Bill Clinton was called the first black president so it shouldn't be surprising that Barack Obama is now the first feminist president.

Greta Van Susteren questions whether the term "feminist" has been hijacked by ideology. Ya think?

Mick intones: With Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin featured so prominently in the recent electoral contest, they pick Barack Obama for the cover? Its a pretty major insult to real feminists, but then again, the reconstituted Ms. rejected a full-page ad by the state of Israel, featuring three of its most prominent feminists a year ago.

"Feminist." You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Will we still be the last best hope on earth after the Democrats get through looting the US of A? Maybe we can move to New Zealand.

Sir Roger Douglas, a prominent figure in the ACT Party, the party of traditional liberalism, has just proposed a sublimely simple new plan. Any New Zealander who agreed to provide for his own health insurance and retirement would receive his first $30,000 in income tax-free. And every dollar after that would be taxed at the flat rate of just 15 percent.

How could I have missed this--here's your dark humor for the day. Bad Vlad Putin warns the U.S. about socialism--and at Davos no less! Choice quotes via The Right Perspective:

Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.

“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”

Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

California has a Republican governor, but not so you would know it. As a result it's even more heartening that the GOP in the Golden State has chosen to take a stand against higher taxes and profligate spending, and has even thrown out their legislative leader to do it.

Governor Palin says President Obama should have vetoed the stimulus, and Governor Jindal signals he may not accept all the porkulus dollars with fed strings attached.

And around the country there are a few citizens harassing The One.

Maybe there are some bumps on the road to serfdom after all. Meanwhile new Obama AG Eric Holder calls Americans cowards on race matters. How post-partisan. We're free at last--free to ignore profoundly wrong-headed (racist) and tedious thinking.

Kenneth Minogue:

Many social conditions have been identified as part of the change, but behind most of them, I suggest, is a massive change in our moral sentiments: notably, a rise in the currency of politicised compassion. This is a sentiment so much part of the air we breathe that it does not even have a name of its own..........."Nice" and "nasty" began to surface out of the deeper waters of moral thought and sentiment to become actual tokens of political discussion, so we may for convenience call this whole tendency by the unlikely name of "the niceness movement". In these terms, the supreme moral virtue is compassion.

This sentiment is not, of course, the niceness and decency that we rightly admire when individuals respond helpfully to others. It is a politicised virtue, which means that it is focused not on real individuals but on some current image of a whole category of people. Correspondingly, it invokes hostility towards those believed to have caused the pain and misery of others. Public discussion thus turns into melodrama. A very powerful version of this doctrinal compassion maps the distinction of oppressor and oppressed on to almost any social or international situation, and this mapping automatically directs our sympathies. Further, our sympathy for the oppressed is a demonstration to ourselves of our own benevolence. The fact is, of course, that political exponents of niceness may or may not be personally generous and benevolent. Doctrine is not character.

Seems the Nobel Peace Prize committee's primary criteria for awarding their prize is to not be George Bush (see Carter, Gore). Considering the pantheon includes such luminaries as Yasir Arafat, George should feel honored.

Interestingly Charles Lane becomes a strict constructionalist when it comes to interpreting the constitutionality of healthcare:

On the merits of the issue, I agree with health reform’s supporters that one’s decision not to buy health insurance has economic ripple effects. Basically, it turns you into a free-rider and that imposes costs on everyone else in the risk pool. As Prof. Erwin Chemerinsky recently put it: “There is no constitutionally protected freedom to be able to refuse to be insured or to avoid paying for the benefits provided.”

Do you think Charles would be consistent and conclude that there is no constitutionally protected freedom to be able to have an abortion?

I didn't think so.

But, Chemerinsky is right - there is no constitutionally protected freedom to be able to refuse to be insured or to avoid paying for the benefits provided - if you think in terms of enumerated rights. It wasn't necessary when the constitution was written and first ratified. The constitution doesn't grant rights. It puts limits on Government's intrusion on our rights. From the text it is clear that making a citizen buy health insurance isn't in the purview of Congress's power. Professor Chemerinsky begs to differ, citing the commerce clause and the potential impact if "society" winds up picking up a future tab for an uninsured (where is it written that we must pay?) The commerce clause argument is a stretch when we are dealing with someone who refuses to participate in commerce. And what about the significant chunk of folks who are self insured; the ones who don't have insurance because they will pay their own way? Chemerinsky's argument is only vaild in terms of the modern court's willingness to stretch the constitution to acheive liberal ends. It will be interesting to see how the courts rule this time.

ADDITIONAL THOUGHTS:
Lane's and Chemerinsky's argument to compel people to purchase insurance hinges on covering the individual liability they potentially pose. For young people, that would normally result in a low premium. With Obamacare, however, a massive amount of a young person's premium is just wealth transfer to pay for someone else's healthcare. Wouldn't the term "free-rider" apply here? But wait, isn't this why Lane and Chemerinsky say it isn't fair for someone not to buy insurance?