weird Hollywood and Polish blind spots in defending Polanski

Anthony Paletta in the WSJ...

Amid the many reactions to director Roman Polanski's arrest...none have been as strong as those of the international film community. A petition demanding his release has attracted over 100 film-world signatories, including luminaries from Martin Scorsese and Costa-Gavras to David Lynch and Wong Kar Wai....

The substance of his guilty plea and the circumstances of the crime receive only glancing mention, in a single line: "His arrest follows an American arrest warrant dating from 1978 against the filmmaker, in a case of morals."

One would never know that those easily brushed off "morals"—rape and pedophilia—have actually been a central concern of some of the petition's signatories....

Paletta then provides a number of odd examples, where their cinemagraphic work condemns the very things they condone in Polanski.

And this weird punchline/ending:

Perhaps the only group more incoherent than the cinematic community in its reaction has been Polish officials. Mr. Polanski, who was born and raised in Poland, has received much support from his countrymen. In an irony evidently lost on Polish bureaucrats, government ministers of the Civic Platform Party began protesting Mr. Polanski's arrest on Saturday, one day after their government successfully passed a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in cases involving victims under 15.

the Duggars: thank them, don't mock them!

From Jonathan Last in the WSJ...

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar made headlines recently when the Arkansas couple announced that they are expecting their 19th child. The news about the reality-show stars was met with quiet condescension by polite society and impolite mockery in the trendier parts of the Internet. The dirty jokes write themselves.

Yes, the Duggars are an easy target: They have taken the idea of a large family and given it an exponential boost. And their lives are not exactly filled with suburban glamour, fancy college degrees or evenings at home reading aloud from collections of symbolist verse. The family tends toward plain clothes, warehouse-club portions and the New Testament. And yet the discomfort with the Duggars is not merely an expression of class snobbery. It has partly to do with their hyperfertility. There is a creeping anti-natalism in America that has made having large families a radical act....

Even by historical standards, the Duggars' soon-to-be-19 kids are exceptional. In 1800 the American fertility rate—that is, the number of children born to an average woman in her lifetime—was 7.04 for whites and 7.90 for blacks....Today the average American woman has only 2.09 children, just a hair beneath the replacement rate of 2.1. The rate for Michelle Duggar's demographic group, non-Hispanic whites, is just 1.85. In 1800, the Duggars would have been odd. By today's standards, they seem positively freakish.

There are scores of reasons for society's decreased fertility. Better medical care reduced infant mortality....Effective birth control reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies. And, beginning in 1974, widespread access to abortion reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies that were brought to term....delayed age of first marriage to car-seat laws (few vehicles can accommodate more than three child-safety seats). But a big part of the story is economics.

In agricultural societies, including that of early 19th-century America, children were of vital economic importance. They provided free labor in the family business and then, in adulthood, care for their elderly parents. They don't perform either of these functions today....

Whatever its merits, the welfare state is a disincentive to childbearing....

Even as economic incentives for childbearing have diminished, costs have grown. The welfare state required an enormous new tax burden...While the government started taking more of a family's money, the expense of raising a child shot to the moon....Finally, there is the opportunity cost of a parent not working....

To be sure, the Duggars have experienced some economies of scale with their soon-to-be 19 bundles of joy. The marginal cost of each additional child is reduced but still nontrivial....

The Duggars have mortgaged their financial futures for their children. Yet we're the ones who will benefit....In an era when it is rare for a bourgeois couple to have even three children, the Duggars are helping subsidize our retirement at considerable costs to themselves. Instead of mocking them, we ought to thank them.

ever heard of Mary Anning? she "blazed the trail" for Charles Darwin

From Shelley Emling in the WSJ, the story of...

...a woman, also raised religious, who blazed the trail for Darwin—an often forgotten and dismissed fossil hunter who, too, was surely tortured by her own bizarre discoveries. Born in 1799, Mary Anning, the dirt-poor woman said to have inspired the tongue-twister "She Sells Sea Shells by the Seashore," would spend her entire life uncovering and piecing together the fossils of one never-before-seen monsters...

After her father died in 1810, a young Anning, in order to put food on her table, was forced to run the shore's gantlet of high tides and landslides, dressed in tattered skirts, as she hunted for curiosities she could sell to seafaring tourists, mostly from London. By birthright, Anning never should have grown up to be an influential fossil hunter and geologist. She was marginalized not only by her family's poverty but by her sex, her regional dialect and her nearly complete lack of schooling. But she enjoyed one natural advantage: the very good fortune of having been born in exactly the right place at the right time, alongside some of the most geologically unstable coastline in the world; it was—and still is—a place permeated with fossils...

...the fossils that Anning uncovered as a young woman—including many of the world's first ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs and pterodactyls—had never been seen by anyone, anywhere before.

One can only imagine how frightening it must have been to find the fragments of these exotic creatures—with their bat-like wings, snake-like necks, and big, bulging eyes...

But according to most accounts from her friends, Anning continued to be a deeply meditative woman who often could be found praying or reading the Bible and who almost never missed a Sunday service....

Anning tried to reconcile what she was unearthing with her belief in God's omnipotence, a belief she apparently held until her death from breast cancer at the age of 47....

Joseph Smith's (claimed) revelation vs. the Book of Mormon

Stephen Prothero in the WSJ on archaeological evidences and Mormonism...

I've talked a lot over the years with Mormons / Latter-Day Saints. One conversation comes to mind as I read this review by Prothero: a colleague and good friend expressed amazement that Evangelicals are so interested in archaeology, saying that Mormons don't pay any attention to that. My response-- half-tongue-in-cheek-- was that Mormons don't go there because the evidence is not friendly to their faith.

That said, here is a review of an amazing scholarly effort-- to go back to the original revelation claimed by Joseph Smith, which differs from what one would read today in the Book of Mormon.

Any claim of revelation is outrageous. It presumes that God exists, that God speaks and that all is not lost when human beings translate that speech into ordinary language. But time mutes the outrage, or muffles it. Many of us greet the miracles of Jesus with a shrug, and there is little scandal any more in claiming that the Bible is the word of God.

