Just before I picked up my 5-year old son at kindergarten, and took him to a play group at the park, I received some excerpts from the President’s State of the Union speech tonight.

A group of parents sat around while our kids played. I pulled the excerpts out of my pocket. The parents are younger and older, liberal and conservative, of varying educations, races and religions. I read the excerpts out loud.

The one that resonated the most among this diverse group was:

“…our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.”

I asked, why? All agreed that’s what they feel about America, and what they try to teach their children.

I asked, don’t Democrats say much the same? All said they were tired of hearing constant negativity from leading Democrats.

I asked, aren’t some of the criticisms valid? All said, yes, but unbalanced or excessive.

None know my politics, so I kept the questions neutral. And, the answers may have been purposely neutral, as we all want to get along with each other.

And, that’s the point that came through to me: harping divisiveness is not what Americans want.

For those who must know before anyone else -- here are some excerpts of Mr. Bush's State of the Union Address:

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

January 31, 2006

STATE OF THE UNION EXCERPTS

As Prepared for Delivery

America is always at its best when we are shaping events, instead of being shaped by events. Tonight, the President will chart a clear path forward for our Nation:

“In this decisive year, you and I will make choices that determine both the future and the character of our country. We will choose to act confidently in pursuing the enemies of freedom – or retreat from our duties in the hope of an easier life. We will choose to build our prosperity by leading the world economy – or shut ourselves off from trade and opportunity. In a complex and challenging time, the road of isolationism and protectionism may seem broad and inviting – yet it ends in danger and decline. The only way to protect our people … the only way to secure the peace … the only way to control our destiny is by our leadership – so the United States of America will continue to lead.”

The President will talk about America’s leadership role in the world, and the importance of working together to better protect our country, support our troops, and advance freedom:

“Abroad, our Nation is committed to an historic, long-term goal – we seek the end of tyranny in our world… the future security of America depends on it.”

“In a time of testing, we cannot find security by abandoning our commitments and retreating within our borders. If we were to leave these vicious attackers alone, they would not leave us alone. They would simply move the battlefield to our own shores.”

“…Ultimately, the only way to defeat the terrorists is to defeat their dark vision of hatred and fear by offering the hopeful alternative of political freedom and peaceful change.”

“To overcome dangers in our world, we must also take the offensive by encouraging economic progress, fighting disease, and spreading hope in hopeless lands.”

To keep America competitive in a dynamic economy, the President will set out an agenda focused on the priorities that families are most concerned about. He will talk about the importance of having an educated, skilled workforce, reducing our dependence on foreign oil, and making health care more affordable, accessible, and portable:

“Here at home, America also has a great opportunity: We will build the prosperity of our country by strengthening our economic leadership in the world.”

On Competitiveness:

“The American economy is pre-eminent – but we cannot afford to be complacent. In a dynamic world economy, we are seeing new competitors like China and India.”

“We must continue to lead the world in human talent and creativity. Our greatest advantage in the world has always been our educated, hard-working, ambitious people – and we are going to keep that edge.”

On Energy:

“America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world… The best way to break this addiction is through technology.”

On Health Care:

“Our government has a responsibility to help provide health care for the poor and the elderly, and we are meeting that responsibility. For all Americans, we must confront the rising cost of care … strengthen the doctor-patient relationship … and help people afford the insurance coverage they need.”

Finally, the President will speak to the character and compassion of America:

“…our greatness is not measured in power or luxuries, but by who we are and how we treat one another. So we strive to be a compassionate, decent, hopeful society.”

# # #

Oi.

The results of a poll commissioned by the Club For Growth indicate that the GOP may face serious challenges at the voting booth this year if the new House Majority Leader is part of the existing senior Republican leadership.

"Voters in the GOP-held districts where the battle for the majority in the House of Representatives will be most hard-fought want Republicans to make a clean break from the past by choosing as Majority Leader someone new and without extensive ties to lobbyists," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "As the only candidate in the race who isn’t associated with the current senior leadership or the Washington lobbying community, John Shadegg offers Members a choice that can help improve the image of the GOP with voters as we go into a tough election cycle."

[...]

"Voters are watching what’s going on in Washington and they don’t like what they see," continued Toomey. "More voters associate the Republican leadership in Congress with corruption and dishonesty than with any other issue or action other than the war and an amazing eighty percent think ethical misconduct in Congress is either serious or scandalous."

The selection of Shadegg as new majority leader will be a good start, and in the short term will at least signify that the GOP is aware of the discontent on the right as it relates to the Abramoff scandal. But as Mark Tapscott pointed out the other day, earmarks that appeal to the clients of Washington lobbyists are chump change compared to nanny-state programs like Medicare and Social Security.

If we're to fight government corruption in the long term, Americans need to realize that the government's penchant for meddling in our everyday affairs is the cause of such extensive lobbying campaigns in the first place.

Nor does the Danish naming law do much to appeal to my love for freedom, but I'll do my best to "buy Danish" on Super Bowl Sunday.

Bruce and Michelle Malkin have done a great job outlining the Muslim world's uproar over provocative cartoons in a Danish newspaper and the ensuing boycott of Danish products by some Muslim nations. These photos at Michelle's blog today sure suggest that the Danish cartoons mocking Islamic violence are off-base, huh?

On Sunday you'll be able to count on my 50-some-odd friends and me to put a pretty good dent in the Carlsberg beer supply at the liquor store around the corner from my house. Now if you'll excuse me, I'd better warn my Chinese buds at the store and submit my half-day leave slip for Monday.

[Icon: Gaijin Biker.]

TAE editor Karl Zinsmeister has returned from his fourth tour to the Iraq war front and separates the fact from the fiction.

After Thanksgiving, for Super Bowl Sunday more Americans come together in a uniquely American rite. Regardless of religious or ethnic heritage, we gather to celebrate as one.

In the Middle East, a Christian – not to mention a Jew – is persecuted for their faith, even for wearing a symbol of their faith.

Right now, it is imperative that Americans demonstrate our common support for those seemingly dwindling few in Europe willing to stand for common values.

I’ve discussed in “Please Eat Danish” what’s going on, as have many other bloggers.

Please buy Danish food products to serve at your Super Bowl Sunday fete, or while munching any other time. They are excellent. It really means a lot to the brave Danes. (List of some is below.)

The Danish are very appreciative. I’m told that I was favorably mentioned on Danish news TV2 for the “counter-attack” in the U.S. to buy Danish.

A sample email from Denmark:

”It’s no surprise for me that USA are the first to support Denmark…Thanks from Denmark to all Americans for the sacrifice they constantly are giving since World War II. There is a lot of reasons why Americans should be proud to be Americans.”

Some wonderful Danish food products:
Danish butter cookies
Danish Havarti cheese
Carlsberg and Tuborg beers
White Clover and Holland Farm dairy products (Wisconsin company, owned by Denmark's Arla)
Danish Crown hams (DAK) -- (Please forgive me Rabbi!)
Shop Online at The Danish Foodshop and Danish Deli Foods
Gevalia coffee
Also: Legos for the kids, and Danish porcelain for you

Toast the Danes at halftime.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan's post is so good:

Please, Bill
31 Jan 2006 10:40 am
Go look at the cartoons. They are not against Islam, although they understandably bristle at the intolerance of some contemporary Muslims in Europe. They are against what has been done in the name of Islam. They are about, in the words of the editor who published them, the way in which Islamist thugs have intimidated free speech in Europe:
"These were not directed against Muslims, but against people in cultural life in Europe who are submitting themselves to self-censorship when dealing with Islam. I wanted these cartoonists to appear under their own names. That was the point of the whole journalistic exercise."
Get it now, Bill [Clinton]? These cartoons help expose the brutalization of women, the use of violence in defense of faith, the idiocy of suicide bombers allegedly going to heaven, and so on. If we cannot speak of these things without giving offense, then we have lost our ability to discuss freely the most significant cultural shift of our time: the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism. While I'm still steaming, let me ask another question: How can Clinton glibly speak of historical anti-Semitism in Europe without noting that the most unrestrained anti-Semitism is now parlayed by the Islamic religious right? Where does he get off lecturing free people about their right of free expression, while remaining silent about the pathological anti-Semitism now manifested in Islamo-fascism and its adherents across the globe? Here's one option: buy Danish.

Today's a good day. I haven't seen these commercials for at least a year, but they're money. Andy Roth points us to Suburban Auto Group's website, and he's right that the "Theft Retrieval System" is by far the best.

For posterity. Enjoy.

If you want to see a liberal turn red with rage, mention school vouchers. They detest any attempt by the public to allow parents to engage in school choice. Apparently, however, it's just fine to shake down private corporations when ensuing settlements will enrich public schools.

Minnesota schools will share $55 million they can use to buy new computers and software, thanks to a court settlement with Microsoft Corp.

While schools have known since 2004 that they had some money coming their way, the final amount was up in the air until recently. Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Monday that the technology vouchers have just started going out.

