What is a Liberal?

"It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow." — James Madison, Federal No. 62, 1788

Classical liberalism (also called laissez-faire liberalism) is a term used to describe the following:

1) The philosophy developed by early liberals from the Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill

2) The philosophy developed by early liberals from the Age of Enlightenment until John Stuart Mill and revived in the 20th century by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman. The contemporary restatement of classical liberalism is sometimes called "new liberalism" or "neo-liberalism"

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy that supports individual rights as pre-existing the state, a government that exists to protect those moral rights, ensured by a constitution that protects individual autonomy from other individuals and governmental power, private property, and a laissez-faire economic policy. The "normative core" of classical liberalism is the idea that in an environment of laissez-faire, a spontaneous order of cooperation in exchanging goods and services emerges that satisfies human wants.

Classical liberalism is a philosophy committed to the ideal of limited government and liberty of individuals including freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and free markets. This is the basis for our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. It can be said with confidence that our Founders were Classical Liberals and the Tories, loyal to King George were the Conservatives. Today these terms have been reversed by our media and education system.

Classical liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology belonging to liberalism in which primary emphasis is placed on securing the freedom of the individual by limiting the power of the government. The philosophy emerged as a response to the Industrial Revolution and urbanization in the 19th century in Europe and the United States. It advocates civil liberties with a limited government under the rule of law, private property rights, and belief in laissez-faire economic liberalism. Classical liberalism is built on ideas that had already arisen by the end of the 18th century, including ideas of Adam Smith, John Locke, Jean-Baptiste Say, Thomas Malthus, and David Ricardo. It drew on a psychological understanding of individual liberty, natural law, utilitarianism, and a belief in progress.

In the early 20th century, liberals split on several issues, and in the United States in particular, a distinction grew up between classical liberals and social liberals.

There was a revival of interest in classical liberalism in the twentieth century led by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

In the late 19th century, classical liberalism developed into neo-classical liberalism, which argued for government to be as small as possible in order to allow the exercise of individual freedom. In its most extreme form, it advocated Social Darwinism. Libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism.

The term classical liberalism was applied in retrospect to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from the newer social liberalism. The phrase classical liberalism is also sometimes used to refer to all forms of liberalism before the 20th century, and some conservatives and libertarians use the term classical liberalism to describe their belief in the primacy of individual freedom and minimal government. It is not always clear which meaning is intended.

The term "liberal" changed meaning in the 1890s. Men like Theodore Roosevelt, John Dewey, Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin Roosevelt changed the meaning previous meaning of “Liberal” to include bigger and more intrusive central government. They called there political philosophy and programs “Progressive.” They believed “progress” meant more government programs at the cost of increasing the tax burdens on those that had been successful. This change began at John Hopkins and Princeton Universities in the 1890s with the influence of Frank Goodnow and John Dewey. For a further discussion of this change see my blogs: The Progressive Rejection of the Founding, Voting Obama Out of Office is not Enough, and The Rise of the Progressive Mind.

Since then Classical Liberals are called "Conservatives" or "Libertarians" in the United States; in the rest of the world, especially Europe and Japan, classical liberals are still called liberals.

This progressive philosophy was not common to one political party. There were Democrats like Grover Cleveland and Republicans like Calvin Coolidge who would be called Classical Liberals (or in today’s lexicon Conservatives or Libertarians). On the other hand there were Democrats such as Woodrow Wilson (the father of the administrative state), Franklin Roosevelt (who believed in the Second Bill of Rights where government was to provide new rights for citizens through redistribution of wealth and property) and Lyndon Johnson (the father of the Great Society). Republicans also fell into this category. Men such as Theodore Roosevelt (who called himself a Progressive), Herbert Hoover, and George W. Bush. Remember that Hillary Clinton is a self-proclaimed dyed-in-the wool Progressive.

So what do we call those who believe in the traditional Classical Liberalism and those who subscribe to the philosophy of Progressivism and the administrative state today?

To help you understand the mind of the Progressive, called Liberal today here are a few metrics to assist you in making that determination:

1) Liberalism is college professors and documentary filmmakers accumulating vast fortunes in a capitalistic system by decrying the evils of capitalism.

2) Liberalism is claiming that the "border is secure" while saying we shouldn't deport anyone who illegally crosses the border.

3) Liberalism is "environmental activists" flying across the world to ride together in SUVs to posh environmental conferences where they call for everyone else to live like cavemen in order to save the planet.

4) Liberalism is spewing hatred and profanity at conservative women, calling for gun control that leaves women defenseless against rapists and murderers, and celebrating misogynistic pigs like Bill Clinton while accusing other people of being engaged in a "war on women."

5) Liberalism is people who say that asking for voter ID is racist while claiming that black Americans are too uniquely stupid and lazy to get an ID.

6) Liberalism is forcibly taking money they believe you don't deserve from the people who earned it and calling them greedy for not wanting to give even more. This is called redistribution of wealth.

7) Liberalism is saying that the government should confiscate guns from NRA members and kill them if they resist and then claiming that you have no idea why they think that they need guns to defend themselves.

8) Liberalism is people who sneer at displays of the American flag, tell the world America isn't exceptional, and criticize the country non-stop while getting offended if their patriotism is questioned.

9) Liberalism is calling for higher taxes while you cheat on your own taxes.

10) Liberalism is bitter, race-obsessed people who see everything in racial terms, accusing other people of being racists.

11) Liberalism is saying you're for "choice" because you support abortion while opposing giving Americans choices about their health care, schools, whether they want to bake cakes for gay weddings, or even the light bulbs they have in their house.

12) Liberalism is calling everyone who disagrees with you a racist, bigoted, homophobic Nazi and then calling other people hateful.

13) Liberalism is considering yourself compassionate for wanting to forcibly confiscate other people's money to give away to constituent groups you hope will vote for you in exchange for the loot.

14) Liberalism is saying George W. Bush is a monkey who started the war in Iraq to "steal their oil" while becoming furious if anyone criticizes Obama.

15) Liberalism is pretending that Christians are dangerous while radical Islamists chanting "Death to America" and advocating Sharia law are harmless little lambs.

16) Liberalism is calling for guns to be taken away from Americans while you're protected by armed guards.

17) Liberalism is millionaires who have more money than they could spend in a lifetime railing against the horrors of "income inequality."

18) Liberalism is "animal rights activists" who eat meat and wear leather shoes screaming profanity at women who hunt.

19) Liberalism is black pundits who got their jobs solely because they're black and willing to call other people racists going on TV and claiming that white gas station attendants and fast food workers are benefitting from "privilege" because of their race.

20) Liberalism is thinking of yourself as an independent, open-minded free thinker for mindlessly parroting whatever the Democrat Party line is on every issue.

21) Liberalism is the belief in the administrative state and that government is the source of your rights.

22. Liberalism is where when they lose at the ballot box they find sympathetic, like-minded judges to overturn the will of the people.

So with this in mind we have to be careful how we define ourselves if we subscribe to the philosophy of the Classical Liberals of the 18^th and 19^th centuries. I like to use the term Constitutional Conservative. This means I believe in and accept the words of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution as written by our Founders. This could be called a “Strict Constructionist.” As for those liberals defined above I like to use the term “progressive-liberal” or just plain liberal. This means I deem them as progressing away from the philosophy of the classical liberalism of our Founders.

Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, the result of a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages. How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world's largest economy, direct the world's most powerful military, execute the world's most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama's pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League, despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a "community organizer;" a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, often he voted "present"); and finally an unaccomplished single term in the United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.

He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as a legislator. And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama's "spiritual mentor;" a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama's colleague and political sponsor. It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? There is no evidence that he ever attended or worked for any university or that he ever sat for the Illinois bar. We have no documentation for any of his claims. He may well be the greatest hoax in history.

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal: “To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day”. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of progressive-liberals to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were 'a bit' extreme, he was given a pass. Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass - held to a lower standard because of the color of his skin.

Podhoretz continues: And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also so articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) "non-threatening," all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?”

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon — affirmative action. Not in the legal sense, of course. But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white progressive-liberals, feel good about themselves.

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back. Progressive-Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow. Progressive-Liberals don't care if these minority students fail; liberals aren't around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self-esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action. Yes, racist. Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin — that's affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn't racism, then nothing is.

And that is what America did to Obama. True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be? As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the U.S. Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate. All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.

What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks? In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama's oratory skills, intellect, and cool character. Those people - conservatives included - ought now to be deeply embarrassed and ashamed.

The man thinks and speaks in the stalest of clichés, and that's when he has his teleprompters in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all. Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth — it's all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years. (An example is his 2012 campaign speeches which are almost word for word his 2008 speeches)

The most recent example of his total incompetence is his dealing with the shoot down of ML-17 by Russian and Ukrainian separatists. In his public press conference 24 hours after the facts came in he was lack-luster in his words and demeanor which cold only mean he didn’t have the slightest idea of what to say or do. As a leader he fails. As an eternal campaigner and fund raiser he excels.

