Hewitt Blog

The Monday morning column from Clark Judge:

Biden to the Rescue?
By Clark S. Judge, managing director, White House Writers Group (www.whwg.com <http://www.whwg.com> ) and chairman (www.pacificresearch.org <http://www.pacificresearch.org> )
 
It is all too easy to become cynical about the mainstream media.
 
Last week Vice President Joe Biden uttered the now famous, "I'm going to get into trouble for saying this.  This ain't your father's Republican Party.  This is the Republican Tea Party."
 
As it happened, this kindhearted warning to voters of the insidious transformation of the GOP was all but identical to a line of attack he took in 2008.  At that time he said, “I don’t get it, really, all kidding aside. … This is not your father’s Republican party.  These are people who talk about middle class tax cuts and the definition of what’s middle class – well, I guess below $4 million. Give me a break!”  (http://tiny.cc/n2v41 )
 
The Vice President didn’t like cuts to spending and taxes in 2008.  He hasn’t liked them at anytime in his career.  He doesn’t like them now.  He is a centerpiece of the “political class” that pollster Scott Rasmussen talked about with the Wall Street Journal’s John Fund this past weekend (http://tiny.cc/0tbs1).
 
As Fund reported, “To figure out where people are [between what Rasmussen calls the Mainstream Public and the Political Class], [Rasmussen] asks three questions: Whose judgment do you trust more: that of the American people or America's political leaders? Has the federal government become its own special interest group? Do government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors? Those who identify with the government on two or more questions are defined as the political class.”

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Peter Hitchens joins me today for an extended conversation about his new book, The Rage Against God

 

John Burns is the two-time Pulitzer winner and London bureau chief of the New York Times, who spent most of the past decade stationed in Iraq.  He was my guest yesterday to discuss the continuing exit of America from Iraq as well as the political and social changes underway in the United Kingdom:

HH: We go across the pond to London, and we talk with John Burns, who is the bureau chief for the New York Times there. John, always a pleasure, welcome back, good to talk with you. 

JB: It’s always good to talk to you, Hugh.

HH: It’s an enormously important day, symbolically, in Iraq, where you have spent so much of the last decade, John Burns. What are your thoughts on seeing the “last combat troops” withdraw from the American mission in Iraq?

JB: Well, I suspect like tens of millions of people in the United States, a tremendous sense of relief that it is actually the beginning of the end, or it appears to be. But that also has to be counterbalanced, as many of your listeners will know, with some concern, some considerable concern, for what may lie ahead as the last American troops, and there are still 50,000 non-combat troops in Iraq, begin to withdraw over the next, what is it, eighteen months ahead of President Obama’s December, 2011 deadline, because as we know, there are already early signs of a breakdown of such law and order as there is in Baghdad. There is a new assertiveness by the suicide bombers, by the al Qaeda insurgents, and we just have to hope that that does not continue on its current trajectory.

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Thursday morning on America Live with Shannon Bream guest hosting, on why the election will go the way it's going to go in November.

 

We will be talking about the CBO's deficit forecast, which is already undermined by this morning's disappointing jobs report. The deficit will not close until the economy begins to grow, and it will not begin to grow until the tax and regulatory burdens on small businesses are cut. The president's economic policies have failed, and the economy will not rebound and the deficits will not decline until those policies change. . 

Here's the transcript of my interview from Wednesday's show with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer:

HH: I am joined now by the Governor of Arizona, Governor Jan Brewer. Welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, Governor. 

JB: Hi, Hugh, it’s great to be with you.

HH: You’ve got a bit election next week. You are sweeping to an overwhelming nomination as the Republican nominee for governor in election there, and you have got a sizeable lead in the polls. What do you attribute this momentum to?

JB: Well, I would like to believe that it was from good leadership (laughing).

HH: Well, what’s the issue that’s defining the race with Goddard, though, when you head into the fall?

JB: Well, I think that the race is going to be based on the economy, jobs and immigration. We want our borders secured.

HH: You know, I’m tempted in the interest of time, Governor, to ask you whether or not we can build a mosque at the border and have same sex marriages in it.

JB: (laughing) No way. Not in Arizona.