Not so with the Book of Mormon. Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the most successful of America's home-grown religions, may not have been hounded by paparazzi, but the scripture that he brought into the world (as translator, not writer, Mormons insist) was born in an age of newspapers and before a cloud of witnesses. In fact, before the book was typeset it was drawing defenders and detractors alike. So we probably know more about the production of the Book of Mormon, which is holy writ to the world's 14 million Mormons, than we do about any other scripture. With the Yale University Press publication of "The Book of Mormon: The Earliest Text" last month, we know even more.

The product of over two decades of painstaking labor by Royal Skousen—a Brigham Young University professor of linguistics and English language, a Mormon...

Mr. Skousen draws on the first three editions of the Book of Mormon (1830, 1837 and 1840), but most of his work is based on two handwritten sources: the original manuscript dictated by Smith and written down by scribes; and a printer's manuscript, copied from the original....the printer's manuscript was, according to the typesetter, "one solid paragraph, without a punctuation mark, from beginning to end." It is largely intact, but only 28% of the original manuscript survives. The rest was consumed by the elements after Smith placed it in the cornerstone of a Nauvoo, Ill., hotel in 1841.

All sorts of errors popped up between the moment Smith uttered the first words of his translation and the moment the first edition went to press, and the text continued to be transformed with each new edition. In one case, Smith's scribes heard "weed" instead of "reed." In other cases, they heard Smith right but wrote down the wrong word. Meanwhile, Smith's publisher, trying to improve his spelling and grammar, introduced errors of his own. Later Smith made hundreds of his own changes, chiefly by transforming some of the first edition's King James style into more standard American English.

In an effort to take us back as close as possible to what Smith saw when he was dictating to his scribes, this new edition restores much of the nonstandard English that the church edited out over time. It also gets rid of the chapter summaries, columns and notes added by LDS leaders...

The Yale edition differs from the standard text in over 2,000 places, but almost all of these differences are inconsequential ("inequality" becomes "unequality," for example). Even where a change is substantive—"sword" of justice becomes "word" of justice—nothing hangs on the change theologically....

One conclusion to draw from this fact is that Mr. Skousen wasted two decades of his life; this oversize, 848-page book is all sound and fury, signifying nothing. Another is that the Book of Mormon has been vindicated, warts and all. Mormons have long acknowledged that the Book of Mormon has a textual history. They admit that there were grammatical and spelling errors in the first edition, and that the text has changed over time. But it has now been proved through painstaking scholarship that none of these changes amount to a hill of beans....

Mr. Skousen told me that this project gave him "a bit of heartburn" because LDS leaders didn't want him to publish it. "They have a history of controlling the text," he explained. And this new edition did leave me wondering which text is now the real Mormon scripture....it is "very unlikely" that the LDS Church will ever make this version its official Book of Mormon. Nonetheless, according to Mr. Skousen's preface, it is the original text—the one he is attempting to unearth—that, for believers, "has authoritative status as a revelation."...

Catholics and Evangelicals on Mary

In 1994, prominent members from both groups issued a statement titled “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium.” They've followed it up with other statements over the years.

Recently, their work on Mary was published in First Things. It's a long article, but well worth reading in its entirety if the topic interests. Below, I have provided excerpts from the "common statement"-- rather than each side's statement to the other side.


Since the sixteenth century, the subject of the Blessed Virgin Mary has been a primary point of differentiation, and even conflict, between Evangelicals and Catholics. While figures such as Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli retained a special reverence for Mary, this dimension of their teaching and piety was largely lost by their followers in the course of growing animosity between Protestants and Catholics. On the Catholic side, the determination to draw a clear line against Protestantism sometimes led to exaggerations and distortions in Marian devotion.

In our time there is among Evangelicals a renewed interest in Mary, and among Catholics a determination to make clear that the greatness of Mary is in her faithfulness to Jesus Christ, her Lord and ours. In the words of the Second Vatican Council, “No creature could ever be counted as equal to the Incarnate Word and Redeemer. . . . The Church does not hesitate to profess the subordinate role of Mary” (Lumen Gentium 62). Whatever is said about Mary is ever and always in the service of what must be said about Christ....

At the announcement of the coming birth of the Savior, the angel says to Mary before she conceives that she is “full of grace.” Because grace is always a gift, that she is full of grace is God’s gift and not her achievement. In her song called the Magnificat, Mary says that “all generations will call me blessed.” She is rightly called by us the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary is the long-awaited daughter of Israel, in fulfillment of biblical prophecy. She stands strikingly between the Old Covenant and the New...

She is the woman through whom that promise is vindicated in the birth, life, suffering, death, glorious resurrection, and promised coming again of Jesus Christ, her son and her Lord....

In the apostolic era and among orthodox Christians of all times, it is clearly understood that the doctrine of Jesus’ virginal conception is based on the apostolic witness and is intimately connected with the belief that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God and son of Mary, is both true God and true man....We are agreed that it is appropriate, and indeed necessary, to call Mary Theotokos—the God-Bearer. Theotokos means “the one who gave birth to the One who is God,” and the title, based on the clear witness of Scripture...

Because Jesus is both true man and true God, and because his human nature and divine nature are inseparable, it is right to call Mary, who is the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God or the God-Bearer. Such language is intended first to exalt Jesus Christ and only then to honor Mary. Indeed, in the Magnificat, Mary glorified not herself but God alone.

...much later, Mary is depicted as praying with the apostles (Acts 1:14), we may imagine that Mary prayed to her son with the words that she had taught him to pray. Contemplating the motherhood of Mary powerfully reinforces—against every form of gnosticism or docetism, whether ancient or modern—our understanding of the full humanity of Jesus the Christ....

one reason why Christianity typically makes you sharper

From Naomi Riley in the WSJ...

College professors have been complaining about their students since the beginning of time, and not without reason. But in the past several years more than a few professors—to judge by my conversations with a wide range of them—have noticed an occasional bright light shining out from the dull, party-going, anti-intellectual masses who stare back at them from class to class. Young men and women from strong religious backgrounds, these professors say, often do better than their peers, if only because they are more engaged with liberal-arts subject matter and more inclined to study with diligence....

