Have you watched the video of Congressman Bob Etheridge (D-NC) calmly and patiently responding to a question from a presumed conservative activist?

In response to an ambush question on a Washington sidewalk, an elected representative of the United States slaps the camera out of a citizen’s hand, grabs his wrist and holds it despite repeated pleas to let go, and briefly pulls the guy around by the neck. No, a quick verbal brush-off or annoyed silence doesn’t suit Rep. Etheridge – only asking, “Who are you” like a drunken, entitled old record player while physically attacking his questioner will suffice. Treat a professed terrorist that way, and you’ll have the ACLU all over your junk. It’s okay if it’s a conservative, though, because those guys are asking for it.

Etheridge responded soon after the video was posted at Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government. Despite his weak apology and the undeniable draw of a congressman attacking someone on film, there’s hardly been an outcry from the brave, self-important press corps that rabidly dissects far less serious mistakes made by Republicans. Representative Etheridge was caught on camera committing criminal assault against a nobody whose offense was daring to address a congressman in an unacceptable tone… and the Washington media’s response is to shrug.

Nonetheless, it’s a campaign year and Etheridge’s opponent has a few months to come up with a snappy tag line she can play on top of that video. In the interest of fairness (Democrats like “fairness,” right?), I’ve put together some materials that will help the Etheridge team with damage control:

Bob Etheridge is one entitled old coot.

This is a totally reasonable response to a simple question.

Bob Etheridge learnin' a young American some character.

[Update: Thanks for the link, Harvey! IMAO readers may also enjoy my brilliant box art for an Islam-based Mario knockoff or the classic Fun With the Ayatollah.]

The Washington Post reports on President Obama’s West Point graduation speech:

President Obama on Saturday offered a glimpse of a new national security doctrine that distances his administration from George W. Bush’s policy of preemptive war, emphasizing global institutions and America’s role in promoting democratic values.

That’s the first paragraph of the Post summary, and already it’s clear Obama’s national security doctrine stretches no further than whatever was programmed into the teleprompter yesterday. How has America promoted democratic values on Obama’s watch? By waiting months before even paying lip service to Iranian dissidents dying in the streets? By criticizing Arizona to the hapless Mexican president, the Communist government in China, and anyone else who will listen? By betraying the Poles, Czechs, and Israelis at every opportunity?

“Yes, we are clear-eyed about the shortfalls of our international system. But America has not succeeded by stepping outside the currents of international cooperation,” he said. “We have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice — so nations thrive by meeting their responsibilities, and face consequences when they don’t.”

This is, to apply my favorite British phrase, bollocks on stilts. The currents of international cooperation are flowing nicely for anyone President Obama fears may not support toothless UN sanctions against Iran. If you’re wondering what sort of consequences nations face for failing to meet their responsibilities, just ask the Iranian mullahs.

And yet, as he calls for global cooperation, Obama has intensified the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And his administration has repeatedly confronted the dangers of Islamic terrorism on U.S. soil, including unsuccessful attempts to down a Detroit-bound airliner and explode a car bomb in New York’s Times Square.

Emphasis mine. The Obama administration has done everything in its power to avoid confronting the danger of Islamic terrorism. The Attorney General is scarcely willing to utter the phrase “radical Islam.” Based on the Post’s summary, Obama’s West Point speech was an exercise in revisionist history and empty rhetoric.

Turning to the full transcript, one sentence in particular stands out:

“But more than any other nation, the United States of America has underwritten global security for over six decades — a time that, for all its problems, has seen walls come down, and markets open, and billions lifted from poverty, unparalleled scientific progress and advancing frontiers of human liberty.”

This is absolutely true, and incredibly important. And President Obama, whose domestic goals guarantee America will no longer be able to afford anywhere near the military might necessary to assist allies and deter enemies, does not care.

My contribution to today’s geeky online defense of free speech, for reasons I discussed here, here, and here:

Friday, April 9^th is Tax Freedom Day, when the average American has earned enough to pay Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam’s various relatives what they demand. Ohio is somehow a day ahead of the average, so in honor of the big day tomorrow I thought I’d dig through some salary info for public administrators here in Franklin County. As boring as I am, I ought to make an effort to avoid any talk of numbers or statistics. As stubborn as I am, I won’t!

