Mollie Hemingway's smart post below spurred a thought I had late Sunday night as I settled into a semi-satisfied coma (damn you, OKC, for not making it the perfect day) as a result of a wonderful Fathers Day celebration out here in the high country.  Unfortunately, as I cruised to sleep, NPR (which actually stands for  "Nonstop Programs about Race") was on our clock radio.  The newest meme is that the presidency is just too darned big for any man (or woman).  It recalled similar screeds I remember (and parroted because I was then a brain-dead liberal fresh from J-school) from the last dregs of the Carter Administration

So cut BO some slack, was the vibe. He’s doing the best he can considering the incredibly tough circumstances.  All those crazy foreigners, screwing him up.  Plus the GWB curse, don’t you know.

 Okay, backtrack to the dinner.  One daughter (25) made the salad, my wife cooked the fried chicken (thank you, Pioneer Woman Cookbook!) and another daughter (21)  made peach pie from scratch.  My third daughter (25, twins!), away at law school (because we need more friggin' lawyers), called to touch base with everyone.   I must say -- at the risk of your rolling eyes -- that  I’m intensely proud of all three of my girls.  They’re beautiful, tough, smart, and hard-working.  At least one of them has the correct political instincts.  The other two, I believe, will come around.  They may have already come around -- and not admitted it to their father.  I have optimism because they have good values and faith and they get angry at the entitlement culture.  And they're infuriated they can't find good jobs.

Last night, I sat on my deck and smoked a cigar and thought about how much I loved my daughters.

They're independent and they have solid husbands/fiancées/boyfriends who respect them and cherish them (and if those males don't, I swear, I'll put them in the ground.  Every time a boy comes out to our place I tell them, "I have a rifle, a shovel, and 20 acres of land.") .  My daughter's values are instilled, even though there are a few arguments.   My wife and I lead our lives knowing we did our best and we cut them loose.  They seem to appreciate it, and they'll -- all three -- be terrific citizens and wonderful people.  We've done all we can do.

But imagine if we had chosen another path.  Imagine if, at this stage in our lives and theirs, we tried to control what they ate, what they drank, what they drove, what their health insurance must include, how many gallons of water their toilet tank must hold, where they got their contraception and whether it was "free," how many watts their light bulbs must be, how many inches of  R-12 insulation must be between their walls...

And they would say, rightly, "Butt out, Dad."

It would be overwhelming, trying to control every aspect of their three lives in different states and in different circumstances.  I would write columns or novels about how being a father was just too tough these days -- how overwhelming it was.   Imagine doing the same for 310 million daughters.  How can any father -- or any politico -- possibly succeed if he thinks that?

And why would we agree?

This is a pretty big deal.

The National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 17,000 of the agency’s nonsupervisory agents, called Monday for the resignation of Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. for his role in the botched “Fast and Furious” gunrunning operation that resulted in the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

Council President George E. McCubbin III, a 25-year Border Patrol veteran, described Mr. Holder’s actions in the case as “a slap in the face to all Border Patrol agents who serve this country,” adding that the attorney general showed “an utter failure of leadership at the highest levels of government.”

And, according to Bill McGurn's latest in the WSJ, Holder's situation is about to get much worse.

Brace yourselves.  Liberals are about to discover that price controls always -- always -- benefit the rich.  Even in San Francisco.  From SFGate:

Well-to-do people are taking advantage of the city's long-protected practice of limiting rent increases to preserve affordable housing by using their cheap apartments as weekend getaways.

Attorney Andrew Zacks represents landlords who work with the city to push out these cheaters. He says these tenants are cynically playing the system.

"You have this class of very rich, elite people benefiting from rent control," he said. "They have a good deal on a $500 or $800 place on Nob Hill and they use it as a pied-a-terre when they come into the city."

I know.  You're shocked, right?  What to do?  Well, they're trying to enforce the rules -- but that's the trouble with complicated price control schemes: it's an invitation for an unwieldy rule book:

...when the law was enacted a certain percentage of renters said, "OK, you caught me," and moved out. But not all of them. Because it is both expensive and difficult to prove residency, some renters think it is worth a fight.

"The burden of proof is on the landlord," said Zacks. "We almost always hire a private investigator, which costs several thousand dollars."

