Long dance to oblivion?

View 791 Tuesday, September 24, 2013

“Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this presidency.”

President Barack Obama, January 31, 2009

Christians to Beirut. Alawites to the grave.

Syrian Freedom Fighters

What we have now is all we will ever have.

Conservationist motto

The weekend and Monday were devoured by locusts. Tomorrow I have an MRI that will take up much of the day. It’s an annual checkup thing, nothing to worry about, and I doubt they’ll find anything.

I watch with a certain fascination the slow dance of the Republicans toward confrontation. I don’t think anyone knows what will happen. Certainly I don’t.

My advice, such as it is, would be to let the Senate play with the Bill, but have ready a new House version that funds Obamacare, but takes out all the exemptions for Congress and its staffers, and also all Federal Employee exemptions. The Constitution forbids titles of nobility, and exempting a class from taxations and regulations is the creation of a nobility. It can’t be popular except of course on Capitol Hill.

Good article:

Bennett and Beach: The Hypocrisy Of Congress’s Gold-Plated Health Care

Special subsidies for Hill workers trample on the Founders’ code of equal application of the law.

By

WILLIAM BENNETT

And

CHRISTOPHER BEACH

As close observers of history and human nature, James Madison and the other Founders of the U.S. Constitution knew that the equal and unbiased application of the law to all people, especially elected officials, is essential to freedom and justice and one of the primary safeguards from authoritarianism and oppression by a ruling class.

And so, referring to the members of Congress, James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 57: "[T]hey can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society."

Today, elected officials need to be reminded of these truths.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324665604579080921594857770.html

Keeping the Smart Black Kids in their places.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder seem bent on preventing smart black children from getting a good education. Perhaps they don’t know that’s what they are doing. Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence. Perhaps. But there are advantages to having a community under class to organize.

Justice Department vs. Louisiana Voucher Kids

Eric Holder hauls out a 40-year-old civil rights case to attack minority school choice.

By

CLINT BOLICK

School-choice programs have faced no shortage of legal challenges en route to their adoption in 18 states and the District of Columbia. But none of the challenges is so perverse or perplexing as the Justice Department’s motion last month to wield desegregation decrees to halt Louisiana’s voucher program.

As part of its efforts to boost educational opportunities for disadvantaged children, last year Louisiana enacted the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program. The statewide program provides tuition vouchers to children from families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line whose children otherwise would attend public schools that the state has graded C, D or F. This year, roughly 8,000 children are using vouchers to attend private schools. Among those, 91% are minority and 86% would have attended public schools with D or F grades.

Attorney General Eric Holder argues the program runs afoul of desegregation orders, which operate in 34 Louisiana school districts. By potentially altering the racial composition of those schools by taking minority children out of failing public schools, the Justice Department asserts the program "frustrates and impedes the desegregation process." It has asked a federal court to forbid future scholarships in those districts until the state requests and receives approval in each of the 22 or more cases that might be affected.

If successful, the Justice Department’s motion could thwart school choice—not just vouchers, but charter schools—in hundreds of districts across the country that are still subject to desegregation decrees. And it would deprive thousands of Louisiana schoolchildren, nearly all of them black, of the only high-quality educational opportunities they have ever had.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323808204579089093469535268.html