David Applegate

Like the camel that gets its nose under the tent, once the federal government butts into people’s business it’s very hard to get it out. But in a per curiam decision in Zubik v. Burwell on May 16, 2016, the Supreme Court may have indicated that even in the age of the nanny state, even Supreme Court Justices can abide only so much.

“The Revolution devours its children,” wrote French royalist Jacques Mallet du Pan in 1793, but in the case of the American left, the children are now devouring their masters, both literally and figuratively. For the progressive war on free speech is nowhere more evident than on campus, where it has taken on sinister aspects completely apart from Title IX, about which we wrote in Part Two of this series.

It’s generally taken as a given that the American left is in favor of individual freedoms, but when it comes to the First Amendment that seems hardly any longer to be the case. A few examples should suffice. Let’s start with one: what can only be described as the Left’s irrational obsession with attempting to overturn the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, which by now has become a virtual plank in the official Democratic Presidential Platform.

Hasn’t the nation had enough of one-branch government run by a sometime lawyer and former law professor?

As I‘ve noted before, picking on The New York Times is so easy that I really should stop doing it, but sometimes it just has to be done. Especially when the author is Paul Krugman, the man whose so-called Nobel Prize in Economics apparently makes him an expert on all things political, in particular the Republican Party. Take Krugman’s Friday, August 7, 2015, column (please!).

Downtown Chicago, where I spend most of my time, has beggars on nearly every corner. Many of them have regular perches, like fishermen with favorite spots. Others, more creative – and usually more crafty – seem to wander around instead. But except for the licensed sellers of Streetwise and a truly unfortunate few, most of them are hustlers.

The proposed wage New York State wage increase, limited to fast food restaurants with thirty or more locations, “doesn’t do much to raise incomes for workers who don’t work at fast-food chains,” the Times helpfully points out, “[a]nd it imposes higher costs on some businesses than others; in this case, much higher, because fast-food chains will be required to pay about $6 an hour more than their nonchain competitors.” Good points, both.

Entitled “Democrats Wage a National Fight Over Voter Rules,” the Times column was subtitled “G.O.P. Sees Lawsuits on IDs and Access as a Campaign Ploy” and featured, above the fold, a gleefully-smiling Hillary Clinton looking her best in a blue suit with her hands clasped in front of her almost in prayer.

Dr. Emanuel’s real reason for discouraging annual physicals seems to be his expert-driven insistence on making Obamacare work despite the odds. In essence, the Affordable Care Act is yet another wealth transfer scheme, from the healthy to the sickly, from the middle class to the lower class.

In yet another moment in which Barack Obama could have made a difference and was perhaps uniquely qualified, the President was once again tested and once again found wanting.

For as Blow then recounts, Obama’s 2013 response to Republicans was: “You don’t like a particular policy or a particular president? Then argue for your position. Go out there and win an election.” Which Republicans, of course, promptly did, in both 2010 and 2014.

Lower the voting age to 16? Better to raise it a few years to, say, 26.

The United States is now manifestly seen as a weak horse even by its allies, a nation in military retreat throughout the world against its three most dangerous adversaries: Russia, China, and militant Islamic fascism.