THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to.

† What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims: As a commentary on the victory of Islamist party Ennhada in Tunisia's election Charlie Hedbo, an anti-clerical satirical weekly published in France, renamed itself “Sharia Hebdo” and put the Prophet Mohammed on its masthead as a guest “editor-in-chief” Predictably this outraged one or more Muslims and in retaliation, the publication’s offices were firebombed, The Telegraph of London reports:

 

Charlie Hedbo's editor-in-chief, known as Charb, told France Info radio: "We no longer have a newspaper. All our equipment has been destroyed or has melted." …

 

“We cannot, today, put together a paper,” said Charb. “But we will do everything possible to do one next week. Whatever happens, we’ll do it. There is no question of giving in,” he said, adding that the magazine is filing a legal complaint against persons unkown [sic]. …

 

Charlie Hebdo's website has also been hacked with a message in English and Turkish cursing the magazine.

 

The message said: "You keep abusing Islam's almighty Prophet with disgusting and disgraceful cartoons using excuses of freedom of speech.

 

"Be God's curse upon you!"

 

Editor Charb said the attackers could not even have read the offending magazine.

 

"The arsonists haven't read this paper, nobody knows what's in the paper except those who buy it this morning. People are reacting violently to a paper without knowing anything of its contents, that's what's most abhorrent and stupid," he told BFM TV.

 

The publication, historically famous for pillorying Catholic clericalism, was criticised by Muslims in 2007 after reprinting the Danish cartoons of the prophet Mohammad that caused outrage around the Islamic world.

 

† The Incredible Shrinking Candidate: You’ll recall that since that September debate in Orlando, former MA Gov. Mitt Romney and TX Gov. Rick Perry have been slamming each other over whether the former’s universal healthcare plan, which covers illegals, or the latter’s in-state college tuition break for American-born children of illegals is the bigger magnet for illegal immigration.

Until now, voters had no way to judge, since it was easy to do the math on the tuition break to attend a public college in TX (a $100,000 taxpayer subsidy per student, per Romney), but the data to calculate the value healthcare coverage in MA was a closely-guarded secret. Thanks to the tireless efforts of freshman lawmaker state Rep. James J. Lyons (R-Andover) – which included a sit-in in the chambers of the state House – Gov. Deval Patrick finally coughed up the information: $93 million just in 2010. The Boston Herald reports:

 

“I didn’t think it would take as much work as it did to answer such a simple question about how our tax dollars are spent,” state Rep. James J. Lyons Jr. told the Herald yesterday.

 

“My whole goal was to get the information and open the process up. (MassHealth spending) is a third of the state budget. That was what we highlighted to (Health and Human Services) Secretary (JudyAnn) Bigby.” …

 

[N]early 55,000 illegal immigrants received more than $93 million in MassHealth benefits for emergency medical services last year.

Watchdogs predicted that the report is likely to inspire deeper questions about the state’s lavish spending on health care for illegals. The staggering medical bill for poor and jobless residents was supposed to level off under the Bay State’s landmark universal health insurance plan enacted five years ago under the aegis of then-Gov. Mitt Romney.

 

“Lavish spending” on illegals is one reason that MA has the highest health costs in the nation. Politico went as far as to call RomneyCare an “albatross.” Perhaps even more damning, this snippet from a New York magazine article that deep dives into Romney’s business acumen based on his stints as a venture capitalist and as governor:

 

[T]he punch line to Romney’s campaign so far is that the plan he built was an almost exact model for Obama’s national plan, designed by some of the same experts.

 

But what separates Romney’s plan from Obama’s – and gives some clues about his potential presidency – is its almost-accidental origin. Romney did not begin with a philosophical quest to improve American health care. He began with the idea of himself as a problem solver and asked those around him for a problem that he might usefully solve. I remembered, when I was told this story, an anecdote I’d heard from a former political staffer of Romney’s. On even basic philosophical questions like abortion, the staffer said, Romney did not try to resolve the question in the abstract, as a matter of principle, and would consider instead various hypothetical cases – for instance, a late-term abortion – and build from them a politics. The line that Romney is a flip-flopper may vastly understate the depth of the condition.

 

New York’s devastating assessment is supported by an article in The Washington Post:

 

Mitt Romney was firm and direct with the abortion rights advocates sitting in his office nine years ago, assuring the group that if elected Massachusetts governor, he would protect the state’s abortion laws.

 

Then, as the meeting drew to a close, the businessman offered an intriguing suggestion – that he would rise to national prominence in the Republican Party as a victor in a liberal state and could use his influence to soften the GOP’s hard-line opposition to abortion.