[...]

The money is left over from a settlement to a class-action lawsuit in which Minnesota customers and businesses claimed the company was violating antitrust laws by overcharging for its Windows operating system and its Excel and Word programs. The company had denied overcharging, saying the prices on its products had dropped.

Let's hope these customers and businesses are happy. They can be sure Microsoft's prices will rise now. As if Bill Gates hasn't already heaped millions in donations alone onto public school students.

Americans, who love their Danish with their morning coffee, must buy more Danish.

A periodical in Denmark published some satirical cartoons, that some Islamic extremists took umbrage with. OK.

But, now, that extremism has spread throughout the Middle East, from periodicals to governments to the “street,” demonstrating that such extremism is a pandemic there.

The Brussels Journal offers a comprehensive roundup (with many links):

This morning armed Palestinians stormed the European Union office in Gaza City, threatening Danes and Norwegians and demanding that they leave…. Yesterday the Danish national flag was burned in the West Bank in protest against the publication of 12 cartoons of Muhammad (see them all here, halfway the article) in the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten last September. Depicting the prophet is blasphemy according to Islam….

Governments of a number of Muslim countries in the Middle East, such as Jordan and Syria, have contacted Danish ambassadors and condemned the cartoons. Last week the Jordanian parliament called for the punishment of the Danish cartoonists. On Saturday the Foreign Minister of Iran, Manouchehr Mottaki, wrote to his colleagues in Denmark and Norway protesting the „ridiculous and repulsive insult“ which he says the cartoons embody. Last week Saudi Arabia called back its ambassador to Denmark for consultation. Yesterday Libya decided to close its embassy in Copenhagen in protest against the cartoons and the lack of „responsible actions“ by the Danish government. Libya also said it would be taking “economic measures” against Denmark, but did not say what they would be….

Several Muslim governments have encouraged their people to boycott Danish products in protest against the cartoons. Disinformation about the affair and about Denmark’s role is being distributed in many Muslim countries, for example through e-mails and sms messages which claim that Jyllands-Posten is a government owned newspaper and that the Danish government was behind the publication of the cartoons. Danish embassies in Arab countries have felt compelled to correct these lies. [There is also disinformation in the Western mainstream media that has finally picked up the story.]

At a press conference in Jeddah on Saturday the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) lambasted the Danish government „over its lack of action or apology“ for the Muhammad cartoons. “The Danish authorities have, by providing protection to the newspaper and failure to censor it in unequivocal terms, served neither the cause of freedom of expression nor advanced the goals of multiculturalism, domestically or internationally. The Danish authorities should have categorically condemned the cartoons,” said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary-general of the OIC…. In addition the OIC and the Arab League have announced their intention to appeal to the United Nations’ General Assembly to issue a resolution “prohibiting attacks on religion.” Such a resolution would among other things make it possible to resort to economic sanctions against countries that contravene it.

In typical European fashion, the EU sticks its head in the sand.

Both José Manuel Barroso, the president of the EU Commission, and the Austrian chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel, who currently holds the EU precidency, appear to be avoiding discussions on the cartoon affair.

However, Danes, as during World War II, are not easily intimidated:

In a new poll published in Denmark last week 79% of Danes say the Danish government should not apologize for the cartoons while 18% say it should. 62% say Jyllands-Posten should not apologize, but 31% say it should. 58% say the newspaper had every right to publish the cartoons, but also said they understood Muslims were angry.

Americans should stand with the Danes. Judith Klinghoffer has issued an appeal to “Buy Danish,” listing some wonderful Danish products:

Danish butter cookies
Danish Havarti cheese
Carlsberg and Tuborg Beers.
Arla owns White Clover Dairy, a Wisconsin company so buy that brand. It comes under White Clover and Holland Farm.
Danish Crown hams ( DAK (sold at Sam clubs)... baby back ribs, because they come from Denmark.
You shop online at The Danish Foodshop and Danish Deli Foods.
You can also buy gorgious Danish porcelain and LEGO for the kids.
Gevalia coffee

The Middle East has nothing to export, aside from oil -- that we in the West must accelerate escape from via alternative energy sources.

Let them pound sand.

UPDATE: With the combined fecklessness of the EU and Bill Clinton, after 4-months of standing up for a free press, the Danish newspaper has issued an “apology” to put the matter behind it. Now, watch all the other newspapers in Europe receive intensified pressure from the Arab states to avoid offending them by any honest reporting.

Judith Apter Klinghoffer
CLINTON AGAINST FREE SPEECH IN DENMARK AS IN CHINA
I came back from teaching only to discover that the former president, who had nothing to say about Yahoo helping China to put a subscriber in jail for being a whistle blower, has plenty to say about a Danish paper publishing offensive cartoons. Clearly he knows who is paying for his new lifestyle. In any case, a man like Clinton will never stand up to dangerous entities like China or Saudi Arabia when he can pick on safe democratic Denmark.
I was going to write shame on him but I know too well the man does not know the meaning of the word.

Danish paper apologizes for Muhammad caricatures
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
COPENHAGEN, Denmark

A Danish newspaper on Monday issued an apology to the world's Muslims for publishing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked a furor in the Islamic world.
The drawings "were not in violation of Danish law but have undoubtedly offended many Muslims, which we would like to apologize for," the Jyllands-Posten's editor-in-chief Carsten Juste said in a statement posted on the paper's Web site.

There's a good collection of letters to the editor today in The State.com, illustrating South Carolina's school choice debate. Most notable to me was a letter by Bill Heitsman, who serves on the board of the South Carolina Education Association and opposes school choice.

Choice proponents decry the lack of competition in public schools and demand market accountability. After more than 25 years of attempting to teach economics at the high school level, I can state that markets and competition are extremely powerful forces. However, markets often reward those who are popular, powerful or incompetent but good at propaganda and persuasion.

I also must mention the failure of legislators to pass the Put Parents in Charge Act. What The State and the legislators who read the act determined was that the bill was little more than a gift package of smoke, mirrors and tax cuts for people who don’t need it.

Markets reward producers who are able to sell goods and services to consumers willing to purchase them, and consumers are likewise rewarded by being provided with a good or service they need. It hardly matters whether someone approves or disapproves of someone else's reasons for purchasing a particular product. Perhaps Mr. Heitsman would understand this if he actually taught economics as opposed to "attempting" to teach it.

Certainly an atheist may not approve of parents who decided to send their child to a Catholic school, but it's nevertheless irrelevant to this debate - as is the Catholic family's impression of the atheist. Citizens who are compelled through taxation to foot the bill for government schooling should at the very least have the ability to choose the school they believe best meets the needs of their children.

Mr. Heitsman further demonstrates his economic ignorance - not to mention overall dearth of common sense - when giving the impression that he (or any individual) could possible know how important tax cuts are to anyone else.

Quick story: My county tax bill just arrived a couple weeks ago, and my property taxes have doubled since last year. Calvert County (Maryland) imposes property taxes based on assessed land values (as opposed to collecting taxes based on the purchase price of the land), which means that the county arbitrarily engages in despotic revenue-grabbing every year based on what you could sell your house for even if you haven't sold it yet. My wife and I were lucky enough to buy one of the last remaining waterfront lots in the area four years ago. Waterfront lots are commonly appraised at higher value than non-waterfront, but because the county controls via environmental regulations the number of waterfront lots available to potential consumers, the value of waterfront property is artificially increased. Anyone care to guess whether the county has a vested interest in regulating the supply of waterfront lots when commissioners know their tax policy enables them to generate inflated revenue?

This is an issue I have to take up with my county commissioners, but the point remains that neither Mr. Heitsman nor anyone else has any clue as to what my financial situation looks like, how fairly I'm taxed by my state and county, or how important these issues are to me. And in the end, we really can't fault our politicians for overstepping their bounds and abusing their authority, whether with regard to schooling or anything else, when simpletons all around us defend indefensible policy in the first place.

Some have hoped that US hi-tech firms might come together with American values to enact self-regulating codes of conduct with respect to trade with repressive regimes. Standing together against repressive regimes, it’s been hoped, their collective commercial and technological weight would cause pause.

Instead, it appears, these US hi-tech firms seem determined to force a confrontation with Congress and American values.

AFP reports that “US Internet companies snub Congressional hearing.”

Microsoft and Cisco refuse to testify at the February 1 hearing of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus looking into US hi-tech firms cooperation with repression in China. Google and Yahoo are “noncommittal.”

Lynne Weil, spokeswoman for caucus co-chairman Democratic Representative Tom Lantos, told AFP: "It is mystifying why these companies would not want to take part after all this is an opportunity to clear their names."

Weil said all five non-governmental groups invited to the briefing had confirmed participation. They were media watchdog Reporters without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Toronto University and Harvard Law School.

