Imagine that — A massive government bureaucracy given almost a head start of more than three years to get up and running appears to be well on its way to not being ready.

Julie Appleby covered the situation at the Washington Post yesterday. Steven Hayward at Powerline accurately called it an item which “ought to be on the front page above the fold,” and wasn’t. It also “just so happens” to be an early vindicator of free-market capitalism as better able than the government to set up and manage complex systems. Here are several paragraphs from Appleby’s report, which will be followed by key points from Hayward (bolds are mine throughout this post):

Concern growing over deadlines for health-care exchanges

With many states unwilling or unable to get insurance exchanges operational by the health-care law’s deadline of Jan. 1, 2014, pressure is growing on the federal government to do the job for them.

(more…)

Arguably the best governor in America when he was Florida’s chief executive, he repeats a shorthand term apparently first coined by Paul Ryan for the inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness identified in the Declaration of Independence in a Wall Street Journal op-ed today:

Capitalism and the Right to Rise
In freedom lies the risk of failure. But in statism lies the certainty of stagnation.

Congressman Paul Ryan recently coined a smart phrase to describe the core concept of economic freedom: “The right to rise.”

Think about it. We talk about the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, the right to assembly. The right to rise doesn’t seem like something we should have to protect.

But we do. We have to make it easier for people to do the things that allow them to rise. We have to let them compete. We need to let people fight for business. We need to let people take risks. We need to let people fail. We need to let people suffer the consequences of bad decisions. And we need to let people enjoy the fruits of good decisions, even good luck.

That is what economic freedom looks like.

… In short, we must choose between the straight line promised by the statists and the jagged line of economic freedom. The straight line of gradual and controlled growth is what the statists promise but can never deliver. The jagged line offers no guarantees but has a powerful record of delivering the most prosperity and the most opportunity to the most people. We cannot possibly know in advance what freedom promises for 312 million individuals. But unless we are willing to explore the jagged line of freedom, we will be stuck with the straight line. And the straight line, it turns out, is a flat line.

It’s a flat line if we’re lucky. In the past three years, it’s been on a downward descent.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder follows. Other topics are also fair game.

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Kim Jong Il is dead. A civilized world truly interested in its self-defense would have an overwhelming strike force ready at any moment to take control of rogue countries like North Korea, take advantage of the confusion, and liberate an enslaved population when something like this happens. Too bad the civilized word isn’t sufficiently interested in its self-defense. So, unless something remarkable and out of our control occurs, we get to watch and hope that the new guy isn’t any worse than the old one, and listen to the tired tropes about how oppressive communist countries eventually fall on their own — which they almost never do unless somehow pushed.

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The killing of Osama Bin Laden was the top news story of 2011 — if something more noteworthy doesn’t happen in the next 13 days.
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Vaclav Havel, who led millions of Czechs to freedom from the Soviet Union in 1989, is dead.

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Investor’s Business Daily on the proposed ban on cellphone use while driving:

There’s No Reason To Ban Cellphone Use While Driving

A federal agency is calling for a nationwide ban on all cellphone use while driving. Once again, Washington busybodies are exaggerating a problem because it happens to be a behavior they don’t approve of.

… First, regulating cellphone use is not a federal responsibility, even on federal roads. This is not an issue that Washington has the authority to address.

Second, there’s no compelling reason for it. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that 3,092 traffic deaths last year involved distracted drivers. But using a cell phone is only one of many driver distractions. Eating and drinking while behind the wheel are two others, and they are far more dangerous than yapping on a phone.

In fact, a 2009 NHTSA study found that 80% of all car wrecks are caused by drivers eating or drinking — not cellphone use — with coffee-guzzling the top offender.

Then there’s this. According to federal data, traffic deaths have fallen from 2.1 per 100 million vehicle miles in 1990, when virtually no one had a cellphone, to 1.1 in 2009, when almost everyone does.

We have no problem with bans on texting while in the driver’s seat. … But it must be done at the state level.

Facts never seem to matter to Ray LaHood.

From Vatican City:

Vatican City, Dec 18, 2011 / 03:18 pm

Pope Benedict XVI told the bishops of New Zealand and the South Pacific on Dec. 17 that the Christian faith provides the best foundation for society, and that promoting the New Evangelization is the best way to build a Christian culture.

“We know that, ultimately, Christian faith provides a surer basis for life than the secular vision; for it is only in the mystery of the Word made flesh that the mystery of humanity truly becomes clear,” he told the bishops, who were gathered in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace on the final day of their “ad limina” visit to Rome. The visit lasted from Dec. 12-17.

The Pope noted that throughout their visit the bishops of the South Pacific raised the challenge secularism presents to each of their countries – “a reality that has a significant impact on the understanding and practice of the Catholic faith.”

The progress of secularism is particularly seen in “a weakened appreciation for the sacred nature of Christian marriage and the stability of the family,” he said.

The answer to this onslaught, Pope Benedict said, is to bring the New Evangelization to their shores. He explained that he established the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization last year for precisely this reason.