 

He would be a “good voice in the party” for their cause, and his moderation on the issue would be “widely written about,” he said, according to detailed notes taken by an officer of the group, NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts.

 

“You need someone like me in Washington,” several participants recalled Romney saying that day in September 2002, an apparent reference to his future ambitions.

 

Romney made similar assurances to activists for gay rights and the environment, according to people familiar with the discussions, both as a candidate for governor and then in the early days of his term.

 

Editorial Note: Erick Erickson also reveals must-read oppo research on Romney that explains why Republicans don’t want “someone like him” in Washington.

 

† Was Steve Jobs A Closet Republican?: This excerpt from the moving eulogy written and delivered by Steve Jobs' sister, Mona Simpson, at his memorial service a couple of weeks ago at the Memorial Church of Stanford University suggests that he would have had little sympathy for the defeatist leeches who are occupying urban parks nationwide (related article, third item on the page):

 

Steve worked at what he loved. He worked really hard. Every day.

 

That’s incredibly simple, but true. ...

 

He was never embarrassed about working hard, even if the results were failures. If someone as smart as Steve wasn’t ashamed to admit trying, maybe I didn’t have to be.

 

When he got kicked out of Apple, things were painful. He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited.

 

He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.

 

Uninvited to the ball, he drove the third or fourth iteration of his same black sports car to Next, where he and his team were quietly inventing the platform on which Tim Berners-Lee would write the program for the World Wide Web. ...

 

This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success: he enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there.

 

And he did. ...

 

[W]hat amazed me, and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.

 

I remember my brother learning to walk again, with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther. ...

 

He tried. He always, always tried.

 

Because of Jobs’ reputation as an uncompromising visionary who was blunt to the point of Tourette’s with lesser mortals who thought that the “80-20 rule” was an acceptable way to do business, the polite convention of not speaking ill of the dead was respected for a mere 18 hours before the backlash began, The New York Times reports, with bloggers and commentators variously calling him a “borderline sociopath,” “iron-fisted” and “Orwellian.”

 

† A To Z Approach On Illegal Immigration In AZ: In July 2009, The Stiletto predicted that “[w]ith 40 percent of the states poised to pass their own AZ-like anti-immigration law, the Obama administration is going to tick off a lot of voters if Attorney General Eric Holder keeps suing them, forcing strapped state governments to rattle the tin cup to defend themselves in court” – as AZ Gov. Jan Brewer was forced to (fourth item on the page). SC is the latest state in Holder’s crosshairs (related article, sixth item on the page), The Christian Science Monitor reports:

 

The bill [the state passed in June], scheduled to become law Jan. 1., allows law enforcement officers to ask for proof of citizenship from people they may suspect of being undocumented. It also criminalizes harboring or transporting people known to be in the country illegally and punishes immigrants if caught without a certificate of registration.

 

The US Department of Justice filed its lawsuit Monday, arguing that the federal government has the “preeminent” authority in immigration reform and that the rigidity of the South Carolina law “will cause the detention and harassment of authorized visitors, immigrants, and citizens who do not have or carry identification documents specified by the statute.”

 

The government is asking a federal judge to temporarily block the law so that it can be argued in court.

 

Taking the state to federal court follows the course of action taken in several other states that have pursued harsh immigration measures, particularly Alabama, which federal authorities challenged in August. …

 

Even though South Carolina Attorney General Tony West has said he is prepared to argue the legislation’s merits all the way to the US Supreme Court, state officials are closely tracking the outcome of the case in Alabama to see just how far a state can go to challenge federal authorities on the issue.

 

† Does The U.S. Need An Election Monitor?: Dems and libs insist that voter fraud does not exist (related article, seventh item on the page), but the FL Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) the FBI arrested eight people for falsifying absentee ballots cast in Madison County’s District One School Board race last year, WCTV (Channel 6, Tallahassee, FL) reports:

 

[T]he District One School Board race, which was won by candidate Abra “Tina” Hill Johnson, had an extraordinarily disproportionate amount of absentee votes. …

 

Abra “Tina” Hill Johnson, 43, was charged with 10 counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote, and two counts of absentee ballots and voting violations. Her husband Ernest Sinclair Johnson, Jr., 45, was charged with 11 counts of fraud in connection with casting votes, one count of corruptly influencing voting, and one count of perjury by false written declaration. Jada Woods Williams, 34, Madison County Supervisor of Elections, was charged with 17 counts of neglect of duty and corrupt practices for allowing the distribution of these absentee ballots, contrary to Florida state statute.

