Video via Val Prieto’s Facebook post, quote via Instapundit.
In the same evening (h/t Andrew Malcom’s Twitter), Marco Rubio to the rescue! Freshman senator saves a falling Nancy Reagan
VIDEO: Nancy Reagan falls : MyFoxORLANDO.com
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Does this sound like a man with Alzheimer’s?
President Ronald Reagan – June 12, 1987
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
Moe Lane raises the question because,
It is my first instinct to treat this report of Ronald Reagan Jr’s… commentary… by simply letting it pass by without a response. For those not wishing to click through, the boy (use of term deliberate) is indulging elderly liberal fetishists everywhere by making the claim that his father was suffering from Alzheimer’s as far back as the 1984 debates*, as well as ‘details’ regarding a supposed operation in 1989 that had even the US News & World Report doing some fancy footwork in order to avoid having to declare it a lie. It’s the Left; it’s pornography; it’s Left-porn. Outside of that particular niche market, its utility is… low.
As Moe says, a man “doesn’t need to defecate on the memory of his father in order to feel less of a failure.”
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Rielle sleaze in today’s roundup
John Edwards is back in the news, with this article on GQ, Hello, America, My Name Is Rielle Hunter. Skip the article and read Ace’s Daily Beast Confirms Edwards Sex Tape Is Real and Was Made During Edwards’ Campaign For Presidency. Sleaze.
More sleaze, at the New Republic, The New Republic illustrates a serious piece about the Tea Party movement with a gross photograph that’s meant to evoke the pejorative “teabagger.” And then TNR removed the photo…
Speaking of sleaze, Unconstitutional Procedure Being Used to Pass Unconstitutional ObamaCare
Here is how the trick would work: In the House, the Rules Committee sets up the parameters for debate on legislation. House leaders are considering a complicated rule that would be structured so that a vote on the rule setting down the structure for the ObamaCare debate would allow the Senate’s version of health care reform to pass without a vote. First, there would be a vote on a rule. If the rule is passed by the House, then the House would vote on a health care budget reconciliation measure that is an amendment to the Senate passed ObamaCare bill. If that reconciliation measure passes, then reconciliation goes to the Senate and the ObamaCare legislation is deemed passed without a direct vote. The plan for the legislation is unclear. House leadership will either structure the rule to either immediately present ObamaCare to the President for his signature or they will hold the bill and deliver it only if the Senate passes a health care reconciliation measure. Either way, the Constitution and the American people are the losers.
Understand that this procedure is drafted in a way so your average American can’t understand it. The simple way to understand the situation is that the House is trying to pass a bill without a vote.
The Constitution states that the House and Senate are supposed to pass identical versions of a bill before the President can sign it into law. One of the reasons for this tricky procedure is to provide cover for moderate Democrats who don’t want to vote for the Senate-passed ObamaCare bill because it includes the federal funding of abortion.
Michael McConnell expands, The House Health-Care Vote and the Constitution
No bill can become law unless the exact same text is approved by a majority of both houses of Congress.
The rub is that, according to the Senate parliamentarian, reconciliation is permitted only for bills that amend existing law, not for amendments to bills that have yet to be enacted. This means that, for the Senate to be able to avoid a filibuster, House Democrats first have to vote for the identical bill that passed the Senate last Christmas Eve. That means voting aye on the special deals, aye on abortion coverage, and aye on high taxes on expensive health-insurance plans. Challengers are salivating at the prospect of running against incumbents who vote for these provisions.
Enter the Slaughter solution. It may be clever, but it is not constitutional. To become law—hence eligible for amendment via reconciliation—the Senate health-care bill must actually be signed into law. The Constitution speaks directly to how that is done. According to Article I, Section 7, in order for a “Bill” to “become a Law,” it “shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate” and be “presented to the President of the United States” for signature or veto. Unless a bill actually has “passed” both Houses, it cannot be presented to the president and cannot become a law.
More on the sleazy move and Slaughter House Rules
How Democrats may ‘deem’ ObamaCare into law, without voting.
The bottom line is, as Thomas Sowell puts it,
Fraud has been at the heart of this medical care takeover plan from day one. The succession of wholly arbitrary deadlines for rushing this massive legislation through, before anyone has time to read it all, serves no other purpose than to keep its specifics from being scrutinized– or even recognized– before it becomes a fait accompli and “the law of the land.”
If you can’t make it to Washington tomorrow, via Instapundit.
Meanwhile – elsewhere in the world – is there a Bronca in Venezuela?
Is there Another billboard mystery in Minnesota? Sure looks like it,
Today we celebrate 20 years of President Reagan’s speech
President Ronald Reagan gave this speech at the Brandenburg Gate twenty years ago on June 12, 1987:
The Reagan Foundation has the entire text of the speech, Tear Down This Wall.
