Where in the world is my wife?

Vancouver Inukshuk, originally uploaded by dr5.

Right now, she’s in Vancouver, B.C.

“Are you guys really here to get me into trouble.”

The L.A. Times has an interesting story of a the Fish and Wildlife Service busting a guy for trying to sell an elephant skull. 

Did it matter that this elephant was legally in the United States and died of natural causes? Of course not. The Fish and Wildlife Service isn’t concerned about right and wrong. They are concerned about enforcing the law. It doesn’t matter whether or not it actually protects species.

There are good reason for the Fish and Wildlife Service to zealously prosecute the law as written. But no one should ever assume that bureaucrats enforcing the laws actually leads to good outcomes. 

Obama campaigned about the spending freeze he claims to support

At least four times during the campaign, Obama argued against a spending freeze such as the one he is now promoting. I’m glad that Obama has come around on the issue. There is no shame in him changing his mind, but it raises the question of whether he is sincere this time.

The sad truth, however, is that his plan will save only $15 billion in 2011 and is actually less than he promised to cut on the campaign trial.

I will be happily surprised if he really achieves a spending freeze or a “net spending cut” as he promised during the campaign.

A sad story in American Samoa

Here’s another example of a good intentions leading to bad (and easily foreseeable) policy:

Maybe Obama has come around on fiscal responsibility

Yesterday Obama’s proposed the lame idea of a comission on fiscal responsibility after the November elections. Apparently this idea was treated with a great deal of scorn because he’s back today with a decent idea—a spending freeze:

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up to Wednesday’s State of the Union address, Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

 

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama’s $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits — and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday’s Massachusetts Senate election — is projected to save $250 billion, the Democrats said.

 

The freeze would not apply to defense spending or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.

 

The proposal is in line with a plan floated by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a fiscal hawk, who told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt last week that there was a “fighting chance” Obama would propose a freeze in most discretionary spending by the federal government as part of his address.

Obama’s Guantanamo mistake

Two days after Inauguration Day, Obama apparently thought it would get his Administration off to a good start by announcing that he was going to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay without one year. I assumed, (incorrectly it turns out) that his Administration had a plan for doing this. I didn’t think this was necessarily a bad move. I don’t agree with Obama on much, but I thought he had some common ground on Gitmo. I’m not sure we do.

A year has gone past and Guantanamo is still open. And for good reason. We need some place to keep people who we arrest on battlefields, but aren’t affiliated with a country. Also, for these enemy combatants, there are good reasons to keep them outside of the United States. I don’t have a problem with Guantanamo being open for these reasons, but that was never my problem with Guantanamo.

My problem with Guantanamo is that people are kept there without a trial. How in the world can we keep people detained for year after year without trial? I’m not arguing they should be given full Constitutional rights, but they deserve a trial. I just wish Obama understood the most important issue at Gitmo and would have made sure people got trials.

Obama endorses deficit commission plan…after November

I can’t wrap my mind around how Obama think this is a good idea. I’ll let Politico explain:

Trying to win the votes of fiscal moderates, President Barack Obama formally endorsed legislation Saturday creating an independent commission with the power to force Congress to vote on major deficit reduction steps this year, after the November elections.

 

Obama’s statement gives new momentum to efforts in the Senate now to attach such legislation this coming week to a pending debt ceiling bill. But the endorsement comes so late that it risks being seen as just a ploy to win over swing Democratic senators whose votes the White House needs to lift the federal debt ceiling.

Unlike Obama, fiscal moderates would like to see something done about record deficits now, not 10 months from now. Why would Obama think this would change anyone’s mind that he promises someday to care to about the deficit?

Why Massachusetts’ Senate race matters

Michael Gerson actually writes something I can agree with:

So, a Republican has convincingly won Ted Kennedy’s former Senate seat. After opposing health reform. And supporting the waterboarding of terrorists. And appearing as a nude centerfold. In a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by three to one. And where Republicans haven’t won a Senate election since 1972. After a high-profile visit by President Obama. Who won the state by 26 points last year. But who now carries no political weight in the bluest state in the country. With vicious, public recriminations starting among Democrats even before election day. Following major losses in Virginia and New Jersey.

All of which led one popular Democratic blog to argue: “Why Massachusetts doesn’t matter.”

Well, it does matter. It means a president who no longer inspires political fear. It means moderate Senate Democrats — such as Ben Nelson and Blanche Lincoln — who now feel nothing but fear from angry voters. It means that cap-and-trade legislation and immigration reform are on life support. It means that Rahm Emanuel’s “big bang” theory of legislative liberalism is the most foolish political strategy in recent memory. It means that spending political capital on health reform instead of economic recovery and growth was a dreadful error. It means that a crisis that Obama didn’t want to waste has largely been wasted.

Perspective on transparency

Obama was lying when he claimed that the health care negotiations would be televised. That’s no surprise. Obama has no desire to be open or transparent (but he would like people to think his Administration is open and transparent). Regardless of Obama’s broken promises, Mickey Kaus has some perspective:

C-SPAN BFD: Complaints about the Dems failure to televise or otherwise open up the House/Senate health care negotiations seem near-completely hollow (as were Obama’s promises during the campaign). Real legislative deals are always most efficiently cut behind closed doors, where the principals can be candid and concession-minded without fear of embarrassment, and where they can’t grandstand. … That’s life.  It’s not like we don’t know what the issues are, or that we won’t find out how they’ve been resolved ….If the Dems let C-SPAN cover the negotiations they’d just have to find another room nearby in which to hold the real negotiations first. …

 

In essence, understandably desperate Republicans (aided in this case by MSM reporters looking for a bit of cheap, non-ideological adversarialism) have now adopted, for tactical reasons, one of the most immature goo-goo liberal fantasies: the idea that "open meetings" on high-profile issues produce actual legislative transparency (as opposed to another layer of fake transparency). Next they’ll be complaining the negotiators don’t exhibit enough race and gender diversity. …

America is losing the free world

I don’t know if I agree with one of the key underlying assumptions in this article—that “most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs.” Obama and his advisors may believe that, I don’t know. But only a fool would think that developing countries would voluntarily harm their economies and their citizens by agreeing to cap CO2 emissions:

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.

 

The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies.

 

But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.