Immigration Ain't That Easy

I've got a window full of tabbed articles I will never have the time to write about. So you're going to get them in linked bullet points.

• First, a little bit of classic Mark Steyn. From 2003. His characterization of Democrats resonates and truly today as it did back then.

• This blogger's favorite columnist, Bret Stephens, had a piece in the latest Foreign Affairs magazine about President Obama's Middle East policy. It is fantastic, natch.

• Stephens also wrote a column about the importance of truthful history. As you can imagine, this one resonates with me.

• Public intellectual, Rush Limbaugh, wrote a piece for the WSJ wherein he defended the Tea Party movement against their media antagonists. Given liberal hysteria and hyperbole in response to AZ immigration law, this one is timely. (Mind you, I'm not saying I agree with AZ policy, just pointing out liberal hypocrisy.)

• Daniel Henninger documents the massive shift in public opinion away from Obama's vision of America and towards a more limited vision of the role of government. This shift has occurred in a very short period of time. Like, a year.

• This is the Bret Stephens show. This time he takes aim at the idea of "peace processes" which are, of course, a friggin' joke. Stephens (I think rightly) calls those who derive benefit therefrom "wicked."

• When it comes to immigration, I tend toward the WSJ line rather than the National Review one. Looks like Jonah Goldberg agrees. Also, Byron York does some good political reportage on the Arizona law particulars.

• Thomas Sowell, another favorite, on the misuse and abuse of history to serve political ends--in this instance, race and slavery.

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Post-ObamacareApocalypse: The Way Forward Friday

Unrelated: I'm not saying it's because of Obamacare's passage that I'm listening to the blues, but let me tell you, Eric Bibb is fantastic. I highly recommend his album "Painting Signs." Brilliant.

First off this morning, a column from earlier in the week by Richard Rahn, a senior fellow at Cato. He writes on the importance of failure--especially as it relates to regulation of financial markets--in a capitalist society. I know that the self-esteem society has infected much of our debate about practically everything, but it's important to remember that people have to be allowed to fail. Does this make me a heartless conservative? Probably. I can live with that. Better that than the alternative.

Next, a column by another one of those conservative ideologues from whom I mindlessly take my marching orders, Mark Steyn. But seriously, folks, in this column about civilizational decline, he draws important lessons from the decline of the British empire and why it wasn't bad, because America took its place, but also how if/when America declines, it will be bad because, well, who's going to take America's place? Who's going to be the benevolent hegemon, allowing the rest of the world to free ride on its guarantee of peace and prosperity? The hard lesson is that there isn't anyone else.

Lastly, a bit of optimism in the form of a look at Paul Ryan. In case you hadn't picked up on it yet, I'm a big fan of the guy. He singlehandedly took on the economically ignorant progressives on the House Budget Committee. Some have called him "Jack Kemp on steroids." Before all you deficit hawks get your panties in a bunch over that comment and the hypocrisy of conservative economics, let me say that unlike Kemp, Ryan is concerned about deficits and has proposed your kind of policy solution to what ails America. The GOP isn't just the party of no. (though if you're a small-government type, isn't that a good thing?)

FWIW, we liked Kemp because he, like Paul Ryan, was an unabashed defender and advocate of free market capitalism. There are too few of those.

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On Obama's 'Partisan, Condescending' State Of The Union Speech

Marc Thiessen was lead writer on President Bush's last two SOTU speeches. He offered his critique of Obama's speech at The Corner and in today's WaPo.

Listening to President Obama's speech, I could not help wondering how different this night would have been had Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's bomb not malfunctioned. Four weeks ago our country was the target of a catastrophic terrorist attack. But for the grace of God, Northwest Flight 253 would have crashed into downtown Detroit, killing thousands. Yet just a month later, it is an afterthought for this president. His only mention of the failed attack was a passing reference that he was responding with "better airline security."

Worse, the president's brief discussion of terrorism focused not on what he was doing to defend the country but was, rather, a vigorous defense of himself. His first words on the subject were a chastisement of those who would dare criticize his handling of terrorism, declaring that "all of us love this country" and warning his Republican critics to "put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough." It's all about him. No acknowledgement of how close we came to disaster or praise for the brave passengers who subdued the terrorist. No, only this message for his critics: If you question the wisdom of telling a captured terrorist "you have the right to remain silent," you are really questioning the president's patriotism and engaging in childish taunts.

