politicallyonpoint-blog

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If the central government gains power, it is likely to be at the expense of local governments.

MIlton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

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Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated -- a system of checks and balances.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

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The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

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Indeed, a major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it does this task so well. It gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

Published March 15, 2016  FoxNews.com

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton committed her second gaffe in as many days on the campaign trail Monday night, claiming that the U.S. "didn't lose a single person" in Libya during her time as secretary of state.

Clinton made the comment defending her push for regime change in the war-torn North African nation at an Illinois town hall hosted by MSNBC.

"Now, is Libya perfect? It isn't," Clinton said. After contrasting her approach toward Libya with the ongoing bloodshed in Syria's civil war, Clinton said "Libya was a different kind of calculation and we didn't lose a single person ... We didn’t have a problem in supporting our European and Arab allies in working with NATO."

Clinton made no mention of the Sept. 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans: U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, information officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Questions about the attack and its aftermath have dogged Clinton throughout her second run for the White House, with emails released by the State Departmentcontradicting several aspects of her testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the attack.

Earlier Monday, Clinton's campaign was forced to scramble to clarify comments she made about coal jobs at a CNN town hall Sunday night.

"I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country," Clinton said, "because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business."

With many workers in crucial primary states like Ohio and Illinois relying on such jobs, Clinton's campaign put out a statement stressing that, “Coal will remain a part of the energy mix for years to come” and Clinton’s plan would also safeguard workers’ retirement and health benefits.

Spokesman Brian Fallon said “no candidate in this race is more devoted to supporting coal communities than Hillary Clinton” and “any suggestions otherwise are false."

Fox News Channel's Ed Henry contributed to this report.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

Updated March 15, 20169:24 PM ET

Published March 15, 20168:23 PM ET

by Jessica Taylor

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., pauses while addressing the American Conservative Union's Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., earlier this month.

Cliff Owen/AP

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio announced Tuesday night that he was suspending his campaign for president after losing his home state in a landslide to Donald Trump.

"After tonight it is clear that while we are on the right side, we will not be on the winning side," Rubio told supporters in Miami.

Rubio congratulated Donald Trump at the start of his speech, but later appeared to criticize the real estate mogul's tactics.

Rubio said that Americans are anxious and frustrated about their jobs, immigration and many other issues, and the easiest path to victory would have been to play on those anxieties.

"I chose a different route, an I'm proud of that," he said. "In a year like this, that would have been the easiest way to win, but that is not what's best for America."

The end of Rubio's candidacy is something that has been sensed for weeks by political watchers. The senator won only three total contests: the Minnesota caucuses on Super Tuesday and later the District of Columbia caucuses and the Puerto Rico primary. His campaign kept arguing that once the race moved into the winner-take-all portion of the campaign, particularly in his native Florida, the momentum would shift his way. Instead, his home state would write his political obituary.

Ultimately, it was a disappointing finish for one of the most promising GOP candidates in the race. After a surprisingly strong third place finish in Iowa, it looked like Rubio could be on the rise in the presidential race at just the right time. As other establishment favorites, including his onetime mentor former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, seemed to be fading, many in the GOP hoped Rubio could become the consensus pick. And many Republicans believed Rubio would be the party's strongest candidate against the Democratic nominee in the fall, too.

But then just days later came a disastrous performance in the New Hampshire GOP debate, where he was repeatedly attacked by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Rattled, he repeated a standard stump speech line multiple times, something he was mercilessly mocked for by his rivals and in the press. He ended up finishing a disappointing fifth place.

But going into South Carolina the following week, he finally seemed to find his stride. He picked up the endorsement of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, along with South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the lone African-American Republican in the Senate, and narrowly edged out Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

But his rising stature made him the target of Trump, who hit him on immigration and his failure to show up for many Senate votes. Then, in an uncharacteristic move from the positive campaign he had been running, Rubio hit back, mocking Trump after a bad debate by insinuating he had sweat so much he looked like he had wet his pants and also implying that because the real estate mogul has small hands, another part of his anatomy might be small, too. The attacks backfired though, and Rubio later said he regretted using the slurs, which had embarrassed his children. He never seemed to fully recover.

