The Patriot Post Digest 9-23

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23
From The Federalist Patriot
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THE FOUNDATION

"In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself." --James Madison, Federalist No. 51

GOVERNMENT & POLITICS
Income Redistribution: Speed Up Failed Policies

"Making You Pay"

The $787 billion "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," otherwise known as the stimulus package, was signed into law by President Barack Obama in February. Since then, the economy has lost two million jobs, and unemployment has risen to 9.4 percent, -- well beyond the administration's top-end prediction of 8 percent if Congress would only spend the money. In Obama's parallel universe, his so-called stimulus has thus far "saved or created" 150,000 jobs, and The One now promises to "save or create" another 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days. After that, he'll part the Red Sea and turn water into wine.

Obama's oft-repeated and utterly ridiculous "save or create" mantra has gone unquestioned by what radio talk-show host Rush Limbaugh calls the "state-run media." In fact, while 49,000 jobs lost in a month was deemed disastrous when George W. Bush was in the White House, 345,000 jobs lost in a month is reason for hope with Obama. However, at least one Democrat isn't fooled. Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) recently told Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, "You created a situation where you cannot be wrong. If the economy loses 2 million jobs over the next few years, you can say yes, but it would've lost 5.5 million jobs."

Obama also said this week, "We've done more than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever, to get the gears of the economy moving again. ... We're in a position to really accelerate." Accelerate what? Why, spending, of course.

The administration intends to accelerate the pace of stimulus spending, much of which is not slated to occur until 2010 or later. As Vice President Joe Biden put it, "We're going to get more dollars out the door, more shovels into the ground and more money into the pockets of workers and families who need it most." He cautioned, however, "A lower job-rate loss [sic] is not our goal. 'Less bad' is not how we're going to measure success."

Outside of Obama World, "less bad" means "more bad." A look at this chart of unemployment numbers reveals what we mean. The Washington Times further notes, "The stimulus actually has dampened economic projections. In January, before the stimulus was passed, 53 business economists and forecasters surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expected gross domestic product (GDP) for the third quarter (July through September) to rise by 1.2 percent at an annual rate. Predictions became gloomier after the stimulus passed.... In May, these experts forecast only a 0.6 growth rate for the third quarter."

Despite these facts, Obama addressed his skeptics with a combination of smooth talk and sophistry: "Now, I know that there's some who, despite all evidence to the contrary, still don't believe in the necessity and promise of this recovery act. And I would suggest to them that they talk to the companies who, because of this plan, scrapped the idea of laying off employees and, in fact, decided to hire employees. Tell that to the Americans who received that unexpected call saying, 'Come back to work.'" Uh, Barry, what about the two million Americans put out of work since Congress passed your stimulus package?

Meanwhile, the president had the audacity to call for a return to the pay-as-you-go, or "Paygo," rule for federal spending -- a rule under which each expense or tax cut would have to be offset by another spending cut or tax increase. The principle sounds good enough, but Paygo has been little more than a Democrat gimmick in the past. In an outstanding summary of "The 'Paygo' Coverup," The Wall Street Journal reveals that it "only applies to new or expanded entitlement programs, not to existing programs such as Medicare, this year growing at a 9.2% annual rate. Nor does Paygo apply to discretionary spending, set to hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, or 40% of the budget." Furthermore, Obama has exempted his health care plan. And isn't it odd that as Obama blames the "reckless fiscal policies of the past," he pleas with Congress to return to Paygo in order to feign control over his own reckless spending?

This Week's 'Alpha Jackass' Award

"I have studied the Constitution as a student; I have taught it as a teacher; I have been bound by it as a lawyer and legislator. I took an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution as commander in chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never -- ever -- turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake." --Barack Obama

Obama must be taking his cues from a famous tyrant: "All this was inspired by the principle -- which is quite true in itself -- that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods." --Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," vol. I, ch. X

News From the Swamp: Culture of Corruption Redux

Democrats were able to make big gains in the 2006 and 2008 congressional elections in large part by tying Republicans to corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a series of other corruption scandals. Thanks to the antics of Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and his most ardently unapologetic supporter, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Democrats are now finding out what it's like to be on the receiving end of such allegations.

