We’ve listened through rapper Jay-Z’s interview on The Truth with Elliott Wilson so you don’t have to. In a 50-minute Q&A focusing mainly on the world of hip-hop, Jay-Z, a well known backer of President Obama (he and superstar wife Beyoncé have thrown glitzy fundraisers in the president’s honor), had this to say about the commander-in-chief:

This is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity. Just who I am. Just like Obama’s is. Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation, and outside of America, is enough. . . . Just being who he is, the first black president, if he speaks on any issue or anything, he should be left alone.

Jay-Z seems confused – the beauty of charity is that it’s most often private. But I guess “Obama’s presence is government dependency” doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way.

In a letter to fellow-Republicans on the Hill today, Senator Jeff Sessions declares with admirable straightforwardness that the GOP establishment’s main argument for the Gang of Eight immigration bill — that “the great lesson of the 2012 election is that the GOP needs to push for immediate amnesty and a drastic surge in low-skill immigration” — is quite simply ”nonsense.” He is, of course, correct. That is true, moreover, of every other argument advanced in favor of the bill by the Gang of Eight and the GOP establishment. All these arguments have been investigated to death, generally by Mark Krikorian on these pages, but also by a wide range of critics elsewhere, notably Mickey Kaus. I can’t think of a single one that has survived its vivisection — no, vivisection is performed on living things; the correct term for examining these arguments is post mortem.

That doesn’t deter the usual suspects from producing the same exploded arguments again and again like a magician producing a series of dead parrots from his hat and vainly ordering them to say “Lovely Bill.” Today’s letter from GOP donors and fundraisers — i.e., the GOP establishment — to the House Republicans repeats the same dreary fallacies. It scarcely seems worth the cost of the stamps. And as Mickey Kaus points out, its organizer, former Bush II commerce secretary Carlos Guterriez, more or less admits that this is a struggle between Republican donors and Republican voters. In fact it’s worse than that. This struggle pits a political coalition of the Republican and Democrat establishments versus blue-collar workers in both parties and of all ethnicities. And the electoral realities of such a struggle don’t favor the establishments.

That’s the strongest point in the letter from Jeff Sessions. This is not his demolition of the establishment rationale for the bill but his argument that opposing it could be a main element in a Republican pitch to the blue-collar voter. The Reagan Democrats drifted away from the GOP in the 1990s in response to the different appeals of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot. Neither George Bush, nor John McCain, nor Mitt Romney made serious attempts to win them back. Mitt Romney was anyway the Republican candidate least likely to appeal to working class (or even lower-middle-class) voters. Once the Obama campaign had cleverly demonized him as Mr. Vulture Capitalist, it felt able to ignore this (still numerous) section of the electorate — until at the last minute it panicked and sent in Bill Clinton to prevent any slippage to Romney. The result is an American blue-collar vote that the Democrats have alienated but that the Republicans have not bothered to woo.

The Democrats are uneasily aware of the danger this poses to them. It is one factor in their passionate but guarded support for the Gang of Eight immigration bill and explains their insistence in three Congresses that Republicans give them “cover” on the issue. The bill is a direct attack on the living standards and job opportunities of low-income Americans of all ethnicities. If the Republicans support it, that would be another signal to blue-collar workers that the GOP is at best indifferent to their interests. Yesterday’s letter from Republican donors would be Exhibit One in any election campaign. But all over the world conservative parties are winning more votes from working-class voters as leftist parties make gains in an increasingly public-sector middle class. By fighting the Gang of Eight bill on the explicit grounds that it penalizes hard-working and lower-paid Americans, the GOP could make even larger gains than Reagan made in the 1980s among these voters. And this electoral bloc dwarfs any other in numerical terms.

Sessions sees this; the GOP establishment does not. Or if it does, it is sacrificing the political interests of the Republican party (and the economic interests of lower-paid Americans) to its own short-term economic adantage.  

I was born between V-E Day and V-J Day, so I don’t have too many occasions to meet people who were in WWII, much less someone who survived Auschwitz. When I did, I had expected to be awed. And I was, but in a larger sense, I was surprised by the joy.

Cantor David Wisnia approached me at the recent summit of Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in Washington, D.C. He had been encouraged by the comments of some of the Christian speakers, and I told him I’d pass along his compliments to my friends Gary Bauer, Frank Gaffney, and others who spoke. Recognizing his Screaming Eagle pullover, I thanked him for his service in America’s famed 101st Airborne.

