Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, Churchill went to Washington with his chiefs of staff to meet President Roosevelt and the American military leaders and coordinate plans for the defeat of the common enemy.  On Christmas Eve Churchill broadcast to the world from the White House on the 20th annual observation of the lighting of the community Christmas tree.

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome,  convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.

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There’s been a lot of discussion about Mitt Romney’s appeal – or lack thereof – among supporters of limited government.

To put it mildly, many libertarians and conservatives are underwhelmed by his less-than-stellar record on healthcare, his weakness on Social Security reform, his anemic list of proposed budget savings, and his reprehensible support for ethanol subsidies.

Notwithstanding this dismal track record, some advocates of free markets argue that anybody would be better than Obama.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Economic history shows that the burden of government often expands the most under Republicans, with Nixon and Bush (either one) being obvious examples.

On the other hand, even a skeptic like me has admitted that Romney’s record in Massachusetts is difficult to assess because he was governor of a very left-wing state and he had to deal with a state legislature with heavy Democratic majorities.

That being said, there’s a new development that suggests Romney may be an unacceptable alternative to Obama. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he basically said he is willing to consider a value-added tax for the United States. Here’s the relevant passage.

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Europe’s Left elites championed the introduction of the euro to “increase political cohesion” by building on the “cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe”. But according to Evans-Ambrose Pritchard of the London Telegraph, as a result of that cohesion “almost 97 percent of the European Union’s population is now governed by conservative or Right-leaning coalitions or EU-imposed mandarins:

“The whole machinery of the European Union (EU) system is under the control of the Right, with variants of Rhenish corporatism in the Council, and pre-modern Hayekians at the European Central Bank (ECB). Whether you regard this Hegelian ascendancy as good or bad, it certainly has profound consequences.

For just as former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher protested at Bruges that “we have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level”, the Left might equally protest that they have not fought the long, hard struggle for worker rights in their own democracies to see social welfare rolled back by Brussels and Frankfurt.”

Pritchard offers numerous examples of the ascendency of conservative Europe. The most dramatic change is taking place in Italy, where the European Central Bank (ECB) forced the resignation of elected Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and his replacement with the ECB’s hand-picked technocrat, Mario Monti. Embattled by credit downgrades on Europe’s second most indebted nation and the doubling of interest rates; the Italian public has turned to the conservatives out of fears Italy might be the next nation to fall into Greek style chaos. This morning 85% of the Italian Parliament approved a $39 billion austerity budget that cut pensions, increased primary residence taxes, and cracked down on tax evaders. “We had to act in a hurry,” Labor and Welfare Minister Elsa Fornero told state-run television regarding Italian public finances. “We have been called to the sick-bed of a very ill man.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has failed to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 Republican primary, a development that complicates his bid to win the GOP presidential nomination.

“After verification, RPV has determined that Newt Gingrich did not submit required 10k signatures and has not qualified for the VA primary,” the Republican Party of Virginia announced early Saturday on its Twitter website.

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Eric Holder has been on a racialist bender the last few weeks.  Last week, he said his skin color is responsible for the fury of criticism over his Justice Department allowing thousands of guns to flood Mexico.  Friday, he blocked South Carolina from implementing a voter ID law under the Voting Rights Act saying it was racially discriminatory.

Sixteen states, including South Carolina, must submit all election law changes to the United States Justice Department for approval.  States also have the option of bypassing DOJ and going straight to court for approval, an option they should readily choose.  This law, unlike so many federal laws, actually has a legitimate Constitutional basis – the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which bars racial discrimination in voting.  Passed in 1965, it was designed to prevent states from drifting toward renewed discrimination.  It is now being challenged as unconstitutionally outdated by Arizona and Shelby County (AL) in federal court.

Eric Holder’s Voting Section, where I used to work, interposed an objection late in the day today.  These Christmas Eve gifts are becoming tiresome.  In 2009 it was Obamacare.  Today, it was blocking Voter ID.

In the objection letter, DOJ said that South Carolina did not meet its burden to prove that photo identification laws did not have any discriminatory effect.  Notice the word “any,” more on that later.  The data show, according to DOJ, that 1.6 percentage points more voting blacks don’t have a driver’s license than whites.  Roughly 10 percent of blacks registered to vote don’t have a photo ID, and 8.6 percent of whites don’t.  That represents a “discriminatory effect” under the statute.

There are several problems with the objection.  But some law first:

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For some of us, it’s difficult to take the Occupy movement seriously. However, for once, let’s do just that and ask the simple question, “What if the Occupiers take power?” To answer that, I need to first address what they would need to do to rise to power (I will address the consequences of them in power in a later post). We need to understand the means through which the Occupiers will reach their ends — communism or anarchy. The answer can be discerned from the perspective of experts on mob mentality and mob rule.

To stand any chance at gaining control over our nation, the Occupy movement would first need to disrupt our current system of governance and commerce. Jim Rawles, editor of Survivalblog.com, New York Times best-selling author, and a former US Army Intelligence Officer, offers a historical perspective on the matter by referencing the International Workers of the World (IWW) protests of the 1920s and 30s.

