During a January 19^th debate in Charleston, South Carolina, former senator Rick Santorum charged that Congressman Paul, in spite of his fervent advocacy of the anti-abortion cause, has only about a 50 percent pro-life voting record in Congress. Incredibly, Paul’s response was that the slaughter of innocent human beings — as he unambiguously recognizes abortion to be — is none of the federal government’s business. “All other violence is handled by the states,” he said. “That’s a state issue.”

While it’s true that murder and other violent acts are prosecuted at the state level, it does not follow that the states have the authority to legalize them. The Fifth Amendment says, “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” By taking the position that the systematic killing of millions of innocent people is a state issue, Paul must suppose that the Bill of Rights is a mere suggestion, from which the states may opt out.

If Paul insists on constantly warbling on about the Constitution, he really ought to go back and re-read it. He often cites the Tenth Amendment to support his libertarian philosophy of devolving power to the states, but that is not what it prescribes in all cases. What it says is, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” (emphasis added)

The Fifth Amendment forbids anybody, including the states, from depriving innocent people of life, liberty or property. In fact, the 14^th Amendment is partially a reiteration of the Fifth, in that it specifies that “No State” shall deprive people of those same rights. Therefore, the power that Paul says is reserved to the states is instead plainly prohibited to them by the Constitution, which places him as much at odds with the Tenth Amendment as any big-government liberal.

What’s really curious is that Paul, who used to be an obstetrician, explains his opposition to abortion through a horrific story about his having witnessed one; yet it’s the one offense against the Bill of Rights about which he conspicuously defers to the states. Among the congressman’s many — oh, let’s go with “unconventional” — opinions is that the Civil War could have easily been averted, if only President Lincoln had simply purchased all the slaves from the South and freed them. The reason Abe didn’t do this, according to Paul, is that he was bent on instigating the war in for the sole purpose of consolidating power in Washington.

Never mind the flaws in his analysis, which, to put it kindly, are egregious and many. The point is that Paul does not contend that slavery was a state issue about which Lincoln should have done nothing. Instead, he prescribes a heavy-handed, if utterly implausible, course of action by the federal government, at no small taxpayer expense. If he sees a role for the federal government in defending people’s right to liberty, then why not life?

Could it be that the man who poses as the consummate non-politician is making the most cynical of political calculations? In open primary states, the bulk of Paul’s support comes from voters who are not registered Republican. In fact, his blame-America-first foreign policy and his support for drug legalization have made him a favorite among the loopiest of liberal activists. Hence their gleeful speculation about an independent Ron Paul-Dennis Kucinich ticket in 2008.

Paul has succeeded where countless other politicians have failed in finding a rhetorical middle ground on the abortion issue. From one side of his mouth, he declares that life begins at fertilization, and that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. From the other, he assumes the Jimmy Carter “personally opposed, but” position, suggesting that there would be nothing legally wrong with all 50 states allowing the atrocity to continue.

The whole reason we have a Bill of Rights is to establish that our most fundamental, natural rights do not come from man, and therefore cannot be lawfully denied by him. That document is wholly incompatible with the proposition that a state government is free to condone the killing of unborn children within its borders. As long as Dr. Paul refuses to see that, he can be no more consistent a defender of the Constitution than he really is of innocent human life.

Describing the 42^nd president’s appetite as “scary,” Mesnier told the story of how Clinton gobbled up half a strawberry cake in one evening, and then awoke the next morning expecting more. “No one could find the cake,” the story goes, perhaps because someone had gotten the crazy idea that it had been intended for more than one person. “Clinton was pounding on the table and shouting, ‘I want my goddamned cake!’”

What an epitaph for the most spoiled, overindulgent, quick-tempered, self-absorbed glutton ever to serve in the Oval Office. If almost anyone else had, for whatever reason, devoured that much in one sitting, that person wouldn’t want to look at another piece of cake for weeks. In Clinton’s case, having consumed half a strawberry cake only served to remind him of half a strawberry cake. Therefore, he did what to him was only natural, and angrily demanded half a strawberry cake.