Murtha, who has loudly and proudly brought home barrels of pork to his district for more than three decades, may become ensnared in an ever-widening federal criminal investigation into PMA Group, a lobbying shop founded by one of Murtha's former aides. It is believed that House members may have traded earmarks to PMA and its clients in exchange for campaign contributions. And this is no small scandal -- more than 100 members of Congress have sponsored earmarks for PMA clients. Murtha alone directed $78 million to PMA companies in the last two years. He has not been officially accused of any wrongdoing, but one of his close House colleagues, Peter Visclosky (D-IN), has received subpoenas in connection with PMA. Federal investigators have raided PMA and Kuchera Defense Systems, another recipient of Murtha's largesse.

Pelosi and her team have circled the wagons around Murtha, but even her famous veiled threats may not keep Democrats from drifting off the reservation. Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) is about to propose his ninth resolution calling for an ethics committee investigation into PMA. Each time he puts the resolution before the House, he picks up a few more Democrat votes. There are many first-term Demos who owe their seats to the Abramoff scandal, and they aren't inclined to defend a dirty pol like Murtha.

Kennedy Unveils Health Care Plan

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee released a draft health care bill this week, and longtime supporters of committee Chair Ted Kennedy (D-MA) are lauding it as his legislative masterpiece. (Translation: It's an unrealistic piece of liberal claptrap that can only be paid for by nailing the American taxpayer to the wall.) The "American Health Choices Act" is calling for a complete overhaul of how the American health care system works by transferring all the power to the federal government. The price tag is, ominously, yet to be determined.

According to the bill, insurance companies will be expected to offer a basic level of care to all comers regardless of pre-existing conditions or other factors, and they will be required to provide coverage for children through age 26. (Of course, most liberals remain children even after age 26, but we digress.) Private insurers are also expected to cut their own throats by allowing the government to cap profits, by providing mandatory detailed reports about how premiums are spent, and to compete with a government-sponsored health care access plan that will offer cheaper insurance for Americans not covered by Medicare or Medicaid.

Furthermore, all employers would be required to provide health insurance to their employees regardless of company size, a mandate that will crush a large number of small companies. Medicaid would be expanded to 150 percent of the poverty level, and since everyone will be required to have health insurance, aid will be provided to people earning up to 500 percent above the poverty level, or $110,000 for a family of four.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23
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New & Notable Legislation

The 900-page House energy bill sponsored by Democrats Henry Waxman (CA) and Edward Markey (MA), on the surface, is all about cap-and-trade (a.k.a. "cap and tax"). But there are also regulations about building codes. Once the purview of local and state governments, the bill demands that building codes for new buildings after 2012 must be 30 percent more efficient than they would be under current regulations. By 2016, the requirement rises to 50 percent more efficient. The idea is that a unifying national standard for building codes will develop as localities and private developers scramble to meet the new requirements. If a new standard does not develop, then the Energy Department will have the power to step in and draft a national code all by itself. States that don't comply will have their codes overwritten without consultation.

Meanwhile, House Republicans introduced an alternate energy bill this week with a heavy focus on nuclear power -- 100 new reactors over the next 20 years. None have been built since 1978. There are also incentives for further oil drilling, particularly off the Gulf Coast and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

The Senate passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act this week, granting regulatory power over the tobacco industry to the Food and Drug Administration. The House first passed the bill in April and Barack Obama has promised to sign it.

GOP Blocks Census Nominee

With preparations well underway and time winding down before the new national census commences early next year, Senate Republicans are blocking confirmation of President Obama's choice to conduct the count, Dr. Robert Groves. Without Republican strategists officially saying so, the most likely reason for the delay is Dr. Groves' expertise in the practice of sampling, or the inexact "science" of making up a count based on the number someone believes would be populating an area had everyone been willing to stand up and be counted. In other words, counting votes ACORN style.

