Stupidly...

President Obama says the Cambridge police behaved "stupidly" by arresting Henry Louis Gates.

But to have said as much without having read the police report was...well, for lack of a better word, stupid.

President Obama also says that 'cooler heads should have prevailed' and that arresting Mr. Gates should not have been necessary.

But if cooler heads had prevailed at that White House press conference, Mr. Obama would not have offered comment on a local police matter, and certainly not without studying it closely.

I'm reminded of a great line from a good movie, Forrest Gump:

"Stupid is as stupid does."

Notice that Forrest's mother wasn't concerned so much with what stupid says. Why? Well, because she wasn't stupid.


Now, down in Honduras, word has it that Zelaya wasn't just trying to hold an illegal referendum to unconstitutionally change the constitution, he was planning to illegally steal the illegal referendum. You'll recall that our dear president has called the removal of Zelaya a "coup" and is currently insisting on his reinstatement as president of Honduras.

I'm so glad our president is so smart and so cool-headed. Aren't you?

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I wrote this before reading Rich Lowry's piece, if anybody is wondering. I also highly recommend Heather MacDonald's fine prose--she includes a detailed review of the facts and figures of policing.

The Faint Sound of...Music

That's exactly what this is--at least in my ears.

It has been my fervent hope for some weeks now that the gargantuan economic stimulus farce would lead ultimately to a failure of Cap-and-Trade and ObamaCare.

On the horror scale, a new health entitlement is off the charts. Temporary government spending that merely distorts an already screwy economy and forces a hike in taxes is delicious in comparison because they are much easier to change 5 or 10 years down the road. Cap-and-Trade is only slightly less bad than the entitlement: it will not merely distort the economy, it will stunt future growth potential.

We have the makings of a deep irony: Conservatives thanking Democrats for passing the Stimulus.

It's too early to know if it will come, but I long for the day when we can look at the exit of many Democrat politicians in the legislative and executive branches and say as Willy Wonka did to Charlie,

When they leave here, they'll be completely restored to their normal, terrible old selves. But maybe they'll be a little bit wiser for the wear. Anyway, don't worry about them.

One can hope.
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The Romance is Gone

All of the best stories have told, in some way or another, how the strong differ from one another: the heroic strong man defends the weak, and the wicked strong man takes advantage of them. In the cowboy movies, the good wear white hats; the bad black.

I know international relations aren't supposed to be about romance (I admit: realism keeps nations out of trouble a good deal), but one can't help noticing how ugly it is for the big dogs in the world to rip at the throat of small fry--like Honduras. Especially when strong powers go about the business of oppression without a care in the world--like China.

I think back to the interlude between the World Wars, when the West experienced its strongest revulsion to war. A good deal of romance was attached to Wilson's dream of the League of Nations and the same romance came to its successor, the United Nations. But when the UN condemns constitutional procedures to defend the people's liberty in a small, poor state and keeps regimes like the PRC on the Human Rights Council, the romance is banished like a mist, and a happy romping ground turns to barren desert.

But my expectations of the UN have been low for the entirety of my short life. America was different. It was a place that kept the romance of justice alive, even when it could not always strike the decisive blow and rescue the weak and oppressed. But what is this? I find America delivering kicks into the side of the Central American Republic.

Perhaps I'm putting it too strongly. Hans Bader writes here.

Is this what America has become? Obama, what is this hope?