Vasko Kohlmayer, American Thinker.com 

 

"As Congress grapples with solutions for a faltering economy, Barney Frank sits at the center of power."

 

In the area of national defense, Barney Frank has for years advocated a 25 percent reduction in the overall military budget of the United States. Earlier this month, he wrote in a piece that ran in the Nation,

 

"[I]f we do not make reductions approximating 25 percent of the military budget starting fairly soon, it will be impossible to continue to fund an adequate level of domestic activity even with a repeal of Bush's tax cuts for the very wealthy."

 

He then challenged those who call for fiscal responsibility to first look "where our spending has been the most irresponsible and has produced the least good for the dollars expended - our military budget."

 

All those who care about the future of this country should be greatly concerned that Barney Frank, a leftist radical who publicly flaunts his homosexuality, is presently one of the most powerful politicians in America. His recent actions and statements make it amply clear that he will seek to use his present influence to implement as much of his extreme agenda as he possibly can. Given his party's hold on the White House and Congress his efforts may meet with much success. Read article.

 

Alan Abramowitz, Rasmussen Reports.com

 

Not only are Democrats and Republicans in Congress sharply divided over President Obama's legislative program, but recent national polls have revealed a deep split in evaluations of the President's performance within the public. According to data assembled by the Pew Poll, the 61 point difference in approval of President Obama's job performance between Democrats and Republicans in early March was the largest for any recent president after such a short time in office, including George W. Bush.

 

The sharp partisan divide in public evaluations of President Obama's performance has led several influential political commentators, including the National Journal's Charlie Cook and Amy Walter and the Washington Post's Dan Balz, to point to independent voters as the key to the President's ability to maintain his political effectiveness. With Democrats and Republicans dividing along party lines, they argue that Mr. Obama's overall popularity, and therefore his influence in Congress, will depend on the views of the large group of "non-aligned" independents. Read article.

 

Guy Benson, Townhall.com

 

Having pronounced herself proud of her country for the first time in decades at several campaign rallies, Michelle Obama explained her surge of patriotic zeal: “What we have learned over this year is that hope is making a comeback.” Her husband repeatedly implored voters to reject the “politics of fear” that had been so fiendishly foisted upon the country after 9/11. 

 

The November election marked a dramatic and historic departure from the old way of doing things, as hope had vanquished fear. But with Democrats firmly ensconced behind the levers of power in Washington, fear is making a comeback of its own. Read article.

 

Andrew C. McCarthy, NRO.com

 

For eight years, we’ve been treated to hysterical rhetoric from Democrats, including Barack Obama, about the scourge of “domestic spying.” Now that the Obama administration is openly calling for domestic spying — the real thing, not the smear used against President Bush — they’re suddenly silent.

 

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in coordination with the FBI, has issued an intelligence assessment on what it calls “Rightwing Extremism.” It is appalling. The nakedly political document announces itself as a “federal effort to influence domestic public opinion.” It proceeds, in what it acknowledges is the absence of any “specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence,” to speculate that “rightwing” political views might “drive” such violence — violence, it further surmises, that might be abetted by military veterans returning home after putting their lives on the line in Iraq and Afghanistan. And for good measure, in violation of both FBI guidelines and congressional statutes, the Obama administration promises scrutiny of ordinary Americans’ political views, speech, and assembly.

 

The word “rightwing” appears repeatedly in the assessment, which was issued by the same DHS component (the “Extremism and Radicalization Branch”) that, a year ago, suggested purging the terms “jihadist” and “Islamofascist” from our lexicon for fear of insulting moderate Muslims. Read article.

 

Larry Elder, JWR.com

 

The New Deal, launched almost 80 years ago, represented a giant leap toward collectivism. But only in the last few weeks, as a result of President Barack Obama's New Deal Reloaded, have some 20 states rediscovered the Constitution and the 10th Amendment.

Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution sets forth the limited duties and obligations of the federal government. The Founding Fathers designed a federal government that focuses primarily on national security, the rules of naturalization and a handful of other matters. And the Ninth and 10th amendments to the Constitution leave all other rights and powers to the people and to the states, respectively.

 

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, standing with members of his state Legislature, said: "The 10th Amendment was enacted by folks who remembered what it was like to have a very oppressive government — to be under the thumb of tyrants in an all-powerful government. Unfortunately, the protections it guarantees have melted away over the course of the years." Read article.

