With his recent exercise in extra-constitutional magnanimity,  allowing religious folk to enjoy the state-endowed religious liberty that he had recently taken away as matter of his principled noblesse oblige, our constitutional law adjunct lecturer-in-chief has finally achieved greatness.

Up until now, he might have entered history  as “The Great Apologizer,” or perhaps  “The Great Appeaser,”  or maybe  “Barry Big Spender.”  He might simple have gone down as “One Term Obama.”

Not anymore.

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She believes it is a right. Otherwise only the rich will be able to go to college in this era of rising educational costs. Singletary writes:

There are those who will decry even asking if college is a right or a privilege. Nonetheless, the question must be asked and answered.

If going to college is a right and vital to our nation’s economic standing, then government will have to do more to make it affordable for all. If it’s a privilege, only the nation’s wealthiest families will one day be able to send their children to college. Or are we damning a large percentage of our citizens to burdensome student loans, leaving them to conclude college isn’t worth it?

But if Singletary were to reflect, what she probably means is that the lifestyle that graduation from college is meant to afford is what she desires as a right. What is the point of making a college education a “right” if it doesn’t make an economic difference? One of the “we are the 99 percenters” recently held up a hand-lettered sign which complained that all her masters degree qualified her for was work as a housekeeper.

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“Hudak is nothing if not controlled and controlling, always fearful of someone stepping out of line — notably himself. He is a career politician who was in on every play of the [October 2011] campaign along with his wife, longtime party strategist Deb Hutton.

If there was a misconceived campaign strategy, Hudak was not its victim but its architect and enabler — endlessly repeating his press lines and stump speeches against high taxes, hydro rates and foreign workers. Now [at this weekend's PC meeting in Niagara Falls], he needs to persuade his own partisans that lessons were learned.

Next, he must convince the general public that he has something new to offer.” [My highlighting.]

Now, read the highlighted lines in that quote again: “Hudak is nothing if not controlled and controlling….It’s [referring to the last election's platform] architect and enabler….He must convince the general public that he has something new to offer.”

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In sworn testimony in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last week, U.S. Attorney Eric Holder continued with this stance. Holder was supported by congressional Democrats who cited a lack of evidence of corruption — corruption that the Oversight majority speculated was a result of the DOJ refusing to hand over the majority of the documents and witnesses requested.

Retired DEA official Tony Coulson was in charge of DEA-Tucson during Operation Fast and Furious. He now states that his agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement were not only aware of the gunwalking plot, but that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were actively interdicting the plot, confiscating weapons the ATF was walking to Mexican narco-terrorists:

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First, the facts.  National Review has reported that the U.S. Army tried to strong-arm military chaplains into not reading their bishops’ letters of condemnation of the recent HHS contraception mandate.  When this failed, the army was successful in editing the texts of the sermons to specifically exclude the statement “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

This happened while, at the same time, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and others were subverting true Catholicism and promoting their own state-sponsored religion with the slimy use of schoolyard peer pressure.

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Afternoon Updates:

2:44 pm EST, February 8th, 2012 — Are Church Confessions Safe? Court To Hear Arguments

3:49 pm EST, February 8th, 2012 — Boehner: Congress will undo contraception rule

But there are new monsters in America, and I am starting to wonder whether I am to be considered among them: those of the uninvolved and uninformed lives, the bar-raisers, the downright mean ones, the never deserving of respect ones, the Vegas junketeers, the Super Bowl jet setters, the tuition stealers, the faux-Christians who do not pay higher taxes, the too much income makers, the tormenters of autistic children, the polluters, the enemies deserving of punishment, the targets to bring a gun against, the faces to get in front of, the limb-loppers, the tonsil pullers, the fat cats, the corporate jet owners, the one-percenters, the stupidly acting, the not paying their fair sharers, the discriminators on the “way you look”, the alligator raisers and moat builders, the vote deniers, the clingers, the typical something persons, the hunters of kids at ice cream parlors, the stereotypers and profilers, the cowards, the lazy and soft, the non-spreaders of money, the not my people people, the Tea party racists, the not been perfect and mistake makers, the disengaged and the dictating, the not the time to profiteers, the ones who did not know when to quit making money, and on and on.

My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons?

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The audacity of a president hell-bent on destroying our great nation has truly been a stunning spectacle to observe.  No lie is too ridiculous to tell about anyone who opposes him.  With a compliant media behind him, the smears this demagogue-in-chief promises to unleash on his opponent this fall could divide the county so badly that it becomes ungovernable.

The societal tensions Obama promised to ease have worsened by his politics of envy.  The racial healing he promised has fallen flat, leaving only a worse divide.  Despite overwhelming opposition, he forced a health plan on the people that few want.  He has trampled on the Constitution and infringed on powers granted to Congress.  He has bailed out auto companies, investment bankers, and insurance companies.  He has given constitutional rights to terrorists.

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Middle East expert and former Clinton administration official Aaron David Miller is quoted by Bloomberg as saying that there’s a “significant analytic difference” between the U.S. and Israel as to how close the Iranians are to an effective shield for their nuclear weapons program.  Miller continues:

There’s a growing concern — more than a concern — that the Israelis, in order to protect themselves, might launch a strike without approval, warning or even foreknowledge.

Imagine that.  The Israelis have a sense of urgency, based on their intelligence estimates, their geographic proximity to Iran, and the not trifling fact that the Iranians are world-class Jew-haters sworn to erase Israel from the face of the earth.  And golly-gee, with national survival at stake, the Israelis may not come to President Obama for approval to act against Iran.  Unthinkable.

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Iran is planning to double its defense budget even though its currency is collapsing. These are related events: in the medium term, the free-fall of Iran’s rial constitutes a transfer of wealth to the government from what remains of Iran’s private sector. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, “The government, which receives oil revenue mostly in dollars and euros, is profiting from the rial’s decline, analysts said. ‘Their income is in dollars, so a strong dollar helps them to buy more rials to pay their bills,’ said one prominent economist, who asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisals.” At least for the time being, sanctions strengthen the relative position of the regime, while undermining its long-term staying power — unless, of course, Tehran begins a new set of regional wars under a nuclear umbrella.

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One one hand, we have nearly a fourth of working-age Americans without jobs, the worst proportion since the early 1980s. On the other, we have $2 trillion of cash sitting idle on corporate balance sheets, as President Obama complained in a February 2011 speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. We have investors languishing for lack of returns, and unemployed people languishing for lack of work.

Standing in between prospective workers and prospective investors, preventing capital from employing labor, is Barack Obama. Someone really ought to to draw the cartoon: a $2 trillion cash pile gathering cobwebs on one side, an endless line of unemployment on the other, and Barack Obama in the middle, keeping them apart.

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On Monday, the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) Appellate Body completed a several year review of these practices and ruled that China was in violation of the agreement it signed when it first joined the WTO. It further directed China to immediately dismantle the illegal export structure. The ruling is a huge victory for the U.S. as well as for all global high tech, military, automotive and alternative energy manufacturers.

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