Cantor Wisnia is 86 years old, and his mind is still incredibly sharp. I hadn’t known this ebullient, energetic man five minutes before he was whipping out photos of himself as a teenager.

He had escaped from death on the march from Dachau to Austria in March 1945. Prior to that, he was in Birkenau, the sub-camp to Auschwitz, for nearly three years. Linking up with U.S. forces, he was “adopted” by the 101st Airborne in Germany.

His business card lists his skills — English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish, and German. I didn’t find out what college he attended. Did he need to? Those languages would have made him a prize catch for our occupation forces in Europe. With those skills he probably could have talked to anyone he met. Those languages were the key to his survival. And, of course, his remarkable singing ability.

It was all we could do to restrain him from belting out the Star-Spangled Banner right there on the crowded conference floor. He describes himself as a “1,000 percent American.” At Auschwitz, his singing ability gave him a starring role. He could sing in German, English, Yiddish, any language and any song his captors wanted.

In both tone and substance, Pope Francis in his recent remarks about homosexuality only echoed the Catechism of the Catholic Church, as Kathryn patiently explains. His views on the subject are mild, but the topic is spicy, at least by the standards of journalists with deadlines that don’t permit them to study the Catechism in depth or to immerse themselves in Catholic culture generally before they file. They hear a word of benevolence toward gay people and imagine they hear something new: Catholic approval of sexual behavior that the Church has always taught is bad for the soul. To some extent their misunderstanding is probably willful. Like the Dalai Lama, the pope makes a distinction that those who disagree with him on this issue pretend to find incoherent. “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” Yeats asked. The question, rhetorical and poetic, is wittier than the answer, which is only logical and dry (though true): through a process called thought.

Making the further distinction between a gay person and “a gay lobby,” Francis said that “the problem” is the “lobbying either for this orientation or a political lobby or a Masonic lobby.” Masonic lobby? I wish the media were more curious about that part of his comment. We’ve all heard the rumors about palace intrigue at the Vatican. “The pope has many masters,” Francis recently confided to Jorge Milia, a journalist and former student of his.

Here evidently is the genesis of the sensational and inaccurate headlines, including the popular “‘Who am I to judge?’ pope says of gay priests.” (In all accounts that I’ve read, Francis was speaking broadly — the word “priests” is being supplied by headline writers.) Toward the end of an 80-minute interview with reporters on the plane back from Brazil, the pope was asked about Monsignor Battista Ricca, whom he has selected to reform the Vatican bank. The Vatican’s announcement, in mid June, that Ricca was the new prelate of the Institute for Works of Religion, as the bank is officially known, was soon followed by the publication of rumors that he frequented gay bars, had a male live-in companion, and so on while serving in the nuncio’s office in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1999–2001. Vatican press secretary Father Federico Lombardi was swift to dismiss the story as “not credible.” According to John Allen, those who have met with Francis since Sandro Magister detailed the rumors in L’Espresso earlier this month say the pope has no intention of revoking Ricca’s appointment. Allen suggests that curial forces opposed to reform might have been working to smear Ricca and that, in turn, Francis is signaling to them that his resolve to clean house remains firm. 

Notes and quotes from various sources reporting on the pope’s interview are scattered. One-liners that have been attributed to him are hard to place in context until we have a full transcript. The Vatican press office has promised to produce one soon.

President Obama’s former White House chief of staff Bill Daley confirmed on Tuesday that he will seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Illinois in 2014.

He launched his campaign with a video announcement citing the “lack of leadership” and crippling “dysfunction” in the state government under Governor Pat Quinn’s management. Reuters reports that Daley will challenge Quinn, whose polling numbers have been improving since he was labeled the “most unpopular governor” in 2012, for the party’s nomination next year. Four Republican candidates have thrown their hat into the race as well.

Daley is the son and brother of former Chicago mayors. He served as Obama’s chief of staff from 2011 until 2012. Prior to that he was secretary of commerce during Clinton’s second term, and was made chairman of JP Morgan Chase’s Midwest operations in 2004.

The gubernatorial hopeful resigned as chief of staff in January 2012 after failing to foster smoother relations between Congress, the White House, and Wall Street during the 2011 debates over financial reforms. The current mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, is also a former Obama administration chief of staff. 

