I’m not a huge college basketball fan, but who doesn’t love the early rounds of the NCAA tournament? (Check out Drew Cline’s take on the tournament here). I’m here for the afternoon and evening sessions and will be dutifully rooting for all the underdogs. First up–Butler v. ODU. 

On January 26, I asked whether the fix was in at the Justice Department in its internal investigation of the New Black Panther Party case. Unfortunately, it looks as if the answer is a resounding “yes.”

Over Christmas, Attorney General Eric Holder appointed left-wing Democratic-party loyalist Robin Ashton to head up the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which is supposed to investigate ethics violations by DOJ lawyers. At the same time, Holder announced in the New York Times that those who dismissed the voter-intimidation lawsuit the DOJ had won did the right thing.

Former attorney general Michael Mukasey was shocked that Holder seemed to be instructing OPR officials what the results of their investigation should be — so much so that he spoke out publicly to criticize Holder, something Mukasey has resisted doing in other contexts. Thus, there was good reason to fear the fix was in.

Now, Christian Adams, former Justice Department career lawyer, has reported that OPR has finished its absurdly long probe into the politically motivated dismissal of the voter-intimidation case. As expected (and directed by Eric Holder in public statements), it will be a whitewash that concludes that none of the trial team’s supervisors “did anything improper.”

But as Adams says, the report will probably attack some members of the trial team that investigated and handled the litigation. Apparently, the reason the investigation has taken so long is because, rather than concentrating on the legal case against the New Black Panthers and the possible involvement of White House officials, OPR investigators have been trying to dig up irrelevant but scurrilous information that could be used to attack the credibility, character, and reputations of the trial team. The liberal ideologues in the Voting Section who oppose race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act are angry over the pursuit of the New Black Panther case and the Ike Brown case (the first DOJ case ever won under the Voting Rights Act against a black defendant). So they’ve apparently been feeding OPR gossip, innuendo, misrepresentations, and derogatory hearsay in order to get revenge on the lawyers who brought these two cases.

The unfairness and mendacity of this is outrageous. It is intended to distract the public, members of Congress, and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights — which tried to investigate the DOJ’s wrongdoing — from what really happened in this case. Apparently, OPR has done its best, Adams notes, to ignore more than “120 pages of analysis and discussion provided by the four trial team lawyers,” as well as “hundreds of pages of exhibits.”

Adams says the OPR report is being sent up to the deputy attorney general this week for review; then it will be sent to the political appointees who head the Civil Rights Division. No doubt many within the DOJ will want to leak the report so that it can be used to attack the lawyers who filed this case, all of whom are consummate, ethical professionals. Too bad the same can’t be said of the attorney general, his new head of OPR, the biased investigators that staff that office, and the political appointees who run the Civil Rights Division.

The upside, if they do leak the report, is that we’ll have many more weeks with the New Black Panthers on the front pages — where the story deserves to be. That’s one thing you can bet the White House doesn’t want. That would increase the pressure on them to finally release the e-mails and other documents they have unlawfully withheld from the Civil Rights Commission and Congress.

The question is, which deceitful faction within the Justice Department will make the next move in this sordid tale of racial double standards, stonewalling, and false character assassination?

I’m amazed this statement by Obama to a gathering of top-tier Democratic donors hasn’t gotten more attention:

“The first time around it’s like lightning in a bottle. There’s something special about it, because you’re defying the odds. And as time passes, you start taking it for granted that a guy named Barack Hussein Obama is president of the United States ,” Obama said. “But we should never take it for granted.”

“I hope that all of you still feel that sense of excitement and that sense of possibility, because we still have so much more to do.”

First of all, I do wish everyone could get their stories straight. Is mentioning Obama’s middle name good or bad? Is it only good when his fans say it, and bad when his political critics mention it? Someone draft me a memo.

More to the point, I don’t think telling 500 super-donors, in effect, “stick with me, because you had so much fun backing me when my campaign was about superficial b.s.” is a good sign for his reelection prospects.

We’re tracking events closely at the Developing blog.

The editors and friends of NR declare their love for Guinness.

Andrew Cline previews the dramas of the NCAA Tournament.

Conrad Black laments the lack of U.S. leadership on Libya .

Victor Davis Hanson compares President Obama to the indecisive character Hamlet.

Jim Lacey explains how the U.S. could topple Qaddafi.

Clifford D. May wonders why the Arab League doesn’t impose its own no-fly zone.

George Weigel argues the unification of Italy strengthened the Catholic Church.

Michael Barone finds much to be criticized about the presidential primaries.

Donald Trump would be willing to spend millions of his own money on a presidential campaign — and has “a little doubt” that President Obama was born in the United States .

“Part of the beauty of me is that I’m very rich,” Trump told ABC’s Good Morning America in an interview that aired today. “So if I need $600 million, I can put up $600 million myself. That’s a huge advantage … over the other candidates.”

“Everybody that even gives a hint of being a birther … they label them as an idiot,” said Trump.

“[Obama] grew up and nobody knew him,” Trump continued. “If ever I got the nomination, if I ever decide to run, you may go back and interview people from my kindergarten. They’ll remember me. Nobody ever comes forward. Nobody knows who he is until later in his life. It’s very strange. The whole thing is very strange.”

Trump’s embrace of the birther movement sets him apart from other GOP contenders who have spurned birther claims. Sarah Palin called conversations about Obama’s birth certificate “annoying” and “distracting” in a Long Island appearance last month, while Tim Pawlenty said “I’m not one who questions the existence of the president’s birth certificate,” during his CPAC speech in mid-February.

Trump also talked about House speaker John Boehner (“I don’t like the crying”) and some of the other 2012 possibilities, including Mitt Romney (“He doesn’t seem to resonate”), Palin (“I think she’s more qualified than Barack Obama was when he became president”), and Mike Huckabee (“I think he’s the kind of guy that maybe could really get some votes”).

Any other suggestions for the title of FLOTUS’s upcoming book on healthy foods? 

Michelle Obama will write a book about the organic garden she planted on the South Lawn of the White House and the virtues of eating fresh, locally grown food, a cause that has been the centerpiece of her work as first lady. The book is not yet titled and is scheduled for publication in spring 2012.  

The House just voted 236-181 to remove federal funding for National Public Radio via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I continue to be puzzled by one of the most familiar arguments for continuing federal funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting: that without tax dollars, some public stations in small radio markets with scant fundraising prospects would go dark.

Voluntary donations and private underwriting have long made up a majority of the revenue of National Public Radio and most of its local affiliates. According to NPR, member stations get an average of 10 percent of their funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But the number is much higher for stations in rural areas and small towns. Even if they would be popular enough among listeners to motivate giving, the argument goes, some of these stations lack the scale necessary to pay their bills through local giving alone.