Nonetheless, his exit is an abrupt political end for the once rising star. The former Florida House speaker came to Washington in the 2010 Tea Party wave, forcing a sitting governor, Charlie Crist, out of the GOP race before defeating him as an independent.

The young, telegenic son of Cuban immigrants was the kind of new face the GOP wanted to promote, hoping to reach out to a growing Hispanic population. He became a leading voice on immigration reform in the Senate, and was part of a bipartisan group pushing a bill in the Senate in 2013. He later backed off his support for the bill, but its pathway to citizenship would end up being a frequent attack point for his White House rivals.

Just running for president this year was a political gamble for Rubio. He was up for re-election to the Senate, but opted to run for the White House instead. So while even his colleague Cruz will be headed back to Washington if he doesn't win, for Rubio the future is more uncertain. And while there has been speculation he could run for the open Florida governor's race in 2018, a crushing loss in the state tonight makes that a more daunting prospect.

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J.D. Tuccille | March 15, 2016

Self-described socialist presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders wants to fund generous promises of cool stuff for everybody with equally impressive taxes that would soak... everybody. Increasing the size of the federal government by upwards of 50 percent doesn't come cheap—the Tax Policy Center estimates that Sanders' proposed tax hikes would cost $15.3 trillion over the first decade "thereby lowering average after-tax income by 12.4 percent." As befits a socialist, Sanders intends to soak the rich, and indeed he tries to hit them harder than he slams the rest of the population. The Tax Policy Center finds that "All income groups would pay some additional tax, but most would come from high-income households."

But researchers find that people who are more likely to succeed economically are also more likely to dodge taxes. And targeting them specifically increases the likelihood that they'll hide their money from the authorities. No matter what he intends, Sanders' proposed tax hike looks destined to fall most heavily on those who can least afford to pay the tab for his promised goodies.

Just by hiking taxes at all, Sanders and others who favor an expansive state face an uphill battle. "In almost all studies it has been found out, that the tax and social security contribution burdens are one of the main causes for the existence of the shadow economy," writes Friedrich Schneider, a professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, and expert on tax evasion and off-books economics. By "shadow economy," he refers to work and business conducted out of reach of tax collectors and regulators.

That shadow economy can be a pretty roomy place in which to go about your life, too. The Internal Revenue Service currently estimates that Americans pay 83.1 percent of all taxes owed. That may sound low, but it's actually about the highest level of compliance in the world (researchers found the rate in Britain closer to 78 percent, and 68 percent in Germany). Hiking taxes could be expected to drive more Americans to get creative with their tax returns.

But who would be most likely to keep their cash out of the government's grasping mitts? "[I]ndividuals who demonstrate high levels of ability or effort, who typically are rich, are much less likely than others to comply with taxation," says Raymond Duch, Director of the Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) at Oxford University.

Those greedy bastards! Of course they want to hold on to their moolah! You can already hear progressive pundits warming up their sharing-is-caring op-ed generators.

But Duch's research doesn't find that becoming rich makes people sticky-fingered. Instead, it seems that the same talent and drive that cause people to strive and succeed also make them proprietary about their earnings. "A causal mechanism contributing to tax cheating appears to be ability as opposed to wealth per se." By ability, Duch means exactly the sort of people you would expect to thrive by their own efforts: "very competitive individuals, successful entrepreneurs or investment bankers, or those who are very successful in the entertainment and the sports world."

There's no trigger level of taxation either—no magic threshold that sets off the talented and ambitious. People seem to resist handing over their money to the taxman no matter the burden. "The  higher  levels  of  cheating  by  able  versus  less  able  types  persists  in  high and low tax regimes."

Higher tax rates are a spur to resistance according to Schneider and company. But that non-compliance is bound to be more pronounced among those with the sort of ability that drives them to be prosperous, as found by Duch and his fellow researcher, Hector Solaz of the University of Birmingham.

So... put the screws to the rich, talented bastards, right? If we know that we're going to resist, the only solution is to hit them harder!