The military judge has seriously erred in acquitting Bradley Manning of aiding the enemy, though his guilt on numerous, lesser charges should mean that he will spend the rest of his life in jail. Manning gave a treasure trove of classified intelligence to Wikileaks which has gravely damaged our national security by releasing the names of intelligence assets, disclosed U.S. tactics and operations, and revealed secret diplomatic negotiations. In this covert war against al-Qaeda, a stateless enemy which conceals itself as civilians to attack innocents by surprise, intelligence is the most important weapon. Manning should have been convicted of aiding the enemy just as should someone who leaked weapon plans during wartime.

Here is the portion of the Uniform Code of Military Justice that criminalizes aiding the enemy:

ART. 104. AIDING THE ENEMY

Any person who–

(1) aids, or attempts to aid, the enemy with arms, ammunition, supplies, money, or other things; or

(2) without proper authority, knowingly harbors or [protects or gives intelligence to or communicates or corresponds with or holds any intercourse with the enemy, either directly or indirectly;

shall suffer death or such other punishment as a court-martial or military commission may direct.

It is undeniable that Manning meets virtually all of the elements of the law — he knowingly and without authority gave intelligence. The only question that the judge might have stumbled upon is whether giving the information to Wikileaks amounts to “the enemy.” But notice that the statute criminalizes “directly or indirectly” giving intelligence to the enemy.

Manning’s defenders will say that Manning only leaked information to the 21st-century equivalent of a newspaper, and that he could not have known that al-Qaeda would read it. But Wikileaks is not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal and it does not have First Amendment rights. Manning communicated regularly with Wikileaks’s founder and would have known about the group’s anarchic, anti-U.S. mission. He also would have known that posting anything on the Internet would make it available to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan, and world-wide. His actions knowingly placed the lives of American soldiers, agents, and allies at grave risk. In the world of instant, world-wide communications and non-state terrorist groups, Manning committed the crime of aiding the enemy, and he is lucky to escape the death penalty.

Army private Bradley Manning was today found not guilty of aiding the enemy when he leaked nearly three-quarters of a million classified documents and videos to WikiLeaks, the website associated with Australian Internet activist Julian Assange.

However, the 25-year-old Manning, who has spent three years in U.S. custody, was convicted on the 20 other counts with which he was charged, including five counts of espionage and five counts of theft. These are less serious charges, but Manning could still face well over a hundred years of prison time for his convictions. Sentencing will be carried out Wednesday morning.

In February, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 lesser counts of misusing classified data, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison.

At Manning’s request the case was decided by a judge, Army colonel Denise Lind, instead of a jury.

While Manning ended up being convicted of a number of serious charges and will likely spend the rest of his life in jail, his acquittal on the most serious charge is still of real significance to his defenders, who had argued that an aiding-the-enemy conviction would set a chilling precedent for those publishing sensitive information. The charge, which requires intent to aid the nation’s enemies, has not traditionally been used in cases like Manning’s. Some took the concern even further: Assange said on CNN yesterday that, if Manning were convicted, it would “be the end, essentially, of national-security journalism in the United States.” 

The defense lawyers sought to portray Manning as a whistleblower, and he said in February that he had wanted to spark a national debate over what he described as a foreign policy obsessed with “killing and capturing people.” Prosecutors argued that Manning had to have known that the country’s enemies would use WikiLeaks as a resource, and at one point entered a statement into evidence that said that Osama bin Laden had some of the leaked documents in his possession when he was killed in a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs in May 2011. 

What do hymn choices tell us about a denomination? A lot, it turns out.

First, forgive me for a bit of a personal reflection. When I was in Iraq — especially as casualties mounted, and the IED menace seemed overwhelming — I took great comfort in a contemporary hymn written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. Called “In Christ Alone,” it bucks the contemporary worship trend of shallow, emotional lyrics in favor of a theologically rich presentation of the Gospel. While the entire hymn is outstanding, the last verse was particularly meaningful:

Anthony Weiner offered a rather earnest response to a question from the New York Daily News about the possibility of more of his lewd messages’ emerging during the campaign. When asked if there was “yet another woman’s shoe about to drop in this campaign” — i.e., more sexting partners who might go public — Weiner had an interesting answer: “I have no idea. These are people who I thought were friends, people I trusted when I communicated with them. But who knows what they might do now.”

“None of it is new” he said. ”It’s all old stuff. So I’ll be in this race for at least the next 44 days. And I think I can win.”

