Can anyone dispute that the high point of the Obama presidency thus far has been him killing the Somali pirates?

He’s just so T.J.

A century on, one has been acclaimed the greatest nation in the history of the world and one is a basket case. So what went wrong with Argentina, a country that, though it has some of the proudest people on earth, is a byword for bad governance and is experiencing emigration on a massive scale by people going back to countries they once fled?

Simply put, it can be put down to poor governance. While the United States by and large embraced capitalism and the rule of law, adopting appropriate regulations for the securities industry and against monopolies to promote capitalism, Argentina took a different route. It championed national producers, prevented external competition and became rife with corruption rather than the rule of law.

The results of these divergent approaches to governance are clear. Whereas Argentina fell behind its neighbors Chile and Brazil, the United States became a ‘hyperpower’ admired around the world.

The reason I tell this story is that it is by no means clear that history cannot be reversed, and the US fall down the path that Argentina went down. Our rapidly spiraling national debt and nationalization of industries such as finance, automaking and insurance show that the US’s position as a world power is by no means secure.

Living in Singapore drives this point home. On a recent visit to New York, I was reminded of America’s deteriorating infrastructure and general sense of decline. When I had lived there previously, that was part of its charm. Living in a country that is shinier and is without problems such as homelessness and crime, the problems America has are put in a much sharper focus.

It would be wrongheaded to blame Obama for the current state of affairs. Much was inherited. And yet, this is where he finds himself. In the view from Asia, America could become another Argentina. A country full of people that think they are the best in the world that are in fact an overly indebted laughing stock.

In an earlier post, I warned the Right to “be wary not to dwell on [Sotomayor's] dismissive treatment of Frank Ricci.”  Upon the Supreme Court issuing the Ricci v. DeStefano decision today and the media’s complete misunderstanding of it, I hereby withdraw my earlier admonishment.

The one and only thing that should be understood about this case as it relates to Judge Sotomayor’s nomination is that all nine members of the Supreme Court found that Sotomayor’s court was in error.  Press reports that the Court “ruled against Sotomayor 5-4 along partisan lines” fundamentally misrepresent the decision issued today.

To understand exactly what happened, it’s crucial to go through the procedural history of the case.

Upon the completion of the fact-finding portion of the case (discovery), the plaintiff firefighters and the defendants, the City of New Haven and its mayor (DeStafano), each moved for summary judgment — a ruling by the court that they were entitled to judgment as a matter of law, without the need for a trial. 

The trial-level court granted summary judgment to New Haven and denied summary judgment to the firefighters.  The decision effectively ended the lawsuit.
 
That decision was then appealed to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, where, as is its custom, a panel of three of the justices would rule.  Judge Sotomayor was the senior member of that panel, which issued what’s called a summary order affirming the lower court’s decision.  Summary orders provide no detail of the case and cannot be appealed any further (meaning, to the Supreme Court).

At this point, the firefighters’ case was dead forever, but for one judge on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals (who wasn’t on this 3-judge panel) demanding that the case be heard by the entire 2nd Circuit (en banc).  Sotomayor’s panel thus withdrew its summary order and instead issued a unanimous per curiam opinion.  That opinion, probably written by Judge Sotomayor, was eight sentences long, essentially analysis-free and likewise affirmed the lower court’s decision.  An appeal thereafter to have the entire Circuit reconsider that opinion en banc was denied by a vote of 7-6.  Judge José Cabranes and Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs wrote opinions in dissent from the denial of rehearing, urging review by the Supreme Court.

In any event, if not for the objection of one judge after Sotomayor’s original summary order, the firefighters would have had no further recourse.  But Judge Sotomayor was forced to withdraw her summary order, thus allowing appeal to the Supreme Court, which today issued its 5-4 opinion.

The media has spun the 5-4 margin as a narrow defeat of Judge Sotomayor’s position.  Such a conclusion is not only false, but ridiculous.

The majority opinion of 5 judges not only reversed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of New Haven, but also reversed the trial court’s denial of summary judgment to the firefighters and instead granted summary judgment in their favor.  Because of the Supreme Court’s decision, the case is still effectively over (without the need for a trial), but this time the firefighters won as a matter of law.
 
