Joel Mathis

Another way of looking at this is that we don’t really know what the world will look like in 25 years. But it’s predictable that whatever military challenges we face, they’ll be easier to deal with if we have a better-educated crop of twenty-somethings rather than a worse-educated one. That they’ll be easier to deal with if we have a productive economy with a modern infrastructure than if we don’t. And it’s predictable that the more we spend on the military in the next ten years the fewer resources will be available for non-military purposes. But it’s the civilian side that ultimately supplies the capacity to engage in military activities over the long run. Obviously the long run does you no good if your country can’t defend itself in the short-term, but a strategy based on perpetually higher commitments to defense spending is self-defeating over time. via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

It's legitimate -- and right -- to call out vitriolic and violent speech and name it for what is. But this seems a step down a road we'd rather not go down: Representative Bob Brady of Pennsylvania told The Caucus he plans to introduce a bill that would ban symbols like that now-infamous campaign crosshair map. "You can't threaten the president with a bullseye or a crosshair," Mr. Brady, a Democrat, said, and his measure would make it a crime to do so to a member of Congress or federal employee, as well. Asked if he believed the map incited the gunman in Tucson, he replied, "I don't know what's in that nut's head. I would rather be safe than sorry." He continued, "This is not a wakeup call. This is a major alarm going off. We need to be more civil with each other. We need to tone down this rhetoric." I'm always leery of any idea to restrain speech -- bad speech is generally best met with more and better speech. Thre

Except for an initial intemperate Tweet , I stayed largely silent -- on the Internets, at least -- during the early hours of the Gabrielle Giffords saga on Saturday afternoon. I don't think myself exceptionally wise or laudable for the silence: I was covering my butt. There's nothing like holding forth on What It All Means in the early aftermath of an event, only to find out the story is completely different. I didn't want to completely embarrass myself. But I had my suspicions. I thought a Tea Partier did it. I'm glad I kept those suspicions to myself, though. Turns out the alleged shooter, Jared Loughner, is just plumb crazy . Unless he had an accomplice, trying to suss out some larger meaning from this story is going to turn out to be a fool's errand.  Sometimes, crazy is just crazy. It's tragic and awful and stupid. Period. No bigger lesson to be learned. As I say, though, I spend the first hour or two of the unfolding story convinced -- and deeply ang

Inky : "A 21-year veteran Philadelphia police officer has been arrested and charged with falsely claiming he was assaulted while making an arrest last year, the department said this morning. Aleksande Shwarz, 54, who was assigned to the 2nd District, also has been charged with simple assault stemming from the arrest on March 4. He was arrested Wednesday, the department said in a statement."

The Slatest : "Defense Secretary Robert Gates presented his proposed defense budget Thursday, unveiling the most significant proposed cuts to military spending since Sept. 11. Gates called for the military to cut $78 billion in program spending and reduce personnel by 70,000 over the next five years. Most of those cuts wouldn't be felt for years, and the reduction in troop size (a loss of about 49,000 Army soldiers and 20,000 Marines) wouldn't begin until the U.S. starts to draw down its presence in Afghanistan next year. At a press conference Thursday, Gates cast the cuts as a matter of national security: 'This country's dire fiscal situation and the threat it poses to American influence and credibility around the world will only get worse unless the U.S. government gets its finances in order,' he said. 'My hope is what had been a culture of endless money will become a culture of savings and restraint.'" And we'll still have the scariest, mo

Tevi Troy at The Corner : "The New York Times reports that the Obama administration is pursuing a full-scale effort against the Republican’s planned repeal vote of the Obama health-care law. As I argue in this month’s Commentary, the Democrats are continuing to operate under the misperception that health care is a winning political issue for them, despite considerable and continuing evidence to the contrary. New York Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner recently acknowledged losing “round one” of the health-care debate to the Republicans. It’s not clear why Democrats think that things will go better for them in round two." Two possible answers: * There have been similar conservative freak-outs over the decades about previous entitlement programs. We've all heard Ronald Reagan's 1960s speech about the socialistic perils of Medicare; it blew over, and is a relatively uncontroversial part of the American fabric. History has tended to be on the side of Democrats on these

Here's the Scripps Howard column this week. I'm not sure I agree entirely with myself about the argument I make here. I don't favor censorship at all. But I think a lot of anti-censorship folks might be too cavalier about the feelings of people who legitimately find "Huckleberry Finn" hurtful, and I think it might be useful to contemplate that a little bit more. Anyway, here goes. You know where to send your angry e-mail: You can't pray a lie. And you can't have Huck Finn -- not the real Huck Finn, anyway -- without his frequent and casual use of the racial slur known as "the n-word." Mark Twain's novel is a document of a brutal time and place in American history, and the depths of that era's brutality to African-Americans cannot be fully contemplated apart from the constant, almost banal repetition of the term throughout the book. Rather than remove the word from "Huckleberry Finn," though, there's another option tha

This is a test. Contemplating abandoning my Posterous site and returning to Blogspot as my full-time digs. The outcome relies on this test.

The angled part to the right? That's what he was using for the stock of the block rifle he built for himself. That's the grip on the left. Kind of an extended Uzi thing going on. He came up to me brandishing it like you'd expect, making shooting noises. The kid is clever.