The fact is, the American people have real concerns about Obama's approach to terrorism. They do question the wisdom of eliminating CIA interrogations, closing Guantanamo Bay, bringing the terrorists held there to this country, putting Khalid Shiekh Mohammed and his cohorts on trial in civilian courts, and giving captured terrorists Miranda rights after 50 minutes of questioning. Instead of acknowledging these concerns, Obama dismissed them. It was strange, defensive, arrogant -- and un-presidential.

I'm also bothered that Iraq & Afghanistan get such short shrift from this President. I read a lot of military blogs and try and keep on top of what's happening in those places. One of the things that comes across a lot is how frustrated members of the military are with the fact that many Americans both don't know and don't seem to care about what's happening to them wherever they are.

Part of the reason for this has got to be the complete lack of attention given to them by President Obama and the Democrat party. And this was reflected in Obama's SOTU last night.

Ps. Yes, I am also annoyed by the arrogant, lecturing tilt of his head when he speaks.

UPDATE 2:34pm GMT: If you need a palate cleanser, here's President Ronald Reagan's SOTU in 1988. (via Orin Kerr @ The Volokh Conspiracy)

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Can't Get Enough Obama?

Try printing off this picture and putting it on your wall. Or a t-shirt. Or in the rear window of your Prius--talk about ironic.

via Jonah Goldberg @ NRO:

I think this is some sort of commentary about over-Obamasaturation, but I'm not sure.

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Mark Steyn Holds Forth On Socialized Universal Healthcare & The Spread Of Apathy

This is why someone hopefully pays Mark Steyn the Big Bucks.

Look, by historical standards, we’re loaded: We have TVs and iPods and machines to wash our clothes and our dishes. We’re the first society in which a symptom of poverty is obesity: Every man his own William Howard Taft. Of course we’re “vulnerable”: By definition, we always are. But to demand a government organized on the principle of preemptively “taking care” of potential “vulnerabilities” is to make all of us, in the long run, far more vulnerable. A society of children cannot survive, no matter how all-embracing the government nanny.

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Milwaukee School Vouchers: Democrat Party Kowtows To Another Special Interest

I know lots of teachers. Many of my friends are teachers. They know I am a friend to good teachers everywhere.

I am also, however, an enemy of unions generally and teachers' unions specifically. Their goal is not the improvement of education, but the guarantee of employment and ever-increasing pay and benefits for all teachers, regardless of performance. Additionally, these folks see their union positions as opportunity to exert political influence.

Brendan Miniter called school choice "the new Civil Rights struggle." Indeed, it is. Given the disintegration of low-income families--especially minority families--school choice and the opportunities a good education affords may be the best chance many of these children have.

Democrats and teachers' unions want to kill every voucher, scholarship, school choice program they can. They already did away with the one in Washington DC--a program that helped thousands of low-income students avoid failing schools. Milwaukee's wildly successful voucher program is next on their list.

At the National Press Club last week, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that he opposed school choice: “Let me explain why. Vouchers usually serve 1 to 2 percent of the children in a community. . . . But I don’t want to save 1 or 2 percent of children and let 98, 99 percent down.” It was a bizarre statement: Why not simply let more than 1 or 2 percent enjoy the benefits of school choice? In Milwaukee, they actually do. It’s the largest urban school-choice program in the country, dwarfing the size of the one in Washington, D.C., whose de-funding by congressional Democrats has drawn so much criticism. Roughly one in five of Milwaukee’s school-age children receive vouchers. All of them must fall below an income threshold. Researchers say that the program is beginning to show systemic effects. In other words, it doesn’t merely help its participants. It also gives a lift to non-voucher students because the pressure of competition has forced public schools to improve.

The principle is choice--liberty, really--applied to education. When I speak to union-enthusiast teaching friends of mine, they talk endlessly about some new initiative or program that will make public education better.

The point of adding choice and competition to education is that these things will introduce the flexibility and incentive into education that will empower teachers and administrators and parents and students to find the education that best suits them.

One-size-fits-all public education doesn't achieve the egalitarian utopia in which its adherents believe, it holds the smart kids back and leaves those who need extra or specialized attention behind.

If the Democrat party really were, as it says, "for the children," it would resist the influence of campaign contributions from teachers' unions and wholeheartedly endorse choice in education.