But that leads to even more trouble. In a separate paper, Duch and Pablo Beramendi of Duke University tried to discover what sorts of tax systems lead to higher compliance, and which ones inspire revolts. What they found is that "[m]ore progressivity leads to less compliance."

But that effect isn't across the board. In fact, "when taxes are high, rising levels of progressivity and redistribution reduces the rates of tax cheating." But that compliance "is largely driven by the behaviour of the poor… For the rich, on the other hand, higher progressivity in the high burden tax treatment reduces their tax compliance."

The simple act of targeting high-income taxpayers leads them to fight back.

Ultimately, this means that the cost of paying for generous programs will disproportionately fall on lower-income people, because they're less likely to evade the taxes intended to fund them.

Interestingly, Sanders has frequently held up Denmark's welfare state, with its necessarily high taxes, as a model to emulate. But a 2013 study found that in that country "about half the population purchases shadow work. In some sectors—such as construction—about half the workforce is working in the shadow economy." Unsurprisingly, Danes have been rethinking whether the expensive programs for which they've been skating on the bill are affordable.

At the end of the day, grandiose promises of massive government programs are cheap. But paying for them has a high price tag—and it will be shouldered by those with the fewest means to afford the cost.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

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Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.

Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom (1962)

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“Venezuela is due to begin installing about 20,000 fingerprint scanners at supermarkets across the country, as part of its introduction of rationing.” - BBC

BRING SOCIALISM TO AMERICA SO THAT WE CAN BE ARRESTED FOR SMUGGLING POWDERED MILK AND FINGERPRINT SCANNERS AT OUR GROCERY STORES!

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The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

H.L. Mencken (via brazilianconservative)

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Because I still see people defending a woman for trivializing an issue as serious as rape for her own personal gains, and even turning her questionable actions into a trend:

Paul Nungesser was cleared of the charge of rape against Emma Sulkowicz.  This was after a seven-month-long investigation.  Nungesser openly cooperated with the police after the university’s investigation, and prosecutors declined to pursue the case any further.

Nonetheless, Nungesser was not given a fair trial.  He was not allowed to call any witnesses, and he was not allowed to present any evidence. “He was not allowed to bring up communications between himself and Ms. Sulkowicz after the night in question.“ Sulkowicz had been sending him a barrage of text messages before, during, and even after she accused him of rape.  Right in the transcription of the official lawsuit itself, you will find numerous text messages of Sulkowicz proclaiming her “love” to Nungesser, and repeatedly stating how much she “misses” him. It was Sulkowicz that brought the texts to court.  It was HER OWN EVIDENCE that discredited her.

Sulkowicz breached the university’s confidentiality agreement regarding the case.  These agreements exist to protect falsely accused students of further defamation.

And yet, Nungesser’s lawsuit is against Columbia University, and not against Sulkowicz.

The two other women that brought accusations against Nungesser are personal friends of Sulkowicz, and made their claims after her story went viral.  He was found innocent of these accusations as well.

Sulkowicz did not carry the mattress strictly to make a “statement”.  She was receiving class credit for doing so, and has also expressed interest in selling the mattress to a museum.  This means that the university gave the okay for a student to publicly humiliate another student after he was already found innocent by a court of law.

Sulkowicz then went on to make a pornographic video out of her alleged “rape” in order to further PROFIT OFF OF IT.  Let me repeat that so the people in the back can hear it:  SHE SEXUALLY EXPLOITED HERSELF FOR PROFIT.

In this country, false accusations of rape are a legitimate issue (the “2%” number claimed to represent false accusations of rape is horribly incorrect, and should never be cited as genuine).

In this country, we’re actually willing to create legislation that makes it even easier for a man to be convicted of rape with zero evidence.  This literally goes against an individual’s legal rights.

In this country, male students are now wary of interacting with female students at all, because they now have a justified fear of having their lives ruined over hearsay.

Because of this, the leading organization devoted to the aid of rape victims now openly discourages the teaching of “rape culture” on college campuses.

In this country, we’re willing to damn a person in nationwide print without even investigating into the truth of the story (and don’t even whine about this being a wiki link, because you damn well know that links to all relevant sources/references are posted at the bottom of the page).

