In my other life, I’m a food writer for The Boston Herald – a cultural raisin in the sun in the far-left world of food journalism here in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

Voltaire

So I was shocked, during a dinner the other night with a bunch of folks in the biz, when one local restaurant critic declared that he had “a very illiberal” view of abortion: he was pro-life! Several table-mates nearly spit up their merlot and brie.

I stood by his side, but not by his phraseology. “It’s a liberal view if you’re the baby,” I said, making my point but not many friends in the process.

The incident highlighted an issue that’s been eating at me for quite some time: the misuse of the word “liberal” in the current political lexicon.

As you know, the American cultural divide is defined by two terms: on the right we have “conservatives” and on the left we have “liberals.”

There’s only one problem: the leftists are anything but “liberal.” In fact, I stopped using the term “liberal” to describe leftists quite some time ago. I call them what they are: “leftists,” i.e., people who espouse weakness in the face of dictators overseas and favor a dictatorial big-government doctrine here at home.

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The Washington think tank New America Foundation has been reporting on drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq for quite some time and its tally of kills by U.S. drones reveals an interesting thing. It shows that drone kills under President Obama are far and away higher than those under Bush.

Reliable numbers of those killed by U.S. drones are obviously hard to come by. Strikes are deep in unfriendly territory and subject to obfuscation by both a U.S. government that isn’t too keen on reporting kills as well as its enemies that try to downplay the strikes in order to discredit their effectiveness. Because of this the NAF reports a range between which the truth may lie.

For instance, in these first few months of 2010 NAF reports that so far between 141 and 240 people have been killed by U.S. predator drones. This includes “collateral damage” as well as the deaths of actual terrorists.

That is a pretty wide span, to be sure. But if we choose some middle point between the NAF’s estimates of predator drone kills we can see that during Obama’s year in office drone kills have gone up precipitously.

Between 2009 and today a middling estimate of drone kills clocks in at 692. However, according to the NAF the kills tallied by U.S. drones during the Bush years — all of the Bush years — is about 392.

The kills during this one year of Obama’s term in office seem to have doubled compared to the number during the Bush years. I’ll say that again: in just one year Obama has doubled Bush’s drone kill rate.

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I just made a donation in Michelle Malkin’s honor to the GOP.

Let me say right up front, I’m not a religious guy.  I support Republicans because they are the party of Small Business, they are the party of Liberty.

On the moral stuff, the personal stuff, the family stuff, I’m a State’s Rights guy.  The Federal government isn’t meant to concern itself with social policy.   You don’t like something, you can vote with your feet.

Also, I like strippers.  Not so much strippers themselves, or even strip clubs anymore (I’m getting old), but I like living in a country unafraid of pole dancing.   And in my youth, I was certainly comfy with two drink minimums and single moms working their way through college.  In 1996, I picked up a truck load of surfers in Newport Beach, drove them to go vote for Bob Dole, and then we high tailed it to Mermaids next to the John Wayne Airport.

Life isn’t all debauchery.  Character still counts.   Everyone doesn’t have to be me.  So unless they are knocking on my door, or trying to teach my kid evolution is a lie, Christians don’t bother me in the slightest.   I know many Christians are my brother in the land of live and let live.

Growing up, my favorite Republicans were Roger Stone and Dick Morris…  this is my Republican party.

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I have always been bothered by the blue-collar mentality plaguing our public schools.  For the longest time, an overwhelming majority of teachers have rallied around the collectively bargained union flag, supported by union leaders that see their members more as steelworkers than the college-educated professionals they are.

It’s a bizarre scenario that directly impacts not only today’s students by contributing to sliding student achievement when compared to their global peers. But also promotes a trend toward lower academic standards that could be detrimental to America’s future.

An April 2009 study of global education showed the United States ranked 25^th in mathematics by international standards, behind such countries as the Czech Republic, Iceland, and Hungary.

Conversely, when it came to spending per point earned by students on international tests, the U.S. finished first.

We’re clearly not getting our money’s worth.

