After two of the best months a potential presidential candidate could possibly have, the Daily Caller lobbed a grenade at the Palin Camp Sunday night in the form of a John Ziegler piece titled: “The Sarah Palin I Know.” The news here is that Ziegler — a columnist, documentary filmmaker, and radio talk show host who’s probably most famous for being one of Governor Palin’s chief defenders, has come out very publicly to proclaim that she’s not only incapable of defeating Barack Obama in 2012, but also that any potential candidacy on her part could hurt those — like Tim Pawlenty — who are capable of defeating Obama.

In his closing sentence, Ziegler sums up his own piece perfectly:

If Sarah Palin still is the person I thought I knew, then she will do what is best for her cause and country by sitting this one out.

Rather than risk misquoting or taking Ziegler out of context, in the best good-faith effort I can summon, I’m going  to quote directly the substance of the arguments Ziegler makes to back up his bombshell claims. I do, however, encourage you to read the full piece.

1. The MSM Destroyed Palin’s Chance to Beat Obama in 2012

Ziegler: Before I left, I felt I had to give the governor at least one piece of advice. After all, I know how politicians work. They surround themselves with yes-people. No one dares speak up. I figured I’d never get another opportunity like this again, so, with the very best of intentions, I told her: “You have to know, you can’t beat Obama in 2012. The media won’t let you. They won’t let him lose and the narrative about you is too negative to correct in three-and-a-half years.”

The main reason I believe Ziegler is falling into the media’s trap, is based mainly on recent polls from crucial swing states that show Governor Palin well within striking distance of Barack Obama. Not only is Obama unable to hit 50% (bad news for any incumbent), but Palin isn’t even an announced candidate and yet she’s polling within the margin of error. Furthermore, a poll ironically released the same night as Ziegler’s piece, shows that Ziegler might be wrong about the following…

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From TODAY:

In an exclusive interview with TODAY’s Ann Curry that will air on Tuesday’s show, President Barack Obama said that if he were Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner right now, he would resign in the wake of the scandal in which Weiner admitted to sending explicit photos of himself to women online.

“I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,’’ Obama told Curry.

Weiner has been the talk of the nation since he was caught sending lewd photos of himself to various women on multiple social media platforms, prompting the head of the Democratic National Party to call for him to step down and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi to demand an ethics committee investigation.

“When you get to the point where, because of various personal distractions, you can’t serve as effectively as you need to, at the time when people are worrying about jobs, and their mortgages, and paying the bills — then you should probably step back,’’ Obama said. (more…)

I’ve seen this numerous times from the left but was genuinely shocked to see it occur from the right one of our own, a well-known tea party citizen journalist. Jeremy Segel of Rebel Pundit was asking a few questions of Mourdock at a tea party rally when Mourdock’s campaign manager Jim Holden – who also happens to be Indiana’s Deputy Treasurer and General Counsel – appears to make physical contact with Segel and shoves the camera down before later shouting “douchebag!”

I reached out to the Mourdock camp and spoke with his communications director, Chris Conner. I asked whether or not Mourdock felt Holden’s response was an appropriate action.

“The individual didn’t ID himself and there were other people there doing the same thing,” Conner replied. “We felt like he was being overly aggressive and when it was clear that Richard was going to talk to other supporters, the individual wouldn’t stop.”

Except Segel does identify himself and it’s heard on video at 1:36 in. I’m told he was also wearing a Gadsen Flag hat. I’m not exactly sure how a few calm and polite questions wound up being mischaracterized by Mourdock’s camp as “aggressive,” but judging by the video, the only aggression viewers can see is that from Mourdock’s campaign manager – who as General Counsel, should know the law better than he demonstrated.

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In a column about the revolving door between big government and the lobbying world, here’s what the irreplaceable Tim Carney wrote about the waiver process for folks trying to escape the burden of government-run healthcare.

Congress imposes mandates on other entities, but gives bureaucrats the power to waive those mandates. To get such a waiver, you hire the people who used to administer or who helped craft the policies. So who’s the net winner? The politicians and bureaucrats who craft policies and wield power, because this combination of massive government power and wide bureaucratic discretion creates huge demand for revolving-door lobbyists. It’s another reason Obama’s legislative agenda, including bailouts, stimulus, ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, tobacco regulation, and more, necessarily fosters more corruption and cronyism.

This seemed so familiar that I wondered whether Tim was guilty of plagiarism. But he’s one of the best journalists in DC, so I knew that couldn’t be the case.

Then I realized that there was plagiarism, but the politicians in Washington were the guilty parties. As can be seen in this passage from Atlas Shrugged, the Obama Administration is copying from what Ayn Rand wrote – as dystopian parody – in the 1950s.