And what about his character? Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles. Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess. Remember, he wanted the job, campaigned for the task. It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerless-ness, so comfortable with his own incompetence. (The other day he actually came out and said no one could have done anything to get our economy and country back on track). But really, what were we to expect? The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In my view Obama is neither a Progressive-Liberal nor a Constitutional Conservative. He is a hollow caricature filled with sound bites written by others who has been pampered and groomed by Liberal handlers and Chicago politicians who are the power behind the throne. His depth is no greater than a saucer half filled with water.

I received this email that I will share here. All of the so called coincidences have been verified many times in reputable blogs, articles, and books. Any one of these 'coincidences' when taken singularly appear to not mean much, but when taken as a whole, a computer would blow a main circuit if you asked it to calculate the odds that they have occurred by chance alone. Sit back, get a favorite beverage, and then read and ponder the Obama-related 'coincidences' ... then super-impose the bigger picture of most recent events i.e. Fast and furious, Benghazi, the IRS scandal and the NSA revelations ... then pray for our country.

“Obama just happened to know 60s far-left radical revolutionary William Ayers, whose father just happened to be Thomas Ayers, who just happened to be a close friend of Obama’s communist mentor Frank Marshall Davis, who just happened to work at the communist-sympathizing Chicago Defender with Vernon Jarrett, who just happened to later become the father-in-law of Iranian-born leftist Valerie Jarrett, who Obama just happened to choose as his closest White House advisor, and who just happened to have been CEO of Habitat Company, which just happened to manage public housing in Chicago, which just happened to get millions of dollars from the Illinois state legislature, and which just happened not to properly maintain the housing—which eventually just happened to require demolition.

Valerie Jarrett also just happened to work for the city of Chicago, and just happened to hire Michelle La Vaughan Robinson (later Mrs. Obama), who just happened to have worked at the Sidley Austin law firm, where former fugitive from the FBI Bernadine Dohrn also just happened to work, and where Barack Obama just happened to get a summer job.

Bernardine Dohrn just happened to be married to William Ayers, with whom she just happened to have hidden from the FBI at a San Francisco marina, along with Donald Warden, who just happened to change his name to Khalid al-Mansour, and Warden/al-Mansour just happened to be a mentor of Black Panther Party founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale and a close associate of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, and al-Mansour just happened to be financial adviser to a Saudi Prince, who just happened to donate cash to Harvard, for which Obama just happened to get a critical letter of recommendation from Percy Sutton, who just happened to have been the attorney for Malcolm X, who just happened to know Kenyan politician Tom Mboya, who just happened to be a close friend of Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., who just happened to meet Malcolm X when he traveled to Kenya. Obama, Sr. just happened to have his education at the University of Hawaii paid for by the Laubach Literacy Institute, which just happened to have been supported by Elizabeth Mooney Kirk, who just happened to be a friend of Malcolm X, who just happened to have been associated with the Nation of Islam, which was later headed by Louis Farrakhan, who just happens to live very close to Obama’s Chicago mansion, which also just happens to be located very close to the residence of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who just happen to have been occasional baby-sitters for Malia and Natasha Obama, whose parents just happened to have no concern exposing their daughters to bomb-making communists.

After attending Occidental College and Columbia University, where he just happened to have foreign Muslim roommates, Obama moved to Chicago to work for the Industrial Areas Foundation, an organization that just happened to have been founded by Marxist and radical agitator Saul “the Red” Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals, who just happened to be the topic of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s thesis at Wellesley College, and Obama’s $25,000 salary at IAF just happened to be funded by a grant from the Woods Fund, which was founded by the Woods family, whose Sahara Coal company just happened to provide coal to Commonwealth Edison, whose CEO just happened to be Thomas Ayers, whose son William Ayers just happened to serve on the board of the Woods Fund, along with Obama.

Obama also worked on voter registration drives in Chicago in the 1980s and just happened to work with leftist political groups like the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and Socialist International (SI), through which Obama met Carl Davidson, who just happened to travel to Cuba during the Vietnam War to sabotage the U.S. war effort, and who just happened to be a former member of the SDS and a member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, which just happened to sponsor a 2002 anti-war rally at which Obama spoke, and which just happened to have been organized by Marilyn Katz, a former SDS activist and later public relations consultant who just happened to be a long-time friend of Obama’s political hatchet man, David Axelrod.

Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC), whose pastor was Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a fiery orator who just happened to preach Marxism and Black Liberation Theology and who delivered anti-white, anti-Jew, and anti-American sermons, which Obama just happened never to hear because he just happened to miss church only on the days when Wright was at his “most enthusiastic,” and Obama just happened never to notice that Oprah Winfrey left the church because it was too radical, and just happened never to notice that the church gave the vile anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan a lifetime achievement award.

Although no one had ever heard of him at the time, Obama just happened to receive an impossible-to-believe $125,000 advance to write a book about race relations, which he just happened to fail to write while using the cash to vacation in Bali with his wife Michelle, and despite his record of non-writing he just happened to receive a second advance, for $40,000, from another publisher, and he eventually completed a manuscript called Dreams From My Father, which just happened to strongly reflect the writing style of William Ayers, who just happened to trample on an American flag for the cover photograph of the popular Chicago magazine, which Obama just happened never to see even though it appeared on newsstands throughout the city.

Obama was hired by the law firm Miner, Banhill and Galland, which just happened to specialize in negotiating state government contracts to develop low-income housing, and which just happened to deal with now-imprisoned Tony Rezko and his firm Rezar, and with slumlord Valerie Jarrett, and the law firm’s Judson Miner just happened to have been a classmate of Bernardine Dohrn, wife of William Ayers.In 1994 Obama represented ACORN and another plaintiff in a lawsuit against Citibank for denying mortgages to blacks (Buycks-Roberson v. Citibank Federal Savings Bank), and the lawsuit just happened to result in banks being blackmailed into approving subprime loans for poor credit risks, a trend which just happened to spread nationwide, and which just happened to lead to the collapse of the housing bubble, which just happened to help Obama defeat John McCain in the 2008 presidential election.

In 1996 Obama ran for the Illinois State Senate and joined the “New Party,” which just happened to promote Marxism, and Obama was supported by Dr. Quentin Yong, a socialist who just happened to support a government takeover of the health care system.

In late 1999 Obama purportedly engaged in homosexual activities and cocaine-snorting in the back of a limousine with a man named Larry Sinclair, who claims he was contacted in late 2007 by Donald Young, who just happened to be the gay choir director of Obama’s Chicago church and who shared information with Sinclair about Obama, and Young just happened to be murdered on December 23, 2007, just weeks after Larry Bland, another gay member of the church, just happened to be murdered, and both murders just happened to have never been solved. In 2008 Sinclair held a press conference to discuss his claims, and just happened to be arrested immediately after the event, based on a warrant issued by Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who just happens to be the son of Joe Biden.

In 2003 Obama and his wife attended a dinner in honor of Rashid Khalidi, who just happened to be a former PLO operative, harsh critic of Israel, and advocate of Palestinian rights, and who Obama claims he does not know, even though the Obamas just happened to have dined more than once at the home of Khalidi and his wife, Mona, and just happened to have used them as occasional baby-sitters. Obama reportedly praised Khalidi at the decidedly anti-Semitic event, which William Ayers just happened to also attend, and the event Obama pretends he never attended was sponsored by the Arab American Action Network, to which Obama just happened to have funneled cash while serving on the board of the Woods Fund with William Ayers, and one speaker at the dinner remarked that if Palestinians cannot secure a return of their land, Israel “will never see a day of peace,” and entertainment at the dinner included a Muslim children’s dance whose performances just happened to include simulated beheadings with fake swords, and stomping on American, Israeli, and British flags, and Obama allegedly told the audience that “Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine” and there has been “genocide against the Palestinian people by (the) Israelis,” and the Los Angeles Times has a videotape of the event but just happens to refuse to make it public.

In the 2004 Illinois Democrat primary race for the U.S. Senate, front-runner Blair Hull just happened to be forced out of the race after David Axelrod just happened to manage to get Hull’s sealed divorce records unsealed, which just happened to enable Obama to win the primary, so he could face popular Republican Jack Ryan, whose sealed child custody records from his divorce just happened to become unsealed, forcing Ryan to withdraw from the race, which just happened to enable the unqualified Obama to waltz into the U.S. Senate, where, after a mere 143 days of work, he just happened to decide he was qualified to run for President of the United States.”

In short: our president is a small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job. When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make any sense. It could not have gone otherwise with such an impostor in the Oval Office.

Has America Changed Too Much?

