At same point in time Americans have a lower opinion of Obama dealing with the oil spill than Bush dealing with Katrina

It would be nice to account for the difference in media coverage. ABC's poll found this:

A month and a half after the spill began, 69 percent in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll rate the federal response negatively. That compares with a 62 negative rating for the response to Katrina two weeks after the August 2005 hurricane.

Click here for a PDF with full charts and questionnaire. . . .

New Washington Times Editorials

My latest pieces from the Washington Times.

FTC floats Drudge tax: Journalism can reinvent itself without government 'help'

Obama cuts crime: Credit to the administration for a drop in the murder rate

An old review of The Bias Against Guns that I just found

DALE STEINREICH at Drury University has this review here.

Democrats plan pushing a lot more bills through the Senate

So much for hopes that the energy bill wouldn't get serious consideration.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) laid out an daunting summer agenda for the Senate on Monday afternoon, including a tax extenders bill, an emergency extension of unemployment benefits, a small-business jobs bill, the financial reform conference report and a war funding bill.

To top that off, the Senate also has to begin the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan and deal with the ongoing oil spill crisis in the Gulf.

"The work period between now and July 4 is short, but our to-do list is very long," Reid said.

As if that’s not enough to deal with, Reid wants key Senate committees to draw up an energy bill in wake of the oil spill crisis.

Late last week, Reid sent a letter to committee chairmen calling for the groundwork to be laid on a comprehensive energy bill. On the floor Monday, he made an even more explicit connection to the Gulf crisis and the need for an energy bill. . . .

Chicago's murder rate up for the year

Well, just in time for the Supreme Court's decision in the McDonald case. From CBS 2 in Chicago:

The murder rate in Chicago is up so far this year, even though most other crime is down.

Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis said Sunday that the homicide rate is up 3.8 percent this year compared with last.

A news release on May crime statistics acknowledged, but downplayed, the drop in the homicide rate. The release said the 164 homicides recorded through May of this year were six more than those in the same period last year. . . .

Almost on Congressional Democrats are holding Town Hall meetings with constituents

They obviously want to avoid the bad publicity of constituents getting angry at them.

Of the 255 Democrats who make up the majority in the House, only a handful held town-hall-style forums as legislators spent last week at home in their districts.

It was no scheduling accident.

With images of overheated, finger-waving crowds still seared into their minds from the discontent of last August, many Democrats heeded the advice of party leaders and tried to avoid unscripted question-and-answer sessions. The recommendations were clear: hold events in controlled settings — a bank or credit union, for example — or tour local businesses or participate in community service projects.

And to reach thousands of constituents at a time, without the worry of being snared in an angry confrontation with voters, more lawmakers are also taking part in a fast-growing trend: the telephone town meeting, where chances are remote that a testy exchange will wind up on YouTube. . . .

How our stimulus dollars are being spent

Well, a lot more people are apparently going into the beauty business.

Massage and beauty schools, online universities and other for-profit colleges in Georgia and across the nation are cashing in on federal stimulus spending, collecting $2.2 billion in tuition grants for low-income students, public records show.

That represents nearly a quarter of the stimulus money spent on these grants to date.

The taxpayer-funded grants are flowing to profit-making schools as the government is seeking to revise how those schools qualify for federal aid, partly because of concerns over how some saddle their students with substantial debt. The effort follows a federal report that cited abuses in the recruiting practices of some of the schools. . . .

Gun sale increases so clearly timed with the November 2008 election

Since the data isn't really available in 1998, it isn't possible to examine the increase in gun sales during the previous biggest drop in crime during 1999.

The NICS background check data is available here. In May 2010, 1,016,876 checks occurred.

Facebook's massive collection of data on people's views

Facebook is collecting a lot of information about people's political views. It is a little concerning given how much time that Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has spent in the past helping out Democrat political causes.

What Zuckerberg didn't point out is that widespread use of the Like button allows Facebook to track people as they switch from CNN.com to Yelp.com to ESPN.com, all of which are sites that have said they will implement the feature.
Even if someone is not a Facebook user or is not logged in, Facebook's social plug-ins collect the address of the Web page being visited and the Internet address of the visitor as soon as the page is loaded--clicking on the Like button is not required. If enough sites participate, that permits Facebook to assemble a vast amount of data about Internet users' browsing habits. . . .

Chileans using guns to defend themselves after earthquake

"The looting continued during the entire day, in the city and in the nearby urban centers. On the road to Chihuayante the situation on the streets was desolate -- all the supermarkets were pillaged. The brutal images of desolation -- in a super market totally looted by one of the mobs that operated here in Chihuayante. Practically there's not a supermarket that wasn't totally stripped bare. They are even taking building materials, parts of the shop windows. . . . After a night of terror, in some sections of Concepcion a night punctuated by rumors and a collective psychosis throughout all classes of society, many opted for defending themselves, confronted by what they called the advance of the hordes. . . . These scenes give account of the violence experienced by the people in the vicinity of Marina del Sol, in the residential area of Concepcion, when a self-defense group of neighbors detained several young men who apparently were getting ready to rob several houses." In many stories, people realized that the authorities were too overwhelmed to help.