Nobody professed to understand the question of the frozen railroad bonds, perhaps, because everybody understood it too well. At first, there had been signs of a panic among the bondholders and of a dangerous indignation among the public. Then, Wesley Mouch had issued another directive, which ruled that people could get their bonds “defrozen” upon a plea of “essential need”: the government would purchase the bonds, if it found proof of the need satisfactory. there were three questions that no one answered or asked: “What constituted proof?” “What constituted need?” “Essential-to whom?” …One was not supposed to speak about the men who, having been refused, sold their bonds for one-third of the value to other men who possessed needs which, miraculously, made thirty-three frozen cents melt into a whole dollar, or about a new profession practiced by bright young boys just out of college, who called themselves “defreezers” and offered their services “to help you draft your application in the proper modern terms.” The boys had friends in Washington.

This isn’t the first time the Obama Administration has inadvertently brought Atlas Shrugged to life.

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Sources on Capitol Hill have told Big Government that the House Leadership is pushing for a fast-track vote on radical Patent Reform legislation and the bill could come to the floor as early as this Wednesday. The bill is an affront to conservative values and principles and the Speaker must derail this freight train.

Patent Reform is a long time dream of lobbyists for multinational corporations and Fortune 100 companies looking to get out of the burden of paying inventors for this innovative discoveries. To achieve this goal, the bill will change 250 years of American patent law by turning our constitutional system of “first to invent” into the European version of “first to file.” Under a “first to file” system, lawyers win. Under the American system, inventors and innovators win.

Conservatives have pushed back against this scheme. Phyllis Schafly and Ed Meese are leading the charge on the constitutional principles and last week the Supreme Court signaled their objections are valid. Writing for the Supreme Court in Stanford v. Roche, a patent infringement case Chief Justice John Roberts held that “[s]ince 1790, the patent law has operated on the premise that rights in an invention belong to the inventor.”

In addition to the push to “harmonize” our system with Europe (what’s next the metric system?), the bill contains a special interest handout available only to big banks and Wall Street firms. Section 18 of H.R. 1249 is another billion-dollar bailout for the biggest banks in the nation. Attacking the provision as “special interest legislation, pure and simple,” legal scholar Jonathan Massey argues that it would “shift the cost of patent infringement from financial services firms to the U.S. Treasury,” requiring the public to once again pick up the tab for the banks’ wrongdoing.

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From ABC News:

ABC News’ Ann Compton (@AnnCompton) reports: Through his Press Secretary, President Obama has finally joined the chorus of other Democrats declaring the behavior of Congressman Anthony Weiner a problem.

“The President feels, we feel at the White house this is a distraction,” White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters on board Air Force One when they asked about the unravelling developments. “Obviously as Rep. Weiner has said himself, his behavior was inappropriate. Dishonesty was inappropriate.”

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Judicial Watch’s mission is, in part, to advocate high standards of ethics and morality in our nation’s public life. The Anthony Weiner scandal is but the latest example of how these standards of ethics and morality are so lacking.

Our friend Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government broke the story of the New York Democrat congressman’s sending of unsolicited lewd photographs of himself to women on the Internet, and now it appears he was sending those pictures to underage girls. Weiner, who is married, spent a week lying (rather obviously) about his activities to the public, to his colleagues in Congress, and to virtually every major news outlet. This past Monday, he finally admitted his lies but said he would not resign from Congress. The Democrat leadership is horrified and trying to push him to resign. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi even requested an “ethics” investigation by the House Ethics Committee! Republicans, who have had more than their fair share of scandals, are happy to sit back and watch.

Most of you, Dear Readers, are not from Washington, so I won’t insult you by spending time explaining to you why Weiner should resign. Unfortunately, there is a certain amoral, cynical crowd that thinks no sexual misconduct (or related criminality) warrants resignation from public office. It used to be called the Clinton administration. It is no coincidence that Weiner is close to Clinton and that Weiner seems to consider Clinton his confessor. The Clinton example shows the way for Weiner. It also highlights the rank hypocrisy of liberals in Congress who are screaming for Weiner’s resignation when those same people applauded Bill Clinton on the day of his impeachment.

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After a decade of experimenting with mandates, tax credits and tariffs, a national consensus has been reached that ethanol is just not worth it. Late to arrive at this conclusion are farmers, their Congressional representatives, and presidential candidates eager to win over primary voters—a coalition that has made it nearly impossible to begin unwinding the various policies designed to prop-up ethanol.

