Al Mohler gives an introduction:

In contemporary America, pornography is both a public reality and big business.  Ambient pornography — sexually explicit advertising, entertainment, and merchandising — is all around us.  But pornography is also big business, producing sexually explicit materials in printed, video, and digital formats and making billions of dollars in the process.

The pornography industry has a big stake in defending itself against legal challenges and restrictive laws, and it has been stunningly successful in doing so.  One of the leading legal defenders of pornography has been David Ogden, a lawyer who can only be described as a First Amendment extremist, who has even argued against laws against child pornography.

President Barack Obama has nominated David Ogden as Deputy Attorney General of the United States.  This nomination is both ominous and dangerous.  Given David Ogden’s high visibility in defense of pornography, this nomination sends a clear and unmistakable message.  The pornography business will have a friend in high office in the Department of Justice.

Steven Groves of the Heritage Foundation has some other concerns about the Ogden nomination.

In the 2005 case Roper v. Simmons, Ogden succeeded in convincing a narrowly divided Supreme Court to declare the juvenile death penalty unconstitutional and spare the life of his client, who killed a woman in cold-blood nine months before he turned 18.

Groves says Ogden argued that the high court should look to laws, legal opinions, and decisions of foreign countries and international organizations regarding the death penalty. He notes that in particular, Ogden cited the United Nation’s Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) — a 1989 treaty that bars the execution of people who commit crimes while under the age of 18.

Ogden, says Groves, pointed out that the United States is one of only two countries in the world that has not signed onto that treaty.

"[He argued] that doesn’t mean that the U.S. doesn’t have to follow the treaty, [but that] it means the opposite — that the United States must follow the treaty that it has specifically decided not to join," says Groves. "Why? Because [Ogden argued] the rest of the world has joined it — and so therefore it’s some new customary, international norm and the United States must outlaw the juvenile death penalty."

So he wants the United States Supreme Court to use foreign laws for precedent, and to adhere to treaties we’ve never signed.  Regardless of your position on whether or not we should sign the CRC, Ogden wants our courts to decide cases based on laws we have no control over, and to unilaterally implement treaties that our legislature hasn’t agreed to or our President hasn’t signed.

Judicial activism, anyone?  Well, more like judicial usurpation.  And Obama wants this guy as our Deputy AG, fighting for the rights of pornographers to get their stuff in front of as many eyeballs as possible, never mind the age.  (He fought against porn filters in libraries, too.) 

Is this just your basic Democratic "family values" kinda’ guy?

Some good news from this administration:

President Obama opposes any move to bring back the so-called Fairness Doctrine, a spokesman told FOXNews.com Wednesday.

The statement is the first definitive stance the administration has taken since an aide told an industry publication last summer that Obama opposes the doctrine — a long-abolished policy that would require broadcasters to provide opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.

"As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated," White House spokesman Ben LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

The "Fairness Doctrine" is really just targeted at radio, where conservative voices dominate.  You typically don’t hear those promoting it complaining that there’s too much liberal bias in this newspaper or that TV network; it’s always a complaint about conservative opinions and ideas.  So the idea that this is about "fairness" is just a smokescreen.

Blogger Dan Riehl is skeptical, though.

Instapundit posts word that Obama does not want the Fairness Doctrine back. Great.

That makes him look like quite the moderate. But the actual doctrine was always a stretch. Get back to me in 3-6 months after we see what his FCC does in terms of "localism."

That’s always been the play more likely to get done. Until I hear something from the FCC, the WH release is what I’m growing accustomed to with Obama: just words.

It is possible to have the effect of a "Fairness Doctrine" without the name, so indeed we’ll see.  But it is nice to get the word from the President.  We’ll hold you to that, sir.

Melanie Phillips in the London Daily Mail observes:

The story of 13-year-old Alfie, who reportedly has become a father by 15-year-old Chantelle, is a fable for our tragically degraded times.

Most of the attention has focused upon Alfie, who looks about eight and doesn’t even understand the word ‘financial’. But while Alfie’s youth is exceptional, this situation is not.

Whether or not Alfie is the father of baby Maisie or whether that honour goes to one of Chantelle’s reputed other boyfriends, the fact is that the length and breadth of this country there are many Chantelles, having sex and often getting pregnant while under age.