As an example, Zacks has a case that involves a couple who own a condominium in Hawaii and have enrolled their children in school there, but wanted rent protection for a single-family residence in the Richmond District that they have rented since 1987. The landlord, who felt he had evidence the two were living full-time in Hawaii, wanted to increase the rent by $1,500 a month to $3,600.

Zacks' client won the case, but only after two appeals, $50,000 in legal costs and four years of wrangling.

How about this for a solution?  Let the market set the rents.  Let the market set prices. Then you won't need to hire lawyers and private investigators.

Get out your inner Long -- Rob Long, that is.  The American Enterprise Institute is offering $50,000 in prize money for the best short video on the virtues of the free market.  I'm willing to work with any Ricocheteers who don't make me perform a capitalist rap.

Full information can be found here, but here's a brief overview:

AEI’s 2012 Video Contest, “Make the Moral Case for Free Enterprise,” is an effort to unleash market forces on behalf of market forces. We’re offering $50,000 in total prize money to attract short, high-quality videos that promote free enterprise—not on the basis of political ideology or economic efficiency but on the basis of simple moral truths, namely:

• Free enterprise promotes earned success, which is the substance of lasting happiness.

• Free enterprise promotes real fairness, based on merit and hard work.

• Free enterprise does the most good for the most vulnerable by supplying both ample charity and unmatched opportunity.

It'd be great to have members of the Ricochet community participate. Good luck!

As Rob notes below, watching the Obama campaign develop a particularly bad case of the yips over the past few weeks has been spectacularly entertaining. We're talking Chris Matthews on Jeopardy! entertaining; Beauty pageant contestant getting a question about Fermat's Last Theorem entertaining (OK, that one hasn't happened yet -- but don't think for a second that it won't be my life's work).

To a certain extent, this is an inevitable byproduct of the 2008 campaign. I wrote as far back as 2009 that the problem with running as a national Rorschach test was that Rorschach tests don't work if you tell the patient what the image is. And eventually, by actually being forced to govern, that was what Obama was going to have to do -- define himself out of being everything to everyone. So here we are four years later and we actually know who Barack Obama is: Dennis Kucinich with a kill list and a jump shot. That's tough to run on.

The enervated condition of the Obama campaign is a great help to Mitt Romney, but it still falls to the Republican candidate to convert Obama's turnovers into points. Over the past few weeks, Romney has generally been doing a fine job of this. But on Obama's immigration gambit, he seems to have been caught totally flat-footed. Here's how The Hill reports Romney's reaction to questions on the issue over the weekend:

Asked about whether he would repeal the new policy on CBS’s “Face the Nation”, Romney vowed to seek long-term immigration reform, but avoided a clear stance on Obama’s new deportation policies.

“Well, it would be overtaken by events if you will, by virtue of my putting in place a long-term solution with legislation which creates law that relates to these individuals such that they know what their setting is going to be, not just for the term of a president but on a permanent basis,” said Romney. 

Asked if he would leave Obama’s policy in place while he worked out a long-term policy, Romney replied, “we will look at that setting as we reach that.”

Can anyone tell me what this means (apart from the fact that Romney has been reading Sarah Palin's book on syntax -- "The Order in Which the Usage of Words is Ordered to Convey the Meaning of the Words Being Used")? Does Romney have a secret plan for immigration?

I'm not sure that the electoral real estate available to Romney on this issue justifies the gymnastics. Targeting individuals whose votes may swing based on a candidate's openness to giving legal status to illegal immigrants probably doesn't get him anywhere. If you're going to vote based on that factor, you're probably going to cast your ballot for the guy announcing a hammer and tongs executive order in the Rose Garden instead of the guy who's talking about the issue like Nostradamus on "Face the Nation." In truth, I suspect there's not a ton of daylight between Romney and Obama on this issue. But even if that was crystal clear to the public, I'd be surprised if it was a boon for Romney.

Because he doesn't want to come out swinging on the substance of immigration reform, Romney's main knock on Obama has been that the president had three and a half years to deal with immigration and waiting until now to address it demonstrates that the motivation is purely political. That's a weak argument. Those who care about the issue are unlikely to care what the motivation was. And the general rule of thumb is that if you're arguing that the other side is playing politics, you're losing the debate.

As we move into another week of the messaging wars, it's better, I think, for the Romney campaign to embrace the criticism made by Charles Krauthammer. Here's how the Daily Caller reports the comments he made on Friday's edition of Fox News' "Special Report":

Krauthammer told host Chris Wallace that this was a so-called “end-run” around the legislative branch of the federal government and explained how it defied the Constitution.