“In that situation, The IWW relocated people from very long distances. They intentionally overwhelmed the local police by relocating large numbers of protesters. It’s analogous to the military massing their firepower for an offensive…If there is an overreaction on the part of the police or conceivably the military, if the protests grow to a large scale beyond the police’s ability, there’s the potential for a lot of violence.”

Further violence from the Occupy movement is not a far-fetched expectation; it’s something we have already seen. Historically, mass sit-in protests, such as those of the 1960s or the Veteran’s Bonus Encampment of 1932, have the capacity to generate a violent and confrontational end result. After all, Occupy has already attempted to disrupt our economy on Black Friday through mass action protests (and miserably failed). History does repeat itself, by the way, as the IWW is heavily involved with the Occupy protests.

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From the Washington Examiner:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry failed to get on Virginia’s presidential primary ballot after the state Republican Party determined Friday that he didn’t submit at least 10,000 valid signatures. The GOP earlier announced former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Texas Rep. Ron Paul will be on the ballot.

An announcement from the party on former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s petitions is expected Friday evening.

The state GOP verified Friday that Romney and Paul turned in petitions with enough valid signatures, including 400 from each of Virginia’s 11 congressional districts, to get their names on the March 6 primary ballot.

Perry submitted 11,911 signatures to Virginia election officials Thursday, which means 2,000 or more signatures were deemed invalid. Gingrich had about 800 fewer signatures than Perry so there’s no guarantee he would meet the 10,000-name threshold. (more…)

Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, has launched an investigation into the compensation of executives at private sector colleges and universities.

Rep. Elijah Cummings

The New York Times reports:

“The American taxpayers fund these schools through billions of dollars in tuition assistance, but there is little evidence that lavish executive pay is linked to the well-being of the students they are supposed to educate,” Mr. Cummings said in a statement. He said he wanted to determine whether executive compensation was “appropriately tied to the performance of students they educate.”

Strangely, Cummings’ interest in ensuring that students receive good educations and taxpayer dollars are wisely spent does not extend to public community colleges, which are 100 percent taxpayer funded and have comparably low graduation and employment rates. Why do these institutions, which service the same market of students as for-profit colleges and are much more directly under government control, get a free pass?

While he’s at it, why doesn’t Cummings see fit to investigate the absurdly inflated salaries of athletic coaches at many public colleges? Answer: because that wouldn’t be as politically expedient. (more…)

In the year since the Tea Party arrived in Congress, the movement has managed to change the debate on Capitol Hill, but not the way Washington works.

The Tea Party has stopped President Barack Obama and the Democrats from bailing out profligate state governments, from passing new so-called “stimulus” spending, and from raising tax rates. It has even begun to win bipartisan support for major entitlement reform.

However, the Tea Party has failed thus far to stop the overall growth in the size and cost of government. It passed over a dozen bills that would accelerate economic growth and create new jobs, only to see those bills languish in Harry Reid’s Senate.

In both the debt ceiling and the payroll tax debates, the Tea Party saw its sensible bills rejected in favor of absurd compromises–then found itself being blamed for congressional gridlock.

The key to the Tea Party’s fortunes has been its relationship with the very establishment it dislikes. Where it has found common ground–for example, with House budget chair Paul Ryan–it has been able to promote its agenda of limited government. But when the Tea Party has clashed with Republican leaders–starting with key Senate races in 2010–Democrats have won by dividing conservatives from moderates, House from Senate. (more…)

It was supposed to be a “slice of Americana and of childhood dreams,” says U.S. Army Specialist Mark Grapin, who lives in Fairfax County, Virginia. He’s talking about the treehouse he built for his two sons after returning from his latest tour of duty in Iraq.

What Grapin didn’t expect was that Fairfax County’s zoning board would demand he tear down the treehouse after an anonymous complaint, thus launching the family into an eight-month legal battle.

Grapin went to the local media for help and public outcry turned into an online petition. A neighbor donated trees to cover the treehouse, and the family even received a pro bono lawyer to help win over board members.

Just days before the treehouse was to be torn down, Grapin was able to convince the board to let him keep it on the condition it be removed after five years. Plenty of time, he says, for his sons to enjoy it.

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The European Sovereign Debt Crisis that morphed into the European Banking Crisis is about to morph into a powerful worldwide deflationary spiral. The bankruptcy of MF Global, a former primary dealer for the U.S. Federal Reserve, has propelled a growing electronic bank run as many depositors have lost faith in the liquidity and solvency of many of their financial institutions. The banks, brokers and other lenders are responding by firing bankers to slash costs, selling off assets, and curtailing lending. As borrowing becomes more difficult large companies and virtually unavailable for smaller firms; production will fall and unemployment will rise.