HH: All right. So let’s start with the border. I had lunch with your colleague, Rick Perry, about ten days ago, and he wanted the President to sit down with him when the President went to Texas, and get some first-hand knowledge. Has the President ever picked up the phone to call you and ask you what your ideas are on securing the border?

JB: No, absolutely not. And of course, he hasn’t ever been here to visit our borders. You know, I really do believe that if he took the time to come out here and go with me down to the border, he would see the situation that Arizonans are facing on a daily basis. He has just resisted and pushed back. And it’s very frustrating to myself and to the people of Arizona.

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Left-wing political activist Jim Wallis was interviewed recently by Patheos.com's Timothy Dalrymple.  It is a fascinating exchange, but this Q&A in which Dalrymple quotes a Wallis critic, Marvin Olasky, jumps out, stands out:

The second part of Olasky's critique was his suggestion that Sojourners receives funding from people like George Soros. The implication is that Sojourners received money from a Leftist atheist to deliver the vote for the Democrats. Is Sojourners open about its books? Is there anything wrong with making common cause with the George Soroses of the world?

It's not hyperbole or overstatement to say that Glenn Beck lies for a living. I'm sad to see Marvin Olasky doing the same thing. No, we don't receive money from Soros. Given the financial crisis of nonprofits, maybe Marvin should call Soros and ask him to send us money.

So, no, we don't receive money from George Soros. Our books are totally open, always have been. Our money comes from Christians who support us and who read Sojourners. That's where it comes from. In fact, we've had funding blocked, this year and last, by liberal foundations who didn't like our stance on abortion. Other liberal groups were happy to point out to them that our stance wasn't kosher on abortion, so our funding was blocked.

So tell Marvin he should check his facts, and not imitate Glenn Beck.

A strong, stinging and absolute statement by President Obama's man on the Christian left, and phrased in decidedly unChristian terms.

Not long after the interview appeared, Wallis' organization sent a communication to Dalrymple, which Dalrymple posted with some notes of his own:

This morning I received a kind message from Tim King, communications manager for Sojourners, confirming that Sojourners has indeed received funding from Soros' Open Society Institute. "This is public," King wrote, "and not something we're trying to cover up." The message included a general statement from Jim Wallis:

Recently, I participated in an interview about the future of Evangelicalism. The interviewer asked about a blog post in which an author made accusations about Sojourners' funding. I should have declined to comment until I was able to review the blog post in question and consulted with our staff on the details of our funding over the past several years. Instead, I answered in the spirit of the accusation and did not recall the details of our funding over the decade in question. The spirit of the accusation was that Sojourners is beholden to funders on the political left, which is false. The allegation concerned three grants received over 10 years from the Open Society Institute that made up the tiniest fraction of Sojourners' funding during that decade -- so small that I hadn't remembered them. Sojourners doesn't belong to the political left or right. Sojourners receives funding from individuals and organizations across a broad spectrum who are committed to our mission of "biblical social justice."

I am sure there will be more conversation over this issue -- but since we hosted the interview, we will let that conversation take place elsewhere. We are grateful for the interview and grateful for Sojourners' cooperation throughout the process.

So Marvin Olasky was slandered by Jim Wallis, as was Glenn Beck.  Wouldn't a man seeking to represent Christians be quick to apologize to both?  If Wallis has done so, I haven't seen it.

I would also be interested to know how much Soros money went to Sojourners.  Most folks who receive donations from billionaires tend not to forget them, so pray for Jim Wallis' memory.

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Andrew Roberts is an accomplished historian and author, most recently, of Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941-1945.

Roberts was my guest in hour two of Wednesday's show, and we discussing President Obama's collapsing presidency as well as the GZM.  The transcript of the interview will be posted here later.

Here's the link to the book.

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The Speaker of the House of Representatives doesn't just want to stifle debate over the opposition to the building of the Ground Zero Mosque, she wants to hold Congressional hearings into who is funding the people behind the opposition. Joe McCarthy lives. Here is who her first witnesses should be. Investigate away.



You can join the witness list of people to be investigated by the Democrats, by contributing to Keep America Safe. 