The driving force behind U.S. ethanol consumption is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), otherwise known as the ethanol mandate, which was established with the enactment of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.The RFS mandated that a minimum of 4 billion gallons of renewable fuels be used in 2006 and that Americans consume at least 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Two years later, in the midst of the 2008 campaign cycle, Congress passed the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 greatly expanding the RFS mandate. Americans now must consume 36 billion gallons of “renewable fuels” annually by 2022—15 billion gallons of which will be corn ethanol.

This is bad for American consumers. Implicit in the ethanol mandate is the reality that without such a policy, Americans would not use nearly as much ethanol—and for good reason. During most of the past 30 years, ethanol has been more expensive than regular gasoline. Furthermore, ethanol contains one-third less energy than gasoline. This means that if you put one gallon of gasoline in your car and one gallon of ethanol in your friend’s identical model, you’ll go 15 percent farther than your friend. Responding to an increase in the RFS mandate, some automakers are even installing larger gas tanks in vehicles.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Francis Cianfrocca to discuss the claim by DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz that Obama has turned around the U.S. Economy, Michele Bachmann, and whether or not the Fed’s dual mandate should be reconsidered.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Obama Was Able “To Turn The Economy Around”
Debbie Wasserman Schultz: Democrats Turned the Economy Around, Or Something!
‘On the Beach, I Bring von Mises’

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‘How to cure the deficit? Tax, Tax, Tax the Rich!” So goes a popular chant on the streets of Madison, Wisconsin and other capital cities across the country.

Memo to liberals: Been there, done that.

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We are in the throes of the Barack Obama Administration’s systematic, systemic assault of the free market.

Every facet of our nation where private endeavor has brought us to the heights of individual achievement and general populace betterment is now under regulatory attack by this President, his Administrative minions and his Congressional Democrat colleagues.

The health care industry – 1/6 of our economy?  ObamaCare, check.

The Internet industry – another 1/6 of our economy?  Network Neutrality, check.

The financial sector?  Dodd-Frank, check.

Which brings us to the energy industry.

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Candidate Obama promised us that under his plan, “energy prices would necessarily skyrocket.”

On this campaign promise, President Obama has delivered.

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It’s not every day you will see a governmental body, in this case a school board, create competition for itself.  But that’s precisely what the Douglas County, Colorado school board did.

It created a unique, if not unprecedented, voucher program, allowing tax dollars to follow Douglas County students to the school of their choice.

Every single school system in America should adopt this model.  Sadly, parents who need school choice the most tend to live in troubled urban school districts that fight to keep children trapped within geographic boundaries.

But in Douglas County, leaders understand students have a right to the education of their choice, even if it is not within the public system.

John Carson, president of the school board, said recently at a National School Choice Week event celebrating the move: “We all realize that we’ve made two big mistakes in public education.  There’s no choice – or limited choice – there’s not enough competition, and we’ve ceded so much of our children’s education to special interest groups.  And that needs to end.”

Bravo.  If only we had more governmental leaders like Carson, just imagine the improved impression that Americans would have of public education today.

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No, we’re not talking about cuts in the gargantuan federal budget.  We’re talking about the endless array of smothering regulations, budget-busting entitlements, special interest ear-marks, economically regressive taxes and bureaucratic agencies that have been steadily extinguishing the dream, the American Dream, that drew millions to our shores, raised tens of millions out of poverty and created the greatest locus of hope and opportunity the world has ever known. The slow slicing away at American Exceptionalism (as defined by Tocqueville and not by leftist elitists) could be, we think, the political equivalent of the now abandoned Chinese practice of ling chi, the death of a thousand cuts.

Alexis de Tocqueville, that first and truly prescient chronicler of the American experiment, noted in 1835 in his seminal work American Democracy, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

It’s hard to pin point exactly when the first self-inflicted cut of a thousand cuts at the American Dream took place.  Many on the right fear, with ample justification, that President Obama seems determined to deliver the coup de grace to the founders’ vision of America. We should, however, recognize that the process of self destruction, that is (to use Toquieville’s definition) when Congress first discovered it could bribe us with our own money, commenced a very long time ago and can be laid at the feet of a wide variety of special interests, and their political enablers of all stripes and from all parties. We are not the first generation to have abused, bent and corrupted the governing model that made America great, but we very well may be the last generation that can right America’s course.

And if we are losing our way, perhaps, we should revisit from whence we came.

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Today, in 1997, Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing.

BigGovernment has learned from a confidential source on Capitol Hill that, starting tomorrow, Rep. Weiner’s DC staff will depart for other Congressional offices. According to our source, staff from Democrat leadership assembled Rep. Weiner’s staff and offered to assist them finding positions in other offices. Finding positions for everyone in Weiner’s DC office could take a week or two.