With employment and the economy in general down for the past year and a half, I wanted to see how the smallest of government big-shots were rewarding themselves relative to 2007 and 2008. Despite widespread populist railing against private industry salaries and bonuses, I expected to see pay increases for the insulated local bureaucrats our tax dollars keep employed. Given some of the things I’ve read recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the data.

A helpful CPA in the Franklin County Auditor’s office responded to my public records request promptly, with salary data on all Franklin County employees from 2007-2010. Download the Excel file if you’d like to check my numbers or do some analysis of your own. I’ll list hourly rates instead of annual salaries, as 2009 contained 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. Let’s start with the highest branch on the Franklin County tree, shall we?

Commissioner’s Office

Commendably, the two highest-paid administrators in the Commissioner’s office received no pay raises this year. That makes 2008′s 6% increases in their six-figure salaries a little easier to swallow.

Department of Job and Family Services

Job and Family Services (which you’ll notice is under the Commissioner’s office on the county org chart) is more complicated because of new hires, departures, and title changes. I should also note that David Migliore, who was Chief Deputy in the Clerk of Courts office while I was employed there from 2005-2007, is hardly my favorite person. I spent my last 6 months – as a Programmer Analyst 1 doing Programmer Analyst 2 work – waiting to hear back about a pay raise request that Migliore ignored literally until the day I resigned.

⁽¹⁾ – Drop in Director’s pay from 2008-2009 reflects a change from Douglas E. Lumpkin to David E. Migliore. I don’t know who decided Migliore should be making around $130,000, but it’s nice that he started at a lower salary than the outgoing Director and didn’t get a raise in 2010.

⁽²⁾ – In 2008 the Department of Job & Family Services added a new Assistant Director, Anthony S. Trotman. The 2009 data list Trotman as a second Director, salaried at $62.37 – equivalent to a 27.86% raise. Trotman isn’t listed at all for 2010, but the additional Assistant Director position remains.

As I said, this is more complicated than the Commissioner’s Office, where the two highest-paid employees were the same guys with the same titles from 2007-2010. I won’t pretend to understand why a second Assistant Director was added to the Department of Job and Family Services in 2008, but I’ll assume Trotman served as some sort of Interim Director in 2009.

Clerk of Courts

⁽³⁾ – In 2008, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy was elected Clerk of Courts. When David Migliore departed for the Department of Job and Family Services, O’Shaughnessy brought in Mary Austin Palmer – and immediately gave her a huge raise in a poor economy. Either Mary Austin Palmer is some kind of management wiz, or Maryellen O’Shaughnessy doesn’t think much of the taxpayers’ money. See (4).

⁽⁴⁾ – Yes, I skipped down the list of Clerk’s office employees; this observation is too ridiculous to exclude. In 2007, before he departed for Columbus City Council, Hearcel Craig was paid $25.49 an hour as the Clerk’s Director of Customer Service. The position remained unfilled (to no ill effect, so far as I could tell) until David E. Black was hired. In 2009, Black’s salary as Director of Customer Service was $24.96. In 2010, Black’s title changed to Director of Business Operations and his salary increased by nearly 50%. Why, all of a sudden, is it necessary for the Franklin County Clerk of Courts to employ a Director of Business Operations? Isn’t that what the Chief Deputy is for? How does O’Shaughnessy justify creating a $77,625.60 business operations role while also paying her Chief Deputy $95,409.60?

Skimming through the other Franklin County salary information, it looks like our highly-paid bureaucrats are at least politically intelligent enough not to give themselves raises when unemployment in the Columbus metro area is somewhere between 9 and 10 percent. Except for the Clerk of Courts office, which seems to have suffered from John O’Grady’s move to the Commissioner’s office.

Happy Tax Freedom Day!

[Update: Additional follow-up on the Clerk of Courts available here and here.]

National Review has an interview with Rep. Paul Ryan, one of a few bright lights on the right side of the aisle in Congress:

“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”

Hope and change as defined by President Obama are exactly what all of us wild-eyed conservatives said they’d be – schlocky advertising and accelerated government growth. That’s clearer today than at any other point this past year. Obama has demonstrated no interest in transparency, no patient bipartisanship, no meaningful variation from the leftist playbook of demonizing private employers while promising unsustainable entitlements to “the middle class.”

Congressman Ryan has been at the forefront of the GOP for months, suggesting solutions to America’s domestic problems that don’t require more spending, more IRS agents, more regulation and taxation. The Democrats’ solution to every domestic problem is to throw more of our money at it, which fits perfectly with a foreign policy of shrinking defense spending as yet another way to show our enemies how cuddly and disinterested we are.

