CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS

Megan McArdle discusses the liberals as the new authoritarians.

Jonathan Haidt, one of my favorite social scientists, studies morality by presenting people with scenarios and asking whether what happened was wrong. Conservatives and liberals give strikingly different answers, with extreme liberals claiming to place virtually no value at all on things like group loyalty or sexual purity.

Jeremy Frimer, the author of the piece, noticed that socialists seemed unable to tolerate even mild questioning of Che Guevara’s eminently questionable legacy. Frimer is a researcher at the University of Winnipeg, and he decided to investigate. What he found is that liberals are actually very comfortable with authority and obedience -- as long as the authorities are liberals (“should you obey an environmentalist?”). And that conservatives then became much less willing to go along with “the man in charge.”

CRITICISM OF AMERICAN DOCTOR WHO CAUGHT EBOLA

Ann Coulter, the darling of "non-compassionate" conservatives, blames the American doctor for catching Ebola.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter criticized the American doctor who contracted Ebola in Africa, arguing that his missionary efforts had caused more harm than good.

“Whatever good Dr. Kent Brantly did in Liberia has now been overwhelmed by the more than $2 million already paid by the Christian charities Samaritan’s Purse and SIM USA just to fly him and his nurse home in separate Gulfstream jets, specially equipped with medical tents, and to care for them at one of America’s premier hospitals,” wrote Coulter in a post for Human Events.
She calls him a "narcisstic Christian."

CONSERVATIVES LEARN FROM RADICAL LEFT

An interesting thesis--the 1960s have returned:  many conservatives and the Tea Party have learned from the tactics used by Saul Alinsky and Occupy Wall Street to let their voices be heard.

In 2012, the conservative site Townhall.com ran an essay arguing that conservatives should see Saul Alinsky's famous how-to guide Rules for Radicals not as a reason to mock their opponents, but as a useful guide for their own protest. Listing Alinsky's 13 rules for shifting the balance of power between the Haves and Have-Nots (which Alinsky framed in economic terms), the site's John Hawkins suggested that conservatives "learn from what he wrote and give the Left a taste of its own medicine."

If this is true, expect more confrontations between Left and Right.

DID SADDAM HUSSEIN HAVE WMD?

With ISIS closing in on Baghdad news reports stated that ISIS forces were closing in on an Iraqi WMD facility. Obviously this raises many concerns about how terrorists would use these weapons.   But we have been told for years by the media and liberals that Saddam did not have WMD, which obviously undermines Bush's reason for invading Iraq in 2003.  Liberals and the media have argued that Bush lied, destroying the neo-con rationale for the invasion.

But now we hear that there was a WMD facility of some kind so did Saddam have WMD or not?  Obviously he used something to kill Kurds.  A Frontline PBS (liberal) report indicated that Saddam did have some kind of WMD program which was more than just a plan or a few buildings.

CNN has an interesting timeline which indicates that in 2002 Iraq submitted a 12,000 page (!) report on its WMD programs.  And in January 2003 some WMD warheads are discovered, but they are largely empty (but could presumably be filled with agents).  In February Secretary of State Collin Powell gave his speech to the UN saying that Iraq lied to UN inspectors.  By March the US has invaded.  CIA director George Tennant said, regarding Iraqi WMD, that it was a “slam dunk.”

Hot Air (conservative) argued in 2010 that WikiLeaks proves the US found WMD in Iraq.  But the Guardian (liberal) in 2004 stated that UN and US inspectors found no credible program.

In 2012 Time  (liberal) reported on the CIA’s confession that it was “bamboozled” when it reported Saddam had WMD.

Commentary (conservative) argues that the weapons ISIS finds will not be usable, but reflects on how the weapons could have been used if Iraq had not been invaded.

What does all of this mean?  It would appear that Saddam Hussein did not have a massive delivery capability for WMD, but he did have something and may have been working on building more.  Whether Bush should have invaded can still be debated, but the media myth that there was no WMD is not supported by the evidence.  However, it would not appear to be a massive buildup of WMD that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.

7/12/14 UPDATE.  From Wired:  "WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq -- With Surprising Results."

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal that for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

IRS DRAFTING SECRET RULES

From the Daily Caller.

The Obama administration’s Treasury Department and former IRS official Lois Lerner conspired to draft new 501(c)(4) regulations to restrict the activity of conservative groups in a way that would not be disclosed publicly, according to the House Committee on Ways and Means.