Pope Benedict and his predecessor have both emphasized the need for the New Evangelization – an effort to re-evangelize countries that were once Christian but have become secularized. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Part 1 — Rick Santorum Exposes the Truth
Part 2 — What Romney Really Did

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In 2006, in the wake of the decision by Catholic Charities in Massachusetts to leave the adoption business because its religious principles would not allow it to place children with same-sex couples, National Organization for Marriage Co-founder Maggie Gallagher wondered aloud in the Weekly Standard about what impact “legalized” (the word is in quotes for a reason, fully explained in Part 2) same-sex marriage will have on the the First Amendment rights of individuals and religious groups, i.e., what will protect them “from persecution for their views about marriage.” Gallagher was pessimistic about what the answer will be after the dueling litigators get done working their cases through the courts.

Five years later, in July 2011, Gallagher told us that we’re learning the answer, and it appears to be “nothing”:

I just returned from interviewing a Toronto sportscaster who was fired for tweeting that he believed “in the true and authentic meaning of marriage.” Next week, I will go to North Carolina to interview another man whose contract was terminated when the HR head of his company found out he had written against gay marriage.

The death threats and hateful mail New York state senator Rev. Ruben Diaz says he has received are not unusual. Whole professions are in the process of being closed to anyone who espouses — and acts — on the view that marriage is the union of husband and wife.

Fox News is not covering this. Conservative media outlets, except for a few beacons such as NR, are virtually silent.

The underlying truth that “pro-equality” Republicans need to understand is this: They are aiding and abetting a political movement that, at this point in history, seeks to make traditional Christian views on sex and marriage unacceptable in the public square — just as racist views on interracial marriage are unacceptable — by heaping scorn and hatred on any American who does something to support marriage as one man and one woman.

The marriage debate is about redefining not only marriage, but the relationship between Judeo-Christian values and the American tradition.

I just wonder what these “pro-equality” conservatives think will be left to conserve after that.

Well, ya gotta admit, those are eloquent and passionate words — and yes, we are heading towards a time in the not-too-distant future where any expression of support for the idea that marriage should be reserved for one man and one woman will likely end your professional and personal life as you know it. From there, the journey to active persecution and prosecution of churches which teach what they have believed for millennia is the proper Bible-based view of marriage and who refuse to perform same-sex marriages is not very far.

Gallagher’s passion is nice, except for one “little” thing — She has also stridently defended the one person who, more than anyone else in the USA, is responsible for emboldening the persecutors — Willard Mitt Romney.

In Part 1, I showed and transcribed Rick Santorum’s mostly correct critique of Romney’s handling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s November 2003 Goodridge same-sex marriage “ruling” at Thursday’s GOP primary debate in Iowa. I then noted Mitt Romney’s public challenge to Santorum that he (in talk show host Steve Deace’s words) “wouldn’t be able to find any respected legal authorities that would agree with his characterization of Romney’s (same-sex marriage) culpability.”

In Part 2, with heavy help from Deace on Friday and WorldNetDaily in 2007, I showed that there are at least three (and surely many, many more) “(highly) respected legal authorities” who not only fundamentally agree with Santorum, but who believe that Romney’s same-sex marriage culpability extends further than Santorum described it. Those three gentlemen are Mat Staver, Herb Titus, and Hadley Arkes.

I also showed in Part 2 that at the time Mitt Romney made his fateful decision to unilaterally impose same-sex marriage on the Bay State, he was well aware, contrary to his Thursday debate claim that “everybody in Massachusetts, and the legal profession in Massachusetts, and my legal counsel” believes that “I fought it (the decision) every way I possibly could,” that dissenting (and correct) “respected legal authorities” were suggesting multiple avenues of resistance, none of which Romney employed. In sum, ignorance was no excuse.

Which leaves one critical question: Why did Romney do what he did?

The answer is: He promised that he would do what he did.

Reporter Matt Luo at New York Times inadvertently and unwittingly let the cat out of the bag in September 2007 in the first three paragraphs of a report which was supposed to demonstrate how Romney had, as a result of campaigning for president, “shifted his tone” on gay rights from support to opposition:

Mitt Romney seemed comfortable as a group of gay Republicans quizzed him over breakfast one morning in 2002. Running for governor of Massachusetts, he was at a gay bar in Boston to court members of Log Cabin Republicans.

Mr. Romney explained to the group that his perspective on gay rights had been largely shaped by his experience in the private sector, where, he said, discrimination was frowned upon. When the discussion turned to a court case on same-sex marriage that was then wending its way through the state’s judicial system, he said he believed that marriage should be limited to the union of a man and a woman. But, according to several people present, he promised to obey the courts’ ultimate ruling and not champion a fight on either side of the issue.

“I’ll keep my head low,” he said, making a bobbing motion with his head like a boxer, one participant recalled.

The caption under the picture at the Times story reads:

Mitt Romney, who campaigned on Friday in Littleton, N.H., once promised he would not lead a fight against same-sex marriage.

Again, note that the intent of Luo’s story was to show that Romney had, as he has done in so many other areas, flip-flopped on gay marriage by breaking a campaign promise that he would “not champion a fight on either side of the issue.”