Ryan’s speech yesterday on the House floor is an important summary of what the entire Republican Party ought to stand for:

In November we’re going to have very clearly defined options – I hope Ryan means what he says, and I hope he finds no shortage of trustworthy allies in D.C. over the coming months and years.

If you’re wondering what sort of valuable services the Senate health care bill could be providing this time next decade, see the future in the leftist bastion that is California’s state government:

The six-member California Division of Occupational Safety and Health standards board voted unanimously on the advice of staff to create an advisory committee to report back on whether to change state law to require safe-sex protections for adult-film actors and actresses.

This is an article from the LA Times, not The Onion. I’m sure. I double-checked.

Should porn “actors” use protection when “performing” their “acts?” Probably, unless they’re in the mood for some sexually transmitted diseases. This is obvious even to a science-hatin’ Christian with a running total of zero “partners.” But, the sort of thing that’s clear to a loser in Ohio is cause for a new advisory committee in California, where unionized state workers have run the government into the ground even without a committee to study whether it’s wise to have copious amounts of unprotected sex.

“We believe the state of California has a responsibility to regulate these workplaces as they do every other workplace,” AIDS Healthcare Foundation President Michael Weinstein told the board.

The state of California has a responsibility to regulate everything, as far as the state of California is concerned. Small wonder the vote to form a committee was unanimous. Imagine being asked this question: Should we form a new committee that will help justify the existence of your cushy job? Not many people would answer “No,” which is why the size of government trends in only one direction.

A former porn star points out that they don’t go into this business due to an abundance of brains:

“You think you’re safe but you’re not; in between scenes, you don’t know what other actors are doing,” James told the board.

While filming a porno, it’s difficult to be sure whether the people you’re having promiscuous sex with for money might be making unhealthy decisions off camera. The nanny-staters want you to know your concerns will be tended to, and as they venture into uncharted regulatory waters it’s clear that even a stupid law like mandated STD testing for the porn industry means a convoluted, money-burning process.

The Senate health bill creates dozens of federal boards, councils, and committees. Think these will be staffed entirely by health care and insurance professionals who know what’s best? Certainly only rational, fiscally sound decisions will be made by these new government employees. Decisions like the rational, fiscally sound decisions Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid make on a daily basis.

Congressman Boehner shared a graph last November displaying the mess of bureaucracy created by the House version of the bill as it stood at the time. Add one, subtract one, change a name here and there – this is what the leftist elites running Washington want. Countless new boards with the power to form committees with the power to impose regulations. All of their salaries coming out of our paychecks. Few of them producing anything of value.

Call. Your. Representatives.

I finally got around to listening to a Ricochet podcast, which I’ve been seeing recommended around the webs for a month or so. Episode 5, recorded on Friday 02/26, features Rob Long, Peter Robinson, Mark Steyn, and Andrew Breitbart. They discuss – among other things – last week’s health summit, and humorless institutionalized leftism.

Ricochet’s a great listen if you’re into that sort of thing. It’s the perfect accompaniment to a game of Filler 2 on Kongregate.com! Or to a commute, if you have one of those Empee-three Players and a car that knows how to talk to it…

Yesterday’s Washington Times has a story from Mark Steyn about the increasing ridiculousness of government regulations, contrasted with America’s refusal to do anything about the threat from Iran:

It is certain that Tehran will get its nukes, and very soon. This is the biggest abdication of responsibility by the Western powers since the 1930s. It is far worse than Pakistan going nuclear, which, after all, was just another thing the CIA failed to see coming. In this case, the slow-motion nuclearization conducted in full view and through years of tortuous diplomatic charades and endlessly rescheduled looming deadlines is not just a victory for Iran but a decisive defeat for the United States. It confirms the Islamo-Sino-Russo-everybody-else diagnosis of Washington as a hollow superpower that no longer has the will or sense of purpose to enforce the global order.

Sure, there are people who insist the Iranian mullahs are saving their oil for later in order to focus a huge portion of their crappy economy on nuclear power. This is based, apparently, on little other than the cute way Iran follows every insane Ahmadinejad rant about nuclear enrichment with a speech by some diplomat about their peaceful intentions.

Oh, right, like the guy in a $4,00-dollar suit is gonna nuke anyone. COME ON!