Kagan will be a decidedly "liberal left" justice

I have several reactions to this. Previously Kagan supporters argued that her memos to Justice Marshall didn't reflect her own views, this was in a Second Amendment case involving DC. The New York Times article indicates quite clearly that she had strong personal views that she pushed while she was clerking. The memo in this case below indicates that she is not at all sympathetic to property rights and would support takings in its broadest forms.

Following a flurry of articles on this week’s opinions, Court commentators have turned their attention back to Elena Kagan’s upcoming confirmation hearings, parsing her records for clues to her judicial philosophy. At the New York Times, Charlie Savage highlights a memo Kagan wrote during her clerkship for Justice Thurgood Marshall, in which she emphatically urged the Justice to overturn a lower court ruling suggesting that a rent-control ordinance was unconstitutional. The memo, Savage writes, is one of hundreds housed at the Library of Congress that will be used in the coming weeks to illuminate her views. At CBS News, Jan Crawford reports on several additional memos from Kagan’s time as a clerk, including one on a case concerning a prisoner who wanted the state to pay for her to have an abortion, and another concerning a challenge to a school desegregation program. The documents, Crawford writes, reveal Kagan as “standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the liberal left” in the era of the relatively conservative Rehnquist Court. . . .

CBS's report to what a down the line "liberal left" justice that Kagan would make:

Kagan's abortion memo, expressing concern the conservative Court will use a prisoner's appeal to "create some very bad law on abortion."
Memo on "amazingly sensible" school desegregation program
Memo requiring states to recognize marriages from other states, saying the argument was at least "arguably correct."
Gun rights: "I'm not sympathetic."
Criminals' rights: wishes Court "would reverse" ineffective assistance of counsel ruling making it harder for criminals to challenge their convictions.

Comparing Bush's trips to Obama's after disasters

Bush was often painted unfairly as not caring about New Orleans after Katrina. By contrast, where is the media's outrage over Obama's level of caring as much.

President Obama's visit to the Gulf Coast on Friday is his third since the start of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster 46 days ago — an opportunity, press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday, to get a full update on the response and "hear from nonelected individuals who are also suffering firsthand."

But when it comes to visiting the disaster-stricken area, Obama still lags behind his predecessor, former President George W. Bush, whose slow and stumbling reaction to Hurricane Katrina drew scathing reviews and left a permanent mark on his approval rating.

In the 46-day period in the fall of 2005, fter back-to-back hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bush made eight trips to the distressed region, including a 35-minute flyover of the region on board Air Force One. That trip came two days after Katrina hit, and Bush returned to review response actions on the ground several days later. He proceeded to make trips to Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas to track the government's response.

Obama visited the Gulf Coast for the first time 12 days after the BP oil rig exploded. He surveyed the damage in Louisiana, and returned again last Friday and met with residents in the area.

Is the Obama Administration breaking promise on Commercial Whaling

More broken promises from the Obama Administration? I don't know enough about this issue to state an opinion one way or the other, but I am recording this just so that I have a list of Obama's broken promises.

Environmentalists, already peeved with the administration’s handling of the Gulf oil spill, are accusing President Obama of breaking his campaign pledge to end the slaughter of whales.

The Obama administration is leading an effort within the International Whaling Commission to lift a 24-year international ban on commercial whaling for Japan, Norway and Iceland, the remaining three countries in the 88-member commission that still hunt whales.

The administration argues that the new deal will save thousands of whales over the next decade by stopping the three countries from illegally exploiting loopholes in the moratorium.

But environmentalists aren't buying it.

"That moratorium on commercial whaling was the greatest conservation victory of the 20th century. And in 2010 to be waving the white flag or bowing to the stubbornness of the last three countries engaged in the practice is a mind-numbingly dumb idea," Patrick Ramage, the whaling director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, told FoxNews.com.

Several environmental groups have joined forces to pressure Obama to withdraw his support for the deal before the whaling commission votes June 20 in Morocco on whether to lift the ban that was championed by President Reagan.

The groups have run ads in major newspapers highlighting Obama's campaign promise in 2008 to "strengthen the moratorium on commercial whaling," adding that "allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable."

"We ask you to honor your promise, stop the sellout, and save the whales," the ad reads. . . .

Man uses gun to protect companion in national park

It looks like a couple people are OK today because they had a gun with them in a national park in Alaska.