T. Kumar, Amnesty's advocacy director for Asia... called the US Congress to enact laws preventing American firms from joining any state-sponsored stifling of human rights to give credence to US foreign policy.

Google and other US Internet companies have also been invited for another Congressional meeting on February 15, convened by the House of Representatives Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations.

Chris Smith, the Republican Representative chairing the panel, is considering legislation requiring Internet companies to locate e-mail servers outside "repressive countries," his spokesman Brad Dayspring said.

Also being considered is legislation to prohibit the export of Internet technology to countries restricting free speech, and to establish a government office solely to counter Internet jamming by these countries, he said.

The sooner the better.

John Kerry and Ted Kennedy’s posts grace DailyKos, leading far-left blog and home to repeated slurs and vulgar language, John Dean fulminates like a drunken Blue redneck, Nancy Pelosi channels Haight-Ashbury, and their Hollywood contributors echo their onscreen filth. The other leaders of the Democrat Party and its allies in the mainstream media don’t chastise them but look the other way.

Is that the political pornography Party that Americans want to attend? I don’t think so. More spotlight needs to be focused on this totally unacceptable speech.

Last June I wrote about “Potty-Mouth Politics”:

Baby Killer! Nazi! Gulag! Genghis Khan! Khmer Rouge! Torturer! And more! These are the charges and shouts heard by Americans against the U.S. military during the Vietnam War and now. Sadly, they're spoken and yelled by Americans, who should know better. During Vietnam, some radical college students used this offensive and hurtful language. Now, these defamers have graduated into positions of power and influence throughout America's institutions. They're at it again…. Recently, I washed my 5-year-old son's mouth out with soap. His potty language quickly stopped, and has not been repeated. I suggest the same be administered to those leaders who are now using such potty language to slander the American military and Americans. They deserve public shame and strong criticism. If other Americans do not, especially others in positions of responsibility, then they are complicit in the degradation of America. This destroys our future as a civil society. It also does give aid and comfort to our sworn enemies abroad.

GayPatriotWest, Dan Blatt, today addresses the extension of this potty-mouth by the radical left to any gays or minorities that disagree with leftist positions or stereotypes, in Do Minority Conservative Bloggers Attract More “Moonbats”? . [HT: Gateway Pundit]

“moonbats” get particularly agitated by “minority” conservatives, that it upsets their view of the world when gay people and Asians refuse to join some “coalition of the oppressed” in speaking out against conservatives. They would rather all conservatives be white Christian men so they could more easily dismiss our ideas….

Or perhaps they get so upset because the mere notion of a member of a supposedly persecuted group backing what they see as the ideology of the oppressor makes it less easy for them to dismiss that “ideology.” The fact that minorities take conservative positions means that such ideas aren’t as narrow as many on the left believe them to be. Instead of undertaking the intellectually challenging task of grappling with our ideas, they choose instead to define us to fit their own narrow world view, ignoring our arguments and insulting each one of us.

UPDATE: Leftist Blog Makes My Point

A leftist blog linked to this post, and I thank it for quoting extensively as some of its readers may get the point, as it reinforces it by commenting: “Bruce Kesler: a middle-aged former Marine who actually uses the term "potty-mouth" sans irony.” Actually, I’ve known few Marines or veterans who gratuitously use curse-words, especially anywhere near as frequently as the childish leftists bloggers. Also, as many Americans are parents, our use of vulgar language is purposely restricted because we care about the example we show. Apparently, many extreme leftists don’t care what common language they use, that alienates parents trying to raise decent children. Then, this blogger calls me a term, beginning with “F” that I’ve never heard of, and I haven’t lived a sheltered life. Must be a secret language of the left. Just like some children have a secret “ishkabibble” language of their own. Hardly useful, however, for mature discourse.

Most predicted that the new Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit would be the beginning of a creeping entitlement, with even larger costs than the $700-million + already forecast.

Easy bet.

Despite demonstrably lower prescription costs under Part D than from a nationalized market, like Canada’s, the inclination of Democrat politicians and their usual allies is to oppose anything from the Bush administration and to ideologically believe that centralized government control is preferable to the private market.

Opponents of Part D come from some Republicans due to the huge budget impacts or due to “lack of gratitude” from seniors, or from Democrats who won’t settle for less than the mass homogenized mediocrity of Canada and Europe.

Most Americans are caught in the middle, as usual, between politicized extremes. The quest of many for simplicity, for not having to think, will lead them to having less choice and benefits, at greater personal and budgetary costs.

“AARP to Seek a Better Drug Benefit,” the Washington Post reports today.

John Rother, AARP's policy director, said yesterday that the group wants lawmakers to change a rule in the drug program that counts assets, such as a house, in determining which Medicare patients are poor enough to qualify for special low-income subsidies. AARP and many congressional Democrats tried to exclude assets when the law was being written in 2003. Similarly, Rother said, AARP wants to reopen debate over a provision that would have directed health officials to negotiate directly with drug manufacturers over the prices they charge through the program. The law embraced a more market-oriented approach in which drugmakers negotiate prices with insurance plans that sell the drug benefit to patients. AARP exerted heavy influence in the politics that created the program, endorsing the legislation shortly before it passed a bitterly divided Congress. At the time, Rother said the group might want to "build on it in the future."

However, the AARP’s own website in January 2006 points out “Cheaper than Canada? The drug benefit may be the better deal”

…The private plans that provide it have been scrambling to win over customers with good deals for 2006. Many have eliminated deductibles and some offer full coverage in the gap….Nearly all our interviewees would be better off financially, by varying amounts, under a medicare plan – with those using the most drugs potentially reaping the greatest savings over the year.

However, the Canadian mail-order prescription vendors to aged Americans feel confident that they can profit from American seniors,

”They believe there’s a better deal in Canada,” MacCay says. And even if the pharmacies are wrong and the math turns out mostly to favor Medicare, MacKay predicts that “mass confusion” among older Americans having to choose between so many plans will still put Medicare at a disadvantage with Canada. “Simplicity,” he says, “is always on our side.”

The Democrats seek to undermine the Medicare Part D’s private market success further by stripping out the subsidies that encourage private prescription and medical plans to offer greater benefits than the standard government minimum.

I wrote here a long column describing the new Part D, ending: “Its tidal waves of arguments and costs will continue for decades.” My personal position is that this very expensive program is necessary, inevitable, and that its genius is exactly the private market components that the Democrats and AARP seek to dissolve.

In addition, by reducing the link between personal assets from personal costs, Democrats and the AARP seek to undermine self-restraint in prescription usage and budget costs.

Health care politics are highly politicized. Commonly bantered estimates of the number of uninsured are overestimated by “as much as 20%.” (Expired link to Los Angeles Times of April 26, 2005, “Number of Uninsured May Be Overstated, Studies Suggest”)

A 1992 symposium among the founding designers and implementers of Medicare in 1965 agreed:

By the time Medicare was implemented, major interest groups were involved – the AFL-CIO and senior citizen organizations for example – but they worked with us for change rather than filing suits….there has been a sea change – in the climate of litigation, in the experience and knowledgeability of the providers, in the growth of strong advocacy groups on behalf of providers, beneficiaries and the public, and all kinds of other things…We didn’t have very many health policy analysts in the country. We had about half a dozen. We did it all.

Now, everyone is a “health policy analyst,” too often in the service of different agendas than health care! Opponents of Part D will, correctly, argue the inevitability of entitlement creep. Their challenge, however, is to curb and channel it rather than ignore the need for such a program. Americans want Part D, and want reassurance and leadership. If Republicans don't provide it, Democrats will, and the results will be worse.

Medicare has been virtually frozen in an outdated 1965 model of medical care delivery, except for the Republican initiative to add Medicare-HMO's. One of the Medicare founding fathers, in the above symposium, remarked, "The Republicans weren't very powerful" then, and another that, anyway, Republicans thought Medicare "was just too damn liberal." Republicans are now very powerful, and have a responsibility to lead, not cower or retreat or permit the statists (or as one of the Medicare founders referred to himself, "paternalistic")to prevail again.

Many of those hoping the U.S. and West can avoid armed intervention or inevitably “leaky” trade embargoes against Iranian nuclear and regional ambitions hope that eventual “regime change” emerging from among Iranians themselves will do the trick, if in time before a catastrophe initiated by the fanatics ruling Iran.

While much attention is focused on the willing, profit-driven complicity of U.S. and Western technology firms in furthering China’s Internet censorship, similar behavior in Iran is even more troubling. Simply, the immediate threat from Iran is more pressing, and some Western firms’ trade behavior is even more contradictory to peaceful transition hopes.

As the most extensive study of “Internet Filtering in Iran” by the international Opennet Initiative and Harvard Law’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society said in its Executive Summary:

”Iran has adopted one of the world’s most substantial Internet censorship regimes….Iran is also one of a growing number of countries, particularly in the Middle East region, that rely upon commercial software developed by for-profit United States companies to carry out the core of its filtering regime.”

