Here’s Mark Steyn:

The president has a point about “tax breaks.” We have too many. And on the scale of the present tax code that’s a dagger at the heart of one of the most basic principles of free societies — equality before the law. But, of course, the president is not opposed to exemptions and exceptions and special privileges on principle: After all, he’s issued — what is it now? — over a thousand “waivers” for his own Obamacare law. If you knew who to call in Washington, maybe you got one. If you didn’t, tough.

But that’s the point. Big Government on America’s unprecedented money-no-object scale will always be profoundly wasteful (as on that Williamsburg flight), stupid (as at the TSA), and arbitrary (as in those waivers). But it’s not republican in any sense the Founders would recognize. If (like Obama) you’re a lifetime member of the government class, you can survive it. For the rest, it ought to be a source of shame to today’s Americans that this will be the first generation in U.S. history to bequeath its children the certainty of poorer, meaner lives — if not a broader decay into a fetid swamp divided between a well-connected Latin American–style elite enjoying their waivers and a vast downwardly mobile morass. On Independence Day 2011, debt-ridden America is now dependent, not on far-off kings but on global bond and currency markets, which fulfill the same role the cliff edge does in a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. At some point, Wile looks down and realizes he’s outrun solid ground. You know what happens next.

That’s all, folks!

N.Y. Rep. Anthony Weiner claimed he was a “victim,” first of hacked social media, then of just a “prank.” It was obvious to anyone with a hint of rational and objective reasoning skills, which is to say everyone who doesn’t work as a Democrat on Capital Hill or as a journalist, that Weiner was lying. Worse, he wasn’t even good at lying. My brother summed it up the best, analogizing that Weiner, “lies like a child” — each outlandish lie followed by one even more ridiculous.

The most comical outcome from Weiner-gate is the indictment against his liberal defenders and particularly against the mainstream media.

Regarding the former, we once again see that there most certainly exists a double standard between sexual scandals affecting Democrats versus Republicans. Weiner has adamantly refused to resign over his behavior, and to date he yields no calls from his party to do so. Contrast this to the scandals of Republicans like FL Rep. Mark Foley, ID Sen. Larry Craig, or N.Y. Rep. Chris Lee — all were immediately called upon to resign by Republicans on the Hill. There was no reason for a dog-and-pony show in the form of an Ethics committee hearing such as the one Nancy Pelosi is requesting — these guys were gone, and gone fast.

Peter Tucci sums it up simply:

Two things are clear: 1) What Weiner did is far worse than what [Chris] Lee did; and 2) If Weiner were a Republican, he would have already tendered his resignation.

Next, the indictment against the media.

The mainstream media were just about to let Weiner off the hook, and I believe would have were it not for Andrew Breitbart doing their job for them. As with the ACORN and Planned Parenthood scandals before this, Breitbart has exposed the mainstream media as being too slanted and incompetent to fairly cover any shortcomings in the Democrat Party or liberal organizations. Now, having been caught with their pants down, all pun intended, the mainstream media has suddenly rediscovered outrage — Yes, we’re outraged that Weiner would lie to our faces, say the media. It is to laugh. Like Weiner, the only thing the media regrets is having been exposed as inept.

Well, I suppose like a broken clock being right twice a day they’re not all schmucks in the media. ABC News Jonathon Karl at least attempted to throw some hardballs Weiner’s way, and he is deserved in extracting his pound of flesh now, given how Weiner attempt to turn the tables and shame Karl during that interview.

Despite the favorable outcome a week ago, it doesn’t change the fact that the Obama Democrats are still woefully wrongheaded on our counter-terrorism policies. Here’s Bill McGurn:

During the 2008 campaign, for example, Mr. Obama asserted it was “the fact” that Mr. Bush “championed a strategy that distracted us from capturing bin Laden, that focused on Iraq, that had nothing to do with 9/11.” Now, however, we learn that we discovered the courier’s close tie to bin Laden through a top al Qaeda operative, Hassan Ghul, captured in 2004 . . . in Iraq.