Until Luo’s Times report appeared, Bay State social conservatives, who arguably gave Romney his seven-point, come-from-behind victory margin in the 2002 gubernatorial election, thought that Romney had “merely” changed his mind while in office, perhaps with the help of incompetent or deliberately misleading legal advice.

Nope. As I wrote in December 2007 once I fully understood the scope of Romney’s betrayal, in words which are as true today as they were four years ago:

What we now know is that Mitt Romney promised that he would violate his gubernatorial oath of office even before he took it, and that he carried out that promise.

… Even though there was no “ruling” to obey (as explained in Part 2 — Ed.), only a court opinion that the legislature had not enabled into law, Mitt Romney extra-constitutionally, and in direct violation of his oath of office, imposed same-sex marriage in the Bay State.

Please grasp the significance of this: It isn’t that Mitt Romney was weak and simply caved in to pressure, or was misled by “bad advice.” Instead, Romney consciously kept a 2002 campaign promise to the Log Cabin Republicans to (in typical Times mischaracterization) “obey the courts’ ultimate ruling,” and considered that promise more important than the oath he swore when inaugurated as governor to uphold and follow the Massachusetts Constitution.

This is not arguable.

… someone should ask Mitt Romney what presidential oath-breaking promises he has made to groups whose last interest is the rule of law.

Yet this is a man who has now been endorsed for president by some of the alleged leading lights of conservatism, even of social conservatism.

This is madness. It must be stopped.

… What he has consciously, proactively, and cynically done to break the oath he swore to the people of Massachusetts, and before God, while pretending now to be a warrior against the very thing he put into place, makes him objectively unfit to serve as president.

Our country’s Founders would agree.

And that, folks, is also not arguable.

Shame on you, Maggie Gallagher, especially in your position as National Organization for Marriage co-founder, for defending the indefensible: “I cannot stand the injustice with which the idea that Romney is somehow responsible for gay marriage in Massachussetts has taken hold.”

Sorry Maggie, you’re wrong (and sadly, I believe you know it):

• Mitt Romney is definitely responsible for gay marriage in Massachusetts.
• He is also responsible for giving other governors (e.g., Arnold Schwarzenegger in California at crunch time there) an example of timidity to disgracefully emulate.
• He is responsible for creating a legal illusion which has placed additional and in some cases irresistible pressure on other states, culminating with New York earlier this year, to take actions legalizing same-sex marriage which they likely would not have otherwise taken.
• Crucially, Mitt Romney is, more than any other single man in America, responsible fo strengthening the culture of what you described mere months ago as “scorn and hatred on any American who does something to support marriage as one man and one woman.”

Shame on you, Ann Coulter, who, when she’s not hanging up on people who present Mitt Romney’s record in an unfavorable light (i.e., when they tell the truth), has equated the facts as recounted in this three-part write-up as “the equivalent … of the 9/11 truthers” (go to the 5:44 mark in the video at the link where the related discussion begins; her “truther” rant begins at 7:20). Rick Santorum (is he the equivalent of a truther too, Ann?) and many others know the truth, Ann, and it’s on our side.

Finally, shame on anyone who claims to believe in the sanctity and/or the civilizational and cultural importance of maintaining marriage as a one-man, one-woman proposition — or in the fundamental freedom to express one’s religious views in public without fear of persecution — if they continue to support Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney for president after reading through this three-part presentation.

Rules are here. Possible comment fodder may follow later. Other topics are also fair game.

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President Obama told CBS’s 60 Minutes (uncut version here) that “I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president — with the possible exceptions of Johnson, F.D.R., and Lincoln — just in terms of what we’ve gotten done in modern history.” CBS recognized what a complete embarrassment and political liability that statement is, and edited it out of what aired over the network.

Please note that the three former presidents mentioned are only offered up as possible exceptions.

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Occupy Updates — just a sampling of items which have appeared the past week or so concerning the Obama-endorsed (proof here, here, here, and here) Occupy movement (HTs mostly to OWSexposed.com):