Despite the insistence by Dr. Groves that sampling would not be used to conduct the count, GOP leaders see that too much is at stake in future elections and federal appropriations to take the chance, and, accordingly, have held up the nomination. Given the Democrats' propensity to count every vote as many times as needed, a bit of skepticism is certainly warranted.

No Land Seizure for Flight 93 Monument

With controversy already swirling around the United Airlines Flight 93 monument planned for rural Pennsylvania -- its crescent shape evokes images of Islam -- federal bureaucrats avoided another black eye by announcing they would refrain from taking land for the site through eminent domain. Instead they have uncharacteristically chosen to negotiate further with landowners. The government wants 500 more acres in order to build a 2,200-acre, $58 million memorial for the plane that crashed in a Pennsylvania field southeast of Pittsburgh on September 11th. The National Park Service is still hoping to have the monument ready for dedication on 9/11/11, the 10th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. A heroic passenger rebellion kept Flight 93's Islamic hijackers from slamming the plane into a Washington-based target, most likely the U.S. Capitol building.

From the Left Field Bleachers

Asked recently if he had spoken to the president, Barack Obama's former pastor and "spiritual mentor" Jeremiah Wright said: "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office. ... They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is." Not surprisingly, Obama's pastor of 20 years wasn't finished. "I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Wright also said Obama should have sent a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, but that the president did not do so for fear of offending Jews and Israel. "Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing [by] the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel." Sounds like Iran really does have an ambassador in the U.S.

Around the World: European Elections

The current global political climate brings to mind a large, bizarre scale. While the U.S., long the bastion of free-market capitalism, slides so quickly leftward, Europe seems to be moving right. While many Americans still hang their hats on the pipe-dream socialism of the Obama regime, European voters are protesting these same socialist ideals, due to their experience with decades of socialism's failures.

Left-leaning parties were dealt a severe blow across Europe last weekend when the citizens of several of the 27 nations composing the European Union -- England, France, Poland, Germany, Spain and Italy, to name a few -- voted in favor of center-right parties. These parties, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, are choosing to forego the tax-and-spend plan favored by American Democrats and are earning the voters' approval for it.

The European Parliament, which for many years held little actual power, can now vote or amend two-thirds of EU laws. But the EU's parliamentary elections also serve as a gauge for political leanings throughout Europe, and the recent results have socialists scrambling to re-evaluate their policies before the individual countries next vote on their own leadership. "The most striking feature of the election results," said Thomas Klau of the European Council on Foreign Relations, "is the fact that center-left parties across Europe, the Social Democrats and Socialists, have not been able to give a plausible answer, political answer, to the economic crisis."

So why haven't American conservatives enjoyed this electoral success in the last few years? As The Washington Post's Anne Applebaum puts it, "Lip service was paid to 'small government' and 'reduced spending' while successive Republican-led Congresses, hand in hand with a Republican White House, enlarged government and spent like crazy. How can they now criticize Obama's possibly lethal budget deficits when their own were so vast, so recently?" Vast is relative, of course -- George W. Bush's last deficit was less than a quarter of Obama's first one. Still, point taken.

NATIONAL SECURITY
Warfront With Jihadistan: Miranda Rights for Terrorists

The Weekly Standard reports, "The Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according [to] a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee." So apparently, at the time of capture, Afghani combatants have to be told in Pashto, Arabic, Dari, Uzbek, Turkmen, Balochi or Pashai, "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense."

If they "lawyer up," captured enemy combatants can demand attorneys paid for by the U.S. government, not to mention that they have been given the right to withhold information that could save American lives. Under current practice, any trial would be in the U.S. but it is not clear which law would be applied. Has U.S. security been increased? Will the world think better of the U.S.? The answer to both is a resounding, "No." Blogger Richard Fernandez gets it right: "This is the logical conclusion to [the] Obama administration's approach to combating terrorism. Actually scratch that. America is no longer fighting terrorists, just investigating alleged crimes."

