future tax increases to abide by French tradition and place more emphasis on “existential angst, ennui, and cigarettes.”

• Venezuelan officials announced that President Hugo Chavez is under close medical watch – and perhaps even facing death -- because of a “severe lung infection.” What followed was an unprecedented and touching display of support, with Venezuelans of all stripes publicly sending their well-wishes for the continued health of the virus.

• In continued testimony to the ineffectiveness of California government, the Golden State rang in the new year by implementing over 800 new laws, none of which prohibited “Chelsea Lately” from being taped on its soil.

• New Jersey Governor Chris Christie launched a blistering attack on House Republicans for holding up an aid bill intended to help states affected by Hurricane Sandy because it contained excessive spending. Christie’s aides later had to apologize for the governor’s bombastic behavior, noting that it stemmed from a miscommunication. “We should’ve been clearer,” one aide said. “We simply told him that the GOP was holding up the release of pork. That’s when he lost it.”

• Popular blogger Andrew Sullivan announced that he will be adopting a paid subscription model for readers going forward. The move is widely believed to provide further evidence of Sullivan’s shift to the left, as its success would provide decisive evidence of the irredeemable failure of capitalism.

• In response to calls for his deportation, television talk show host Piers Morgan suggested that he may leave the U.S. voluntarily if the nation doesn’t tighten its gun laws. CNN executives could not be reached for comment, as they were all busy making donations to the National Rifle Association’s PAC.

• An announcement from Kim Kardashian and Kanye West revealed that the makers of the the Mayan calendar had simply made a minor mathematical error.

• Obama Administration officials disclosed that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner is expected to leave his post in late January. Geithner will reportedly pursue opportunities in the private sector, which is generally interpreted to mean that he understands the need to leave office before casting is finished for the upcoming “Hobbit” sequels.

• In an appearance on “The Tonight Show,” former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told Jay Leno that, “Chris Christie does not have a weight problem. He has a water retention problem.” Asked to respond, Christie noted that Schwarzenegger has not had marital problems, just housekeeper retention problems.

• Al Gore, hero of the left, made $70 million by selling an American company to an overseas media conglomerate that’s hostile to civil liberties and fed by oil money, all while trying to avoid tax liability. Inquiries to the Obama Administration as to whether Gore had been responsible for any of his employees’ wives dying of cancer had not been answered at press time.

• The government of Argentina announced that it will distribute 82 million free condoms to its citizenry in 2013. Reports on the development have led to some confusion in the media, as this is now the second major public effort to be dubbed the “Clinton Global Initiative.”

I noticed a couple of things while driving up from Hannibal, Missouri into Iowa last weekend. The first was that the bottom had completely fallen out of the thermometer and taken the temperature with it. Second -- and there is really no polite way to describe this observation -- when the temperature drops below 18 degrees Fahrenheit, one can actually see cow flatulence.  I know it's not a savory thought. Nor is the phenomenon easy to see. In fact, its almost as elusive as a partial lunar eclipse, or the backbone of a Republican, but I saw it just the same. Which, of course, set me to thinking about what passes from Washington DC these days.

People from both political camps are looking sideways at the emissions from inside the Beltway and wondering what, if anything, can be done alleviate the smell. Louis Michael Seidman, a constitutional Law professor at Georgetown University, has taken great heat for his recent New York Times editorial, "Let's Give Up On The Constitution," but I think the uproar is in some way undeserved. At least he put his cards on the table, unlike the looming effrontery scheduled for January 20th, when Barack Obama will place his hand on a Bible and swear an oath that he'll violate the first chance he gets. Of course, Obama used to publicly lament the Constitution's shortcomings, back when it was profitable. But these days he swears allegiance to it in speech, and then feeds it to the shredder.  

Some plain talk from Professor Seidman:  

As the nation teeters on the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken. But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.  

Question: Who is insisting on constitutional fidelity? Democrats? Not hardly. Ask Nancy Pelosi what constitutional provision authorizes the federal administration of health care and she'll stare at you like a big-eyed flower child on bad buds. Ask a Republican about obedience to the Constitution and he'll immediately begin selling as much of it away as required to make you say nice things about him. In fact, one could make the point that our "system of government is broken" in exact proportion to our abandonment of the Constitution, but that hardly advances the good professor's point, which he explains thus:  

Consider, for example, the assertion by the Senate minority leader last week that the House could not take up a plan by Senate Democrats to extend tax cuts on households making $250,000 or less because the Constitution requires that revenue measures originate in the lower chamber. Why should anyone care? ….

