When you are of 'no party or clique,' you write deep, incisive things like this:

If your name is Koch, it's pronounced cock. And if your name is Boehner, it's pronounced boner. They can always change their names if they want. Until then ... I'm calling it like it is.

Congratulations, Tina Brown, you've picked a real winner!

In a defense of the utility of unions in a Newsweek column, 26-year-old Washington Post columnist/blogger Ezra Klein uses the words 'union' and 'efficiency' in the same paragraph.

Klein writes:

... unions still have a crucial role to play in America. First, they give workers a voice within -- and, when necessary, leverage against -- their employer. That means higher wages, but it also means that workers can go to their managers with safety concerns or ideas to improve efficiency and know that they'll not only get a hearing, they'll be protected from possible reprisals.

Someone needs to explain the concept of irony to Young Ezra -- joining the concepts 'World Series' and 'Chicago Cubs' makes more sense than does the linkage of the words 'union' and 'efficiency.'

Michael Barone:

A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.

Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.

Read the whole piece.

The Detroit News' Nolan Finley:

It's part of a disturbing trend by Democrats to embrace a by-any-means-necessary approach to governing. We saw it during passage of Obamacare, when the Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate blew up the rules to block a filibuster. In Massachusetts, Democrats used after-the-fact law changes in a failed attempt to keep a Republican from succeeding Ted Kennedy.

Obama trashed bankruptcy law to move the United Auto Workers ahead of General Motors' and Chrysler's secured creditors. And his regulatory agencies are bypassing Congress to enact policies he knows the elected representatives would never approve.

The strategy exposes the arrogant liberal conviction that they are justified in imposing their will on the people, because only they know what's best for America.

These Democrats in Indiana and Wisconsin merit universal condemnation.

What they are saying is that the people no longer have the right to use the ballot box to decide the direction of their government.

That's a rule change our system can't survive.

130 years ago on this date in 1881, Thomas Edison hired Samuel Insull as his private secretary. Insull was one of the founders of General Electric, and essentially created Commonwealth Edison Co., a Chicago-based utility, which led to his ownership of many other Chicago-based companies, including People Gas, as well as a number of commuter rail lines, including the Chicago North Shore and Milwaukee Railroad, Chicago South Shore and South Bend Railroad, and the Chicago Rapid Transit Company.

February 28 ...

In 1827 the first US railroad chartered to carry passengers and freight, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, was incorporated. In 1844 a 12-inch gun aboard the USS Princeton exploded, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others. In 1849 the ship California arrived at San Francisco, carrying the first of the gold-seekers. In 1861 the Territory of Colorado was organized. In 1881 Thomas Edison hired Samuel Insull as his private secretary. In 1901 scientist Linus Pauling was born in Portland, OR. In 1951 the Senate committee headed by Estes Kefauver (D-TN) issued a preliminary report saying at least two major crime syndicates were operating in the US. In 1953 scientists James D. Watson and Francis H.C. Crick discovered the double-helix structure of DNA, the molecule that contains the human genes. In 1974 the US and Egypt re-established diplomatic relations after a seven-year break. In 1986 Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was shot to death in central Stockholm. In 1993 a gun battle erupted at a compound near Waco, TX, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to serve warrants on the Branch Davidians, a group of religious extremists; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.

From CNN:

Frank Buckles, the last living U.S. World War I veteran, has died, a spokesman for his family said Sunday. He was 110.

Charles Krauthammer:

The magnificent turmoil now gripping statehouses in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and soon others marks an epic political moment. The nation faces a fiscal crisis of historic proportions and, remarkably, our muddled, gridlocked, allegedly broken politics have yielded singular clarity.

At the federal level, President Obama's budget makes clear that Democrats are determined to do nothing about the debt crisis, while House Republicans have announced that beyond their proposed cuts in discretionary spending, their April budget will actually propose real entitlement reform. Simultaneously, in Wisconsin and other states, Republican governors are taking on unsustainable, fiscally ruinous pension and health-care obligations, while Democrats are full-throated in support of the public-employee unions crying, "Hell, no."

A choice, not an echo: Democrats desperately defending the status quo; Republicans charging the barricades.

Wisconsin is the epicenter.
...

We have heard everyone - from Obama's own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?

Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?

February 27 ...