In this country, people are actually willing to create false stories of sexual abuse/assault just for the sake of fleeting internet popularity.  Accusations are often lodged against anyone with any level of online “fame”, and sometimes the accuser has already done it multiple times before.  Some people will even willingly make up false stories about sexual assault against children.

In this country, a student can end up losing out on a promising career due to a false accusation.

In this country, a man can spend decades in jail due to a false accusation. 

In this country, we’ve even deemed it acceptable to kill another person caught in the act of rape.

In this country, a man can be BEATEN TO DEATH BY AN ANGRY MOB due to a false accusation.

But please–continue to insist that we live in a “rape culture” when rape is so despised that a person can even be found innocent of it by a court of law, yet still have their future destroyed.  Tell me how this is a “rape culture” when a woman can lie about assault, and actually be rewarded for it, and publicized as a “hero”.

If you’re willing to support someone that will lie about rape, then YOU are part of the problem.  YOU are the ones adding to any “culture” regarding rape victims not being taken seriously, because you’re actually APPLAUDING THE KIND OF WOMAN WHO IS GIVING OTHERS A REASON TO BE SUSPICIOUS IN THE FIRST PLACE.  I see the same fucking people glorifying this woman for lying about rape that have openly victim-blamed and harassed other victims.

STOP PRETENDING TO GIVE A FUCK ABOUT RAPE VICTIMS, BECAUSE YOU CLEARLY DON’T.  WHENEVER A VICTIM DISAGREES WITH YOU, YOU’RE MORE THAN WILLING TO EXPRESS A DESIRE TO PHYSICALLY HARM THEM, OR ACTIVELY TRY TO HAVE THEM HARMED BY SOMEONE ELSE.  YOU ONLY GIVE A FUCK ABOUT HAVING SOMETHING TO VALIDATE YOUR OWN PERSONAL RESENTMENT, REGARDLESS OF WHO HAS TO SUFFER FOR IT.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

More importantly, the Court forgets that ours is a government of laws and not of men. That means we are governed by the terms of our laws, not by the unenacted will of our lawmakers.

Antonin Scalia (1936-2016)  U.S. Supreme Court Justice (via philosophicalconservatism)

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

FEB 4, 2016 @ 01:31 PM

Michael F. Cannon, CONTRIBUTOR

In 2009, PolitiFact ruled that Barack Obama’s infamous “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan” promise was “ half-true.” In 2013, they reversed themselves and declared it a lie. The “Lie of the Year,” no less. Again in 2013, PolitiFact (with a little help from yours truly) was forced to reverse another ill-considered ruling that benefited Obamacare supporters. Now PolitiFact is at it again, ruling that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is pants-on-fire lying when he says Obamacare is the nation’s “biggest job-killer.” The ruling is likely to get a lot more coverage now that Cruz finished first in the Iowa GOP presidential caucuses ahead of Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and the rest of the GOP field. Whether you like Cruz or not, he has the better of this dispute.  In their rush to label Ted Cruz a liar, PolitiFact ignored economic theory, ignored economic consensus, ignored problems with the evidence they had amassed, ignored that some of the evidence they collected supports Cruz, ignored reams of anecdotal evidence, and dismissed Congressional Budget Office projections based on nothing more than a subjective and arbitrary distinction PolitiFact themselves invented.

Senator Ted Cruz is right when he says Obamacare is the nation’s “biggest job-killer.” (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

PolitiFact Ignores Economic Theory & Consensus

We begin with the simple proposition that, all else equal, increasing the cost of something means you get less of it. Obamacare’s employer mandate requires employers with more than 50 workers to provide coverage to all full-time employees, defined as anyone who works 30 hours or more per week. These and other provisions of the law increase the cost of hiring and retaining workers. It stands to reason that increasing the cost of hiring in this way will reduce employment.