A Manhattan court of appeals has upheld the March ruling that blocked Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to prohibit the sale of sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces.

The unanimous panel of the New York State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, First Department, agreed with Justice Milton Tingling’s decision that the New York City Board of Health was not authorized to ban large sodas from being sold in restaurants, theaters, and stadiums.

The four-judge appeals court ruled that the Board of Health “violated the state principle of separation of powers” in approving Bloomberg’s proposal and “overstepped the boundaries of its lawfully delegated authority when it promulgated the Portion Cap Rule to curtail the consumption of soda drinks.” (The proposal, this decision and the previous one explained, would have had to go through the relevant legislature — in this case, the city council.)

The city government plans to challenge the decision in Albany before the state’s highest court. The controversial proposal to restrict beverage sizes has prompted criticism from beverage companies and businesses alike over the past year, as well as from consumers and citizens.

Anthony Weiner told reporters today that he has “enormous respect for the Clintons,” who reportedly are “livid” over being connected to the tumultuous campaign, but he still doesn’t intend to drop out of the race for mayor of New York City.

At a small-business forum on Dyckman Street in Manhattan this morning, a reporter asked Weiner, “If not the Clintons, what would it take for you to drop out of the race?” The candidate responded, “They’ve been enormous friends to my wife, to my family; there should be no, no intent to disrespect. But what I’ve been trying to make clear is that what is important to me in this race is the ideas that animated me to run. I recognize I am not a perfect messenger, I get that. I knew that when I got into this race that these things behind me might be a problem for voters, I understand that.”

“I’ve got a lot to prove to everyone in this city,” he admitted.

Jonathan Van Meter, who penned the April New York Times Magazine piece about the post-scandal Anthony Weiner, admitted that his journalistic curiosity didn’t compel him to ask the former congressman if he still sexted with strangers.

For what was largely seen as a puff piece portraying Weiner and his wife, Huma Abedin, as having moved past the 2011 scandal, Van Meter told the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple that it “never even occurred to me to ask!” Van Meter explained that he had “just assumed it had when [Weiner] got caught.”

In a Q&A about his article in April, Van Meter remarked on how much time he spent with Weiner and the deep insights he gathered from him in their conversations. “Interviews normally don’t involve such thoughtfulness and searching,” he said, adding that “I really felt like I was his analyst.”

The magazine’s editor-in-chief expressed regrets, especially given the two-month period the the magazine spent on the article. “The assumption that he made was the same assumption I made,” Hugo Lindgren told Wemple. “It turned out to be a poor assumption.”

While not directly related to the magazine, it is worth noting that the the New York Times editorial board called on Weiner to step down since last week’s revelation that he had continued to send lewd pictures to other women after leaving Congress; it did not mention the magazine’s piece.

Via NewsBusters.

Sarah Palin has floated a run for the Senate in Alaska, but her approval rating iswell underwater according to a new poll from liberal-leaning Public Policy Polling (PPP).

PPP puts Palin at a 39 percent approval rating against a 58 percent disapproval rating overall, a gap of 19 points. She does even worse among independents, polling at 33 percent approval to 64 percent disapproval (Of the potential GOP candidates, only 2010 nominee Joe Miller is more disliked, with a 63 percent disapproval rating). Perhaps the most damaging data point is that among those polled, which included an oversampling of GOP primary voters, only 47 percent considered Palin to still be an Alaskan, compared with 46 percent who do not consider her Alaskan. 

However, she has the lead among Republican primary voters, topping Treadwell 36–25 percent. 

Lieutenant Governor Mead Treadwell (R) provides the staunchest challenge to Senator Mark Begich (D., Alaska). Treadwell trails Begich by only four percentage points in a hypothetical matchup, and Dan Sullivan, Alaska’s natural-resources commisioner, trails by a few points more, 46–39. Palin is twelve points behind at 52–40, and Miller is 23 points behind at 55–32.

This doesn’t mean Begich is guaranteed the seat; he stands at 42 percent approval to 41 percent disapproval. That’s down from the 49–39 approval he had in a February PPP poll. 

PPP conducted the automated telephone survey of 890 Alaska voters, including an oversample of 507 usual GOP primary voters, July 25–28. The margin of error was +/- 3.3 percent for the overall survey, and +/-4.4 percent for the Republican portion. 

Can You Actually Cough Up A Lung?

Sharknado hairdo, or hat, or something.

How Beer Gets Its Color.

