The Hollywood Liberal

Paul Takes on Crotchety GOP Establishment
John Kass, Chicago Tribune
Republican Sen. John McCain is pushing 80 now, but he still has those jaws and the Teddy Roosevelt teeth that look as if they could chomp through a baseball bat.Yet no matter how vital his bite, the Arizona Republican is getting up in years. So he can't help but add to the litany of stupid things he's said.We all say stupid things, but what came out of McCain's mouth the other day about fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul's heroic filibuster on the Senate floor wasn't merely foolish.It was Homeric in its stupidity. 

Why Obama’s Meet-Ups With GOP Matter
Eleanor Clift, The Daily Beast
If you wonder why President Obama has changed course and is suddenly reaching out to Republicans in Congress, you need look no further than the recent wave of public-opinion surveys, which show his approval rating dropping precipitously, his reelection bump gone. Even though polls show the public is more likely to blame Congress for the obstruction that led to the sequester, and the hardship it causes, that doesn't mean Obama gets a free pass. Spokesman Jay Carney was at pains Thursday defending the decision to suspend White House tours in the face of a plea on Facebook from a group of…

Govt Continues to Gain Power at Expense of Individual Rights

Please God, Not an American Pope
Jeremy Lott, RealClearReligion
Let me begin with a necessary admission of ignorance: I have no earthly idea who will be crowned the next pope sometime next week. But then, most of the experts who are providing commentary about the closed-door, burnt-ballot papal elections that begin in the Sistine Chapel next Monday, don't either.Not a few of the men who emerged as pope caught the world largely unawares. John Paul II was the first non-Italian pope in over 450 years. The Polish pontiff's shock election was made possible because his predecessor died after only a little over a month in the Vatican. When John Paul I…

Levin’s Integrity Will Be Hard to Replace

Mitt Romney: Still Clueless About ObamaCare
Philip Klein, DC Examiner
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Mitt Romney said that President Obama’s health care law was one of the reasons why he lost.“The president had the power of incumbency,” Romney said. “ObamaCare was very attractive, particularly to those without health insurance. And they came out in large numbers to vote. So that was part of a successful campaign.”

U.S. Economic Malaise and Gadget Lust
George Packer, The New Yorker
Every day, in every way, things are getting better and better. The iPhone 6 will dispense with the annoying home button and feature a 4.8-inch screen and quad-core processor. Google is developing Google Glass, which will allow users to text, take pictures and videos, perform Google searches, and execute other essential functions of contemporary life simply by issuing conversation-level spoken commands to a smart lens attached to a lightweight frame worn above the eyes.Yelp has a hundred million unique monthly visitors, up from seventy million at this time last year. The Dow Jones average just…

Hugo Chavez & His Legacy of Plunder

To Create Growth, Unleash the Invisible Foot
Reihan Salam, Reuters
Across the political spectrum, there is a growing recognition that while short-term battles over government spending are important, they would be far less ferocious and intense if our economy were growing at a faster clip. But while conservatives and liberals alike clamor for more growth, they disagree about how to produce it. The key is unleashing what the economist Joseph Berliner once called the “Invisible Foot,” the neglected counterpart to Adam Smith’s “Invisible Hand.”

President Obama’s Lost Leverage
Dennis & Newhauser, Roll Call
It wasn’t supposed to be like this for the White House and a re-elected president with political capital to spend.But President Barack Obama is in a position of supplication to Hill Republicans, talking loudly and often about the harm of automatic budget cuts but lacking the leverage to get the GOP to buckle. 

Feminine Mystique at 50
Cathy Young, RealClearPolitics
A book both hailed and reviled for launching the modern revolution in women's roles –Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" — recently turned 50, almost exactly seven years after its author's passing. Today, Friedan's feminism still has important lessons and messages to offer, including ones that the women's movement rejects at its own peril. Whatever its flaws, her vision is one that focuses on female achievement and equal partnership between women and men, not female victimhood, male evil, and gender warfare.Some of Friedan's conservative…

Bernanke Is in Denial on Too Big to Fail
Simon Johnson, New York Times
In testimony to the Senate Banking Committee this week, Ben Bernanke made a clear statement acknowledging that very large American banks receive implicit subsidies because the market believes they are too big to fail. This was one of the most forthright public statements on this topic by a top Fed official, and Mr. Bernanke should be congratulated for being honest and direct on this important point. Unfortunately, when it came to discussing how to bring down this subsidy – and addressing the problem of “too big to fail” financial institutions –…

Why Schools Should Teach the Bible
Roma Downey & Mark Burnett, WSJ
Have you ever sensed in your own life that “the handwriting was on the wall”? Or encouraged a loved one to walk “the straight and narrow”?Have you ever laughed at something that came “out of the mouths of babes”? Or gone “the extra mile” for an opportunity that might vanish “in the twinkling of an eye”?If you have, then you've been thinking of the Bible.These phrases are just “a drop in the bucket” (another biblical phrase) of the many things we say and do every day that have their origins in the most read, most influential book…

Obama Is the Closest Thing to Nixon in 40 Years
Pat Caddell, FOX News
It is not without a bit of irony that, in the 40 years since the explosion of the Watergate story, Bob Woodward would again be under attack from the White House for trying to tell the truth. But this time the attack is coming from a Democrat. While Barack Obama may not share the Nixon pedigree, he and his White House are the closest thing to the Nixon regime of any that we have seen since then — both in the extent of their paranoia and their willingness to suppress the truth and push the boundaries of law.In my lifetime, in over 40 years in national politics, Mr. Obama is…

The Jobs Picture Is Far Worse Than It Looks
Mort Zuckerman, U.S. News
We think of the iconic images of the Great Depression as representative of a uniquely miserable period, long vanished from American history. The bread lines and soup kitchens of those abnormal times have gone. So, too, has the sight of thousands of men (there were very few women among them then) waiting all day outside a factory in a forlorn quest for work.But they're there still, in the many millions across the country—little changed in their total since the 1930s: 12.3 million today are fully unemployed, compared to 12.8 million in 1933 at the depth of the depression. The…