Your Random Saturday

Andrew Tallman pointing out the obvious to the oblivious:

Teaching introductory logic for ten years made me vividly aware of the low average quality of reasoning among college students. It also showed me how little improvement can realistically be accomplished by only one semester’s training in the art of thinking clearly. By all rights, then, I should have severely pessimistic expectations about public discourse in this country. Nevertheless, whether I suffer from my own strain of bad induction or just unquenchable naïveté, pandemic outbreaks of illogical memes still catch me by surprise.

That’s why I’ve been so shocked at the widespread assertion that a national mandate requiring individuals to carry health insurance is legitimate (and even Constitutional) because we already require everyone to purchase auto insurance. There’s just one small error this idea seems to forget: the federal government does not actually have a law requiring individual drivers to carry such insurance. Only states do...

Additionally, you should note that no state requires you to have liability insurance until you positively engage in some enhanced risk activity, like driving, performing surgery, or opening a restaurant. Even though any of us at any time could harm another person (bicycling, playing softball or even just tripping on a crowded escalator), no one is required by law to carry bodily motion insurance...

Furthermore, the actual car coverage levels required by most states are extremely low. Although I suppose some people are satisfied with $25,000/$50,000 coverage (a common benchmark), most drivers understand that $100,000/$300,000 is much more prudent. But if the more robust protections are so obviously smart, why aren’t they required? It’s simple. Because all of the states recognize the need to balance the wisdom of carrying insurance against the restraint all levels of government must exercise when infringing upon the core value of individual liberty.

Since the right to property (in this case to not pay insurance premiums) is so fundamental in our system, it must be violated only for the most extreme of reasons and only to the most humble of extents. Thus, basing health care reform on this same pattern would require at most only some sort of minimum catastrophic coverage. Suffice it to say that current proposals which cover every form of health care down to the most routine are not modeled on the same recognition of liberty and property rights.

So, having taken a more diligent look at whether mandatory automobile insurance justifies the imposition of health insurance, we now have a much better sense of its validity. In order to make the comparison justify current health care proposals, Congress (not the states) would have to currently require that all people (regardless of personal wealth or actual car ownership) owned an insurance policy provided by Congress itself that covered routine maintenance, periodic breakdown, and collision repair to their own cars, even ones they acquire with pre-existing defects (like from a junkyard).

Should we be worried about the dollar (since Obama and Bernanke aren't)? Larry Kudlow says 'you betcha':

Obama has no plan to stabilize King Dollar, and the Asian economies don’t like it. China’s top banking regulator said the Federal Reserve’s money-creating binge was the main cause of “massive speculation.” Similar sentiments came from top officials in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan.

And while Ben Bernanke tried to calm dollar worries during his recent speech at the New York Economics Club, it was clear that the greenback’s value ranks low on his priority list. Nothing but dollar lip service from the Fed head.

Because of the slumping dollar, U.S. import prices have jumped 10 percent at an annual rate over the past three months, and nearly 6 percent excluding energy. This is a tax hike on consumers and businesses, and it could depress holiday sales. It’s reminiscent of the gigantic energy shock of 2008 that was caused by the dollar’s collapse...

President Obama did talk about entering free-trade discussions. But his Commerce secretary, Gary Locke, threw cold water on the idea in a Singapore speech. He said trade agreements have to wait because of a crowded U.S. legislative agenda. (Hat tip: James Pethokoukis.) He may have a point: The South Korean free-trade bill has been languishing for several years in the Democratic Congress.

Then there’s the massive U.S. health-care takeover plan, which is now estimated at $3 trillion. This additional dollar depressant will tax the patience of China, Japan, and other would-be buyers of our massive debt creation.

Terry Jeffrey thinks something's changed:

In a May 21 speech at the National Archives, Obama himself said: "Military commissions have a history in the United States dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War. They are an appropriate venue for trying detainees for violations of the laws of war. They allow for the protection of sensitive sources and methods of intelligence-gathering; they allow for the safety and security of participants; and for the presentation of evidence gathered from the battlefield that cannot always be effectively presented in federal courts."

Is it Obama's argument now that Khalid Sheik Mohammad did not violate the laws of war? Is it Obama's argument now that the United States does not need to protect sensitive sources and methods used in gathering intelligence on Mohammed and his al-Qaida affiliates? Is it Obama's argument now that the participants in Mohammed's trial will not need the safety and security provided by a military commission? Is it Obama's argument now that the case against Mohammed does not involve evidence gathered on battlefields that cannot be effectively presented in federal courts?

The truth is Obama has no argument at all to justify trying this unlawful enemy combatant who perpetrated war crimes against America in a civilian court designed for civilian crimes.

The word, Mr. Tyrell, is 'hypocrisy':

What would the mainstream media's response be if former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin described China's economic growth to an audience of students in Shanghai as "an accomplishment unparalleled in human history"? That is what the most inexperienced president in modern American history said in Shanghai this week...