“Beyond the pandering, beyond the politics, beyond the process — is simple constitutional decency,” Krauthammer explained. “This is out-and-out lawlessness. You had a clip of the president himself say months ago ‘I cannot do this on my own because there are laws on the books.’ Well, I have news for president — the laws remain on the books. They haven’t changed.”

This line of argument has two great virtues for Romney. First, it's correct. Second, it fits into a broader narrative. This comes from the same president who upended the conventional role of secured creditors in the auto bailouts, who eviscerated the traditional constitutional understanding of the recess appointment power, who continuously walks all over traditional protections of religious liberty, and who -- one hopes -- will soon be found to have trespassed across constitutional boundaries with Obamacare.

That's the line of attack: not that a professional politician is motivated by political considerations, but that a former law school lecturer who rose to prominence criticizing the legal excesses of the previous administration won't allow his authority to be cabined by something as quaint as the Constitution of the United States.

The Greek election was for schnooks. That’s not where the real story is happening.

Sure, a win by the loony leftist Syriza party would have put Greece on the fast-track to the Euro exits. But Hellas, even with a New Democracy-Pasok coalition government, is still on the moving walkway that is likely taking it to the very same place. So instead of sooner rather than later, it’s probably [a bit] later rather than sooner.

Here’s what Citigroup is saying today:

Initial reactions from European officials welcome the outcome of the election, but made very clear that the there is little room for the new government to change the existing bailout programme. With this in mind, our probabilities for Grexit [Greek Exit] remain unchanged in the range between 50% and 75% over the next 12 to 18 months.

And Morgan Stanley in a new research note:

Not much is resolved from a medium-term perspective. … The list of prior actions that Greece needs to comply with is long and substantial. The IMF Memorandum of Understanding published on March 9, 2012, says that “prior to the first disbursement of the new programme, the Government adopts the following measures, through a supplementary budget.” These measures amount to about €3bn, or 1.5% of GDP. And “some 7% of GDP in additional measures will be needed to attain the 2014 fiscal target”. Even though the Troika might make some small concessions, there’s a high risk that the loan tranche is disbursed with some delay, given that we are running at least six weeks behind schedule for Greece’s ability to make all domestic payments.

Finally, Goldman Sachs with the exclamation point:

Greece will remain a source of uncertainty due to its macro-dynamics. The country is undergoing extreme economic pressures that are likely above and beyond austerity; prolonged uncertainty have led to a multi-year suppression in confidence and a collapse in credit growth, which has helped compressed the private sector, create supply shortages and has contributed to the lack of investment or privatization efforts, higher structural unemployment and persistent inflation currently observed. Unless this uncertainty of tail events is lifted over Greece, moderate solutions will be prone to marginalization, while extreme and populist views could become ever so prevalent.

And if New Democracy can’t form a government with Pasok, we’re right back where we started.

But Greece is a sideshow. It’s Spain and Italy on center stage. Despite the favorable election results in Greece, borrowing costs rose for both economies. The yield on Spanish 10-year bonds surged above the 7% red line, Italy above 6%. Markets may have finally moved beyond relief rallies based on nuggets of supposed good news. They want the Big Fix, and maybe it will come at the big EU meeting at month’s end. But that is not likely, is it? Everyone wants “more Europe,” but defines that goal differently. France wants a banking union leading eventually to a greater political union; the Germans just the opposite. More muddle from the politicians could put both Spain and Italy on an accelerated exit path.

Meanwhile, the other growth engines are sputtering—China, India, the United States. In the U.S., we’re now looking at a repeat of 2011, even if the EU crisis is contained. Slow growth, flat incomes, high unemployment. We’re not ready for another storm, much less a perfect one. But that’s just what might be on its way. And nothing that happened in Greece yesterday changes that. The only people who believe that are the schnooks—or someone trying to sell you something.

In case you were wondering, the Supreme Court issued its decisions for today, and ObamaCare was not one of them. It's possible that the Court will issue its decision on the Affordable Care Act later this week, but Court-watchers are predicting that the ruling will come Wednesday or Thursday of next week (see here and here).