But surely the noble, progressively minded folks at NPR would never let these stations go dark. Why would affiliates in large or affluent markets be allowed to keep all the money they raise for local use? I assume that in the absence of government funding, NPR would adjust its programming charges in a way that would essentially redistribute income from these markets to the smaller, poorer ones, thus ensuring truly national coverage for its programming and a basic “safety net” of news, talk, and quirky music shows for all Americans.

I’m convinced that the noble, progressively minded donors to stations in New York , San Francisco , Ann Arbor , Chapel Hill, Austin , and other communities would welcome the opportunity to share their good fortune with their disadvantaged counterparts.

No problem.

Tyler Cowen did a matched pair of posts on what he believes to be the common mistakes of left-wing and right-wing economists. What seems so striking to me is not the differences between mistakes made by different kinds of economists, but rather what I believe to be the set of misconceptions that are endemic to the profession.

To begin, let me provide two caveats. First, everything that follows is a generalization about what I take to be the dominant tendencies of professional economists (and especially American economists working in academia and government). It is possible to cite counterexamples to each statement; in fact, every criticism I will make has been anticipated by canonical economists including Hayek, Coase, Knight, Schumpeter, North, and Smith (Adam and Vernon), among others. Second, I am observing the economics profession from the outside as an entrepreneur and business executive engaged in the economy directly. I think that the last formal economics training I had was Evsey Domar’s Comparative Economic Systems seminar at MIT in the 1980s.

I’ve grouped these observations into two broad themes to provide some structure; but in order to get beyond very general abstractions, I’ve also tried to give some of what I think are the most important examples of each theme. At the conclusion of each theme, I’ve highlighted what I see as the negative result of these specific problems, from the point of view of a consumer of the outputs of professional economics.

1. Strategic elision between economics as predictive science, and economics as informed advocacy. Economists will sometimes make explicit claims that “the economic science says X,” and will more frequently make implicit claims for scientific knowledge by flatly asserting the known truth of some predictive assertion. This is normally a statement made around some specific policy question – we should (or should not) execute the following stimulus program; we should (or should not) raise the minimum wage right now, etc.

When pushed to provide the scientific evidence, they will normally reference some combination of empirical analysis of naturally occurring phenomena and mathematical models derived from axiomatic statements about human decision-making. In scientific terms, this is all sophisticated theory-building. What’s lacking is dispositive evidence of the accuracy of the predictive rule that allows the statement about this specific case to be an example of a more general rule that has scientific provenance. Otherwise, all we have is an informed opinion of the type we might have from an expert historian rendering an opinion about something the likelihood that Libya would revert to an authoritarian government within ten years if it overthrew Qaddafi

Among the most important manifestations of this problem are:#more#

a. Lack of focus on controlled experiments as falsification trials. Theory and experiment are to science as inhalation and exhalation are to breathing. Even in scientific fields in which experiments are infeasible, our knowledge of causal relationships is underwritten by traditional controlled experiments. Astrophysics, for example, relies in part on physical laws verified through terrestrial and near-Earth experiments. Economics has traditionally been a consciously non-experimental science (though this is slowly starting to change). This creates a very weak feedback loop to weed out false belief. One can argue that controlled experiments cannot be done for many important economics questions. Fair enough, but then the claim to scientific status for these beliefs is hard to sustain, and leads to the next problem…

b. Ad hoc retreat to non-falsifiable “a">Without the discipline of experimental verification, however, this becomes more like philosophy than science. For economists, this can be a feature, not a bug, if it can be used to intimidate non-experts (generally those who are less comfortable with mathematics).

After visiting India to deliver a talk Saturday, Sarah Palin will travel to Israel.

She will meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli right-wing political leaders, reports the Jerusalem Post.  It’s also anticipated that Palin will visit Nazareth and the Western Wall.

Palin, an outspoken supporter of Israel, isn’t the first possible 2012 candidate to visit Israel. In recent months, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Haley Barbour have all visited and spoken to Netanyahu.

It occurred to me recently that if we were not currently engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had recent events in the Middle East and Maghreb gone down exactly as they have, we’d almost certainly already be running a no-fly zone over Libya, or even launching offensive air strikes against Qaddafi forces.

Another way to put this: In the 90s, the sort of thing we’re pondering — painfully, slowly, increasingly irrelevantly pondering — was pedestrian. Clean, abstract, but impressive night-vision videos of American and NATO smart bombs striking the strongholds of people with funny names was the Clinton administration’s bread and butter foreign policy tool. Now, getting that same thing done would be, as Andy puts it, an Olympian feat.

I respectfully dissent from Wendesday’s NRO editorial, which urges that the United States go to war with Libya.

The editorial doesn’t put it that way. Indeed, it doesn’t call for President Obama to seek a congressional declaration of war, or at least an authorization for the use of military force, as the Bush administration understood was required before commencing combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In this case, complying with the Constitution is almost certain to result in a resounding “no” vote from the people’s representatives — and if you think getting the Patriot Act reauthorized was uphill, figure getting Congress to bless another adventure in Islamic nation-building as Olympus … squared. So apparently ensuring that the American people support a war against Libya is a step is to be dispensed with. The editors instead claim that “the request by the rebels and the Arab League [is] all the authorization we need,” a proposition that I imagine would have come as something of a surprise to Madison, Jefferson, et al.

In any event, they would have President Obama, post haste, launch our tapped-out nation into an open-ended military intervention, one that is to start with not only the “no-fly zone” that the editors recently opposed but a “no-drive zone” to protect the “rebels” in their tottering eastern stronghold of Benghazi. That sure sounds like a full-blown U.S. invasion of Libya, although the editors are less than clear about exactly whose boots would be hitting the ground. They assure us that they seek only a “meaningful” U.S. military commitment, not an “overwhelming” one “comparable” to the Islamic nation-building misadventures in the fledgling sharia states of Iraq and Afghanistan. But of course, no one was talking about occupying Muslim countries for a decade or more when those projects started.

It seems like a long time ago, but it is worth reminding ourselves that the only missions the American people supported involved destroying the terror network that attacked our nation on 9/11 and toppling its state sponsors. Unlike anything at stake in Libya, those are vital U.S. security interests. Iraq and Afghanistan became overwhelming commitments because of the conventional unwisdom that our security somehow hinges not only on defeating our enemies but on converting Muslim basket-cases into something resembling democracy. And this, despite the absence of any Islamic democratic tradition; despite the tension between sharia and the Western principles that undergird our notion of democracy; and despite the dearth of evidence supporting the theory — and it is only a theory — that Country A’s being a democracy makes Country B safer from trans-continental terror networks skilled at exploiting democratic freedoms. (In point of fact, the evidence cuts in the other direction — unless you think places like Hamburg, Madrid, San Diego, and Westport, four of the many Western cities and towns where 9/11 was planned, are not democracies.)