In 1801 the city of Washington, DC was placed under congressional jurisdiction. In 1807 poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born in Portland, ME. In 1812 poet Lord Byron gave his first address as a member of the House of Lords, in defense of Luddite violence against Industrialism in his home county of Nottinghamshire. In 1827 New Orleans held its first Mardi Gras celebration. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln gave his famous speech at Cooper Union in New York City. In 1883 Oscar Hammerstein I, grandfather of composer Oscar Hammerstein II, patented the first cigar-rolling machine. In 1902 American author John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, CA. In 1922 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the 19th Amendment to the Constitution guarantying the right of women to vote. In 1923 the great jazz tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon was born in Los Angeles, CA. In 1933 Germany's parliament building, the Reichstag, caught fire. The Nazis, blaming communists, used the fire as a pretext for suspending civil liberties. In 1951 the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, limiting a president to two terms of office, was ratified. In 1960 the US Olympic hockey team defeated the Soviets, 3-2, at the Winter Games in Squaw Valley, CA. (The US team went on to win the gold medal.) In 1972 the Shanghai Communique, pledging that it was in the interest of all nations for the United States and China to work towards the normalization of their relations, was issued by US President Nixon and Chinese Premier Chou En-lai at the conclusion of Nixon's historic visit to China. In 1973 the American Indian Movement occupied Wounded Knee in South Dakota. In 1974 People magazine was first issued by Time-Life (later known as Time-Warner). In 1979 Jane M. Byrne confounded Chicago's Democratic political machine, upsetting Mayor Michael Bilandic to win their party's mayoral primary. (Byrne went on to win the election.) In 1985 former ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, who had served three terms as a US senator, and ran as the 1960 Republican vice-presidential nominee, died in Beverly, MA, at age 82. In 1986 the US Senate approved telecasts of its debates on a trial basis. In 1991 President George H.W. Bush declared that "Kuwait is liberated, Iraq's army is defeated," and announced that the allies would suspend combat operations at midnight.

David Harsanyi:

According to Nobel laureate and raconteur Paul Krugman, Gov. Scott Walker and "his backers" are attempting to "make Wisconsin -- and eventually, America -- less of a functioning democracy and more of a Third World-style oligarchy."

Now, it's common knowledge that throwing around loaded words like "socialism" is both uncivil and obtuse, so it's comforting to know we can still refer to people as "Third World-style oligarchs." And boy, that kind of Banana Republic doesn't seem very appealing.

Democracy, naturally, can only be saved by public sector unions, which attain their political power and taxpayer-funded benefits by "negotiating" with politicians elected with the help of unions who use, well, taxpayer dollars. And you know, that doesn't sound like an oligarchy at all.

While Walker, who won office using obnoxious Third World oligarchic tactics like "getting more votes than the other candidate," is a cancer in the heart of democracy, union- funded Democrats evading their constitutional obligation to cast votes are only protecting the integrity of representative government by completely avoiding democracy.

You're getting it now, right?

Read the whole piece.

February 26 ...

In 1802 poet, novelist, and playwright Victor Hugo was born in Besancon, France. In 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from the Island of Elba to begin his second conquest of France. In 1848 the Second French Republic was proclaimed. In 1907 the US Congress raised its own pay to $7500. In 1916 Mutual Films signed Charlie Chaplin to a film contract for $10,000 per week, plus a $150,000 signing bonus. In 1919 Congress established Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. In 1929 President Coolidge signed a measure establishing Grand Teton National Park. In 1940 the United States Air Defense Command was created. In 1945 a midnight curfew on nightclubs, bars, and other places of entertainment was set to go into effect across the nation. In 1952 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that his nation has an atomic bomb. In 1970 National Public Radio was founded. In 1993 a bomb built by Islamic terrorists exploded in the parking garage of New York's World Trade Center, killing six people and injuring more than 1,000 others. In 1995 Barings PLC collapsed after a securities dealer lost more than $1.4 billion by gambling on Tokyo stock prices. The company was Britain's oldest investment banking firm.

Context.

Victor Davis Hanson:

We live in a therapeutic age, one in which the old tragic view of our ancestors has been replaced by prolonged adolescence. Adolescents hold adult notions of consumption: they understand the comfort of a pricey car; they appreciate the status conveyed by a particular sort of handbag or sunglasses; they sense how outward consumption and refined tastes can translate into popularity and envy; and they appreciate how a slogan or world view can win acceptance among peers without worry over its validity. But they have no adult sense of acquisition, themselves not paying taxes, balancing the family budget, or worrying about household insurance, maintenance, or debt. Theirs is a world view of today or tomorrow, not of next year -- or even of next week.
...

There are lots of issues involved in Wisconsin, in the impending financial and fuel crises, and in the sense of American impotency abroad. Yet a common denominator is a national adolescence, in which we want what we have not earned. We demand the world be the way that it cannot; and we don't wish to hear "unfair" arguments from "bad" and "mean" people.

A reader sent this along:

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.' The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.' The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I can not accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The Congressman was very happy and left the shop. The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.

February 25 ...

In 1570 Pope Pius V excommunicated England's Queen Elizabeth I. In 1793 the department heads of the US government met with President George Washington at his home for the first Cabinet meeting on record. In 1841 impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, Haute-Vienne, France. In 1901 US Steel Corp. was incorporated by J.P. Morgan. In 1913 the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution, giving Congress the power to levy and collect income taxes, was declared in effect. In 1943 US troops reoccupied the Kasserine Pass. In 1948 Communists seized power in Czechoslovakia. In 1956 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev harshly criticized the late Josef Stalin in a speech before a Communist Party congress in Moscow. In 1964 Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) became world heavyweight boxing champion by defeating Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, FL. In 1986 President Ferdinand E. Marcos fled the Philippines after 20 years of rule in the wake of a tainted election; Corazon Aquino assumed the presidency. In 1996 a 12-mile tether connecting a half-ton satellite to the space shuttle Columbia broke loose as it was almost completely unreeled.