CNN calls this a big win for the Obama administration, but really it's also vindication for the Bush administration too:
"The Supreme Court has granted the Obama administration's request to dismiss the pending appeal of an accused enemy combatant held on U.S. soil. The decision "to dismiss the appeal as moot" came in a brief order from the nine justices issued Friday. Ali al-Marri has been held in military custody since 2003, and was challenging the president's unilateral authority to detain him indefinitely and without charges. The court's order is a defeat for him on the larger constitutional issue."
A constitutional issue the Bush administration had vigorously pressed...
Speaking of CNN, one of their reporters/bloggers asks if the singer Rhianna is a "role model."
Simple answer: no. Don't make her your role model, girls. We now know more facts about what went down between her and Chris Brown. He's beaten her up before. He beat her up, badly, in this latest incident. He claims he'll "change", and she believes he will...but history and studies have shown that men like him won't change. Yet she's taking him back. The blogger agrees with me that she's making a "terrible" decision...but she worries too much about what a burden it is for this young woman to be a role model. Well, simple, people: don't make her one. She won't be a good one.
And by the way, speaking of Chris Brown, I hadn't heard this--today it comes out that it took 9 days for him to even apologize to the woman he battered. Shameful.
Jonah Goldberg today gets at the fundamental problem with President Obama's economic plans--he's claiming higher taxes on the rich will cover the spending, but...they won't:
"Obama brags — albeit dishonestly — that he’s only raising taxes on rich people. Ninety-five percent of the American people will get a tax cut, the president insists. Well, which is it? Do the times demand shared sacrifice from us all, or from just 5 percent of Americans? If I say to ten co-workers, “We all need to chip in together to get this done,” and then say, “So, Todd, open your wallet and give five bucks to everyone else in the room,” it would sound ridiculous. But when Obama says the same thing to 300 million Americans it’s called “leadership.” “The problem with socialism,” Margaret Thatcher once said, “is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” What Obama is proposing isn’t socialism — yet — but it runs into the same problem. You could take all of the money made by the richest one percent in this country and it wouldn’t come close to covering government’s expenses — even if those rich people for some reason kept working."
Read the whole thing. Don't forget--Obama's energy plans will raise costs for ALL Americans. Obama admits this. And his tax cuts for the working poor will amount to maybe $13 bucks a week. Wow.
By the way, speaking of Rush Limbaugh, as the Obama administration and many other Democrats have been...
Very good sources estimate that his listenership has spiked, since the controversy began, to over 25 million listeners per week. Thanks, Democrats!
Wow. The well-respected centrist Stuart Taylor writes for the nonpartisan National Journal. He's written favorably of Obama in the past. But now he's worried:
"Having praised President Obama's job performance in two recent columns, it is with regret that I now worry that he may be deepening what looks more and more like a depression and may engineer so much spending, debt, and government control of the economy as to leave most Americans permanently less prosperous and less free. Other Obama-admiring centrists have expressed similar concerns. Like them, I would like to be proved wrong. After all, if this president fails, who will revive our economy? And when? And what kind of America will our children inherit? But with the nation already plunging deep into probably necessary debt to rescue the crippled financial system and stimulate the economy, Obama's proposals for many hundreds of billions in additional spending on universal health care, universal postsecondary education, a massive overhaul of the energy economy, and other liberal programs seem grandiose and unaffordable."
Read the whole thing.
