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America’s Economy Is ‘Mostly’ Free? Washington Needs to Back Out of the Marketplace

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

— Ben Sasse is the junior Republican U.S. senator from Nebraska and former president of Midland University. Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation, was formerly a Republican U.S. senator from South Carolina.

The land of the mostly free and the home of the brave.”

That sounds wrong, and it is. But “mostly free” is how the U.S. economy rates in the recently released 2016 Index of Economic Freedom. This is bad news for Americans in general, and especially unfortunate for our poorest, most vulnerable citizens.

A joint research product of the Heritage Foundation and the Wall Street Journal, the Index measures the economic freedom of nations based on ten criteria, including the rule of law, size of government, regulatory efficiency, and market openness. These factors affect how easily Americans from Nebraska to New York can climb ladders of opportunity, start businesses, and make a better life for their families. These are the things that really matter.

Nations such as Switzerland and Australia continue to rank among the ten freest economies in the world, while North Korea and Cuba remain on the bottom rungs — their citizens the victims of crippling economic repression.

The good news is that the average score for the 189 nations analyzed rose again this year. In other words, economic freedom overall advanced globally for the fourth year running. The bad news: Economic freedom declined here in the United States.

Our 2016 score is only 75.4 out of a possible 100 — well below the 80 points required to earn a “mostly free” rating. Indeed, the new score ties our previous worst — set in 1998. Put another way, all U.S. advances in economic freedom logged in the last 18 years have now been wiped out. As Americans, we shouldn’t have to settle for anything short of excellence — that’s not who we are.

America is exceptional because we are free. We are unique in history because we haven’t stood in line to ask a king, a court, or a bureaucracy for our freedoms. We have invented and invested, collaborated, and created great products, businesses, and services without government micromanagement.

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The Regrettable Decline of Higher Learning By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

What do campus microaggressions, safe spaces, trigger warnings, speech codes, and censorship have to do with higher learning?

American universities want it both ways. They expect unquestioned subsidized support from the public, but also to operate in a way impossible for anyone else.

Colleges still wear the ancient clothes of higher learning. Latin mottos, caps and gowns, ivy-covered spires, and high talk of liberal education reflect a hallowed intellectual tradition.

In fact, today’s campuses mimic ideological boot camps. Tenured professors seek to indoctrinate young people in certain preconceived progressive political agendas. Environmental-studies classes are not very open to debating the “settled science” of man-caused, carbon-induced global warming – or the need for immediate and massive government intervention to address it. Grade-conscious and indebted students make the necessary ideological adjustments.

Few sociology courses celebrate the uniquely American assimilationist melting pot. Race, class, and gender agenda courses – along with thousands of “studies” courses – have been invented. A generation of politicized professors has made the strange argument that they alone have discovered all sorts of critical new disciplines of knowledge – apparently unknown for 2,500 years – to ensure that graduates would be better educated than ever before.

Universities have lost their commitment to the inductive method. Preconceived anti-Enlightenment theories are established as settled fact and part of career promotion. Evidence is made to fit these unquestioned assumptions.

Two unfortunate results have predictably followed.

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Is State Dept. Turning Deaf Ear to Pleas of Bloggers on al-Qaeda Hit List? By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom implored Secretary of State John Kerry late last month to admit to the United States some Bangladeshi bloggers at high risk of assassination by al-Qaeda groups.

That follows a plea just before Christmas from a coalition of human rights groups warning that dozens of Bangladeshi writers — deemed blasphemers by Islamists for their secular works — were in “urgent danger” and in need of protection.

But today at the State Department, the Obama administration wouldn’t confirm if it had any response to the requests in which the urgency of the matter was clearly spelled out.

USCIRF Chairman Robert P. George wrote to Kerry on Jan. 25, asking “that our government provide humanitarian parole for a limited number of Bangladeshi writers at imminent risk of assassination by extremist groups.”

Last year, one American, Avijit Roy of Atlanta, and four Bangladeshis, Washiqur Rahman Babu, Ananta Bijoy Das, Niloy Chatterjee, and Faisal Arefin Dipan, were viciously murdered by assassins aligned with al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent.

George noted that they “were assassinated because of their writings, including expressing their secular beliefs that amounted to blasphemy in the eyes of the religious extremists who killed them.”

“Additionally, numerous other individuals have been placed on ‘hit-lists,’ which are widely available on the Internet. The five murders, along with the hit lists, underscore that several individuals remain in imminent danger,” he wrote.