• The latest Maxine Waters “That’s Life, It Happens” Update shows the following:
  - John Nolte’s incomplete but nonetheless useful compilation at BigJournalism.com was halted as of Friday, December 9, at 417 incidents. At least dozens more which could have been reportable have occurred since.
  - The total arrest count at list compiled at OWSexposed.com is at 5,425 (in 94 cities).
  - Then of course there are the deaths (eight), sexual assaults (19 items in a very incomplete compilation), and other items over at OWSexposed.com (whose numbers are light in certain instances).
• Dec. 16, at the Washington Examiner — “Protester takes $5,500 from Occupy DC bank account”
• Dec. 16, at the Blaze (my title) — “Video reveals Seattle occupiers threw bricks and steel rebar at police.”
• Dec. 16, at Fox Business (“Time’s 2011 Person of the Year is a Wimp”), by Al Lewis — “Last year, to be person of the year, you had to invent Facebook. This year, all you had to do was complain. Time magazine on Wednesday named “The Protester” as its “2011 Person of the Year.” If you happened to have ragged about anything in the past 12 months, take a bow.”
• Dec. 15, from Portland, Oregon (“Portland occupiers block food donations to the poor”) — “Their protest stopped volunteer truckers from unloading at the Port of Portland so they could turn around and fill them with donated produce.” Another trucking company stepped up to transport the goods and save the effort orchestrated by K-12 kids from the Occupy Scrooges.
• Dec. 14, at NewsBusters — “OWS protester featured on Colbert Report outed as scam artist forger”
• Dec. 14, again from Portland, Oregon — “Occu-Mom puts 4-year-old daughter on train tracks at Portland port protest.”
• Dec. 14, via Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller’s Daily Trawler — “Somebody please explain to me how this doesn’t qualify as child abuse.” I think it does.
• Dec. 12, at the New York Post (“OWS teach faked docs”) — “A leader of Occupy Wall Street abruptly quit his job as a city public school teacher after getting caught red-handed falsifying time sheets, The Post has learned.”
• Dec. 10, at the Washington Post — “DC occupiers arrested for assaulting counter-protester.”

Finally, from the “Who Do You Think You’re Foolin’?” Dept. — “Occupy activists stake camp at Obama office”

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Ari Fleischer at the Wall Street Journal (“Calling Obama’s Payroll Tax Bluff”) –

• Obama billed last year’s cut as a one-year holiday to boost the economy. Now preserving it is about fairness.” Money quotes:
• “.. cutting the payroll tax while holding Social Security payments steady means there really is no trust fund and Social Security is just another redistribution-of-income program.”
• “… a president who famously said there is “no red America or blue America, just a United States of America” has become the great divider, pitting taxpayer against tax receiver, this time by making taxpayers pay for someone else’s Social Security.”
• “Make no mistake, if the payroll-tax cut is extended, it will become permanent. Social Security will become another welfare program as the tie between what someone pays and what they receive gets broken.”

They don’t work. They’ve never worked.

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Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Friday.

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It was more than a little disconcerting to watch President Barack Obama pretend to be a friend of the middle class in Kansas on December 6, and to watch the press lap it up as if it was the gospel truth. The record shows that Obama’s and his party’s policies, plans, and proposals have done more harm to the middle class than any administration in my lifetime.

One of Obama’s core claims is that the policies of the past, coming from largely Republican administrations espousing and carrying out conservative ideas, are what brought the economy to the brink, and that those ideas and policies must never again be considered.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that those ideas and policies were often not conservative enough, Obama’s historical revisionism is about as brazenly dishonest as it gets. After all:

• I don’t recall the Community Reinvestment Act, which over several decades morphed into a sledgehammer forcing banks to act against their own interests or face endless litigation at the hands of ACORN-like groups, being a Republican or conservative policy.
• I don’t recall current New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s determination to make mortgage financing available based on ethnicity instead of ability and willingness to pay when he ran the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton something that Republicans or conservatives cheered.
• Finally, I don’t recall the systematic undermining of the market for mortgage-backed securities undertaken by Democratic Party cronies who ran the frauds by design known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac having Republican or conservative approval. While it’s true that Fan and Fred had some RINO defenders, none of them — and for that matter almost no one else in the country besides Democratic insiders — knew that for fifteen years, Fan and Fred “routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring,” presenting them as being of higher quality than they really were. As a result, mortgage-backed securities holders unknowingly bought hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of junk.

The housing and mortgage lending messes, which were almost entirely the creation of Democratic Party policies and Democrat apparatchiks’ backroom scheming, are what brought the economy down. It certainly wasn’t the straw-man, “on your own” mindset Obama chose to demonize in his speech.

The principal economic policy features of the quarter-century stretch Obama wants to send down the memory hole were tax cuts (with booming tax receipts, which the smarties said would never happen) and at least some regulatory restraint (but really not enough). The president claimed that this set of policies “doesn’t work. It has never worked.”

Horse manure. Until things came to a head in housing, as James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute pointed out on December 7:

The U.S. economy grew at an average pace of 3.3 percent from 1983-2007, inflation … was slayed, and the stock market rose by 1,400 percent. Median middle-class incomes rose by roughly 50 percent. Reaganomics worked. But Obama acts as if that generation of steady growth … never happened since it doesn’t fit into his disingenuous narrative.

Once we were in the mess, the policies the newly-elected Obama chose to get us out were the ones which so obviously failed to get us out of serious difficulty in the past — which leaves Obama’s seriousness about wanting to get us out open to question. Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s statist “solutions” for the Depression never brought unemployment below 12% during the 1930s. Similarly, three years of round after round of Keynesian stimulus, Keynesian money-printing, and unprecedented Keynesian deficits, combined with previously unseen regulatory excesses, have left the private sector’s output smaller than it was almost four years ago. We still have supposedly grown men and women on the left who continue to claim, during the worst recovery since World War II, that the best form of economic stimulus is continuing to give money to those who aren’t working.