This simple economic intuition is so widely accepted that it should be non-controversial. In 1989, Harvard economist Larry Summers, who would go on to become one of President Obama’s top economic advisers, wrote a seminal article observing that employer mandates reduce employment, particularly when combined with a binding minimum wage. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has consistently projected, based on its reading of the available economic evidence, that Obamacare will reduce hiring in part by reducing employers’ demand for labor.  (More about the CBO’s projections later.)

PolitiFact Doesn’t Even Know When It Has Good Data

PolitiFact does not even mention this economic consensus .  Instead, it concludes, blithely:

Cruz said that Obamacare cost the country millions of jobs and had forced millions into working part-time.

The government’s employment surveys show no sign of that occurring. By every measure, millions more people are working and millions fewer are stuck unwillingly in part-time work since the time the Affordable Care Act became law. The law might have affected part-time work for certain kinds of people, but that didn’t change the improvement in the overall numbers.

Set aside that PolitiFact acknowledges there is evidence that Obamacare increased part-time work  ”within certain groups — people with little education and those 60-64 years old,” and that this should have been enough to dissuade them from calling Cruz a liar.

As the above excerpt suggests, PolitiFact bases its conclusion not on studies that isolate the effect of Obamacare, but on studies and (worse) aggregate data that fail to control for other factors that affect employment, like the overall economy or state tax policy, and therefore might hide Obamacare’s effects. That’s not particularly useful. The question is not whether the number of jobs has risen since Obamacare became law. It is whether there are fewer jobs than there would have been if Obamacare hadn’t become law. As James Capretta and Joe Antos write, “Given the structure of the ACA, it would be hard to conclude the law would not eventually reduce hours worked or total compensation, although the magnitude of the resulting changes may be hard to detect in the U.S.’s large and complex labor markets.”

PolitiFact Ignores Anecdotal Data, And Lots Of It

Nor did PolitiFact examine “every measure.” There is ample anecdotal evidence to demonstrate Obamacare has indeed caused many employers to eliminate full-time jobs and shift to part-time workers. The Washington Post reports that Kevin Pace, an adjunct professor of music in Virginia, lost $8,000 of income when his employer cut his hours, and “thousands of other workers in Virginia” also saw their hours cut. According to the State of Indiana, “many Indiana public school corporations have reduced the working hours of instructional aides, substitute teachers, non-certified employees, cafeteria staff, bus drivers, coaches, and leaders of extracurricular activities to fewer than 30 hours per week” because of the employer mandate. This week, NPR and Kaiser Health News report many employers have settled on a strategy for dealing with the employer mandate: “Just make as many workers as possible part time. A U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey found nearly 60 percent of small franchise businesses said they would make personnel changes like this.”

Yes, these are anecdotes, but there are simply too many of them to dismiss. Last year, I had an intern compile state-by-state reports of how employers responded to Obamacare by eliminating full-time jobs and/or shifting to part-time work. I have posted that compilation here. Notice how many employers are limiting hours to just below Obamacare’s 30 hours/week cutoff. Each state’s section includes estimates from the American Action Forum of the job losses Obamacare has caused among small businesses in that state, and many state’s sections include excerpts from relevant news reports. If you’re wondering why the articles stop around April 2015, that’s when this emotionally scarred intern’s time at the Cato Institute ended, abruptly, because of–drum roll, please–ObamaCare’s employer mandate.

There is enough anecdotal evidence here to suggest that the aggregate data are hiding something important. And even if these reductions in jobs and hours worked are being more than made up for by the number of new jobs created, those losses are more plausibly connected to Obamacare than the gains are. And that’s the question before us.

PolitiFact Arbitrarily Dismisses CBO Projections

Voters who read only the headlines blaring Ted Cruz a liar would never know that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has projected Obamacare will reduce employment by the equivalent of 2.5 million full-time jobs.  Yes, you read that right. PolitiFact doesn’t even mention those CBO projections in its fact-check. Given that such a credible source projects Obamacare will significantly reduce employment, how does PolitiFact justify its ruling?

For years, PolitiFact has maintained that while Obamacare reduces employment, it does not eliminate jobs . Yes, you read that right, too. Here’s how PolitiFact explains its rationale in a previous fact-check…

as the CBO put it: “The estimated reduction [in employment] stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply, rather than from a net drop in businesses’ demand for labor.”

