After last night’s Republican debate over national security and foreign policy, CNN called upon Tom Foreman to check some of the facts asserted by the candidates, in a segment entitled “Keeping Them Honest.”

It soon became clear that Foreman and CNN were not interested in checking the candidates’ facts–which were correct in each case–but in checking their opinions, while misleading viewers about the candidates’ honesty.

First, Foreman checked Mitt Romney’s list of the Obama administration’s proposed defense cuts. Foreman had to admit that “He’s got all the numbers right. All of those cuts are correct, the ones he named.” Yet he objected to Romney’s alleged exclusion of “context” such as the fact that the U.S. spent $700 billion on defense, “more than the next 17 nations combined.” Hence he rated Romney’s statement “true, but incomplete.”

That’s not fact–that’s Foreman’s own apparent opinion that Obama’s defense cuts are irrelevant as long as the U.S. remains the world’s pre-eminent military power. Foreman begged the question of whether we are spending as much as our potential enemies, rather than considering America’s existing commitments and unique leadership role. It was, essentially, an anti-war critique of Romney’s view–not an analysis of his facts. (more…)

In yet another case of willful blindness, our formerly august mainstream media all but ignores Al Gore’s global warming millions.  Their secular saint, Prophet Al, has become a very rich man off his global warming “science.”  Yet, whenever he is interviewed by those virtuous paragons among the media elite, you’ll hear nary a peep on the fact that Prophet Al stands to become the “World’s First Carbon Billionaire,” if and when governments – especially ours – enact the cap and trade legislation, of which Mr. Gore is the most vociferous proponent.

The lying hypocrisy of it is just too much for an honest person to bear.

Mr. Gore has, in effect, declared economic war on the middle-class American family through his global warming faux science.  The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the cap and trade legislation, which passed the House last year, will cost the average American family $890 per year.  But the conservative Heritage Foundation immediately challenged this figure.  Using a more inclusive analysis, Heritage raised the estimate to at least $1,870 per year.

Heritage also took the trouble – on behalf of American families – to take into account the larger picture, significant details completely ignored in the CBO’s accounting: (more…)

California has long had the reputation of being trend-setter to the nation. The Golden State was practicing Obamanomics back when Barack was still called Barry. And now its ways are catching up to it like a hard partier who looks in the mirror one day and sees the portrait of Dorian Gray staring back at him.

Get ready America: California’s unsustainable path is echoed by the federal government. One will crash before the other, giving us all a preview of things to come.

Part of what is slowly destroying California is its move from a land of plenty to a land of locusts. The state taxes and regulates resident companies to such an extreme extent it has driven many of them, and many tax-paying citizens, to other states. For decades California was a place to migrate to. Now it’s suffering an exodus. The fault lies in a political shift from being a conservative, low- tax state to a statist, high-tax nanny state. Californians used to be the freest people in the United States and the world, and now? Not so much. (more…)