A backpacker shot and killed a grizzly bear in Denali National Park and Preserve on Friday after the animal charged toward his hiking companion. This is the first shooting incident since a change in federal law that allows firearms to be carried in many national parks and wildlife refuges went into effect in February.

This is also the first known shooting of a grizzly bear in the wilderness portion of the park by a visitor.

According to park spokeswoman Kris Fister, the backpackers were hiking in an area about 35 miles from park headquarters when they heard noise in nearby brush. The male hiker drew a .45-caliber pistol he was carrying, and when the bear emerged and charged toward his female hiking companion, he fired about nine rounds toward the grizzly.

The bear returned to the brush, at which point the hikers headed back the way they came, until meeting a park employee and reporting the incident.

Since it was unclear if the animal was killed or only wounded, the area was immediately closed to other hikers. The bear's carcass was discovered Saturday evening by park rangers near where the shooting took place. . . .

UPDATE: See also this discussion.

Latest unemployment numbers

After declining for a while, the Household survey shows that there was a sudden large increase in the number of people not in the labor force: rising by 493 thousand. The Household data showed that there was a 35,000 person drop in the number of people with jobs, but the unemployment rate fell because of the huge increase in the number of people who simply took themselves out of the labor force and were thus no longer looking for a job.

The Establishment Survey shows a 431,000 increase in total nonfarm jobs, but 390,000 of those are due to increased government jobs (most getting temporary jobs at the Census). Even in the private sector, 31,000 jobs were in "temporary help services."

What Obama did after the oil spill

Just some general comments. First, I think that it some what strange to look to Washington to direct these operations and thus unfair to blame Washington. On the other hand, the reason for putting up this link is that Obama has claimed that this has been his top priority and that he was on this from the beginning. If he is going to claim he did certain actions, it seems fair to me to see whether he did them. My own approach would be to impose liability on BP to make sure that they have the right incentives to stop this and clean it up. I think that the government has little competence in running these responses to oil problems, and the environmental rules that require environmental impact studies have delayed responses.

Some documents show how very liberal Kagan is on crime and other issues

The story here is from CBS News:

But in documents obtained by CBS News, Kagan--while working as a law clerk to the late Justice Thurgood Marshall - made her positions clear on some of the nation's most contentious social issues.

The documents, buried in Marshall's papers in the Library of Congress, show Kagan standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the liberal left, at a time when the Rehnquist Supreme Court was moving to the conservative right.

They also provide a remarkably candid picture of her opinions, including on the most controversial issue Supreme Court nominees ever confront: abortion.

Although Kagan's confirmation has thus far been an all but foregone conclusion, sources say these documents will give Republicans a few cards of their own to mount a strong fight against her. . . .

Dem offers conspiracy theory explanation for Arizona Immigration Law

I would obviously been nice if she had read the bill, but her explanation for how pushed for the law is weird enough.

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

"There's a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups," said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. "It's been documented. It's not mainstream politics."

Click here to listen to the audio tape.

Sanchez said front organizations for white supremacist groups are approaching lawmakers to propose the language to the bills and urging them to push them through state legislatures in an effort to legalize discrimination.

"It creates a Jim Crow system where based on the color of your skin you could be treated as a second-class citizen or harassed based on how you look," she said.

The Arizona law, which makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally, requires police enforcing any other law to question people about their immigration status if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are in the country illegally. . . .

FTC offers more intervention in the media as a way to save it

The FTC's proposals are pretty dangerous for they will make the media more dependent on government and thus presumably less willing to criticize government. Taxing iPads will make alternative ways of doing things independently of the government. The 47 page document is here.

The Federal Trade Commis sion says it wants to save journalism. I'm not sure who asked it to.
In a just-released "staff discussion draft" of "potential policy recommendations to support the reinvention of journalism," the agency only circles its wagons around old newspapers and their fading business models.
If the FTC wants to reinvent journalism, perhaps it should align with news' disruptors. But there's none of that in this report. The word blog is used but once in 35 pages of text--and then only in a parenthetical mention of soccer blogs. Discussion of investing in technology comes on the last page in a suggestion about tools for "improved electronic note-taking."
Instead, the FTC staff declares defeat in the search for business models so it may explore many government interventions, including:
* Expanding copyright law and restricting the doctrine of fair comment to benefit legacy publishers.
* Granting antitrust exemptions to allow publishers to collude on pricing to consumers and to business partners.
* Giving news organizations tax exemptions.
* Subsidizing news organizations by increasing government funding to public broadcasting; establishing an AmeriCorps to pay reporters; giving news companies tax credits for employing journalists; creating a national fund for local news, and giving the press an increased postal subsidy.
To its credit, the FTC does ask how to pay for all this. So the staffers speculated about what I'll dub the iPad tax -- a 5 percent surcharge on consumer electronics to raise $4 billion for news. They also consider a tax on broadcast spectrum and even on advertising. . . .