Well, for starters, since senators were originally selected by the states, the House of Representatives most closely reflected the will of the people and, given that they stand for election every two years, they are also the most responsive to the people. So it made perfect sense that measures extracting money from the people would have to originate from that part of government most accountable to them. But Seidman is a constitutional law professor, so he already knew that, right? His point -- and he should be applauded for making it -- is that the Constitution is "archaic," "idiosyncratic," and contains provisions that are "downright evil."  Though, come to think of it, "evil" is a pretty archaic term for our enlightened age, isn't it? Why such exclusionary language? Never mind. He's a professor, he's smart, and he's getting to the nub of things. For example: 

Our obsession with the Constitution has saddled us with a dysfunctional political system, kept us from debating the merits of divisive issues and inflamed our public discourse.  Instead of arguing about what is to be done, we argue about what James Madison might have wanted done 225 years ago. …

What divisive issues? The idea that sovereign individuals are to be divided into groups and that certain groups of people are to function as harvesters of money for the aggrandizement of other groups? The idea that that which you create with your hands or with your mind is not your own, but rather Barack Obama's, or Harry Reid's to dispense as they please? What is divisive about these issues, other than that they run contrary to the basic nature of man, which is that of liberty?  Or perhaps, the root of this division was identified long ago by John Locke, who observed that, "[W]henever the legislators endeavour to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people…"  But Locke has been dead for a long time and so the statute of limitations on his wisdom has expired, yielding inexorably to the illuminations of Professor Seidman who observes that:

What has preserved our political stability is not a poetic piece of parchment, but entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, the sense that we are one nation and must work out our differences. No one can predict in detail what our system of government would look like if we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation, and I harbor no illusions that any of this will happen soon. But even if we can't kick our constitutional-law addiction, we can soften the habit a bit.  

Here, one wishes the Professor had hitched up his courage a notch and taken his argument on tour. If we're going to disconnect the government from legal restraint, why not disconnect the people too? Are we not all equal after all? If the government isn't bound by the law, why should the people be bound by the government? For that matter, weren't the Ten Commandments superseded by the advent of the condom?  

But, you might ask, what is to halt the descent into anarchy? Here, Professor Seidman rushes in to say:

This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and protections against government deprivation of life, liberty or property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. …

While we appreciate the professor's dispensation, we are entitled to ask  how those protections square with confiscatory tax schemes or administrative agencies acting as unaccountable legislatures? This could turn divisive, couldn't it? But I'm getting in the way again. Seidman sez: 

Nor should we have a debate about, for instance, how long the president's term should last or whether Congress should consist of two houses. Some matters are better left settled, even if not in exactly the way we favor. Nor, finally, should we have an all-powerful president free to do whatever he wants. Even without constitutional fealty, the president would still be checked by Congress and by the states. There is something to be said for an elite body like the Supreme Court with the power to impose its views of political morality on the country. 

And why wouldn't we debate presidential terms, or the composition of the legislature? Even the Constitution, with all its supposed draconian restraints, contains an amendment process. But in his world, the professor, who can't stand restraints, places certain things off-limits. Why?  Because in his world, the rule of law is supplanted by the rule of men. Men who, though they may fashion themselves as supremely gifted to order our lives, are just as fallen as the rest of us, and just as susceptible to the seductions of power. His is a world in which life, liberty, and property are supposedly sacrosanct, but which also contains a "Supreme Court with the power to impose its views on the morality of society." And when those ideas come into conflict, as they inevitably will, what refuge is left to the free man?

The point of the American Revolution was to free the individual from the arbitrary rule of men.  When the professor writes of the glorious possibilities that await if only, "… we freed ourselves from the shackles of constitutional obligation," he gets it exactly backwards in his monumental failure to understand that it is not the people who are shackled by the Constitution, but rather the government, which, after all, has the sanction to use deadly force against its citizens to accomplish its ends. The Constitution is the last impediment, before physical resistance, to the despot. That bit of parchment, written by men of the Enlightenment, is historically relevant not because it attempted to anticipate all the technological advancements of society, but because it addressed that which is unchanging in human nature. It is predicated on another outdated notion; that of virtue. As another old dead white guy, Montesquieu, wrote: 

When that virtue ceases, ambition enters those hearts that can admit it, and avarice enters them all. Desires change their objects: that which one used to love, one loves no longer. One was free under the laws, one wants to be free against them. Each citizen is like a slave who has escaped from his master's house. What was a maxim is now called severity;  what was a rule is now called constraint; what was vigilance is now called fear. There, frugality, not the desire to possess, is avarice.

To which one might add; what was called the wisdom of the human experience, is now called "evil" by tenured and presumptuous academics. But, like the cow in 18 degree weather, at least the professor had the gumption to let 'er fly -- and no one can take that away from him.