Pop Culture and Reality

Pop culture.

Reality.

#Trudeaupia

So yeah, Justin Trudeau is running.

I think it’s great. Why? The media attention is hilarious.

Paul Wells had some fun:

Colleagues at the sprawling Maclean’s nerve centre in downtown Ottawa note that we are sometimes asked why Maclean’s carries such a torch for Justin Trudeau. I hotly dispute the claim: that’s no torch, it’s more like a lighter, of the kind fans hold aloft whenever REO Speedwagon breaks into Can’t Fight This Feeling. Herewith, the greatest hits of our decade-long thing for Justin.

We can’t fight this feeling any more. We’ve forgotten what we started fighting for. It’s time to bring this ship into the shore.

And throw away the oars.

Forever.

It’s going to be so much fun.

That being said, I wouldn’t dismiss him out of hand. He thrives on being underestimated. Misunderestimated, you might even say…

Of course, there’s this.

We’ll see how he is on the trail.

Le Quebec aux Quebecois!

So yeah, 28%?

Le Parti québécois est aux portes du pouvoir, mais le courant souverainiste est clairement en perte de vitesse. Seulement 28% des gens voteraient Oui à un référendum proposant que le Québec devienne un pays souverain, un recul de huit points depuis le début de la campagne électorale. …

Dans son coup de sonde, CROP constate que le camp du Non ne gagne pas autant de terrain toutefois. On est passé de 60 à 62% depuis le début août, révèlent les données brutes. Ce sont les indécis qui ont pris du poids – ils étaient 4% au début du mois d’août, on en retrouve désormais 10% sur la question référendaire.

I hesitate to post something from Frum, but here’s why:

If Quebec breaks the fiscal union with Canada, it must for its own sake exit the currency union too. Which means that Quebeckers will awake the next day to huge depreciations of their salaries, benefits, and savings.

Quebecers know that, or anyway intuit it. The old promises of an easy separatism have been discredited. Separatism is now a hard path, involving great sacrifices, reduced standards of living, more work, and fewer social benefits — all at a time when PQ supporters yearn to hear a message of no sacrifices, improved standards of living, less work, and more social benefits. Which is precisely why Quebec separatism is effectively dead.

So what is offered instead is an elaborate pretense. PQ leader Pauline Marois has promised to form of committee to work on a project to develop a plan for a new strategy for independence. The committee will begin by studying past studies of Quebec independence, and then — once the studies are complete — proceed to propose action plans. A new diplomatic initiative will seek to gain international approval of the independence that Quebecers themselves do not want.

In tough economic times, these studies at least offer make-work jobs for under-utilized economists, sociologists, and party functionaries. But they impose a tough challenge on the rest of Canada: how to keep a straight face through the prolonged hemming and hawing. “Okay, you just let us know when you finish talking to yourselves. Take your time. We’ll wait. Four years? Eight? Twenty-seven? Fine. No rush.”

Fun times.

“I am a Canadian; we accept that we are in Canada”

If the sovereigntist movement is ever to die, this is how it will die:

One thing is clear: I don’t want to define myself as a federalist. I want to define myself as a Quebecker first, but also as a Canadian. … I am a Canadian. We accept that we are in Canada. I think we’ll have a good relationship with Stephen Harper. I think that we agree on many issues, including the economy and public finances. Of course, we have some disagreements on social issues. … I am back in politics for ten years, and I will never promote the sovereignty of Quebec.

That’s the best case scenario for these ex-separatists, and it’s not a terrible one.

Romney energized?

Seems so.

The most interesting thing about the Ryan pick, it seems to me, is how it’s changed Romney. Some Republicans won’t like this, but this reminds me of how the Gore pick seemed to re-energize a tired Bill Clinton in 1992.

See text of speech here.

At several points, Mitt was interrupted by cheers and applause, and at times the crowd broke into chants of “Mitt! Mitt! Mitt!” or “USA! USA! USA!” The candidate was fired up and the crowd was fired up, and it was very exciting to be there with my 13-year-old son Jefferson. Afterwards, as we left, I talked briefly to a National Correspondent Whose Name You Would Recognize and said, “Great speech, huh?”

The correspondent replied: “He wrote it himself, you know.” My reaction was skeptical. Does any big-time politician write his own speeches anymore? I said, “Really? He wrote it himself?”

The correspondent said, “Swear to God. He wrote it himself” — and then did a cross-my-heart motion.

How would the correspondent know Mitt wrote the speech himself? I don’t know, but his confidence was such — and the speech was so genuinely awesome — that I called my source at Romney campaign HQ in Boston and asked him if he he had a text of the speech he could send me. It just arrived by e-mail and so here, ladies and gentlmen, is what I call The Chillicothe Address…

There’s this, too.

Go figure. Maybe something is turning.

Ryan reactions

Dave Weigel: Paul Ryan’s Party.

