As much as we on the right appreciate the leadership the immediate past president showed in standing up to the threat of international terrorism — as well as the good will he showed to his ideological adversaries, we, well most of us at least, never much cared for his overall domestic policy.  To be sure, we appreciated his efforts to reform Social Security, but wondered why he didn’t do more to contain the growth of the federal government and limit the scope of its regulatory power.

During the market melt-down of 2008, Democrats faulted the then-president’s deregulatory policies for causing the crisis.  Only problem was that they failed to identify the specific deregulations, basing the argument not on actual facts of their administration, but culling them instead from their standard list of talking points.

As I wrote over two years ago in a post asking critics to the specific Bush-era regulations responsible for the financial meltdown (none did),

Even Obama-supporting columnist Sebastian Mallaby wrote, during last fall’s campaign, that the “claim that the financial crisis reflects Bush-McCain deregulation is not only nonsense. It is the sort of nonsense that could matter.”

If anything, W was a re-regulator, having signed the costly Sarbanes-Oxley Act increasing regulation of public companies in 2002.  And today, David Hogberg reminds us yet again of George W. Bush’s very regulatory policies, excerpting a letter signed by, among others, former U.S. Senator Blanche Lincoln, an Arkansas Democrat.

That missive, released by the National Federation of Independent Businesses “calls on President Obama to cut back on government regulation“:

Since 2005, there has been a 60 percent increase in the number of federal regulations defined as “economically significant” — each costing the economy $100 million or more. Today there are 4,257 regulations in the pipeline with 845 directly impacting small businesses.

Since 2005?  Um, wasn’t that the first year of George W. Bush’s second term? (more…)

It’s not often we get the chance to endorse one of our own, an openly gay Republican running for legislative office who opposes government solutions to all problems social and economic and supports policies which make it easier for small businesses to flourish, keeping our communities vibrant and creating jobs for our fellow citizens.  Not just that, like my co-blogger, he’s a graduate of Syracuse University, having received his J.D. from its law school.

Alas that this fine man is not running in California, a state which could really use more candidates like him.  Patrick Forrest is running in Virginia which holds its biennial legislative elections one week from today.

A graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and an officer in the Coast Guard, Forrest served until March 2011 in the U.S Department of Homeland Security, working as lead counsel for the federal employment verification program, E-Verify and as Associate Chief at the Office of Legislative Affairs at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. He has also been active in civic affairs, securing appointments to the Fairfax County Public School Board, Business & Community Advisory Council as well as the county’s Textbook Selection Committee.

Concerned about growing congestion in his Northern Virginia district, Forrest wants to conduct “economic impact studies” to determine how best to implement “public-private partnerships“, focusing not just on roads, but also on alternative transportation.  He wants to “encourage and promote innovation and demand absolute transparency from our transportation spending.”

In terms of retaining businesses in the commonwealth, Forrest wants to create “a competitive low tax and smart regulatory system that promotes the entrepreneurial spirit . . . in Northern Virginia“.   (more…)

As I worked out yesterday in the gym, I saw CNN’s Anderson Cooper devoting a full fifteen minutes to the Cain kerfuffle and assumed he was not the first on that network to tackle the topic.  How much time, I wonder, did Mr. Cooper’s network devote in the 1990s to corroborated allegations that a Democratic president raped a woman?

Oh, and that woman came forward to detail her allegations — unlike Politico’s sources.  Naming the four Politico reporters, Glenn Reynolds asked last night, “Would Jonathan Martin, Maggie Haberman, Anna Palmer and Kenneth Vogel have put their names on a similar piece, with no named sources, aimed at Barack Obama? Would Politico have run it?”

Glenn thinks he knows the answer, but, well, let’s ask some questions first before rushing to conclusions.

So, let’s put some questions to Politico:

1. When it was revealed that Barack Obama’s operatives successfully maneuvered to remove an incumbent state Senator from the ballot in 1996, indeed, “challenging petitions until every one of Obama’s four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot”, how many reporters did your journal assign to the story?
2. How many Politico reporters investigated Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers?
3. When the LA Times refused to release a tape of a dinner where Obama apparently toasted anti-Israel historian Rashid Khalidi, how many reporters did Politico assign to try to determine what the Democrat said that night?  And to figure out why the Times was keeping the tape under wraps?
4. Has Politico dispatched any reporters to determine why Barack Obama won’t release his college transcripts?
5. How many reporters did Politico send to Chicago to find out how aware Barack Obama was of the racism, anti-Semitism and anti-gay bigotry of a preacher whose church he attended for twenty years?
6. When it was revealed in 2008 that Barack Obama was the second largest recipient of campaign cash from then-bankrupt Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, how many Politico reporters investigated that connection, particularly given that the largest recipient of those government-sponsored enterprises largesse had served in the Senate for the full 19-year reporting period (which began 15 years before Mr. Obama’s 2004 bid for the U.S. Senate)?
7. When news broke that Barney Frank’s boyfriend worked at Fannie Mae at the same time the Massachusetts Democrat served on the House committee overseeing the government-sponsored enterprise’s operations, how many reporters did you dispatch to cover this conflict of interest?  How many of them followed up when Gretchen Mortenson of the New York Times reported that the Congressman had “called up the company and asked them to hire” said boyfriend?
8. When a White House spokesman yelled at a CBS reporter for not being “reasonable” in asking questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, how many reporters did you send to inquire why the White House wanted to bury the story?
9. When Solyndra went bankrupt, how many reporters did Politico dispatch to inquire at the methods that Department of Energy used to evaluate this company or to investigate other companies receiving loan guarantees from the federal government?

Contending that the Cain “story was a legitimate issue for a presidential candidate“, blogging law professor William A. Jacobson quips, “we only wish the mainstream media would investigate Obama’s past with half as much enthusiasm.”  Well, we’re about to find out if they did.

I’ll be passing along this post to the woman from Politico who regularly e-mails me their posts and will let you know if she responds to these questions.

UPDATE:  Just thought of another question: (more…)