This story portrays Bill Clinton as America used to know him, before his post-presidential rehabilitation. His voracious appetite knew no bounds, whether for food, women, money, attention, or practically anything else he could get. Whenever the propriety of his taking those things was questioned, he’d respond with completely unjustified indignation. The Leader of the Free World who pounded the table for more cake was the same man who, in denying the Monica Lewinsky affair, repeatedly thumped the podium while pointing his finger at the American people, as if he was angry at us for interfering with another of his extreme acts of consumption.

Even many conservatives now partake in revisionist fantasies about the Man from Hope, declaring him to have governed as a pragmatic centrist, treating his egomania as at least a partially endearing quality, and, most incredibly, ranking him somewhere other than first among the most prolific liars in American political history. It’s not unusual for commentators who were once known to the sniveling class as “Clinton-haters” to now confess that they actually miss the Big Creep. Sure, he’s flawed, but he’s really an amiable character, they imagine, kind of like H.R. Pufnstuf with a distinguishing characteristic.

Part of the motivation for conservative Clinton nostalgia is to compare him favorably to our current president, which in most contexts is entirely unfair. As philosophically polluted as Barack Obama is, there’s no question that Clinton takes the cake in terms of sheer personal awfulness. It was he who facilitated the sale of American missile technology to the Red Chinese, granted clemency to domestic terrorists from the FALN, and twice used his veto pen to defend infanticide, in exchange for a free pass from feminists for his serial abuse of women. Those are just a few of the very worst among an infinite number of examples from which to choose.

Clinton’s entire life story has been a relentless exhibition of one despicable act after another, from lying to a Bataan Death March survivor in order to worm his way out of the draft, to selling the tainted blood of Arkansas state prisoners to the Canadian Red Cross, to falsely arresting Billy Dale in the travel office scandal, to attempting to pilfer valuable items from the White House as he prepared to leave, and countless other immoral acts along the way. As if that weren’t enough, he also elevated Al Gore to within one underdone pork chop of assuming the presidency.

Even that part of the Whitewater real estate scheme that was unquestionably legal was vile beyond belief. The fine print contained a clause saying that if a buyer missed a single payment, all the money he’d invested to that point would be converted to rent, meaning that the Clintons and their partners would evict him, keep his money, and go find a new investor.

Most people wouldn’t care to take a trip through the sewer under Memory Lane with Bill Clinton, but they don’t have to, thanks to anecdotes like Mesnier’s that capture the former president’s life in microcosm. Just picturing the big, furniture-punching boob hollering “I want my goddamned cake,” like someone doing a bad Henry VIII impression, tells you everything about him you need to remember.

At their 2004 national convention, the Democrats honored Michael Moore by seating him right next to former president Jimmy Carter. If that was outrageous, it was nothing compared to the fact that the next Democrat administration would conduct itself as if it were producing one of Moore’s phony documentaries.

A scene in Moore’s anti-gun film Bowling for Columbine depicts him opening an account at a Traverse City, Michigan bank that offers a free rifle to each new customer. After filling out some paperwork, he exits the building, victoriously hoisting his easily obtained firearm overhead. Like everything else in Moore’s movies, that’s not exactly how it happened.

The bank, which was also licensed as a gun dealership, administered background checks, after which it would issue vouchers redeemable for rifles kept in a vault at a remote location, about 300 miles away. Moore had already opened his account and passed his background check long beforehand, and arranged to have his gun delivered to the bank for the purpose of shooting the scene.

Moore was allowed this departure from the usual procedure because the gullible manager was eager to cooperate with what the congenitally dishonest filmmaker had told him was a story about innovative business practices. In exchange for having done him this favor, the bank and its employees were lied about, and turned into objects of derision.

The Obama administration has used this same approach in executing Operation Fast & Furious, through which the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms instructed gun dealers to sell arms to suspected Mexican gangsters, in contravention of the established safeguards. The dealers must have thought they were doing their patriotic duty by cooperating with the ATF, when in fact they were being set up to take the blame for Mexican drug-related violence.