If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn’t be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of?

9 Terrifying Parasites.

The Cost of Being a Superhero in Real Life: Then & Now (Infographics).

​

The Chattanooga Times Free Press doesn’t want any part of President Obama’s latest jobs speech. “Forgive us if you are not greeted with the same level of Southern hospitality that our area usually bestows on its distinguished guests,” the paper’s editorial board warned this morning prior to the president’s speech at a local Amazon.com warehouse this afternoon.

The editors blasted the president’s job plan as being nothing more than “a ridiculous government spending spree” coupled with a “punitive tax increase on job creators.” Even “regular folks with a basic understanding of math,” not just top economists, understand that these are “the most damaging policies imaginable” for the country at this point in time, they wrote.

While local residents may not be excited to see Obama, the paper tells the president that ultimately “it’s probably good that you’re here” because “it will give you an opportunity to see the failure of your most comprehensive jobs plan to date, the disastrous stimulus scheme, up close and personal,” in particular the wasteful electric/Internet/cable Smart Grid funded by the president’s 2009 stimulus. The Free Press editors detail that the grid, which they playfully call the “Gig to Nowhere,” will ultimately cost taxpayers a half-billion dollars — which is nearly five times more than originally thought — with little improvement in the quality of service, if not potentially worse. Along with driving up costs, the project has hampered technological innovation in Chattanooga, instead of fostering it as it was intended to do, they write.

Despite the Free Press’s protests, President Obama will be making his latest jobs proposal in the city, but the newspaper could do without it. “So excuse us, Mr. President, for our lack of enthusiasm for your new jobs program. Here in Chattanooga we’re still reeling from your old one,” the newspaper concluded.

In light of recent violence in Iraq — and al-Qaeda’s resurgence there – the New York Times editorial board finally stated the obvious yesterday:

Iraq is a sovereign country, responsible for its own security. But Iraq might have been better able to repel Al Qaeda if Mr. Maliki and the Americans had worked harder on a deal to keep a token number of troops in the country to continue helping with training and intelligence-gathering. Not surprising, Mr. Maliki’s interest in such an arrangement has grown; Army Special Operations and the C.I.A. reportedly have small units in the country to assist in counterterrorism activities.

If “Americans” — meaning President Obama and his administration — had earnestly attempted to forge a lasting, residual relationship with Iraq, the situation on the ground there would be much different today. As the Times piece notes, even a token number of troops would have done the trick. Instead, the situation has slowly unraveled (for many reasons) and America is left without a seat at the table to influence it. As bad as it is for the people of Iraq, the chaos is just as bad for America’s long-term security interests. Instead of following through on our commitment there and truly preventing al-Qaeda’s ability to return, we’ve squandering a heavy investment for the sake of a campaign promise.

When America behaves like this, it’s no wonder our influence dwindles in the Middle East. Yet another casualty of Obama’s foreign policy, or lack thereof.

The consensus response to President Obama’s Knox College speech on the economy is that the administration has been reduced to pushing a menu of stale and timid policies that, in any case, won’t be enacted. But what if the administration isn’t actually out of ideas? What if Obama’s boldest policy initiative is merely something he’d rather not discuss? And what if that initiative is being enacted right now?

A year ago, I published Spreading the Wealth: How Obama Is Robbing the Suburbs to Pay for the Cities. There I described the president’s second-term plan to press a transformative “regionalist” agenda on the country. Early but unmistakable signs indicate that Obama’s regionalist push is well underway. Yet the president doesn’t discuss his regionalist moves and the press does not report them.

The most obvious new element of the president’s regionalist policy initiative is the July 19 publication of a Department of Housing and Urban Development regulation broadening the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” The apparent purpose of this rule change is to force suburban neighborhoods with no record of housing discrimination to build more public housing targeted to ethnic and racial minorities. Several administration critics noticed the change and challenged it, while the mainstream press has simply declined to cover the story.

Yet even critics have missed the real thrust of HUD’s revolutionary rule change. That’s understandable, since the Obama administration is at pains to downplay the regionalist philosophy behind its new directive. The truth is, HUD’s new rule is about a great deal more than forcing racial and ethnic diversity on the suburbs. (Regionalism, by the way, is actually highly controversial among minority groups. There are many ways in which both middle-class minorities in suburbs, and less well-off minorities in cities, can be hurt by regionalist policies–another reason those plans are seldom discussed.)