The editors do not explain why dictates of the “freedom agenda” would not turn Libya into another exercise in nation-building. The plan is to leap in first (to “check Qaddafi’s offensive”) and “then we can consider other options.” But the three trial balloons they fly for a purportedly limited engagement (though they do not actually restrict themselves to a limited engagement) are utterly unrealistic: (a) if it’s important enough to intervene on behalf of the “rebels,” it’s unserious to suggest that we would go no further than shoring up their enclave “so they can fight another day”; (b) “decapitation strikes against the regime in Tripoli” would produce exactly the sort of chaos that became the justification for entangling ourselves in Iraq (can anyone forget Colin Powell’s bromide, “You break it, you own it”?); and (c) as Daniel Freedman points out in the WSJ-Europe, we and the “international community” have no credibility to, as the editors put it, “bargain Qaddafi out of the country,” having relentlessly undermined the deal by which Nigeria induced Liberian dictator Charles Taylor to step down in 2003. As Mr. Freedman recounts, the Bush administration joined Europe’s preening over the “need to bring Charles Taylor to justice.” Qaddafi, naturally, took notice of what he called this “serious precedent” — a precedent that now has convinced him to fight until “the last drop of blood is spilled.” (Call Qaddafi crazy, but he often seems to understand how the world works better than our “progressive” diplomats do.)

#more#So what is the rationale for enmeshing our armed forces and sparse resources in Libya for the benefit of the “rebels” — the nebulous term used to avoid the inconvenient fact that Qaddafi’s main opposition includes virulently anti-American Islamists (whom the editors gently refer to as “bad actors”)? The editors assert, “Qaddafi is a murderer of Americans with whom we still have a score to settle.” They also deride him as a dictator who “hatch[es] assassination plots against foreign leaders and ravage[es] Libyan society.”

Funny thing about that: Throughout the Bush years, Qaddafi remained a murderer of Americans with whom we still had a score to settle (viz., the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 people, including 189 Americans, in 1988). The assassination attempt to which the editors refer happened in 2003, when Qaddafi plotted with al-Qaeda financier Abdurrahman Alamoudi — formerly the favorite “moderate” Muslim leader of the Bush and Clinton administrations, now a convicted terrorist — to kill then–crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. It must, in addition, be recalled that Qaddafi never stopped ravaging Libyan society while George W. Bush was president, a fact Michael Rubin documented time and again here at NRO (see, e.g., here). Notwithstanding all of this, the Bush administration, anxious to show a positive development amid the deteriorating situation in Iraq, decided in its wisdom to give Qaddafi a clean bill of health in exchange for his commitment to forswear the development and proliferation of WMD. (A commitment from Qaddafi — what could go wrong?)

Wouldn’t it have been sufficient exchange for the U.S. to agree that we wouldn’t depose Qaddafi as we had just deposed Saddam? Of course it would have … but then that wouldn’t have flaunted the full glory of the freedom agenda, right? So instead Qaddafi — a terrorist who never changed a whit — was suddenly portrayed as a reformer and a strong U.S. ally in the war against terror. The Bush administration removed him from the list of terror sponsors, opened the foreign-aid spigot for him, and cultivated ties between his regime and U.S. industry — all to the deep dismay of the same opposition we are now told it is essential that we help. Even more infuriating, President Bush, at the apparent urging of Secretary Rice, agreed to satisfy Qaddafi’s damage claims arising out of the Reagan administration’s righteous missile-attack on Tripoli in retaliation for the despot’s terrorist bombing that killed American troops in Germany.

That seems like some pretty outrageous coddling of a murderer of Americans with whom we still have a score to settle. So I searched the NR archives to find an editorial in which we condemned any of this appeasement, called for Qaddafi’s ouster, demanded that the terrorist be made to answer for Flight 103, or at least protested Secretary Rice’s treacly sit-down with this anti-American monster. Unless I’m missing something, there is no such editorial. To be clear, I am not saying NR ever bought the Bush administration’s Qaddafi makeover or regarded the dictator as anything other than the thug that he is. My point is that, although Qaddafi is still the same guy he has always been, we did not make much of a peep over the Bush approach, yet now we want to go to war with the guy under circumstances where there has been no intervening Libyan attack on the U.S., or even a threat against the U.S.

(To be sure, as I have noted before, there were plenty of Libyans who transited Syria to join the anti-U.S. insurgency in Iraq. But we didn’t consider that kind of misbehavior a casus belli even against Iran, the maestro that was actually orchestrating much of the insurgency. Furthermore, the Libyans who joined it were at least as likely to be part of what the editors now call the “rebels” as they were to be Qaddafi loyalists.)

Apparently, the editors now want to get tough on Qaddafi not because it is easier for conservatives to push Obama than it was for them to buck Bush, but because there is now a real chance to oust Qaddafi. In favor of what? It is here that the editorial is at its weakest, resisting any admission that its proposed military intervention would, in all probability, just exchange one anti-American dictator with a new set of anti-American rulers. Claiming to have “no illusions” about the “rebels,” the editorial allows that they have their “share of bad actors.” But the editors refrain from actually describing who those bad actors are.

There is a reason why, besides “freedom agenda” enthusiasts, no one wants Qaddafi “hanging from a lamp post” (as the editors put it) more than Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s sharia guide. He has just issued a fatwa calling for Qaddafi’s murder. The Brotherhood, once again, is all over this. As I summarized in a column last week:

As in Egypt, the main opposition is the Muslim Brotherhood — avowed enemies of the West whose goal is the establishment of sharia states. The National Front for the Salvation of Libya is also a largely Islamist opposition group — one that was stronger until many of its Islamist members split off because they objected to the group’s acceptance of U.S. support in the 1980s. There are other Islamist and leftist groups, including violent jihadists. Moreover, Libya is virulently anti-Israeli, and a disturbing anti-Semitism courses through the opposition. (See this Pajamas report, as well as this post by Andrew Bostom on the history of anti-Semitism in Libya.) Whatever regime comes after Qaddafi is likely to be anti-Western, anti-American, and anti-Israeli.

The editors slough this off with the contention that it really doesn’t matter in light of the “standard” they’d apply, which they say, “shouldn’t be particularly high,” to wit:  “Are [the ‘rebels’] better or worse than Qaddafi?” They then suggest that this is a slam-dunk, since “it will be hard to do worse, unless [the ‘rebels’] take over and immediately begin hatching assassination plots against foreign leaders and ravaging Libyan society.” This piles naivete atop absurdity.