In other news, Sky News reports, "Two passengers with names linked to Islamic terrorism were on the Air France flight which crashed with the loss of 228 lives." The report continues, "Flight AF 447 crashed in the mid-Atlantic en route to Paris during a violent storm. While it is certain there were computer malfunctions, terrorism has not been ruled out."

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23
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North Korea Sentences Reporters to 12 Years

North Korea continued to execute its Axis of Evil Playbook this week, sentencing two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor for their "crimes." Their crime was getting too close to the Chinese-North Korean border in pursuit of a story about Korean refugees. This particular ploy -- holding westerners under trumped up charges and then extracting concessions for releasing them -- is old hat to dictators everywhere. Iran recently held American citizen Roxana Saberi on "spying" charges before magnanimously releasing her. Two years ago it was the 15 British sailors and marines who were first to be tried and hanged, but were then released by Ahmadinejad himself in a media spectacle worthy of Hollywood. And Patriot readers will no doubt remember the patently absurd image of Slobodan Milosevic holding hands with Jesse Jackson in a photo-op prayer session before Milosevic agreed to release three U.S. Army soldiers captured when they strayed too close to the Kosovo-Serbia border in 1999.

The two journalists held in North Korea were working on a project for Current TV, whose chairman is none other than former Vice President Al Gore. There is talk that President Obama may send Gore to discuss the journalists' release. We will credit Gore, if he does go, with honestly wanting to protect two people who were working for him. But if Gore is given any authorization to accept conditions from Pyongyang on America's behalf, or to apologize for any alleged U.S. wrongdoing in order to win the journalists' release, it will be an enormous mistake. That is precisely what North Korea wants, and it will reinforce that rogue regime's belief in the continued usefulness of this kind of extortion.

Judicial Benchmarks: SCOTUS Leaves 'Don't Ask' Alone

On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a constitutional challenge to the Pentagon's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy that effectively bans open homosexuals from serving in the U.S. military. This policy, we should remind, traces its lineage to Democrat President Bill Clinton, who had initially tried to end the military's ban on homosexuals in 1993. But the ensuing firestorm led him to quickly backtrack and adopt the "Don't ask" policy. Monday's Supreme Court move puts the ball squarely back in Obama's court for resolution.

Given the president's predilection for avoiding controversial decisions, it wouldn't be surprising to see this issue hang around for a while longer. However, Obama's lefty minions are getting impatient. On the campaign trail, Obama pledged to reverse "Don't ask," yet the administration requested that the Supreme Court decline to hear this case -- because it then wouldn't get stuck defending the Army's position. James Pietrangelo II, the former Army infantryman and plaintiff in the case the high court declined to review, said of The One: "He's a coward, a bigot, and a pathological liar." Ouch.

While recent polls indicate that the American public may be more receptive to homosexuals serving openly in the military, we must remember the military's purpose. The U.S. military is not a lab for lefty (or righty, for that matter) social experiments, but it should serve only as the absolute best at bringing controlled, sustained violence against an enemy in order to defeat it. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything and everything that detracts from that goal, such as endangering unit cohesion by allowing open homosexuality, must be avoided.

U.S. Army Birthday and Flag Day 2009

Sunday is the 234th birthday of the United States Army, born of the desire to defend liberty and spread its flame. As the U.S. Army now leads the way in the Long War, let us not forget to pray for these brave Patriots standing in harm's way and their families awaiting their safe return.

Sunday is also Flag Day. Our flag is a beacon of liberty, a symbol of hope for all people who "hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed -- that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...." On this Flag Day, we American Patriots display and pay homage to our national flag.

For further information on the history of our flag, as well as proper etiquette and protocol, take advantage of The Patriot's resources on our Historic Documents' Flag page.