Phillips points out what has long been a refrain in societies where liberal programs have taken hold; the unintended consequences of government intervention.

There has been a profound loss of the very notions of self-restraint and boundaries of behaviour, promoted from the top by narcissistic liberals and funded at the bottom by welfare benefits which cushion people from the consequences of their actions.

The liberal intelligentsia pushed the idea that the worst things in the world were stigma and shame. Illegitimacy was accordingly abolished, lone mothers provided with welfare benefits and any talk about the advantages to children from marriage and sexual continence was to be banned as ‘judgmental’.

With all constraints on behaviour vilified as ‘moralising’, sex became treated merely as a pleasurable pastime devoid of any spiritual dimension.

As parents careered through serial sexual partnerships, putting their own short-term desires first and effectively behaving like children, they no longer wanted to be bothered with taking responsibility for their own offspring and so started treating them as if they were grown-up.

This was massively reinforced by the approach to sex education and contraception by schools and public health professionals, who treated children as quasi-adults capable of making their own life choices.

What they actually needed, as all children do, was firm and consistent boundaries which taught them that sex was properly an adult activity.

Instead, they were taught to treat sex a bit like bungee-jumping or paragliding – to have fun doing it, but to take precautions to avoid getting hurt.

And, she notes, the only definition of "hurt" was "getting pregnant".  Never mind the emotional or psychological harm that might be involved.

Read the whole thing.  Seems the more sex education we have and the earlier it starts, the more stories like this that we get.  Phillips’ article is a strong argument for the teaching of responsibility and its consequences rather than covering the world in bubble wrap. 

Mickey Kaus is alarmed that the stimulus package has the effect of rolling back welfare reform.  Moe Lane, in responding to Kaus’ shock, wonders why this reaction.

The thing that I enjoy most these days when I read a moderate Democrat’s first realization that he or she really did go out and vote against their core principles/class interests/better judgment this go round is the startled tone that’s usually taken.  Of course you did that.  We told you that you were.  But you were too busy living in the moment to listen.  So, yeah, Mickey: the Democrats – who don’t really care about Obama’s big plans – are going to gut welfare, and it’s entirely possible that Obama doesn’t realize this.  Or if he does, he doesn’t particularly care about your feelings.  Why should he?  He can win you over again, right?  After all, who needs to be faithful if you can sweet-talk your way out every problem?

Go to the link to find out which woman politician had predicted this as well.  Oh yeah, she got that right.

All that’s left for the economic stimulus bill is for President Obama to sign it.  A round-up of reaction:

Dan Spencer at RedState notes an Obama quote from the day before the bill passed, “We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently carrying.”  The accompanying graphic is the ultimate irony.

CBS news reports that the President is going to convene a “fiscal responsibility summit” on February 23rd.  Again with the irony.  The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.

And finally, satirist Scott Ott engages in some wishful thinking:

President Barack Obama said today that “after a restless night’s sleep” he will veto the $787 billion economic stimulus package passed by Democrats in Congress on Friday.

“I had a dream,” said a visibly shaken Mr. Obama. “that my daughters, Sasha and Malia, were trapped under the 1,100-page legislation. In the dream I saw my girls as women in their forties and they were still paying for this. I woke up, and did the math, and realized that it wasn’t just a dream. Has anybody read this thing yet?”

Read the whole thing, even if Congress won’t.

I wasn’t a big fan of Dubya’s faith-based initiatives.  Well, I was at first, but I was later convinced that, since whoever pays the bills makes the rules, that having government pay the bills was a bad  idea for churches.  It opened them up to having to do things their faith told them not to in order to keep the money coming in.

Of course, there’s another more general reason to avoid new government programs; they expand to fill whatever void the government finds; real or perceived.  And President Obama is busy looking for voids.

President Barack Obama on Thursday signed an order establishing a White House office of faith-based initiatives with a broader mission than the one overseen by his predecessor, Republican George W. Bush.

Obama said the office would reach out to organizations that provide help "no matter their religious or political beliefs."

Obama is calling his program the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

(I would have put this in another ChangeWatch entry, more of the same alleged "theocracy" that Bush was supposedly foisting on us, yet continued and expanded under Obama, but thought it could use its own post.)