According to the latest in a series of reports by Sharyl Atkisson of CBS News, internal ATF e-mails indicate the use of Fast & Furious as a rationale for more restrictive gun regulations. In the absence of a reasonable explanation why the administration would deliberately arm the drug cartels, without making any effort to track or intercept the weapons or notify the Mexican authorities, one would have to conclude that its usefulness in furthering Obama’s liberal domestic agenda was its entire purpose. After all, the president had repeatedly made the baseless claim that most of the Mexican gangs’ guns were coming from American dealers. Why not create some proof?

In both Bowling for Columbine and Fast & Furious, the anti-gun activists misrepresented themselves so that they may later betray the trust of innocent gun dealers, who became unwittingly complicit in their campaign against Second Amendment rights. The difference is that peddling a pack of lies about his political adversaries was the entire purpose of Moore’s deception, whereas the Obama administration meant to take it a step further, by using those lies as a basis to affect federal policy. In other words, the perpetrators of Fast & Furious hold positions of great responsibility, and therefore wield far greater power than a mere propagandist.

Moore’s movies may be a bunch of lying, slanderous, intelligence-insulting, anti-American mindpuke, but that’s about as damaging as they can get. When similar tactics are used by people with real power, as in a federal bureaucracy, the results can be lethal. Fast & Furious came to light just over a year ago when Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in a shootout with Mexican criminals, using weapons that have been traced back to that operation.

These weapons have also been connected to the kidnapping and murder of the brother of the Mexican state of Chihuahua’s attorney general, and have been used to kill an undeterminable but undoubtedly increasing number of others. In addition, Fast & Furious has endangered the remaining American agents in the field, immeasurably harmed relations between the United States and Mexico, and hindered future collaborations between the two countries against the gangsters who continue to terrorize the areas along our border.

This scandal is just a sampling of what can happen when power is given to a political party that models its behavior after a buffoon who specializes in creating false realities. To a superficial blowhard like Moore, real reality may be, up to a certain point, optional. The same is not true of the President of the United States, who must eventually deal with the fact that, when you deliberately arm vicious criminals to the teeth as part of a plan to disarm the innocent, good people will die.

In Ronald Reagan’s first inaugural address, he described America by saying, “We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around.” Thirty years later, that doesn’t exactly ring true.

During the 2008 primaries, Barack Obama told a group of supporters in Oregon that, “We can’t drive our SUVs, and eat as much as we want, and keep our homes at 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say, ‘oh, okay.’ That’s not leadership. That’s not going to happen.” Exercising our freedom as consumers is “not going to happen?” Spoken like the future leader of a government that has a nation.

This September, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack lectured representatives of the National Restaurant Association about the amount of salt and sugar in their food, as part of an intimidation campaign with which several large restaurant chains are already “cooperating.” Of course, salt and sugar cost money, so if it made good business sense for restaurants to reduce the amounts they use, they would have done so already. They haven’t because the food just won’t taste as good, as you’re well aware if you’ve ever accidentally bought a can of low-sodium soup, and then carpet-bombed it with salt in an attempt to make it palatable.

Naturally, our federal overseers have thought of a solution to this. “It’s going to take time for people’s tastes to adjust, ” Vilsack said. “So we have to make sure that what we do is create the appropriate transition.” Not only will the government dictate what food is allowed to be served to us, but it is going to make us eat it and like it.

That statement of Vilsack’s crystallizes the liberal Democrats’ view of the relation between themselves and the people they are supposed to serve. If they must govern by the consent of the people, then they will determine that to which the people consent. When they decide that you’ll eat more peas and less pizza, they’ll just send one of their taste adjusters over to give your buds a tweak.

Do you doubt it? They’ve already succeeded in “creating the appropriate transition” to change people’s preferences about what kind of vehicle to drive. Not long ago, SUVs were outrageously popular, but big-government liberals decided that people shouldn’t want SUVs, and lo, people don’t want SUVs.

Under the guise of “saving the planet,” our government has done almost everything imaginable to retard domestic energy production, making ownership of a low-mileage vehicle enough of a hardship to outweigh its benefits. Therefore, more people now “want” the kinds of vehicles that liberals say they should want. This is an example of what “Regulatory Czar” Cass Sunstein calls “nudging.”