It’s an important distinction. CBO estimated that millions of Americans will probably decide they don’t need to work as much because the law makes health insurance more available by offering subsidies for some to obtain insurance and expanding Medicaid eligibility in some states.

The CBO’s distinction between supply and demand is indeed important. But when PolitiFact then claims that discouraging people from working does not eliminate jobs, it is inventing and basing its name-calling ruling on a separate, purely arbitrary, and easily rebuttable distinction.

As I have explained before, a job is when Peter and Paul exchange labor for money, and that job can disappear either because Paul withdraws the money or because Peter withdraws the labor. In one case, Peter doesn’t get a paycheck; in the other, Paul can’t get a job done. The latter imposes costs on society every bit as real as the former. In other areas, President Obama has personally decried the loss of ”hundreds of billions of dollars in wages that will not be earned, jobs that will not be done, and purchases that will not be made.” (Emphasis added.)

According to PolitiFact, however, while discouraging the buying of labor eliminates jobs, discouraging the selling of labor does not. On this arbitrary distinction, PolitiFact hangs its entire ruling. Without it, they would have to admit that the CBO’s projection that Obamacare will reduce employment by 2.5 million jobs supports Cruz’s statement.

Clean Up Your Act, PolitiFact

This episode is yet another good illustration of why PolitiFact should just stop calling people liars.  They don’t know what the word means. A lie is when someone says something he believes to be false, with the intent to deceive others. Cruz wasn’t lying, if only because he undoubtedly believes that Obamacare really is a job-killer. But neither that (ahem) fact, nor PolitiFact’s failure even to establish that his statement was false, was enough to make them hesitate from launching an ad hominem attack on someone who has a legitimate difference of opinion with PolitiFact’s reporters and editors. (By PolitiFact’s own admission, they found “Only that[ Cruz's claim is] not true…At least in any way that the national data picks up.” Failing to prove a statement is true is not the same as proving it is false, guys.)

PolitiFact should completely scrap both their “pants on fire” rating and their attention-seeking “Lie of the Year” award.  The childish and promiscuous name-calling that is part of PolitiFact’s business model has made public discourse both nastier and dumber.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

Let ambition counteract ambition.

6:37 PM, FEB 14, 2016 | By ADAM J. WHITE

Senator Schumer appeared Sunday on ABC's This Week and responded to suggestions that the Senate might not confirm the lame-duck President's nomination to replace the late Justice Scalia: "show me the clause [in the Constitution] that says [the] president's only president for three years."

True, Presidents serve four-year terms. But here's a question for Senator Schumer: Can you show me the clause that says the Senate must vote on, let alone confirm, a President's nominee?

I'll save him the effort: There is no such clause in the Constitution.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ... judges of the Supreme Court."

It could not be simpler. The president nominates someone. If the Senate gives its advice and consent, then the president can appoint him. But nowhere does the Constitution say that the Senate is required to act on the president's nominations. The Framers certainly didn't understand the Senate to bear such an obligation. And the Framers who drafted that document certainly didn't say that the Senate bore such an obligation.

That is a point I offered once in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. Writing amidst the war over President Bush's judicial nominations, I looked at the founding debates at the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and the ratification debates that followed, and found no indication of any expectation that the Senate would be required the vote on a President's nominees.

The Framers expressly based the Constitution's "advice and consent" model on the approach used in Massachusetts, under the State's Constitution of 1780. And, looking through years of archived nomination files, I found myriad examples of nominations made by the governor that received no up-or-down vote from the "Privy Council," the body that provided constitutional advice and consent.

But the best evidence of the Senate's power not to vote on nominations is found in the Framers' rejection of an alternative approach to appointments. As an alternative to the "advice and consent" model, James Madison proposed a discretionary Senate veto. Under that plan, a president's nominees would automatically be appointed unless the Senate mustered a majority vote against that nomination within a fixed number of days.

In short, Madison would have put the burden on the Senate, to affirmatively act to block a nomination. But the Framers rejected his proposal, and chose instead the "advice and consent" model, placing the burden on the president (and his supporters) to convince the Senate to confirm his nominee.