The report continues with the example of Iran’s use of SmartFilter from the U.S.:

”In effect, Iran outsources many of its decisions for what its citizens can access on the Internet to a United States company, which in turn profits from its complicity in such a regime.”

SmartFilter’s corporate parent, Secure Computing says its software has been pirated by Iran. However, it does sell it to Tunisia, another leading Internet censorship state. Clearly, increased U.S. controls over the export of such dual-use software is required.

The BBC reports that:

“Unlike China, which filters content in a centralized way at the national level, the Iranian government relies on the country’s various internet service providers to assist with its censorship….SmartFilter, according to the Secure Computing website, comes with a database of millions of blockable web addresses, in more than 60 categories.”

The BBC report interviewed the co-director of Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society:

”I take them at their word, -- that they are ‘shocked to find gambling going on in this establishment,’ to quote from the movie Casablanca,” said Jonathan Zittrain co-director of…one of the groups who helped write the Iran report. “But the fact remains that the software has been in use for an extended period of time there. And we’ve seen Secure Computing software turn up in more than just Iran. We’ve seen it in Saudi Arabia as well,” he said….”I think there’s a spectrum ranging from providing steel to a regime, to providing them with finished bullets, to providing them with execution services, where at some point you say, ‘we’re not going to do it’.”

According to the director of the ISP association Data Communications Company of Iran, “Iranian-made filtering applications do not have the quality of ‘foreign-made’ software’s.”

Tehran’s chief prosecutor has the lead in cracking down on Internet “criminals.” According to the BBC Persian service, “Mortazavi has been directly involved in the recent arrests of technicians and journalists related to a few reformist websites and is aid to be responsible for torturing them.”

Iranian rulers’ self-isolation of its peoples marches on. The BBC reports three days ago that, “The Iranian authorities have started to block the BBC’s Persian language Internet site, for the first time.”

Meanwhile, Iran is also moving toward the Chinese model of more centralized censorship. Last September an Iranian company, Delta Global, won the contract “for the management of the Internet control and censorship system.” Delta Global’s head said “he wanted to put an end to ‘the anarchy of the Internet Service providers (ISP’s)’ by centralizing the filtering system. He also claimed that Delta Global’s technology was capable of blocking access to all the tools used to get round censorship.”

Reporters Without Borders noted, “This is very bad news for Iranian bloggers and Internet users.”

The report also notes, even more ominously for those who hope for internal fissures among Iran’s rulers or with its peoples to lead to moderation, “The ban points to internal struggles within the conservative camp” as those differing from Ahmadinejad are also silenced.

There are delicate issues involved in a U.S. embargo of such software to Iran, including their use for more tolerable or desirable uses in quashing some of the Middle East’s infamously legendary sex and pornography trade. Also, Iran or others may penetrate the embargo. Nonetheless, technological means exist to block usage from, say, an Iranian site.

Also, nonetheless, it is just as important that the U.S. have a consistent policy in accomplishing its foreign policy goals, if it is to lead by example. Allowing such contrary dual-use technology to flow into the hands of the Iranian tyrants is not consistent with our hopes and goals for more peaceful from-within regime change.

UPDATE: In correcting a link, I realized I'd left out this message from Secure Computing:

We sell to ISPs where the law allows. It's really up the customer how they use our software.
David Burt
Public Relations Manager
Secure Computing(r)
Securing connections between people, applications, and networks(tm)www.securecomputing.com
NASDAQ: SCUR
1-206-336-1541 (Direct Phone)
1-800-971-2622 (Main Phone)
1-206-683-9508 (Mobile Phone)
1-206-834-1788 (Fax)David_Burt@Securecomputing.com

...maybe Canadians will.

Al Gore:

"The election in Canada was partly about the tar sands projects in Alberta," Gore said Wednesday while attending the Sundance Film Festival in Utah.

Yeah, and it was "partly" about Liberal Party broken promises and corruption, too.

President Bush will give his annual State of the Union address next Tuesday. Thanks to Andy Roth, you can now find every SOTU since 1790.

Jay Greene, author of "Education Myths," responds to questions from viewers of John Stossel's recent report discussing how public schools are failing kids.

Don Boudreaux conducted a nice litte experiment we all should appreciate. He used his first purchase on eBay to score a 1975 Sears catalog, and what he found is quite interesting.

Other than the style differences, the fact most noticeable from the contents of this catalog’s 1,491 pages is what the catalog doesn’t contain. The Sears customer in 1975 found no CD players for either home or car; no DVD or VHS players; no cell phones; no televisions with remote controls or flat-screens; no personal computers or video games; no food processors; no digital cameras or camcorders; no spandex clothing; no down comforters (only comforters filled with polyester).

Of course, some of what was available to Sears’ customers in 1975 is also quite noticeable to those of us looking back from 2006: typewriters, turntables for stereo systems, 8-track players, black-and-white television sets. And lots and lots of clothing and bedding made from polyester.

Boudreaux goes on to compare the prices of some of 1975's hottest items with their prices today, adjusted for inflation (today's price in parens).

Sears Best kitchen range, $589.95 ($2,088).

Sears Best television, $749.95 ($2,655)

Sears Best black and white television, $137.95 ($488)

Sears Best typewriter, $278.99 ($988)

Sears Best motion-picture camera (no sound; but it did have 8X zoom!), $197.00 ($697)

There's more, but you get the point. Anyone who tries to tell you that capitalism, and capitalism alone, doesn't account for the prosperity we have today - not to mention lower and lower prices for better and better goods - is simply nuts.

Tim Chapman notes today that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) is getting serious about tackling outrageous porkbarrel spending in Congress.

Tim says, "This is good news."

That's the understatement of the day.

Sowell's on a "rowell."

Many of you may know Thomas Lipscomb as the intrepid reporter who in 2004 almost single-handedly, and without outside resources, did what the rest of the mainstream media were too lazy or biased to do: expose several of Presidential candidate John Kerry’s exaggerations and lies regarding his military record.

Lipscomb and I have joked, ruefully, that any competent reporter could have done much the same, and more with the resources of mainstream journalism behind him or her. The information was pretty much right out there to be found or volunteered by those who knew. But, mainstream journalism turned its back on the truth.

Lipscomb’s long-time involvement with publishing and journalism did not begin in 2004, but many years before. Thomas Lipscomb was the founding president of Times Books, the general book publisher owned by an earlier generation at The New York Times, and is a senior fellow of the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future at the University of Southern California.

On January 24 I posted “Google Gags Tiananmen Square Massacre” Immediately after, Lipscomb emailed me:

"I couldn’t agree more… I marched Times Books out of the Moscow Book Fair when the KGB started picking up “culturally unacceptable” books off the Schoken Books table next to us.. and explained that American publishers who wanted the protection of the First Amendment at home… insisted on it at overseas Book Convention… did an editorial in the NYT… and went on the Today Show… I caused a TERRIBLE stink. One of my less brilliant career moves… I took on the industry assoc…. THE AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF PUBLISHERS for being too gutless to protest"

I asked Lipscomb to elaborate. Today he did, with “The Real Cost of Google’s Sell-Out To China” in journalism’s main trade paper Editor & Publisher.

Lipscomb points out that Google’s market capitalization is alone double that of the entire U.S. newspaper industry, hardly a corporate lightweight. Lipscomb explains how Google has jettisoned freedom of speech for potential profits in China.

“Google has been badly hampered by the filters placed on access to it by the Chinese government. They slow its search speeds to a crawl, make it undependable, and would keep Google at a competitive commercial disadvantage unless it complied with China’s demands.”

Lipscomb continues:

“Thanks to its search technology governments no longer have to censor book by book or publication by publication. They can censor an entire universal library instantly with terrifying efficiency. Google has already announced its intention to create just such a library…Many are concerned concerned that the concentration of media that has taken place in the past decade has made the few giant companies that now control them more vulnerable to compliance demands from foreign and domestic governments with their own agenda. And American media companies have been tempted to jettison their standards before in order to gain entry to a major market in a totalitarian state.”

Lipscomb then retells the doings at the Moscow Book Fair

“Some years ago, as the Soviet Union was headed for its demise, a Moscow Book Fair was announced and publishers in the United States and throughout the world flocked to gain access to a huge potential new market. The Soviets promised an open market at the Fair to display what publishers felt were their best books most suited to the market. But as soon as the Fair opened, Soviet police moved in on publishers and confiscated books they felt might “feed agitation.”

”Other publishers, fearing this kind of action, had already self-censored the books they displayed or quickly removed them on the spot. Times Books, the general book publisher owned by the New York Times Company, immediately withdrew from the Fair arguing that it was difficult to maintain First Amendment standards in the United States while conceding them elsewhere. A lively debate ensued, and the Moscow Book Fair was seriously diminished as a market place thereafter.”

Lipscomb concludes:

“ Isn’t it time Americans and their elected representatives pay more attention to their own cherished freedoms? Aren’t the giant keiretsu companies that control American media too willing to suspend them wherever they interfere with their pursuit of profit?”