No one would then no about why an organization was denied approval (or approved).

At least 292 conservative groups were subjected to unfair targeting between 2010 and 2012, against six liberal groups that were allegedly given similar treatment.
I guess the IRS believes liberals are more honest.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION GOES AFTER CONSERVATIVES

From Ace of Spades. 

Coincidence: Hollywood's only conservative group is getting close IRS nonprofit scrutiny
Another Coincidence: James O'Keefe Group Being Audited by NY. Again.
Yet Another Coincidence: Dinesh D'Souza Indicted For Election Fraud
Still Another Coincidence: IRS Proposes New 501(c)(4) Rules That Just Happen to Cover Most Tea Party Groups
Judge Strikes Down Wisconsin's 'John Doe' Subpoenas

From Ann Althouse.  The politics of the Dinesh d'Souza prosecution.  The Feds and media did not seem concerned about the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns using the web to collect monetary gifts and disabling certain credit card information.

From WAPO.  An Edward's donor was charged with a much lesser crime, but he was a Democrat. 

And then there is the IRS scandal which Holder and the media are not to be concerned about.  The IRS Scandal, Day 259.

BENGHAZI, OBAMA & CENSORSHIP

The story, from Greta Van Susteren, of how the White House tried to get Fox News to stop covering Benghazi.

LIBERAL BILLIONAIRES

The media has a lot to say about conservative fat cats giving money to conservative causes, but they seem to ignore how liberal fat cats also try to influence politics by supporting Democrats.

DEMOCRATS IN TROUBLE OVER OBAMACARE

Republicans and conservatives are going after these 10 vulnerable Senate Democrats for pledges they made about Obamacare.

Last week, President Obama apologized for misleading the American public with his false claim that "if you like your insurance, you can keep it." Without this assurance, it is unlikely ObamaCare would have passed. Obama was not the only politician fudging the truth. Most Democrat lawmakers repeated this claim on the campaign trail and in meetings with constituents. If Obama apologized, they should as well, as they are equally culpable.

IRS SCANDAL

A video report from the Wall Street Journal.  There sure is a lot of data supporting the IRS effort to "control" conservative groups while giving liberal groups a walk.  A "hit list" appears to have existed.

From the Christian Science Monitor:

A House Oversight and Government Reform Committee memo suggests that IRS scrutiny of the tea party movement – egged on by liberal media – helped Obama win reelection in 2012.

But what has become clear to many conservatives is that federal agencies going back to 2010 appeared to openly champion liberal causes by, for example, putting on special conferences to show black churches how to express political opinions without losing their tax-exempt status, all the while stonewalling tea party groups with questions ranging from queries about religion to personal relationships.

In 2009 Obama joked about auditing his opponents.

IRS AND THE TEA PARTY

Research indicates that IRS harassment of Tea Party activists may have swayed past elections.  The IRS prevented the Tea Party from organizing voter turn out.

In a new research paper, Andreas Madestam (from Stockholm University), Daniel Shoag and David Yanagizawa-Drott (both from the Harvard Kennedy School), and I set out to find out how much impact the Tea Party had on voter turnout in the 2010 election. We compared areas with high levels of Tea Party activity to otherwise similar areas with low levels of Tea Party activity, using data from the Census Bureau, the FEC, news reports, and a variety of other sources. We found that the effect was huge: the movement brought the Republican Party some 3 million-6 million additional votes in House races. That is an astonishing boost, given that all Republican House candidates combined received fewer than 45 million votes. It demonstrates conclusively how important the party's newly energized base was to its landslide victory in those elections, and how worried Democratic strategists must have been about the conservative movement's momentum.

Update 6/27/2013:  "IRS Auditor Reaffirms that Conservatives, Not Liberals, Were Targeted."  

IRS targeted 292 Tea Party groups and only 6 progressive groups. 

MORE IRS LEAKS

The list of conservative groups who had their IRS returns leaked to opponents keeps growing.  Now a group who opposes gay marriage comes forward with its story of how opponents got its tax returns.

The wife of the former IRS commissioner, Max Shulman, worked for a liberal group which opposed conservatives.  There sure seem to be a large number of potential conflicts of interest.

IRS: A PERSONAL STORY

From National Review.  What happened when Democrats and then the IRS, OSHA, the FBI, and ATF dealt with a business woman who started a Tea Party group.  Government bureaucracy used for political ends.

