Anwar al-Awlaki Killed

We've been hunting Anwar al-Awlaki for quite some time and it appears that we finally got him. Details are unclear, but several news sources are reporting that he was killed in a drone strike. Naturally terrorist rights supporters are unhappy. I wrote about al-Awlaki and the ridiculous arguments of those claiming that he deserved "due process," a year ago in my post "Kill Anwar al-Awlaki."

The New Debit Card Fees

Today we got yet another example of the unintended consequences of poorly-thought out and unnecessary legislation. Bank of America is now charging $5 per month for its debit cards, with other banks sure to follow suit. Why is it doing so? Awhile back, Congress, then led by Democrats, passed new regulations restricting the fees banks could charge merchants for accepting debit cards. The new restrictions go into effect on Saturday. Naturally banks are not going to passively accept a huge cut in income, and are now looking for ways to make up the difference from customers.

This is the sort of thing that happens when you have clueless government officials, primarily Democrats, interfering in business operations, and passing unnecessary regulations. If, like me, you make regular use of debit cards, you know they are extremely useful. One of the things that makes them so useful is the lack of fees. If they start to come with a monthly charge or other restrictions, they become another expense which lessens their overall utility.

You might wonder why it is any business at all of the government what fees banks should charge merchants for using debit cards. Why can't banks just set whatever fees they want and merchants decide whether or not they want to pay them, pass them on the customers, or reject them entirely? Was there some sort of major problem with debit card use that even required government action? No, there wasn't. There was no need whatsoever for this sort of overbearing big government regulation. And now consumers are going to pay for it. Here's one of the sponsors of the regulation, one of the biggest idiots in Congress, Democrat Dick Durbin of Illinois,

"After years of raking in excess profits off an unfair and anticompetitive interchange system, Bank of America is trying to find new ways to pad their profits by sticking it to its customers. It's overt, unfair, and I hope their customers have the final say."

What are "excessive profits" and who are you to decide what businesses should make? Bank of America is not trying to pad their profits, they are attempting to preserve them from being cut by arbitrary regulation. It may be "overt," but there's nothing unfair about it. Banks are not obligated to provide free debit card use. They were doing so until you decided to interfere. It's an obvious reaction to your attempt to slash their profits, one which was abundantly clear to anyone with the slightest clue when this legislation was under discussion.

Foreign Policy Incompetence - Pakistani Edition

The Obama administration gets much well-deserved criticism for its incompetent and ineffective domestic policies. But it is always worth pointing out that administration incompetence also extends to foreign policy. Today we had another reminder.

Last Thursday Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, touched off a major diplomatic crisis with Pakistan when he said the following things:

[He] told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Pakistan’s spy agency was tied to the attack on the U.S. embassy last week as well as the truck bombing on Sept. 10 that wounded 77 American soldiers. ... Mullen told the committee the Haqqani network “acts as a veritable arm” of Pakistan’s intelligence agency.“In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan’s opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence,” Mullen said. “They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet.”

These are things that should never have been said unless A) we meant them, and B) we were prepared for the obvious Pakistani reaction and felt that somehow they would produce positive results. Apparently the Obama administration was too clueless to figure that out. Now that the damage has been done, it is trying to backtrack. From the first NYT link,

Asked on Wednesday whether he agreed that the Haqqani network was “a veritable arm” of the ISI, Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters, “It’s not language I would use.”

He pivoted quickly to say the Obama administration is united in its assessment that “links” exist between the Haqqani network and the ISI, “and that Pakistan needs to take action to address that.”

If that wasn't the language they wanted used, it shouldn't have been used by the senior military leader of the United States. The damage is already done.

Conor Friedersdorf Doesn't Know Much About Conservatives

Anyone who has read Conor Friedersdorf's columns at the Atlantic already knows that he's a regular critic of conservatives who doesn't actually know much about them. His latest column, called "The Heresies of Chris Christie," makes that abundantly clear. Regarding Christie's speech at the Reagan library, Friedersdorf writes,

he also made four key assertions that are now heretical within the Republican Party, and the significance of his speech is almost entirely wrapped up in those passages of politely stated dissent.

Unfortunately for his premise, none of those assertions are "heretical" to Republicans.

First, Friedersdorf thinks that political compromise is "anathema" to Republicans, "who regard compromise as tantamount to selling out principle." Republicans are not opposed to reasonable political compromise and never have been. The question is what is reasonable. If the compromise is in fact a selling out of principle, which some compromises are, then yes, many Republicans would oppose that, just as Democrats oppose selling out their principles.

Second, he makes a big deal out of Christie's comments on American Exceptionalism, apparently reading into them much more than was there, and creating a strawman regarding how conservatives might view them. Christie was primarily arguing from an economic perspective that U.S. exceptionalism requires us to lead by example. If our country is a fiscal mess, it ceases to be much of an example to the rest of the world. There are very few conservatives that would take issue with Christie on that point.

Third is more of the same. Christie argues that if America is a mess, and we can't fix our own problems, it lessens our influence. This is not even close to being "heretical" to conservatives, let alone Republicans in general.

And finally, Friedersdorf seizes on this passage,

"We certainly cannot force others to adopt our principles through coercion," he said. "Local realities count; we cannot have forced makeovers of other societies in our image. We need to limit ourselves overseas to what is in our national interest so that we can rebuild the foundations of American power here at home - foundations that need to be rebuilt in part so that we can sustain a leadership role in the world for decades to come."