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Reasons For Optimism

Jonah Goldberg, happy warrior:

The conventional wisdom holds that conservatism is in trouble because the GOP is in trouble. But the two are not one and the same. Indeed, the GOP’s conservative principles aren’t necessarily the main reason for its unpopularity. Arguably, Republicans’ failure to adhere to their principles when in power hurt them more. The most recent Pew Research Center report on “Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes” finds that 37 percent of Americans describe themselves as conservative, while only 19 percent describe themselves as liberal. And conservative principles are still competitive, even after eight years of Bush, a staggering recession, and the most popular Democratic president in nearly a half-century. A majority of respondents say the “federal government controls too much of our daily lives” and that “government regulation of business usually does more harm than good.”

Obviously, the GOP is not in an enviable position. But conservatives have been in worse shape countless times before. What they have done each and every time is argue their way forward. Goldwater, Reagan, and Gingrich each mounted conservative victories by making arguments for their cause.

The cliché is that politics is about “addition,” and the GOP needs to add more Hispanics, or gays, or women to its coalition, as if such descriptors define people more than their individual aspirations. Republicans will never win that fight, nor should they try to out-bean-count the Democrats. Persuasion should trump the pandering of “addition.” Conservatives must argue why they are right, not endlessly apologize for their alleged wrongs.

Yes.

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'The Decline & Fall Of America'

In the spirit of my earlier Anglo-American post, here's Mark Steyn on a very disturbing & possible repetition of history.

America has a choice: It can reacquaint itself with socioeconomic reality, or it can buckle its mandatory seatbelt for the same decline most of the rest of the West embraced a couple of generations back. In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . .

Let’s not go there.

The Brits were fortunate enough to partner with a strong friend (the US).

With whom will we partner to guarantee our future security and prosperity?


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My Kind Of Bailout

Jonah Goldberg:

The latest number, which includes the Citigroup rescue, is $7.7 trillion. That’s roughly half of America’s GDP.

[...]

[A]ny way you slice it, we are talking about really, really large amounts of money here. Barry Ritholtz, a financial blogger and Wall Street analyst, offers some perspective. Adjusting for inflation, the Marshall Plan cost $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase: $217 billion. The race to the moon: $237 billion. The New Deal: $500 billion (estimated). The Korean War: $454 billion. The Iraq war: $597 billion.

You can add all of these things together and still not come close to what taxpayers are on the hook for already. You could even throw in the Savings and Loan bailout ($256 billion), the Vietnam War ($698 billion) and all of NASA ($851 billion) and still come up short.

[...]

Obama says he doesn’t want spending as usual when it comes to formulating his impending mother of all stimulus packages. (Estimates vary from $500 billion to $700 billion, but who knows how high that number will go?)

So far, all we know for sure is that he wants massive increases in infrastructure “investment.” That’s fine with me, so long as it’s the infrastructure we need (though history shows such expenditures usually come on-line well after a recession is already over).

But rather than blow money on a lavish reenactment of the New Deal, or continue bailing out undeserving corporations, why not really think outside the box? Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) suggests an across-the-board reprieve on paying 2008 income taxes. This would leave an extra $1.2 trillion in the hands of Americans, who are the best stewards of their own money. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell proposes a one-year moratorium on corporate income taxes in order to stimulate investment, job creation and the like. That wouldn’t be as popular, for understandable reasons.

The details can be negotiated, but this sort of approach would certainly create more jobs and spur more consumer demand than paying for a lot of asphalt. It would buy a lot more prosperity than any corporate bailout. Politically, it could buy Obama and Congress a year to formulate a serious tax-reform proposal. And — here’s the amazing part — it would be much cheaper than what we’ve spent already.

Really? You think everything they've done so far is just hunky dory?

How about we follow the advice of both Mundell & Ghomert and not collect corporate or personal income taxes?

Is that something you might be interested in?


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That Mark Hemingway, He's A Funny Guy

Don't worry, everyone on this side of the pond is super excited about Obama winning too. That must mean they like US now, right? Right?

Anyway, over at The Corner, Mark Hemingway tackles the notion that newsworthy events = a baby boom. Specifically, one reporter speculated that Obama's win would create a minor baby boom 9 months from now--you know, because liberals have so many children.