And history reflects the Framers' choice. Presidents have made 160 nominations for the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed only 124 of them. And of the 36 failed nominations, the vast majority of them (25) received no up-or-down vote.

To that end, the Senate can structure its own rules to govern the advice-and-consent process. It had constitutional power to establish the filibuster system. It has constitutional power to abolish or reform the filibuster. And it probably should. But the Constitution leaves this choice to the Senate alone—just as it leaves the Senate free to decide whether to consider a president's judicial nomination.

Of course, Senator Schumer knows as well as anyone that the Senate is not constitutionally obligated to give judicial nominations an up-or-down vote. From the very outset of George W. Bush's presidency, Schumer was ready to block a vote on any of his Supreme Court nominations. In fact, Schumer announced in mid-2007—with a year and a half left in Bush's presidency—that he would block any further nominations Bush might make to the Court. (He added that the failure of his effort to filibuster the Alito nomination, barely a year into Bush's second term, one of his "greatest failings and regrets.")

President Obama once shared Schumer's fondness for filibustering Supreme Court nominations. But now he, like Schumer, sees things quite differently. "I plan to fulfill my constitutional responsibilities to nominate a successor in due time," he said yesterday, before asserting that the Senate must "fulfill its responsibility to give that person a fair hearing and a timely vote."

Obama's last point repeated almost verbatim the words of his predecessor. "The Senate has a constitutional responsibility to hold an up-or-down vote on every judicial nominee," President Bush said in response to Senator Obama's and Schumer's failed filibuster, a point Bush pressed repeatedly throughout his presidency.

In those days, President Obama was among the loudest critics of presidential power. Today he asserts presidential power more aggressively than his predecessor ever did. The Senate should assert its own power with no less vigor. Let ambition counteract ambition.

Adam J. White is a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

Expect the other Republican presidential candidates to pepper Trump with questions about what kind of Supreme Court justices he'd pick, perhaps as early as at tonight's debate. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

By W. JAMES ANTLE III (@JIMANTLE) • 2/13/16 5:53 PM

It feels crass to discuss politics so soon after the passing of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon, but the plain fact is his death has major implications for the 2016 presidential race.

With so many aging justices, control of the White House and Senate will likely effect the Supreme Court majority too. Before Scalia's death, the court was precariously split between conservatives and liberals. Now President Barack Obama has the opportunity to give the liberal bloc the majority.

Will Senate Republicans let him? They will have the power to block the confirmation of any Obama nominee and could argue that the Supreme Court majority is something that the voters should in effect get to decide in November.

Either way, it reinforces the Republican argument that the composition of the federal judiciary is a compelling reason for conservatives to defeat Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the general election this year.

The issue of judges will now take on a new life in the Republican primaries too. While every Democratic appointee to the Supreme Court has been a reliable liberal since Byron White veered right after John F. Kennedy put him on the court, Republican presidents have a spottier record.

Some of the biggest liberal activists of the last few decades — Earl Warren, Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens — have been appointed by Republican presidents. Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush each made a concerted effort to elevate conservative justices. Bush 41 choice David Souter joined the court's liberal bloc.

Reagan nominees Sandra Day O'Connor and current Justice Anthony Kennedy were more conservative, but voted with the liberals on some important decisions. Kennedy wrote the decision reaffirming Roe v. Wade in 1992 and also last year's ruling in favor of nationwide same-sex marriage.

John Roberts, the chief justice chosen by Bush 43, has been more conservative than Kennedy or O'Connor. But even he played a pivotal role in sparing Obamacare from a constitutional challenge that would have overturned the law.

At first glance, this would seem to be a major advantage for Ted Cruz, who is deeply plugged into the conservative legal network from which Republican presidents would surely draw their Supreme Court talent pool. It also raises major questions about Donald Trump, who has no track record on conservative legal issues, has defended the Kelo decision (written by John Paul Stevens) expanding the scope of eminent domain and whose sister is a pro-Roe federal judge (Trump once said she would make a "phenomenal" justice but hasn't committed to nominating her).