Interesting.

So on one hand democracy has prevailed in the Palestinian elections. On the other, the Palestinian electorate has given a terrorist organization a legislative majority (as if there was much of a choice, however).

NRO:

Rightly President Bush has applied pressure by saying that there can be no question of dealing with Hamas until it gives up terror. For Israel, Ehud Olmert has made the same condition. In practice, there are already Hamas mayors and officials on the West Bank and in Gaza, and Israel has to treat with them over plenty of low-level issues. Common sense suggests that Hamas would enter the government along with Fatah, and try to steer the political process to its benefit, while shaking a fist at Israel for show. That appears to be what Abu Mazen hopes, and he is too weak to do much more than appease Hamas. The Arafat years have left Palestinian society so fractured and lawless that common sense is at a premium, however, and any idea of peace and cooperation may well be wishful thinking. In that case, this election will have added to the baffling Middle East phenomenon that something new has happened but nothing changes.

Ed Morrissey:

Perhaps this election will finally convince the United States, if not Europe and Russia, of the folly of continued efforts on "road maps" and the like. Gaza showed that Fatah cannot govern a state, and the West Bank just elected bloodthirsty terrorists almost to a Parliamentary majority. These people want war. They will not settle for half the land when they believe a war will bring them all of it. In the end, it may be better for the world to let the two sides fight their war in order to make them both sick enough of the consequences to start selecting leaders that want peace and plan for it. If all the Palestinians understand is death and martyrdom, then let them have their fill of both.

Power Line:

With the election results yesterday in the Palestinian Authority, Arafatistan frankly joins the Axis. The Jerusalem Post reports: "Masha[a]l calls Abbas to inquire about partnership." Post editor David Horovitz describes the outcome as an "earthquake," writing: "The era of Fatah is over. The Islamists are in control."

With all the attention to the “invisible” information walls erected on the Internet by modern dictatorships, count on that old-time leader of the pack, Fidel Castro, to remind us of the tangible nature of such barriers.

As the Associated Press reports from Havana:

The American mission irked Castro last week when it installed the electronic sign on the facade of its main building with streaming text of sayings about freedom and excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Cuba is a signatory.

Castro’s response:

"The regime appears to be building a permanent structure that, we believe, seeks to obstruct Cubans' view of the uncensored messages and information posted on our streaming billboard," the U.S. statement said. "The regime's reaction is not surprising: building walls to isolate Cubans from the rest of the world is what the regime knows best.”

We can expect to hear extensive calls for the U.S. government to impose trade restrictions on Google Inc. after yesterday's report that the search engine conglomerate has agreed to censor its results in China.

I have argued in this space before why this would be a very bad idea, but I'd like to refer you to a 1997 article by James A. Dorn in The Freeman, a publication of the Foundation For Economic Education, in which the author argues in this timely classic that the best way to promote human rights around the world is to promote free trade. Dorn's piece is appropriate today because the example he used was China.

A free-market approach to human rights policy does not mean an attitude of indifference toward human rights abuses. Using slave labor or political prisoners and compelling very young children to compete in international markets are wrong. But blanket restrictions, such as the denial of most-favored-nation (MFN) trading status or the use of sanctions not directly targeting the wrongdoers, should be avoided. The problem is that even limited actions are very difficult to enforce and unlikely to bring about political change in an authoritarian regime.

Protectionist measures are more apt to radicalize than liberalize closed societies. The logical alternative is to use the leverage of trade to open authoritarian regimes to market forces and let the rule of law and democratic values evolve spontaneously as they have in Chile, South Korea, and Taiwan. The expansion of markets creates a culture of commerce and economic liberty that naturally spills over to social and political life. As people become freer in their economic life, they will demand greater autonomy in other areas, including a stronger voice in government.

The proper function of government is to cultivate a framework for freedom by protecting life, liberty, and property, including freedom of contract (which includes free international trade), not to use the power of government to undermine one freedom in an attempt to secure others. The right to trade is an integral part of an individual’s property rights and a civil right that governments should protect as a universal human right.

Is Google's concession to China's censorship demands unfortunate and offensive? You bet it is. But if Americans believe Google is contributing to human rights abuses in China, it's our responsibility to protest by boycotting the company and withdrawing our financial support, not by running to the federal government to impose trade restrictions.

Either we believe in freedom or we don't. Free trade means having to accept that there will be some negative consequences in addition to all the benefits we derive as a result of such freedom. Using our government as a vehicle to deny the Chinese people the economic freedom they will gain as a result of access to technological resources would be to fight the oppressed instead of the oppressor, and will ultimately delay any advancements of political freedom such access enables.

Today’s Washington Post reports that President Bush, at his State of the Union address, will propose “New Tax Breaks for Medical Expenses.”

Of course, the proposals are subject to tuning over the next two-weeks. However, while their trial-balloon outline by the Post appear to me to make sense, more is needed. I’ve managed insurance for large and emerging companies and for the past two-decades as an employee benefits broker and consultant, studying and seeing how medical care and insurance decisions are made.

The proposals include increasing the tax-deduction for out-of-pocket medical expenses, leveling the playing-field with the deductibility by employer-provided health insurance, and increasing the portability of coverage when leaving an employer.

Currently, unless self-employed, an individual taking responsibility for themselves and family by paying for medical insurance may only deduct that portion of the premium that is above 7.5% of adjusted taxable income. Analysts indicate a $28-billion reduction in tax revenue if full-deductibility by individuals is allowed.

Additionally needed are refundable tax-credits, or equivalent chits, for the working-poor to better afford medical insurance. Also, as many are just negligent in buying medical insurance, I believe that medical insurance should be required of all. This will increase the budget impact beyond the $28-billion estimated.

Currently, if group medical coverage is lost, and COBRA extension exhausted, an individual has 2-months to obtain guaranteed-issue replacement coverage without preexisting condition exclusions. The President’s proposals include extending this period.

However, if extended by too much, this proposal may lead to actually increasing premiums for the more responsible, as many will delay until having a serious medical condition but will not have contributed to the premium-pool to pay their fair share. The few states that have unlimited guaranteed-issue individual medical insurance have seen a sharp spike in premiums as a result.

Also, the Post says that the availability of health savings accounts will be proposed for expansion. These link individual and group tax-deductible health care savings accounts, usable for out-of-pocket expenses, to high-deductible medical insurance policies.

To now, relatively few have enrolled in these, as they are more appropriate to the young, healthy and affluent who can take out-of-pocket risks, and the relative premium-saving – to my estimation whenever I’ve evaluated them for clients – is not worth the probable savings gains. The bulk of claims expense comes from serious illnesses and accidents, covered by these insurance policies. Also, this approach to medical cost containment relies on the shaky assumption that medical consumers are able to “shop” smartly for care savings.

Nonetheless, the President’s tentative proposals will whittle away at our uninsured population, and our anxieties about obtaining adequate medical care.

This is not an anxiety restricted to the poor and unfortunate. A survey of the relatively affluent (defined as earning over $150,000 a year or having over $500,000 of investable assets if working or $1-million if retired) shows 52% rating “providing for my health and wellness” as their number one financial concern.

I'll leave a discussion of the politics of health care for another post.

We bring you Part II of Tom Sowell's gem of a piece yesterday.

Chris Penn was found dead in his California home yesterday. One of my favorite movies of all-time is "Reservoir Dogs," which in my opinion was carried by Penn and Michael Madson - and considering the cast, that's saying a lot. He was easily one of the best bit actors ever.

More proof that felons really care how many gun-control laws we pass.

Brian Anderson, senior editor of City Journal, has the MUST read op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “Shut Up, They Explained: The left’s regulatory war against free speech.”

In one piece, all the strands of the Democrat attack upon the First Amendment are described, from McCain-Feingold to “Fairness Doctrine,” leading Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds to question:

Instead of a media exemption…maybe we need a "free speech exception, in which you are allowed to say what you want about political candidates without fear of prosecution by the government."

As Brian Anderson summarizes:

The rise of alternative media--political talk radio in the 1980s, cable news in the '90s, and the blogosphere in the new millennium--has broken the liberal monopoly over news and opinion outlets. The left understands acutely the implications of this revolution, blaming much of the Democratic Party's current electoral trouble on the influence of the new media's vigorous conservative voices. Instead of fighting back with ideas, however, today's liberals quietly, relentlessly and illiberally are working to smother this flourishing universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance and media regulations.

For the details READ IT ALL.

In the continuing race to the bottom by major Western firms appeasing Chinese censorship, Google (which Michelle Malkin says should be renamed “GAGGED”) has reached agreement to roll out Chinese-language Google.cn in China. As AP reports: “Online search engine leader Google Inc. has agreed to censor its results in China, adhering to the country’s free-speech restrictions in return for better access in the Internet’s fastest growing market [where] some topics, such as Taiwan’s independence and 1989’s Tiananmen Square massacre remain forbidden subjects.”