A blast email that a reporter from a New York publication sent out today:

"I'm working on a funny piece about the potential for an Obama baby boom 9 months from election night. Did you make love in the name of Obama on election night? Were you feeling particularly romantic because your candidate won? If you seriously plan to conceive, are you happy you'll be bringing a child into an Obama administration?

I'm looking for funny and/or stories and anecdotes. If you're not comfortable having your name used, please let me know and we can likely work around that."

Well, once again we have a reporter who flunked statistics:

"Because variances in birth rate are an ordinary phenomenon, spikes in the number of births will occasionally coincide with a newsworthy event that took place three-quarters of a year earlier. Those who cling to the belief in blackout babies fail to accept that the same communities they point to as proof of the theory saw even greater leaps in number of births in years that weren't preceded by memorable events. Blackouts, snowstorms, and the like are more usually followed by perfectly ordinary birth rates nine months afterwards, but because human nature is what it is, we tend to remember only the events that fit the pattern we're determined to see and unconsciously discard all the rest [...]"

Such a query does, however, seem to confirm that no one was more turned on by Obama's victory than the media.

9 months from now, check your local hospital to see how many little Barry's, Barack's, and (for the girls) Obama's there are on the baby register.


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Remember The Vets

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs,

President Wilson proclaimed November 11 as the first commemoration of Armistice Day with the following words: "To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations…"

Since that original designation, 11 November has been expanded to be a day in which all veterans of all wars are remembered and their sacrifices honored.

Commander Salamander suggests--and I recommend--that you make a donation to Valour-IT, a fund set up to purchase laptops and other necessary IT equipment to help injured vets on the path to recovery. See CS's. post for more info.

Finally, you must read David French's article, Soldiers Win.


Thanks to Ace.


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Surveying The Case For McCain (& Against Obama)

NRO Editors, 2 columns by Thomas Sowell, 1 by Rich Lowry, & 1 by Charles Krauthammer:

NRO editors:

This election does not present Americans with a straight-up choice between conservatism and liberalism. This is not so much because John McCain is a moderate, although he is, as because liberals are likely to have effective majorities in both houses of Congress. Thus the choice we face is, in most respects, between a liberalism that is checked and one that is not.

We have no doubt that if McCain is president we will find much to criticize. But we will be confident that we have the right commander-in-chief and that liberals do not have a free hand to remake our country. In this election we support Senator McCain and urge all conservatives to do so as well.

Thomas Sowell - "Obama, Powell, & Popularity":

Among the reasons given by Secretary Powell for supporting Barack Obama is that Obama can restore America’s standing with foreign countries.

The idea that the United States must somehow rehabilitate itself in the eyes of the United Nations or NATO or “world opinion” is staggering, even though it is an idea very popular in the mainstream media.

The first duty of a President of the United States is to protect American interests — of which survival is number one — regardless of what others may say.

[...]

Despite the media hype that we need to rehabilitate ourselves in the eyes of the world, the United States of America remains the number one destination of immigrants from around the world, some of whom take desperate chances with their lives to get here, whether across the waters of the Caribbean or by crossing our dangerous southwest desert.

Even when dozens of governments around the world join the United States in coordinated efforts to fight international terrorism, the media will call our actions “unilateral” if some demagogues in France or Germany spout off against us.

The American nuclear umbrella has enabled Western European nations to escape responsibility for their own military survival for more than half a century.

Lack of responsibility has bred irresponsibility, one sign of which are unionized troops in NATO and NATO bomber pilots who have office hours when they will and will not fly, not to mention NATO troops letting American troops handle the really dangerous fighting in Afghanistan.

Maybe the time is overdue for NATO to try to rehabilitate itself and for Americans to stop trying to be “citizens of the world.”

Needless to say, I don't buy this argument about "rehabilitating America's image abroad." They don't hate us any more now than the "Peace Movement" of the 1980s hated Ronald Reagan. These are the fruits of playing policeman of the world.

Charles Krauthammer - "Further Left than LBJ":

McCain is just the kind of moderate conservative that the Washington/media establishment once loved — the champion of myriad conservative heresies that made him a burr in the side of congressional Republicans and George W. Bush. But now that he is standing in the way of an audacity-of-hope Democratic restoration, erstwhile friends recoil from McCain on the pretense that he has suddenly become right wing.