Here’s the part that Pres. Reagan reads in the video clip:
And now the Soviets themselves may, in a limited way, be coming to understand the importance of freedom. We hear much from Moscow about a new policy of reform and openness. Some political prisoners have been released. Certain foreign news broadcasts are no longer being jammed. Some economic enterprises have been permitted to operate with greater freedom from state control.
Are these the beginnings of profound changes in the Soviet state? Or are they token gestures, intended to raise false hopes in the West, or to strengthen the Soviet system without changing it? We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace.
General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!
I understand the fear of war and the pain of division that afflict this continent– and I pledge to you my country’s efforts to help overcome these burdens. To be sure, we in the West must resist Soviet expansion. So we must maintain defenses of unassailable strength. Yet we seek peace; so we must strive to reduce arms on both sides.
Beginning 10 years ago, the Soviets challenged the Western alliance with a grave new threat, hundreds of new and more deadly SS-20 nuclear missiles, capable of striking every capital in Europe. The Western alliance responded by committing itself to a counter-deployment unless the Soviets agreed to negotiate a better solution; namely, the elimination of such weapons on both sides. For many months, the Soviets refused to bargain in earnestness. As the alliance, in turn, prepared to go forward with its counter-deployment, there were difficult days–days of protests like those during my 1982 visit to this city–and the Soviets later walked away from the table.
But through it all, the alliance held firm. And I invite those who protested then– I invite those who protest today–to mark this fact: Because we remained strong, the Soviets came back to the table.
The Victims of Communism Memorial is being dedicated today in Washington:
The Victims of Communism Memorial will be dedicated on Tuesday morning, June 12, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, will give the keynote address while Rep. Dana Rohrabacher will deliver remarks. President George W. Bush has also been invited to speak. A crowd of 1,000 including Congressional leaders, members of the diplomatic corps, ethnic leaders, foreign dignitaries, and Memorial supporters, is expected to attend the historic event.
John Fund writes about the Memorial:
The memorial is a 10-foot bronze replica of the “Goddess of Liberty” statue, which Chinese dissidents erected in Tiananmen Square before tanks crushed both it and their movement in 1989. The statue’s inscriptions will both mourn the “more than 100 million victims of Communism” and call for the freedom of “all captive nations and peoples.” Marking the bipartisan nature of the U.S. effort during the Cold War, the site on Capitol Hill was donated through a bill signed by President Clinton, and the keynote address will be made by Democrat Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a native of Hungary who escaped the Holocaust thanks to Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg.
Fund also writes about Pres. Reagan, (emphasis added)
Reagan first saw the Berlin Wall in 1978, when he told his aide Peter Hannaford, “We’ve got to find a way to knock this thing down.” After Reagan became president, he returned in 1982 and enraged the Soviets by taking a couple of ceremonial steps across a painted border line. Then, in 1987, he overruled his own State Department by giving the momentous speech in which he implored the general secretary directly to tear down the wall.
Reagan liked to refer in his speeches to the “tide of history,” and that idea must have been on Mr. Gorbachev’s mind two years later when he visited East Berlin and informed the comrades there that they needed to change. He told reporters who asked about the wall, “Dangers await only those who do not react to life.” The signal was sent that Moscow would no longer prop up a corrupt system.
The Berlin Wall’s fall was both a vindication of the West’s refusal to kowtow to the Soviets and a tribute to the spirit of dissenters behind the Iron Curtain. Today pieces of the wall exist as mere souvenirs on mantelpieces. Sadly, today Russia itself is slipping back into authoritarianism.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Russia has resisted efforts to erect memorials about the communist era. In 2005, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s autocratic president, let slip in a speech that “the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Under Mr. Putin’s leadership, Russian officials are conspicuously re-creating some of the institutions of oppression. Their frosty silence about three-quarters of a century of communist oppression does not augur well for Russia’s future.
In the news last Saturday, Russia warns US on missile plan. Here’s a BBC video report. Today Russia celebrates itself with Kremlin awards ceremony on Day of Russia:
The June 12 holiday is one of several that have been shifted or renamed as Putin’s Kremlin seeks to shape Russians’ perception of their country and its history.
It was introduced by Putin’s predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, to commemorate Russian lawmakers’ 1990 declaration of sovereignty and was long known to most Russians as Independence Day. However, millions of Russians regret the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union _ which was dominated by Russia _ and blame Yeltsin for its disintegration.
That means there is little political capital to be captured from celebrating Russia’s independence, and the holiday’s name was officially changed to the Day of Russia in 2002, under Putin.
Coincidence?
Update:
Via Real Clear Politics, The Speech That Brought Down a Wall and Seizing the Moment
Memorable presidential speeches are few and far between. But Ronald Reagan’s words in Berlin two decades ago will live on
Others blogging about it:
Babalu
Betsy posts about a book, whose author, Robert Service, asks, Communism destroyed millions of lives, but its critics are now branded “neocons”. Why has the left’s poisoned love affair with it endured?
CatHouse Chat
(h/t my friends Moe Lane and Maria)