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I don’t know about you, but my benefits are shrinking and my wages have been reduced for 2010. And I certainly won’t be seeing any major increase in my salary this year.  My employer is struggling in this economy.  I know it, I see the sales and operating numbers.  Amazingly, no one in our company has complained once about the state of their salaries and benefits.  And after a recent round of layoffs, we’re all working two and three people’s jobs, too.  But we get it, we’re all a team, and together we have to do what we can to pitch in and help cut costs during a rough patch in time.  That’s just how business works.

Every single friend, family member, and neighbor I know is in the exact same position.

That’s why so many of us are appalled at the behavior of some of the union bosses these days.  Even some of the most ardent union defenders I know (the few people who typically argue with me over union policy) have had enough with all the headlines like this:

“As National Bargaining for 100,000 Union Members at Kaiser Permanente Begins… SEIU-UHW Members Tell Kaiser: Keep Your Hands Off Our Healthcare Benefits”

And they have also had enough of behavior like this:

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Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal editorial highlighted the baby steps Illinois is taking toward enacting public employee pension reform, noting that this could be the “start of a nationwide backlash against the scandal of runaway public pensions.”

State government employees in Illinois receive generous defined-benefit pension plans with compounded annual cost of living increases. As of August 2009, 536 Illinois public employee retirees earned a pension of more than $100,000. Former state employee (and now U.S. Senator) Roland Burris received a pension payment of $121,747 in 2009. You can look up the individual pension payments for state retirees at IllinoisOpenGov.org.

In response to the public’s growing frustration with Illinois’s habitual fiscal mismanagement, the General Assembly passed a pension reform bill that keeps the defined-benefit structure but institutes a benefit cap, requires an older retirement age, and prohibits double dipping. Governor Pat Quinn has yet to sign the bill, but he called for similar reforms in his March budget blueprint.

As I pointed out in the Wall Street Journal editorial, what the legislature passed were the bare minimum reforms. They only apply to newly hired employees, not existing employees.

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As we watch Obama practice Chicago-style politics, it’s time to answer the question the old media ignores. Who were the key people in the Chicago Machine who helped advance Obama to power? We’ll start at the top.

In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley gets the spotlight while Alderman Edward Burke runs the show. Burke is Chicago’s longest serving Alderman, first elected in 1969.  He chairs the City’s Finance Committee.  He also chairs the Judicial Slating Committee for the Cook County Democrat Party. Since there are no Republican judges at the circuit level, Burke is de facto head of the Judicial Branch of Chicago’s government. Burke was an early Obama supporter.

Burke’s campaign chest is impressive. In 2008, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that Burke “has more money in his four campaign funds than the combined total of all 49 other Chicago aldermen, more even than Mayor Daley’s $2.9 million.”

The City of Chicago website acknowledges Burke’s power:

As Chairman of the City Council’s powerful Committee on Finance, Alderman Burke holds the city’s purse strings and is responsible for all legislative matters pertaining to the city’s finances, including municipal bonds, taxes and revenue matters. Alderman Burke became Chairman for the second time in 1989. He previously served from 1983 to 1987.

Anyone aspiring to a position of power in the Cook County Democrat Party must have Burke’s approval.  He’s the Machine’s gatekeeper.

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Today, in 1913, the 17th Amendment, providing for the direct election of Senators, became law. Previously, Senators were elected by their state Legislatures, which provided a check on the federal government. In just about a century after enactment, Al Franken would become a US Senator.

A Washington Post columnist reports on a group of limousine liberals who are lobbying to pay more taxes. Of course, there’s no law that prevents them from writing big checks to the government and voluntarily paying more, so what they’re really lobbying for is higher taxes on the vast majority of investors and entrepreneurs who don’t want more of their income confiscated by the clowns in Washington and squandered on corrupt and inefficient programs.