Self-serving rubbish. McCain is who he always was. Generally speaking, he sees government as a Rooseveltian counterweight (Teddy with a touch of Franklin) to the various malefactors of wealth and power. He wants government to tackle large looming liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare. He wants to free up health insurance by beginning to sever its debilitating connection to employment — a ruinous accident of history (arising from World War II wage and price controls) that increases the terror of job loss, inhibits labor mobility and saddles American industry with costs that are driving it (see: Detroit) into insolvency. And he supports lower corporate and marginal tax rates to encourage entrepreneurship and job creation.

An eclectic, moderate, generally centrist agenda in a guy almost congenitally given to bipartisanship.

I have a lot of so-called "moderate" friends. They have always complained about the supposed extreme right-wing nature of Republican politics. Alright, guys, you got what you asked for. John McCain is the most moderate candidate since Bill Clinton. He's the Republican party's equivalent of Bill Clinton, minus the womanizing.

Will you vote for him?

Rich Lowry - "Redistribution You Can Believe In":

Obama proposes a dog’s breakfast of tax credits, including a $500 refundable work credit that applies even to people who owe no income taxes. The Internal Revenue Service would cut them a $500 check every year. This essentially is a government payment dressed up as a tax cut. It will be partly funded by new taxes on the top 5 percent. So Obama is redistributing wealth, but in an eminently salable way. Call it “redistributive change we can believe in.”

Obama’s plan wouldn’t, like cuts in marginal tax rates, increase the incentive to work, invest or save. In fact, the opposite. As tax credits phase out, they increase marginal tax rates. But for Obama, his plan is a matter of justice rather than economics.

When in a Democratic primary debate Charlie Gibson of ABC News pointed out to Obama that increasing the capital-gains rate in the past has initially reduced revenue, Obama replied that he wanted the increase “for purposes of fairness.”

But how unfair is the American tax system? It’s already steeply progressive. IRS data show that the top 1 percent of filers paid 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2006. The top 5 percent paid 60 percent. The top half paid 97 percent.

Robbing the rich to bribe the poor. This is Obama's idea of "social justice." Social justice is a joke.

True justice is not taking money from those who earned it and giving it to those who did not.

Thomas Sowell - "A Perfect Storm":

Policies that he proposes under the banner of “change” are almost all policies that have been tried repeatedly in other countries — and failed repeatedly in other countries.

Politicians telling businesses how to operate? That’s been tried in countries around the world, especially during the second half of the 20th century. It has failed so often and so badly that even socialist and communist governments were freeing up their markets by the end of the century.

The economies of China and India began their take-off into high rates of growth when they got rid of precisely the kinds of policies that Obama is advocating for the United States under the magic mantra of “change.”

Putting restrictions on international trade in order to save jobs at home? That was tried here with the Hawley-Smoot tariff during the Great Depression.

Unemployment was 9 percent when that tariff was passed to save jobs, but unemployment went up instead of down, and reached 25 percent before the decade was over.

Higher taxes to “spread the wealth around,” as Obama puts it? The idea of redistributing wealth has turned into the reality of redistributing poverty, in countries where wealth has fled and the production of new wealth has been stifled by a lack of incentives.

Open your eyes, folks.

If you think you've got it bad now under Bush, just wait until you see the craptastic future Obama has in store for you.


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Jonah Goldberg On Chris Buckley's Betrayal

For the most part, I consider myself to be a Buckley conservative (William F. Buckley Jr.). I am socially conservative, fiscally libertarian, and hawkish on foreign policy. I'm probably more interventionist and thus (by some people's definition), neoconservative in my foreign policy outlook.

I subscribe to National Review and have read Christopher Buckley's stuff (WFB's son) for years. I particularly enjoyed Thank You For Smoking, and recommend it to anyone.

However, I do not agree with his outlook on the current state of the Republican party, John McCain's candidacy, or his ticket's inclusion of Sarah Palin. You can read Chris's endorsement of Barack Obama here, if you like.

Here on the pages of OL&L, I prefer to post Jonah Goldberg's response:

I am a great fan of Christopher's. I am proud to call him my friend and I am grateful for his many kindnesses. None of that changes because of his decision to endorse Barack Obama. But I think he’s wrong.

I would very much like to leave it at that.

But since I don't need a kazillion emails complaining that I punted, I'll pick up the ball and carry it a few yards downfield without any attempt to make it to the end zone, never mind do some sort of dance at his expense.