BUSINESS & ECONOMY
Chrysler's Off-Again, On-Again Sale

The Obama regime's plan to sell Chrysler to Fiat was nearly wrecked by the U.S. Supreme Court this week, but the deal was completed Wednesday after the Supreme Court lifted a daylong stay. The sale, which would force senior secured lenders to write down their loans to Chrysler, violates the right of secured lenders to be paid in full before lower-priority creditors, and some of those lenders sought to block the Obama administration's plan. Meanwhile, Obama's constituents, the United Auto Workers, hold 55 percent of the company in a retiree health care trust, while Fiat would initially obtain only 20 percent. Administration officials expressed surprise at the secured creditors who dared to challenge the government's plan to give their private equity to Obama's political backers in exchange for nothing, but it is clear that the rights of creditors have been under attack by the president since he took office.

The bigger issue is constitutional: The administration is clearly overstepping its authority with the bailout and takeover of Chrysler and GM. Specifically, the courts must oversee bankruptcies, not the executive branch. Congress could have played a role by rewriting bankruptcy law, but it did not do so here. And Obama likely will never be held to account.

Regulatory Commissars: 10 Banks to Repay TARP

There are signs of hope on the bailout front, with 10 of the top banks that took TARP money receiving "permission" to reacquire their independence earlier than initially forecast. That sentence tells one all that is necessary to understand TARP. While the Leftmedia continually report that TARP funds are loans, in reality, they are equity acquisitions that gave the government an ownership stake. Having to seek permission to reacquire independence sounds a bit nefarious, perhaps exhibiting the "best practices" of the local loan shark. Of course the difference between the local mob loan shark and the U.S. Treasury is that Tony Soprano knows that his enterprise is illegal; Timothy Geithner doesn't care. If Tony gets caught, he risks going to jail. But Timmy can ignore the law with the blessings of a compliant press.

We've said it before, but it still applies: The proper role of government is as the enforcer of laws, the mediator of disputes, and the principal investor (i.e., payer) for those projects whose public benefits exceed their private benefits (roads, bridges, etc.). Government has no role in picking the winners and losers in private enterprise, and its ownership of an equity stake in any company is unconstitutional and a conflict of interest with its primary responsibilities.

This Week's 'Braying Jackass' Award

"Several financial institutions are set to pay back $68 billion to taxpayers. It's worth noting that in the first round of repayments from these companies, the government has actually turned a profit. This is not a sign that our troubles are over. Far from it. The financial crisis this administration inherited is still creating painful challenges for businesses and families alike, and I think everybody sees it in their own individual districts. But it is a positive time." --Barack Obama, dictating to businesses, but still passing the buck to his predecessor whenever possible

EFCA = Cash Cow for Big Labor

A recent study commissioned by the Workforce Fairness Institute determined that passage of the grossly misnamed Employee Free Choice Act, also known as "card check," would result in labor unions netting a political windfall in the billions of dollars over the next decade. Taking the claim by Service Employees International Union president Andy Stern that an additional 1.5 million union workers would sign up each year after passage of EFCA, the WFI study extrapolated the likely amount of dues payments each worker would be forced to cough up, combined with trends in political giving by Big Labor, to come up with its figure. The WFI estimates that forced contributions could reach $320 million annually by 2020. It almost goes without saying that the vast majority of union political contributions accrue to Democrat candidates and causes.

While union spokesmen were critical of the study, one may have unwittingly let slip a kernel of truth by noting, "How we spend money on politics is not a reflection of membership." Since many of those union members contributed to the column of "Reagan Democrats" and later became faithful Republicans, the huge disparity of political donations to liberal Democrats indeed belies the political makeup of the rank-and-file. That will likely continue to skew farther away from genuine representation if EFCA becomes law.

[nChrist]

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The Patriot Post Digest 9-23
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CULTURE & POLICY
Second Amendment: Museum Shooting Fallout

"Two members of Washington D.C.'s city council used Wednesday's shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to draw attention to a gun amendment that has stalled a bill that would grant D.C. a representational vote in Congress," reports The Hill. DC Councilman Michael Brown warned, "Loosening the District's gun laws is a deadly proposition." That reaction was predictable. We should point out to Councilman Brown, however, that this was not a law-abiding citizen who shot and killed a security guard at the museum. And DC's current gun laws (not to mention murder laws) were not sufficient to deter 88-year-old James von Brunn.