We’ve had a chance to see what the policies Obama said would work will continue to bring us if sustained. It has not been pretty, especially when compared to the analogous Reagan-era time period:

• In the 29 months since the recession ended in June 2009, the economy has added a bit less than 2 million seasonally adjusted private-sector jobs. Federal government employment is virtually unchanged despite substantial job losses at the postal service, while previously bloated state and local governments have shed over 550,000 jobs. During the first 29 months after the last full quarter of the Reagan-era recession when the workforce was about 25% smaller, what “doesn’t work” brought us over 7.3 million additional jobs, including more than 400,000 in the public sector.
• During the nine quarters after the most recent recession ended, the economy has grown by 5.5%. During the analogous nine quarters under Reagan, what “has never worked” caused the economy to grow by 14%, a full 2-1/2 times faster.
• The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate since the most recent recession ended has gone from 9.5% to 8.6% — and November’s reading had many disturbing “going Galt” elements underlying it. The comparable drop during the Reagan era? From 10.1% to 7.2%, over three times greater.
• The economy’s cadre of temporary, seasonal, and part-time workers continues to swell. Incredibly, the economy had only 417,000 more full-time workers in November than it did at the end of the recession. The comparable Reagan-era period saw 6.9 million full-timers added. Employers are avoiding and will continue to avoid adding full-time help as long as they can until they see whether the malaise known as Obamanomics will get another four-year run, and whether the monstrosity known as ObamaCare survives court challenges.

Slow growth, out-of-control regulation, and chronic uncertainty have caused millions of the unemployed to stay that way, making them even more unemployable with each passing day. Millions of others are seeing their skills underutilized. Team Obama’s gutting of the middle class thus far has been quite effective. Give ‘em four more years, and they might just finish the job, all the while pretending to be the average American’s best friend.

From Mexico City:

Dec 14, 2011 / 06:10 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Norberto Rivera of Mexico City said that he and other Church leaders in the country are thrilled over Pope Benedict’s plans to travel to Mexico and Cuba in 2012.

“We are very happy that the Pope is coming to Mexico, and we are going to welcome him with great affection, because we all know what the Holy Father means to us,” he told CNA.

During a Mass for Latin America on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Pope Benedict said he would travel to the two countries before Easter of 2012 in order to “proclaim the Word of Christ there and to and convince people that this is the time to evangelize with strong faith, living hope and burning charity.”

Cardinal Rivera said the bishops of Mexico are also happy that the Pope is traveling to the city of Leon in the state of Guanajuato, “a region that is very symbolic in Mexico.”

Outside the city, a 65-foot statue of “Christ the King of Peace” sits atop Cubilete Hill, where young people gather on pilgrimage each year.

The statue has a long history going back to the Mexican Revolution. It was originally built in 1920, but the government blocked access to the hill in 1923. After Mexicans continued to defy the government and visit the shrine, it was destroyed by dynamite in 1928. Pieces of the original statue, including the head and the Sacred Heart, are preserved in a museum located at the shrine today.

In December of 1944, construction began on the statue that currently sits atop the hill. Pope Pius XII personally sent his blessing for the project. …

Go here for the rest of the story.

Besides being a great story, this should — but won’t — teach those people who compile their “Stories of the Year” lists to wait until December 30 or so before releasing them:

Here’s a Cincinnati-area version of the story about what are from all appearances spontaneous acts of kindness occurring all over the country this Christmas season:

3:16 PM, Dec. 17, 2011

‘Layaway angels’ strike local Kmarts
Strangers come forward to pay for shoppers’ Christmas gifts

Two women were in the Newport Kmart store Saturday morning, fretting about how to buy gifts for the 60-plus children on their Christmas-party list when a tall woman with short blonde hair provided the answer.

“She said, ‘I’m here to pay for this’,” recalled a grateful Marquicia Jones-Woods, 46, of Cincinnati’s West End, who was shopping for kids who were going to attend the party for the Q-Kidz Just Say No to Drugs and Violence Drill Team, which practices at the Lincoln Recreation Center on Linn Street in the West End.

“It was truly a blessing,” Jones-Woods said. “She didn’t even want to give her name.”

Such random gifts of kindness have been happening at Kmarts locally and nationally, including about 15 times at the Newport store alone. Givers have offered no explanation of whether they were spurred by a church or other group.
(more…)

Part 1 — Rick Santorum Exposes the Truth
Part 3 — Romney Did It Because He Promised He Would

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Last night, I:

• Noted how people who should (and in my opinion do) know better like Maggie Gallagher, Ann Coulter, and others are defending Mitt Romney’s indefensible same-sex marriage record when he was Massachusetts Governor.
• Showed and transcribed Rick Santorum’s mostly correct critique of Romney’s handling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s November 2003 Goodridge same-sex marriage “ruling” at Thursday’s GOP primary debate in Iowa.
• Noted that after the debate, Romney dared Santorum to back up his claims. As Steve Deace described it, “Romney issued a challenge that Santorum wouldn’t be able to find any respected legal authorities that would agree with his characterization of Romney’s (same-sex marriage) culpability.”