While we're waiting, Heritage has a post about the "devastating" effects of ObamaCare on young adults, namely:

• Premium increases
• Loss of coverage
• Government takeover of student loans
• Less money for education
• Crushing fiscal burden

If the student loan thing seems strange, it actually is part of the ObamaCare legislation, not that anybody pretends it has anything to do with healthcare. 

Why haven't we elected a female president?  How was it, that when feminists had an opportunity to put the pinnacle of omnipresent supergalactic oneness,  Hillary Clinton, on the ballot, they passed?  The short answer, women didn't want her.  That's an oversimplification to be sure, and there is a preponderance of polling data many have used in an attempt to make meaningful conclusions about why Hillary never got asked to the prom.  So who is electing female leaders, if not the most enlightened and empowered group of women on the planet, American women?  The answer is surprising, I think.  

The highly empowered societies championing the cause of women are: Germany, Liberia, India, Argentina, and Bangladesh. Not surprisingly, Liberia, India, Argentina, and Bangladesh are all circling the drain on the Heritage Index of Economic Freedom, and aren't doing much better on the UN's gender inequality index either.  The U.S., on the other hand, is near the top on both scores.  

The numbers, while interesting, aren't very helpful in that they don't really inform as to why some of the poorest of developing nations are willing to elect a female president, or prime minister, and exceptional Americans are not.  

In looking at the news sources, the answer started to become more clear. These women have real problems like war and pestilence.  They don't really trust men and see a female leader as the path to peace.

The hardships these women routinely face has a galvanizing effect.  So when presented with an opportunity to elect a woman who they view as sympathetic to their plight, they seem to be far more unified in support of her.  Women in the U.S. don't have galvanizing events, like wars, coups, droughts, and horrific poverty, which unify them behind a female leader.  Instead they light up the mainstream media with serious issues like subsidizing birth control because.....  and stay at home moms don't really work.  

Update: Germany, Liberia, India, Argentina, and Bangladesh were selected because they are currently the top five countries with the longest serving female leaders in the world. 

Who knows if this will last, but for the moment, it's fun to watch.  From Talking Points Memo:

Democratic strategists have been raising red flags about the Obama campaign’s messaging recently, worrying that Obama is spending too much time explaining why the economy has improved over the past three and a half years and not enough time talking about the next four years.

But the Obama campaign seems loath to take their advice, or at the very least, acknowledge publicly that they need to adjust their message.

Which "strategists?"  Just the one with the biggest mouth:

“I’m worried that when the White House or the campaign talks about the progress that’s being made, people take that as a signal that they think that things are fine and people don’t feel they ought to believe that,” Democratic strategist James Carville said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

Carville is the co-author of a memo, along with Democratic pollsters Stan Greenberg and Erica Siefert, which uses findings from focus groups to argue that the president needs to articulate a vision moving forward with “minimal discussion of the recovery and jobs created and maximal empathy for the challenges people face.”

Meanwhile, inside the hermetically-sealed ObamaDome:

On “Fox News Sunday,” [Obama advisor David] Plouffe argued that Carville and his chorus of Democrats are wrong.

“Those other Democrats are not paying attention to what the president is saying,” Plouffe told host Chris Wallace. “Which is every day, not just in what he says but what he does, he understands our economy is not as strong as it needs to be, that this didn’t happen overnight, it’s going to take us a long time to recover, there’s a lot of people out there hurting. So we are making progress and we need to make a lot more.”

Plouffe’s retort did exactly what the critics warn the campaign not to do: focus on the president’s economic record for his first term, rather than what he would do in a second term.

On “Meet The Press,” Plouffe denied that Democrats were panicking after a few rough weeks and poor economic news. But he called on Democrats to quit the “hand wringing” and focus on winning the election. What Democrats and any other supporters of the president need to do, Plouffe said, “is work like heck to win this election. That’s where we need our energy focused. Not on kind of some of the hand wringing that sometimes occurs in our party.”

Enjoy it while you can.

Visiting us as this week's Guest Contributor is A.D.P. Efferson.  A.D.P. does business development and geopolitical analysis for energy and defense firms from home while raising three kids and three cats with her husband, who is a military officer.  She has written for Human Events, and her personal blog (which is ridiculously funny) can be found here.  Please join me in welcoming A.D.P. Efferson to Ricochet!

Last week we were treated to all sorts of stories about how Catholic bishops were just partisan tools. The headline in the Los Angeles Times was, for instance, “Are Catholic bishops abandoning nonpartisanship in contraception battle?” (I wrote a little something about how this was a public relations message being pushed by a Soros-funded religious progressive group.)