Has America Changed Too Much?“Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.” — Barry Goldwater

In 1960, Barry Goldwater published The Conscience of a Conservative. In it, he noted:

“Conservatism is not an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place — that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.

The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of today is that Conservatives take account of the whole man, while Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature.”

Fifty-three years later that remains a constant. Unfortunately for conservatives, much of the hand-wringing over paths forward to victory involve haggling over taxes and balanced budgets and spending and debt to GDP ratios, etc.

Writing in Real Clear Politics Ben Domenech gets to the heart of this:

“The choice for the Republican Party is whether to invest more in the 2010 strategy of this populist strain, to refine it and connect more policy proposals to it … or to embark on an effort to restore the party’s standing as the adult in the room – the competent, clean cut, good-government technocracy that sees the chief appeal of Republican politicians as combining agencies and seeking out efficiencies rather than rolling back government power and draining bureaucratic swamps. The GOP swung back to this technocratic approach on a national scale in 2012, and let’s just say the electoral results left much to be desired.”

The budgetary and economic wonkery only gets the GOP so far and that isn’t far enough to victory.

In truth, I think it will take a magnetic personality to pull the GOP out of the gutter. We live in an age of personality politics. But that personality will have to have a message that resonates with the American public. What resonates right now with the American public is a deep-seated distrust of government. Any Republican way forward must capitalize on this. In other words, the faces in Washington who can play the role are very limited to people like Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and — if immigration can go away as an issue and the base forgives him — Marco Rubio.

The message to seize on is pretty straight forward. Under Republican and Democrat policies in Washington, particularly accelerated in the past five years, the United States meritocracy has given way to an aristocracy.

Only those of means can get ahead. Increasingly, they view their role as making life comfortable for the less well-off instead of enabling the less well-off to become well off. Wall Street, banks, major corporations, politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, and the rich are the only ones who can prosper because they are the only ones who can either navigate the system or afford to pay others who can figure out how to navigate the system.

For the rest of Americans, from small business to the middle class, the only path is one of dependence on a governmental structure too byzantine to figure out and, should one be smart enough to figure out, too costly through litigation, regulation, and complication to navigate through.

An America where, as Lincoln said, every man can make himself, is replaced by an America where men are made by how the government takes cares of their individual circumstances. Students are no longer trained to be creative, entrepreneurial citizens, but to be workers for others. The self-employed are encumbered to the point of needing to be employees of others. The nuclear family is disincentivized and destabilized.

The America where one could work hard and get ahead is less and less possible because Democrats wish to force us all onto a safety net on which all are entangled, ensnared, and punished if we escape. Republicans, for fear of being disliked, would rather nibble at numbers than paint a picture of a better America for everyone.

Just one fact worth noting: under the present system, enabled by Republican and Democrat alike, a single mother on $29,000 a year and government benefits would have to get to $60,000 in salary to make it worth her getting off the safety net. This is a bipartisan construct, but one only an outsider conservative can build a campaign around fixing to the betterment of the single mom and everyone else.

Ideas of the 1960s have now grown reactionary in our world that is vastly different from a half-century ago.

Take well-meaning subsidies for those over age 62. Why are there still senior discounts, vast expansions in Social Security and Medicare, and generous public pensions?

Five decades ago all that made sense. There was no such thing as double-dipping. Seniors often were physically worn out from blue-collar jobs. They were usually poorer and frequently sicker than society in general. The aged usually died not long after they retired.

Not now. Seniors often live a quarter-century or longer after a mostly white-collar retirement, drawing subsidies from those least able to pay for them.

Seniors are not like today's strapped youth, scrimping for a down payment on a house. Most are not struggling to find even part-time work. None are paying off crushing student loans. In a calcified economy, why would an affluent couple in their early 60s earn a "senior discount" at a movie, while the struggling young couple with three children in the same line does not?

Affirmative action and enforced "diversity" were originally designed to give a boost to those who were victims of historical bias from the supposedly oppressive white-majority society. Is that still true, a half-century after these assumptions became institutionalized?

Through greater intermarriage and immigration, America has become a multiracial nation. Skin color, general appearance, accent or the sound of one's name cannot so easily identify either "oppressors" or "victims."

So who exactly should receive privileges in job-hiring or college admissions — the newly arrived Pakistani immigrant, or the third-generation, upper-middle-class Mexican-American who does not speak Spanish? Both, or neither? What about someone of half-Jamaican ancestry? What about the children of Attorney General Eric Holder or self-proclaimed Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren? What about the poor white grandson of the Oklahoma diaspora who is now a minority in California?

Even if the 21st-century state could define who is a minority, on what moral grounds does the targeted beneficiary deserve special consideration? Is his disadvantage defined by being poorer, by lingering trauma from his grandparents' long-ago ordeals, or by yesterday's experience with routine racial prejudice?

If Latinos are underrepresented at the University of California, Berkeley, is it because of the stubborn institutional prejudices that also somehow have been trumped by Asian-Americans enrolling at three times their numbers in the state's general population? Are women so oppressed by men that they graduate from college in higher numbers than their chauvinist male counterparts?

Of all the consequences that would result from amnesty, one that hasn't been discussed enough is the expansion of affirmative action.

Affirmative action takes existing racial grievances, institutionalizes them, and then magnifies them. Affirmative action encourages "a victim-focused identity in minorities" and fosters "a parasitic diversity industry"

Affirmative action policies will benefit minority immigrants, and minority immigrants will naturally support affirmative action policies. How do we know? Because Hispanics are telling pollsters so.

Sixty-five percent of Hispanics believe that affirmative action should be used to ensure that more Hispanics get to college or university, and 68% support affirmative action in employment, according to a 2011 Angus Reid opinion poll. A 2012 Georgetown University poll showed that 63% of young Hispanics (18-24) support affirmative action to "redress past discrimination," along with 75% of young blacks, but only 19% of whites.

Of course, making up for past discrimination doesn't apply to people whose ancestors never set foot in this country, but fairness was never the goal of racial preferences; former Democratic Senator James Webb famously noted that affirmative action simply favors "anyone who does not happen to be white."

The policy is bad enough. The greatest harm is the poisonous racial grievance reinforced by the policy.

People who believe that their racial group is often discriminated against will support affirmative action. On this point, the open-borders Republicans have done an extremely poor job of understanding Hispanic viewpoints about how this country treats them. Sixty-four percent of Latino adults claim that discrimination against Hispanics in schools is "a major problem," and 58% said the same of the workplace, according to a recent Pew poll.

There are very few policy issues that liberals don't reduce to supposed racism. Even "righteous indignation against diversity and reverse discrimination" is one of the "implements of racism" for upper-class whites, according to law professor Mari Matsuda, a founder of the highly influential critical race theory

It's safe to say that when a racial group perceive a high degree of supposed discrimination, they will not be voting for limited government, but will instead favor reverse discrimination. Those who assert the contrary — pro-amnesty Republicans — have the extraordinary burden of showing some basis in history or logic for believing that groups with a racial victim mindset will reject racial preferences.

It is a false hope that any significant number of those who receive amnesty will vote Republican, unless the GOP gets in the affirmative action game. Give a group amnesty, and they'll be thankful to all Democrats and a few Republicans, but Democrats will give them more of what they want from the state. The choice will be simple.

Consider also the calcified assumptions about college education. The expanding 1960s campus was touted as the future gateway to a smarter, fairer, richer and more ethical America. Is that dream still valid?

Today, the college-educated owe a collective $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. Millions of recent graduates cannot find jobs that offer much chance of paying off their crushing student debts.

College itself has become a sort of five to six-year lifestyle choice. Debt, joblessness or occasional part-time employment and coursework eat up a youth's 20s — in a way that military service or vocational training does not.

In reaction, private diploma mills are springing up everywhere. But there are no "diversity czars" at DeVry University. There is no time or money for the luxury of classes such as "Gender Oppression" at Phoenix University. Students do not have rock-climbing walls or have Michael Moore address them at Hillsdale College.

The private-sector campus makes other assumptions. One is that the hallowed liberal arts general-education requirement has been corrupted and no longer ensures an employer that his college-graduate hire is any more broadly educated or liberally minded than those who paid far less tuition for job-training courses at for-profit alternative campuses.

Scan the government grandees caught up in the current administration's ballooning IRS, Associated Press and Benghazi scandals. In each case, a blue-chip Ivy League degree was no guarantee that our best and brightest technocrats would prove transparent or act honorably. What difference did it make that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Attorney General Eric Holder, President Barack Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice had degrees from prestigious universities when they misled the American people or Congress?

The now-aging idealists of the 1960s long ago promised us that a uniformly degreed citizenry — shepherded by Ivy League-branded technocrats -- would make America better by sorting us out by differences in age, gender, education and race.

It is now past time to end that fossilized dream before it becomes our collective nightmare.