First for the absurdity: The “standard” the editors suggests does not address the issue at hand. The question is not whether Qaddafi’s successors would be better than Qaddafi such that we should hope they succeed or even provide them the sort of moral support the Reagan administration gave to Poland’s Solidarity movement. The question is whether there are such clear and vital American national security interests riding on the supplanting of Qaddafi by these particular Islamist would-be successors that we should commit American military forces, i.e., invade another Muslim country that has not attacked us, in order to bring that outcome about. Even if we were to concede for argument’s sake that the rebels would be less anti-American than Qaddafi, that would argue for nothing more than wishing them good luck; it would not call for the sacrifice of American blood and treasure (or, more accurately, American blood and going deeper in hock to China).

And then the naivete: Is it really so obvious that the “rebels” would be better for us than Qaddafi? News flash: The Muslim Brotherhood has a history of not just plotting but actually carrying out the assassination of foreign leaders. Indeed, while we are not happy that Qaddafi is a foreign leader, he does happen to be one, and, as already noted, the Brotherhood’s top clerical leader is openly calling for him to be killed. If we just have a look at Gaza, Sudan, Somalia, and Iran, where Islamist governments reign (the one in Gaza is actually run by the Muslim Brotherhood), it’s fair to say that “ravage” is too gentle a word for what they do to their societies. Look at how Turkey is devolving after eight years of Islamist rule. Clearly, it wasn’t so obvious to the Bush administration that the available alternatives were manifestly preferable to Qaddafi. I don’t know why the editors are so confident on this point.

I repeat, the editors may well be right that a Libyan regime run by the “rebels” could end up being better for us than Qaddafi — at least marginally. But it also might be worse — Qaddafi hasn’t attacked us in many years; the Muslim Brotherhood is actively seeking to destroy the West. In either event, the issue is not what we ought to be hoping for or even working toward diplomatically. It is whether hastening the post-Qaddafi era is so clearly in our interests that it’s worth going to war over.

Besides attacking Libya directly, the editors further suggest that we should “work with our allies to provide logistics, training, and arms” to these “rebels.” Before we do something like that, should we not at least discuss how disastrous have been our efforts to train and arm Muslim forces in the recent past? Indeed, perhaps I should say the very recent past: Though I cannot vouch for them, reports are now circulating (see, e.g., here) that two members of the U.S.-funded and trained Palestinian security forces have been arrested on suspicion of providing logistical support for the massacre of a Jewish family in the West Bank town of Itamar last weekend (the massacre is the subject of my last column).

Besides arming the Palestinian Authority, which continues to maintain its own terrorist wing, our government has been funding Qaddafi (including “charities” run by his family) and the Pakistani regime that created the Taliban. We seeded the Afghan mujahideen with hundreds of millions of dollars that ended up going to al-Qaeda and jihadist warlords like Hekmatyar who are still at war with us. We intentionally looked the other way while Iran armed and trained the Bosnian Muslims, giving the jihad a foothold in Europe. The Egyptian military to which we have given tens of billions over the last 30 years could soon be coopted by an Islamist regime. Do we really want to keep arming and funding shady players in a place about which we know little except that there is teeming animosity for America and the West?

The editors also offer the now familiar argument that we need to act because President Obama has staked American credibility on Qaddafi’s ouster. “All lies in jest,” the tune goes, “still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” Obama says a lot of things, many of them contradictory. (Mubarak must stay, Mubarak must be gone yesterday, Qaddafi is our friend, the violence must stop but no need to mention Qaddafi, Qaddafi is suddenly illegitimate, and so on. If Mr. Obama can pry himself away from his brackets, who knows what we’ll be hearing tomorrow?) The president refused to intervene in the Iranian uprising because he had committed us to diplomacy with the mullahs — should we support that feckless strategy since, whatever misgivings we may have, Obama has staked U.S. credibility on it? I don’t understand how it is that we can disagree with most everything Obama says but, when he occasionally takes a position — however fleetingly — that we find pleasing, we abruptly decide he must be defended because American credibility is now on the line.

As long as we’re talking about American credibility, what about Bush’s staking of it on the conclusion that Qaddafi was no longer an anti-American terrorist but, instead, an American ally in the war on terror whose regime should no longer be listed as a terrorism sponsor? The editors insist that Qaddafi is “a dictator with American blood on his hands,” and that we thus “still have a score to settle” with him. But didn’t President Bush pronounce that score settled in a diplomatic agreement in which American and, yes, Libyan claims were paid and deemed satisfied. You don’t like that result? Me neither … and, I said so at the time. But by the editors’ logic, wasn’t Bush’s agreement a staking of American credibility on both a settlement of Pan Am 103 claims and the re-entry of Libya into the “international community” — notwithstanding his record of terrorism and dictatorship? How is it that if Obama doesn’t act, U.S. credibility will be in tatters, but that U.S. credibility is not already in tatters because of our treatment of Qaddafi from 2003–2011? Won’t U.S. credibility be in tatters if our rationale for launching combat operations against Qaddafi is a terrorist attack that our last president determined was a closed chapter?

Contrary to the editors’ claim, a military campaign to pick a winner between Qaddafi (for whom we were vouching for up until a few weeks ago) and the “rebels” (who include anti-American jihadists) would not be “commensurate with our interests.” It could not be, for such campaigns, as the editorial concedes, have “costs and risks.” Our interests are calculated by weighing those costs and risks against the anticipated benefits. To justify the use of military force, the benefits have to be clear and substantial, and their pursuit must be supported by the public. The fate of Libya is just not that important. Qaddafi is a creep, but he hasn’t done anything to us since our government absolved him seven years ago. If he falls, no one will weep. But that doesn’t make it worth a single American life to move him out so the “rebels” can move in.

Arab League members have been lushly armed by the U.S. for years. Why don’t we suggest that they band together to drive Qaddafi out, just like they have banded together several times to try to wipe out Israel? Why don’t we let our great NATO ally Turkey take a time-out from trying to break Israel’s blockade of Hamas to deal with its own backyard?

To borrow General McChrystal’s words about Afghanistan, Libya is not our war. The editors observe that “waiting for U.N. or even NATO approval is a formula for inaction,” but there are very good reasons for inaction. Putting aside Security Council authoritarians like China and Russia, who have their own reasons for protecting Qaddafi, many other countries see the potentially catastrophic downsides of getting involved and say, “No thanks.” Why do we need to be the ones to take on the empirically thankless task of stepping in between warring Muslims who are united only by their disdain for America and the West? 

