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• Obama’s Super-PAC-Men
  

  The White House didn’t blow a dog whistle for deep-pocketed liberal donors on Monday. No, the administration whipped out a supersized vuvuzela. Blaring message: Let loose the campaign-finance-bundling hounds of “super PAC” war!

  President Obama’s campaign manager, Jim Messina, who served as White House deputy chief of staff for operations before assuming 2012 reelection duties, announced the super-PAC super-flip-flop in a mass e-mail to supporters and a blog post published on the left-wing Huffington Post website. In a related conference call to major campaign-finance bundlers, Messina encouraged these high-dollar donors to start funding Priorities USA Action. That’s the Democratic super PAC founded by former White House staffers Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

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• Highway Robbery by Republicans
  

  Anyone still wondering why there is a disconnect between grassroots limited-government conservatives and the Washington establishment need look no farther than the latest highway bill currently making its way through Congress with support from Republican leaders in both houses.

  The Senate version, SB 1813, would cost $109 billion over two years. The House bill, HR 7, which runs to 847 pages of pork and special-interest projects, raises the price tag to $260 billion, but extends it over five years, making it a couple billion cheaper on a year-by-year basis.

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• A U.N. for Good Guys
  

  The governments in Russia and China very much want to uphold the principle that every now and then the state must crush people who want freedom. That is why they worked together to veto a fairly toothless United Nations resolution condemning the regime in Syria and calling for President Bashar Assad, the lipless murderer who runs the place, to step down.

  The free world, still nominally led by the United States, erupted in outrage. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced the U.N. Security Council veto as a “travesty.” U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said the U.S. was “disgusted” by it. French foreign minister Alain Juppe said the Russia–China veto was a “moral stain.” A spokesman for British prime minister David Cameron proclaimed that “Russia and China are protecting a regime which is killing thousands of people. We find their position both incomprehensible and inexcusable.”

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• Mitt in Minnesota
  

  Last cycle, Mitt Romney didn’t just win Minnesota. He dominated, beating second-place finisher John McCain by 19 points.

  This time around, Romney is fighting a surging Rick Santorum. A Public Policy Polling survey released today shows Santorum at 33 percent, with Romney behind him at 24 percent. Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul are close on Romney’s heels, at 22 percent and 20 percent respectively.

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• Obama’s Union Point Man
  

  On January 4, President Obama took the unprecedented step of declaring the Senate to be in recess — although the Senate considered itself to be in session — so that he could install several appointees in key positions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). While a lot of attention has been focused on the procedural defect of these appointments (correctly, as I’ve explained), there has been far too little attention paid to the most radical of these appointees: Richard Griffin.

  Unlike Obama’s appointment of Richard Cordray, which was announced to a frighteningly enthusiastic crowd at an Ohio rally, the Griffin appointment was done quietly, in a written announcement. The appointment was a direct reward for the union bosses who made an enormous contribution to Obama’s 2008 campaign and will be critical to his reelection effort.

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• Why Private Equity Is Profitable
  

  Mitt Romney recently attacked Newt Gingrich for working as a lobbyist in Washington. The public being naturally suspicious of politicians who make money off of public service, Gingrich must offer slippery explanations of his lobbying income. Rick Santorum has the same problem.

  Romney seems to stand apart, having made his $250 million fortune in the private sector. But Americans sense that his fortune is unlike those of Henry Ford and Steve Jobs, visionaries who created something from nothing. Corporate raiders may deserve remuneration for reallocating resources to their best use — but hundreds of millions? It is the scale that grates, and correctly so, for it was not value creation but government policy that made the industry so lucrative.

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• The Greek Tragedy Continues
  

  Those of us who wish that the euro be brought to an end before too many people get hurt are likely to be disappointed, because European politicians refuse to admit defeat.

  Greece now stands on the brink of a sovereign default. Over the last few months, the slump in the Greek economy has been much deeper than anticipated, and, as a result, the Greek government is now in urgent need of roughly $20 billion to cover its immediate financing needs, on top of the rescue package of approximately $170 billion conferred in October of last year.

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• Obama’s Nuclear Mistake
  

  If President Obama hadn’t won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for his “work for a world without nuclear weapons,” his objection earlier this month to tightening nonproliferation conditions on U.S. civilian nuclear exports wouldn’t look so strange. But the president did, and this latest decision is quite odd indeed.

  Congress, eager to sanction Iran’s suspect “peaceful” nuclear program, now plans to hold hearings on the policy shift, and once-dormant House legislation to increase oversight over U.S. civilian nuclear exports is again suddenly vital. Congress is in the right; the president is not.

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• Mandatory Abortion Coverage?
  

  Advocates of religious freedom were outraged on January 20, when the Obama administration announced it would enforce its new mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage in private health-insurance plans without a meaningful conscience exemption. Even most religious organizations can’t qualify for the rule’s incredibly narrow “religious employer” exception, which will remain unchanged. NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood have said pro-life organizations are wrong to oppose such mandates: After all, they argue, increasing access to contraception (especially “emergency contraception” or “EC”) will reduce abortion, and don’t we all want that?