But, to begin, the Republicans must be able to relate. With distrust in government at an all-time high, a relevant Republican is probably going to be a guy who hates the status quo, not one who talks Washington wonkspeak.

As Domenech concluded:

“The Republican Party needs to understand that shrinking its policy aims to more modest solutions is not going to be rewarded by the electorate. Yes, they need to tailor their message better and find policy wedges which peel off chunks of the Democratic base (winning political strategy is built on an understanding that every drama needs a hero, a martyr, and a villain). But what’s truly essential is that the party leadership rid themselves of the notion that politeness, great hair, and reform for efficiency’s sake is a ballot box winner, and understand instead that politicians who can connect with the people and deliver on their limited government promises – not ones who back away from them under pressure – represent the path forward.”

Unless the Republicans can find candidates who can eloquently express true conservative they will not win. Just putting up candidates like Mitt Romney who had one note to play is not enough. They must convince the majority of the electorate that only through a return to the values of our Founders and the Constitution can this Republic be saved from the tyranny of bigger and bigger government.

Grover Cleveland – Republican or Democrat – Progressive or Conservative

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.” — Grover Cleveland

Once upon a time in the last part of the 19^th century there was a Democratic Party that was more fiscally conservative and dedicated to small government. This party’s principles were dedicated to sound fiscal management, less government intervention of the lives of citizens, states’ rights as enumerated in the 9^th and 10^th Amendments, and the Constitution — especially Article I, Section 8.

On the other side of the political aisle was the Republican Party that had been in power since Abraham Lincoln. This once small party, that was formed to abolish slavery, had grown over the same period of time to become the party of big business, crony capitalism, and bigger government.

So what happened to these two major political parties controlled our government and our lives?

The Parties did a flip-flop in the first decade of the 20^th century. After the administration of Theodore Roosevelt the Democrats became more like to Republicans and the Republicans became more like the Democrats. Under the progressive administrations of Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson the Democrats became the Party of big government and fiscal irresponsibility. There were brief periods during this time when the administration of Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan attempted to correct the progressive course of the Democrats.

A word about “flip-flopping.” Today the term has become a pejorative in political campaigns. However, I see “flip-flopping” in different context. Suppose you we educated to believe the Earth was flat, as many were in olden times. Then one day after reading scholarly works and scientific papers on Newtonian physics, Geodesy, and Geophysics you came to believe that earth was round (actually it’s an oblate spheroid) and began espousing a round Earth principle. Is this “flip-flopping” of simply education and the rejection cognitive dissidence?

Applying this hypothesis to the political parties we see that the Democrats flipped to the principles held by the Republicans of the latter 19^th century and the Republicans flipped the other way. The flipping was not immediate but more of a osmotic process from 1908 to 1920 (Taft to Harding).It should be noted that the corrosive 16th Amendment was introduced and ratified during the Taft administration although it was supported be the progressive Woodrow Wilson. The Democratic Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, Richard E Byrd (the father of the Polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd, Jr.), mounted such fierce opposition to the 16^th Amendment that the House of Delegates refused to ratify it.

Over the past few years I have been guilty of an ignorance of great conservative presidents in American history. The first was Calvin Coolidge and the second was Grover Cleveland. "Coolidge" by Amity Shlaes is certainly a page-turning eye-opener that I highly recommend. Who knew that American presidential history could be so insightful? The second is this book, "The Forgotten Conservative” by John Pafford. Cleveland also garners praise from libertarians such as Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo in his mind-blowing "The Real Lincoln" as being the last Jeffersonian. Cleveland's policies of economic freedom and fiscal responsibility make Reagan look like a big government type. That is not to disparage Reagan's outstanding legacy, however, it is simply to highlight the excellent qualities of principle that guided him and the statesmanship that Cleveland demonstrated.

The Question I ask is “how do we keep forgetting great presidents?” It appears that our progressive public education system seems to focus only on the liberal progressive administrations. Unless you are studying for an advanced degree it is very likely you will not learn much about Presidents like Jackson, Cleveland, Coolidge, or even Reagan. These presidents are considered an anathema by our liberal press and progressive educators.

Stephen Grover Cleveland was the First Democrat elected after the Civil War, Grover Cleveland was the only President to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later.

One of nine children of a Presbyterian minister, Cleveland was born in New Jersey in 1837. He was raised in upstate New York. As a lawyer in Buffalo, he became notable for his single-minded concentration upon whatever task faced him.

At 44, he emerged into a political prominence that carried him to the White House in three years. Running as a reformer, he was elected Mayor of Buffalo in 1881, and later, Governor of New York.

Cleveland won the Presidency with the combined support of Democrats and reform Republicans, the "Mugwumps," who disliked the record of his opponent James G. Blaine of Maine.

Corruption in politics was the central issue in 1884, and Cleveland's reputation as an opponent of corruption proved the Democrats' strongest asset. Reform-minded Republicans denounced Blaine as corrupt and flocked to Cleveland. The Mugwumps, including such men as Carl Schurz and Henry Ward Beecher, were more concerned with morality than with party, and felt Cleveland was a kindred soul who would promote civil service reform and fight for efficiency in government. At the same time the Democrats gained support from the Mugwumps, they lost some blue-collar workers to the Greenback-Labor party, led by ex-Democrat Benjamin Butler.

The campaign focused on the candidates' personalities, as each candidate's supporters cast aspersions on their opponents. Cleveland's supporters rehashed the old allegations that Blaine had corruptly influenced legislation in favor of the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad and the Union Pacific Railway, later profiting on the sale of bonds he owned in both companies. Although the stories of Blaine's favors to the railroads had made the rounds eight years earlier, this time Blaine's correspondence was discovered, making his earlier denials less plausible. On some of the most damaging correspondence, Blaine had written "Burn this letter," giving Democrats the last line to their rallying cry: "Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine, 'Burn this letter!"

To counter Cleveland's image of superior morality, Republicans discovered reports that Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child while he was a lawyer in Buffalo, and chanted "Ma, Ma, where's my Pa?" When confronted with the emerging scandal, Cleveland's instructions to his campaign staff were: "Tell the truth."Cleveland admitted to paying child support in 1874 to Maria Crofts Halpin, the woman who claimed he fathered her child named Oscar Folsom Cleveland. Halpin was involved with several men at the time, including Cleveland's friend and law partner, Oscar Folsom, for whom the child was also named. Cleveland did not know which man was the father, and is believed to have assumed responsibility because he was the only bachelor among them.

Both candidates believed that the states of New York, New Jersey, Indiana, and Connecticut would determine the election. In New York, the Tammany Hall Democrats, after vacillating, decided that they would gain more from supporting a Democrat they disliked than a Republican who would do nothing for them. Blaine hoped that he would have more support from Irish Americans than Republicans typically did; while the Irish were mainly a Democratic constituency in the 19th century, Blaine's mother was Irish Catholic, and he had been supportive of the Irish National Land League while he was Secretary of State. The Irish, a significant group in three of the swing states, did appear inclined to support Blaine until one of his supporters, Samuel D. Burchard, gave a speech denouncing the Democrats as the party of Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion". The Democrats spread the word of this insult in the days before the election, and Cleveland narrowly won all four of the swing states, including New York by just over one thousand votes. While the popular vote total was close, with Cleveland winning by just one-quarter of a percent, the electoral votes gave Cleveland a majority of 219–182. Following the electoral victory, the "Ma, Ma ..." attack phrase gained a classic rejoinder: "Gone to the White House. Ha! Ha! Ha!"

A bachelor, Cleveland was ill at ease at first with all the comforts of the White House. "I must go to dinner," he wrote a friend, "but I wish it was to eat a pickled herring a Swiss cheese and a chop at Louis' instead of the French stuff I shall find." In June 1886 Cleveland married 21-year-old Frances Folsom; he was the only President married in the White House.

In his third annual message to Congress (December 6, 1887) Cleveland stated:

"When we consider that the theory of our institutions guarantees to every citizen the full enjoyment of all the fruits of his industry and enterprise, with only such deduction as may be his share toward the careful and economical maintenance of the Government which protects him, it is plain that the exaction of more than this is indefensible extortion and a culpable betrayal of American fairness and justice. The public Treasury, which should only exist as a conduit conveying the people's tribute to its legitimate objects of expenditure, becomes a hoarding place for money needlessly withdrawn from trade and the people's use, thus crippling our national energies, suspending our country's development, preventing investment in productive enterprise, threatening financial disturbance, and inviting schemes of public plunder."

This sounded very much like Frederick Bastiat, Calvin Coolidge, Ronald Reagan, or Ron Paul than any Republican or Democrat since.

