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Bret Stephens, OnlineWSJ.com

 

-- Design objectives for the Washington Monument, 1832

 

Why wait? As its first order of business in the coming year, the 111th Congress must establish the Barack H. Obama Presidential Monument Commission, to approve the design and fund the construction (with a target completion date of Jan. 21, 2017) of a suitable tribute to the best 44th president this country will ever have.

 

Lest it seem like we're getting ahead of ourselves, bear in mind that the government is already in the business of making monuments to the living. The most capable nuclear attack submarine in the U.S. fleet bears the name of our 39th president. Fittingly, the USS Jimmy Carter's first commanding officer was relieved of duty on account of "loss of confidence" in his abilities. The Navy christened its latest aircraft carrier after our 41st president, George H.W. Bush, whose name now graces CIA headquarters at Langley as well as Houston's airport.

 

(Come to think of it, the airport in Anchorage, Alaska, is named after convicted felon Ted Stevens. Is it too late to rename Chicago's O'Hare Blagojevich International?) Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

With both Barack Obama's supporters and the media looking forward to the new administration's policies being similar to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies during the 1930s depression, it may be useful to look at just what those policies were and-- more important-- what their consequences were.

 

The prevailing view in many quarters is that the stock market crash of 1929 was a failure of the free market that led to massive unemployment in the 1930s-- and that it was intervention of Roosevelt's New Deal policies that rescued the economy.

 

It is such a good story that it seems a pity to spoil it with facts. Yet there is something to be said for not repeating the catastrophes of the past.

 

Let's start at square one, with the stock market crash in October 1929. Was this what led to massive unemployment? Read article.

 

Aliza Marcus, Bloomberg.com

 

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, battling a deadly brain tumor, is pushing ahead on a plan to overhaul the U.S. health-care system, ordering meetings with interest groups and negotiating with colleagues to ready a proposal that Barack Obama can act on after taking office.

 

Kennedy, 76, had surgery for his cancer in June, and has since been treated with chemotherapy and radiation. While the type of tumor Kennedy has can sometimes be fatal within 18 months, the Massachusetts Democratic and his staff are pushing ahead in their efforts to secure approval of an idea championed by Kennedy for 46 years: medical insurance for all Americans.

 

“This has been the cause of Kennedy’s life, and it’s clear he sees this as a great opportunity,” said Adam Clymer, the author of a Kennedy biography, in a telephone interview. “There’s a president who wants it and, at this stage, there’s a lot less hostility from the industry” than in the past. Read article.

 

Tom DeWeese, Canada Free Press.com

 

Since just before the election of Barack Obama in November, it has been interesting and quite shocking that a forty-year old, seemingly forgotten radical group called “Weatherman” is getting so much attention. Of course, Obama denies any connection to old Weathermen. Here’s a quick history of the “Weathermen” and why it’s relevant to a new president calling for an undefined “change.”

 

You’ve heard the famous names: Bill Ayers, Mark Rudd, Bernadine Dohrn and Jeff Jones, among others. Today, Ayers describes himself as a professor; Dohrn is his wife and a clinical law professor, Jeff Jones, predictably is an environmentalist and political consultant, and Mark Rudd is now a teacher. Just normal Americans, living their lives. Really?

 

There’s much more to the history of violence and revolution pulled off or attempted by Ayers, Rudd, Dohrn and Jones (and others in their clan). But these examples should give anyone enough of an idea as to their dedication to destroying America.

 

But what does that have to do with today? And how does it connect to Barack Obama? Read article.

 

Joel Kotkin, Forbes.com

 

The core of the elite liberal constituency--academics, high-tech businesspeople and media figures--has been growing steadily in wealth and influence. By marrying this constituency to poor minority voters, gentry liberals have turned our core urban areas into a collection of electoral "ditto heads," with so-called "progressives" winning as much as 70 or 80% of the vote in presidential elections.

 

It's not surprising that, so far, the Obama pre-presidency reflects the values of the gentry class. His appointments in key economic posts have been very much in sync with the Schumer-Robert Rubin Wall Street wing of the party. Contrary to the hyperventilations of some conservatives, Obama seems as unlikely to confiscate the holders of mega-wealth, inherited or otherwise, as that muddle-headed blueblood, George W. Bush.

 

If the president-elect looks to raise taxes, a more likely target will be the less-well-heeled small businesspeople, farmers and others who have tended to remain closer to the Republican Party. These are the people who earn about $250,000 a year and may now be demonized as "rich." Another source of pain for the middling classes may come from carbon trading, which could boost energy prices. Read article.

 

Ralph Z. Hallow, Washington Times.com

 

A power struggle that will determine the future leadership of the Republican Party has broken into the open as dissatisfied Republican leaders pushed for a meeting early next month that they hope will be the first step toward ending Washington-based control of the party.

 

In a move seen as a backlash against years of control of the Republican National Committee (RNC) by allies of President Bush and their District-based consulting firms, several senior members of the party's governing body are working to call an extra meeting to hear from all candidates for national chairman three weeks before the election for the post is scheduled.

 

The effort is seen by party insiders as an attempt to allow all six candidates for chairman to have an equal shot at the job, rather than giving an edge to the incumbent chairman, Robert M. "Mike" Duncan. Read article.