 

Paul Greenberg, JWR.com

 

Nuclear nonproliferation is as ungainly a term as the network of treaties that was supposed to assure it, but no longer does. For one rogue regime after another is about to acquire its own nuclear arsenal — complete with the missiles to deliver it: North Korea, Iran … and soon enough there will be others.

 

If this new president of the United States is looking for a nuclear nonproliferation policy that works, he will have to look somewhere other than the feckless United Nations or the just as useless European Community. He might start by asking: Where have rogue nations' nuclear ambitions actually been thwarted?

 

Actions do deter; words are much less effective. Regimes like those in North Korea and Iran are not likely to be deterred from becoming nuclear powers — aggressive nuclear powers — by just words, however smooth this president's.

 

John Bolton, the former American ambassador to the United Nations and current prophet without honor in his own country, noted that President Obama had said North Korea's firing its (misguided) missile would be a "provocative" act. Yet when it did, that regime suffered no repercussions except more empty words of censure. Read article.

 

Charles Krauthammer, Townhall.com

 

Franklin Roosevelt gave us the New Deal. John Kennedy gave us the New Frontier. In a major domestic policy address at Georgetown University this week, Barack Obama promised -- eight times -- a "New Foundation." For those too thick to have noticed this proclamation of a new era in American history, the White House Web site helpfully titled its speech excerpts "A New Foundation."

 

As it happens, Obama is not the first to try this slogan. President Carter peppered his 1979 State of the Union address with five "New Foundations"

Like most of Carter's endeavors, this one failed, perhaps because (as I recall it being said at the time) it sounded like the introduction of a new kind of undergarment.

 

Undaunted, Obama offered his New Foundation speech as the complete, contextual, canonical text for the domestic revolution he aims to enact. It had everything we have come to expect from Obama: Read article.

 

Joseph Joffe, Online WSJ.com

 

As ever, countries have interests, not friends. Nearly 100 days into Barack Obama's presidency and he is still a rock star in Europe, as evidenced by the large crowds that turned out to cheer him at the recent G-20 summit in London and NATO summit in Strasbourg, France.

 

George W. Bush was heartily disliked in Europe west of Warsaw, and Mr. Obama is universally loved. But how well does that popularity translate into power? How far could President Obama push his agenda with, say, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or French President Nicolas Sarkozy? About as far as you can throw a piano. Read article.

 

Michael Barone,

 

When you try to predict climate, you are dealing with even more factors and more unknowns than when you try to predict financial risk. Prudent people will want to hedge against some risks that seem possible. But imposing huge costs on the private-sector economy -- raising the price of electricity for everybody -- solely on the basis of some geeks' formulas seems, well, not prudent. But that's what Barack Obama tells us we must do.

 

Or consider health care. One element of proposed health-care reforms is restricting care to procedures that are indicated as optimal by "quality metrics." The Obama campaign called for comparative-effective research to produce such metrics. The problem, as Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical School points out (though not in these words), is that the geeks keep producing different formulas.

 

Geeks with formulas can help us understand the world better and make informed decisions. But the collapse of our financial institutions tells us that we'd be fools to rely on them completely in ordering our great institutions. Read article.

 

Alan Keyes, WND.com

 

My father was career Army. When I was about 6 years old he was stationed at Fort Gordon, Ga. We lived in Augusta, home to a golf course that I think was particularly favored by then President Eisenhower.

 

My parents were Democrats, but I remember being hoisted up to sit on my father's shoulders to get a glimpse of the commander in chief's motorcade as it went by, with the same sense of pride and excitement that we felt some time later when we stood in the crowd at the National Cemetery to get a glimpse of John F. Kennedy.

 

There has been a great tradition in the American military that respects the idea that our troops don't fight for partisanship or from loyalty to individuals. They serve, they work, they risk their lives for the Constitution, and for the safety, rights and liberty of the sovereign people of the United States. Read article.

 

Charles Moore, Telegrph.co.uk

 

Until January, Barack Obama was a tall, thin, young senator, and one reason he is President of the United States today is because he answered – in modernised form – that American yearning for purity and simplicity. He knows that his appeal is still strong, which explains why, virtually every day, he makes a speech.

 

At Georgetown University, he reminded his audience of how the well-meaning attempt to spread home-ownership in America had been perverted into forms of debt so ill- or unsecured that they had provoked the world financial crisis. He repeated Jesus's parable of the two houses. One was built on "a pile of sand", and so fell when the rain came. The other was built upon a rock. "We must build our house upon a rock," said the President. How rock-like is that foundation likely to be?

 

How rock-like is that foundation likely to be? Read article.

 

 

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