I don't know if I'd go as far as Harry Reid does here : “The American people love government, but they don’t like too much  politics  in government,” he said. I don't think the American people "love" government. I think they even like it, in a generalized and monolithic sense. But I think they like having roads to drive on. An Internet to use. Education for their kids. Social Security and Medicare for their parents. I think they like that Hawaii isn't under Japanese control. I think they like having national parks to visit, and local libraries to aid their learning and reading. I think they like these things -- and a lot more services they receive or use all the time -- but don't always contemplate that it's government doing these things. This is why Republicans frequently talk in a general way about cutting government, but even now seem hesitant to name what, precisely, they would cut. (Paul Ryan, perhaps, being a notable exception.) And I f

There's apparently confusion over whether Philly.com is about to suddenly and unexpectedly erect a paywall, but this part of Phawker's report about the Inquirer is good news if it's true: " Also, expect less national and international wire stories and more local news inside the A section of the weekday edition of the Inquirer."   I've mentioned a few times that the Inquirer's front page -- and, really, it's entire A section -- is a relic of older days when A) the Inky had reporting assets to spread around the world and B) when readers couldn't easily get worldwide news from other sources. If I want to read reporting that originated in the LA Times or New York Times, I can read those papers! But the Inky has continued to fill its front section with stories from those organizations. I expect I'll retain a slight bias for the Daily News, just because I live in Philly and I expect the Inquirer will remain largely suburban in its outlook. Bu

That's the incredulous question posed, in passing, over at The Weekly Standard's blog . And it's a good question! After all, Robert Gibbs' salary is more than three times the median household income of an American family .  On the other hand, the Standard has a bit of a history of poo-poohing the idea that households with yearly incomes of $250,000 or more could be reasonably defined as "rich." So the Standard's standard is clear: If you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you're middle class -- unless you're a Democrat.

Swamped with other work. But trust me when I tell you that I've got a take on the whole "Huckleberry Finn" thing that's going to make nobody happy.

A change in the rules by a bare majority aimed at benefiting Democrats today could just as easily be used to benefit Republicans tomorrow. Do Democrats really want to create a situation where, two or four or six years from now, they are suddenly powerless to prevent Republicans from overturning legislation they themselves worked so hard to enact? via washingtonpost.com Here's the thing: the proposed reforms don't leave the minority party in the Senate "powerless." Instead, they make the minority party actually work to obstruct the passage of legislation: If you want to filibuster, you actually have to take the floor of the Senate and filibuster. Right now, all Mitch McConnell has to do, essentially, is utter the word "filibuster" and the obstruction is passed. That's simply too low a bar -- one that presumes the minority has veto power over legislation unless proved otherwise. Old-time filibustering actually worked once upon a time. It's wh

The New York Times adds to its coverage of efforts to repeal birthright citizenship, and includes this mind-boggling comment from Rep. Duncan Hunter: In April, Representative  Duncan Hunter , Republican of California, one of those pushing for Congressional action on the citizenship issue, stirred controversy when he suggested that children born in the United States to illegal immigrants should be deported with their parents until the birthright citizenship policy is changed. “And we’re not being mean,” he told a  Tea Party  rally in Southern California. “We’re just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.” If America is in the "soul" of anybody, it's probably somebody who fought to come here--crossing deserts, dealing with smugglers, and yes, breaking laws--so that they could partake in the freedom and opportunity this country supposedly offers. Beyond that, though, I wonder how Hunter proposes to do

A scene in the Craft-Mathis household: Me: Tobias, I love you. T: I lahv you! Me (ratcheting it up): Tobias ... I LOVE you. T: I lahv YOU! (Giggles.) ME: I love YOU! T: I lahv YOU! (Laughs maniacally.) Gufbaw. He's right. I am a goofball.

Incoming House Majority Leader John Boehner is leading the charge to cut $100 billion from the domestic budget this year, reports the New York Times . The question is, where would the budget cuts come from? Military, domestic security, and veterans would be spared, but under the Republican plan, remaining federal programs would face savage cuts of about 20 percent this fiscal year. The $100 billion diet was part of a House GOP campaign pledge, but even Senate Republicans have backed away from such drastic cuts. Like many impending House Republican initiatives, its bark is worse than its bite – with the Senate still in the hands of Democrats and Obama retaining veto power, the budget-cutting vote is largely an act of political theater. The vote could give Republicans more bargaining power in their budget showdown with the White House this winter, however. For Democrats, the move to cut funding from education, transportation and scientific research could provide ammunition against Repub

An interview with Antonin Scalia: In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both? Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society.  Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. The text of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment: Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of

It looks like Democrats in the Senate might force reform of the filibuster. This makes Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander mad : In a speech prepared for a Tuesday appearance at the  Heritage Foundation , Mr. Alexander reiterated his position that Democrats would be making a mistake. “Voters who turned out in November are going to be pretty disappointed when they learn the first thing Democrats want to do is cut off the right of the people they elected to make their voices heard on the floor of the  U.S. Senate ,” he said in his planned remarks. Which is why Dems should make the entirely correct case that their proposed reforms actually help newly elected senators make their voices heard on the floor of the U.S. Senate. After all, the changes -- as I understand them -- won't do away entirely with the filibuster: Democrats can clearly see the day, two years ago, when they'll be in the minority: they'll want to have the tool available for themselves at that point. But right

Bill Kristol chortles over cuts at a Maryland library, which includes the loss of a subscription to his own Weekly Standard: THE WEEKLY STANDARD knows that government spending at all levels must be reduced. And TWS puts the country first! So to all our readers who are offering to write in protest, to organize petitions, and to gin up denunciations of Montgomery County officials: No. We'll do our part for the greater good. Unjust and unwise as it is to deprive Bethesdans of TWS in their public libraries, we're willing to say: As long as public sector unions, politically correct county activities, foolish and unnecessary programs, and bloated government payrolls are also cut—we'll take the hit, too. So Bethesdans who've been reading TWS in the library will have to subscribe ( it's a good deal! ). And we'll have done our part to help put the nation on the path to recovery from big government liberalism. I don't know. It's true that libraries can som