The dissenting opinion, written by Justice Ginsburg and signed onto by 4 justices, disagreed with majority’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the firefighters, but agreed with the reversal of summary judgment in favor of New Haven. 

In other words, all nine justices agreed that summary judgment should not have been granted in favor of New Haven, a finding that Sotomayor had affirmed twice — once by summary order and once in an analysis-free, eight-sentence opinion.  Justice Ginsburg also found that Sotomayor’s court had used the wrong standard: “The lower courts focused on [New Haven]’s ‘intent’ rather than on whether [New Haven] in fact had good cause to act.”

Needless to say, it’s troubling that a nominee for the Supreme Court would sign on to (and probably write) two analysis-free decisions that all nine members of the Supreme Court found was not only in error, but apparently predicated on the wrong standard.

According to the A.P., President Obama has called the removal and exile of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya a “not legal” coup.  President Obama said that the United States still recognizes Zelaya as the President of Honduras, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters the United States is sending delegation to Honduras as early as tomorrow  “to begin working with the parties” on the restoration of constitutional order.

This is an obvious departure (if not 180 degree reversal) from the Obama Administration’s reaction to the Iranian coup, where for an entire week Obama refused to address the legality of the coup, stating that American interference could be a “political football.”

My question is, “why meddle in Honduras, but not in Iran?”

This issue becomes more troubling if you believe Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s article this morning in the Wall Street Journal or this blog which has in depth coverage of what’s happen in Honduras.

Hector,

Procedural rules are often designed with substantive purposes; and the procedures of the Constitution quite clearly protect substantive rights.

For example, the Quorum requirement (Art. I, Section 5) prevents a tiny fraction of the legislature from passing laws affecting the entire populace.  Similarly, “bicameralism and presentment” — the process requiring all laws to be passed by both Houses of Congress and then signed by the President — is really a three-prong safeguard against legislative abuse.

The amendment I propose is another such safeguard, preventing like-minded (or even corrupt) legislators from railroading through laws that haven’t even been read, much less analyzed and reflected upon.  In support of this proposal, I would submit that the Founders never really contemplated the type of bill-making procedure we know have, and certainly would have never countenanced a yeay vote on a 1,500-page bill that not only had never been read, but which wasn’t even made available for members to read.

In short, the Constitution is full of safeguards to protect individual rights from the tyranny of the majority.  Some are express, such as the Bill of Rights; while others are implied through process, such as the bicameralism and Houses of Congress being accorded the right to decide their own rules (and thus permitting the filibuster in the Senate).

A big thank you to my new best friend, Iain Murray, who is championing the “read the bill” effort.  This entry from the Corner provides an overview of the effort (and links to the constitutional amendment I proposed on this site last week).

In fact, Iain has begun a web site dedicated to this effort, called “Just Read the Bill, Already.”

With the House passing a monstrosity of a 1,500-page “climate change” bill on Friday night — that no one has even read, that will probably do nothing at all to help the environment, and that no one in America seems to have even noticed — I encourage everyone to get behind this effort, including by participating at Iain’s site.

Hector,

If we take your argument –

[T]he American public has the power to vote out their legislators if they feel those persons are not performing competently or that their interests are not adequately represented.  The fact that they choose not to do so in such overwhelming numbers means that they are getting precisely the democracy they deserve. 

– to its logical conclusion, I would humbly ask: why even have a Constitution at all — save for some cursory document which outlined the branches of government and procedure for passing legislation?

If members of Congress should be limited only by whether or not they were elected to office (citizens thus “deserving” the representatives they voted for), what is the point for having all the other protections written into the Constitution?

While I share concerns about unknown and unintended consequences — and that goes for all legislation — in this case, the consequences seem more known than unknown.  Indeed, I would venture to say that the Founders would be shocked to learn of Congress passing behemoth 1200-page pieces of legislation that only a handful of staff members had even read, and perhaps none of them in toto.

Moreover, I’m not as concerned about some of the specific consequences raised — dyslexic or blind members, etc.  Such members could simply have the bills read to them by the staff (or read in Braille, in the case of the visually impaired).  If members still couldn’t digest the bill, perhaps they shouldn’t be making the laws.  Just a thought.

