Posts By Author » Brian Garst

John Stewart’s Speech Served Conservative Ends
31 Oct 2010 7:02 pm

It’s easy to be critical of the attendees at the recent Stewart/Colbert non-political but political non-rally rally, and for good reason. As a group, they are hard to take seriously. Egged on by Stewart’s Daily Show, they routinely confuse conviction for extremism, and the possession of neither information nor principles with moderation. Most of them are actually just standard liberals pretending to be moderate, anyway. There is also room to be critical of the rally itself, as Cat …

You Have the Right to Choose Who You Live With in a Free Society
24 Oct 2010 3:35 pm

We’re not allowed to discuss it in polite company, but the dirty secret of anti-discrimination law is that it violates free choice, as well as the very civil rights it is ostensibly designed to protect. Take the case of a Michigan woman who advertised for a roommate with whom she would be compatible. Specifically, she wanted a Christian roommate. Now, she’s facing a “civil rights” violation.
A civil rights complaint has been filed against a Grand Rapids woman who posted an advertisement at her church last July seeking a Christian …

Understanding Obama’s Fear of the Creator
23 Oct 2010 10:00 am

For the third time, Obama has elected to redact “endowed by their Creator” from a recitation of the text of the Declaration of Independence. No longer a possible fluke, this omission is now a clear pattern. What does it mean?
The reason Obama refuses to say that rights are endowed by our Creator does not come from any religious animosity. The statement itself, after all, was religiously ambiguous. Rather, the point of the phrase is to acknowledge that true rights come from our status as …

Free Labor For Me, But Not For Thee
30 Sep 2010 10:00 am

Government bureaucrats think it is their business to prevent individuals from entering voluntary contracts with companies or organizations if the level of compensation does not meet some arbitrary threshold. Congress has used minimum wage laws to prevent certain arrangements, while the Department of Justice has a set of rules detailing when unpaid internships are considered legal. Naturally, these rules do not apply to government.
At CEI’s Open Market, Brian McGraw points to these rules from the DoJ that won’t apply for the currently advertised unpaid …

Cramer Wrong on Death Tax
12 Sep 2010 11:58 pm

On his Mad Money program, Jim Cramer recently listed 8 items to get the economy moving. He was dead wrong to include a retroactive reinstatement of the death tax in the list. For the sake of argument, I’ll pretend like he didn’t contradict himself by also calling for a freeze on the Bush tax cuts (which included the elimination of the death tax) through 2013, and instead just focus on the incorrect claims he made regarding the death tax.
Cramer said that the death tax is …

Report Sheds Light on Incestuous Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying
12 Sep 2010 9:43 pm

Illinois, like many states, is broke. Its credit is even worse than that of California and its highly publicized financial quagmire. In such a fiscal environment, taxpayers are rightfully demanding that governments tighten up and are increasingly zealous about ensuring that money is spent productively. One way in which they may be surprised to find that local Illinois governments, along with those all over the country, collectively waste millions of dollars is by lobbying other governments for handouts.
Thanks to a recent report conducted …

Don’t Burn The Qur’an, Read It
9 Sep 2010 11:51 am

Way too much coverage has been given to some pastor of a tiny Gainesville church just because he plans to burn the Qur’an on 9/11. While I have no objection to the content of that coverage, which has consisted of near universal condemnation, it’s not surprising to me at all that protecting Muslim sensibilities seems to immediately launch the media into high gear. As far as I’m concerned, this pastor has gotten more attention than he deserves. But the damage is done on that …

The Short-Sightedness Of The Talking Heads
6 Sep 2010 10:45 am

It’s election season. That means every paper, TV news show, magazine, or blog is full of predictions, prognostications and prophesying. More often than not, it seems, the talking heads engaging in such speculation are incredibly short-sighted.
Take this New York Times article which notes the “double-edged sword” the Tea Party poses to the GOP. The author worries about what it will mean for the GOP with Tea Party candidates opposing establishment pols in moderate or blue states, such as Mike Castle in Delaware. The author …

The Left Lies Because You’re Too Stupid for the Truth
15 Aug 2010 2:20 am

The Daily Caller recently reported on a twitter exchange between Matt Yglesias, blogger savant at Think Progress, and and Washington Examiner’s Mark Hemingway. During the discussion, Yglesias basically endorsed lying and deception as legitimate when used to advance the left-wing agenda.
“Fighting dishonesty with dishonesty is sometimes the right thing for advocates to do, yes,” said Yglesias.
The exchange, with Washington Examiner writer Mark Hemingway, came on the heels of a debate between the two on transportation policy.
Yglesias pressed his point with another conservative writer, saying, “Do …

This Blogger is Proudly Unlicensed
7 Aug 2010 12:01 pm

Last time I was in Time Square, I passed a couple people selling humorous Barack Obama condoms on a street corner. I was amused and proud of everything represented by this simple act of commerce: freedom, expression, and capitalism. I am sad to learn now that those same individuals might be the ones in this case, who have just been harassed by the government because they don’t have proper vendor licenses.
The defendants argued that their product was a form of speech, and therefore should be …