Fox News summarizes the study here.

California House passes ban on open carry of loaded guns

Here are the strong arguments advanced against open carry. As usual, the arguments are about what might happen, not examples that they can point to of systematic problems.

"We think it's an accident waiting to happen," Amanda Wilcox, of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, said of gun-toting protesters mixing with frightened citizens in public places.

Wilcox said that allowing firearms in public – recently such a demonstration occurred in downtown Sacramento – sends the wrong message to children. . . .

Los Angeles Public Schools to teach that Arizona Immigration Law is Un-American

This is pretty bizarre. Any bets on whether the public school teachers will actually give the students a copy of the law to read?

New Fox News piece: Illegal Alien Legal Challenge

My new Fox News piece starts this way:

Little noticed, last Friday the Obama administration yet again tried to make it easier for illegal aliens to stay in the United States. In a brief filed with the Supreme Court, the administration asked the court to carve out a special exemption for businesses who break the law by hiring illegal aliens.

In every state, individuals must have a business license to do a huge range of jobs, be it a restaurant, stores, salvage, selling cars, cleaning people's houses, pest control, or other businesses. But people must get a criminal background check to get a license. Different states vary in terms of what crimes can disqualify one from getting a license -- some including misdemeanors not covered in other states.

Similarly, if you commit a crime, your business license is very likely to be revoked. The same is true for professional licenses for lawyers, doctors, or even barbers. The logic for these rules is pretty strong. If someone commits a crime, states have decided those people can't be trusted in dealing with consumers. . . .

UPDATE: Supreme Court to hear Arizona immigration law challenge

The nation's highest court agreed to decide whether the 2007 state law infringed on federal immigration powers and should be struck down.

The law at issue in the case is different from the strict new Arizona immigration law passed earlier this year and criticized by President Barack Obama that requires the police to determine the immigration status of any person suspected of being in the country illegally.

But the Supreme Court's eventual decision in the case, depending on how the justices rule, could end up affecting the pending legal challenges to the new law as well.

The Obama administration last month urged the Supreme Court to rule that the 2007 law was preempted by federal immigration rules and would disrupt the careful legal balance that the U.S. Congress struck nearly 25 years ago.

The Arizona law suspends or revokes licenses to do business in the state in order to penalize employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. It also requires employers to use an electronic verification system to check the work-authorization status of employees through federal records. . . .

New piece at National Review and NPR: Guns and Crime in Chicago

The newest piece that I have can be found here at NR and here at NPR:

The Chicago gun debate finally shows signs of changing. With the Supreme Court’s decision on the city’s gun ban imminent, people might be beginning to understand that gun bans don’t stop criminals from getting guns.

At a press conference two weeks ago, Mick Dumke, a reporter from the liberal Chicago Reader, asked Mayor Richard Daley what should have been an obvious question: “Since guns are readily available in Chicago even with a ban in place, do you really think it’s been effective?” Daley’s response wasn’t very helpful. Picking up a very old rifle with a bayonet that had been turned in during one of Chicago’s numerous gun buybacks, Daley blustered: “Oh, it's been very effective. If I put this up your butt, you’ll find out how effective it is. . . . This gun saved many lives — it could save your life.”

Reporters greeted Daley’s outburst with a moment of stunned silence. But it wasn’t Daley’s answer that was important. The novelty is that a reporter actually questioned Daley on whether the gun ban had failed. . . .

Counting news stories on defensive gun uses

As I have discussed in The Bias Against Guns, relying on news stories to document defensive gun uses has its limits, but it still gives you a very minimum estimate on how frequently they occur. One example of the bias is this claim: "in 14 percent of documented cases, no shots were fired." Note that the 14 percent number obviously misrepresents the actual rate because those cases where a gun doesn't have to be fired are much less likely to be newsworthy. In any case, this is still a useful exercise.

"We've documented 2,160 stories of self-defense with guns since May 2007 – the same time frame the VPC used," said Burnett. "When it comes to concealed carry permits, we have 153 documented cases across 26 states with at least 550 lives saved."
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) recently claimed concealed weapons licensees are killers, offering stories as proof. Burnett says the VPC is distorting the truth.
"If these victims had been disarmed, they wouldn't be able to fight back…they'd be dead," said Burnett. "Since no place is immune from crime, we must allow people to be armed for their own protection. Nobody wants to kill someone, but nobody wants to die either."
Burnett also notes that in 14 percent of documented cases, no shots were fired. "You don't always have to shoot to stop a criminal. Sometimes the threat is enough." . . .