In Sunstein’s Orwellian model of “libertarian paternalism,” individuals are free to make their own choices in life, but only after their government “choice architects” have already “nudged” them toward the preferred liberal outcomes. Therefore, if all goes according to plan, the government will have decided what your “choice” is, long before you’ve had the opportunity to make it.

The Regulatory Czar oversees regulations across the entire executive branch, which is why Vilsack’s language is so derivative of Sunstein’s. To “create the appropriate transition” for your tastes to adjust is simply to “nudge” you out of making the choices you would really rather make. Once your “choice architects” have bullied fast food restaurants into ruining their french fries, for example, you probably won’t eat them as often, if at all.

Had this band of aspiring omnipotents gained power through subterfuge, that would be a simple enough problem to correct. Instead, it was willfully given to them by 53 percent of the voters, less than six months after Obama had told us that we’re not fit to govern our own houses, cars and stomachs.

It’s not that a majority of voters necessarily wanted the government to start dictating our tastes, but the lack of outrage at Obama’s remarks was the next worst thing. So eager were so many people to be a “part of history” that they couldn’t be bothered to notice that their candidate was exhibiting totalitarian tendencies.

As a result of that indifference, we are now a nation that is being had by a government. We’d better reverse this situation while we still can, because as Reagan warned, “If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.” And don’t think Obama and his “choice architects” are unaware of that.

– Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.

Supposedly, Rogers wants the tax in order to pay for infrastructure projects, but he let the real reason slip when, according to an October 21st Fox News story, he explained, “We are entitled to more money from the only industry in the county. They created the image of this little old hamlet down here being the place where this fantastic whiskey is being made, and the people didn’t realize what was going on.” O, the exploitation!

Jack Daniel’s general manager Tommy Beam responded that the company is already heavily taxed, and that, being the county’s largest employer, it has expanded the tax base dramatically. The population of Lynchburg is now actually close to 6,000 (The 361 figure on the bottle is from the time that the label was trademarked, about 50 years ago). In addition, the distillery brings in an estimated 200,000 tourists every year. This demonstrates a point that ought to go without saying, which is that a successful industry is beneficial to the community in which it resides. Yet Rogers treats Jack Daniel’s as if it were a deadbeat, failing to pay its “fair share” to the local government.

If Rogers’ attitude sounds familiar, you’ve probably heard Massachusetts Democrat senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren lecture, with window-shattering shrillness, that each individual’s property belongs to everyone else. While angrily patronizing our nation’s producers (“You built a factory out there? Good for you!”), she grudgingly conceded that they may “keep a big hunk of it,” but scolded that they must “pay forward” the rest, as “part of the underlying social contract.”

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — Nobody!” she seethed. “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” Mind you, she’s not referring to some “too big to fail” bailout recipient here. She’s talking about the vast majority of business owners who either succeed or fail legitimately, and who already pay a disproportionately high percentage of the taxes.

Liberals like Rogers and Warren view society as a high school group project, and they’re the lazy kids who have no compunction about leeching a share of the credit from the kid who does all the work. What would they do, though, if all of a sudden, that one industrious kid was no longer there? Lynchburg may soon find out.

Dawson County, Georgia has sent a letter to Jack Daniel’s, asking the company to consider relocating to the town of Dawsonville. County Commissioner Gary Pichon expressed surprise to the Gainesville Times at the Tennesseeans’ treatment of their most productive citizens. “That they would try to extraordinarily tax them is shortsighted to me,” he said. “We’d love to have them.”

So now it’s put up or shut up time for Rogers, and whoever else in Lynchburg believes in Warren’s underlying social contract. If they truly believe that the whiskey maker is freeloading off their community, then they should be more than willing to say good riddance.

They won’t, of course. Once they’re faced with the reality of losing everything the business brings to their town, they’ll be forced to admit, however tacitly, that their underlying social contract is a lie. They don’t seriously think successful enterprises like Jack Daniel’s are indebted to government. They just want to tax them more for the simple reason that they want the money.

Big-government liberals love to sermonize about greed, but there’s nothing greedier than claiming an entitlement to ever-expanding percentages of other people’s earnings. What they don’t seem to understand is that the more money they take, the less incentive there is for the producers to earn it. If the people of Lynchburg destroy the incentive for Jack Daniel’s to do business in their town, they might as well be telling person #361 to turn out the lights.

Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.

This time-tested rhetorical tactic has often been used by liberals to shield their positions from examination, by denying the very existence of an objective reality. “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom-fighter,” they’ll say. “One man’s pornography is another man’s poetry.” Simply by asserting that there are differing opinions, they declare the issue to be effectively nullified.

The fundamental flaw in these arguments is that the theoretical Second Man in each example is demonstrably wrong. Considering his track record, one would have to conclude that he’s either a liar, or else an ignoramus unable to discern fact from fiction, or right from wrong. An Islamic terrorist who wants to force the rest of the world to submit to his beliefs is not a freedom fighter. Larry Flynt is not just a modern-day Robert Frost in a puddle of drool. The fact that somebody might take contrary positions on matters like these does not elevate those contentions to equal footing with the truth.

As for Carney’s example, putting the word “democracy” in the mouth of the Second Man does not make it an accurate description of the OWS activists. Although they call themselves the “99 percent,” these hard-core socialist misfits know that they’re not in the majority, and are not interested in majority rule. What they want is rule through intimidation by an angry and destructive minority. They attack policemen, squat on private property, and deliberately obstruct productive citizens from going about their daily business. That’s not democracy in action. That’s a mob.

The key to the sophistry of the Second Man is the denial of objectivity, by recasting the truth as merely the opinion of the First Man. Notice that Carney doesn’t come right out and deny that the Occupiers are a mob. Instead, he assigns that characterization of them to the First Man, so that the habitually oblivious Second Man may rebut it. This allows Carney to triangulate between the two, making the Obama administration appear to take a neutral position, when in fact President Obama and his party have been inciting the mob all along.

The Second Man always makes whatever statement his liberal ventriloquist wants to introduce to the argument, but is unwilling to make himself. Carney wanted the characterization of the Occupiers as “democracy” to be heard; he just didn’t want to leave himself in the position of having to defend it. Conveniently, the Second Man arrived to save the day, by assuming responsibility for the indefensible statement. If the reporters don’t like it, they can take it up with him.

Of course, you can’t carry on an argument with a hypothetical being, which is what makes the Second Man such an effective rhetorical device. Since he can’t be reasoned with, there’s no dissuading him from his viewpoint. Your only two options are to reject it outright, or to let it be established as an equal, alternative “truth.”

It would be nice if some reporter would take the former position, and say, “Come off it, Carney, OWS is a mob and you know it.” We know that’s unlikely to happen, though, not just because the media are reluctant to contradict a Democrat administration, but because the efficacy of the Second Man tactic rests in part on the stigmatization of judgmentalism that has been ingrained in our society over the past half-century. Thus, anyone who refutes one of the Second Man’s assertions is bound to be derided as some kind of a fact nazi.

When liberals are afraid that they’ll be caught lying, they invoke the Second Man in the same way that a child blames his misdeeds on an imaginary friend. Perhaps in a liberal family, things are different. Instead of blaming a broken lamp on Invisible Marvin, maybe the liberal child tells his parents that one man’s broken lamp is another man’s abstract sculpture.

Next time Carney takes questions from the press, he should just put on a Batman mask whenever he’s about to tell a lie, and then take it off when he feels free to speak truthfully. He could later offer the disclaimer that Batman is entitled to his opinions, which are not necessarily shared by the administration. That would be no less forthright than the liberals’ tiresome Second Man evasion, without being nearly as trite.

Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.

The president generously shared this gift with Queen Elizabeth, whom he and the first lady gave an iPod, already loaded with, among other things, audio of his inaugural address and his 2004 convention speech. One can just imagine Her Majesty going out for a brisk morning walk, energizing herself by listening to exhilarating tidbits like, “Uuuhhh, let me be clear.”

What the president and his acolytes have never learned is that what makes a great speech is not the way the speaker tilts his head, not the lilt in his voice, and not the quality of the stage props surrounding him. A great speech is made great by the idea behind it, and sadly, Barack Obama seldom has anything of value to convey. As evidence, consider the following baker’s dozen of the most dismal and ill-considered speeches he’s given so far.