It is not easy to explain to our troops and their loved ones why the combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which have devolved into increasingly pointless nation-building exercises, continue to be worth their sacrifice. But at least in those missions, there were clear U.S. national security reasons for the initial invasions. At least in those missions, we are still killing and capturing some terrorists who might otherwise attack the U.S. In Libya, there are no similar U.S. interests. Yet NR is not only undertaking to support a forcible intervention; the editors lay the groundwork for supporting “other options” to be considered once Qaddafi’s offensive has been checked. Intended of not, that leaves the door ajar to yet another long-term, troop-intensive occupation, the editors’ protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. And is it not worth at least a mention that among the “costs and risks” of military intervention in a Muslim country is that, regardless of how well-meaning we are, mainstream Islam construes sharia to require attacks against Western forces that attack Muslim countries? By intervening — even if some Muslim countries are asking us to intervene, history tells us — we would guarantee intensified calls by influential Islamic clerics for jihad against us.

Finally, what about the cost? We are, after all, engulfed by debt — increasing trillions of it that are appropriately the subject of ever more agitation on the pages of NR and NRO.  Although the editorial purports to explain why military intervention is “commensurate” with our interests, it omits from this calculation any mention of how much this “meaningful” intervention will cost our bankrupt country. Perhaps more importantly in our current dire straits, the editors do not grapple with how easily a costly intervention will be exploited by the Left to justify the preservation of wasteful Big Government spending that we also can’t afford.

I appreciate that it is hard to say, “Butt out.” Qaddafi is a monster and his opposition is murky enough (for now) to be portrayed as “rebels” and “freedom fighters.” But I fear we’re being swept away by emotion and by what we should now know is the vain hope that making sacrifices for besieged Muslims is going to make the ummah like us better. It is essential to attack Islamic terrorists who plot against America, but our humanitarian military efforts in the Islamic world have been a disaster — at staggering costs in lives and hundreds of billions of dollars that we don’t have. We should be working on how to get the nation disentangled from Islamic countries, not leading the nation headlong into another conflict that we cannot win. With great respect, I believe the editorial is profoundly mistaken. 

Mention “nuclear radiation” at your next cocktail party, and the room will likely fall silent. Americans fear few things more than the idea of radioactive fallout landing on U.S. soil. Small wonder then that from California to Oregon, potassium iodide is selling out.

But the fearful response is not always the most appropriate. And facts, not fears, should determine how we respond to the nuclear crisis in Japan.

Perhaps the most important fact for those of us stateside: It is extremely unlikely that the radiation released into the atmosphere from Japan will have any biological effect on U.S. populations. Radiation levels in Tokyo, though higher than normal, are currently still below the threshold which poses danger to human health. And Tokyo is only 150 miles from the damaged nuclear plants. More than 5,000 miles separate the U.S. and Japan. Radiation that blows eastward would likely break down in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. 

What if such radiation reaches U.S. shores? First, we should determine the degree of the problem. The danger of low-dose exposure is incredibly small, and the technologies to detect radiation are incredibly advanced. Moreover, potential health risks can be mitigated by factors such as general health, duration of exposure, genetic traits, and medical treatment.

We must also recognize non-radiation risks. Potassium iodide itself can produce harmful side effects in some people, especially those with certain medical problems like thyroid issues and chronic diseases. It’s not prudent to take it unnecessarily.

People are naturally concerned about the health and safety of their families. They should keep current on the situation, listen to the communications from government officials, and remain calm. Meanwhile, government officials must provide factual, up-to-date information and be open and honest about risks.

What leaders should avoid is the type of baseless, over-reactive measures invoked during the last public-health scare in the U.S.: the swine flu. Eager to be seen as caring, concerned, and “doing something,” public officials aired ridiculous ideas (e.g., stop eating pork to avoid the flu) and lawmakers offered ludicrous proposals (e.g., seal the borders to keep “carriers” out). Officials may be tempted to play to public fears of radiation in a similarly unhelpful and disruptive fashion. They shouldn’t.

Media reports over the next few days and weeks will contain a lot of “maybes.” Americans must pay attention, but they should also weigh these reports critically. Sift through the “maybes” to get at the facts — which are almost always far less alarming. When faced with a potential threat — even one involving radiation — calm and common sense are invaluable.

DeMint Defends Romney on Health Care

PERMALINK

Today, Reps. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), Tim Scott (R., S.C.), and Scott Garrett (R., N.J.) will introduce the Welfare Reform Act of 2011, a bill that would do much more than rein in exploding federal welfare spending. It also seeks to free millions of families, currently trapped in the welfare system, from a debilitating dependence on government.

The Jordan-Scott-Garrett legislation is a bold step forward. Adopting several major proposals by my Heritage Foundation colleague, Robert Rector, the bill would apply fiscal discipline to dozens of means-tested welfare programs where spending has skyrocketed since President Obama took office.

The legislation also would ease able-bodied recipients of government assistance off the welfare rolls and into jobs — the signature accomplishment of the limited 1996 reforms. The fastest way out of poverty, as the saying goes, is a job.

Or as the Republican Study Committee, of which Jordan is chairman, puts it in a summary of his bill: “Conservatives believe that the answer to poverty is work, higher earnings and marriage.”

The welfare-reform bill aims to encourage personal responsibility while reversing the 40 percent jump in spending among the 70-plus federal welfare programs during the first two years of the Obama administration, primarily by:

● Requiring the president’s annual budget to detail total current and future welfare spending, as well as estimate state contributions to federal programs.

● Capping total welfare spending at 2007 levels plus inflation once the recession ends.

● Adding work requirements to the food-stamps program, so that the able-bodied must seek employment and job training if they are to continue receiving the assistance.

Spending on the food-stamps program alone has more than doubled since 2008. Under Obama’s 2012 budget proposal, it would reach $80 billion and 40 million recipients — with more growth to come.

If Congress doesn’t slow this runaway train, federal and state welfare spending will total $10.3 trillion over the next decade. Our government is broke and heavily in debt. We can’t afford the accelerated growth in the welfare state that Obama has set in motion, especially considering these programs aren’t an efficient, lasting way to lift individuals out of poverty.

The welfare reform bill would cap overall — or aggregate — welfare spending at the rate of inflation once the recession subsides (defined as an unemployment rate of 6.5 percent or less). Savings are estimated to exceed $1.4 trillion over ten years.

But although saving taxpayers’ money is critical, even more important are the lives of the Americans who receive these benefits. Most have spent years on welfare with little chance of leaving. The average stay on food stamps is eight years, according to one report. And despite the fact that welfare costs are 13 times higher than in the 1960s, when the War on Poverty began, the poverty rate remains virtually unchanged.