During the campaign, we learned that waterboarding and other enhanced interrogations were “torture” plain and simple—”something that undermines our long-term security.” Now we learn that these interrogations in fact gave us operable clues about the courier’s identity.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama told a crowd at an Iowa rally that he was “frustrated with warrantless wiretaps and the undermining of our civil liberties”—and he voted against allowing the National Security Agency to listen in on foreign terrorists calling the U.S. (before flip-flopping on the issue six months later). Now we learn that intercepts of overseas phone calls helped give us the courier’s real name.

So obvious are these connections that Mr. Obama’s smallness in not admitting them is now working against him. For it invites the question that both Tim Pawlenty and Rick Santorum effectively raised in last week’s debate among would-be GOP contenders: Would we ever have gotten bin Laden if then-Sen. Obama’s policies had been put into effect instead of Mr. Bush’s?

… If human intelligence is so vital—as we saw in the strike on Abbottabad—why does the administration have no plan for capturing, detaining and interrogating terrorists? With Pakistan having shown pretty clearly how untrustworthy it is, does it really make sense to take the CIA out of the interrogation business and rely on the Pakistanis for information? And so forth.

In short, the issue is not who deserves credit for getting bin Laden, but what policies will best keep America free from attack going forward.

Hey, I’m glad he’s dead. I know, I know, we’re not supposed to celebrate anyone’s death. In fact, it wasn’t even a full day after the news of Bin Laden’s death that I had to hear from presumptuous moral-equivalence preaching factions amongst media and social networks about how embarrassed they are to see any fellow Americans show any joy or positive emotion over the death of the murderer of 3,000 Americans (not to mention the the October 12, 2002, Bali bombings, or the March 11, 2004, Madrid bombings, or the July 7, 2005, London bombings, and so on).

The hand-wringer’s code word instead became “relief.” You are only allowed to express “relief” that OBL is dead, not happiness, you see, because in the second-grade logic of the moral equivilist expressing any joy over a terrorist’s death makes us no different than the terrorists, or at least no different than, say, the Palestinians caught on tape celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians on 9-11. See: “Cycle of violence” and all of that nonsensical garbage, as though defending oneself is the same as trying to push a lawful and recognized nation of peoples into the sea.

Faster than you can say “Bleeding-heart, context-lacking UN lover” a supposed quote from Martin Luther King popped up all over the social media Internet, claiming, “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy.” Just one problem — MLK never said that. Facts? No matter. A five-minute Google search won’t stop the moral equivilist locomotive once it gets going. And the speed at which it propagated — faster than any false narrative that National Security Adviser John Brennen could even muster! — underscored its fabricated intentions.

Sure, maybe the quote captures the spirit of MLK’s thinking, and many are saying it’s not such a stretch or no different than, say, the MLK quote that “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.” Well, there’s a time for MLK’s thinking, and there’s a time for the Navy SEAL instead. You either get that or you don’t. As for me, I like to think that the last light Osama saw was the muzzle flash from a Navy SEAL’s Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying to abandon moderation. I’m not saying there wouldn’t be cases in which an expression could become pornographic, embarrassing or extreme. Albeit, chanting “U-S-A” is more appropriate at an Olympic event than for the death of a murdermarytr-preaching terrorist. Lack of couth aside — and from what I’ve seen such celebrations were mostly from college youths who were 10 years ago too young to understand how our world forever changed — if you take joy in Bin Laden’s death, don’t be cowed into shame. It doesn’t make you a monster, or the same as the terrorist, or someone with blood lust, or even less enlightened than the self-righteously moral equivilists claim themselves to be. And, certainly, OBL’s death may not change much operationally (and yet, never underestimate the loss of a leader — they are not often easily replaced).

Likewise, if you’re sad over his death — because the loss of life and recollections of dark times, etc. — I will respect that too, but don’t hold yourself somehow superior to those feeling in a more elated mood.

And while we’re at it, it’s also perfectly acceptable to be happy for the circumstances of the mission. It’s okay to be okay that Bin Laden may not have had a firearm, and may not have used women as a human shields. Maybe it would have lightened the heavy conscious of the hand-wringer, but it changes nothing.

