Clive Bibby: Dead Man Walking

I suppose it is too much to expect those who have spent the last nine years devoted to the proposition that Donald Trump is a threat to democracy to finally admit his misdemeanours pale into insignificance compared to the Biden family and all who promoted that lot as the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Lushington D. Brady: One Con Job after Another

For all their blatherskite about “saving democracy”, the Democrats are stomping all over it.

Politics is rarely without irony, if not staggering hypocrisy. Take, for instance, “independent” MP Zali Steggall demanding “truth in political advertising” laws. But, should such laws have existed in the US, the Democrats would be out of a job, if not their very name.

Richard Hargy: Donald Trump and the gathering darkness threatening US politics

In America, we resolve our differences at the ballot box … not with bullets. The power to change America should always rest in the hands of the people, not in the hands of a would-be assassin.

So said the US president, Joe Biden, in an Oval Office address to the nation the day after the attempted assassination of his rival in November’s presidential election.
US president, Joe Biden, calls on America to ‘lower the temperature’ in US politics.

Ross Meurant: Trump's Security Service Failed

Former President Donald Trump’s narrow escape from a bullet between the eyes, resonates.  How much closer can one be to death’s door, than have a rifle bullet slice your right ear?

In my assessment, the US Secret Service, failed Mr Trump.

“Close Protection” i.e. close-by Security Agents, tasked with being within a radius of 5 meters – front, rear, left side, right side, is elementary protection-cover for, “risk” persons.

American Presidents, are all, “high risk” targets.  “High Risk” should have two circles of security: 5 meters and an inner, 1 meter second circle.

Clive Bibby: Move for dismissal - Donald Trump and the case against him

Watching the courtroom drama involving Donald Trump on US TV last week, one couldn’t escape the “elephant in the room” which of course is the blood lust combination of those arraigned against the former President.

Their determination to “Get Trump” has reached farcical proportions and is an insult to the sanctity of the whole justice system in that once great country.

It was more like a rerun of the Aussie classic, “The Castle” where Darryl Kerrigan is defending himself against those who regard his presence in their midst an inconvenient obstacle they must remove with or without the help of a court whose true function should be - the delivery of justice fairly to ever member of society, no matter who they are now or were in the office they once held.

Clive Bibby: For whom the bell tolls - it tolls for thee

There have been multiple interpretations of this famous Hemingway line - I choose to use it as a characterisation of the US political situation as it uncovers the corruption during the period of hegemony in the years 2021 and 2022 when the Presidency and the House of Representatives were controlled by the Democrats. 

Yes, there have been times when multiple control has occurred during Republican administrations but it is hard to remember a time when one party has spent so much of its energies trying to destroy an ex President and his political legacy. 

It has been a vendetta, the likes of which we are unlikely to see again because the consequences of that obsessive behaviour will have repercussions that no one envisaged when this witch-hunt began. 

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Did Trump ‘incite’ that crowd?

"You can’t incite what was already going to happen" - Trump defence attorney at the second impeachment trial

Q: Did Trump ‘incite’ the mob that trashed the Capitol on 6 January?

A: No or yes, depending on what you read into that word.

Turning to my computer thesaurus, ‘incite’ can mean, amongst other things, ‘stir up’ and ‘rouse’, or ‘bring about’ and ‘cause’. The first two of these distance Trump’s words that day from the specific outcome of the rally, viz the sacking of the Capitol; therefore, ‘no’. The second two forge a direct, causal connection between the words and that specific outcome; therefore, ‘yes’.

Lloyd Marcus: This Black American Deems Floyd Protests Unnecessary

As a black American, Democrats and fake news media demand that I agree with the George Floyd protests. I say the protests are unnecessary and are totally politically motivated. The American people of all races including President Trump have expressed their outrage over the wrongful death of Mr. Floyd. The officer who killed Mr. Floyd has been charged with murder. The three officers who watched the abuse have been fired and investigated. So, where’s the beef? Why are opportunists looting stores, burning businesses, and beating up whites in the name of demanding justice? Who is opposing justice for Mr. Floyd? The answer is no one.

Therefore, what is the real purpose of the riots, hate, violence, and chaos in our streets? The answer is politics. Democrats and fake news media believe by generating racial hate, they can ensure that blacks will vote against Trump in November.

Melanie Phillips: The Democrats' Proposed Banana Republic

I wrote here that the American Democratic party had become the party of hate. Subsequent events have not only amply confirmed that view but further suggest that the Democrats now pose a real threat to America, in terms of both physical violence and a threat to due process and the US constitution.

Two days after the Senate confirmed Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell told a press conference that GOP senators were “literally under assault” during the confirmation process.

“These demonstrators, I’m sure some of them were well-meaning citizens. But many of them were obviously trying to get in our faces, to go to our homes. Basically almost attack us in the halls of the capitol. There was a full-scale effort to intimidate.”

Melanie Phillips: America’s Revolutionary Moment

Finally – finally! – a Republican has expressed appropriate fury, disgust and contempt for the way in which the Democratic Party turned Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court into a political lynching.

Christine Blasey Ford had accused Kavanaugh of having sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers in high school. She had taken her allegation, made for the first time after 36 years, to Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Feinstein sat on it for six weeks until virtually the last moment in the Senate’s consideration of Kavanaugh’s nomination.

Melanie Phillips: America's Party of Hate and Subversion

What’s going on in the US is simply terrifying. Almost every day seems to bring a fresh demonstration of a hate-driven stampede towards mob rule – by people who, in Orwellian fashion, claim to be acting to uphold American values.