The new HUD rule is really about changing the way Americans live. It is part of a broader suite of initiatives designed to block suburban development, press Americans into hyper-dense cities, and force us out of our cars. Government-mandated ethnic and racial diversification plays a role in this scheme, yet the broader goal is forced “economic integration.” The ultimate vision is to make all neighborhoods more or less alike, turning traditional cities into ultra-dense Manhattans, while making suburbs look more like cities do now. In this centrally-planned utopia, steadily increasing numbers will live cheek-by-jowl in “stack and pack” high-rises close to public transportation, while automobiles fall into relative disuse. To understand how HUD’s new rule will help enact this vision, we need to turn to a less-well-known example of the Obama administration’s regionalist interventionism.

In the face of heated public protest, on July 18, two local agencies in metropolitan San Francisco approved “Plan Bay Area,” a region-wide blueprint designed to control development in the nine-county, 101-town region around San Francisco for the next 30 years. The creation of a region-wide development plan–although it flies in the face of America’s core democratic commitment to local control–is mandated by California’s SB 375, the Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008. The ostensible purpose of this law is to combat global warming through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. That is supposedly why California’s legislature empowered regional planning commissions to override local governments and press development away from suburbs into densely-packed urban areas. In fact, the reduction of greenhouse gases (which Plan Bay Area does little to secure) largely serves as a pretext for undercutting the political and economic independence of California suburbs.

Essentially, Plan Bay Area attempts to block the development of any new suburbs, forcing all population growth over the next three decades into the existing “urban footprint” of the region. The plan presses 70-80 percent of all new housing and 66 percent of all business expansion into 150 or so “priority development areas” (PDAs), select neighborhoods near subway stations and other public transportation facilities. This scheme will turn up to a quarter of the region’s existing neighborhoods–many now dotted with San Francisco’s famously picturesque, Victorian-style single-family homes–into mini-Manhattans jammed with high-rises and tiny apartments. The densest PDAs will be many times denser than Manhattan. (See the powerful ten-minute audio-visual assault on Plan Bay Area at the 45-55 minute mark of this debate.)

In effect, by preventing the development of new suburbs, and reducing traditional single-family home development in existing suburbs, Plan Bay Area will squeeze 30 years worth of in-migrating population into a few small urban enclaves, and force most new businesses into the same tight quarters. The result will be a steep increase in the Bay Area’s already out-of-control housing prices. This will hit the poor and middle class the hardest. While some poor and minority families will receive tiny subsidized apartments in the high-rise PDAs, many others will find themselves displaced by the new development, or priced out of the local housing market altogether.

A regional plan that blocks traditional suburban development, densifies cities, and urbanizes suburbs on this scale is virtually unprecedented. That’s why the Obama administration awarded the agencies behind Plan Bay Area its second-highest “Sustainable Communities Grant” in 2012. Indeed, the terms of the administration’s grant reinforce the pressure for density. The official rationale behind the federal award is “encouraging connections” between jobs, housing, and transportation.

That sounds like a directive to locate new residents–poor and minorities included–in existing prosperous communities. In fact, HUD’s new emphasis on “connecting” jobs housing and transportation does more. In practice, bland bureaucratic language about blending jobs, housing, and transportation pressures localities to create Manhattan-style “priority development areas.” The San Francisco case reveals the administration’s broader intentions. Soon HUD and other agencies will begin to press localities directly, rather than through the medium of California’s new regionalist scheme. Replicating Plan Bay Area nationwide is the Obama administration’s goal.

The Enactment of Plan Bay Area was wildly controversial among those who managed to learn about it, yet went largely unnoticed in the region as a whole. One of the chief complaints of the plan’s opponents was the relative lack of publicity accorded a decision with such transformative implications. Critics called for a public vote, and complained that the bureaucrats in charge hadn’t been elected.

Another theme of critics was that “the fix” seemed to be in from the start. Input was largely ignored, opponents claimed, and public forums offered only the illusion of consultation. Although it’s gone largely unreported, that accusation is far truer than even the opponents of Plan Bay Area realize.

Here’s where the Obama administration comes in. Not only does acceptance of the administration’s $5 million grant make it next-to-impossible to de-densify Plan Bay Area, but the grant itself helps to fund “grassroots” supporters of the plan–leftist groups dedicated to radicalizing the scheme still further.