Ethics Enforcement Is Rrrrrrrrrracist
1 Aug 2010 11:30 pm

It’s no surprise, in today’s race obsessed political environment, to find yet another instance in which race is being used to deflect from troubling behavior or bad news. This time, the entire idea of ethics is being challenged as racist. You see, there are just too many black members of Congress being investigated for corruption.
Politico reports complaining, and cries of racism, coming from the Congressional Black Caucus regarding the number of their members currently in the spotlight for ethics violations.
The politically charged decisions by …

LeBron’s Migration Mirrors that of the Broader Public
12 Jul 2010 1:11 am

Basketball is not my sport of choice, so I had no vested interest in the outcome of the recent drama surrounding LeBron James. Even though I still consider Florida my home state, I don’t care that he’s chosen to play in Miami. I am, however, struck by the degree to which LeBron’s decision mirrors that of so many ordinary Americans and businesses. Namely, I note that he’s spurned high tax jurisdictions for income-tax free Florida.
Obviously, LeBron made his decision on more than just economic factors, though it’s fair to say …

Sen. Bennett is Behaving Like a Clueless, Bitter Old Fool
10 Jul 2010 2:16 am

When Republican Utah voters decided they wanted a more consistently conservative representative than a 3-term senator who promised to only serve two, defeated incumbent Bob Bennett had a choice to make. He could exit gracefully and be proud of his service, and a career marked without scandal (an admittedly low bar, but an impressive feat among politicians, nonetheless), or he could lash out bitterly. Like an old fool, he has chosen the latter course.
Lashing out at the Tea Party for defeating him, Bennett puts on an air of fake concern …

Faith in Government Regulators is Misplaced
28 Jun 2010 1:17 am

Shakespeare would likely describe the latest major legislation winding its way through Congress as a piece of legislation crafted by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Rather than address the systemic distortions created by prior government policies, and which caused the financial meltdown, policy makers are now “[putting] a lot of faith in the watchful eye of regulators to prevent another financial crisis,” according to the Washington Post.
Nearly two years after tremors on Wall Street set off a historic economic downturn, congressional leaders greenlighted a bill early Friday …

Al Franken’s Bad Judicial Comedy
19 Jun 2010 4:08 pm

Vitriolic left-wing Senator Al Franken has bought into the conservative courts myth. This myth is popular only so far as the courts have not yet completely embraced left-wing “progressive” interpretations of the Constitution that in reality render its existance entirely meaningless. Rather, such views only dominate academia, the political class and almost all levels of the court system below SCOTUS, where it only captures at least 4 of the 9 justices.
Nevertheless, he’s now on the attack against “conservative activism:”
The first-term senator launched a full-throated attack on originalism, the judicial philosophy …

Not All Experience Is Created Equal
12 Jun 2010 1:53 am

Susan Estrich thinks the crop of Republican women winning primaries is problematic because they don’t have enough political experience:
Some years ago, the late New York Times and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist William Safire wrote a great column comparing politicians to plumbers. It was during one of those periods when (like now) experience had become a dirty word in politics and incumbency was a veritable curse. There was nothing worse you could say about someone than to call him a “career politician” — just what California Republican gubernatorial nominee Meg Whitman called …

Thoughtless On Discrimination
23 May 2010 1:02 am

Decades of reflexive animosity toward anything that might even be remotely labeled as discrimination has rendered the modern left braindead. They no longer have the ability to think critically or debate honestly on policy solutions to social problems involving discrimination. Instead, they simply reflexively label anyone who disagrees with their policy as racist/bigoted/homophobe.
Rand Paul is the latest target of this thoughtless assault. Paul’s sin was discussing publicly a fairly standard libertarian position: that federal intervention forbidding private actors from discriminating, such as with parts of the Civil Rights Act, are …

Elites Hate When The People Speak
15 May 2010 7:35 am

Much of the animosity we’ve witnessed directed at the Tea Party over the last year has come from political and cultural elites who find regular people disturbing, if not downright disgusting. The peasants, according to elites, are prone to temper tantrums and just don’t get how things work in the sophisticated political world. That same attitude was on display this last weekend following the primary defeat of Sen. Bob Bennett.
On last Sunday’s Meet the Press, David Brooks described Bennett’s defeat as a “damn outrage.” Liberal E.J. Dionne went a step …

Mayors Daley And Nutter Cross A Line
1 May 2010 3:17 pm

Despite having some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, violence in Chicago has gotten so bad that some local politicians are calling for deployment of the National Guard. It’s bad enough when gun control advocates can’t recognize the failure of their own policies, but now Mayor Daley has taken the anti-Second Amendment agenda to a whole new level. Literally.
Along with several other mayors across the globe, Mayor Daley and Philadelphia Mayor Nutter have signed a resolution which fails to recognize the Constitution as the supreme law of …

New York Times Runs Racist Op-Ed Against Tea Party
18 Apr 2010 3:13 pm

Charles M. Blow, a regular columnist for the New York Times, has taken the already despicable race narrative on the Tea Parties to another level. He begins with a bit of “diversity” hunting:
I had specifically come to this rally because it was supposed to be especially diverse. And, on the stage at least, it was. The speakers included a black doctor who bashed Democrats for crying racism, a Hispanic immigrant who said that she had never received a single government entitlement and a Vietnamese immigrant who said that the Tea …

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