I wasn’t aware of a doctrinal test for Bush’s faith-based initiative, but Obama is claiming credit for expanding the reach.  Nifty sleight of hand there.

But the most notable expansion of the program is the addition of the word "Neighborhood".  The partnerships are "faith-based and neighborhood", not "faith-based neighborhood", meaning the neighborhood partnerships don’t have to be faith-based.  This turns the program into an untargeted channel for any and all grassroots groups.  As Warner Todd Hudson notes, sounds like yet another vector for funds to ACORN. 

Hudson also wondered (last Saturday, when he wrote his piece) whether the Left, and the Kos krowd in particular, will give Obama a pass on this, unlike the screams of "church and state!" they gave Bush when he created it.  Well, as of today, if you search Daily Kos back two weeks for the phrase "faith-based", you get exactly one hit, and that article still raps the GOP for it.  Yeah, still OK if their guy does it.  It’s still all about politics.  Such blind partisanship.

History only repeats itself when people don’t learn from it.  Even recent history.

Japan’s rural areas have been paved over and filled in with roads, dams and other big infrastructure projects, the legacy of trillions of dollars spent to lift the economy from a severe downturn caused by the bursting of a real estate bubble in the late 1980s. During those nearly two decades, Japan accumulated the largest public debt in the developed world — totaling 180 percent of its $5.5 trillion economy — while failing to generate a convincing recovery.

Yes, some still think that such spending can indeed create a recovery (notably, in the article, tax scofflaw Timothy Geithner), but it’s all theoretical, much like Japan’s attempt at stimulus.  In fact, Japan bailed out its banks as well, and the cure, at least according to the people living there (as opposed to those watching from an ivory tower) was far worse than the disease.

In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations.

In the United States, it has also led to calls in Congress, particularly by Republicans, not to repeat the errors of Japan’s failed economic stimulus. They argue that it makes more sense to cut taxes, and let people decide how to spend their own money, than for the government to decide how to invest public funds. Japan put more emphasis on increased spending than tax cuts during its slump, but ultimately did reduce consumption taxes to encourage consumer spending as well.

Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

Learn from history, or we may in for our own Lost Decade.

A growing list of "honest mistakes" by Democrats is leading this op-ed author to ask, "What does it take to disqualify Democrats from public service?"  If tax evasion, suborning forgery and using campaign funds for personal expenses ain’t enough, what is?  As commenter "socrates" writes:

Failure to pay $150K in taxes normally gets one in front of a Tax Court judge with the IRS burning your house down.

If you’re a Democrat it gets you a Cabinet position.

Both sides have corruption in their ranks, make no mistake about it.  But as I’ve said multiple times in the past, it’s not about corruption; it’s about accountability.  On the whole, Republicans tend to remove those involved with corruption, while Democrats, when they do anything, pass a motion and continue with the business of the day.  Read those links for a number of examples.

Nominating them for cabinet positions, right "socrates"?

Man is sinful; that’s just the way it is.  But if he’s not held accountable for his actions when he breaks the law, do we expect that we’ll have less law-breaking?

Ed Morrissey notes that…

For the last seven years, the Left has screeched hysterically over the CIA practice of rendition, in which agents turn detainees over to authorities in their home country for interrogation.  Never mind that the practice started in the Clinton administration, and never mind that the other options were Guantanamo Bay, release, or two caps in the back of the head; they pilloried Bush over renditions as if he’d thought them up himself.  Hollywood even made a movie about how awful the process is, apparently matched in awfulness only by the film’s box office.

Obama has signed an executive order to remedy some things he finds wrong with the Bush administration policy, but some things remain as they are.

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The anti-war Left is surprisingly silent.

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president’s order was that they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured — but that designing that system is going to take some time."

But as Moe Lane notes, Human Rights Watch was playing quite a different tune up until a Democrat made it to the Oval Office.  Their web site says, in an article from April 7, 2008:

The US government should:

·Repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA’s rendition program;

That was then.  This is now.  Now, it has "a legitimate place".  Funny how some Bush policies look oh-so-different through the Obama prism.

From Chuck Asay.  (Click for a larger version.)

We punish the fiscally responsible by making them pay for the irresponsible.  Do you think this will bring about more responsibility or less?  Hmmm.