(#13) February 4, 2010 — Obama tries to tell an uplifting tale about a Navy corpsman at a National Prayer Breakfast, but bungles it by mispronouncing the word “corpse-man,” as if referring to a dead body. He makes this mistake a second time, demonstrating that it is not a slip of the tongue, but that he really thinks it’s pronounced that way.

(#12) May 24, 2011 — At Buckingham Palace, Obama appears to finish a brief and dignified toast to Queen Elizabeth, when the band starts playing God Save the Queen. Apparently believing that this is meant as background music for one of his brilliant orations, he plods on, trampling the British national anthem with a hackneyed recitation of the famous soliloquy from Richard II (“…This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England”) It’s as if he’d haphazardly assigned some flunky to scrounge up “something British” for him to say.

(#11) July 24, 2008 — Presidential candidate Barack Obama ludicrously gives a campaign speech in Berlin, where he declares himself to be a “citizen of the world.” With typical professorial arrogance, he proceeds to lecture the German people about the history of Germany.

(#10) September 8, 2011 — Obama convenes a joint session of Congress for the anticlimactic purpose of proposing a warmed-over repeat of his woefully failed stimulus package. The president comically chants the phrase “pass this bill now” 17 times during the speech, despite the fact that no bill exists. Obediently, the legislature swiftly acts on nothing.

(#9) September 9, 2009 — Obama repeatedly accuses Republicans of lying about the Democrats’ health care plan, in response to which GOP congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina blurts out, “you lie!” The point of their dispute is Obama’s denial that his party’s plan would give health benefits to illegal aliens, which it assuredly will. Wilson would be thoroughly rebuked afterward, but it is the president who commits the greater breach of decorum, for using that particular setting to unleash a pointedly partisan harangue. This is the first of several instances in which he uses a joint session of Congress as an opportunity to scold the opposition, which is expected to sit quietly as a captive audience, appearing to endorse Obama’s unchallenged accusations.

(#8) January 27, 2010 — President Obama again shows his disdain for traditional rules of decorum in his State of the Union Address, when he levels an absurd accusation against the Supreme Court, by charging that a recent decision would allow “foreign corporations to spend without limit in our elections.” One member of the Court, Justice Samuel Alito, is seen uttering the words “not true,” which of course it’s not.

(#7) June 4, 2009 — During a widely anticipated speech in Cairo, President Obama reverts to the liberal Cold War playbook, by portraying the War on Terror as just one big misunderstanding between America and Islam. It is here that he first states his oft-repeated whopper that “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” Speaking to an international audience on foreign soil, he criticizes American policy by referring to the invasion of Iraq as “a war of choice.” So much for the adage that politics stops at the water’s edge.

(#6) September 24, 2011 — Speaking to the Congressional Black Caucus, Obama presumes to bark orders at elected representatives of the people as if they were his personal hired help. Insultingly commanding them to “take off your bedroom slippers, [and] put on your marching shoes,” he proceeds to tell them to “stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying,” and give him the support he thinks they owe him. As extremely liberal as most CBC members are, it is officially nonpartisan, counting conservative Republican freshman Rep. Allen West among its members. Yet the president addresses them like low-level Democratic Party staffers.

(#5) May 1, 2011 — While announcing the killing of Osama bin Laden, Obama just can’t help taking a childish and dishonest swipe at former president George W. Bush. Not content to simply report the good news and bask in what credit he deserves for it, he spitefully tries to discredit the Bush administration, by portraying the hunt for bin Laden as having been dormant until he, Obama, took office and made the terrorist’s capture or killing a “top priority.”

(#4) March 18, 2008 — Using his ballyhooed “speech on race” to distance himself from Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama outs his white grandmother as a racist in order to provide balance. He summarizes some of the historical injustices against blacks, without mentioning the Democratic Party’s role in them, of course. He calls Rev. Wright’s anger “simply inexcusable,” and then turns around and excuses it, by blaming it on America instead of on Rev. Wright. Ominously, he adds, “At times, that anger is exploited by politicians, to gin up votes along racial lines, or to make up for a politician’s own failings.”