I debated one of these guilt-ridden, silver-spoon, trust-fund rich people on CNN last year and never got an answer when I asked him why he wanted to pull up the ladder of opportunity for the rest of us who would like to become rich some day. Here’s what the Post reported on the issue:

A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want to pay more taxes. “I’m in favor of higher taxes on people like me,” declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about “my absurdly low tax rates.” “We’re calling on other wealthy taxpayers to join us,” said paper-mill heir Mike Lapham, “to send the message to Congress and President Obama that it’s time to roll back the tax cuts on upper-income taxpayers.” …”The Obama plan we don’t think goes far enough,” Lapham protested. … They are among 50 families with net assets of more than $1 million to take a “tax fairness” pledge — donating the amount they saved from Bush tax cuts to organizations fighting for the repeal of the Bush tax cuts. According to a study by Spectrem Group, 7.8 million households in the United States have assets of more than $1 million — so that leaves 7,799,950 millionaire households yet to take the pledge. …Of course, if millionaires really want to pay higher taxes, there’s nothing stopping them. The Treasury Department Web site even accepts contributions by credit card to pay the public debt. …His donation will, however, ease the sense of guilt that comes with great wealth, described poignantly by the millionaires: “In 1865, my great-great-grandfather Samuel Pruyn founded a paper mill on the banks of the Hudson River in Glens Falls, New York,” Lapham explained. Judy Pigott, an industrial heiress on the call, added her wish that her income, “mostly unearned income, be taxed at a rate that returns to the common good that I have received by a privilege.” Confessed Hollender, who now runs the Seventh Generation natural products company: “I grew up in Manhattan on Park Avenue in a 10-room apartment.”

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Last month, Phil Kerpen wrote an insightful piece here at BigGovernment.com about “The Stimulus Bill’s Hidden Attack on What We Eat, Drink, and Smoke.” In it, he detailed yet another absurd (and angering) use of so-called “stimulus” funds to help lobby for restrictions and higher taxes on the nanny state’s favorite targets: unhealthy foods, sweetened beverages, tobacco, and other disfavored products that your friendly bureaucrat doesn’t think you ought to enjoy. Digging through the Health and Human Services Department’s stimulus website raises some serious questions about the $650 million in taxpayer money being spent on this program, called “Communities Putting Prevention to Work” (CPPW).

Several grant descriptions suggest that this funding may be in violation of guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control, through which the CPPW program is administered. The CDC’s lobbying restriction guideline states in part that, “no part of CDC appropriated funds, shall be used…to support or defeat legislation pending before the Congress or any State or local legislature.” And yet, that’s exactly what several of the grantees plan to use the money for.

For example, Jefferson County, Alabama plans to spend $7 million on a “tobacco use prevention and cessation initiative [that] will promote changes in policies to reduce smoking opportunities and reduce access to tobacco products.” Pretty straightforward, that. They plan to lobby for more smoking bans and restricting access to legal tobacco products.

New York City, for its part, plans to spend $15.5 million “work[ing] to set policies and create environments that reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages and overly salted foods.” One New York legislator is already trying to “create an environment” where restaurants are prohibited by law from using SALT in their food. Yes, salt, the substance without which virtually every food on Earth would be inedible.

Perhaps my favorite, our nation’s capital is spending $4.9 million on a program called “LiveWell DC,” which will “explore limiting tobacco access through zoning/license restrictions, restrict point-of-purchase advertising of tobacco products, support the elimination of price discounts, and provide social support through quitline and other cessation services.” Quite the laundry list there.

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Is it time to eliminate America’s large naval fleet?

Did Donald Rumsfeld get it right with an emphasis on small, fast, and flexible?

Naval Postgraduate School professor John Arquilla joins Victor Davis Hanson to discuss these questions and more in the latest episode of Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.

They explore the importance of networks in war-making and how they make enemies elusive, the prolonged failures in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Pentagon’s refusal to continue Rumsfeld’s military strategy and finally the current military landscape and what it means for policy regarding Iran.

Here is the full episode:

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The drinking age in the US has been 21 for more than 20 years.

Today, we all take the drinking age for granted, but should we? In fact, the US is one of only four countries in the world with a drinking age as high as 21—the other three are Indonesia, Mongolia and Palau.

Is the policy working to reduce health and safety issues related to youthful alchohol abuse? Is enforcing the drinking age the best use of scarce public resources? What are the unintended consequences of alcohol prohibition for 18-20 year olds?

Organizations such as Mother Against Drunk Driving (MADD) argue that the drinking age is an effective policy and that the answer to ongoing alcohol related problems for 18-20 year olds is more education and better enforcement.