If you want to get a sense of why this might be so, look no further than "Souls in Transition," by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith. Examining the data from his vast longitudinal National Study of Youth and Religion, "Souls" uses statistics and face-to-face interviews to paint a picture—not necessarily a pretty one—of the moral and spiritual lives of 18- to 24-year-olds in America.

Religion, of course, does not make people smart—as Richard Dawkins and other atheists will tell you. But it does seem to save young adults from a vacuous and dispiriting moral relativism. The study's interviews with nonreligious or semi-religious "emerging adults" tend to show vague powers of moral reasoning and a vague inarticulateness....

Mr. Smith notes that the persistent use of "feel" instead of "think" or "argue" is "a shift in language use that expresses an essentially subjectivistic and emotivistic approach to moral reasoning and rational argument." He concludes that such young adults "are de facto doubtful that an indentifiable, objective, shared reality might exist across and around all people."

By contrast, young religious people have been made to think seriously and speak publicly about Big Questions from a young age. They do believe in a reality "out there" that can be studied and apprehended....

spirituality vs. religion and sexual behavior

From Peter Smith in the C-J, reporting on a UK research project on spirituality vs. religion...

Spirituality and religion may seem similar, but they can have vastly different influences on sexual behavior, according to a University of Kentucky study [published in Journal of Sex Research].

They are similar in that they both speak to the supernatural. But the former is relatively ungrounded and the latter is relatively grounded. (I'm reading a Eugene Peterson book right now where he's making the same point-- on the importance of the word "spirituality" [even though it has been bastardized] and the importance of linking it to Jesus.)

Not surprisingly, different beliefs lead to different conduct...

A survey of more than 350 UK students found that young women who are considered highly spiritual — a measurement based on their survey question responses — are likely to have more sex partners, and more unprotected sex, than those who measure low on a spirituality scale.

But it also found that young people who are highly religious — those who adhere strictly to a traditional faith such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam — are less likely to have sexual intercourse outside of marriage.

Researchers say the findings are significant because they indicate that “spirituality, at least for women, could be considered a risk factor” when it comes to sex.

The study, and particularly that conclusion, has its critics. But it also joins a small but growing field of research into the connections between sexuality and non-traditional spirituality....

The study found that highly spiritual men, in contrast to women, did not differ in their sexual practices from other men. Burris speculated that this may be explained by longstanding research that “although both men and women have sex to satisfy physical arousal, having sex to achieve emotional intimacy and union is relatively unique to women.”...

why do we reject beauty and perfection in our midst?

Excerpts from a fascinating but very long article by the Washington Post's Gene Weingarten asked that question with an intriguing social experiment (hat tip: Rusty Russell from the communion devotional in last week's worship service-- as he related to the way many of us "interact" with Jesus)...

He merged from the Metro at the L'Enfant Plaza station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, January 12, the middle of the morning rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Almost all of them were on the way to work...Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen?...Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad?...Do you have time for beauty?...

On that Friday in January, those private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world [Joshua Bell], playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?...

Bell decided to begin with "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor. Bell calls it "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect...." Bell didn't say it, but Bach's "Chaconne" is also considered one of the most difficult violin pieces to master. Many try; few succeed. It's exhaustingly long -- 14 minutes -- and consists entirely of a single, succinct musical progression repeated in dozens of variations to create a dauntingly complex architecture of sound.

I love that piece!

Three minutes went by before something happened. Sixty-three people had already passed when, finally, there was a breakthrough of sorts. A middle-age man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something.

A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

Things never got much better. In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run -- for a total of $32 and change. [Some gave pennies.] That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look....

It was all videotaped by a hidden camera. You can play the recording once or 15 times, and it never gets any easier to watch....Even at [an] accelerated pace, though, the fiddler's movements remain fluid and graceful; he seems so apart from his audience -- unseen, unheard, otherworldly -- that you find yourself thinking that he's not really there. A ghost.

Only then do you see it: He is the one who is real. They are the ghosts.

Wow! Very Lewis-like here with this observation: the real thing is heavenly and oh so real, but we in our earth-bound reality are oh so fake.

Bell headed off on a concert tour of European capitals. But he is back in the States this week. He has to be. On Tuesday, he will be accepting the Avery Fisher prize, recognizing the Flop of L'Enfant Plaza as the best classical musician in America.

Bayh stepping up on health care and the deficit

Good for him!

From David Broder in the Washington Post (hat tip: C-J)...

When I wrote a few days ago about the growing nervousness of moderate Senate Democrats over the approaching vote to raise the federal debt limit, I had no idea how quickly evidence of that shift in the political winds would appear.

I quoted Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, who this month initiated a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saying that he and nine co-signers would have a hard time voting to boost the debt limit, as the White House needs them to do to protect the nation's fiscal credibility, unless a tangible step were taken at the same time to pledge serious action to reduce future deficits.

Specifically, the 10 asked Reid to support a long-bottled-up proposal for a bipartisan commission whose report would trigger an up-or-down vote in both the House and Senate on a set of specific ways to cut those deficits. Both Reid and President Obama told Bayh, in separate meetings, to cool his jets and wait until next year.

But on Wednesday, a floor vote made clear that this issue may not wait. Reid tried to get the Senate to ratify a scheme for dodging a $247 billion hole in financing the health-care bill and was thwarted when Bayh and his allies, plus three more Democrats, and all 40 Republicans, voted it down, 53 to 47.

The "doc fix" rejected last week is something Congress has been willing to do each year to avoid scheduled reductions in payments to doctors for treating their Medicare patients. But if that $247 billion were added to the estimated 10-year cost of the pending health-care legislation, it would bust the $900 billion ceiling Obama has set.

Reid's solution: Pass the "doc fix" as separate legislation and get it out of the way before the health bills hit the floor.

This is exactly the kind of sleight of hand that Congress routinely performs to conceal spending that has contributed to the record $1.4 trillion deficit for this past year. It's not limited to Democrats. When Republicans were in control for eight years, they refused to raise taxes to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or the costs of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit....