(#3) June 30, 2008 — In what is referred to as his “patriotism speech,” he describes the actions of the “so-called counterculture” as merely a reaction to their having been, completely unfairly, called unpatriotic. In one of his usual grotesque moral equations, he likens the criticism of politicians who tried to make America lose the war in Iraq to the disgraceful treatment of Gen. David Petraeus by congressional Democrats. Ostensibly setting out to define “patriotism,” he deliberately avoids identifying it to the exclusion of anything else. In short, not even the “so-called counterculture” (read: Weather Underground) can truly be unpatriotic.

(#2) November 5, 2009 — At a conference hosted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Obama approaches the podium to address the massacre that had just taken place at Fort Hood. First, however, he takes the time to thank his Department of Interior staff, and give a “shout out” to Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Joe Medicine Crow (whom he misidentifies as a “Congressional Medal of Honor winner”). A jihadist infiltrator murders 13 Americans at an Army base, and the president treats it as just another bullet point in his otherwise whimsical monologue.

(#1) May 17, 2010 — At the signing of the Daniel Pearl Press Freedom Act, the president remarks that, “the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination, because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is.” What a remarkably nonjudgmental reflection on the beheading of a reporter by Islamic terrorists, for the simple reason that he was an American Jew. Such an atrocity should outrage the world, not capture its imagination, as if the world were standing back and observing an interesting work of art.

Mind you, these are not unforeseeable gaffes, or “gotcha” traps laid out by Barack Obama’s enemies. These are all prepared speeches, specifically crafted for the man who has “a gift.” Anyone who perpetuates the myth that Obama is some kind of great orator, including himself, has got to be delusional.

Actually, that’s just as well. If President Obama ever realized what a terrible speaker he really is, he’d probably just bore us with a bunch of excuses about how he’d inherited bad oratory from the previous administration.

– Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.

No Labels, which claims to represent the “vital, civil center” of the political spectrum, aims to “overthrow the tyranny of hyper-partisanship that dominates our political culture today.” To that end, it tells politicians to “put aside their labels” and “check their preconditions at the door,” so that they can end “gridlock,” and get on with the business of solving problems.

To anyone who’s seen this scam before, the phoniness of No Labels’ centrist rhetoric leaps right off the page. For starters, gridlock is not what ails America. It was during the time that the Democrats were virtually unopposed that trillion-plus deficits and 9 percent unemployment became the “new norms.” Had there been gridlock during that time, there would have been no “universal health care,” no $814 billion stimulus package, and no Cash-for-Clunkers. Tragically, there was no way to stop the implementation of these economically devastating policies.

No Labels did not even exist during that time, when the hyper-partisanship of the majority party really was threatening the nation. That organization, supposedly having no partisan agenda of its own, was established in the immediate aftermath of the 2010 elections. Only when the new Republican majority in the House threatened to put the brakes on the Obama agenda were the group’s founders stirred into action.

Which side is it that shuns labels, anyway? You never hear a conservative complain about being labeled a conservative. It’s only liberals, trying to conceal their true beliefs and intentions, who shrink from political labels. Even obviously liberal presidential candidates like Michael Dukakis and John Kerry have protested the use of the word “liberal” to describe them.

No Labels’ whimpering declaration that, “We are not labels — we are people,” is clearly meant to abet this deception. It is also a typically liberal statement, in that it is grossly illogical. Of course people aren’t labels, but that doesn’t mean that labels, when accurately applied to people, do not perform a valuable public service. So spare us the indignation.

According to its August 5th press release, “No Labels places the blame for the downgrade of America’s credit rating by Standard & Poor’s squarely on elected officials on both sides of the aisle who have been unwilling to compromise, put everything on the table and tackle the tough issues facing the nation.” In reality, this pretense of nonpartisanship acts as a shield for the side that is truly at fault. After witnessing a two-year rampage by a party that believes it can stimulate the economy through previously unimaginable amounts of deficit spending, nobody can seriously believe that partisan intransigence is the cause of our dilemma.

Even after the downgrade, and several weeks of pretending to have discovered fiscal responsibility, President Obama has returned with a plan for another stimulus package, substantially similar to his first one, and projected to cost another $447 billion. The “vital civil center” has yet to offer an opinion about this. That’s really not surprising, since No Labels refrains from stating policy preferences, but instead focuses on the political process.