Cleveland vigorously pursued a policy barring special favors to any economic group. Vetoing a bill to appropriate $10,000 (well over a quarter of a million dollars in today’s money) to distribute seed grain among drought-stricken farmers in Texas, he wrote: "Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character." Cleveland also stated: he could find no warrant in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) that would permit the government to give financial aid to the states or private persons as a group or individuals. Cleveland stated:

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people. The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

He was no doubt referring to the intent limiting Congress’ authority and power as enumerated in Article I, Section 8.

He also vetoed many private pension bills to Civil War veterans whose claims were fraudulent. When Congress, pressured by the Grand Army of the Republic, passed a bill granting pensions for disabilities not caused by military service, Cleveland vetoed it, too.

Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism and subsidies to business, farmers or veterans. His battles for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, independence, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism expressed by men like John Locke and our Founders. Cleveland relentlessly fought political corruption, patronage, and bossism.

Cleveland's last cabinet.
Front row, left to right: Daniel S. Lamont, Richard Olney, Cleveland,John G. Carlisle, Judson Harmon
Back row, left to right: David R. Francis, William L. Wilson, Hilary A. Herbert, Julius S. Morton

He angered the railroads by ordering an investigation of western lands they held by Government grant. He forced them to return 81,000,000 acres. He also signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first law attempting Federal regulation of the railroads.

In December 1887 he called on Congress to reduce high protective tariffs. Told that he had given Republicans an effective issue for the campaign of 1888, he retorted, "What is the use of being elected or re-elected unless you stand for something?" But Cleveland was defeated in 1888; although he won a larger popular majority than the Republican candidate Benjamin Harrison, he received fewer electoral votes.

Elected again in 1892, Cleveland faced an acute depression. He dealt directly with the Treasury crisis rather than with business failures, farm mortgage foreclosures, and unemployment. He obtained repeal of the mildly inflationary Sherman Silver Purchase Act and, with the aid of Wall Street, maintained the Treasury's gold reserve.

Labor unrest continued to haunt Cleveland during his second term. When 150,000 railroad strikers in Chicago violated an injunction, Cleveland sent Federal troops to enforce it. Even though the governor of Illinois, John Altgeld, did not want Cleveland to use federal troops to break the strike, the President did so anyway. Many observers wondered whether the nation was on the brink of either anarchy or presidential tyranny. Cleveland's handling of the strike alienated many Northern workers from the Democratic Party. If it takes the entire army and navy of the United States to deliver a post card in Chicago," he thundered, "that card will be delivered."

Cleveland's blunt treatment of the railroad strikers stirred the pride of many Americans. So did the vigorous way in which he forced Great Britain to accept arbitration of a disputed boundary in Venezuela. But his policies during the depression were generally unpopular. His party deserted him and nominated William Jennings Bryan in 1896, who was defeated by the Ohio Republican William McKinley a burgeoning progressive. Upon McKinley’s assassination on September 14, 1901 and the ascendency of his vice president Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency the progressive movement in the United States began with renewed vigor.

In the midst of the fight for repeal of Free Silver coinage in 1893, Cleveland sought the advice of the White House doctor, Dr. O'Reilly, about soreness on the roof of his mouth and a crater-like edge ulcer with a granulated surface on the left side of Cleveland's hard palate. Samples of the tumor were sent anonymously to the army medical museum.

Cleveland decided to have surgery secretly, to avoid further panic that might worsen the financial depression. The surgery occurred on July 1, to give Cleveland time to make a full recovery in time for the upcoming Congressional session.] Under the guise of a vacation cruise, Cleveland and his surgeon, Dr. Joseph Bryant, left for New York. The surgeons operated aboard the Oneida, a yacht owned by Cleveland's friend E. C. Benedict, as it sailed off Long Island. The surgery was conducted through the president's mouth, to avoid any scars or other signs of surgery. The team, sedating Cleveland with nitrous oxide and ether, successfully removed parts of his upper left jaw and hard palate. The size of the tumor and the extent of the operation left Cleveland's mouth disfigured. During another surgery, Cleveland was fitted with a hard rubber dental prosthesis that corrected his speech and restored his appearance. A cover story about the removal of two bad teeth kept the suspicious press placated. Even when a newspaper story appeared giving details of the actual operation, the participating surgeons discounted the severity of what transpired during Cleveland's vacation. In 1917, one of the surgeons present on the Oneida, Dr. William W. Keen, wrote an article detailing the operation.

Cleveland enjoyed many years of life after the tumor was removed, and there was some debate as to whether it was actually malignant. Several doctors, including Dr. Keen, stated after Cleveland's death that the tumor was a carcinoma. Other suggestions included ameloblastoma or a benign salivary mixed tumor (also known as a pleomorphic adenoma). In the 1980s, analysis of the specimen finally confirmed the tumor to be verrucous carcinoma, a low-grade epithelial cancer with a low potential for metastasi

Cleveland's agrarian and Silverite enemies gained control of the Democratic party in 1896, repudiated his administration and the gold standard, and nominated William Jennings Bryan on a Silver Platform. Cleveland silently supported the Gold Democrats' third-party ticket that promised to defend the gold standard, limit government, and oppose high tariffs, but declined to accept their nomination for a third term. The party won only 100,000 votes in the general election, and William McKinley, the Republican nominee, triumphed easily over Bryan. Agrarians would later nominate Bryan again in 1900, but in 1904 the conservatives, with Cleveland's support, regained control of the Democratic Party and nominated Alton B. Parker.

After leaving the White House on March 4, 1897, Cleveland lived in retirement at his estate, Westland Mansion, in Princeton, New Jersey. For a time he was a trustee of Princeton University, and was one of the majority of trustees who preferred Dean West's plans for the Graduate School and undergraduate living over those of Woodrow Wilson, then president of the university. Cleveland consulted occasionally with President Theodore Roosevelt (1901–1909), but was financially unable to accept the chairmanship of the commission handling the Coal Strike of 1902. Cleveland still made his views known in political matters.

When Grover Cleveland became President in 1885, he was the first Democrat to occupy the White House since James Buchanan was elected just prior to the Civil War. For most of his first term, Cleveland was more concerned with preventing Congress from granting privileges to special interests than with pursuing his own legislative agenda. He did not see himself as an activist President. Beyond making speeches, he did not send much legislation to Congress or demonstrate much leadership. Instead, he focused on making the federal government more efficient by appointing officials based on merit. Cleveland's management style was to name qualified cabinet members, delegate authority to them, and use them for advice and counsel.

Cleveland did, however, push two legislative initiatives, during his first term,: the repeal of the Bland-Allison Silver Purchase Act of 1878 and tariff reduction. His efforts, however, were ineffective and poorly presented. Always a hard-currency advocate (he thought that paper money should be backed by gold), Cleveland believed that inflating the money supply through the purchase and coinage of silver undermined confidence in the American dollar and punished creditors by paying them money less valuable than the dollars they had originally loaned. On this issue Cleveland stood apart from his constituency, especially in the South and West. The Bland-Allison Act remained law until the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890 replaced it. Tariff reduction, on the other hand, had the support of many Democrats. However, Cleveland's ineffective leadership generated little change in the tariff structure.

Consistent with his actions as governor of New York, Cleveland was not shy about using his veto power. For example, he turned away hundreds of veterans' pension bills because he thought they were fraudulent. He also vetoed a bill to provide drought relief to farmers in the West owing to his belief that such assistance was not the province of national government.

In one area, however, Cleveland exhibited tact and effective energy. Almost as soon as he assumed office, Cleveland's congressional opponents attempted to limit his power to remove Republican-appointed federal officials. They argued that the Tenure of Office Act of 1867 required congressional consent for the dismissal of executive branch office-holders. Cleveland refused to accept this interpretation, made speeches in opposition, and forced the Republicans to back down. His decisive action in this matter stands as the exception rather than the rule when it came to his leadership of Congress.

Although a reformer, Cleveland used patronage and party organization to win elections. He stood with his party in opposition to temperance, thus winning the support of others who opposed it—including the Irish, Germans, and East Europeans who had migrated to the United States by the tens of thousands in the 1880s. On the issue of race, he agreed with white southerners in their reluctance to treat African Americans as social and political equals, and made special efforts to reach out to Democrats and former Confederates in the South to assure them that they had a friend in the White House. He also opposed integrated schools in New York and saw African Americans as essentially inferior. In believing that government should not interfere with what he regarded as a social problem, he opposed efforts to protect the suffrage of African Americans.

In his first term as President, Cleveland condemned the "outrages" being committed against the Chinese on the nation's west coast. He soon concluded, however, that prejudice towards the Chinese in the region was so deep and their culture so alien that America could not absorb this immigrant group. Thereafter, he worked to limit Chinese immigration and to prohibit those who had left the United States to visit relatives in China from returning. The principal difference between Chinese and European immigrants, he believed, was the unwillingness of the former to assimilate into American society.