"This American Life" on health care-- "must hear" radio

NPR's "This American Life" has an outstanding two-hour show on health care, health insurance, and health reform. (Hat tip: Paul Pittman.)

The program is thorough, balanced, provocative, etc. If you're interested in this issue and can make the time, I heartily recommend the program!

Here's a link to part 1 and part 2.

driving under the influence...of an electronic device

From the editorialists of the C-J a few weeks ago...

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is holding a two-day summit in Washington this week to discuss a national scourge: the hazards posed by drivers using mobile communications devices. The participants have a lot to talk about. Use of cell phones, and texting in particular, are not merely irritants for more conscientious motorists; they are mortal dangers.

According to The New York Times , extensive research in multiple studies shows that drivers using phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as other drivers. Indeed, the likelihood that they will crash equals that of a driver with a blood alcohol level at .08, the point at which drivers in all states are considered to be intoxicated. A Harvard study in 2003 estimated that distraction from cell phones cause 2,600 deaths a year and 330,000 accidents that result in severe or moderate injuries, and use of mobile devices has increased significantly since then...Texting, the Times reported, is at least twice as dangerous as talking on the phone....

It's interesting that neither market nor government mechanisms have dealt with this previously. From the market side, one could imagine insurance arrangements that would tailor a policy for whether one was using electronic devices. (Is there a market limitation here-- or some regulation which prevents an optimal [market] outcome? Is it too difficult to observe post-accident?)

On the government side, one could imagine "DWT" laws-- prohibitions or at least stiffer penalties for people who cause an accident or even, are driving while "under the influence".

Two other thoughts:

DWT is different DWI. For example, one could DWT in a traffic jam with no adverse effects. So, the two are not equivalent.

It's interesting to consider people who are uptight about speed limits. Is it safer (more moral) to drive the speed limit but read something, text someone, or do one's nails while driving?

the champagne cartel

From Christina Passariello in the WSJ...

Champagne producers agreed to pick 32% fewer grapes this year, leaving billions of grapes to rot on the ground, in a move to counter fizzling bubbly sales around the world amid the economic downturn.

The result of the slashed harvest and other reductions will be a 44% cut in the number of bottles produced this year...

It is one of the starkest signs yet of how cutbacks in consumer spending are affecting this segment of the luxury-goods market. Grape growers and bottlers of the wine in the Champagne region of France haven't significantly cut the volume of usable grapes since 1955, when a bumper harvest was reduced....

The Champagne industry's governing body, the Comité Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, estimates there are more than 1.2 billion spare bottles sitting in warehouses....The committee decided the volume of grapes that can be picked this year will be 9,700 kilograms per hectare of land, compared to 14,200 kilograms per hectare allowed last year. Also for the first time, only 82% of the harvested grapes will be bottled this year -- the rest will age in tanks for at least another year until the drop in sales stabilizes. The reductions will produce 44% fewer bottles of the wine this year....

why third-party candidates can help AND why running without a platform is ultimately stupid (unless you just want to hold power)

Competition is good-- in economics and politics, right?

Interestingly, Michael Medved is excited about the more conservative 3rd-party candidate in NY, but unexcited about the more conservative 3rd-party challenger to Chris Christie in NJ.

Why? The more conservative candidate is perceived as not winning.

I understand the drive for pragmatism over principle in politics. But unfortunately, it also moves Medved and his ilk down the spectrum toward political hackdom.

From Jason Riley in the WSJ...

By design, [Republican gubernatorial challenger Chris Christie] has been vague about his tax and economic plans for the state. Ducking details is a tried and true strategy for front-runners who don't want to reveal anything specific enough to criticize. In August, Mr. Christie was ahead by double-digits. But that lead was shaved to four points by mid-October, and with the election now just a fortnight away, polls show him and [Democratic incumbent Jon] Corzine dead even...

It's understandable that Mr. Christie would prefer to make the contest primarily about character. He spent seven years as a federal prosecutor, an obvious attribute given New Jersey's crooked political history. But Mr. Corzine, an ex-senator and former chairman of Goldman Sachs, is not perceived by the public as corrupt so much as feckless. And voters have made it clear that they are most interested in electing someone with a reasonable plan to restore economic sanity to Trenton.

After a decade of Democratic governance, the state is a fiscal train wreck. New Jersey sports the nation's highest state and local tax burden...Nevertheless, lawmakers have repeatedly borrowed billions to fill budget gaps and increase spending. The state's debt has quadrupled, to $35 billion from $8.1 billion, over the past 15 years....

And now, for the 3rd-party option:

Team Christie's decision to put strategy above substance not only ignores this voter sentiment but also has given an opening to independent candidate Chris Daggett, whose economic reform proposals have been as specific as Mr. Christie's have been vague.

"You deserve as voters more than a failed plan from Democrats and no plan from Republicans," said Mr. Daggett at the debate....

Mr. Daggett's chances of becoming New Jersey's next governor are remote, to be sure. Mr. Corzine is a multimillionaire and Mr. Christie is backed by the Republican National Committee. Mr. Daggett lacks the name identification and resources to compete effectively down the stretch. Yet his impact so far has been substantial. The race is tight because Mr. Christie's popularity has fallen, not because Mr. Corzine's has increased. And polls indicate that Mr. Christie's support has suffered due to the presence of Mr. Daggett, who could spoil victory for the GOP by winning as little as 12% of the vote.

The punchline:

One lesson here for other Republicans is that say-nothing candidates invite third-party challenges. In a two-man race, Mr. Christie might get away with running on his personality and playing it safe, especially given the slow economy and Mr. Corzine's unpopularity. But a viable third candidate means Mr. Christie must compete for Republican support...

Should Mr. Christie, who's still favored, win despite employing the most bizarre campaign strategy since Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid, he will have done himself and the state no favors by running as a cipher. Mr. Christie will likely face a Democratic legislature and the prospect of trying to change the tax-borrow-spend culture in Trenton without a mandate. After all, it's hard to claim you were elected to do something when you haven't told anyone what you planned to do.