Expect the other Republican presidential candidates to pepper Trump with questions about what kind of Supreme Court justices he'd pick, perhaps as early as at tonight's debate. The rival campaigns may begin to argue that it is too risky to leave the Supreme Court majority up to Trump.

Jeb Bush could also conceivably take some grief for his father's and brother's appointees, although they include reliable conservatives like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as well as Roberts and Souter.

Scalia's death will cast a major shadow over the Republican presidential debate and could have a real impact on the race going forward.

[politicallyonpoint-blog]

Updated by Dara Lind on February 14, 2016, 4:00 p.m. ET 

@dlind 

dara@vox.com

Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the opera in 2006.(Katherine Frey/Washington Post)

If you've ever believed that people can disagree passionately about politics and still respect and care for each other as friends, the friendship of Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a comfort and an inspiration.

He was the Supreme Court's most outspoken conservative; she is its most outspoken liberal. But their friendship became famous, not just because of its odd-couple unexpectedness but because their mutual respect and affection for each other was obviously genuine.

They and their families spent New Year's Eve together every year. They rode together on an elephant in India (Scalia joked that Ginsburg betrayed her feminism by sitting behind him), and Scalia watched Ginsburg go parasailing in the south of France ("She's so light, you would think she would never come down. I would not do that").

So it's no surprise that of all the tributes to Justice Scalia, who died Saturday of an apparent heart attack at the age of 79, Justice Ginsburg's is uniquely moving. It's a tribute to Scalia as an interlocutor, a fellow opera lover — including a reference to the opera Scalia/Ginsburg: A (Gentle) Parody of Operatic Proportions, which debuted in 2015 — and a "best buddy."

Toward the end of the opera Scalia/Ginsburg, tenor Scalia and soprano Ginsburg sing a duet: 'We are different, we are one,' different in our interpretation of written texts, one in our reverence for the Constitution and the institution we serve. From our years together at the D.C. Circuit, we were best buddies. We disagreed now and then, but when I wrote for the Court and received a Scalia dissent, the opinion ultimately released was notably better than my initial circulation. Justice Scalia nailed all the weak spots—the 'applesauce' and 'argle bargle'—and gave me just what I needed to strengthen the majority opinion. He was a jurist of captivating brilliance and wit, with a rare talent to make even the most sober judge laugh. The press referred to his 'energetic fervor,' 'astringent intellect,' 'peppery prose,' 'acumen,' and 'affability,' all apt descriptions. He was eminently quotable, his pungent opinions so clearly stated that his words never slipped from the reader’s grasp.

Justice Scalia once described as the peak of his days on the bench an evening at the Opera Ball when he joined two Washington National Opera tenors at the piano for a medley of songs. He called it the famous Three Tenors performance. He was, indeed, a magnificent performer. It was my great good fortune to have known him as working colleague and treasured friend.

It's easy to mourn the lack of civility in contemporary American politics; politicians on both sides talk glowingly about the time when Ronald Reagan could invite Democratic House Speaker Tip O'Neill to the White House for a drink to work out a conflict. It's just as easy to say that civility is for people who don't have the courage of their convictions — that if people genuinely disagree about what is best for America, they shouldn't have to put that aside for the sake of small talk.

What makes Ginsburg's statement remarkable is that it shows how superficial both sides of the civility argument are.

The respect that Ginsburg's statement shows for Scalia's intellect — that she could trust him to point out the flaws in her arguments — also reveals a respect for her own, to know the difference between a genuine agreement of principle and an error that needed to be corrected. But more importantly, the statement shows that it's okay for people in politics to spend time cultivating other interests — like opera — and that those can be a genuine basis for friendship in their own right.

Arguably, that's easier for appointed judges than it is for elected officials. It's still rare. And it's still worth celebrating.

It's not just atypical in contemporary American politics for people to be both ideological adversaries and close personal friends. It's atypical for contemporary American political figures to even be close personal friends with each other. Justices Scalia and Ginsburg showed just how much everyone else was missing. That won't be as significant to Scalia's legacy as his jurisprudence, but maybe it should.