If this were 60-years ago, would Google be agreeing to censor out news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in order to have access to Nazi Germany’s Europe? Why are we tolerating this corporate immorality? Is it time for a "Jackson-Vanik" Amendment to reaffirm our nation's stand with the Chinese, and their future leaders, once the current thugocrats are replaced?

Thomas Sowell explains how the Abramoff scandal is small potatoes compared to the widespread misuse of government prevalent on every level.

Fascinating article today in the Washington Times on the impending Ford layoffs.

Ford Motor Co. yesterday said it will close 14 North American manufacturing facilities and cut employment by up to 30,000 in the next six years as part of a broad restructuring meant to reverse financial losses and stabilize eroding sales in the company's home market.

U.S. automakers and their suppliers are laying off tens of thousands of workers as they struggle to overcome high pension, health care and wage costs; strong foreign competition; and auto designs that have limited consumer appeal.

American automakers are sitting on a double-edged sword in today's market. Not only has the United Autoworkers union contributed to the high costs Ford has grappled with for years as a result of its demands for inflated wages and pension and health care plans, but foreign competitors are simultaneously not strapped by such provisions. This is a plan for financial disaster, though you'll never hear union reps admit it.

Ford is having more success in foreign markets, posting profits in Asia, Europe and South America. The company, for example, is expanding its manufacturing facilities and introducing new products with a more than $1 billion investment in China, the Associated Press reported last week. The autos are sold in the fast-growing country.

Of course they are. Foreign governments are more concerned with creating jobs and expanding their economies than they are with regulating American manufacturers.

The United Autoworkers (UAW), which represents Ford workers, said [Ford's] plan, like the 2002 strategy, is a misguided attempt to gain profits by cutting workers and closing plants in North America.

Would you look at that! Ford Motor Company actually wants to make a profit! Huh. Someone ought to inform the UAW that when the costs of retaining workers and plants outweigh the benefits of doing so, the number of workers and plants will decrease. This is nothing new, nor should it be surprising. But instead of admitting that unions have directly contributed to these artificially inflated costs, Ford critics will simply wail that corporate "greed" accounts for its decision to outsource labor and manufacturing.

"Then, as now, the focus should instead be on striving to gain market share in this competitive market by offering consumers innovative and appealing products," said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger.

Hey, Ron. You worry about your workers. Let Ford worry about its marketing strategy.

"Somehow Ford is going to have to take on the UAW," said Jim Hossack, a consultant with AutoPacific Inc., an industry research firm.

Uh, I think that's what they're doing.

And now for the best part.

Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland, said the plan does not clearly state how Ford will get its labor and design costs in line with its Japanese competitors, a shortcoming that will limit its ability to compete on price, quality and content.

"In a nutshell, the [Ford plan] looks like the road to Chapter 11," Mr. Morici said, naming the most common filing under U.S. Bankruptcy Code.

Actually, Ford is embracing this new plan to try to avoid going broke. And if the UAW doesn't do its part to reduce the high costs it has placed on Ford over the years, layoffs and outsourcing will continue to be the natural course of events. On the bright side, however, this is usually a company's last resort before it goes bankrupt altogether - which tends to cost everyone his job.

Who knew?

Okay, I'm kidding. But for the first time in 13 years, the Conservative Party has won a national election.

The Conservatives' winning margin was too narrow to rule with a majority, a situation that will make it hard for them to get legislation through the divided House of Commons.

Monday's vote showed that Canadians are weary of the Liberal Party's broken promises and corruption scandals. They were willing to give Harper a chance to govern despite concerns that some of his social views are extreme.

"Tonight friends, our great country has voted for change, and Canadians have asked our party to take the lead in delivering that change," Harper told 2,000 cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters in Calgary.

He said his new government — not likely to be sworn in for several weeks — would immediately move to cut the unpopular national sales tax from 7 percent to 6 percent, "reform the justice system to fight against crime and gangs," and begin to allocate $1,042 to Canadian families for each child they have needing daycare.

He also wants to introduce a federal accountability act that will monitor government spending in an effort to avoid the corruption scandals that have plagued the Liberals.

"We will do this because shuffling the deck in Ottawa is not good enough," he said. "We need to do this to make the system more accountable to you, the Canadian taxpayers."

Cutting taxes and bolstering security are good moves, but Stephen Harper won't be the Canadian Reagan, even if he wanted to be. Harper favors socialized day care and will probably be forced to govern from the center. One thing I'm interested in finding out is whether a more conservative leadership will challenge the existing socialist health care system that has infected the country for so many years.

Ed Morrissey:

Stephen Harper should be sworn into office within the next two weeks, and the new era of Tory leadership will begin. Canadian voters have given Harper a rather limited mandate, a test period where they expect the Conservatives to prove that they can lead from the center-right, maintaining the economic success of the last few years while cleaning up and streamlining the excesses of the Liberal government. If successful, the voters might reward Harper and his party with a majority government down the road -- but until then, Harper will have to keep his diplomatic skills trained on the Commons.

This is a start.

Liz Wegman, Managing Director for Operation Iraqi Children, has just contacted me to express her appreciation that bloggers have begun to organize to donate School Supply Kits.

Ms. Wegman writes, in part:

The number of hits to the OIC website has increased dramatically since Friday and I’m sure that both you and Michael [Yon] have a lot to do with that. It’s great that you instruct people to list "Bloggers For Iraqi Children" as the organization because I’ll be able to track donations quite easily that way and will be able to keep you informed!

I'd wager that Michael Yon is much more responsible for an increase in web hits than I am, but blogger response to my initial call to action has been surprisingly lighter than I'd hoped, considering how rapidly information spreads via blogs and how committed bloggers usually are to joining meaningful causes.

Thanks to all who have signed on so far, and let's get the word out so we can make a collective positive impact on these kids! Ms. Wegman is ready to keep track of our gifts.

UPDATE (1/24; 8:34am): Dave Craddock at The Paladin blog is keeping a running list of bloggers for Iraqi children posted to his sidebar.

***

BLOGGERS FOR IRAQI CHILDREN:

Trevor Bothwell, Democracy Project
Lorie Byrd, PoliPundit
John Oberle, Bujutsu Blogger
Dave Craddock, The Paladin
Michelle Malkin
Mark Tapscott, Tapscott's Copy Desk
Susan Kienle, Navy Wife

Thomas DiLorenzo reinforces my own claims today that unionized labor's attack on Wal-Mart (via the Maryland legislature) will do nothing but throw low-income employees out of jobs. Only Prof. DiLorenzo goes a step further and outlines how unions conspire against the very workers they claim to defend.

As long as there is competition by the superior, non-union grocery stores, the unionized stores cannot compete as well with their bloated costs and their low-quality goods and service. The unionized stores will lose business to their superior, non-union competitors and may even go bankrupt. The union will lose members and, more importantly, dues revenues. Thus, the role of the corporate campaign, if it is successful, is either to unionize the non-union stores so that they will become just as expensive and inefficient as the unionized ones, or at least impose costs on the non-union companies that will achieve essentially the same outcome.

In either case, it is a patently anti-consumer policy that can only harm the employees of the "targeted" company. Consequently, the whole idea of a corporate campaign is based on a Big Lie: That the union is somehow concerned about the well-being of non-union employees at places like Wal-Mart. In reality, the objective of the union is to force every one of those employees to either join its union (and pay its expensive dues) or become unemployed. This is true of all corporate campaigns, including the ones against Nike and other companies operating in Indonesia.

While the media may portray unions as collections of Mother Teresas, concerned only with the plight of poor Indonesians, the reality is that the real objectives of the unions is to throw every last Indonesian who is employed by Nike out of work, forcing many of them to resort to begging, stealing, prostitution, or worse. That way, competition for higher-priced/lower quality textile goods produced in unionized factories in America will be reduced or eliminated. And the unions pretend to take the moral high ground in this patently immoral crusade.

Bingo.

In an op-ed titled "Florida gets it right on vouchers," Barbara Miner gets it completely wrong.

The Florida court noted that the voucher program "diverts public dollars into separate, private systems ... parallel to and in competition with the free public schools." Yet the Florida Constitution, it ruled, clearly states that public education is a paramount responsibility of the state. The constitution also mandates free public schools that are "uniform" in nature.

The voucher program had funded private schools that, for example, had vastly different curriculums. These private schools were not required to hire certified teachers or do background checks. Parents, not the schools, were responsible for making sure students took state standardized tests.

It's hard to believe people can be so dense. School choice in no way limits the so-called responsibility of the state to provide education, nor does it prohibit Florida's public schools from being "uniformly" poor if they so choose. The primary reason voucher proponents desperately want choice is because private schools have vastly different curriculums and teachers who don't have to waste their time taking fluffy education courses and certification tests (as if certification currently guarantees quality teachers in public schools).