I think Mark's reader has it basically right. Christopher knows that McCain once had great character. We know he knows this because he says so at some length. He thinks McCain has lost it. I think that is unfair and untrue. His only real evidence stems from McCain’s recent political performance. But even if you think McCain has run a less than honorable campaign (I do not – which is not to say that I think he’s run a particularly good campaign), it's hard for me to take the complaint all that seriously from someone who worked for — and greatly admires — George HW Bush. Campaigns often require a certain tackiness, as was conspicuously the case with poppa Bush. But Bush pere was not a tacky president and I see nothing in Christopher’s argument that persuades me to think it would be otherwise with McCain.

Meanwhile, Christopher invokes Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous line that FDR had a “first-class temperament” and so too Obama. Indeed, he suggests that Obama is a man of great character because he's a man of great temperament. Conceding for the sake of argument that Obama's temperament is first rate, are the two really the same thing? I don't think so (indeed, that would be a hard case to make about FDR himself, who could be deceitful, vindictive, petty — even to his own son — and adulterous. And let us note that Holmes himself was not a man many of us should be invoking as an authority on political virtue or general decency).

The story Christopher tells of McCain's great character has no real analogue in Obama. He may be in private a deeply honorable man, but his public record is one of accommodation, shortcuts, dishonest equivocations, serious leftwing sympathies and fellow-traveling with some awful people. Obama, let us recall, threw his own grandmother under the rhetorical bus in order to defend his relationship with Jeremiah Wright. That he sounded dignified doing it does not confer dignity on the act itself or the man behind it. That is surely not all there is to say about Obama, many of his friends and fans speak very well of him. But the scales Christopher uses to weigh one man against the other seem awfully rigged to me.

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I Know Henry Kissinger And You, Sir, Are No Henry Kissinger

Barack Obama tried to lecture John McCain about foreign relations by citing McCain's own advisor, Henry Kissinger. McCain pointed out that Obama mischaracterized Kissinger's positions. Who shall we believe? How about Kissinger?

From Stephen F. Hayes at the Weekly Standard blog:

Henry Kissinger believes Barack Obama misstated his views on diplomacy with US adversaries and is not happy about being mischaracterized. He says: "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality."

(h/t Yuval Levin @ The Corner)


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Drill, Baby, Drill: Dems To Quietly Let Offshore Drilling Ban End

It's a catchy slogan, isn't it?

The AP reports that Democrats are finally going to give up the ghost on their offshore drilling ban.

Since I don't buy the 'environment argument' against drilling (any of them) and think there are mitigating factors to the 'energy independence argument,' I find this to be incredibly great news.

More from Ace. Guitar Hero fans (of the game, not Barack Obama*) be sure to watch the video Ace links. It's a classic.

Adult observations courtesy of The Corner.

UPDATE 10:43pm MDT: I almost forgot: *Over-the-top performance, no real skill or experience.


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Bob Costas Interviews President Bush

We don't care what anyone says, it'll be a sad day when George W. Bush is no longer President of the United States. He's so like-able and trustworthy. And such a good guy. Think you won't miss him? Ask Britons how they feel about Gordon Brown and if they miss Tony Blair. We suspect the same thing will happen in the U.S. if Barack Obama is elected.

While watching the Olympics tonight, we caught Bob Costas' interview with President Bush. Their interview was wide ranging but we were particularly impressed with the discussion of China and it's human rights/liberty issues.

Transcript here

Costas noted that China remains an authoritarian state despite what you maybe believe as a result of all the positive press surrounding the Olympics. Good on Costas for pointing this out when everyone else seems to forget.

President Bush, a man whose religious sincerity has sometimes been questioned by the haters, pointed out that increased religious liberty is a positive and important step in creating a more free and open society. As he said, 'once religion takes hold, it doesn't leave.'

Religious liberty is often overlooked in broader discussions of human rights. President Bush has made it a priority to push for religious freedom in all his interactions with oppressive regimes. This is something for which he should be given more credit.

It may be that as China continues market liberalization, while resisting the broader freedoms that normally come as a result, that religious liberty will be the catalyst to bringing about deeper democratic reform.

As President Bush noted, it's important for America to stay engaged with China--on every level--and continue to encourage reform at every opportunity.

We already included these links as part of the "Editors' Picks" over at Newsbusters.org, but we don't want anyone to miss out on reading them. W/o further ado, Jay Nordlinger's series on China & the Olympics:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5


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