 

Five others involved in the voter fraud conspiracy were charged with multiple counts of fraud in connection with casting a vote and providing a false report to law enforcement authorities and/or perjury by false written declaration. …

 

The case will be prosecuted by the State Attorney’s Office, Second Judicial Circuit. The investigation is ongoing and more arrests are possible.

 

[Hat Tip: RedStateNews]

 

† Nationalized Healthcare Always Leads To Rationing: In this Wall Street Journal op-ed former NY Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey, an ObamaCare opponent explains why the recent study in Lancet reporting that 32 percent of elderly American patients undergo surgery in the year before they die does not make the case for limiting access to healthcare resources for this patient population:

 

The Lancet investigators looked only at patients who died, making surgery appear unsuccessful. That's like saying Babe Ruth struck out 1,333 times so he must have been a poor ball player – even though he had a .342 lifetime batting average and 714 home runs. Investigators should have considered how all surgery patients fared, including those who recovered, returned home from the hospital and resumed active lives.

 

Valid data show that surgeries on older patients are successful. A 2003 study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology followed 220 patients age 65 and older who underwent heart-valve surgery. The study concluded that "age does not appear to limit the health related quality of life benefits" of surgery. Even patients over 75 had symptom relief and improvements in quality of life "on a par with improvements seen in younger patients."

 

The decision to operate should be based on a patient's ability to benefit, not age. Dr. Martin A. Makary of Johns Hopkins has developed a way to gauge readiness for surgery with his well-known, 10-minute frailty test. It identifies which older patients have the physical reserve to withstand the stress of surgery and resume an active life.

 

So should medical resources be reserved for younger patients? That's an ethical issue. But research should not be rigged to prove that withholding care is harmless. Yet such flawed research is driving our political debate.

 

† Obama Is Just About Every U.S. President All Rolled Into One!: Throughout the 2008 campaign and before he had been inaugurated, pundits and historians likened Barack Obama (he wasn’t using his middle name back then; only “racists” were) to, well, just about all of his predecessors – including a couple of “cool” Repubs, like Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt. Now that everyone’s seen the Mediocrity in Motion that is the Obama presidency, he has been likened to several uncool Repubs, like Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon, and people no longer perceive the similarities to our more illustrious presidents that they had once discerned (related article, fourth item on the page). Case in point: Obama is no longer JFK. At least that’s what MSNBC host Chris Matthews thinks now. The Wrap reports:

 

Obama’s personal touch is gone. You’ll see. I personally think that’s his deficit. His lack of personal rapport and connection and bond with other politicians and the people. He doesn’t have what Jack Kennedy had, what Clinton had -- relationships with people in the country.

 

He doesn’t have a relationship based on, "We’re all in this together." It’s: "Look how smart I am, look how good I am at this." Kennedy invited people in to help him share the Peace Corps and the special forces, to be part of winning the Cold War without a war. A Kennedy person was someone called to duty. You don’t feel that today.

 

† 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America: This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series (previous article, last item on the page) meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on Carlos Evans and Jimmy King, who were competing in the Marine Corps Marathon. Evans, who lost both legs and his left hand in Afghanistan last year, had never competed in a marathon before. King, who lost his left leg in Iraq in 2004 and was competing in his 14^th marathon, told Evans he’d watch out for him. The Washington Post reports:

 

The men, part of a team supported by the Achilles Freedom Team of Wounded Veterans, a nonprofit organization, were among dozens of wounded warriors competing. About 130 racers, including Evans and King, used handcycles. Others crossed the finish line on prosthetic legs, where a growing throng cheered.

 

Evans wanted his family – his wife and two daughters, 1 and 5 years old – to see him finish the race. After all the pain and suffering, he wanted them to see him in a moment of triumph.

 

But the first few miles were much harder than he had anticipated. The cold caused his shoulder muscles to cramp. The early hills sapped more energy than he thought they should. His prosthetic arm kept slipping out of place. Doubts started creeping in.

 

“Don’t give up,” King implored. “Keep going.” …

 

By mile eight on Sunday, the sun started to warm Evans’s shoulders. The pain subsided. He pushed through Georgetown, then past the Kennedy Center and the Lincoln Memorial. …

 

By mile 13, the halfway point, King, who lives in Germantown, told Evans to pace himself. There was still a long way to go. …

 

In mile 22, Evans hit the wall. He shoulders felt leaden; his abs ached. King encouraged him, making small talk: “Anything to keep his mind off the race.” …

 

When Evans slowed, King slowed. They had started off as strangers but were now buddies joined in a long, hard slog. “We’re Marines; that’s enough,” King said.

 

Three hours and 41 minutes after they began, they crossed the finish line together. Volunteers draped medals over their heads. Applause surrounded them. They bumped fists and steered their way through the crowd.