The goal should be to move welfare recipients out of poverty and dependence, and into jobs and independence. The Jordan-Scott-Garrett bill would do this by adding the same kind of work requirements that in 1996 transformed the government’s largest cash-assistance program.

Welfare rolls shrunk by 60 percent as a result of reforms to one major program, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, in policy changes first proposed to President Clinton and Congress by Rector and Heritage.

We could achieve similar success in the years ahead by implementing work requirements not only for food stamps but for public housing assistance, another of the larger welfare programs.

The Welfare Reform Act of 2011 would revive the vision of the 1996 reform initiative, picking up where it left off. For the first time in 15 years, lawmakers have a real opportunity to lessen dependence on government and improve the lives of millions of Americans.

— Katherine Bradley is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society and oversaw the nation’s largest cash-assistance program during the George W. Bush administration. She is co-author, with Robert Rector, of the 2010 research paper “Confronting the Unsustainable Growth of Welfare Entitlements.”

Here’s a quick rundown of why the Dane County DA’s complaint trying to overturn the new collective-bargaining law is bogus. (And yes, this gets pretty arcane.)

Here’s the complaint.

Basically, the DA is arguing that the wrong set of rules is applicable. He’s trying to apply the joint legislative rule noticing requirements to the conference committee meeting. If that were the case, the bill would generally need 24 hours’ notice, or more than two hours’ notice if it was an emergency. (The DA argues the bill was given less than two hours, but even this is bogus, as explained by the chief clerk — he said he sent notice to each legislative office at about 4:08 for the 6:00 meeting, but that the bill was officially noticed well before that.)

What the DA doesn’t mention is that the bill in question is a special session bill, which gives it a completely different status than a regular bill. Senate Rule 93 essentially says that with special session bills, the senate rules apply with some special stipulations (my bold):

Senate Rule 93. Special or extraordinary sessions. Unless otherwise provided by the senate for a specific special or extraordinary session , the rules of the senate adopted for the biennial session , with the following modifications, apply to each special session called by the governor and to each extraordinary session called by the senate and assembly organization committees or called by a joint resolution approved by both houses:

Senate Rule 93 (2)  (2) A notice of a committee meeting is not required other than posting on the legislative bulletin board, and a bulletin of committee hearings may not be published.

So, as we’ve mentioned before, not even two hours was required — Scott Fitzgerald decided to offer it as a courtesy.

The rest of the DA’s complaint throws the kitchen sink of lefty complaints in there — that the capitol doors were closed, etc. But it’s all extremely weak sauce.

— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

From the 2011 edition of The Green Bag Almanac and Reader, the quirky and very eclectic “law review” edited by the inimitable Ross Davies at George Mason Law School, comes this tidbit from the “Chronicles of Grammar” section:

The BBC News reported (4-17-10) that Penguin Group Australia had destroyed 7,000 copies of a newly printed cookbook because of a typographical error. In one recipe, the prescribed ingredients included “salt and freshly ground black people” (the intended word having been pepper). Bob Sessions, head of publishing, said: “Proofreading a cookbook is an extremely difficult task. We’re mortified that this has become an issue of any kind, and why anyone would be offended, we don’t know.” There was no further word on Penguin’s continuing use of this foot-in-mouth representative as a spokesperson.

Today on Uncommon Knowledge, Governor Mitch Daniels defends his speech at CPAC where he called for a truce on the social issues.

On the day Joe Knilans stood to address his Republican colleagues in a closed-door meeting, he was celebrating his sixty-day anniversary as a Wisconsin assemblyman. It was March 10, the day the assembly was set to take its final vote on Gov. Scott Walker’s controversial bill to limit collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin.

But as the words fell out of Knilans’ mouth, it was clear he was not up for celebrating.

“I just want to say that taking this vote today will probably cost me my job,” he began. “But that’s why I came to Madison — to take votes like this. I never wanted to be a career politician — it’s about doing the right thing.”

Knilans, 46, is an old union hand who used to assemble cars at the recently mothballed General Motors plant in Janesville. In November, he won a shocking victory over the sitting speaker of the assembly, Mike Sheridan, who had been caught having an affair with a registered lobbyist. It was the first time since 1938 a sitting Wisconsin assembly speaker had lost. After such a historic election, “how can I not vote with the people who voted for me?” Knilans told me.

When Knilans finished speaking, his colleagues gave him a standing ovation. Many that watched him speak remember feeling a jolt of electricity pass through the room. They were numb from the passion Knilans exuded in his speech. Soon, more vulnerable representatives stood and expressed their resolve in voting for the collective-bargaining bill.

Rep. Scott Krug was the next to stand, echoing Knilans’s sentiments about the bill being the right thing for Wisconsin. (In November, Krug beat the longest-serving assemblyman in state history, cantankerous Democrat Marlin Schneider.) Rep. Kathleen Bernier, who had served in local government in Chippewa Falls, cried as she told tales of how the bill had affected her friendships and family relationships.

Sixty-nine-year-old freshman Rep. Ed Brooks talked about how he had been alive for World War II and the Kennedy assassination, and said he would always remember the vote they were going to take that day. One representative stood to explain why he couldn’t vote for the bill, but his opinions were treated respectfully.

At the end of the caucus meeting, they all held hands and prayed.

On election night in November, Assembly Speaker-to-be Jeff Fitzgerald confided to friends that the Republican electoral wave had been so tremendous, he didn’t even know the names of some of the people that would be joining his new majority caucus. Knilans had to be one of the names Fitzgerald never could have imagined would be joining him in Madison. In switching from Democratic to Republican control, the assembly had picked up 25 new GOP members. Forty-four percent of Fitzgerald’s members were now first-termers with no legislative experience. Call them the “Obamacare Babies.”

It was these freshman legislators who stood on the assembly floor following Knilans’ speech that day, while their orange-T-shirt-clad Democratic colleagues shouted “SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!” in their faces. They could feel the ambient rumble of the thousands of pro-union protesters that stood mere feet outside the assembly chamber. Newly elected representative Michelle Litjens had earlier been the target of a threat from a Democratic assemblyman, who pointed at her and said, “You’re f***ing dead.”

Knilans himself felt the intimidation. In his capitol office one day, he heard a group outside his door say, “We know where you live.” Picketers showed up at his house. He said he didn’t personally feel threatened, but he was anxious about the safety of his wife and two small children at home. One day, his five-year-old son asked him, “Do they hate you, Dad?”

Yet they stood together, endured the insults, and passed the bill on to Walker, who signed it the next day.

Voters always say they want politicians who vote without their reelection in mind; they favor elected officials whose conscience is their guide. Yet the GOP assembly freshman class of 2010 has been rewarded for the leadership with verbal abuse, death threats, demonstrations at their homes, and promises they will be yanked out of office via recall. Certainly, some of them know they will not keep their jobs in 2012 as a result of their vote last week.