“USCIRF respectfully urges you to use your good offices to help secure humanitarian parole for a select number of bloggers who remain in imminent danger in Bangladesh.”

The December letter to Kerry from PEN American Center, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Reporters Without Borders and others noted that “the government of Bangladesh has not provided adequate protection to those at risk and, in some cases, has promoted the idea that these bloggers should self-censor in order to deter attacks against them—or that they should leave the country.”

“In what appears to be a concession to appease Islamist groups, Bangladeshi officials have also arrested secular bloggers on charges of insulting religious sentiments in the past,” the coalition wrote.

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Have We Reached Peak Trump? By Roger Kimball

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

Inquiring minds want to know: have we reached Peak Trump? Most of the polls told us that Trump would cruise to victory in Iowa. Instead, Cruz did the cruising, not only precipitating the largest turnout in history (186,000 votes; the previous record was 122,000), but also achieving that record after frankly opposing ethanol subsidies, a fuel that (so the pundits told us) was absolutely indispensable to victory in the Hawkeye State.

Except that it wasn’t. Once upon a time, Trump had been opposed to ethanol subsidies, until political expediency convinced him to join the “I love ethanol” bandwagon. But then, Trump’s record has shown that he will say anything at any time to anyone if he thinks it will benefit him.

For his part, Rubio declared himself in favor of ethanol subsidies “for seven years” (that should hold ’em). The pandering of the Republican cohort over the issue of ethanol subsidies was nauseating (the Dems didn’t quite rise to that level of pandering), but Cruz was the only one who stuck to his free-market guns. The ethanol subsidy is a classic government boondoggle: bad for everyone and everything (even the environment, which it was supposed to help). It even hurts the farmers getting the government checks, because it lures them into a cycle of dependency and so robs them of their independence.

So what’s next? All the polls I’ve seen put Trump way ahead in New Hampshire, where the world will descend on February 9 to gape and ogle before decamping for points south until the cycle starts again in four years. But now that the game is really afoot, has Donald Trump peaked?

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Toomey Gives Rubio Another Senate Endorsement By Bridget Johnson

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) got the endorsement of another one of his colleagues as Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) threw his support behind Rubio’s presidential bid.

That brings Rubio’s upper chamber endorsements up to six, including Sens. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Jim Risch (R-Idaho), and Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who endorsed after Rubio came in third in the Iowa caucuses this week.

Toomey announced his support on CNN this afternoon, saying that last week he called Rubio and said, “Marco, I want to help you any way I can.”

“I want to help you become the next president of the United States. I’m endorsing his candidacy and I’m very optimistic about his prospects,” Toomey said.

Asked why Rubio was a better pick than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the Pennsylvania senator replied, “You know, we face a huge national security crisis, obviously emanating from the Middle East. There is tension all around the world. I think Marco has demonstrated a clear understanding.”

“He’s done the hard work. He’s very knowledgeable, thoughtful. He’s a smart guy. He’s demonstrated the leadership. You know, domestically I think we’ve sometimes have a crisis of confidence,” Toomey continued. “And Marco has an extraordinary ability, I think, to communicate and to inspire people. I think he’s going to be a really strong leader.”

Toomey dismissed Jeb Bush’s charge that Cruz and Rubio haven’t had to make any tough decisions.

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Obama’s Islamophobia – Fear of telling the truth By Roger L Simon

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

rack Obama suffers from serious case of the real Islamophobia — fear of telling the truth about Islam. Even though a “progressive,” he says nary a word about the rampant misogyny and homophobia in Islam or about Sharia law whose medieval strictures are preferred by 51% of American Muslims. Nor does he seem to care that so few of these same American Muslims actively oppose radical Islam. The president prefers the Hamas-linked CAIR to courageous reformers like Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. But that’s no surprise. For Obama, radical Islam doesn’t even exist.

Instead, he claims American citizens are mistreating their Muslim brothers and sisters when anyone with a web browser can see that simply isn’t true and is yet another Obama lie. In fact, anti-Muslim acts in the USA are few and far less than those against Jews. According to the FBI, in 2014, 57% of hate crimes targeted Jews, only 16% Muslims. Moreover, hate crimes themselves are extremely infrequent in this country, only 1140 (again from 2014) in a nation with a population well over 320 million. Compare hate crimes to burglaries — 2,159,878, according to the FBI, in 2010 — and it becomes obvious how minuscule the threat is, particularly to Muslims. It’s almost non-existent.