Two local applications:

1.) Steve Beshear became governor in Kentucky in the last election, simply because he was not Ernie Fletcher. A vague campaign with a lopsided victory carried no mandate and no pop.

2.) In my own race, both candidates were more middle-of-the-road than could satisfy everyone. The Democrat was largely supportive of our military policy in Iraq and Afghanistan-- and ignored a wide array of economic issues that harm the working poor. The Republican was a fiscal moderate who chose not to work on or speak to federal funding of Planned Parenthood. Neither is good enough.

My presence in the race was seemingly too marginal to a lot of macro-good. But the GOP did pick up the Planned Parenthood funding issue after I ran in 2006 (led by another Hoosier congressman). And both opponents were forced to finesse their positions/records and make stronger claims of their bona fides on important issues. So, who knows?

In any case, life is too short to run vague campaigns. And politics is too important to have candidates who miss key issues.

Republicans endorsing a Conservative over a Republican

Following the story of Chris Daggett in NJ...

The most recent buzz here was Palin's endorsement of the Conservative party candidate. (I heard Michael Medved do the same on his radio show. Dick Armey, Fred Thompson, and Steve Forbes are other notables who have thrown their hats in his ring.)

Here are the WSJ editorialists on the congressional race in NY...

Republicans are telling themselves that a political wave is building that could carry them to big election gains next year. Judging by their performance so far in a special election in New York, however, they deserve to wander in the minority for another generation or two.

The November 2 contest will replace nine-term Republican John McHugh, who resigned to become Secretary of the Army. President Obama carried the district along the Canadian border with 52%, but George W. Bush carried it twice and Republicans outnumber Democrats by 45,000 or so. With voters alarmed about the economy and runaway spending, this ought to be an easy GOP retention.

Yet party bosses have managed to nominate a rare Republican who could lose: Assemblywoman Dede Scozzafava, whose liberal record has caused voters to flee to Doug Hoffman, a business executive who is running on the Conservative line. Mr. Hoffman has more than 20% support in the latest poll, which is only a few points behind Ms. Scozzafava, who is only a little behind Democratic lawyer Bill Owens....

...the best result might be for Mr. Hoffman—who promises to caucus with Republicans—to emerge as the main opponent to the Democrat. A divided GOP vote could elect the Democrat and add to their majority. But Mr. Hoffman might even win if enough voters abandon Ms. Scozzafava. James Buckley won a Senate seat as the Conservative candidate in New York in 1970 against a pair of major-party liberals.

Above all, a defeat would teach Republicans that running candidates who believe in nothing will keep them in the minority for years to come.

Dems look to extend regressive taxes on the working poor

Two troublesome options are being considered here:

DIRECT: Increasing payroll taxes as a means of paying for expanded health coverage. (Payroll taxes are already more burdensome for more than 80% of wage-earners, imposing a far heavier burden on the working poor and the middle class.)

INDIRECT: Increasing the implied marginal tax rate from the benefit reduction rate attached to reduced health care subsidies as income increases. If one earns more money, their subsidy is reduced, acting as a higher tax (a reduction of their net income as their gross income increases).

Here are the WSJ editorialists with some details:

None of the new distortions that the Senate health-care bill will layer onto the already-distorted tax code have received the attention they deserve, but in particular its effects on marginal tax rates could use scrutiny. Incredibly, for those with lower incomes, ObamaCare will impose a penalty as high as 34% on work.

Central to Max Baucus's plan—assuming the public option stays dead—is an insurance "exchange," through which individuals and families could choose from a menu of standardized policies offered at heavily subsidized rates, provided that their employers do not offer coverage. The subsidies are distributed on a sliding scale based on income...

Think about a family of four earning $42,000 in 2016, which is between 150% and 200% of the federal poverty level. CBO says a mid-level "silver" plan will cost about $14,700 in premiums, of which the family will pay $2,600—since the government would pay the other $12,100. If the family breadwinner (or breadwinners, because the subsidies are based on combined gross income) then gets a raise or works overtime and wages rise to $54,000, the subsidy drops to $9,900. That amounts to an implicit 34% tax on each additional dollar of income.

Or consider a single worker earning $20,600 and buying an individual "silver" policy with a premium at $5,000. Again according to CBO, if his income rises to $26,500, his subsidy plummets to $2,700 from $4,400 (including a cost-sharing subsidy that goes away). This is a 29% marginal tax; moving to other income levels yields increases in the neighborhood of 20% to 23% for both individuals and families. Jim Capretta, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calculates that when combined with other policies like the Earned Income Tax Credit that also phase out, the effective marginal rate would rise to nearly 70% at twice the poverty level....

A far better and cleaner alternative would be to extend the same tax exclusions to individuals that employees receive if they get coverage from their employers. The current bias for one type of insurance has persisted for decades despite its unfairness and irrationality. But ObamaCare will keep all that, while in the process creating many new problems.

the perils and past failures of prognostications on health care costs

It is standard fare that government intervention is oversold in terms of its practical benefits and undersold in terms of its direct and indirect costs.

In the context of health care, the historical record brings that principle to vivid life.

As such, the burden should be on those who want to increase government intervention in health care-- from its massive role now-- to make a good cost/benefit case for their reform proposals.

Here are the editorialists from the WSJ with some of the numbers...

Let's start with the claim that a more pervasive federal role will restrain costs and thus make health care more affordable. We know that over the past four decades precisely the opposite has occurred. Prior to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, health-care inflation ran slightly faster than overall inflation. In the years since, medical inflation has climbed 2.3 times faster than cost increases elsewhere in the economy....contradict[s] the claim of government as a benign cost saver.

Next let's examine the record of Congressional forecasters in predicting costs. Start with Medicaid, the joint state-federal program for the poor. The House Ways and Means Committee estimated that its first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it hit more than $1 billion, and costs have kept climbing.

Thanks in part to expansions promoted by California's Henry Waxman, a principal author of the current House bill, Medicaid now costs 37 times more than it did when it was launched—after adjusting for inflation....

