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Obama Ruined the Tea Party for All of Us

Mother Jones

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A friend draws my attention today to a piece by National Review editor Rich Lowry about—of course—the wild popularity of Donald Trump among tea partiers. Lowry waxes nostalgic for the early tea party days of 2010, when being a “constitutional conservative” was all the rage, and wonders where it all went:

Trump exists in a plane where there isn’t a Congress or a Constitution. There are no trade-offs or limits….He would deport the American-born children of illegal immigrants. He has mused about shutting down mosques and creating a database of Muslims. He praised FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II.

You can be forgiven for thinking that in Trump’s world, constitutional niceties—indeed any constraints whatsoever—are for losers….For some on the right, clearly, the Constitution was an instrument rather than a principle. It was a means to stop Obama, and has been found lacking.

My friend snickers at Lowry’s use of some, which does a whole lot of heavy lifting here. Technically, though, 95 percent is still some, so this is accurate. But a wee bit misleading, no? Anyway, this leads Lowry into an argument that, really, Trump is just Obama 2.0:

Trump is a reaction to Obama’s weakness but also to his exaggerated view of executive power….Whereas Obama has a cool contempt for his political opponents and for limits on his power, Trump has a burning contempt for them. The affect is different; the attitude is the same.

….A hallmark of Obama’s governance has been to say that he lacks the power to act unilaterally on a given issue, and then do it anyway. Progressives have been perfectly willing to bless Obama’s post-constitutional government. Trump’s implicit promise is to respond in kind, and his supporters think it’s about time.

Uh huh. So far, Obama has done OK in the Supreme Court, but no matter. Tea partiers believe Obama goes to sleep each night not by counting sheep, but by counting bonfires of Constitutions. Or, as Lowry admits, they pretend to believe this. In reality, it’s just a handy way to oppose Obama’s liberal policies.

Now, it’s never been clear to me why you need this kind of charade. Why not just oppose Obama’s liberal policies because they’re no good? I suppose it’s mainly a palliative for the rubes, who don’t like to think of themselves as meanspirited folks who dislike paying taxes to help the less fortunate. Instead, they can complain that Obama’s policies are unconstitutional; or that he’s running up dangerous levels of debt; or that he’s turning America into sclerotic old Europe. That sounds a lot nicer.

Anyway, Lowry’s actual goal in this piece is to come up with conservative arguments against Trump. That’s the Lord’s work, even if “Obama 2.0” seems a little unlikely to catch on. What’s more, I seem to recall that he’s a cat person in an office jampacked with dog people. And Christmas is right around the corner. So I’ll call a truce. No more writing about Donald Trump until Christmas is over. We all deserve a break.

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Obama Ruined the Tea Party for All of Us

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Obama: Sony "Made a Mistake" Stopping the Release of "The Interview"

Mother Jones

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On Friday, President Barack Obama called Sony’s decision to cancel the release of “The Interview” a “mistake.”

“We cannot have a society in which a dictator in some place can start imposing censorship in the United States,” he told reporters at his final press conference of the year. “Imagine if producers and distributors and others start engaging in self-censorship because they don’t want to offend the sensibilities of someone who’s sensibilities probably need to be offended.”

“I wish they’d spoken to me first,” he added. “I would have told them: Do not get into the pattern in which you are intimidated.”

Earlier on Friday, the FBI officially linked the North Korean government to the cyber attack on Sony. In the press conference, Obama indicated the US government was considering how to respond.

When asked for specifics, he said, “We’ve been working up a range of options. They will be presented to me and I will make a decision based on what I think is proportional and appropriate to the nature of this crime.”

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Obama: Sony "Made a Mistake" Stopping the Release of "The Interview"

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WATCH: George Zimmerman’s Girlfriend Reveals Disturbing New Details in Police Video

Mother Jones

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Last November, after a heated domestic dispute and a frantic call to 911, George Zimmerman’s girlfriend told police that he had threatened her with a shotgun. The allegations were eerily similar to those lodged by Zimmerman’s ex-wife following his acquittal on charges of murdering unarmed teen Trayvon Martin, and they seemed to signal a pattern of uncontrolled violence.

Zimmerman’s girlfriend, 27-year-old Samantha Scheibe, later recanted the accusations, saying in a sworn statement that she was “intimidated” during police questioning and believed investigators had “misinterpreted” her words. But a recently released video of Scheibe’s police interview casts doubt on her disavowal. It also adds credibility and violent new detail to Scheibe’s original account.

Far from intimidating, the officer who questioned Scheibe, Stephen LaGuardia of the Seminole County Sheriff’s office, is a mild-mannered civil servant. And Scheibe’s description of events was detailed and vivid—not exactly the kind of thing most people concoct on the fly. Having broken off the relationship, Scheibe said she told Zimmerman to leave her house. He began packing his belongings, including his AR-15 assault rifle. As he removed the clip and shoved it in his rifle bag, a bullet fell on the floor. Zimmerman then grabbed and cocked his shotgun, apparently so that there was a shell in the chamber, and stuffed it in the rifle bag, too.

Scheibe began carrying Zimmerman’s belongings outside “to get him out faster,” at which point Zimmerman grew agitated and retrieved the shotgun. “The bag was right there, let’s just say this is the couch, he grabbed it, unlocked it, opened it,” she explained, acting out Zimmerman’s gestures. Initially, she suspected Zimmerman might commit suicide. “I was trying to figure out, honestly, whether or not he intended to hurt me or himself.” But then, Scheibe said, he pointed the gun at her.

Scheibe also described Zimmerman smashing her table and and her eyeglasses with the butt of the shotgun. Later, she revealed that she had “threatened to call the cops on him before” because “he has episodes.” During one such episode she claimed that Zimmerman—who was jealous that she had been texting her former boyfriend—choked her so violently that it bruised her throat. When asked her why she hadn’t called the police then, Scheibe replied, “Because I feel like he always gets off.” These words turned out to be prescient: Last month, after Scheibe recanted her allegations, prosecutors dropped the domestic violence and assault charges against Zimmerman.

The entire video is worth a look.

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WATCH: George Zimmerman’s Girlfriend Reveals Disturbing New Details in Police Video

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