If it were really as concerned about the direction of our country as it incessantly claims to be, that would not be the case. No Labels would be demanding particular results, not obsessing over the particular details of how we would get there. If Party A had the right policy, and Party B the wrong one, No Labels should be siding in that instance with Party A, not prodding the two parties to put aside their principles (i.e., “preconditions”) in order to broker an unsatisfactory compromise.

The media must realize that No Labels is a phony organization that is running interference for liberal Democrats. If they believed it was just a group of concerned citizens demanding responsibility from their representatives, they would portray its members as a horde of cantankerous, illiterate, sociopathic racists. Instead, they just play along, pretending to be unable to tell the difference between a stealth liberal campaign and a tall can of soup.

Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.

They do this by preventing a newly created embryo from adhering to the uterine wall. Though lethal, this does not technically constitute an abortion. That’s because in an abortion, the thing being aborted is the pregnancy, not the fetus or embryo. If an embryo has not been conceived in the womb, there is no pregnancy, and therefore can be no abortion. Hence, a “morning-after pill” like Plan B can accurately be described as a contraceptive, in that it prevents conception in the womb, despite the fact that it kills an existing human embryo.

Last year, the FDA approved a drug called “ella” (chemical name: “ulipristal acetate”) to be used as a contraceptive, which qualifies it for inclusion among these essentially free services. The catch is that ella can also be used to kill a child who has already been conceived in the womb. That makes it an abortifacient, no matter how you slice the semantics. In fact, ella acts in the same way as mifepristone, a drug more commonly known as RU-486. By suppressing a hormone called progesterone, it not only prevents an embryo from implanting, but can also weaken the womb’s lining to the point that an already implanted embryo will detach itself and die of malnourishment.

There can be little doubt that the secretary is aware of this. When she was governor of Kansas, Sebelius distinguished herself as the most pro-abortion politician in America, something she demonstrated by defending notorious late-term abortionist George Tiller the way a mother bear protects her cubs. If we assume that her whole motivation is to force Americans to pay for abortion (and in the words of Max Bialystock, “assume away”), then we can see that this is how it has to be done. She could not have openly trumpeted an abortion drug giveaway program, but what if she could frame such an outcome as an unintended consequence, and conceal it so that it would be realized only gradually?

To that end, Sebelius could not have included RU-486 in her decree, because of the publicity that drug has received in the past. On the other hand, few people have heard of ella, which the FDA conveniently characterizes as a contraceptive, while stating that it is contraindicated for abortion. Not that this distinction will matter to those who administer it. Planned Parenthood has systematically and hazardously disregarded FDA guidelines for administering RU-486 over the years, without any legal or political consequence.

That same organization now brags that it “played an integral role in the development of ella,” by participating in clinical trials, and producing a report on the drug’s alleged safety and effectiveness. PP is surely aware, then, that ella has proven effective at inducing abortion in rats, and to a lesser degree in rabbits and macaques. The “family planning” group also knew the importance of classifying the pill as a contraceptive, which is why it subsequently petitioned Sebelius to guarantee insurance coverage of contraceptives at no additional cost.

Inevitably, and probably soon, the FDA will revisit ella, and declare it to be “safe and effective” for inducing abortions in humans as well. Nevertheless, ella will still be an FDA-approved contraceptive method, and will thus remain “free” under Sebelius’ mandate.

Sebelius was given this extraordinary power by phony pro-life Democrats, who voted for the bill in exchange for a constitutionally meaningless executive order signed by President Obama, promising “to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services.” Even if this order were enforceable, Obama and his party have found a way to circumvent it. The new abortion pill will be paid for not with federal funds, but through your health insurance premiums.

This is the kind of thing that happens when Congress creates fill-in-the-blank legislation, that leaves major policy decisions to the unilateral discretion of an unelected official. As Nancy Pelosi, who was then Speaker of the House, famously said at the time, “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

On second thought, let’s repeal it, and let the rest of its contents forever remain a mystery.

Daniel Clark is a writer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.