So here we are. This is the part where we take Mitt Romney’s goose and thoroughly cook it.

As carried at Deace’s place, here’s “respected legal authority” Number 1 (bolds are mine throughout this post):

When I contacted Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of Liberty Counsel, for his response to the exchange, he sent me the following statement:

“Rick Santorum’s statement during the debate about Mitt Romney’s actions regarding same-sex marriage are correct. I litigated in Massachusetts by filing a suit in federal court to prevent the implementation of same-sex marriage. Due to federalism issues with the federal courts being asked to block a state court action, the federal courts were constrained not to get involved.

Having spent considerable time reviewing the Massachusetts Constitution, drafted by John Adams, I can say that the Massachusetts Constitution is unique with respect to marriage and domestic relations by vesting the authority over marriage to the Legislature. The provision is explicitly set forth in the Massachusetts Constitution. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the Legislature should act within a certain time to implement same-sex marriage, but the Legislature refused to act. Yet, Gov. Romney on his own went ahead of the Legislature and forced the implementation of same-sex marriage. Not only was he not required to implement same-sex marriage, the Massachusetts Constitution gave him no authority to do so. Gov. Romney should not have acted until the Legislature acted as that is the body vested by the Massachusetts Constitution with authority over marriage.

Sen. Rick Santorum was right and Gov. Mitt Romney was wrong.”

Staver is also the dean of Liberty University Law School. His work on behalf of constitutional law has been endorsed by three of the most pivotal figures in Christian political activism, who have since passed away — D. James Kennedy, Jerry Falwell, and Bill Bright. Staver is a trustee of the Supreme Court Historical Society. He’s written 11 books. He may or may not meet Gov. Romney’s definition of a respected legal mind, but his bio begs to differ.

Staver identifies the one place where Santorum was not correct.

Santorum said:

So Governor Romney was faced with a choice. Go along with the Court or go along with the Constitution and the statute. He chose the Court, and ordered people to issue gay-marriage licenses and went beyond that. He personally, as Governor, issued gay marriage licenses.

Staver makes it clear that Romney didn’t “choose the Court.” Instead (“Yet, Gov. Romney on his own went ahead of the Legislature and forced the implementation of same-sex marriage”), Romney acted totally on his own without any constitutional authority whatsoever and imposed same-sex marriage on Massachusetts by fiat. He forced Justices of the Peace in the Bay State to Issue “Partner A/Partner B” marriage licenses instead of ones reading “Husband/Wife.” I am told that a small number of JPs resigned rather than do so. And yes, he indeed, as Santorum said, “personally … issued (some of those) gay marriage licenses.”

Again at Deace’s place, let’s get to “respected legal authority” Number 2, who in no uncertain terms reinforces the points made in the previous paragraph, and takes it further:

Dr. Herb Titus was the founding dean of the School of Public Policy at Regent University, and later served as the founding dean of Regent Law School. Before that he studied under Dr. Francis Schaeffer, and graduated from Harvard Law School. Titus has worked with the U.S. Justice Department, and is admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court. His book “God, Man, and Law” is a must-read for anyone interested in preserving the rule of law for the next generation.

I contacted Dr. Titus on Friday morning for his response to the Santorum-Romney exchange. He replied back with the following:

“Rick Santorum challenged Mitt Romney to justify the former Massachusetts Governor’s decision to implement the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruling that declared that the exclusion of otherwise qualified same-sex couples from civil marriage violated the state constitution.

… As Governor, Mr. Romney has claimed that he had no choice but to obey the Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion. This claim is false for several reasons.

First, Mr. Romney was not a party to the case. Only parties to a case are bound to obey a court order. As President Abraham Lincoln said in support of his refusal to enforce the United States Supreme Court’s infamous Dred Scott case – the nation’s policy regarding slavery was not determined by a court opinion, even by the highest court of the land. Likewise, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ policy regarding marriage may not be determined by the Supreme Judicial Court, the State’s highest court.

Second, the Supreme Judicial Court did not order any party to do anything. Rather, it issued only a declaration that, in its opinion, excluding otherwise qualified same-sex couples access to civil marriage was unconstitutional. Thus, even the Massachusetts Department of Health, which was a party to the case, was not ordered to do anything.

Third, the Massachusetts Board of Health was not authorized by statute to issue marriage licenses. That was a job for Justices of the Peace and town clerks. The only task assigned by the Legislature to the Board of Health was to record the marriage license; it had no power to issue them even to heterosexual couples. So the Department of Health, the only defendant in the case, could not legally have complied with an order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Fourth, if the court were to order the Department of Health to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, then Mr. Romney’s duty as governor would have been to instruct the Department that it had no authority to do what the court ordered. Nor could the court confer such authority, such an authorization being in nature a legislative, not a judicial, act.

Fifth, the decision whether to implement the Supreme Judicial Court’s opinion was, as the court itself acknowledged, for “the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of [the court’s] opinion.” By the very terms of the (Court’s) order, the Massachusetts legislature had discretion to do nothing.