Sarah Palin is accorded no such dispensation. During the 2008 presidential campaign, in answering a foreign policy query by Katie Couric about Russia's proximity to the state of which Palin then served as governor, she was mocked for saying Russia is so close it can be seen from Alaska. Her explanation to Couric, whose face was contorted in disbelief, contained the perfectly sensible observation that Alaska and Russia share "a very narrow maritime border." That, and nothing further that the governor said was laughable. Still, the media laughed. The media did not laugh when Couric, at about the same time in the campaign, listened attentively to Biden claim President Franklin Roosevelt talked to a nonexistent television audience during the 1929 stock market crash, four years before Roosevelt was president and even more years before there was a television audience. Couric's respective countenance betrayed no evidence that she recognized that Herbert Hoover was actually then president or that a television audience was years from reality...

Put the politician who sees China's economic development as "an accomplishment unparalleled in human history" next to the politician who notes that her state borders Russia (and Canada, too), thus giving its governor occasion for at least some foreign policy knowledge. The first is boomed as very charismatic, but so is the second. The first orates successfully to large crowds, but so does the second. The first is telegenic, charming and a pioneer -- the first mixed-race politician to be president. The second is telegenic, charming and a pioneer -- the first Republican woman to be nominated for vice president. Is there a difference in their qualifications? Well, yes, the pulchritudinous Ms. Palin in 2008 had more executive experience than Mr. Obama, having been both a small-town mayor and a governor. In fact, as President Obama comes up on his first year in office, former Gov. Palin still has more executive experience. Why is no one laughing?

'What's the frigging point?' seems to be Mona Charen's cry to the morons running Justice:

The claim that the Bush administration was somehow dilatory sets a new standard for gall, particularly coming from Eric Holder. As former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy points out, "The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers (including Holder) to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts."

Those lawyers threw up hundreds of roadblocks. Military detentions and tribunals violated, they claimed, the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Litigating all this has taken years...

Attorney General Holder is keen to prove to a supposedly skeptical world that America lives up to its values (never mind that granting the full rights of citizens to enemy combatants is not part of our creed -- nor anyone else's). Yet he has also repeatedly asserted that a not-guilty verdict is unacceptable. "Failure is not an option. These are cases that have to be won." Whoa. In the first place, it isn't at all beyond imagination that the government could lose this case. KSM was waterboarded. No evidence thus obtained is admissible. A liberal judge who disliked the Bush administration might exclude other key evidence as well.

But Holder says he'll be found guilty. Isn't that a perversion of our jurisprudence? If a not-guilty verdict is impossible, then the trial is a sham. "Sentence first -- verdict afterward" said the Red Queen.

Moreover, the Justice Department has assured Sen. Jon Kyl that "we will not release anyone into the United States if doing so would endanger our national security or the American people." So in the event that KSM is acquitted, it's the position of the Obama Justice Department that we would continue to hold him? How does that outcome burnish the reputation of our justice system?

S.E. Cupp writes a column about Sarah Palin and ends up pounding the press and Obama...my kind of column!

Not only that, she's got real power. President Obama's been trying to sell the country on health care reform for months, but she managed to change policy overnight with a pointed note...on Facebook...

On "Hardball," Chris Matthews, who's still recovering from that bizarre bout of restless leg syndrome that suddenly befell him last year, actually had the audacity to say of the attention Palin is getting for her book release, "I've never seen hype like this." Apparently, the overwrought sensationalism of the Denver Democratic National Convention, where Obama stood amidst faux White House columns, under fireworks, next to Sheryl Crow and Will.i.am -- or "Hype and Change 2008" -- is but a distant memory to Matthews...

Others still have tried to dismiss Palin as some would-be celebrity, who -- how dare she?! -- had the gumption and considerable bad taste to write a book. And promote it. (Irony alert: Al Gore has his own television network.)

A radio host asked me recently if the perception that she is more "human interest story than person-of-action" will harm her in the long run. The fact is, there is no one on the planet more "human interest story than person-of-action" than our current president, who penned his terribly self-satisfied autobiography at the ripe old age of 43, while a mere state legislator.

But we don't see the liberal press fretting over President Obama's penchant for self-promotion. They coo when he goes on Letterman to talk about all the cool stuff that happens when you're president -- during a recession and a war. And they applaud his Nobel Peace Prize, for which he was nominated after just 12 days in office. And they rally around his embarrassing Olympic bid, which actually argued that the IOC should choose Chicago so that he and Michelle could stop and see the fam while in their old neighborhood. Obama's "me, me, me, me, me, me, me" aria is fine. But Palin's plain-speaking and honest stab at defending herself against her seething critics is schlocky showboating and shameless self-promotion. Please.