Medicare has a similar record. In 1965, Congressional budgeters said that it would cost $12 billion in 1990. Its actual cost that year was $90 billion. Whoops. The hospitalization program alone was supposed to cost $9 billion but wound up costing $67 billion. These aren't small forecasting errors. The rate of increase in Medicare spending has outpaced overall inflation in nearly every year (up 9.8% in 2009), so a program that began at $4 billion now costs $428 billion....

The lesson here is that spending on nearly all federal benefit programs grows relentlessly once they are established. This history won't stop Democrats bent on ramming their entitlement into law. But every Member who votes for it is guaranteeing larger deficits and higher taxes far into the future. Count on it.

Christians and Halloween

A timely piece from my files-- by Hank Hanegraaff, in the Christian Research Journal...

Should we participate? Accommodate? Or should we vigorously denounce Halloween? To answer such questions, its helpful to view Halloween from the perspective of history.

First, we should recognize that Halloween is indeed rooted in the ancient Celtic feast of Samhain (sah-ween). The Druids believed that on the eve of Samhain the veil between the present world and the world beyond was pierced, releasing demons, witches, and hobgoblins en masse to harass the living. In order to make themselves immune from attack, people disguised themselves as witches, devils, and ghouls; they attempted to ward off evil spirits by carving grotesque faces on gourds illuminated with candles; and they placated the spirits with a variety of treats.

Furthermore, we can learn a lot from how the early Christians responded to Halloween. October 31st, the eve prior to All Saints Day, was designated as a spiritually edifying holiday (holy day) on which to proclaim the supremacy of the gospel over the superstition of ghosts. Thus, all Hallows Eve, from which the word Halloween is derived, was an attempt on the part of Christianity to overwhelm the tradition of ghouls with the truth of the gospel.

Finally, although Halloween is once again predominately pagan there is a silver lining. Like our forefathers, we can choose to celebrate all Hallows Eve by focusing on heroes of the faith-- those who, like Martin Luther, were willing to stand for truth no matter what the cost. We might also use the occasion to introduce our children to such great classics as Pilgrims Progress. In the end, the trick is to treat Halloween as a strategic opportunity rather than a time of satanic oppression...

Obama more conservative than Bush on medical marijuana

From the AP's Devlin Barrett in the Dallas Morning News (hat tip: C-J)...

I wish they were making a philosophical argument, but the practical arguments work well too.

Pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers should not be targeted for federal prosecution in states that allow medical marijuana, prosecutors were told Monday in a new policy memo issued by the Justice Department.

Under the policy spelled out in a three-page legal memo, federal prosecutors are being told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law....

The new policy is a significant departure from the Bush administration, which insisted it would continue to enforce federal anti-pot laws regardless of state codes.

Bush did that a few times-- crushing state rights/freedoms through federal policy-- most notably, with No Child Left Behind. Thanks, George!

By the government's count, 14 states allow some use of marijuana for medical purposes: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington....

The change has critics, including lawmakers who see it as a tactical retreat in the fight against Mexican drug cartels.

"We cannot hope to eradicate the drug trade if we do not first address the cash cow for most drug trafficking organizations — marijuana," said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee....

Good luck with that, Lamar. Meanwhile, Mexico and Columbia thank you for destablizing their governments-- and the Taliban thanks you for helping to fund their efforts.

charter schools coming to KY?

From Chris Kenning in the C-J...

The idea of charter schools has long failed to gain traction in Kentucky — but that could be changing.

Two bills to authorize charter schools have been filed for the coming General Assembly, and the Kentucky Department of Education is currently studying the pros and cons.

Supporters say momentum is building because without such legislation, Kentucky could lose out on up to $200 million in federal stimulus money aimed at education reform and innovation....

Pioneered in Minnesota in 1992, charter schools are independent public schools that get taxpayer funding but aren’t held to many of the rules and regulations that apply to regular schools.

In exchange for more autonomy, charter schools must meet academic goals and are held accountable by a sponsor, usually a school board, a state or a university, which can cancel the contract if academic goals aren’t met — and close the school....

But opponents were already lining up Monday to oppose the push for charter schools.

Jefferson County Teachers Association president Brent McKim vowed to lobby against the bills, which he said would siphon money from public schools, skim off the best students and complicate student assignment.

“They’re not really about empowering schools,” he said of charter schools. “They’re really about undermining public schools by diverting funds and resources.”

McKim is willing to undermine parents and students in order to avoid "undermining schools"?

State per-pupil funding would follow the students who attend the charter schools...

Outrageous!

randomized study finds successful charter schools in NYC

From World...

A great experiment since most NYC charter school students are chosen by lottery. This allowed researchers from the New York City Charter Schools Evaluation Project to compare two subsets of those whose parents entered them in the lottery: those who got into a charter and those who did not.

Looking at data from 2000 to 2008, the report found that on average, a student who attended a charter school from kindergarten to eighth grade would close about 86 percent of a 35-40 point achievement gap...between affluent suburban schools and inner-city schools...

don't let your teen own their own car

From World, citing an article by researchers at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia in October's issue of Pediatrics...

...one quarter of all teen drivers who have their own car have been in an automobile accident while driving. Only 10% of teens who shared their vehicle with another family member have crashed the car.

I wonder how the numbers would look for teen car owners who bought their own-- vs. being given it by mommy or daddy. I'll bet that makes a difference!

teachers' unions take beating from "liberal media"

From Richard Whitmire and Andrew Rotherham in the WSJ...

Which newspaper in recent editorials called teachers unions "indefensible" and a barrier to reform? You'd be excused for guessing one of the conservative outlets, but it was that bastion of liberalism, the New York Times.

The New Yorker published a scathing piece on the problems with New York City's "rubber room," a union-negotiated arrangement that lets incompetent teachers while away the day at full salary while doing nothing....

A Washington Post editorial about charter schools carried this sarcastic headline: "Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased." And the Times weighed in again Monday, calling a national teachers union "aggressively hidebound."

In recent months, the press has not merely been harsh on unions—it has championed some controversial school reformers. Washington's schools chancellor, Michelle Rhee, who won't win any popularity contests among teachers, enjoys unwavering support from the Post editorial page for her plans to institute merit pay and abolish tenure....