John McCardell, president of Choose Responsibility, and 135 university presidents and chancellors across the country believe it’s time to take a fresh look at the drinking age. The former president of Middlebury College and the new head of Sewanee/University of the South, McCardell says our current system encourages unsupervised binge drinking.

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Stanley Greenberg and James Carville claim that the Republican Party has peaked too soon. Incredibly, Greenberg says that “when we look back on this, we’re going to say Massachusetts is when 1994 happened.” Stan’s only claim to expertise in the 1994 elections, of course, is that he’s the guy who blew it for the Democrats. Right after that, President Clinton fired both of the flawed consultants and never brought them back again.

Their latest pitch is that the highpoint of the GOP advance was the Scott Brown election and that, from here on, things will “improve slightly” for the Democrats.

Once again, Carville and Greenberg are totally misreading the public mood. Each time the Republican activists battle, they become stronger. Their cyber and grass roots grow deeper. The negatives that attach to so-called “moderate” Democratic incumbents increase. And each time Obama, Reid and Pelosi defy public opinion and use their majorities to ram through unpopular legislation, frustration and anger rise.

Were Obama’s ambitions to slacken, perhaps a cooling-off might eventuate. But soon the socialist financial takeover bill will come on the agenda, followed by amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap-and-trade and card-check unionization. Each bill will trigger its own mobilization of public opposition and add to the swelling coalition of opposition to Obama and his radical agenda.

And, all the while, the deficit will increase, interest rates will rise and unemployment will remain high.

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Just prior to Barack Obama announcing self-imposed conditions on if and when America would use nuclear weapons, he made a North Carolina audience wilt under a 17-minute response to a fairly simple question.

According to a rather humorous blog by the Washington Post’s Anne E. Kornblut, Obama meandered for 17 minutes and 2,500 words in response to a woman wondering if  it was a “wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care” reform.  “We are over-taxed as it is,” she stated.

His best answer, from his perspective, would have simply been to have said, “Yes.”  But he knows that’s not a popular answer.  Instead, he kept  talking,  on and on, to the point where listeners no longer cared about what he was saying or why. They just want him to shut up.

His discursive answer – more than 2,500 words long — wandered from topic to topic, including commentary on the deficit, pay-as-you-go rules passed by Congress, Congressional Budget Office reports on Medicare waste, COBRA coverage, the Recovery Act and Federal Medical Assistance Percentages (he referred to this last item by its inside-the-Beltway name, “F-Map”). He talked about the notion of eliminating foreign aid (not worth it, he said). He invoked Warren Buffett, earmarks and the payroll tax that funds Medicare (referring to it, in fluent Washington lingo, as “FICA”).

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In 1864, the GOP relabeled itself the “National Union Party” in an effort to attract moderate Democrats in support of President Lincoln’s re-election.  To reach out even further to Democrats, the convention dumped the Republican vice president, Hannibal Hamlin, from the ticket and replaced him with a Democrat, Andrew Johnson.  The man most responsible for this tragedy was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Henry Raymond.

A former lieutenant governor, Raymond had founded The New York Times.  He won the chairmanship by arguing that Republicans should shift toward the Democrats.  To that end, he convinced the national convention to nominate a Democrat as Abraham Lincoln’s running mate.  Like his namesake, Andrew Jackson Johnson rose to prominence in Tennessee.  The only southern senator not to go with the Confederacy, Johnson seemed a good prospect for postwar reconciliation, but instead of being a moderate, President Johnson turned out to be a hard-line Democrat.  And, one of his strongest supports was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Henry Raymond.

In August 1866, Johnson tried to divide Republicans by setting up his own party, using the “National Union” name.  The effort failed, because at what was supposed to be the founding convention, nearly all the delegates were Democrats.  One of the few Republicans to attend was the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Henry Raymond.

Republicans knew they had to act quickly.  On September 3, in what amounted to a national convention, delegates from both northern and southern states met in Philadelphia to retake the party.  Charging him with “abandonment of the principles” of the party, the RNC ousted Henry Raymond and elected the governor of New Jersey, Marcus Ward, as the new chairman.

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A federal appeals court — second only to the U.S. Supreme Court in its legal influence — looks to have put a stop to the desire of the Federal Communications Commission to exert its control over the Internet via the Trojan horse of net neutrality rules.