Yet Obama continues to hector us about our anti-Muslim bias. Actually what he is demonstrating is an unconscious contempt for Muslims, treating them like children who need to be coddled. And as most parents know, coddling children is a sure way to ratify, even encourage, bad behavior.

Obama’s choice for his first mosque visit did just that. From Investor’s Business Daily:

President Obama is conferring legitimacy on a Baltimore mosque the FBI just a few years ago was monitoring as a breeding ground for terrorists, after arresting a member for plotting to blow up a federal building.

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The Peace of Submission by Mark Steyn

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union funded “peace movements” throughout the west – because for the Soviets “peace” meant “the absence of opposition”.

In our time the new peace movement is Islam. And so we are told today, from the podium of a mosque with “extremist” “links”, that the very word Islam means “peace”. Actually, it means “submission” – ie, the absence of opposition.

The only difference between then and now is that instead of being chanted by scrofulous hippies protesting outside a Nato air base the old line’s being peddled to us by the President of the United States. Odd.

~At the end of September, I spoke in the Danish Parliament on the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. (See my speech here.) Afterwards I was hustled off-stage and, a little weary and the worse for wear, gave an interview in a rather handsomely appointed ante-room on the subject of Chancellor Merkel and her Million Muslim March. You might be interested in what I had to say – remember this was two months before the Paris attacks and three months before the New Year sexual assaults and the cover-up by German police and media. Click below to watch:

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What does losing in Iowa say about Trump’s temperament? By Ed Straker

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

One of the things that has troubled me the most about Donald Trump is his lack of emotional maturity. Unlike with a reality TV show host, it is vital that the president of the United States be grown up and mature. But Trump, time and time again, acts like a child, name-calling, holding grudges, and crying when things don’t go his way.

Case in point: the Iowa caucuses. On election night Trump grudgingly congratulated Ted Cruz. But now he’s saying that Cruz “stole” the Iowa caucuses by repeating a news report that Ben Carson was about to leave the presidential race (which, by the way, may well be true – how many candidates do you know right now who have flown all the way home to “pick up some more clothes”?). Here’s what Trump tweeted:

Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it. That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated.

And finally, Cruz strongly told thousands of caucusgoers (voters) that Trump was strongly in favor of ObamaCare and “choice” – a total lie!

Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.

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Jimmy Carter: Trump best GOP candidate because he has ‘no fixed positions’ By Ed Straker

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

Former president Jimmy Carter, who is still alive, says of the Republican candidates that he prefers Donald Trump to Ted Cruz because Donald Trump has no fixed beliefs and his views are malleable:

“I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you,” the former Democratic president said during an appearance at Britain’s House of Lords on Wednesday afternoon. He was asked who he would pick for the GOP nomination.

“The reason is, Trump has proven already he’s completely malleable,” Carter explained. “I don’t think he has any fixed [positions] he’d go the White House and fight for. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is not malleable. He has far-right wing policies he’d pursue if he became president.”

It’s not hard to figure out why Carter would think that, given that Trump has had close relationships with Democrats for most of his adult life. In Trump’s own words:

I always had a decent relationship with Reid, although lately, obviously, I haven’t been dealing with him, so he’ll actually use my name as the ultimate – you know, as the ultimate of the billionaires in terms of, you know, people you don’t want. I always had a great relationship with Harry Reid and frankly, if I weren’t running for office I would be able to deal with her or Reid or anybody. But I think I’d be able to get along very well with Nancy Pelosi and just about everybody.

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Obama, in radical mosque, calls for other religions to be tolerant By Jeannie DeAngelis

Posted By on February 4th, 2016

As the body count at the hand of Islamic extremists continues to rise in America, shouldn’t the president be trying to come up with a way to defend Judeo-Christian types, who cling to guns and the Bible, from Islamic jihadi types who cling to machetes and the Quran?

Guess not, because for his first visit to a U.S. mosque, Obama chose a congregation where a Sudanese native and former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Adam el-Sheikh, was chief imam for almost twenty years.

Why would a U.S. president even give credence to a congregation once led by a man who also lent a hand in founding the Muslim American Society, a Muslim Brotherhood-established organization interested in advancing sharia law?

Does Obama not care that in his spare time, the current executive director of the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Islamic legal scholars, also helped found the notorious Dar Al-Hijrah mosque, led by the late al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki? Or that in 2004, while still serving as imam of the Islamic Society of Baltimore, el-Sheikh discussed Palestinian suicide bombers with the Washington Post?