IRS TREATED LIBERAL GROUPS DIFFERENTLY

From USA Today. While the IRS was asking for much more information about "Tea Party" groups, it was approving liberal groups without asking for the same information.

Tim Carney.   IRS employees overwhelming donate more to liberal Democrats. . .and some employees are activist Democrats.

In the past three election cycles, the Center for Responsive Politics' database shows about $474,000 in political donations by individuals listing "IRS" or "Internal Revenue Service" as their employer.

This money heavily favors Democrats: $247,000 to $145,000, with the rest going to political action committees. (Oddly, half of those GOP donations come from only two IRS employees, one in Houston and one in Annandale, Va.).

Did Harry Reid get Romney's tax returns from the IRS?  In the 2012 election Reid was talking like he knew what was on Romney's returns--supposedly he hadn't paid taxes for 10 years.

Investor's Daily. 

Obama joked about auditing enemies in 2009. 

Christian, conservative, and pro-Israel groups refused tax exemptions but not Muslim groups.

LIBERAL CRITICISM OF DR. BENJAMIN CARSON

Dr. Carson is the black neurosurgeon who has spoken out criticizing a number of Obama's policies.  It is hard for liberal to deal with blacks who don't follow the Democrat world view.

LIBERALS ATTACK CONSERVATIVE RELIGION

Liberals are wondering if children of conservative religionists will convert to liberalism.  Since liberals aren't haven't children, they need children of conservative families to convert to liberalism.

HARRY DEXTER WHITE

It is interesting to see how facts change political debates.  Harry Dexter White was a spy for the Soviet Union, but for years the left argued that it was just right-wingers making information up about him.  Now Foreign Affairs recognizes that he was indeed a spy.  So the right wins this one.  The issue should be truth and political bias should not stand in the way of finding out what exactly happened. But I haven't heard anyone on the left stand up and admit they were in error on this one.  But could this same thing be happening today?

The truth about White's actions has been clear for at least 15 years now, yet historians remain deeply divided over his intentions and his legacy, puzzled by the chasm between White's public views on political economy, which were mainstream progressive and Keynesian, and his clandestine behavior on behalf of the Soviets. Until recently, the White case has resembled a murder mystery with witnesses and a weapon but no clear motive.

Now we have one. The closest thing to a missing link between the official White and the secret White is an unpublished handwritten essay on yellow-lined notepaper that I found buried in a large folder of miscellaneous scribblings in White's archives at Princeton University. Apparently missed by his previous chroniclers, it provides a fascinating window onto the aspirations and mindset of this intellectually ambitious overachiever at the height of his power, in 1944.

GREECE DISINTEGRATES

Fascists may be taking over in Greece--blog post by Alan Johnson.

Quotes Paul Mason at the BBC:  Last month, the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, warned Europe that his country was on the edge of a Weimar Germany-style social collapse. What I have seen on the streets of Athens convinces me this is not rhetoric. There is a violent far-right party, its MPs committing and inciting violence with impunity; a police force that cannot or will not prevent Golden Dawn from projecting uniformed force on the streets. And a middle class that feels increasingly powerless to turn the situation round.

In addition:  The neo-fascist party Golden Dawn won 6 to 7 percent of the vote in the Greek elections of May and June 2012 and is polling at twice that today, as anger rises against the economic austerity measures of the coalition government of Conservatives, Socialists and the Democratic Left.

Increasing lawlessness may be on the horizon.

HIGHER EDUCATION MOVES FURTHER TO THE LEFT

Academics have always leaned to the left, but now the tilt is even more that way according to a UCLA survey.

Among full-time faculty members at four-year colleges and universities, the percentage identifying as "far left" or liberal has increased notably in the last three years, while the percentage identifying in three other political categories has declined.

In looking at the new data, there is notable variation by sector. Private research universities are the most left-leaning, with 16.2 percent of faculty members identifying as far left, and 0.1 percent as far right. (If one combines far left and liberal, however, private, four-year, non-religious colleges top private universities, 68.6 percent to 67.7 percent.) The largest conservative contingent can be found at religious, non-Roman Catholic four-year colleges, where 23.0 percent identify as conservative and another 0.6 percent say that they are far right.

REDISTRIBUTION RECESSION

A recent book by Casey B. Mulligan (University of Chicago, Department of Economics)  which argues that in helping people incentives to work have been undermined.  There are no longer the same incentives to work.

The social safety net became more generous under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and as a result massively altered employment patterns in the labor market.

The New York Times has a bio of the author.