On February 2, 2011 MF Global was accepted as one of the 21 “primary dealers” for the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank on the strength of the economic and political clout of Jon Corzine, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and Governor of New Jersey. Primary dealer is a formal title for the world’s most elite financial institutions that are allowed to act as direct market-makers with the U.S. Federal Reserve System (“the Fed”). The stellar credibility of this designation gave the firm inside access about funding requirements for the U.S. budget deficit and implementation of Fed monetary policy. Primary dealers legally use this information to distribute debt of the U.S. at home and around the world.

Less than eight months later on October 30, 2011, MF Global announced a “material shortfall” in client funds. The next day regulators froze assets and the company filed the 8th largest bankruptcy in U.S. history with $1.2 billion of missing customer funds. What creditors are now learning is the “hypothication agreements” banks routinely require their customers to sign, allow banks to re-hypothecate customer funds to invest repurchase agreements (repos).

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Walk into your local gun shop and you’re likely to be greeted by some of the hardest working salesmen and women in America. On Black Friday alone Gun dealers flooded the FBI with background check requests for prospective hand gun and long gun buyers, smashing the previous record by more than 30%. Deputy Assistant FBI Director Jerry Pender said the checks, required by federal law, surged to nearly 130,000 during the day, far surpassing the previous high of 97,848 on Black Friday of 2008. The actual number of firearms sold is likely much higher because multiple firearms can be included in a transaction by a single buyer. The FBI does not track actual gun sales.

Gun buyers are more diverse than ever. This however is not the kind of diversity the anti-gun left is happy about. Young professionals, people starting families and women, in greater numbers than ever, are purchasing guns. Dennis Henigan, acting president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said he was “skeptical” of the Black Friday gun surge.

Refusing to accept the reality of the trend, he said “I think there may be no real significance at all.” This of course is the same Brady Center that that in the face of gun violence, has focused it’s efforts on restricting law abiding citizens’ access to guns, rather than campaigning for tougher penalties against criminals who use guns in crimes.

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We live in a democratic society, and that means that we can put certain issues and people to a vote and let the majority rule. However, there are certain rights that no majority percentage can vote away: the right to worship, the right to speedy trial, and the right to speak and express oneself freely are some examples. However, residents of the city of Los Angeles may soon get a chance to weigh in on whether or not adult film actors have the right to decide for themselves: condoms or no condoms.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) has advocated for the enforcement of condom mandates in the adult film industry for many years. Their most recent tactic is to put their mandate to a vote. By the end of November, AHF had enough signatures (15% of the voters in the previous mayoral election) to get the Initiative on the ballot. This means that come June 2012, LA residents might be able to vote on whether or not to tie porn production permits to the mandatory usage of “barrier protection,” like condoms in the film’s production.

However, there’s a big problem with the Initiative: prohibiting films that refuse to use condoms is a violation of the constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of speech. While the U.S. is a democracy, we’re a constitutional democracy, which means individuals have a number of rights that are protected, regardless of the number of people who vote to abridge them. For example, 99% of a town may vote to make it lawful to imprison the 1% of the population without a trial. The measure might pass, but it would not be lawful as it would violate the constitutional right to a trial. In this case, the condom mandate would abridge free speech by prohibiting adult films that refuse to utilize some form of barrier-protection. (more…)

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

Four Republican presidential candidates – Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry and Ron Paul — submitted paper work in time to qualify for Virginia’s March 6 primary ballot.

No other GOP contender will be on the Virginia ballot. Rep. Michele Bachmann, former Sen. Rick Santorum and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman did not submit signatures with Virginia’s State Board of Elections by today’s [Thursday] 5 p.m. deadline.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Consumers spent at a lackluster rate in November as their incomes barely grew, suggesting that U.S. households may struggle to sustain their spending into 2012.

The Commerce Department says consumer spending rose just 0.1 percent in November, matching the modest October increase. Incomes also rose 0.1 percent. That was the weakest showing since a 0.1 percent decline in August.

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WASHINGTON (AP) – Capping a full retreat by House GOP leaders, Congress will convene Friday in hopes of approving a stopgap measure renewing payroll tax cuts for every worker and unemployment benefits for millions—despite serious opposition among some tea party Republicans.

Friday’s unusual session, if all goes according to plan, will send a bill to President Barack Obama to become law for two months and put off until January a fight over how to pay for the 2 percentage point tax cut, extend jobless benefits averaging around $300 a week and prevent doctors from absorbing a big cut in Medicare payments through 2012.

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What’s a Barack Obama Administration multi-billion dollar boondoggle without a Czar to oversee it?

For the automobile industry bailout, the Lord Overseer was Car Czar Steven Rattner.

This is the same Steven Rattner who late last year reportedly paid a $6.2 million Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) fine and accepted a two-year ban from associating with broker-dealers or investment advisers.  For an alleged “pay-to-play” New York state pension fund kickbacks scheme he orchestrated after leaving Washington and his Czar-ship.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

His current gig – besides being a (shocker) MSNBC Morning Joe “Economic Analyst”?  Managing New York Mayor – and 1%-er billionaire – Michael Bloomberg’s personal and philanthropic assets.

DC-Wall Street nexis, anyone?  Crony Socialism, anyone?

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