Editorial pages of major papers nationwide have begun to demand accountability for schools, despite objections from vested interests. Since the Obama administration took an unexpectedly tough line on school reform, the elite media response has been overwhelmingly positive....

kudos to Rwanda and its president Paul Kagame

From Mindy Belz in World...

Rwanda has done the most to make itself a business-friendly environment, vaulting from 143rd place to 67th in the World Bank's annual "Doing Business" report. According to the in-depth paper—which measures bureaucratic, financial, and legal hurdles to running a business in 183 countries—"Rwanda is the world's top reformer of business regulation, making it easier to start businesses, register property, protect investors, trade across borders, and access credit"—the first time a sub-Saharan African economy has topped the list...

a sign from God? no, just a fund-raising letter from Michael Steele ;-)

Funny mail yesterday: an envelope with one of those windows through which I could see this phrase:

SPECIAL NOTICE: You have been selected to represent Republican voters in Indiana's 9th Congressional District. Enclosed please find documents registered in your name.

Inside, I'm told that I'm one of the "select few" to receive the survey and fund-raising request.

Two questions:
-Does "select few" mean "anyone who's ever given money to the GOP or its candidates"?
-Do they actually read and record these surveys?

My first clue that the letter was not from God: He wouldn't have specified "Republican voters", knowing that I'd do a fine job representing all sorts of voters! ;-)

a fresh take on Gov. Palin stepping down: a must read if you find Palin interesting or frustrating

From Greg Beato in Reason-- who labels her a "real maverick at last" and gets off a ton of good and creative lines...

When Sarah Palin aborted her gubernatorial career in its final trimester, pundits and political insiders reacted with shock, bafflement, scorn, and dismay....

To [the establishment], walking away from a prime gig like Palin’s was virtually incomprehensible, signaling either imminent scandal or incipient dementia. To the rest of America, Palin’s move made perfect sense, firmly cementing her status as perhaps the one politician who truly feels our ennui. First she cheerfully admitted that she had no idea what the vice president actually does all day. (Just like me!) Then she stared blankly when asked to reveal her thoughts on the Bush Doctrine. (The what?) Then, after earning even higher Nielsen ratings in her first big prime-time showcase than the American Idol finale, only to return to Alaska and the dull reality of mulling over potential appointees to the Board of Barbers and Hair Dressers, she bailed. Sorry, politics, she’s just not that into you.

Palin has always positioned herself as a Drudge-like figure—an unorthodox interloper, devoid of the proper pedigree and old-boy connections, but nonetheless ready to shake things up. Until now, however, this pose was about as convincing as a veggie burger. The self-proclaimed hockey mom who supposedly entered the world of politics via the PTA was a career politician who’d won her first election at the age of 28...The self-proclaimed antidote to entrenched career politicians had spent 13 of the last 16 years as an elected official and the other three as a director of a nonprofit organization whose function was raising money to elect Republican women in Alaska.

That so many people found such obvious facts so easy to overlook shows just how great a demand there is for the kind of magical populist Palin claimed to be. On July 3, she took a giant leap toward making her actions match her rhetoric. She really is a maverick now, exploring territory few of her fellow politicians are likely to follow....

Beato then points to the impact of "non-journalist" Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, "non-music-industry" CEO Shawn “Napster” Fanning, and finally, Al Gore as ex-VP vs. VP:

If a wooden patrician like Gore can achieve such fruitful productivity by becoming a private-sector man of the people, imagine the potential accomplishments of a Wasilla beauty queen with a 10-megaton wink....

How Palin will ultimately capitalize on her populist appeal is a matter of great speculation, but one thing is clear: Whether she plans to run for president or star in a documentary about the pressing need to save the oil industry, Palin’s abrupt departure was a stroke of genius, the most sensible move she could have made. Spending 18 more months governing a state with fewer residents than Columbus, Ohio, was the political equivalent of releasing a straight-to-DVD movie. Now she can devote her full attention to all the things that enthrall her fans...

Ron Paul on ending the Fed

From Sudeep Reddy's interview in the WSJ with Ron Paul on the Fed...

For three decades, Rep. Ron Paul has waged a lonely battle in Congress to abolish the Federal Reserve. But he has more foot soldiers across the nation today, particularly after the financial crisis, who are leading the drive for wider congressional audits of the central bank.

In his new book — “ End the Fed” — released today, Rep. Paul walks through his critique of the central bank and lays out a strategy (briefly) for eliminating it. We sat down with the congressman to hear his views on a money system backed by gold, the Fed’s challenge of withdrawing its stimulus and his legislation to audit the central bank. Excerpts of the interview:

What would a world without the Fed look like?

You’d go back to the day that if you wanted to borrow money to build a house, somebody would’ve had to save some money. You wouldn’t have zero savings and all the credit in the world. That’s just a total distortion of capitalism. Capital comes from savings. The part you don’t use for everyday living which you have left over, you reinvest and you save or you loan it out. We were living with something absolutely bizarre that had nothing to do with capitalism. We had no savings whatsoever yet there was all the credit in the world.

So without the Fed, there wouldn’t be as much credit.

Yeah, it would be different. If you were selling me a car and the car was worth $10,000 and I didn’t want to pay cash, you could take credit from me. You’ve got to have something to measure it by. What is a dollar? We don’t even know what a dollar is. There’s no definition for a dollar. There’s never been a time in law that said a Federal Reserve note is a dollar. That’s the basic flaw. There’s no definition for money. We’ve built a worldwide economy on a measuring rod that varies every single day. That’s why it was fragile, and that’s why it collapsed. There was no soundness to it. So that’s why you have to have a stable unit of account.

If you live in a primitive society, you’d trade goods. And if you wanted to advance, then you would trade a universal good, which would be a coin. But we’ve become sophisticated and smart and say, ‘Oh, you don’t have to go through that. We’ll just print the money. And we’ll trust the government not to print too much, and distribute it fairly.’ That’s often just a total farce....

What if, years from now, we see that the Fed has returned its balance sheet to its old size and pulled that money back from the system? Would that not be a validation of its approach?