Look at how the Senate judiciary committee confirmation hearing into the Supreme Court candidacy of Judge Brett Kavanaugh turned into a circus on day one. It is standard procedure in the US that when the presidency changes political colour, the political makeup of the Supreme Court may also change as a result.

Nicholas Kerr: Trump and our divided country

Let me preface my comments. First, I didn’t support Trump, but I’m an optimist, and like Obama, Clinton and others said following the election, I think he deserves a chance.

Second, I don’t call myself conservative. In fact I try to avoid the use of labels. As I explained in my blog post “Less labels, more meeting of minds,” I don’t think they help debates or conversations. Labeling a person or policy as left-wing or right-wing, conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat, introduces biases and barriers and does nothing to advance a discussion.

Richard Epstein from the US: Obamacare's Slow Death?

Back in 2010, President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress took the wrong fork in the road to health care reform. To be sure, the case for some reform was very strong, given that the mixed health care system in the United States provided inferior health care at premium prices for large portions of the population. But identifying a problem does not point the way to the necessary cure. What is needed is a clear theory of what has gone wrong and why.

In this regard, there were two diametrically opposed paths for reform. The first was to double down on failed regulatory and subsidy strategies. The second was to deregulate in an effort to unleash market forces to meet the strong and persistent demand for health care services. Unfortunately, in 2010, the road taken was the former: double down on combining government regulation with government subsidy.

Richard Epstein: The Obamacare Train Wreck

Defunding or repealing the law is practically impossible, but here’s how we can fix it.

It is now common knowledge that the bugs in the Obamacare website have been embedded in the system from the start. For the past two weeks, not only have many individuals found it impossible to access the website, but they are often frozen in place once they pass through the initial portal. The problems will just get worse. The current law requires extensive communications between enrollees and their chosen insurance carriers, as well as massive interaction with both federal and state organizations. As a result, web traffic builds up behind bottlenecks and leads to massive frustration. As I warned last May, watching Obamacare unravel is a painful business.

Richard Epstein: The Dream Derailed

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of over 200,000 people. The crowd had gathered to protest the dangerous state into which race relations had fallen in the summer of 1963. King’s memorable speech was part of “the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,” and its solemn cadences ring as powerfully today they did 50 years ago. No one who heard it could forget its immensely powerful assault on segregation, the demise of which no respectable person—northerner or southerner—mourns today. No one should forget that King’s speech was a major catalyst in moving a still reluctant nation to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Richard Epstein: In Praise of Income Inequality

You cannot make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

One month into the second term of the Obama administration, the economic prognosis looks mixed at best. On growth, the U.S. Department of Commerce reports the last quarter of 2012 produced a small decline in gross domestic product, without any prospects for a quick reversal. On income inequality, the most recent statistics (which only go through 2011) focus on the top 1 percent.

Richard Epstein: Is Employment a “Human Right”?

Efforts to stamp out so-called discrimination in the labor market will kill jobs and stifle economic growth.

Today’s economic trends are not promising. In the United States, the European community and Japan, the prospect of dismal growth is too often met with desperate measures that only make matters worse. There are endless claims about the failure of austerity to spur growth, and impassioned attacks on the folly of unbridled spending that will drown the nation in debt. What a choice!

Richard Epstein: The Boy Scouts Dilemma

Rather than be ripped apart over admitting gay people, the Boy Scouts should split in two. 

Last week, a deeply divided Boy Scouts of America (BSA) opted to delay its decision about whether to admit gays into its ranks until May. The decision, which I recently discussed with the Wall Street Journal, should come as no surprise. The delay is the first line of defense against an internal bloodletting. In the short term, delay allows a fragile coalition to buy time to forge a compromise by acquiring new information and considering fresh proposals that will help the organization stay together.

Richard Epstein: Franklin Delano Obama

Eighty years ago, Franklin Roosevelt rode into office at the height of the depression. In many ways, the election of 1932 has much in common with the current campaign. The economic record from 1929 to 1933 was grim. Unemployment rates spiked to close to 25 percent from a pre-1929 figure of about 4 percent. World trade was down by about a third, partly in response to the ill-advised Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, which sparked retaliation from around the globe. And a persistent deflation in the order of 20 percent meant many debtors could not repay their debt with these new expensive dollars.

Today’s situation is nowhere near as desperate as it was then, but there is little doubt that the nation has become stagnant and uneasy. Real economic growth has slowed and the future likely holds higher levels of insecurity and lower rates of growth. Today’s parents are no longer confident that their children will lead lives as fulfilling and as prosperous as their own. Falling expectations lead to rising discontent, and discontent leads to clarion calls for action.

Richard Epstein: Law of Unintended Consequences – The Obamacare Quagmire

Now that the Supreme Court has held President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) constitutional, mounting evidence suggests that the statute’s most ardent defenders may well come to rue the day. During the legal struggles over the ACA, its defenders both on and off the Supreme Court took for granted the proposition that the law would deliver on its major promise, which was to extend affordable coverage to the over 47 million people who now lack healthcare insurance, without disrupting the protection that others currently enjoy.

Unfortunately, these bold pronouncements failed to take into account the old and powerful economic law of unintended consequences. Sometimes these are positive, which is why the selfish actions of ordinary individuals in competitive markets prove socially beneficial. Adam Smith said that each individual “is led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” But those unintended consequences often turn bad in connection with the many forms of government regulation that limit the scope of contractual freedom, which the ACA does in a big way.