But on Thursday, March 10, amid attempts to intimidate them, they held hands, closed their eyes, and made the leap together. Some will not survive.

— Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.

From the Wall Street Journal:

Democratic officials in Wisconsin have filed a second legal challenge to the legislative process that facilitated the passage of Gov. Scott Walker’s “budget repair bill.”

The Dane County District Attorney on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in circuit court alleging that Republican senators didn’t give proper notice of a meeting last week in which they passed the bill, which curtails collective-bargaining rights for public-employees unions.

District Attorney Ismael R. Ozanne, a Madison-based Democrat, said in a complaint filed Wednesday afternoon that Republicans posted notice of the meeting less than 24 hours before it began, in violation of state law.

Mr. Ozanne is seeking an injunction blocking the Wisconsin secretary of state from publishing the law as well as a ruling that would void it.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald said Republicans “are fully confident that every law was followed.”

From my most recent NRO article, on President Obama’s Libya policy: “As for Libya, there is room for legitimate debate over what to do there, but I cannot believe that there is a single conscient American who has followed these matters who is not appalled by the grotesquerie of American policy fumbling that has stalked, wreathed, and bedeviled this issue.”

Whether you agree or disagree, your comments are, as always, most welcome.

I just saw a commercial on the local TV station that carries Two and a Half Men reruns: It invites viewers to watch the show and thus be “bi-winning.” (I also caught about ten minutes of the show itself, which I had never seen before. It seemed rather funnier than network sitcoms used to be, but probably not funny enough to make me go out of my way to watch a full episode.)

This is Jonah’s beat, I know, but I couldn’t help but think that this dog is a better friend than a lot of people are. Cold, wet, shivering, dehydrated, disoriented and hungry in the post-diluvian wreckage of Japan, this pup stands by his stricken canine pal as a news crew approaches.  You can see he’s initially tempted to run to the crew, but has second thoughts, lets off a bark, and returns to the side of the injured dog (initially thought dead by the reporters). Whether this is a protective posture, or just meant to draw the humans’ attention so they’ll bring help — he’s a hell of a pal.

By the way, CNN and the Guardian are both reporting that the dogs were rescued and are receiving veterinary care. You can read a transcript of the reporters’ back and forth here.

The e-mail hit reporters’ in-boxes earlier this evening. Subject header: “POSTPONED: GOP Senators to Unveil Balanced Budget Amendment to Constitution.” Senators Kyl, Hatch, Lee, Cornyn, and Toomey had plans to announce a proposal for a balanced–budget amendment tomorrow at noon, but suddenly it was off. What happened?

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wanted more consensus, according to sources familiar with the deliberations.

The five senators planning the press conference have been working to merge a Hatch-Cornyn proposal with a Lee-Kyl proposal. That’s what they planned to announce tomorrow. Today they met with members of the GOP’s balanced-budget working group to discuss final details.

One aide tells us that McConnell urged the members at the working-group to take more time building support for the measure within the entire conference before unveiling the proposal. “He argued that it will be more powerful if we are working with the House when we introduce the [balanced-budget amendment] and that it will be more powerful if we have all 47 Republicans on board, so we need to start gathering cosponsors.”

“[McConnell] wants something all senate Republicans can get behind,” says another aide. “The question is: is that possible? And how long do we keep working within this group before just moving forward on our own?” After today’s talk, the aide adds, “a bunch of senators wanted more discussions, so the news conference was postponed.”

More as it develops . . .

I rather think we irreparably screwed up when we first legalised and promoted alcohol.

I missed this, from the Washington Post:

District Republicans often feel like they’re metaphorically under fire in a city that’s 70 percent Democratic. But what happened last night appears to be unprecedented.

Paul Craney, executive director of the D.C. Republican Committee, says that a shooter took out the windows at the GOP’s storefront office, near 13th and K streets NW, with a small-caliber projectile, possibly from an air gun.

Craney said he got a call from an alarm company early Wednesday morning but didn’t pick up the call. And when he showed up to work this morning the alarm was on. But he didn’t notice the fenestration damage until later in the day. “I was getting lunch, and noticed: Oh my god, our windows are all shot up.”

While on the phone with a reporter, Craney discovered an approximately BB-sized piece of shot on the ground outside the window.

Craney said the D.C. GOP office appeared to be specifically targeted. “We’re right by a hair salon, and the hair salon was fine. But we weren’t,” he said. “There were multiple shots. Whoever did it took some time to take out our windows.”

Doesn’t sound like a huge deal, though obviously serious. Of course, if it had been the DNC office that would prove the tea parties are [fill in the blank].

Dan: That’s not the first time this has happened. The video game Homefront — which was written by the guy who directed and co-wrote the original Red Dawn, and was released today to reviews that were so bad its publisher’s stock fell 26 percent — also had its invaders-of-the-U.S. switched from Chinese to North Korean.

. . . [A] new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) confirms that means-testing would yield very little in savings … unless we took benefits away not only from rich retirees, but also from many who are solidly middle-class.

A 41-year-old Jewish pro-life lawyer in Palm Beach County is increasingly catching the attention of conservative activists in the Sunshine State and beyond. He’s Adam Hasner and he’s on the verge of officially putting his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination to challenge Senator Nelson in Florida.

Meanwhile, he’s already on what looks much like a campaign trail.

His expected competition includes Mike Haridopolos, the state senate president, who has announced, as well as George LeMieux, the former senator appointed by Charlie Crist, and current congressman Connie Mack. The race is beginning early and promises to keep our attention as Florida proves to be a key to whether or not we have a different president in the White House come January 20, 2013.

Hasner, who currently has a Senate exploratory committee, has been traveling the state like a candidate and is open about the fact that he is “taking all the necessary steps to move forward.” But, given the relative political powerhouses running, it will be far from a given that he will be the nominee. And he’s open about that, too, embracing his relative outsider-ness, confident it’s a winning strategy.

“I know that I’m going to be outraised and outspent,” Hasner, a former Florida house majority leader, tells NRO.  “Our message is resonating with the conservative leaders and the conservative activists across the state.”  

His message: As senator, he will be what he is: “An unapologetic conservative” who believes the “importance of America’s prosperity as an economic as well as a national-security issue. … We are safer when we are stronger.”

Hasner believes he brings “a unique voice” to the mix, and a three-legged stool, as they say. Already sounding like a candidate, he says, “I’m the one who is consistently talking about … having a discussion about reforms we need to entitlement spending … getting more and more engaged on the threats of national security… and the fact that social issues still matter.” While some Republicans stay away from the latter, Hasner emphasizes that “the deterioration of fundamental values is really what has created a dependency on government to cure what has ailed us.”

