Posted on May 25, 2013 by John Hinderaker in Conservatism

Taking Back the Tundra

Tuesday evening, Hugh Hewitt will be in town for a program sponsored by AM 1280 the Patriot: Taking Back the Tundra. The show will be in Brooklyn Park, and if you live within driving distance of there, I would urge you to attend. The program will include something of a Northern Alliance reunion: I will participate, and I think Scott will, too. Here is the information:

The dinner is now sold out, but general admission tickets remain, for a modest $12.80. We will be talking about the political situation in Minnesota–hence, “Taking Back the Tundra”–and immigration, but, with Obama scandals dominating the news, there will be lots more to discuss. Hope to see you there!

Posted on by John Hinderaker in European Decline

Fecklessness, Swedish Style

In Stockholm, riots have taken place for six consecutive nights, with windows smashed, cars and schools set on fire, and policemen pelted with rocks. This would normally be considered a major problem, but the Swedes seem to be taking it pretty casually:

Since last Sunday, May 19, rioters have taken to the streets of Stockholm’s suburbs every night, torching cars, schools, stores, office buildings and residential complexes. Yesterday, a police station in Rågsved, a suburb four kilometers south of Stockholm, was attacked and set on fire.

But while the Stockholm riots keep spreading and intensifying, Swedish police have adopted a tactic of non-interference. ”Our ambition is really to do as little as possible,” Stockholm Chief of Police Mats Löfving explained to the Swedish newspaper Expressen on Tuesday.

”We go to the crime scenes, but when we get there we stand and wait,” elaborated Lars Byström, the media relations officer of the Stockholm Police Department. ”If we see a burning car, we let it burn if there is no risk of the fire spreading to other cars or buildings nearby. By doing so we minimize the risk of having rocks thrown at us.”

Well, that’s one way of looking at it. I noted last night that in Great Britain, police are powerless to deal with Islamic terrorists who attack innocent citizens with knives and meat cleavers (partly, at least, because most of them are unarmed), but a serious crackdown on those who criticize Muslim terrorists on Twitter or Facebook is in progress.

Something similar is happening in Sweden, as Joe Malchow points out. The police don’t do anything to prevent cars from being torched by “youths”–here’s a hint, the “youths” aren’t named Erik or Gustav–but parking regulations are being strictly enforced. So we have this absurd situation:

Swedish parking laws, however, continue to be rigidly enforced despite the increasingly chaotic situation. Early Wednesday, while documenting the destruction after a night of rioting in the Stockholm suburb of Alby, a reporter from Fria Tider observed a parking enforcement officer writing a ticket for a burnt-out Ford.

When questioned, the officer explained that the ticket was issued because the vehicle lacked a tag showing its time of arrival. The fact that the vehicle had been effectively destroyed – its windshield smashed and the interior heavily damaged by fire – was irrelevant according to the meter maid, who asked Fria Tider’s photographer to destroy the photos he had taken.

This, I take it, is one of those photos:

That’s the thing about Sweden: just when you think there is not a single good thing about the country, you are forced to admit that they have the world’s most fetching meter maids. Still, that doesn’t prevent the decline of civilization from proceeding apace in Sweden, as in Great Britain.

Posted on by Paul Mirengoff

Rubio’s history of obstructing immigration enforcement

The Daily Caller reports that Marco Rubio has a history of opposing enforcement of immigtation laws. As Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Rubio blocked efforts to deal with illegal immigration at the state or local Miami level.

According to the Daily Caller, the record shows that Rubio used his power as Speaker to block legislation to tighten enforcement even after such legislation had saied through committee. He even opposed, and thwarted, bipartisan legislation to deport 5,000 illegal immigrant prisoners in Florida jails.

Rubio’s Florida record helps us understand his indifferent attitude towards enforcement in connection with the Schumer-Rubio amnesty bill. As we have noted, Rubio’s position on enforcement is, in essence: maybe there are problems with what I hve proposed, but others can fix them.

I think it’s pretty clear that Rubio isn’t backing amnesty and a path to citizenship reluctantly, as the only way we can attain better enforcement. Instead, amnesty and a path to citizenship are his objectives, with the promise of better enforcement just along for the ride.

The hard-line Rubio took on immigratiion when he ran for the Senate is an outlier in Rubio’s history on the subject. That’s a polite way of saying that this position was, in all likelihood, fraudulent — a cynical attempt tp appeal to conservatives in his long-shot race against Charlie Crist.

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Islam, Terrorism

Spot the Incongruous Headline

So take in this screen cap of the latest roster of headlines appearing on the AOL/HuffPo home page.  Six of the ten headlines relate one way or another to terrorism or the problem of Islamic jihad.  One of them sticks out like the proverbial sore thumb.  The country’s in the very best of hands, as Glenn Reynolds likes to remind us. (more…)

Posted on by Steven Hayward in Bureaucracy, jurisprudence

In Praise of Slow Learners

There’s this much to be said in praise of Jonathan Turley, professor of “public interest law” at George Washington University Law School, and frequent bobblehead on cable TV shows: at least he isn’t a supercilious smug-mugger like Jeffrey Toobin.  In addition, unlike Toobin, Turley often gets things right.