When Cleveland took office, 204,000 Native Americans were scattered among 171 reservations on 135 million acres of land. In Cleveland's view, the Native Americans were wards of the nation, like wayward but promising children in need of a guardian. Regarding himself as an Indian reformer, Cleveland sought to persuade Native Americans to forego their old tribal ways. He sought to assimilate them into white society by means of education, private land ownership, and parental guidance from the federal government. Though he did not campaign for the bill, he eagerly supported and signed into law the Dawes Act of 1887, which empowered the President to allot land within the reservations to individual Indians—with all surplus land reverting to the public domain. It was a disastrous policy that robbed Native Americans of much of their land and did little to improve their way of life.

Cleveland was mostly silent on the issue of women's suffrage. He understood the value of women's clubs and political organizations in drumming up the vote of husbands and fathers, and was careful not to alienate either group by speaking out against female suffrage. Neither, however, did he speak in favor of it. His one stance in support of women's rights was to criticize polygamy.

In a 1905 article in The Ladies Home Journal, Cleveland weighed in on the women's suffrage movement, writing that "sensible and responsible women do not want to vote. The relative positions to be assumed by men and women in the working out of our civilization were assigned long ago by a higher intelligence.”

Cleveland's second administration began in 1893, just as the nation entered the most severe depression in its history. By 1894, nearly 18 percent of the nation's workers were unemployed. One-third of the wage earners in manufacturing and 25 percent of urban workers stood idle and hungry. Confidence in the economy was low, as one out of ten banks had shut their doors to depositors. Railroad construction had fallen by 50 percent, and the market for steel rails fell by one-third, forcing dozens of steel companies into bankruptcy. Charities and relief societies were unable to cope with the overwhelming demand for aid.

One response to the depression came by way of Ohioan Jacob Coxey, who organized unemployed workers from the Midwest to march to Washington, D.C., and appeal to the government for provide public works projects and relief. Known as Coxey's Army, thousands of workers tramped across the nation to Washington, D.C., though only 500 actually arrived. The press gave the march wide coverage. Ultimately, however, Coxey's efforts were unsuccessful. Cleveland did not believe that the government should sponsor work projects to relieve the depression, and the march did nothing to change his mind.

Cleveland's most forceful response to the depression was to blame the Sherman Silver Purchase Act of 1890, passed during the Harrison administration, for the nation's economic troubles. This law required the Treasury to purchase 4.5 million ounces of silver a month to be coined as silver dollars. As a result, the production of silver increased while the supply of gold fell, making gold more expensive. By 1893, the gold value of the silver dollar fell to 60 cents.

In successfully calling for repeal of the Purchase Act, Cleveland split the Democratic Party down the middle. He lost the support of western and southern Democrats, who thereafter looked upon Cleveland as more Republican than the Republicans. Upon repeal of the act, holders of U.S. government bonds (and the silver certificates the government once used to purchase silver) began cashing them in for gold. By 1892, the nation's gold reserves dipped below $100 million. Between 1894 and 1896, Cleveland authorized four new government bonds to raise enough gold to prevent the government from defaulting on its international obligations. He was forced to turn to investment banker J. P. Morgan to support the bonds. In relying on Morgan, Cleveland was derided for allying with powerful Wall Street interests instead of helping the average American. The President, however, felt that he had no choice but to replenish the country's gold reserves.

In the congressional elections of 1894, Cleveland's failure to deal with the depression instigated the greatest realignment of voters since the Civil War. The Democrats lost everywhere but in the Deep South. One Missouri Democrat said that the election was "the greatest slaughter of innocents since Herod," referring to the King of Judea under the Roman regime who was infamous for his tyranny, violence, and wickedness. Cleveland felt besieged, surrounded by enemies, and beset by hecklers at every turn. He left the White House in 1897 as an embittered but arrogant man, convinced that he had been betrayed by the "agrarian radicals" and "Silverites" within his own party.

Historians do not rank Grover Cleveland as a great President. Historians prefer Lincoln and progressives like Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Roosevelt. The consensus is that he achieved mixed results at best. Cleveland did help to create a Solid South for the Democrats by encouraging former Confederates to believe they had a friend in the White House who supported the 10^th Amendment; his return of captured Confederate battle flags and his decision to go fishing on Memorial Day — a Civil War holiday — aided in this regard. He also strengthened the party outside the South by linking it to civil service reform. On the other hand, his stubborn enmity toward the Silverites and agrarian populists nearly split the Democrats and contributed to their defeat in 1896. He distanced himself from party machines by insisting that the President had a special relationship with the people that superseded any obligation to party workers as did George Washington.

Cleveland's portrait was on the U.S. $1000 bill of series 1928 and series 1934. He also appeared on the first few issues of the $20 Federal Reserve Notes from 1914. Since he was both the 22nd and 24th president, he was featured on two separate dollar coins released in 2012 as part of the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005.

Although, according to historians, not a great President, Cleveland almost single-handedly restored and strengthened the power and autonomy of the executive branch. Notable in this regard was his use of executive privilege in refusing to hand over department files to Congress in the fight over presidential appointments. No President prior to Richard M. Nixon had ever made such an extreme assertion of executive privilege in peacetime. His record-breaking use of the presidential veto also enabled him to reestablish the equilibrium between the executive and legislative branches, another precedent-setting example of presidential power. Equally important, Cleveland laid claim to a strong presidency in ways that had lasting impact. His assertion of authority in calling out federal troops during the Pullman strike, sending warships to Panama, and threatening Britain with war over the Venezuelan boundary dispute set the tone for the modern energetic executive. Regarding social policy, Cleveland comes across as much more racially intolerant, and certainly when compared to Presidents such as Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt.

Following Cleveland's retirement from political office in 1897, he played the stock market and practiced law in order to support his substantial family — though it is estimated that by 1896 he had amassed a moderate personal fortune of $350,000 (8.2 million today). He moved to a spacious house in Princeton, New Jersey, where he was treated like royalty by the town's inhabitants. He also became a trustee of Princeton University and began writing essays and political commentary, including a book — Presidential Problems (1904) — which focused on some of his most controversial decisions. However, he never wrote his autobiography. Cleveland also served on several corporate boards and gave public speeches. The death of his oldest daughter Ruth, in 1904, visibly aged the old Democrat. Some of his friends said that he never fully recovered.

Grover Cleveland died as he had lived: determined to be in control. In the grip of a gastro-intestinal disease complicated by an ailment of the heart and kidneys, Cleveland suffered great pain in the spring of 1908. A severe attack hit him while on vacation in late March of 1908, causing him to think that the end was near. With great secrecy, he was rushed by automobile to Princeton, where he died early on June 24. "I have tried so hard to do right" were his final words.

Two days later, he was buried. Venezuela indicated that its nation's flags would be flown at half-mast. Theodore Roosevelt's eulogy compared him to a "happy warrior"—one who had served on honorable terms and who understood that the presidency was a "public trust" bestowed upon him by the people.

So while not a governing angel, in the terms of James Madison, Cleveland was a man who believed in the Constitution and the fiscal responsibility of the federal government. In that sense he could be considered a true conservative. On the other hand his intervention into strikes was more in line with his progressive predecessors like the Roosevelt’s and Woodrow Wilson.

In the words of Andrew B. Halldorson, one of the reviewers of Pafford’s book:

“In a day where political spin dominates everything, it's fascinating to read of the swift rise of an anti-corruption politician who faced two great obstacles to the White House. One, a sex-scandal, of which he told his supporters, "Whatever you do, tell the truth"; the other, a threat to play ball - or else -- from the powerful Tammany Hall political machine, which Cleveland rejected utterly and publicly.

The author of this book, John Pafford is that rare thing - a conservative optimist, who can make long ago events seem relevant for today, and embolden hearts as they look to both the past and the future

I suspect I'm not the only reader who knew next to nothing of the Cleveland era. Despite all the great differences, some issues had a familiar ring. Faced with economic calamity and a great social upheaval as the job market changed, there was enormous pressure to essentially print money and borrow on the future. But Cleveland would have none of it. He used the veto more than any president before him, and cited again and again the Constitutional limits of the power of federal government.

Cleveland's integrity still has the power to draw admirers from all political backgrounds, just as it did in its own day. Pafford includes anecdotes about an up and coming young Republican opponent - Theodore Roosevelt - who was a friend and admirer of Cleveland. And there is also a memorable exchange involving another supporter - the great writer and moralist Mark Twain.

Though the book looks at Cleveland through the eyes of a modern conservative, one of the best traits of the book is that Pafford never forgets his is writing foremost about a flesh-and-blood man, rather than a set of ideas. And so, by the end of the book, the reader may very well be ready to count Cleveland not only as a near great president, but someone it would have been a privilege to know.”