OP,

The answer to your question is “yes, there would be teeth.”  The language of this version of the Amendment would require members of Congress to “swear under penalty of perjury.”  Obviously, if members perjure themselves in that regard, they would have committed a felony punishable by imprisonment.

The question is whether such perjury charges would be pursued.  Unfortunately, that would be left up to the DOJ and to Congress to fund such prosecutions.

“No bill shall be deemed to have passed the House of Representatives or the Senate unless such bill shall have received a majority of yeay votes from the membership of each House; yeay votes shall only be counted from members who swear under penalty of perjury that they have read the entirety of the text of each bill.”

It’s been suggested to me by a few wise individuals that Americans’ perceptions of health care is not incongruous; rather most people like their health care but also recognize that the system is incredibly wasteful, overpriced and terrible at serving people without employer-based coverage.

First, I take their argument seriously.  Indeed, I’m sure that Americans’ perception of the U.S. system is colored by legitimate concerns about waste, price and coverage.

However, it’s hard to believe that most Americans realize just how satisfied their fellow Americans are with their own care.  Indeed, how bizarre would it be for Americans to be knowingly dissatisfied with their system (where 9 in 10 people like their own health care) in larger numbers than people in socialized systems (where only 6/7 in 10 people are satisfied with their own health care).

Either Americans are far more demanding about American health care (“9 in 10 is not good enough”) than Europeans are about their own health care (“6 in 10 is fine”); or Americans are operating under a misconception about the satisfaction of other Americans with their health care.

The incongruity between how Americans’ regard their own health care and how they perceive everyone else’s health care is perhaps the greatest disparity between perception and reality of all major “political issues.”  A joint survey conducted by ABC News, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the USA Today found that only “44% of adults said they were satisfied with the quality of health care in the U.S.,” but that “89% said they were satisfied with the quality of their own health care.”

In other words, 9 out of 10 Americans think their own health care is good, but a full half of those people think everyone else’s health care is bad.  Why the discord?  Cue the leftwing, biased, “do-something/do-anything” media.

In all seriousness, perhaps the biggest problem of bias with the media is not leftwingism, but an inherent, self-serving predisposition in favor of “doing something.”  “Doing something” equals news, attention to the media, and ratings.  “Doing nothing” means Americans won’t spend time watching television reports or reading the paper.

As the relentlessly optimistic Larry Kudlow observed this morning, once the number of (47 million) uninsured Americans is adjusted for college students, people earning $75,000 or more who chose not to have insurance, non-U.S. citizens, and individuals eligible for SCHIP and Medicaid but have not signed up for some reason, the total number of uninsured Americans is really between 10 million and 15 million people.

That is not to say that we shouldn’t carry about those 10 to 15 million people.  But, it’s important to note that they represent only 3% to 5% of all Americans.  Before the entire health care system is overhauled, perhaps most Americans should be told that 9 out of 10 Americans are satisfied with their own health care, and only 1 in 20 Americans is truly without health care insurance because he/she can’t afford it.

OP, as you say, Obama’s statement — save for his self-absorbed  “As I said in Cairo” clause — finally hit the right pitch and sentiment.  And, again reiterating you, the President’s biggest adorers have already found no distinction between his initial comments, “I’m troubled by violence,” “I understand the Iranian government is looking into the results,” and “there may not be a distinction between Ahmadjinedah and Mousavi,” on the one hand, and this latest statement “the Iranian regime must govern through consent, not coercion,” on the other.  Clearly, there’s a difference.

I suppose the President’s statement raises two questions: Why the change? and, How come his didn’t make these statements orally?

To the naysayers who laugh off any suggestion that Barack may not want a revolution in Iran, I submit for consideration the words of Michael Scheuer, former high-ranking CIA official and vehement critic of President Bush’s Middle East policy.  Mr. Scheuer appeared on Fox News yesterday and, with a straight-face, suggested that the election returns in Iran, resulting in a landslide for Ahmadjinedah, may indeed have been accurate.

It’s certainly unfair to associate the words of Scheuer with the President.  But, it bears noting that not every experienced foreign policy guru thinks the protests in Iran are legitimate and/or beneficial for the United States.

Link:

Guys, how can you say Obama isn’t stimulating things?  Haven’t you seen his shirtless picture on our masthead?  That’s got to be worth something!