Fred Barnes: Romney the Fighter.

Mike Allen: Brilliant or Political Malpractice?

Months ago, a Romney official was walking through the pluses and minuses of the various V.P. possibilities, and said at the very end of the spiel: “Only one person on the campaign wants Paul Ryan. That’s Mitt Romney.” The two had just campaigned together, and proved to have superior chemistry.

Althouse saw it coming.

I didn’t see it coming, but I’m glad it came. We’ll get to have a clean fight now.

Instant update: Like many conservatives, I really liked this part of Romney’s introduction.

“He doesn’t demonize his opponents. He appeals to the better angels of our nature.”
“There are a lot of people in the other party who might disagree with Paul Ryan. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t respect his character and judgment,” Romney added. “We’re offering a positive governing agenda that will lead to economic growth.”

I prefer a positive campaign. I’ll take negative if I have to — as we do in Canada just now — but positive is better.

Update again: Seniors seem to like Ryan…

Cruz Control

Now that Ted Cruz has trounced his opponents in the Republican Senate Primary in Texas, join me in laughing at this anti-Canadian anti-Cruz site.

Ted’s probably going to be a rock star, and we may yet see him as a justice at SCOTUS or in the White House. (Clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist.)

If he does run for the presidency someday, expect to see a rather vicious debate on whether citizens “by birth abroad” are “natural-born”. There’s enough contemporaneous evidence to satisfy the originalists that they probably are.

In the crosshairs

I disagree with Greenwald here.

I think “enhanced interrogations” are okay under some circumstances. I also think targeted killings of US citizens at the President’s command go too far and are illegal.

The president, by contrast, thinks “enhanced interrogations” are wrong, and is a-okay with targeted killings of US citizens.

Which position makes more sense?

ObamaCare — Yea or Nay?

Today’s the day.

10 AM EDT is when SCOTUS starts to do its thing.

Does Obama already know? Some theorize that he does, and if so, the news isn’t good for his signature law.

But it’s quite possible that the law will be upheld, instead — as Ann Althouse said last week, there are good arguments on each side.

Some precedents lead one towards declaring the mandate constitutional; taking a step back and looking at the constitution as a whole leads one towards declaring it ultra vires.

In a very real sense, this is a case of first impression — do the enumerated powers of the United States Congress allow it to require one to buy a service? (Well, some of them do. The Militia Power allows the Congress to require one to buy a rifle. But this is a Commerce Clause case.)

This will be an interesting day, either way.

More to come later on this post…

Update, 10:25 AM EDT: So, the right held together on the Commerce Clause reading, but the mandate is saved as an exercise of the taxation authority.

Chief Justice Roberts got together with the four liberal justices to uphold ObamaCare on that basis.

Fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Very Supreme Court of Canada-like move.

Update, 10:45 AM EDT: Here’s the full judgment.

Final update, noon: If it’s a tax, it can be taken out by reconciliation with fifty votes in the Senate.

Politically, the GOP has a red-meat issue & a plausible path to repeal with 50 votes in the Senate & the presidency.

That’s not nothing. It’s not much today, but it’s not nothing. And SCOTUS did put real limits on the federal commerce power.

My take on this morning can be seen in video.

Children of the 1980s will understand.

Coda: Watch President Obama lie to the American people.

R.I.P. Individual Mandate, Take Two

Someone else read it the way I did.

Most tellingly, she touched upon the key question that I believe the Court is still working through: what to do with the law if the individual mandate is indeed found to be unconstitutional.

My sources (which I freely admit to be third-hand) suggest that Kennedy will side with the conservatives and strike down the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that nearly every American must buy health insurance. The key question is: how much of the rest of the law should be struck down along with it? …

My understanding—again, from third-hand sources—is that this question of severability is the subject of intense debate among the justices, even now. It’s entirely unclear whether the Court will strike down the mandate and two related provisions—what I’ve called the “strike three” scenario; or take down the entirety of Title I, where the law’s restructuring of the private insurance market resides; or overturn the whole law. Indeed, it is probable that the Court has not yet decided how it will rule on this question. …

If you’ve been following my writing on the Obamacare legal challenges, you know that a pet peeve of mine is the 1942 Supreme Court caseWickard v. Filburn, in which the Court decided that Roscoe Filburn couldn’t grow wheat on his own land to feed his own animals, because this somehow constituted interstate commerce. Wickard remains the core justification for 70 years of federal intrusion into the activities of individuals and localities. …

The bottom line is that if Scalia [now] thinks Wickard was wrongly decided, he’s almost certain to vote to overturn the mandate. This isn’t a surprise based on his commentary at oral argument, but it may shed light into the thinking of Justices Alito and Roberts, who are thought to share Scalia’s precedent-oriented approach to dealing with the Commerce Clause.

Well, we’ll see.