  This argument conveniently ignores studies showing that such access simply doesn’t reduce abortion rates. For example, out of 23 studies on the effects of increased access to ECs, not one study could show a reduction in unintended pregnancies or abortions. It also ignores the fact that at least one EC drug covered by the mandate, “Ella,” is a close analogue to the abortion pill RU-486; both drugs can induce abortion weeks into pregnancy.

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• A Defining Moment
  

  Governor Mitt Romney’s statement about not worrying about the poor has been treated as a gaffe in much of the media, and those in the Republican establishment who have been rushing toward endorsing his coronation as the GOP’s nominee for president — with 90 percent of the delegates still not yet chosen — have been trying to sweep his statement under the rug.

  But Romney’s statement about not worrying about the poor — because they “have a very ample safety net” — was followed by a statement that was not just a slip of the tongue, and should be a defining moment in telling us about this man’s qualifications as a conservative and, what is more important, as a potential president of the United States.

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• Half-Baked in America
  

  If Clint Eastwood narrated “The Cat in the Hat,” the words of Dr. Seuss would instantly take on a menacing authority. He could read the latest worthless United Nations condemnation of Syria and make Bashar Assad tremble. 

  So if you’re Chrysler and want to air a propagandistic advertisement implicitly touting your government bailout as what’s best about America, Eastwood is a natural frontman. The movie tough-guy and former Republican mayor of Carmel, Calif., will make everyone take notice. He will dare you not to believe him. He will invest a sugarcoated narrative of Detroit’s comeback with every bit of his gravelly voiced credibility.

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• Planned Parenthood’s Fig Leaf
  

  Planned Parenthood would appear to have won this latest skirmish in the abortion wars. The Susan G. Komen Foundation for the Cure, having first decided to withdraw future grants to the world’s largest abortion provider, quickly retreated under a barrage of accusations, complaints, and threats.

  No fewer than 26 Democratic senators signed a letter to Komen saying, in part, that “it would be tragic if any woman — let alone thousands of women — lost access to these potentially lifesaving screenings because of a politically motivated attack. We earnestly hope that you will put women’s health before partisan politics and reconsider this decision.”

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• Kastelorizo: Mediterranean Flashpoint?
  

  It is the far-flung, easternmost island of Greece, 80 miles from Rhodes, 170 miles west of Cyprus, but just one mile off the coast of Turkey. Kastelorizo (in Greek, Καστελόριζο; or officially Megisti, Μεγίστη) is tiny, comprising just five square miles, plus some yet smaller, uninhabited islands. Its 430 inhabitants are way down from 10,000 in the late nineteenth century. The Lonely Planet travel guide has picked it as one of the four best Greek islands (out of thousands) for diving and snorkeling. There’s no public transportation from nearby Anatolia, only from distant Rhodes by airplane or ferry.

  That Athens controls this wisp of land implies it could (but does not yet) claim an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the Mediterranean Sea that reduces the Turkish EEZ to a fraction of what it would be were the island under Ankara’s control — as maps reproduced from the Cypriot newspaper I Simerini illustrate. The top map shows Greece claiming its full 200-nautical-mile EEZ and controlling Kastelorizo EEZ (indicated by the red arrow); the bottom one shows the Greek EEZ minus Kastelorizo (indicated by the white arrow).

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• The GOP Wins the Super Bowl
  

  Indianapolis

  Perhaps you’ve already heard: The G-Men beat the Pats, 21–17.

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• ACORN Is Up to Its Old Tricks
  

  There is an old claim, oft-repeated as gospel truth, that the only living thing that would survive a nuclear attack is the cockroach. The power of modern weaponry has likely rendered this false, but in its place we might well put the disgraced “community organizing” organization, ACORN. Reports of ACORN’s demise are greatly exaggerated, a fact by which nobody with even a cursory familiarity with their practices should be surprised. The evidence suggests that the group has weathered the fallout from its scandals with a remarkable fortitude — it is not just surviving, but thriving; and it is doing so with thousands of those federal dollars that it is explicitly banned from receiving.

  Since it was ignominiously stripped of all federal funding in 2009, ACORN has steadily maintained its extensive network of “affiliates” — more specifically, tax-exempt progressive 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations, most of which have been renamed since the scandal hit. For 40 years, it appears, ACORN employed many of these groups to funnel millions of federal dollars its way — and it continues to do so today. It appears to be getting away with it. When somebody buys a gun for a convicted felon, it is called a “straw purchase,” and it is prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When ACORN takes money prohibited to it by employing others as collection agents, it is called “accounting.” This is the financial equivalent of being dishonorably discharged, but continuing to serve, and anyone who respects congressional authority should be outraged.

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