The key is limiting government-run education and heeding the wisdom of experts like Walter Williams, who says, "While there might be an argument for government financing of education, there's absolutely no argument for government production of education."

Of course, as Williams adds, the superior option would be getting government out of education altogether.

My latest column is up at The American Enterprise Online, and it examines the costs that will be imposed on Maryland industry and low-skill, low-income workers as a result of the state's recent anti-growth legislation attacking Wal-Mart and raising the minimum wage.

Liberals and Democrats generally view such issues as employer vs. employee struggles, and argue that Governor Ehrlich vetoed the bills merely to protect small business (the nerve!). Successful vetoes indeed would have protected companies, inasmuch as they would have saved them unnecessary costs. More significantly, however, Ehrlich's vetoes were an attempt to protect low-skill, low-income workers, who eventually pay the greatest price for such anti-capitalist measures, whether our do-gooder politicians prefer to admit it or not.

Though the company probably won’t flee Maryland altogether, Wal-Mart may react to such legislation simply by terminating the employment of thousands of lower-income Marylanders in order to come in just under 10,000 workers, the threshold above which employers must abide by the state’s new revenue-grabbing law. Wal-Mart may also refuse to expand its business base in Maryland, opting instead to open shop henceforth in more hospitable states. Such choices would pose disastrous consequences for low-income workers and shoppers who rely on the retailer for good jobs and cheaper products.

Likewise, artificially raising the minimum wage costs jobs as well, because company payrolls don't instantly grow just because politicians force employers to pay arbitrarily higher labor rates, and such wage increases don't magically translate into more refined employee skills. The reality is that employers will adjust skill requirements to match new labor costs, a move that often includes firing workers who don't currently possess skill sets justifying an increase in salary—altogether reducing employment opportunities precisely for those low-skill workers for whom such political panaceas are created in the first place.

As a Maryland resident I take particular umbrage at such intrusive government action, but this type of state overreach should have all of us concerned. This type of behavior is less specific to any particular state than it is to our ever-eroding sense that government needs to mind its own business. How long until similar legislation infects other states? How many people really think our legislatures will be content simply to push around the big boys like Wal-Mart?

If Maryland wants to become a completely socialized welfare state, let it propose significant tax hikes and put the vote to the people. Engaging in such dictatorial, oppressive bullying of private industry to accomplish similar ends is not freedom, it's fascism.

Thanks to all the bloggers so far who have pledged to get behind our little effort to send school supply kits to children in Iraq. A couple people have written to ask how this is being coordinated, whether they send me money, etc.

It's simple. If you're interested in getting on board, simply go here to obtain the list of school supplies the people at Operation Iraqi Children would like you to package up, and ship the box to the distribution center in Kansas City using the address they've provided.

I've been keeping a running count of bloggers who have expressed interest in this so far, and hopefully more will sign up. I've also sent an email to Operation Iraqi Children to let them know that they'll be receiving packages from bloggers, so if you note on the donation information sheet (.pdf) provided by the folks at OIC that your organization is "Bloggers for Iraqi Children," they'll know what you're talking about. I'll be shipping my own kits out tomorrow.

There's really nothing to organize here. Buy some school supplies, ship 'em out, and drop me a quick note to let me know that I need to add your name and blog to our list. Every supply kit means that one more Iraqi kid has some school supplies this year that he or she may not otherwise have had. And more importanly, the kids will know we care.

If for no other reason than his proposal (with Jim DeMint) of the Health Care Choice Act, John Shadegg demonstrates the innovative issues leadership needed by the House of Representatives and its Republican majority.

The Health Care Choice Act could very well lead to breaking much of the national impasse over reforming health care by steering us strongly toward improved private market solutions instead of nationalized health care.

Deroy Murdock’s column (also syndicated by Scripps-Howard) about the Act well lays out much of the positive attributes. The Act would allow insurers from any state to offer their medical insurance policy to individuals in all states, potentially reducing premiums for those in states where coverage or underwriting mandates have increased policies’ prices too high for many to afford. Thus, the number of uninsureds may be reduced, a competitive restraint may be introduced to state legislatures piling on more premium-increasing mandates, and administrative efficiencies of larger pools of insured may further reduce premium pressures.

The organizations allied for and against the Act tells us much about the issues involved.
In favors include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Organization for the Self-Employed, National Taxpayers Union, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, and even eBay (seeing a marketing opportunity).

Opposed organizations, with near-hysterical fear-mongering, include:
· The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees union, whose Director of Legislation claims that consumer protections would be reduced because “the bill would create a Wild West environment in the individual market where bad actors could engage in fraud and abuse while state regulators would be helpless to stop it.”
· The National Partnership for Women & Families, whose President fears loss of “required coverage of critical health care benefits like mammography screenings and preventive care.”
· The American Diabetes Association, whose press release fears “a significantly negative impact, as insurers could choose to be licensed in one of the four states that do not require state-regulated health plans to cover diabetes supplies, education and equipment.”

Facts:
· As the Congressional Budget Office review (much the rest of which is fairly worthless static analysis) says, the insurers would have to meet the “requirements to register with the secondary state, submit to financial reviews under limited circumstances, participate in solvency associations, or comply with state laws governing fraud, abuse, or unfair claims settlements….the insurance issuer would be required to provide for a process for covered individuals to appeal coverage decisions to an independent medical reviewer.” Hardly a “Wild West.” More likely, a reduction of state bureaucracies (union members), and a reduction of lobbyist contributions to legislators for their pet mandate.
· Specific care mandates that may not be available from one insurer would be available from another, choosing to offer them or choosing to offer a policy from a state requiring them. Those with that need or desire are free to choose that policy, instead of another that may be less costly. Lobbyists for specific mandates raise a false fear that only the lowest cost policies would be offered. As we’ve seen with the multitude of Medicare Part D policies offered, with varying levels of coverage and premium, the competitive market will result in wide choice.

Those with maladies that require high levels of medical care will pay more for policies to cover them than those who are healthier at underwriting and can choose more limited policies.

However, for those who really cannot afford the premium, the truly poor still have the availability of Medicaid. For those who can afford the premium, but who are denied coverage, most states do have high-risk pools available to them. However, some states don’t or their programs need expansion. John Shadegg has, also, thought of this in sponsoring (co-sponsor Ed Towns-D- N.Y.C.) the High-Risk Pool Funding Extension Act, passed unanimously by the House, to seed and support state high-risk pools.

The affordability of individual medical insurance is not subsidized as it is in the employer-offered insurance market. Employers and the profitably self-employed are able to deduct premiums from taxes, whereas individuals are not (except for the amount exceeding 7.5% of adjusted gross taxable income), and most employers only charge a relatively small percent of the coverage to the employee. (See “Individual Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Survey of Affordability, Access and Benefits” from America’s Health Insurance Plans: Center for Policy and Research)

Legislation should be introduced that both requires everyone to have medical insurance, providing tax credits to the working poor not covered by Medicaid and allowing full tax-deductibility to others.

A concern is that lobbyists for various mandates will pressure the federal government to force them on all insurers. That may come to be, but the design of the Health Care Choice Act is to encourage competition among the states, and the imposition of underwriting and coverage mandates is still legally reserved to the states.

The Shadegg-DeWine Health Care Choice Act, and its attendant reforms, will go far to increasing the availability and enrollment in affordable medical insurance for many. Mandates that benefit far fewer, while often beneficial for them, will need to be paid for by them or by government subsidy for those who are too poor, instead of their cost shifted on to all at the cost of greatly increasing uninsurance.

This extension of the private market will, itself and by the legislation it leads to, go far toward both remedying uninsurance and avoiding the many pitfalls of nationalized health care.

Beltway Blogroll's Daniel Glover has written an extensive analysis of how blogs have made a noticeable impact on American society.

He's also posted a great interview with my bud Andy Roth, who says you might want to check it out if you have absolutely nothing to do today. Read it even if you're swamped.

Mark Tapscott has the transcript of Ronald Reagan's first inaugural address to the United States, 25 years ago today.

I hope every Republican member of Congress takes the time to read it today.

Michelle Malkin has the scoop.

Alas, Code Pink's URL and motto is "Women Say No To War," but all they really say is 'No' to freedom.

Jonah Goldberg says that we can swat the proverbial flies of government corruption all day long by changing lobbying rules, but until we clean the stables it will always be with us.

Lasting reform wouldn't come up with a new obstacle course for money to find its way into politics, it would reduce the incentive to spend money on politicians in the first place. Lobbyists would have no reason to pester and bribe a government that minded its own business. Microsoft and Wal-Mart, for example, spent virtually nothing on lobbying Washington until Washington began treating them like piñatas.

In other words, integrity on behalf of our politicians is good, but politicians who believe we can take care of ourselves are better.