“Leadership said they understood that the staff had been lied to,” our source told BigGovernment. “But, they appreciated that the staff had been troopers and wouldn’t be left without jobs. They also made it clear that they didn’t think Rep. Weiner would be back in Congress.”

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Like a wily serpent lurking in the dark corners of unsuspecting places waiting to strike, so is the personality of the collectivist mind that is rotting America both socially and economically. Those of a conservative or libertarian mind are aware and on guard for the frontal attack of this beast when it tries to strike using direct government schemes and programs. And we are aware of how the entitlement programs and welfare state are a direct assault on the American philosophy of individual liberty and free market capitalism. But what if this snake is attacking us from dark corners that go unnoticed?

Let’s take two big issues, health care and long term financial security or retirement funding. These are two of the biggest issues we face as people, because they are critical and significant areas of life that concern everyone. For a long time we’ve had social security, Medicare and Medicaid crammed down our throats and washed down by some liberal progressive dogma, and are now told that two of the biggest concerns we face in our lives are no longer a concern because big brother has our back. Well the bill is coming due on this scheme, and it’s coming due on state and local government pension promises. It came due in the private sector with companies like GM, which was being crushed under an unsustainable health care and union pension system until we bailed them out. And it’s going to come due at your company soon, at least as it relates to your healthcare, because prices cannot continue to exponentially go up and companies be expected to pay.

The issue lost in the rhetoric of the traditional left/right argument is not about circumstances and poor people, but rather one of philosophy. Collective systems operate on a kind of “parent-child” philosophy. Citizens are told they are children who cannot take full responsibility for themselves and instead are taught to rely on their parents. Bureaucratic systems take care of them, decide the right choices for them, and always tell them that the system has their best interests at heart. The parent tells the child that they can’t be trusted. That the enemy out there will not protect their future but destroy their future. To the collective the enemy is the individual. And the individual is you! What has happened to the responsibility and empowerment of “doing it yourself”? We are not children and the parental control system is not taking care of us!

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From the Associated Press:

The second-ranking House Democrat on Sunday joined the party leadership in urging Rep. Anthony Weiner to quit because of his sexting scandal, a request the New York lawmaker has sidestepped in favor of a temporary leave of absence.

The Republican Party chairman criticized Democratic leaders for not taking a more forceful stand earlier on the affair, which has overshadowed much of the legislative business on Capitol Hill over the past week.

Weiner has acknowledged exchanging messages and photos ranging from sexually suggestive to explicit with several women online, and the latest to surface appeared on the entertainment website TMZ.

The photos posted Sunday were purportedly taken in the House members’ gym and show a shirt-less Weiner with a towel around his waist and his hand on his crotch. TMZ said the photos were sent online to at least one woman.

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From the UK’s Telegraph:

To an extent, the emails remind Americans of the person they saw take the state at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota nearly three years ago – refreshing, plain-speaking, open and uncomplicated.

Since then, her image has hardened into one of a brittle, even paranoid, politician who seethes with resentment, feels aggrieved and entitled and is intent on pursuing celebrity even at the expense of her family.

Mrs Palin as a person has become so remote that it is hard for to assess how much, if any, of that widely-held caricature has a basis in truth. The email release could mark the end of a chapter of what conservatives have termed “Palin Derangement Syndrome”. Her enemies in the media appear to have overplayed their hand.

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A century ago, the idea that the Constitution imposes limits on the federal government’s authority and that judges have a duty to enforce those limits would have been seen as a truism, regardless of one’s political affiliation.  Yet today, this cornerstone of constitutionally limited government is under attack not just by those on the left, but by conservatives as well.

Steve Chapman’s piece, “A Conservative Defense of Obamacare,” which endorses former solicitor general Charles Fried’s argument that Obamacare is constitutional, exemplifies this conservative attack on the judiciary’s role in ensuring constitutionally limited government.  At issue is a mandate in the new health care law that every individual either purchase health insurance or pay a fine.  In response to rulings by two federal judges that the mandate is unconstitutional, Fried offers a dismissive response, noting that he knows of no other constitutional scholars who are also members of the right-leaning Federalist Society that agree with the rulings.  Fried also notes that while one of the architects of these challenges, Randy Barnett, was a student of his, Fried only taught Barnett torts, not constitutional law.

But the notion that there are constitutional limits on Congress’s authority to micromanage individual economic decisions – and that judges should be serious about enforcing those limits – cannot be so easily dismissed.  The constitutional challenges to the individual mandate represent a larger intellectual challenge to the sort of legislative and executive overreaching and judicial abdication that have transformed the Constitution from a charter of liberty into a source of virtually limitless government power. This argument presents a fundamental issue of constitutional interpretation that is worthy of earnest discussion and debate among legal scholars of all political persuasions.

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