We are “inseparable” from our “Judeo-Christian roots,” he tells me. Hasner says he’s not “going to be politically correct” and “my message is the same whether I am in Palm Beach or Panama City. … I’m going to be the one who is going to see what needs to be said and do what needs to be done.” No kidding. Hasner has been known to host a screening of Iranium and talk about the threat of sharia-compliant finance.

Listening to Hasner, it is obvious that the University of Maryland graduate has a bit of a passion for politics and public policy.

Speaking of the economy, Hasner supports Sen. Marco Rubio’s opposition to continuing Resolutions to fund the government, something he believes resonates with well-educated voters. “People recognize that this is no longer an academic discussion about America’s fiscal crisis,” he says. “People recognize the crisis we face long term.” And so they’re more open to tough reforms because they know we have to be.

Of Rubio, Hasner, an early supporter who served with him in the Florida house, says: “Marco Rubio has demonstrated why people believed in him and supported him. This is the type of leadership Florida is looking for, America is looking for.” He sees his campaign as a next step for Floridians who don’t want to “play an insider game. The issues we’re facing are far too challenging.”

Hasner says voters around Florida are “engaged and educated on the issues unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.” This past November, Hasner says, “They sent a message in 20120 and it was enough is enough. We want our leaders to do the hard thing and if they don’t do it we are going to send new people to do it.”

There was a screening of Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton, my new documentary, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center earlier this week. Among the guests were Walter Russell Mead, historian; Max Rudin, publisher of the Library of America; Richard Snow, author and longtime editor of American Heritage; and a cohort of my colleagues led by Jack Fowler. Herbert London, president of the Hudson Institute, MC’d. Michael Pack, the director and producer, and I took questions afterwards.

If you ever want to see what your face looks like when it is 15 feet tall, have your documentary shown at the Walter Reade Theater. I felt like Rhett Butler or Lawrence of Arabia, until the house lights came back up and I went back to being me.

Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton airs on PBS, April 11, 10 p.m. to midnight (but check your local listings).

On today’s Uncommon Knowledge episode, Gov. Mitch Daniels flipped a question about his opposition to a state right-to-work law by saying that a “better question is what the right-to-work people think they were doing.”

I’m glad he asked, because we are confident Governor Daniels knows exactly what we were doing. And as the saying goes, everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.

Daniels asserts that the idea of a right-to-work law came “out of nowhere,” yet since 2003, Indiana citizens determined to free themselves from the shackles of compulsory unionism have been working tirelessly to pass right-to-work protections for Indiana’s workers. Led by the nearly 120,000-member Indiana Right to Work Committee, pro-right-to-work Hoosiers sent many thousands of postcards, letters, and e-mails to their legislative candidates urging them to support right-to-work.

In 2010 alone, Indiana Right to Work mailed a series of letters to more than 200,000 Hoosiers in targeted districts reporting where their candidates for state house and state senate stood on the right-to-work issue.

Meanwhile, dozens of winning candidates (including Ron Bacon, Sue Ellspermann, Rebecca Kubacki, Kevin Mahan, Jud McMillin, and Tim Wesco) repeatedly sent out direct mailings to voters announcing right-to-work as a key plank in their platforms, while still others trumpeted their support in town halls and other public forums. (All of which was laid out in a letter to Daniels from the head of Indiana Right to Work dated January 6.)

Public-opinion polls consistently show that nearly 80 percent of Indiana voters oppose forced unionism, and members of Daniels’s own party think it is a winning issue enough to bring it up. And since 2004, there have been three votes on an Indiana right-to-work bill in the state house — making right-to-work hardly an issue that has come “out of nowhere.”

Additionally, Daniels has claimed that the rest of his agenda would have been derailed if right-to-work came up. As such, Daniels has urged the delay of the introduction of right-to-work since December, essentially cuing the Democrats to block the bill from the start by pushing the introduction of the bill to the point where the Democrats could defeat it by leaving the state for just a day or two. And in the end, Daniels’s other legislative priorities were blocked anyway, despite his preemptive surrender on the right-to-work issue.

If Daniels had just shown leadership and decided to fight this battle early in the legislative session (as advised), workplace-freedom advocates would have won the battle, as majorities of both houses are on the record in support of a right-to-work law. Instead, hundreds of thousands of Indiana’s workers will continue to be forced to pay union dues and fees as a condition of employment, while (as Daniels admits) one in four businesses looking to relocate will not even consider his state.

Daniels’s efforts to block right-to-work stand in stark contrast to the positive strides made by Governors Scott Walker (Wisconsin), Chris Christie (New Jersey), John Kasich (Ohio), and Paul LePage (Maine) in taking on forced unionism.

Governor Daniels’s failure of leadership (and truthfulness) on this issue should give serious pause to those who think he’s ready for national office.

— Mark Mix is president of the National Right to Work Committee.

On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh praise" target="_blank">Christian Heinze)

My wife (who reads the Times so I don’t have to) sent me this story this morning. It tells the story of a Gallipolis, Ohio, couple that escaped poverty by working for the government. Careful to avoid the implication that the couple is overpaid at taxpayer expense, the Times makes sure to depict an ongoing struggle:

Jodi and Ralph Taylor are public workers whose jobs as a janitor and a sewer manager cover life’s basics. They have moved out of a trailer into a house, do not have to rely on food stamps and sometimes even splurge for the spicy wing specials at the Courtside Bar and Grill.

While that might not seem like much, jobs like theirs, with benefits and higher-than-minimum wages, are considered plum in this depressed corner of southern Ohio. Decades of industrial decline have eroded private-sector jobs here, leaving a thin crust of low-paying service work that makes public-sector jobs look great in comparison.

. . .

The Taylors are not college educated, but their public-sector jobs have made them middle class. Together"3">You can see a chart of household income in the U.S. here. The median — contrary to what the Times says — is right around $52,000. The median family of four in Ohio — one of the Taylors’ two children has already moved out — earns only a little more than the Taylors, $67,000. Bear in mind that much of Ohio’s population lives in Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati, and suburbs thereof, where the cost of living is higher than in the more rural areas.

Here’s a comparison that New York liberals might understand better: If you look at Charleston, W.V. (which is close to Gallipolis), and adjust for cost of living, $63,000 is the equivalent of $147,000 in Manhattan, $123,000 in Brooklyn, and $108,000 in Queens.

And perhaps if the Times is concerned about the economic wellbeing of the non-college-educated, they should consider rethinking their position on immigration, rather than advocating for the overpaying of public employees.