Cynical and elitists academics and historians will always incline their views of great presidents to the progressive ones, perhaps with the exception of Lincoln. These historians like activist presidents who ignore constitutional limits and push on issues of fairness and social justice while ignoring the limits placed on government by the Constitution. They are quick to find flaws with conservative presidents while overlooking or excusing the unconstitutional actions of a Lyndon Johnson or Barack Obama. Conservatives like Cleveland, Coolidge, or Reagan are just not on their radar.

Our Founders gave the President explicit powers in the Constitution. Greatness was not one of the attributes they were looking for. They also were not looking for greatness in the Congress or Supreme Court. However, what they were looking for was dedication, support, defense, and obedience to the Construction.

Today President Obama and New Jersey Governor Chis Christie toured the Jersey Shore to assess the progress being made after a billion dollars in federal aid has been pumped into the recovery efforts. Both stated that more aid was needed. Compare this with Cleveland’s refusal to grant $10,000 in seed grain relief for the victims of the Texas drought. I am sure Cleveland is turning over in his grave with the statement from Obama and Chrissie. Just ponder for a moment if more “non-activist” and less “great men” had occupied the White House since Grover Cleveland. Today we probably would have no federal agencies or departments such as FEMA, The EPA, Department of Education, HUD, Health and Human Services, Department of Energy, IRS, or ObamaCare.

A Bad Day for Lois Lerner

“In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell

Today was a bad day for Lois Lerner the director of the IRS’ Exempt Organizations Division as she was called to testify before Darrel Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The Internal Revenue Service official at the center of the political targeting scandal invoked her constitutional right not to answer lawmakers’ questions on Wednesday, but defiantly asserted that she has done nothing wrong — prompting confusion about how exactly she was using her right not to incriminate herself.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told Politico that Lois Lerner, who leads the IRS office that determines which organizations receive tax-exempt status, will be brought before his panel again.

Lerner was the first to publicly disclose earlier this month that the IRS gave extra scrutiny to conservative groups.

“I have not done anything wrong, I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee,” Lerner told House Oversight and Government Reform Committee members. “While I would very much like to answer the committee’s questions today, I have been advised by my counsel to assert my constitutional right not to testify or answer questions related to the subject manner of this hearing.”

Lerner added that by asserting her right not to testify, “I know that some people will assume I have done something wrong. I have not. One of the basic functions of the Fifth Amendment is to protect innocent individuals, and that is the protection I am invoking today.”

Issa noted during the hearing that because Lerner had asserted her innocence in her opening statement, “I believe you have not asserted your rights but have effectively waived your rights” and took her refusal to answer as a refusal to testify.

An incensed Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) spoke up that Lerner should testify, agreeing that she already waived her constitutional privilege.

“You don’t get to tell your side of the story and not be subjected to cross-examination. That’s not the way it works. She waived her right to Fifth Amendment privilege by issuing an opening statement, she ought to stand here and answer our questions,” Gowdy said, earning applause from the audience.

After a key agency IRS official today invoked her Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate herself during congressional testimony, Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa said he will review legal precedent in order to determine whether Lois Lerner, the director of Exempt Organizations at the IRS, could be held in contempt of Congress.

Although Lerner, who’s at the center of the controversy, refused to answer questions from members of the committee, she read a brief statement into the record declaring her innocence. Furthermore, at the request of Issa, Lerner authenticated a document containing her written answers for the inspector general’s investigation of the matter.

Those actions prompted members of the committee to question whether Lerner effectively waived her right to invoke the Fifth Amendment.

“She just testified. She just waived her Fifth Amendment right to privilege,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., a former federal prosecutor, said. “You don’t get to tell your side of the story and then not be subjected to cross-examination. That’s not the way it works.”

Although Issa dismissed Lerner, at the end of the hearing he announced that the committee would recess rather than adjourn while he determines whether Lerner should be recalled before the panel.

“Ms. Lerner may have waived her Fifth Amendment rights by addressing core issues in her opening statement and the authentication afterwards,” Issa, R-Calif., said as he brought the hearing to a close. “Although I excused Ms. Lerner subject to a recall, I am looking into the possibility of recalling her and insisting that she answer questions in light of a waiver.”

A Republican committee aide said the application of the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with House or committee rules, but rather is a constitutional question. The aide said courts have interpreted that the Fifth must be asserted in the absolute, not partially.

“Congress is respective when witnesses assert the Fifth, but if it’s not asserted properly, you’re not refusing to testify based on constitutional protection,” the aide explained. “Because you don’t want to answer certain questions, there’s a potential contempt of Congress.”

Sources also believe Lerner’s decision to read a statement into the record while invoking the Fifth may have been unprecedented for congressional testimony.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee, said he does not personally believe Lerner waived her rights with her actions today, but he said the committee should look into the issue.

“This is not a courtroom,” Cummings, D-Md., said. “In a courtroom that might have been the case. It’s a legal question.”

Cummings added that Lerner was acting on advice of counsel, and he doubted her legal team would have permitted her to deliver a statement if it would jeopardize her right to invoke the Fifth.

One constitutional expert noted that generally people who claim the Fifth in hearings give no statement and it would be “unusual” to give a statement and still claim the Fifth.

“Most witnesses claiming the Fifth will not tempt fate by answering any questions,” said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina constitutional law professor who specializes in the relationship between Congress and the executive branch. “I suppose the witness might argue he or she is claiming the Fifth for limited purposes but then needs to have someone spell out the relevant scope.”

Evert legal expert I have heard on TV today stated the same thing. You cannot assert your Fifth Amendment Right to some things and not others. It pertains either to all or nothing. When she made her opening statement and proclaimed:

“I have not done anything wrong, I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee.”

She opened herself to answering any and all questions pertaining to the three items she skated in that statement; “broken any laws”, “violated IRS rules”, and “provided false information.”

According to Politico:

“Lois Lerner might win the legal battle but she’s prolonging the political war.

Instead of simply taking the scorn of lawmakers for a day, repeatedly invoking the Fifth Amendment to avoid self-incrimination, and then moving on, she chose defiance.

And her bravado has prompted House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to say she has waived her constitutional right to not comment.

Now, he plans to haul the director of the IRS’s tax-exempt department back to the committee for questioning.

“When I asked her questions from the very beginning, I did so she could assert her rights prior to any statement,” Issa told POLITICO. “She chose not to do so — so she waived.”

Lerner shocked the committee room in the opening moments of Wednesday’s hearing by delivering an opening statement denying any wrongdoing and professing pride in her

“I have not done anything wrong,” said Lerner, who triggered the IRS scandal on May 10 by acknowledging that the agency had singled out conservative groups applying for tax exemptions. “I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other committee.”

Beyond that, she refused to answer the committee’s questions, immediately triggering a debate among panel members over whether she had just voided her Fifth Amendment rights.

At the very least, Lerner’s speech prolonged the process. She’s almost certain to be back on Issa’s turf when Congress returns in June from the Memorial Day recess. If she refuses to talk then, the committee could ultimately pursue a contempt charge.

Issa said late Wednesday that he’s consulting the House parliamentarian and outside counsel to determine how to proceed.

..

Paul Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University, disagreed saying she “has run a very grave risk of having waived her right to refuse to testify on the details of things she has already generally talked about.”

She “voluntarily talked about a lot of the same things then lawmakers wanted to ask her about” in her opening statement.

“In that situation, when you voluntarily open up the subject they want to inquire in to, and it’s all in the same proceeding, that does result in a court criminal case … that would be a waiver,” he said in an interview with POLITICO.

That was Rep. Trey Gowdy’s argument. The South Carolina Republican and former federal prosecutor wanted to keep Lerner on the stand during today’s hearing and was the first to argue that she waived her rights.

He said lawmakers should at least be able to ask her questions about assertions she made in her statement.”

When the hearing concluded six hours later, Issa announced that he might recall Lerner before the committee and review whether she waived her Fifth Amendment rights by giving an opening statement and answering questions about the document.

Accordingly, Issa said the hearing “stands in recess, not adjourned.”

Lerner’s attorney had informed the committee on Tuesday that she would invoke the Fifth Amendment, but committee aides said she was required to appear anyway.

Once Lerner left the committee room, lawmakers turned their attention primarily to Douglas Shulman, the Bush administration appointee who led the IRS during President Obama’s first term. He was joined at the witness table by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, and Treasury Deputy Secretary Neal Wolin.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House panel, criticized Shulman for not correcting his March 2012 testimony after learning that IRS employees had indeed targeted conservative groups.

“It seems to me that you would come back even if it were a phone call or a letter,” Cummings said. “I mean, common sense.”

At various points Issa charged that George, who has been largely spared the grillings reserved for other officials in previous hearings, failed to keep Congress informed about his findings as his audit began last year.

Issa told Inspector General George that “we do not wait 10 months to find out that there’s a there there” and called the delay “the greatest failing of an otherwise well-regarded inspector general.”