The administration’s “sustainable communities” grants generally require recipients to “partner” with local leftist community organizations. Opponents of Plan Bay Area often outnumber supporters at public meetings. Yet such supporters as are present–groups like TransForm, the Greenbelt Alliance, Marin Grassroots, and East Bay Housing Organization–are funded (or slated to be funded)with the help of the same federal grant that backs up the bureaucrats in charge.

Press accounts of the Plan Bay Area controversy generally say nothing about the financial interest that “non-profit” “grassroots” organizations have in passage of the plan, or about pressures on the bureaucrats in charge to maintain their government-mandated “partnerships” with these community organizations. So when opponents of Plan Bay Area complain about officials simply going through the motions of public consultation, they’re right. The deck is stacked, the fix is in. By way of the federal grant, many of the “grassroots” groups that support Plan Bay Area are actually partners of the decision makers (the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments). The Obama administration’s role in all this, while generally unnoticed, is substantial.

If you complain that the regional bureaucracy behind Plan Bay Area undercuts democracy and local control, you’ll be told that local governments retain full authority over land-use within their jurisdictions. In reality, Plan Bay Area subverts that control, and the Obama administration plays a role here as well. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (one of the two agencies in charge of Plan Bay Area) doles out state and federal transportation assistance. Now that Plan Bay Area has been formally approved, MTC can withhold billions of dollars in federal aid from suburban jurisdictions that refuse to densify, leaving local bridges and highways in disrepair. One of the core goals of the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative is to use federal transportation aid as a stick to force regionalist planning on unwilling suburbs.

Recalcitrant suburbs can also be brought to heel by lawsuits claiming violations of federal fair housing law. California’s SB375 facilitates such suits by placing the burden of proof on local jurisdictions accused of housing discrimination. Such legal claims are often brought by leftist community organizations of the type currently funded through the Obama administration’s grant.

When criticism of Plan Bay Area reached a crescendo in suburban Marin County–the center of public opposition to the plan–the bureaucrats pared back their demands for densification in a few resistant municipalities. Obama’s HUD responded by charging that failure to assign more multifamily housing to suburban jurisdictions could violate federal fair housing law. So what looks like a softening of Plan Bay Area’s demands on a few suburban municipalities may ultimately be reversed. By publicly declaring suburban non-cooperation with Plan Bay Area a potential violation of federal housing law, and by funding organizations that could sue to bring resistant suburbs into compliance, the Obama administration is serving as a key enforcer of this controversial scheme.

All of which returns us to HUD’s controversial new regulation expanding the obligation of recipients of federal aid to “affirmatively further fair housing.” When HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced that rule change, he acknowledged that it wasn’t really focused on preventing “outright discrimination and access to the housing itself.” The Obama administration is using traditional anti-discrimination language as a cover for a re-engineering the way we live. The real goal is to Manhattanize America, and force us out of our cars.

The Plan Bay Area precedent makes it clear that HUD will use data on access to housing, jobs, and transportation to press densification on both urban and suburban jurisdictions. With the new HUD rule in place, municipalities will be under heavy pressure to allow multifamily developments in areas previously zoned for single-family housing. The new counting scheme, which measures access to housing, jobs, and transportation, will simultaneously create pressures to push businesses into the newly densified areas, and to locate those centers near transportation hubs. In effect, HUD’s new rule gives the federal government a tool to press ultra-dense Plan Bay Area-style “priority development areas” on regions across the country.

HUD’s new rule also allows the creation of regional housing consortia. Although the choice to join such regional housing partnerships would technically be voluntary, the administration will be able to use the same combination of legal threats and funding leverage we’ve seen in San Francisco to pressure municipalities to join the consortia.

Over the next few years, select Regional Planning Grants funded under the Obama administration’s Sustainable Communities Initiative will be issuing regional development plans guided by the same philosophy that informs Plan Bay Area. So even in states without California-style regionalist legislation in place, a federally-funded structure with the potential to override local control, block suburban development, and force densification will be created. The Obama administration’s goal is to use legal and financial carrots and sticks to press Plan Bay Area clones on regions across the country through its federally-funded Regional Planning Grant program. The new HUD rule will be folded into this broader strategy. (I lay out the structure, philosophy, and history of that strategy in Spreading the Wealth.)

When Secretary Donovan announced the sweeping new HUD rule, he said: “Make no mistake: this is a big deal.” He’s right. Yet the mainstream press has ignored the change, as well as the broader story behind it. Recognizing the politically explosive nature of its regionalist plans, the Obama administration does little to connect the dots for the public at large. Above all, the president himself avoids this issue, although it’s deeply embedded in his administration’s policies.