But come on man, you’re only just discovering now that the federal administrative bureaucracy—the “fourth branch of government”—has become problematic?  From Turley’s article today in the Washington Post:

The growing dominance of the federal government over the states has obscured more fundamental changes within the federal government itself: It is not just bigger, it is dangerously off kilter. Our carefully constructed system of checks and balances is being negated by the rise of a fourth branch, an administrative state of sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy and decreasing transparency. . .

This exponential growth has led to increasing power and independence for agencies. The shift of authority has been staggering. The fourth branch now has a larger practical impact on the lives of citizens than all the other branches combined.

The rise of the fourth branch has been at the expense of Congress’s lawmaking authority. In fact, the vast majority of “laws” governing the United States are not passed by Congress but are issued as regulations, crafted largely by thousands of unnamed, unreachable bureaucrats. One study found that in 2007, Congress enacted 138 public laws, while federal agencies finalized 2,926 rules, including 61 major regulations.

This rulemaking comes with little accountability. It’s often impossible to know, absent a major scandal, whom to blame for rules that are abusive or nonsensical. Of course, agencies owe their creation and underlying legal authority to Congress, and Congress holds the purse strings. But Capitol Hill’s relatively small staff is incapable of exerting oversight on more than a small percentage of agency actions. And the threat of cutting funds is a blunt instrument to control a massive administrative state — like running a locomotive with an on/off switch.

From here Turley goes of the rails a bit, but failing to understand that Congress actually wants it this way.

But more to the point, it never ceases to amaze me when “mainstream” potentates like Turley come to understand what conservatives have been saying loudly for thirty or forty years, but somehow pose as though they’ve discovered something new or are offering brilliant new insights.

Posted on by Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Summer Sequel Edition

Since summer sequel season in the movie theaters has arrived, we might as well treat ourselves to the memes and images of the ongoing Obama scandals.  Speaking of sequels, I took in Star Trek: Into Darkness yesterday.  Meh.  It’s impossible to review without spoilers, so I’ll just say it is as unimaginative as a Washington scandal involving political influence at a bureaucracy.  But the Obama scandals do give rise to some good movie poster parodies, which is a good place to start our Week in Pictures.

Since it is Memorial Day weekend, let’s offer a Power Line salute to the troops:

And finally, an example of literalism run amok.

Posted on by Scott Johnson in Media, Obama Administration Scandals

In the matter of James Rosen

The latest reporting in the matter of Fox News Channel’s James Rosen indicates the Obama administration fought to keep the search warrant for Rosen’s private email account secret, arguing that the government might need to monitor the account for a lengthy period of time. Thank you, Ryan Lizza.

And one more thing. Despite Eric Holder’s protestations of ignorance regarding the Rosen matter, NBC reports that Holder himself authorized the warrant application. Hmmm. Does that mean he might not have been entirely forthcoming about the matter in his testimony to a House Committee on the matter? The White House has gone silent over the Memorial Day weekend.

Our observant reader with long experience in the criminal investigative division of the IRS has an interesting sidebar on the affidavit supporting the Rosen email search warrant:

I thought I’d point out another Great Moment in Government Competence, this one from Eric Holder and his Justice Department in the Rosen “scandal.” Take a look at the documents which were unsealed recently, particularly the Motion to Seal which was originally filed to protect the search warrants. That’s Exhibit B. The papers are all at New Yorker’s website, where Ryan Lizza wrote about it today.

Everything cruises along pretty smoothly until you get to this little gem on page 2: “The United States has considered alternatives less drastic than sealing and has found none that would suffice to protect the government’s legitimate interest in attempting to locate and prosecute those responsible for THE BOMBINGS.”

I added a little emphasis to highlight the most interesting part. So is Mr. Rosen involved in bombings? He sounds like a bad guy. Or did some idiot FBI agent or (more likely) AUSA recycle a motion from another case? It certainly would have reflected better on the author had he actually proof read his motion before he turned it in to the magistrate judge. Who obviously didn’t read it, either. And apparently the US Attorney and, if reports are to be believed, Eric Holder also didn’t read it closely enough to catch a pretty glaring error.

It’s a little thing, I know, though Mr. Rosen might not appreciate being linked, however incompetently, with “bombings,” but these are the same people who are asking to be trusted with investigation of the other scandals out there. It would be nice if one had some confidence in their ability to get the facts straight, especially in a federal court pleading.

I think it’s fair to say that these are men in a hurry. Mistakes, as they say, were made.