Just when you thought the Democrats could not go lower in the public's esteem, the Speaker calls for an investigation of those who oppose the Ground Zero mosque, a portion of our population which runs north of 200 million Americans if polls are to be believed:




The melt-down of the Democrats on the issue generally, and of the left-wing commentariat specifically, is as remarkable as it is disturbing.  The rather uncontroversial desire of a large majority of Americans to assure that Ground Zero not be exploited for "messaging" by any group has been seized on by Mayor Bloomberg, the president and now the Speaker as a bat with which to beat that supermajority as bigots and haters.  The sheer numbers of the opposition has pushed the Speaker into paranoia about the subject.

As I conveyed in my draft "stump speech" yesterday, the November elections will be fought primarily on the mess that the president and his Congressional captains have made of the economy, the disaster that is Obamacare, and the deficit volcano.

But increasing numbers will join in the effort to toss out Democrats from top to bottom because of the three "social issues" of border security, marriage and the mosque, and not just because of the substance of the issues, but because so many among the Democrats have decided to denounce their political opponents on these matters as bigoted haters.

This wild escalation in rhetoric suggests that a kind of panicked political madness has overcome the Democrats as they study the polling numbers.  They are anticipating their reaction on November 3 and giving early vent to their fury at the voters for not agreeing to blame Bush some more.

John Schroeder at Article VI Blog has noted the extreme venom that has marked the attack on mosque opponents, but he should add that those who are now quick to hurl the charge of "bigot" were either participants in or silent during the outpouring of anti-Mormon bigotry during campaign 2008.

The most appalling of many examples of the anti-LDS rage was Slate's Jacob Weisberg's December 2006 attack on Romney's religion --"Romney's Religion: A Morman President? No Way?"-- but there were many other such outbursts from the left and the right, but very few if any of the mosque defenders from today said a word about it then or since. (I don't know if Weisberg has denounced opponents of the mosque as bigots,but it certainly wouldn't surprise me.)  It was politically convenient then to allow and encourage the attacks on the religion of a GOP candidate, but now it is judged politically useful by the left to side with the GZM and stand, for a while, on the side of "religious tolerance."  (As Rush pointed out yesterday, this tolerance will not extend, even for a day, to faith-based protesters of abortion outside of clinics.)

There isn't a principle about religious freedom at work on the left. Indeed, most of the declarations about the Free Exercise clause have been wildly off the mark, and the president's ringing "The writ of the Founders must endure!" from Friday night is as vacuous as any of them. 

The trouble is that opposition to one mosque in one place does not a bigot make, though certainly there are anti-Muslim bigots in America.  The various straw men put forward and beaten down by Bloomberg et al serve only to deepen the anger of those opposed to one mosque in one place because of their concern over the politicization of Ground Zero, and the other line --taken by Pelosi in the comments above-- that the mosque at Ground Zero is a "local land use decision"-- is instantly understood as not only quite obviously absurd but also political cowardice, especially after the president entered the debate.

As a lawyer who has long represented churches and religious schools in land use disputes, the basic law is this:  The government may not constitutionally treat one proposed religious land use differently from similarly situated other religious land uses, and the government may not single out religious land uses for discriminatory treatment in ways that uniquely burden those uses.

By contrast, the government can and does zone land to serve the general good,and in the course of doing that, it may treat religious land uses as one category of land use that will be treated in specific ways, provided those ways are not intended to burden or discriminate against that class of land uses or a particular denomination.

Thus New York City or the state or even the federal government could chose to protect the entire area around and including Ground Zero from all uses that are intended to exploit proximity of the hallowed ground to send messages of any sort.  None of these governments could single out the Muslim faith for special burdens or prefer a different faith seeking a shrine nearby.

Neutral principles fairly applied are the heart of Free Exercise Clause's protection of religious land uses.

This approach is, for the benefit of the president's speech writers, a fairly recent development.  "The writ of the Founders" did not, for example, stop the attempted extermination of the LDS church in the 19th century. 

For those genuinely curious about how courts have dealt with conflicts concerning proposed religious-themed land use projects ,there is a pretty comprehensive list of recent cases and controversies at RLUIPA.com, a project of the Beckett Fund.

Speaker Pelosi's latest display of bizarre thinking should serve to remind voters that every vote for every Democratic member of Congress is a vote for Nancy Pelsoi to remain as Speaker.

If you would like to take the gavel from her increasingly obviously unsteady hands, send a contribution to www.NRSC.org. 

UPDATE:  Powerline's Scott Johnson confesses.  The first of many to seek the Speaker's mercy.

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