It’s also perfectly natural to want to see the photographic evidence of Bin Laden. True, a lack thereof does not make a conspiracy — the nuts are nuts and weave their logic accordingly. All the more reason one rationale of the Administration — that they had a DNA match and thus needed no photograph for proof — was truly ridiculous. We’re talking about an Arab street that believes that Jews were told to stay home on 9/11, and a Truther fringe that thinks federal agents somehow secretly and quietly planted explosives in the twin towers. Do you really think they’re going to accept, “Trust us, we have DNA evidence?” No, the reasons for the evidence are many, and include less tangible things as affirming to terrorists how bipartisianly serious and persistent we remain in hunting them and crushing their morale, historical record, and for some, just plain closure.

Indeed, it’s not just the president or liberal Democrats who would have us all take a quaalude. Here’s the epitome of knuckle-headed moral equivalence from Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers: “Imagine how the American people would react if Al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders, and put photos of the body on the Internet.” Did Chairman Rogers really compare al Qaeda terrorists and self-ordained Islamic rulers to our professional soldiers and duly-elected representatives? Isn’t it great how Chairman Rogers can see the photos but the constituents paying his salary cannot? Can we get a little less lecture with your hypocrisy, Congressman?

But most of all, one should be overjoyed with U.S. military forces, the guys and gals who keep us safe.

You see, that Navy Seal is the same guy who hasn’t seen his family in 10 months, who routinely humps about a 50-pound rucksack across the mountains of Afghanistan, the deserts of Iraq and other armpits of the planet while our hand-wringing moral equivilists shake fingers and tut-tut with one another in their virtual chat rooms and otherwise second-guess and draw comparisons between our accountable military forces versus unaccountable, non-state sanctioned, illegal-combatant terrorists who highjack passenger planes for guided missiles.

Like I said, you either get the difference, or you don’t.

Solid points by Eugene Robinson, a rare occasion we’re in agreement:

Why? Because while gory photographs would have inflamed some jihadists and wannabes, I believe they would have disillusioned and deflated others. A heroic myth of invulnerability had been built around bin Laden. He was supposed to have cheated death while fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, walking tall through fields of fire as the bullets somehow missed. He escaped the Americans who cornered him at Tora Bora. He evaded capture for a decade, despite the best efforts of the West’s spies and soldiers.

Showing him in death would definitively refute any notion that bin Laden enjoyed some kind of divine protection. The myth would die with the man.

It’s also true that photographic evidence would silence most, but not all, of the conspiracy theorists (who are surely putting on their tinfoil hats as we speak). But this is just a secondary consideration, because the wing nuts won’t get any traction. I doubt that even Donald Trump is going to endorse a theory that requires calling Navy SEALs a bunch of bald-faced liars — not to mention the entire military and intelligence chains of command.

The reason to display the photos is to show bin Laden for what he really was: not a holy warrior, not a holy anything, but a deluded mass murderer who met the end he so richly deserved.

Great tongue-in-cheek post by IowaHawk. Read the whole thing:

Who is to credit for this rebirth in American national unity? First and foremost, we must cite the leadership of President Obama. Like many Americans – and the Nobel Peace Prize committee – I naively feared he was actually serious when he initially proposed shutting down Guantanamo, trying detainees in American civilian courts, and prior consultation with the international community. Little did I know that this untested young Commander-in-Chief would muster the courage to read his weekly Gallup numbers and, in one daring unilateral extra-judicial targeted hit job, toss aside every single idiotic foreign policy principle of his election campaign. Perhaps most satisfyingly, it was a mission made possible thanks to information extracted by methods he previously banned as “illegal torture.”

But this triumphant new era in situationally-unified American bloodlust does not belong to the President alone; we must also cite Congress’s born-again waterboarders like Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, and their newfound enthusiasm for what (at least until 9pm Sunday) they would have once considered illegal military murder squads. Neither can we forget the watchdogs of America’s press, who have shown unprecedented ethical flexibility in shedding their long-held Gandhi moralism and embracing their inner Rambo.

Hey, was this part of the War on Terror, or just Overseas Contingency Operations?

Ha! I’m laughing at the su-perior liberal rationale! Seems we’re all a bunch of targeted-assassination lovers these days.

I don’t know which group is more unconscionable, the Wisconsin state Democrats or that state’s unions.