As silly as that narrative was to begin with, it just took a debilitating hit with the Friday Night News Dump from the Catholic Health Association:

Sharpening an election-year confrontation over religious freedom and government health insurance rules, the nation’s Catholic hospitals on Friday rejected President Barack Obama’s compromise for providing birth control coverage to their women employees.

The Catholic Health Association was a key ally in Obama’s health care overhaul, defying opposition from church bishops to help the president win approval in Congress. But the group said Friday it does not believe church-affiliated employers should have to provide birth control as a free preventive service, as the law now requires.

The letter is signed by Sister Carol Keehan, the same woman who effusively praised the so-called accommodation offered by the Obama administration back in February. Now she says it's not enough.

Stay tuned for the next spin ...

Over at Telegraph blogs today I pay tribute in my inimitable, tasteful way to the late Rodney King - the man responsible for giving me my first big break in journalism when, while on holiday in California in April 1992, I accidentally ended up covering the LA riots.

I'm sure for many of those caught up in the riots it was a nightmare. But covering them as a journalist was a blast because I was young and dumb with delusions of immortality. Even scarier than my encounter with the "Four-Tray Crips" - see above - was when I found myself driving with a colleague through South Central in a red open-topped Ford Mustang. The car was fine for its original rental purpose: cruising San Diego while covering the Americas Cup. But definitely somewhat provocative when driven in the midst of the riots by two very conspicuous white guys.

We were lost, looking for a pastor's house, and we took a turn down a side road to be greeted by a very tall black man standing in the middle of the road, staring at us, with something long and metallic dangling from his hand. As we drove closer - very, very slowly - we saw what it was: a .44 Magnum with a silencer on it. I didn't look him in the eyes. I pretended not to have noticed anything at all. As we drove past, buttocks clenched so tight they wouldn't untighten again for several hours thereafter, I felt the guy studying us curiously, trying to decide what to do. We cruised on (slowly, so as not to provoke) and I wondered how it would feel to be shot in the back of the head or in the back through my car seat by the world's most powerful handgun. Did I feel lucky, punk?

Anyway, I hope I'm not spoiling the story by telling you that he didn't shoot and I lived to see another day. This is the thing about scary life or death experiences which could go either way. If they go wrong, you die. If they go right, they end up as just another amusing anecdote.

“I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognese / And not feel bad about for days and days and days,” sings the British pop-star Lily Allen in her sarcastically named song “Everything’s Just Wonderful” (2006).

Allen’s song came to mind when I read this excerpt of the book How to Be a Woman by Caitlin Moran, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal this weekend. Moran wonders whether we have moral hang-ups about food:

Of all the overwhelming compulsions you can be ruined by, all of them have some potential for some perverted, self-destructive fascination—except eating.

Consider, for instance, Keith Richards, in his Glimmer Twins days—snorting, smoking, injecting, drinking. Everyone loves him! Even though, by any way we can calculate it, he would almost certainly have been a complete nightmare to be around—paranoid, shaky, unreliable and, a good part of the time, so deeply unconscious that the primary method of moving from one location to another would have been being dragged by the ankles—we still have a slight cultural frisson of “How cool!” when people get this messed up.

But imagine if instead he had started overeating and gotten really fat instead. If he’d really gotten into spaghetti Bolognese, say, or kept coming onstage holding foot-long meatball subs. Long, crazy, wired nights after gigs, in penthouses, nubile dollies scattered across the room, and Keith in the center, sprawled across a silk-draped emperor-size water bed, eating Doritos sandwiches.

If we’re talking about morality and food, we need to make a distinction between two trends. First, there is the new religion of food. Its adherents believe that eating vegan, vegetarian, organic, local, or insert your label of choice, is a morally good thing. It’s what Mary Eberstadt was talking about in her essay “Is Food the New Sex?”

Wavering in and out of vegetarianism, Jennifer is adamantly opposed to eating red meat or endangered fish. She is also opposed to industrialized breeding, genetically enhanced fruits and vegetables, and to pesticides and other artificial agents. She tries to minimize her dairy intake, and cooks tofu as much as possible. She also buys “organic” in the belief that it is better both for her and for the animals raised in that way, even though the products are markedly more expensive than those from the local grocery store. Her diet is heavy in all the ways that Betty’s was light: with fresh vegetables and fruits in particular. Jennifer has nothing but ice in her freezer, soymilk and various other items her grandmother wouldn’t have recognized in the refrigerator, and on the counter stands a vegetable juicer she feels she “ought” to use more.