In today's dispatch, Michael Yon chronicles the incredible work of Operation Iraqi Children, a non-profit organization started by actor Gary Sinise in March 2004 to address the dire educational needs of the future leaders of a free Iraq.

My words mean nothing here. You just have to read this dispatch and absorb all the stirring words and pictures for yourself.

Michael said he's never before asked bloggers to link to a site in order to send traffic - until now. It's the least we can do for this philanthropic organization that's already begun to make a huge difference in the lives of these Iraqi kids.

So here's an idea. I'm interested in starting a blog drive through Democracy Project to see how many bloggers we can get to participate in sending at least one School Supply Kit to OIC's distribution center in Kansas City, the location from which FedEx will ship overseas free of charge.

Any blogger interested in participating can shoot me a quick email here, and be sure to give me your name and your blog letting me know you're in so I can keep a running list here. Spread the word!

UPDATE: Download this .pdf form and print and fill it out to include with your shipment. Be sure to list "Bloggers For Iraqi Children" as your organization.

(Note: Please forgive any delayed responses to posting the names of bloggers who sign up, as I do not have access during the daytime to the email account I've provided. I will, however, update this list every evening.)

***

BLOGGERS FOR IRAQI CHILDREN:

Trevor Bothwell, Democracy Project
Lorie Byrd, PoliPundit
John Oberle, Bujutsu Blogger
Dave Craddock, The Paladin
Michelle Malkin
Mark Tapscott, Tapscott's Copy Desk
Susan Kienle, Navy Wife

Michael Yon, who in my opinion has been the most insightful conveyor of information from the Iraq war front, has transformed his blog site to an actual website, which incorporates his dispatches, outstanding photos, and gallery and bookstore.

If you haven't checked in with Michael yet, you've been missing out. But there's no time like the present. Below I've excerpted a portion of the journalist's explanation of why he was drawn to Iraq.

Getting these dispatches right is challenging. Iraq multiplies the challenge. The chaos of combat has already claimed two pairs of eye-glasses, a video camera, and two digital still cameras; the environment is merciless, with 117 degree days beating down over land and people.

I was in the Army some years ago and maintained close contact with many friends who made a career of military service. Naturally, I had an interest in what was happening in Iraq–I had friends in harm’s way.

But what spurred me to drop what I was doing, get on a plane and fly halfway around the world, to a war zone, was a growing sense that what I was seeing reported on television, as well as in newspapers and magazines, was inconsistent with the reality my friends were describing. I wanted to see the truth, first hand, for myself.

And what I saw changed how I thought about this war. The "truth" of this experience is too complex to capture in a body count or a thirty-second sound byte. It’s chaotic, dynamic and evolving. It’s unwieldy, wasteful and we have made mistakes. It’s a struggle of epic proportions that ultimately relies on the strength of a people about whom most Americans seem to know very little.

The longer I stayed, the better I understood things. And I began to realize that Americans need to see these things in order to understand what is happening here and come to a more informed judgment of whether this struggle is "worth" the cost, in money and lives. No one can make that determination without a balanced set of facts.

To me, one look in the face of any of the children tips the scales one way.

This is my favorite part:

But I don’t do this work to espouse a point of view, or rally people to the right or left. Some people might find that statement disingenuous. I’ve been criticized for using terms like terrorist and enemy in my dispatches. Most critics are a safe distance from the battleground. Up close, [it's] more than a matter of taking sides. There’s no value in using imprecise language in a futile attempt to appear objective. There is a difference between Coalition soldiers and Iraqi police officers and the terrorists and criminals they confront. Whether you call them insurgents or resistance fighters or terrorists, the people who wake up in the morning plotting how to drive explosives-laden cars into crowds of children have to be confronted.

Read it all.

In the article below, the AFL-CIO’s Campaign Director Jason Judd admits that the Wal-Mart mandate campaign by unions is not about health care.

Having failed to organize Wal-Mart, as the Sacramento Bee article carried at the unions’ “Wakeup Wal-Mart.com” site says: “Ultimately it still wants to unionize Wal-Mart but for now is dedicated to applying various pressure points on the company….The union has concluded that such a multipronged approach is a better bet than traditional store-by-store organizing, which so far has proven fruitless.”

So, having failed to enlist Wal-Mart workers to join the union, the unions would rather increase their unemployment and lack of health care! (The link to the referenced study is here.)

Study claims health mandates won't cut number of uninsured
January 19, 2006
States that require large firms to give workers certain levels of health coverage won't necessarily see their uninsured population shrink, according to a study released this week by the Employment Policies Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
The research, conducted by economists at the University of California, Santa Cruz, indicates that "fair share health care" bills don't reduce the number of uninsured people because most uninsured are unemployed, employed part-time, employed at companies with fewer than 10 employees, or newly employed and have yet to acquire the tenure required for eligibility.
Minorities and less-educated workers have high rates of insurance loss, so legislation should consider ways to cover those demographic groups, the researchers suggest.
Supporters argue that "fair share health care" bills will keep companies from shifting medical costs to workers and level the playing field for all businesses.
Jason Judd, a campaign director for the AFL-CIO, doesn't take issue with EPI's findings. The "fair share health care" bills aren't intended to solve the far-reaching problem of 46 million uninsured Americans, he says, because that should be addressed in broad, national health care reform.
Richard Berman, executive director of the Employment Policies Institute, warns, "By proposing legislation that targets large employers, many lawmakers will keep most of their state's uninsured out in the cold."

George Will today explains the methods behind the madness of Maryland's shakedown of Wal-Mart.

Organized labor, having mightily tried and miserably failed to unionize even one of Wal-Mart's 3,250 American stores, has turned to organizing state legislators. Maryland was a natural place to begin because it has lopsided Democratic majorities in both houses of its legislature.

[...]

Wal-Mart's enemies say Maryland is justified in expropriating some of the company's revenue because the company's pay and medical benefits are insufficient to prevent some employees from being eligible for Medicaid. Well.

Well, indeed. I love how government attempts to legitimize its regulation of private industry by complaining that the state ultimately pays the price of consumer decisions - tobacco and fast food cause health-related problems the goverment must subsidize; "insufficient" health benefits cause the state to assume the difference of health care costs - as if this were a problem of private industry instead of a problem of socialism.

For the record, Will outlines the futility of the argument alleging the inferiority of Wal-Mart's health benefits.

Eighty-six percent of Wal-Mart employees have health insurance, more than half through the company, which offers 18 plans, one with $11 monthly premiums and another with $3 co-payments. Wal-Mart employees are only slightly more likely to collect Medicaid than the average among the nation's large retailers, which hire many entry-level and part-time workers. In the past 12 months, Wal-Mart, the largest private employer in the nation and in 25 states, estimates that it has paid its 1.3 million employees $4.7 billion in benefits. That sum is almost half as large as the company's profits, which last fiscal year were $10.3 billion -- just 3.6 percent -- on revenue of $285 billion. Wal-Mart earns just $6,000 per employee, one-third below the national average. Anyway, Wal-Mart's pay and benefits are sufficient to attract hordes of job applicants whenever it opens a new American store, which it does once every three days.

If unchecked, there is no length to which the state will not go to shoplift private property rights. The only uncertainty is, how long will it take for us to realize this?

As I noted on Tuesday, I'm thrilled that the Supreme Court finally got one right and voted to uphold Oregon's right-to-die law. But as I mentioned, I was a little perplexed at Justice Thomas's dissent, as he's usually the one justice who can be relied upon to enforce principles of federalism.

Well, here's why he dissented. At the same time, however, Glen Whitman explains that while Thomas had his motives, it probably wasn't the right decision.

In short, Thomas deferred to the precedent set by Raich [2005 SCOTUS decision that overruled states' rights to allow doctors to prescribe medical marijuana for patients suffering from cancer or other serious illnesses] – a precedent with which he disagreed and that the majority implicitly rejected in the present case. This makes sense, if we take as given the Court’s decision in this case to ignore the issue of federalism and focus entirely on the matter of statutory interpretation. But why not force the federalism issue onto the table? Thomas may have thought he was doing so by writing a dissent, but a concurring opinion would have been the more appropriate vehicle in this case. That way, he could have affirmed what he clearly believed was the right choice on constitutional grounds, while shining a spotlight on four other justices’ inconsistency. I suspect this would have been a better strategy for rehabilitating the principles that were so damaged by Raich.

I tend to agree. But whatever Thomas's motives, the outcome was nonetheless correct.

[HT: Radley Balko.]

Only to be outdone by the ignorance of the author of this letter to the editor in The State.com.

Thomas Terrill of Columbia, S.C. outlines some "ground rules" for the application of school vouchers:

Rule 1: Competition is generally desirable, but it is not competition if it is not fair competition.

Rule 2: Fair competition is only possible if the rules apply to all the competitors.

Addendum to Rule 2: Any private or parochial schools that receive tax-supported vouchers must practice open admissions, just as public schools do, and they must meet the same legal standards that public schools are required to meet. Among those standards are o