 

Bill Gertz, Washington Times.com

 

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has asked most Bush administration political appointees except those targeted for dismissal to stay on in the Pentagon until replaced by the Obama administration in the coming months.

 

"I have received authorization from the president-elect's transition team to extend a number of Department of Defense political appointees an invitation to voluntarily remain in their current positions until replaced," Mr. Gates said in an Dec. 19 e-mail to political appointees.

 

The chance to stay is "available to all willing political appointees with the exception of those who are contacted individually and told otherwise," he stated.

 

Notification of those who must depart was to be done before the close of business Monday. The policy affects some 250 political appointees in the department. Read article.

 

Robert Stacy McCain, Spectator.org

 

Evidence that Democrats consider Sarah Palin a potent political force for the future continues to mount. A Huffington Post blogger went rooting around the comments at the Team Sarah website over the weekend and emerged to announce that he had discovered "something very ugly happening out there in the hinterlands these days -- a brewing cauldron of racist anger being directed at President-elect Barack Obama."

 

This accusation of "mean-spirited bigotry" was based on a relative handful of comments, far less dramatic than the huffy HuffPoster's hyperbolic introduction suggested. The Christian ladies who run Team Sarah -- Marjorie Dannenfelser, Jane Abraham and Emily Buchanan of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List -- responded immediately with sanctions against commenters who cross the lines of political decorum. (Of course, decorum is not even an afterthought at Huffington Post, DailyKos or any number of liberal blogs where the comment fields routinely boil with vitriol, but conservatives have long since become accustomed to this sort of double standard.) Read article.

 

The Right Side of Life.com

 

Oklahoma State Representative Mike Ritze — the same State Representative who brought forward a bill to have the State validate candidate eligibility — is now seeking to persuade OK Senator James Inhofe to challenge the Electoral College vote certification in Congress.

 

According to InvestigatingObama:

 

Related yesterday evening by FReeper, BonRad, below is an email sent by Plains Radio, early Tuesday morning (emphasis by I.O.): …

 

Last night, Plains Radio made history. We had for the first time one of them to join us. Them? That would be Rep. Mike Ritze of the Oklahoma State house. Dr. Mike will now take our cause to the Senators and Congressman from Oklahoma. He will try and persuade Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma to stand up and challenge Obama Election. …

 

The email goes on to say that on Friday, 12/26, they are scheduled to interview Obama outistcorrespondent for Pravda’s Web publication (yes, Pravda). The only journalist that I.O. knows of who is reporting about Obama’s ineligibility is Mark S. McGrew and it turns out McGrew was interviewed by Ed Hale of Plains Radio on Monday, 12/22, as well. Also, Stephen Pidgeon, attorney for Obama challengers in Washington state. Read article.

 

John Stossel, JWR.com

 

Barack Obama wants to use the recession to remake the U.S. economy.

 

"Painful crisis also provides us with an opportunity to transform our economy to improve the lives of ordinary people," Obama said.

 

His designated chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is more direct: "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste".

 

So they will "transform our economy." Obama's nearly trillion-dollar plan will not merely repair bridges, fill potholes and fix up schools; it will also impose a utopian vision based on the belief that an economy is a thing to be planned from above. But this is an arrogant conceit. No one can possibly know enough to redesign something as complex as "an economy," which really is people engaging in exchanges to achieve their goals. Planning it means planning them.

 

Obama and Emanuel want us to believe that their blueprint for reform will bring recovery from the recession. Yet we have recovered from past recessions without undertaking a radical social and economic transformation. Read article.

 

Phyllis Schlafly, Townhall.com

 

When Candidate Barack Obama declared himself a "citizen of the world" before thousands of cheering German socialists, and later pledged to "rejoin the World Community," those weren't just his usual platitudes about "change." Those words sounded the trumpet for his specific and far-reaching globalist agenda.

 

Obama plans to use his presidential power to get the Democratic-majority Senate to ratify a series of treaties that would take us a long way toward global rule over our money, our laws, our military, our courts, our customs, our trade and even our use of energy. Here are the treaties he says he wants.

 

The U.N. Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which Ronald Reagan rejected in 1982, is high on Obama's list.

 

LOST gives the ISA the power to levy international taxes. The real purpose of the taxing power is to compel the United States to spend billions of private-enterprise dollars to mine the ocean floor and then let ISA bureaucrats transfer our wealth to socialist, anti-American nations. Read article.

 

Jennifer Rubin, Pajamas Media.com

 

If only Scooter Libby had thought of this: conduct an internal report, exonerate himself, and release it during Christmas week when he and every other percipient witness were at an inaccessible holiday location. Well, it wouldn’t have worked because the MSM would have regarded such a stunt coming from a Republican official as laughable.

 

Indeed it only would have spurred the press to gin up its own investigation into potential wrongdoing, if only to prove the self-exonerator wrong.

 

But the rules aren’t the same for the Democrats. When Rahm Emanuel and the other Obama transition team members get a clean bill of health on Blago-gate from their own colleagues, the MSM pronounces itself satisfied. Let's see if the mainstream media ever gets around to demanding answers.

 

Let's see if the mainstream media ever gets around to demanding answers. Read article.