As reported by Big Government’s Capitol Confidential, and also at InfoTech & Telecom News, the United States Circuit Court for the District of Columbia ruled Tuesday that the FCC does not have the inherent authority to regulate the Internet, but must seek such power from Congress. That was the clear message of the court as it sided with Comcast in its long-running dispute with the FCC over the company’s network management practices. From ITTN:

The decision made it clear that the FCC has no authority to force Comcast to stop managing its broadband network as it sees fit—in this case by throttling back the speed of a relative handful of “bandwidth hogs” who use bitTorrent programs to share enormous files. Comcast said it throttled the “hogs” to ensure speedy service for the majority of its customers in 2007, but no longer does so. …

Commonly referred to as Comcast v. FCC, the ruling stated that the FCC’s “ancillary authority” over the broadcast and cable industries “is not the equivalent of untrammeled freedom to regulate activities” on the Internet, too. …

“Instead, the court begins and ends by dismantling the brief of the FCC, rejecting every effort to tie the Commission’s ‘ancillary jurisdiction’ to something—anything!—in the Communications Act that could justify the sanctions.”

Larry Downes, a fellow with the Stanford Law School Center for Internet & Society, notes that the decision can only be seen as a thorough knock-down of the FCC’s position, because “there is not a single reference to any arguments made by Comcast.”

Downes is right. It’s hard to read this decision as anything less than a complete repudiation of the FCC’s attempted power-grab over the Internet. Lefty groups who have been urging strict regulation of the Internet, such as Public Knowledge and Free Press, are quite despondent today — with the latter outfit plainly urging the FCC to ignore the ruling and “re-establish [its] legal authority.” As Capitol Confidential notes, that would entail the FCC reclassifying Internet service providers (ISPs), currently considered a lightly regulated “information service,” under the commission’s much-stricter “Title II” authority. But such a move would also be subject to the legal argument Comcast won here: The FCC would need explicit Congressional authority to do that.

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What leading vacation destination has a warm, temperate climate, villas overlooking the sea, terrific food and drink, and an enormous debt crisis? Greece has been in the news recently because its massive debt is sparking a crisis in the European Union. But I was actually referring to California.

While Greece dominates the headlines, California’s state debt is actually rated as more risky than Greek debt by at least two rating agencies. Although the rating agencies differ in their assessments of Greece and California, Moody’s rating agency gives California a Baa1 while it gives Greece a higher rating—A2. Don’t be mistaken: both ratings are severe warnings from the financial markets to California and Greece that they must get their fiscal house in order. The recent downgrades in California’s debt ratings mean that the state will face much higher costs of borrowing both now and in the future. Similarly, even though both have the euro as their currency, Greece’s borrowing costs are twice that of Germany because of the difference in the two nations’ perceived creditworthiness. And both Greece and California face similar problems attracting lenders to purchase their debt.

In the bond markets, Greece is known as one of the “PIIGS” – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain – countries that joined the euro in 1999 and have faced problems in adjusting and adhering to the strict economic discipline theoretically required of members. These problems may result from the economic union of weaker nations like the PIIGS with fiscally stronger nations like France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Right now, Greece is creating a problem for the European Union (EU). Greece’s national debt compared with the size of its economy, GDP, far exceeds the 60% ratio that is the limit for EU member states to adopt the euro as their currency. It is surprising that our fiscal status has declined so much in recent years that even if the United States wanted to adopt the euro, our federal debt to GDP ratio does not even come close to meeting the minimum criteria.

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Today, in 1933, the prohibition on 3.2% ABV beer was repealed. It was a small step for freedom.

Tomorrow, I have the honor and privilege of welcoming Governor Sarah Palin to my home state of Minnesota, where she will join me on the campaign trail for a rally at the Minneapolis Convention Center. I want to let you know that just because you’re not in the area, it doesn’t mean you can’t take part in the event. The rally will start at 2pm CT, and it will be streaming live on my website:www.michelebachmann.com.

Sean Hannity will also be joining us in Minnesota tomorrow, and he will be filming his TV show right from the rally. I encourage everyone to tune in to Fox News Channel and follow along!

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