Meanwhile, Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center pontificated, "I think this latest round of killing once again shows how ridiculous the criticism from the right of the Department of Homeland Security report was. That whole brouhaha was absurd." In other words, "See, we told you so." Von Brunn was a Holocaust-denying white supremacist, which, to leftist nuts like Potok, means he's automatically "right wing." On the contrary, von Brunn is a socialist who hates Christians, Fox News, The Weekly Standard and other "neocons," and proclaimed in a blog post, "SOCIALISM, represents the future of the West." Besides, if anti-Semitism is a marker of being right wing, what does that make Jeremiah Wright?

Faith and Family: Tiller's Clinic Closed

In the wake of the murder of abortionist George Tiller, his family has announced the permanent closure of his Kansas clinic -- one of the few in the country that performed partial-birth abortions. Fellow partial-birth abortionist Warren Hern called the outcome "hideous," claiming, "The anti-abortion movement got exactly what they wanted. ... The question is, 'Who's next?'" Despite Hern's statement, however, not one pro-life organization has -- or will -- condone Tiller's murder.

Indeed, far from asking "Who's next?" one group is asking, "What's next?" for the clinic's property. Operation Rescue, one of the nation's most prominent pro-life organizations, has expressed interest in buying the property to complement its Wichita office location which, incidentally, is also a former abortion clinic. Such a conversion is not unprecedented. In Tennessee, for example, the National Memorial for the Unborn and AAA Women's Services, which provides education and alternatives to abortion, occupy a former clinic where more than 35,000 babies were killed.

While some believe the best answer to Tiller's murder is more murder -- the Philadelphia Women's Center, for example, gave away free abortions to "honor" Tiller, and Nebraska abortion provider LeRoy Carhart has promised his "help," pledging, "There will be a place in Kansas for the later second- and the medically indicated third-trimester patients very soon" -- we support Operation Rescue's approach, and we hope the site where thousands of unborn babies met a horrific death will soon help women choose life.

Climate Change This Week: NASA Says Sun Warms Earth

Though snow fell in North Dakota this week, we have a breaking update on global warming from Daily Tech: "A study from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland looking at climate data over the past century has concluded that solar variation has made a significant impact on the Earth's climate. The report concludes that evidence for climate changes based on solar radiation can be traced back as far as the Industrial Revolution."

Now, we understand that the idea that the sun could be affecting the earth's climate might be hard to believe, but the evidence is persuasive. Thomas Woods, solar scientist at the University of Colorado in Boulder says, "The fluctuations in the solar cycle impacts Earth's global temperature by about 0.1 degree Celsius, slightly hotter during solar maximum and cooler during solar minimum. The sun is currently at its minimum, and the next solar maximum is expected in 2012." We were relieved that the NASA report went back to blaming humans for warming in spite of their own evidence to the contrary. After all, we can only tolerate so many inconvenient truths on the subject.

And Last...

President Obama announced last Friday that Washington attorney Kenneth Feinberg would be his new "compensation czar," tasked with setting salaries and bonuses at firms that receive taxpayer money for bailouts. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner clarified that the administration doesn't plan on "capping pay" or "setting forth precise prescriptions for how companies should set compensation," but rather, with the help of Congress and the SEC, will simply rein in past practices that have led to excessive risk taking. Sure -- and we have some oceanfront property in Arizona.

As we noted last Friday, the czar position is called the "Special Master for Compensation." Blogger Michelle Malkin sheds some light on the term, writing, "The term 'special master' is a legal term referring to court-appointed volunteers who ensure that judicial orders are followed. In common law, 'special masters in lunacy' handled psychiatric cases." She then quips, "'Masters in lunacy' fits the Obama administration nicely, doesn't it?" Indeed, Michelle, all too well.

*****

Veritas vos Liberabit -- Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot's editors and staff.

(Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm's way around the world, and for their families -- especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)