The former group actually fled the state rather than participate in a vote on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s proposal to have state workers become financial participants in retirement and health care costs (something that every private sector Wisconsin citizen already does). You see, the Wisconsin Republicans have 19 of the 33 seats, but need 20 seats in order to maintain a quorum and conduct business. So the Democrats, rather than all vote against the bill in a losing effort of solidarity, simply didn’t show to work today. That’s how these “Democrats” feel about democracy and the voters of Wisconsin, that is, their constituents — there was an election, and the Wisconsin voters clearly decided that something had to be done to curb spending, growth and wasteful government.

The reply of the Wisconsin Democrats is the middle finger. So brazen are they, so unconscionable, so filled with contempt for their constituents that these Wisconsin Democrats added insult to injury by hiding in a Best Western Clock Tower Resort, which according to its website, features a hair salon, two restaurants, and “65,000 square feet of indoor water park fun at CoCo Key Water Resort and Key Quest Arcade.” All of this no doubt to be billed back to the Wisconsin taxpayer.

Next, we have the thousands of Wisconsin teachers — who called in “sick” rather than educate Wisconsin children — and other state workers who showed up in mass to protest what they call an attempt by Wisconsin Republicans to eliminate their “collective bargain rights.” This is nonsense, of course. Nobody, obviously from the mere fact that they can just up and walk away from their job for the day, is taking away their right to bargain collectively. They can bargain all they want for, say, increased salaries. No, the unions are unhappy because under the proposal they wouldn’t be able to force state workers to join a union, to pay dues. You see, they prefer anyone who happens to be in their profession — from teacher to firefighter — be forced to abide by union rules without consent or meet the wrath of union brownshirts. Who’s the fascist, again?

Instead, all that Gov. Scott Walker is proposing is that state workers of Wisconsin make financial contributions to their own retirement; that they make financial contributions to their own health care. This is somehow considered radical? That state workers should be no more exempt in contributing to the cost of their benefits than non-state workers?

President Barack Obama called the bill “an assault on unions.” Assaults are made of sterner stuff, Mr. President. The bill would nonetheless leave Wisconsin state workers in a far better financial position than that of non-state workers. I guess to Democrats “share the wealth” means have those in the private sector share their wealth with those in the public sector, but not vice versa.

Here’s Patrick McIlhernan:

The public-sector union tantrums, meant to make lawmakers wobble, have an inadvertent message for the rest of us: Voters can vote all they want. We can elect a cheapskate governor and a Legislature to match. But come the moment, unions will have the last, loudest word.

They’ll have it if takes marches. They’ll have it if it takes what amounts to an illegal strike, with so many Madison teachers calling in sick Wednesday that the district closed schools. If it takes showing up for a we-know-where-your-family-is protest on Walker’s Wauwatosa lawn while he was at work, the unions are sure they can outshout any election result.

This is exactly why Walker is right to limit the unions’ power over government spending.

Walker, remember, is not removing unions’ fundamental power to bargain for wages. He is demanding that state workers put 5.8% of their wages toward retirement and that they cover 12.6% of their health care premiums, which would still have them paying more than $100 less a month than the average schmoe. He is also proposing that elected officials determine the shape of employee benefits without having to bargain them, and this as much as the added cost has unions crying “unfair.”

They insist this is the end of unionization in government, something to which they have as much right, they say, as anyone else.

But they miss a bedrock difference. Unions in the private sector are a way of organizing private interests, those of employees, against other private interests, those of a company’s owners, for economic gain and for protection against unfairness. In government, workers are already protected against unfairness by civil service laws, and Walker has supported expanding those. Economically, government unions pit a private interest, that of employees, against the public’s interest, that of taxpayers and voters.

We see the result. Walker’s moves are prompted by the state’s vast deficit. The alternative, he says, is to lay off thousands. Nonsense, charge the marchers: Just raise taxes. Unions and allies have for years been demanding more sales taxes, new business taxes and higher taxes on other people’s incomes, all to keep the state flush and generous. We’re taxed enough already, said a voting majority in November. Not yet, insist the unions that have become the largest players in Wisconsin politics precisely to counter any such voter sentiment.

Anyway, union leaders were conceding the pension and health care premiums by this week. They said they knew they’d have to pay more eventually – so when unions in December said such payments were tantamount to slavery, it must have been just maneuvering. Bygones, say unions, as long as Walker leaves them the power to set health benefits via bargaining. Leave that, they say, and it’s peace.