Obama isn’t actually out of bold ideas. They’re simply too controversial for him to discuss. The time has come for a national debate on the Obama administration’s regionalist policies.

I’m not sure what Chris Christie’s motivation was for going after Rand Paul and libertarians, unless it was just more Christie shoot-from-the-lip bluster to score political points with the New York Times, but on balance I think the brewing feud between the two wings of the GOP heading into the 2016 election season is a very good thing. Bring it on.

In one corner, the larger-than-life governor of New Jersey, who might have been a front-runner for the nomination until his very public embrace of President Obama during Hurricane Sandy. Christie did the right thing, of course — his state was among the hardest hit by the superstorm, and a visit by the president of the United States, any president, could only be a good thing. Still, the chumminess at a time when conservatives were desperately holding their noses and about to pull the lever for Mitt “severely conservative” Romney seemed over the top, and the pugnacious pol never recovered his former status as a heart-throb of the Right. 

In the other, the son of perennially quixotic libertarian candidate Ron Paul, less wacky than his dad and something of a hero after his filibuster against the drone-strike program. Rand is a much cannier mainstream politician than his father ever was, and not only is positioning himself for the 2016 nomination fight, but is collecting vouchers in advance via the 2014 congressional elections. 

It’s a great fight to have, and it’s a great fight to have right now. With Obama reeling from an assortment of “phony” scandals that somehow include multiple dead Americans (Benghazi, Fast and Furious) and with him now standing revealed (via the IRS targeting of conservatives) as every bit as partisan and unprincipled as conservatives suspected, this is paradoxically not the time for the GOP to rally ’round a candidate or wing of the party in the hopes of presenting a united front for 2016. Rather, it’s the time to air out the differences between the Establishment GOP (eastern in orientation, with branches in Texas and Arizona) and the populist upstarts who have just about had it with Washington, with reaching across the aisle, with sucking up to the mainstream media, and most of all with the implicit defeatism of a party that time and again nominates candidates sure to lose (Dole, McCain, Romney) against Democrats who could not otherwise win (Clinton, Obama). 

Oddly, the MSM’s ironclad support for Obama helps the Establishment GOP, by norming the Bush-Obama domestic spying programs, the drone strikes and the other trappings of the Big Brother state. In effect there are now two parties: the Permanent Bipartisan Fusion Party, embodied by Obama and McCain (and what does that tell you about the 2008 election?) and the Other America party, which still believes in old-fashioned things like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as reactionary and unenlightened as those things may be. 

The support for potential candidates like Rand Paul and Ted Cruz — and the rapid fading of support for people like Christie and Marco Rubio, who badly blotted his copybook with his inexplicable “comprehensive immigration reform” advocacy when that is just about the last thing on the minds of the American people — indicates a hunger for the fight. Conservatives understand that they have two opponents in the 2016 election: Hillary Clinton (or whoever comes out of left field to rob her of the nomination this time) and, far tougher, the McCain/Graham/Rove wing of the Republican party. Until that wing is soundly defeated and its accommodationist principles refuted and discredited, conservatives have exactly zero chance of engaging with the Democrats the way the want to: unapologetically and unafraid.

Abbie Alger of the nonprofit Leadership Institute termed the president’s recent dismissal of the Internal Revenue Service scandal “incredibly interesting,” and she called for further investigation of the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations – including the Institute itself, which was subjected to a 13-month audit that cost the group $50,000 in legal fees and included detailed questions about the identities of the Institute’s student interns. Appearing on On the Record last night, Alger laid out details of the audit, which was reported by our own Andrew Stiles earlier this year.

“There’s three things” that stand out, Alger told Greta van Susteren:

The first is the timeline: The audit of us as an existing organization closely parallels the audits of all the new conservative organizations applying for the tax status for the first time. The second is that a new conservative organization, the Hawaii Tea Party, was specifically asked about their relationship with the Leadership Institute, and to turn over the training materials that they received from us. The third is the nature of the questions that we received from the IRS; so there’s either amazing telepathy occurring across IRS offices, or there’s something more going on behind the scenes.

She also noted that the audit originated in the IRS’s Baltimore office, notwithstanding initial claims by IRS officials that the targeting had been confined to the Cincinnati office.