Very few conservatives would disagree with those points, especially since they can be interpreted various ways, particularly with regard to limiting ourselves to what is in our national interest. There's certainly nothing there that would rise to the level of "heretical."

Friedersdorf has demonstrated on many occasions that he is a poor political analyst. In my opinion he's a pretentious, intellectual lightweight who has nothing more than a simplistic, caricatured view of conservatives and the GOP in general. There are actually plenty of things conservatives don't like about Chris Christie, such as his pro-gun control views, for example. It would be very easy to write an accurate article about why conservatives aren't thrilled with Chris Christie. Others have even done so.

Obama's Latest Anti-Business Proposal

I wrote about the president's new massive government spending proposal, misnamed as a job's bill, a couple of weeks ago. Now we find that it includes an idea that would encourage frivolous lawsuits against employers.

Mr. Obama’s jobs bill would prohibit employers from discriminating against job applicants because they are unemployed.

Under the proposal, it would be “an unlawful employment practice” if a business with 15 or more employees refused to hire a person “because of the individual’s status as unemployed.”

Unsuccessful job applicants could sue and recover damages for violations, just as when an employer discriminates on the basis of a person’s race, color, religion, sex or national origin.

Naturally this idea also involves giving more power to the government to scrutinize business hiring practices.

Under Mr. Obama’s proposal, the employment commission would be given new power to enforce the proposed ban on discrimination against the jobless.

What a great idea. If unemployed people fail to get a particular job, why not give them the ability to allege that they were discriminated against because they are unemployed? I'm sure greater government involvement and the threat of lawsuits if they turn someone down will do wonders to make businesses more interested in hiring instead of just deciding to do without that extra worker. Businesses love attention from government agencies and the threat of lawsuits.

Church or Jail

Bay Minette, Alabama is letting non-violent misdemeanor offenders decide between jail & fines or going to church for a year. That's right, you can avoid jail time and fines by agreeing to attend church for a year.

If offenders select church, they'll be allowed to pick the place of worship but must check in weekly with the pastor and police. ... If the one-year church attendance program is completed, the offender's case will be dismissed.

I had two main thoughts when I read this story. First, I found it pretty funny that this city judge is giving the impression that going to church every week is roughly equivalent to jail time. But after my initial amusement, came the reality that this is a ridiculous punishment that lets criminals off easy. I'm all for alternative sentencing for non-violent offenders. But how is attending church once a week for a few hours in any way equivalent to serving jail time and paying fines? I'm an atheist and I'd take that deal in a second. You can just sit in the back and take nap during the service, daydream, or whatever. It's not a punishment. Amazing as it may seem, many people actually like going to church. Depending on the church you pick, it might have good music, food and other benefits. You can steal things, get DUIs, and commit various other misdemeanors and get off with just going to church weekly?

The Troy Davis Execution

I was going to write something about this execution, but John Hawkins of Right Wing News did it for me in his post at Huffington Post called, "Why Do Liberals Have Such a Soft Spot for Cop Killers Like Troy Davis?" Here are some of the key points.

We have a justice system that is already ridiculously slanted against the death penalty. It usually takes decades of appeals and retrials to put anyone to death, no matter how ironclad the evidence is against him. Despite farfetched claims that large numbers of innocent men have been put to death, there's actually no solid evidence that an innocent man has been executed in this country in the last fifty years. ... Liberals don't like the death penalty; so they are desperate to find proof that innocent men have been executed and there are people who are willing to make money providing that evidence, no matter how far they have to stretch to deliver it.

And the weight of evidence for Troy Davis' guilt is so great that despite all those years of appeals and efforts to overturn the verdict, or lessen the penalty, not a single court was willing to do so.

despite the incredibly slanted accounts you may have read, Troy Davis is not one of these mistakes. More than a dozen courts looked at the trial and came to that conclusion -- and no wonder. Davis shot a cop to death in public. There were 34 witnesses at the trial. Some of them were strangers. Some of them were friends of Davis. To this day, there are several people, some strangers and some former friends, who said they saw Davis shoot Officer Mark MacPhail and haven't recanted. How many eyewitnesses to a murder should you need to convict someone?

There's one other thing that Hawkins doesn't mention regarding the Supreme Court's refusal to stay the execution. There are outspoken liberals on that court, who have not been shy in expressing opposition to other executions.

In late June, for example, the court cleared the way for a Mexican national to be executed in Texas over the objections of the State Department, but the decision came on a 5-4 vote. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.

No dissents were recorded in the Davis case. About 10:20 p.m., the court released a one-line order saying that the “application for stay of execution of sentence of death presented to Justice Thomas and by him referred to the court is denied.”

Despite all the pro-Davis propaganda, it apparently didn't even convince the liberal members of the Supreme Court. The overwhelming weight of the evidence is that Troy Davis was a murderer and was justly executed.

UPDATE

For those who might think I'm a reflexive, ideological defender of the death penalty in every case, I should point out that back in 2009 I wrote a post arguing that the Troy Davis case was a bad use of the death penalty. But, that's because I was uninformed about many details. As is sometimes the case in blogging, I was offering a quick take based on my reading of one op-ed which presented a skewed picture. A commenter pointed that out, which eventually led to me reversing my opinion.