But George reminded the committee that his office conducted an audit, not a formal investigation. He added that there are “established procedures for conducting an audit” to ensure fairness and noted that information given to Capitol Hill “sometimes is not retained on the Hill.”

Under questioning by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), who chairs an oversight subcommittee that first probed allegations of IRS wrongdoing, Shulman said he did not discuss the IRS targeting of conservative groups with the White House during visits to the White House that Jordan said numbered more than 100 between 2010 and 2011.

“It would not have been appropriate to have a conversation with anyone at the White House about the subject of discriminating against conservative groups,” Shulman said.

When Shulman was asked about his 118 visits to the White House he claimed he did not recall all of those visits and later clarified that he had visited the White House complex — which includes the adjoining Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the New Executive Office Building located across the street — for “The Easter Egg Roll with my kids” and for various meetings regarding the IRS budget, the enforcement of tax laws, efforts to improve the federal finance aid process and meetings on the implementation of the 2010 health-care reform law.

So where is Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform Committee going now? No one seems to know. I have always maintained that Issa’s committee was too large and did not have the legal counsel that was available to the Watergate Committee — no Sam Dash. It appears as though the members of the committee each have an agenda they want to push with no clear mission. At times there seems to be more speech making than fact-finding. The real solution is for the House to appoint a select committee with subpoena power, crackerjack legal counsel, and adequate investigative resources.

In my view Lois Lerner is a key figure to the unraveling of the IRS scandal. She has a record that needs to be looked into and according to the Washington Post she has been feeding Congress nothing but lies and obfuscations. In fact the Post’s fact checkers have given her four Pinocchios for just about everything she has said:

“In the days since the Internal Revenue Service first disclosed that it had targeted conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, new information has emerged from both the Treasury inspector general’s report and congressional testimony Friday that calls into question key statements made by Lois G. Lerner, the IRS’s director of the exempt organizations division.

The clumsy way the IRS disclosed the issue, as well as Lerner’s press briefing by phone, were seen at the time as a public relations disaster. But even so, it is worth reviewing three key statements made by Lerner and comparing them to the facts that have since emerged.

“But between 2010 and 2012, we started seeing a very big uptick in the number of 501(c)(4) applications we were receiving, and many of these organizations applying more than doubled, about 1500 in 2010 and over 3400 in 2012.”

Lerner made this comment while issuing a seemingly impromptu apology at an American Bar Association panel. (It was later learned that this was a planted question — more on that below.) In her telling, the tax-exempt branch was simply overwhelmed by applications, and so unfortunate shortcuts were taken.

But this claim of “more than doubled” appears to be a red herring. The targeting of groups began in early 2010, after the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC was announced on Jan. 21. The ruling led to increased interest in a tax-exempt status known as 501(c)(4). Most charities apply under 501(c)(3), but under 501(c)(4), nonprofit groups that engage in “social welfare” can also perform a limited amount of election activity.

At first glance, the inspector general’s report appears to show that the number of 501(c)(4) applications actually went down that year, from 1,751 in 2009 to 1,735.

But it turns out that these are federal fiscal-year figures, meaning “2010” is actually Oct. 1, 2009 to Sept. 30, 2010, so the “2010” year includes more than three months before the Supreme Court decision was announced.

Astonishingly, despite Lerner’s public claim, an IRS spokeswoman was not able to provide the actual calendar year numbers. By allocating one-quarter of the fiscal year numbers to the prior year, we can get a very rough sense of the increase on a calendar-year basis. (Figures are rounded to avoid false precision; 2012 is not possible to calculate.)

• 2009: 1745
• 2010: 1865
• 2011: 2540

In other words, while there was an increase in 2010, it was relatively small. The real jump did not come until 2011, long after the targeting of conservative groups had been implemented. Also, it appears Lerner significantly understated the number of applications in 2010 (“1500”) in order to make her claim of “more than doubled.”

I think you guys were reading the paper as much as I was. So it was pretty much we started seeing information in the press that raised questions for us, and we went back and took a look.”

Here, Lerner suggests that she found out about this issue only when news reports appeared in February and March 2012 about tea party groups complaining that they were being targeted. But the IG timeline shows this claim to be false.

According the IG, Lerner had a briefing on the issue on June 29, 2011, in which she was told about the BOLO (“Be On the Look Out”) criteria that included words such as “tea party” or “patriots.” The report says she raised concerns about the wording and “instructed that the criteria be immediately revised.” She continued to be heavily involved in the issue in the months preceding the new reports, according to the timeline.

“I don’t believe anyone ever asked me that question before.”

This was Lerner’s excuse during the media call for why she had not publicly addressed the issue before.

But in congressional testimony Friday, outgoing acting director Steven T. Miller said he had talked with Lerner about arranging to make a statement at a May 10 conference sponsored by the American Bar Association, knowing that the IG report would soon be released.

Lerner then contacted a friend, Celia Roady, a tax attorney with the Washington firm Morgan Lewis, to get her to ask a question about the targeting, according to a statement by Roady on Friday. (Roady had previously denied this was a planted question when asked directly by participants at the meeting.)

So Lerner was dissembling when she suggested that a simple well-aimed question prompted the disclosure.

In fact, just two days before the ABA conference, Lerner appeared before Congress and was asked by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-N.Y.) about the status of investigations into 501(c)(4) groups. She provided a bland answer about a questionnaire on the IRS Web site, failing to take the opportunity to disclose the results of the probe. Small wonder that Crowley is now calling for her to resign, saying that Lerner lied to him. “

Lerner has a history of going after conservative and Christian groups. In the 1990's, Lerner also served as chief of enforcement at the Federal Elections Commission.

Under her direction, the FEC undertook the largest enforcement action in its history — suing the Christian Coalition for violating campaign laws. The Christian Coalition won, but in one deposition, FEC lawyers asked a defendant if televangelist Pat Robertson prayed for him.

James Bopp, the Christian Coalition's lawyer, said he was "shocked and appalled" by that.

"Both political activity and religious activity are specifically protected by the First Amendment," he said.

When Bopp learned years later that Lerner had been promoted to an IRS position, he became concerned.

"She was in effect being promoted for what she had done at the Federal Election Commission and now was going to be expected to replicate that at the IRS and now we know that's exactly what happened," he said.

Lerner is represented by lawyer William W. Taylor, who is noted for winning a dismissal of all charges against former IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn in a high-profile sexual assault case.

Lerner said at Wednesday's hearing that she had done nothing wrong. Well that is to be seen. She is an out of control civil servant with a history of violations against the Constitution. All she needed was an administration that would encourage her. Perhaps Issa’s or any other committee will have to grant her some level of immunity for her to open up and tell the truth. She is a defiant woman who seems to believe she is beyond the law. If granted the umbrella of immunity and she lies or obfuscates the immunity will be lifted and she will then be the subject of a grand jury. It’s time for Issa to take off the gloves and treat go after her in the manner the Watergate Committee went after John Dean. She is a servant of the people, we are not her serfs.

In 2004 when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal rocked the Pentagon and the nation the press and Congress were furious with the Bush administration and Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, in particular. Photos were published in the media on almost a daily basis while liberal and conservative commentators pushed the story.

Most of these offenses were committed by young, untrained and unsupervised National Guard soldiers of the 320th Military Police Battalion. After public outrage and investigations by the Army CID eleven of these soldiers were charged and suffered Courts Martials or non-judicial discipline. The commander of the prison, Brig. General Janis Karpinski was busted to Colonel. The prison terms ranged from 10 years to six months.

As distasteful and controversial as Abu Ghraib was it should be remembered that the abuses took place in a time of armed combat in a very dangerous war zone where the coalition troops were suffering 50 to 100 casualties per week. The military did take action and punished the perpetrators. Unlike the abuses at Abu Ghraib the IRS abuses were against American citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. It is unlikely any of the principles will be disciplined or fired. They will surf the Potomac from agency to agency seeking new positions under the protection of their union. All We, the people can do is to urge of representatives to be vigilant and tireless in their pursuit of the truth.

As an aside to this post Deadline Breaking News has reported that the Fox News Cable Channel has just scored its second-best week of the year while the liberal channel MSNBC hits a seven-year low:

“The scandals of the Obama administration seem to be hurting not just the White House but MSNBC as well, while Fox News Channel has just scored its second-best week of the year. After double-digit gains during last year’s presidential election, May 13-17 saw the progressive-aligned “Lean Forward” news network hit new lows as the IRS scandal erupted and revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained AP records became public. With 350,000 viewers on average and 94,000 in the adults 25-54 demo, MSNBC had its least-watched and lowest-rated total-day results of the year last week. That was also the lowest total-day demo result the network has had since the week of June 26-July 2, 2006, when MSNBC pulled in just 83,000 viewers among adults 25-54, according to Nielsen data.”

Perhaps the American people are more interested in these scandals as the pundits would leave to you believe.