There has only been one time that I know of where they have done that significantly, to withdraw anything of significance. That was after the Civil War. They withdrew greenbacks to a degree, they quit printing greenbacks, and they balanced the budget. I don’t think you can find any other time in our history and probably the history of the world. Because it’s an addiction, and the withdrawal is always much more serious than the continuation. The immediate problem of continuing the inflation is always more acceptable than withdrawal symptoms. Politically there will be continued inflation until it self-destructs...

How would an audit lead to ending the Fed?

It’s a stepping stone. I think what’s going to lead to the next step is the destruction of the dollar, just like economic events moved further ahead than my legislative process. I wasn’t getting anywhere. But the economic events demanded that we look into it. So even if this bill passes and we have more information and we’re talking about monetary policy reform, I don’t think that’s the way this system is going to be ended. I think it’ll be ended when it’s a total failure and then it’ll have to be replaced by something....

it takes a governor to run a nation OR World gives props to two Hoosier governors!

From Joel Belz in World...

It takes a governor, I've come to think, to make a competent president. You're not ready for the presidency until you've actually headed a government. Senators and congressman learn a few leadership skills, I guess—but they can never point to their desks and say: "The buck stops here!" A governor can say that.

That's why I paid attention the other day when I saw something that came from the pen of the governor of Indiana. I won't prejudice you politically just yet by telling you his name....

Belz then shares a bunch of (fiscally responsible) quotes before concluding with (potential) surprise:

OK. Time to end my little game. It's time to tell you that all these sober paragraphs—with every word coming verbatim from the pen of an Indiana governor—in fact come from two very different Indiana governors. The Hoosiers' current governor, Republican Mitch Daniels, wrote the first and then every alternate paragraph. Indiana's previous governor, Democrat Evan Bayh (now a U.S. senator), wrote all the paragraphs in italics. Both men's thoughts appeared in recent weeks as guest editorials in The Wall Street Journal . It's unsettling how neatly the counsel of a thoroughgoing conservative and that of a through-and-through liberal tend to mesh....

someone please make him stop!

From the AP's Charles Babington in the C-J...

The Obama administration is considering steps to ease the burdens of laid-off workers, including possible extensions of unemployment and health benefits, officials said Saturday.

The administration has stopped short of calling for a second economic stimulus package to augment the $787 billion measure approved this year. But with the jobless rate continuing to climb, President Barack Obama said Saturday he is exploring "additional options to promote job creation."

Oh no! Someone: please make him stop!

And then this interesting and obviously awkward comment from one of his economists, Larry Summers:

"I don't know what the term 'second stimulus package' exactly means. We certainly need to continue to support people who are in need..."

Dems support a maximum wage of $0...how progressive!

I've written about the minimum wage many times before-- in particular, in its connection to the current recession.

Here's more from the editorialists of the WSJ...

Yesterday's September labor market report was lousy by any measure, with 263,000 lost jobs and the jobless rate climbing to 9.8%. But for one group of Americans it was especially awful: the least skilled, especially young workers. Washington will deny the reality, and the media won't make the connection, but one reason for these job losses is the rising minimum wage.

The September teen unemployment rate hit 25.9%, the highest rate since World War II...Hardest hit of all: black male teens, whose unemployment rate shot up to a catastrophic 50.4%...

The biggest explanation is of course the bad economy. But it's precisely when the economy is down and businesses are slashing costs that raising the minimum wage is so destructive to job creation. Congress began raising the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour in July 2007, and there are now 691,000 fewer teens working...

According to new numbers from the Labor Department, in 2008 only 1.1% of Americans who work 40 hours a week or more even earned the minimum wage....The data also show that teenagers are five times more likely to earn the minimum wage than adults....

Study after study reveals that there are long-term career benefits to working as a teenager and that these benefits go well beyond the pay that these youths receive. A study by researchers at Stanford found that those who do not work as teenagers have lower long-term wages and employability even after 10 years. A high-wage society can only come by making workers more productive, and by destroying starter jobs the minimum wage may reduce long-term earnings....

Another recent study across 17 OECD nations, also by Messrs. Neumark and Wascher, found a highly negative association between higher minimum wages and youth employment rates. But it also concluded that having a starter wage, well below the minimum, counteracts much of this negative jobs impact. If Congress won't suspend its recent minimum wage hike, it should at least create a teenage wage of $4 or $5 an hour to help put hundreds of thousands of teens back to work. White House chief economic adviser Larry Summers has endorsed this in the past. Without this change, expect the teen unemployment to remain very high for a long time.

The wonder of it all is that liberals still call "progressive" a policy that has driven the wages of hundreds of thousands of the lowest skilled workers down to $0.00.

Obama rejects Webster's definition of tax: Is he a liar OR is it time to write his own dictionary?

From the editorialists of the WSJ about a month ago, discussing President Obama's appearance on five Sunday talk shows

The President revealed a great deal about his philosophy of government and how he defines a tax increase. It turns out the President thinks a health-care tax is not a tax if he thinks the tax is for your own good.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Mr. Obama was asked by host George Stephanopoulos about the "individual mandate." Under Max Baucus's Senate bill that Mr. Obama supports, everyone would be required to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty as high as $3,800 a year. Mr. Stephanopoulos posed the obvious question about this kind of coercion when "the government is forcing people to spend money, fining you if you don't [buy insurance]. . . . How is that not a tax?"...

Mr. Obama: "No. That's not true, George. The—for us to say that you've got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase."

Mr. Stephanopoulos tried again: "But it may be fair, it may be good public policy—"

Mr. Obama: "No, but—but, George, you—you can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase."

"I don't think I'm making it up," Mr. Stephanopoulos said. He then had the temerity to challenge the Philologist in Chief, with an assist from Merriam-Webster. He cited that dictionary's definition of "tax"—"a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

Mr. Obama: "George, the fact that you looked up Merriam's Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you're stretching a little bit right now...."

If you can follow this reasoning, then you probably also think that a new entitlement is the best way to reduce entitlement spending....And for that matter, what doesn't count as a nontax under Mr. Obama's definition? All taxes can be justified in the name of providing some type of service...