Yeah? Recall how we got here. How is it that only in desperation will unions accept a deal that still leaves them better off than everyone else? How did we achieve not just next year’s $3.3 billion deficit but the decade of structural deficits before? Easy: It’s because labor costs for years have been outstripping taxpayers’ capacity. That in turn was caused by officials, elected in a union-dominated political environment, buying labor peace via benefits, where it’s harder for voters to see the costs adding up.

If the Legislature takes the 5% and 12% and doesn’t reform collective bargaining, the 5% and 12% soon will be won back by unions. Any further savings are out the window. Walker talks of moving to consumer-driven benefits, as many companies have done, to restrain medical costs. That’s anathema to unions, who will resist it contract by contract. Without bargaining reform, government costs will have taken only a pause in their ascent.

Union activists in Madison Tuesday spoke apocalyptically of “class war,” hinting wildly at general strikes and takeovers of the Capitol. They correctly see their control of the state slipping and must figure that if they bring 13,000 shouting people to Madison, they can overrule the election.

Any worried legislators should keep in mind that Walker drew about five times that many votes in Dane County alone in November.

Here’s Jay Nordlinger:

Even before Bush was elected president, the kill-Bush talk and imagery started. When Governor Bush was delivering his 2000 convention speech, Craig Kilborn, a CBS talk-show host, showed him on the screen with the words “SNIPERS WANTED.” Six years later, Bill Maher, the comedian-pundit, was having a conversation with John Kerry. He asked the senator what he had gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry answered that he had taken her to Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” (New Hampshire is an early primary state, of course.) Kerry said, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.” (This is the same Kerry who joked in 1988, “Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they’re to shoot Quayle.”) Also in 2006, the New York comptroller, Alan Hevesi, spoke to graduating students at Queens College. He said that his fellow Democrat, Sen. Charles Schumer, would “put a bullet between the president’s eyes if he could get away with it.”

Here’s an interesting note found by Atlas Shrugs. It’s another example of the Mainstream Media (MSM) becoming so caught up in acting as paid agents for the Democrat Party that they miss the forest for trees.

We’re to believe that through some strange osmosis person A says something “inciting” that in turn causes person B to not just assassinate a political target but gun down a nine-year-old child and a dozen others. Now we have pundits and politicians actually channeling George Orwell by calling for a ban on rhetoric, on words, on symbols. Meanwhile, as Michelle Malkin demonstrates with factual evidence, the political wing intent on quieting everyone else is the group that demonstrates the likelihood of actually committing violence.

[Atlas Shrugs] We know Loughner was a political radical back in 2007, according to his high school friend, college friend, bandmate and fellow liberal Caitie Parker. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Jared Loughner targeted Giffords as far back as 2007.

There was no Tea Party in 2007, or Palin (who has officially replaced George Bush as the Left bogeyman), so what will the media spin? Nothing. Facts are irrelevant! Pump out the propaganda.

After the shooting, investigators searched a safe connected to the shooting suspect, Jared Lee Loughner, and found a letter apparently sent to him by Ms. Giffords’s office thanking him for previously attending a similar “Congress on your corner” event in 2007.

Much remains unknown about what motivated Mr. Loughner, who is in custody. But the initial evidence, including the constituent letter, has led law enforcement officials to think that the suspect had been thinking about the congresswoman for years, according to people familiar with the case.

Investigators also found paper on which the suspect apparently wrote the word “assassination” and “I planned ahead.” The meaning or significance of that writing isn’t clear.

The suspect has been uncooperative with investigators, according to law enforcement officials. Charges are expected to be filed later Sunday.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller said the charges would include the attack on Ms. Giffords and Judge Roll and other victims, with later additional charges likely. Investigators seized computers during a search of the suspect’s home, and Mr. Mueller said those were being examined.

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste. What I mean by that is it’s an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.” — Former Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

Here’s Glenn Reynolds:

Those who try to connect Sarah Palin and other political figures with whom they disagree to the shootings in Arizona use attacks on “rhetoric” and a “climate of hate” to obscure their own dishonesty in trying to imply responsibility where none exists. But the dishonesty remains.

To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America’s political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder.

Where is the decency in that?