So long as there are a few isolationist libertarians and pantywaist liberals insisting Iran’s just trying to keep up with the Joneses and not trying to incinerate the Joneses, Obama and the State Department seem content to mix the occasional harsh word in with their flowery diplomatic rhetoric. That would be totally fine, if dictatorships always meant the peaceful things they said and were only kidding about the violent stuff.

But when you’ve authorized successful mob hits on Salman Rushdie’s publishers and translators, when you’ve blown up Jewish community centers in Buenos Aires, when you’ve acted extraterritorially to the full extent of your abilities for 30 years, it seems prudent for the rest of us to assume that when your abilities go nuclear, you’ll be acting to an even fuller extent.

Read the full Steyn article, and remember that President Obama is busy trying to resurrect a leftist health insurance plan that a majority of Americans don’t want and zero Americans can afford. Foreign policy? He’s already not George W. Bush; what do you people want?!

Harry Reid decided to remind us today – lest anyone forget! – what a giant, sleazy windbag he is, comparing Senate Republicans to opponents of women’s suffrage and supporters of slavery. You can see quotes, in Reid’s patented “wino panhandling outside UDF” rhetorical style, at Fox News, which is too partisan to be considered an actual news source.

It seems like the Progressives running our country are on a perpetual acid trip, reliving the hippie glory days of the ’60s and ’70s and oblivious to the world around them. Harry! We’re really sorry, but if you want to be sprayed by a fire hose or repressed by the government, you may have to move to Iran. You could burn your bra and chant “Hell no, we won’t go!” while smoking pot with some of the president’s Weather Underground crew… but gosh, that would be almost as crazy as what you’re actually doing on a regular basis.

Hope, change, and bipartisan fun times were promised by the Obama campaign, and anyone who saw through that b.s. probably supported slavery. Now the slavery-supporting, lady-hating freedom-ruiners lurking around the U.S. of A. are trying to stop Harry Reid from giving all Americans (legal or otherwise) the free health care and taxpayer subsidized abortions they’ve always wanted. We might as well be living in caves, treating women like property, and slaughtering anyone different from ourselves! But then, regions of Africa and the Middle East already have that stuff nailed down.

In other news, Israeli intelligence reports the Iranians are now capable of producing a nuclear bomb. But I’m sure they won’t! It’s not as if George W. Bush is in charge of the United States anymore.

…voted tonight to pass a 2,000 page bill none of them has read. 219 Democrats and 1 Republican would like to demolish our flawed health insurance system and replace it with one where bureaucrats decide what coverage is acceptable, what we should be charged for it, and the rates at which care providers will be compensated. No word as to how any of the above will be paid for, why companies who can save money by shunting employees into a government program will do otherwise, or what sort of masochists will choose to be doctors in such a rigged system.

But don’t worry! The Pelosi plan will guarantee the prompt, effective health care of over 300,000,000 people without adding to the deficit or limiting choice! We should not rule out the possibility that some of those two thousand pages are blueprints for medical robots that cost nothing to build, cost nothing to operate, and cost nothing to maintain.

Democrats easily voted down Republicans’ attempt to pass their own bill, which would have more narrowly expanded health insurance and cost $61 billion over a decade.

A $61 billion dollar overhaul is not nearly a big enough overhaul. The GOP is the “party of no” ambition! Republicans simply lack the dedication of Democrats who know how to run every damn thing on earth better than the industry professionals who do so for a living.

Democrats portrayed their legislation as a moral imperative that would achieve a goal sought by presidents since Theodore Roosevelt. They argued it would fix the worst aspects of the medical system by preventing insurers from denying coverage to the sick and protecting consumers from financial ruin caused by medical bills.

At long last, the United States can be free from the tyranny of risk and reward! Every man, woman, and child shall have their own Aflac duck to pay for all their needs with someone else’s money. Next up: cause and effect. Cause and effect are assholes, and it’s morally incumbent on Congress to use pretend dollars to make them go away.

“It is testimony to how we care for our fellow citizens,” said John Larson (D., Conn.). “It is at the very core of all that America stands for, and why we came here to serve.”

Bankrupting America is at the very core of all that America stands for. Or did I miss the Paul Krugman essay on how $1,500,000,000,000 is no big deal? The fight’s not over yet, but it looks like there are plenty of House Democrats willing to flush their careers for this insane leftist cause.