Sixth, because the legislature did nothing, Mr. Romney had no power to act to implement the court decision. By ordering justices of the peace, town clerks, and other officials authorized to issue marriage licenses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Mr. Romney unconstitutionally usurped legislative power, a power denied him by the Massachusetts constitution that separated the three kinds of powers into three different departments.

The only quibble I have with Mr. Titus is his use of the word “order.” Yes, it’s technically correct, but when you say, as the Goodridge court did, that it wanted “the Legislature to take such action as it may deem appropriate in light of [the court’s] opinion,” that was hardly an “order” as laymen understand it. If the Legislature, either consciously or out of sheer laziness, chose to do nothing, it was still in compliance with the court’s “order” (really an “opinion” or “suggestion”) as written. Roughly 2,950 days after the ruling, the Massachusetts legislature has as far as I can tell still not followed the Court’s suggestion. (Update: Because of that lack of legislation, it is a constitutionally valid fact that no same-sex marriage license issued in Massachusetts, even the one issued to the couple involved in the Goodridge case itself, is valid or enforceable.)

Memo to Mitt: If Mat Staver and Herb Titus aren’t “respected legal minds,” Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were pathetic tinkerers who accomplished nothing meaningful. Consider your goose thoroughly cooked.

Deace goes on to cite a July 1997 WorldNetDaily item which included more expert opinion and critically important truths:

Experts: Credit Romney for homosexual marriage
‘What he did was exercise illegal legislative authority’

Some opponents contend that with those actions, Romney did no more or less than create the first homosexual marriages recognized in the nation.

And (Herb) Titus agrees.

(Hadley) Arkes (cited earlier in the item as “a professor of jurisprudence at Amherst,” and who is also a universally recognized “respected legal mind” — Ed.) wrote about the situation in National Review shortly after the implementation of the law. He called the developments a “dramatic abuse of power by the Supreme Court” and a disappointment from the legislature.

But, he wrote, “a deeper failure must go to the man who stood as governor, holding the levers of the executive. … Against a plural body like a legislature, a single executive could act as force to impart focus and energy. … The range of things he could do in combination with the legislature was considerable – if there was a will to do them.”

“In the Goodridge case in Massachusetts, Romney could have announced that he would respect the decision for the plaintiffs allied in the case, but he might have pointed out that the case was not a ‘class action.’ He could have insisted then that clerks should issue licenses of marriage only to couples who have come through comparable litigation and received a comparable order from a court,” he said.

Romney also could have invoked the state constitutional provision that, “All causes of marriage, divorce, and alimony, and all appeals from the Judges of probate shall be heard and determined by the Governor and Council, until the Legislature shall, by law, make other provision.”

Arkes also suggested the governor could have gone to court himself, creating the circumstances in which the “court could be compelled now to face precisely the issue that the judges had skirted: whether the majority of four had themselves violated the constitution of Massachusetts.”

Remember, the Massachusetts Constitution says that “All causes of marriage, divorce, and alimony, and all appeals from the judges of probate shall be heard and determined by the governor and council, until the legislature shall, by law, make other provision.” In other words, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts had no legal authority to even take the case — but no one, including Romney’s predecessor as Governor of Massachusetts, stopped them.

Now let’s look at Romney’s assertion Thursday that Rick Santorum’s rundown, as well as everything outlined in this post and the previous one, are somehow “unusual,” and that “everybody in Massachusetts, and the legal profession in Massachusetts, and my legal counsel” believes that “I fought it (the decision) every way I possibly could.”

This is a lie. There’s no way to sugarcoat it. There can be no doubt that Mitt Romney knows better:

• He and his people know darned well who the outspoken Hadley Arkes is (Amherst College is in Massachusetts).
• He and his people received a wide range of legal advice from legal experts in and out of Massachusetts during the critical post-Goodridge period. They had to know that there were and still are plenty of people who were then and today remain vehemently opposed to what he chose to do.
• Finally, in 2006, as noted here, “A letter signed by 45 Massachusetts and national pro-family leaders including the late Paul Weyrich, Sandy Rios, Gary Kreep, Robert Knight, Linda Harvey, Rev. Ted Pike, Peter LaBarbera, Gary Glenn, Brian Camenker, John Haskins, etc. was sent to Romney in December 20, 2006, urging him to use his power as Governor to reverse himself on homosexual marriage.” So much for the “everybody in Massachusetts” — “respected legal authorities” or otherwise — agreeing with what he did.

Thursday, Mitt Romney said that he would be “happy to be corrected.” Consider it done, pal. Are you happy?

As readers will see tomorrow morning in Part 3, it gets even worse.

That’s because there is credible and never-refuted evidence that Mitt Romney entered office as Governor of Massachusetts fully intending to react to the Goodridge decision as he ultimately did, proving even further that he’s inarguably and objectively unfit to be president of the United States.

Say it ain’t so, Steve.

The news on the progress of Software Online Piracy Act proceedings in the House Judiciary Committee is not good, with a tiny silver lining:

We weren’t supposed to be able to stop SOPA, but we could at least raise awareness, put up a fight, and prepare for the floor votes. And sure enough, the vote to keep the Internet censorship provisions went in favor of censorship 22-11.

Well, it turns out, we managed to slow the process down. After we made our threats to start working on primary challenges over that 22-11 vote, Lamar Smith put off SOPA, halting the current process until next week at the earliest. Stay sharp, but feel good about this delay. The longer we delay, the more we can gain support for the OPEN Act instead of SOPA.

SOPA opponents Darrell Issa, Zoe Lofgren, Jared Polis, and Jason Chaffetz also deserve credit. Why yes, that list does include a Democrat. Just shows how wrong Lamar Smith is to side with disgraced former Senator Chris Dodd and the MPAA on this. Two men who between them have no clue how the Internet works.

Here’s more from Adweek.com:

SOPA Markup Halted; Opponents Get a Little More Time; Adjournment only delays inevitable

With 31 co-sponsors on both sides of the aisle, the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is likely unstoppable in the Judiciary Committee, despite a well-orchestrated and highly visible campaign to kill it by SOPA opponents both in and out of the hearing room.

But the inevitable will have to wait for another day. With votes looming on the House floor, Judiciary Chairman Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, the lead sponsor of SOPA, was forced to adjourn the markup in its second day. The Committee has scheduled to pick up the market next Wednesday.

Committee members, especially opponents, were no doubt breathing a sigh a relief after soldiering through a 12-hour day on Thursday and an hour Friday morning, until Smith adjourned about 1:30 p.m. following a two-hour recess.

The markup was, if anything, great theater until its abrupt adjournment.

Hoping to defy the odds and delay the markup, SOPA opponents Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., joined by other members such as Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah., used every tactic and argument at their disposal, including offering some 60 amendments. They are part of a bipartisan group of lawmakers from both chambers pushing the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act, an alternative bill to SOPA in the House and Protect IP in the Senate.

All three bills are aimed at shutting down foreign websites that infringe on copyright holders and sell counterfeit goods, but OPEN takes a different approach than SOPA and Protect IP. To combat rogue sites, OPEN would set up the International Trade Commission to go after foreign sites by cutting off advertising and payment to those venues. SOPA would use the U.S. legal system to force domain name servers and Internet service providers to block websites and links to infringing material, an approach the Internet community believes goes way too far.

… At the beginning of markup Day 2, Issa knew he couldn’t win the markup fight. “It’s very clear we’re going to lose here today, and lose in the worst possible way, without all the facts,” Issa said.

But now at least, he and SOPA opponents have got a little more breathing room.

Almost, Adweek. We KNOW it goes too far.

I can’t seem to get any committee roll call detail, but there’s very little doubt that “my” congressman, erstwhile Tea Party supporter turned co-sponsoring Internet censor Steve Chabot, has been voting with the committee’s misguided majority.

Not that yours truly’s travails are of surpassing importance, but I should inform readers that I called Chabot’s office four times during the previous three days asking for some form of documented justification as to why he is co-sponsoring this travesty. It wasn’t until yesterday on call #4 that I was informed that they could/would not send me information because I don’t live in his district.

Until this week, the BizzyBlog bunker was located in Jean Schmidt’s OH-02. But effective on December 14, when the redrawn congressional map out of Columbus became official (still subject to challenge, I think, but it’s official until a challenge succeeds), it is now in Chabot’s OH-01. The person I spoke with on call #4 (I should emphasize that Chabot’s peeps have been uniformly polite despite the tension) told me that she thought that eligibility for communications might be based on Chabot’s old district lines until Election Day 2012. At that point, I invoked the fact that I have editorialized on the topic, that perhaps Mr. Chabot might recognize me from past commentaries on his performance — usually good (e.g. here and here) and occasionally bad (here and here), and that surely he has said something somewhere about SOPA’s alleged desirability.

So far, I’ve received nothing. For now, we must assume that Mr. Chabot is on board with what has accurately been described as “China-Style Internet Censorship.”

If Mr. Chabot continues to lead the charge for this, he’s lost my vote. I only wish that it were realistic in the short time between now and next year’s primary for a credible challenger to emerge. Sadly, that’s a pipedream.

_________________________________________

UPDATE: Paul Tassi at Forbes — “How SOPA Could Ruin My Life.” Read the whole thing. Folks, this is not idle chit-chat or nerdy paranoia.

Law prof Instapundit’s reax: “Tar. Feathers.”

UPDATE 2: At TechDirt –

Despite the fact that Congress was supposed to be out of session until the end of January, the Judiciary Committee has just announced plans to come back to continue the markup this coming Wednesday (Dec. 21). This is rather unusual and totally unnecessary. But it shows just how desperate Hollywood is to pass this bill as quickly as possible, before the momentum of opposition builds up even further.

Another Instapundit reax: “SOPA Hearing Not Delayed Until Next Year — Rescheduled For the 21st In The Hope You Won’t Notice.”

His latest “Work and Days” post is as complete a collection of Obama myths vs. reality as I’ve seen.

Just one example:

That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.

Read the whole thing.

Many happy returns, sir.