Most important of all, however, is the difference in moral attitude separating Betty and Jennifer on the matter of food. Jennifer feels that there is a right and wrong about these options that transcends her exercise of choice as a consumer. She does not exactly condemn those who believe otherwise, but she doesn’t understand why they do, either. And she certainly thinks the world would be a better place if more people evaluated their food choices as she does. She even proselytizes on occasion when she can.

This is an interesting phenomenon, but I don’t think it’s what Moran is talking about in her book excerpt. Even though Moran uses Keith Richards as an example, she is discussing a trend that is unique to women: This strange guilt-complex that we have about eating too much:

Why will women happily boast-moan about spending too much (“…and then my bank manager took my credit card and cut it in half with a sword!”), about drinking too much (“…and then I took my shoe off and threw it over the bus stop!”), and about working too hard (“…so tired I fell asleep on the control panel, and when I woke up, I realized I’d pressed the nuclear launch button! Again!”) but never, ever about eating too much? Why is unhappy eating the most pointlessly secret of miseries? It’s not like you can hide a six-Kit-Kats-a-day habit for very long.

Why would a woman keep “unhappy eating” a secret? Because she is ashamed that she just ate that whole pint of ice cream, or those three slices of cake, or that entire box of chocolates. Shame.

People feel shame when they think they’ve done something wrong. So what, exactly, has that woman done wrong by overeating? Eating too much violates principles of moderation and self-control, but that would apply to both men and women. And yet, women experience the food-shame trigger more intensely than men, based on my anecdotal experience. When I see men overeat, they feel bad for a while and try not to make the same mistake next time. When women overeat, they fall into emotional turmoil. They’ll say something like “Now I have to go work out for an hour to burn that off” because they “feel fat.” Women also connect food and emotions when they say they talk about “eating their feelings,” which is really a surrender of will to the emotions.

Some women resort to unhealthy habits, like bulimia, to deal with overeating. Still others just try to avoid the problem altogether by not eating at all–i.e., anorexia, which takes self-control about food to an extreme. Ninety percent of people with eating disorders in this country are women.

The question is why–why do women have this peculiarly visceral reaction to food and overeating?

Here are the next verses of that Lily Allen song I quoted above:

In the magazines they talk about weight loss

If I buy those jeans I can look like Kate Moss

Oh no, that’s not the life that I chose

But I guess that’s just the way that things go.

We live in an image-centric culture where people are judged by how they look, especially if those people are women.  For women in the West, eating is tied to image. Image is defined by the media. The power of the Western media in affecting the dieting patterns of girls was revealed by a fascinating study conducted in the mid-nineties:

The British Medical Association revealed that anthropologist Anne Becker of Harvard Medical School, who worked thoroughly with the Fiji population, “has shown that exposure to western ideals of beauty have led to a high percentage of adolescents dieting within the last decade. It is hard to prove that it is exposure to TV images which have caused this change, although it is reasonable to assume that this is the case” (Jade). An extensive look into this study revealed that two groups of Fijian schoolgirls were interviewed and tested within a few weeks of their introduction to television in 1995 and then again in 1998. According to the study, “in 1995, the number of girls who self-induced vomiting to control their weight was zero. But three years after the introduction of television, that figure reached 11%” (Television). The study indicated that dieting had become the norm and that girls living in houses with a television set were “three times more likely to show symptoms of eating disorders.” Researchers have concluded that the prevalence of eating disorders in non-Western countries is lower than that of Western countries, but it seems to be increasing due to media consumption.

The beauty ideal of the Western media has set an impossible standard of thinness and fitness for women to live up to. Because the media is so pervasive, women mistake the Kate Moss ideal for the norm, and try to adjust their habits accordingly. When they overeat, they’re not just consuming too much food, they actually feel like they’re failing to live up to a standard of identity that they want to achieve, just like Catholics who don’t do the right thing are failing to live up to a standard of goodness that they want to achieve.

When Catholics err, they have to confess their sins to a priest. When overeaters err, Moran thinks they should also confess:

Coming into the office looking frazzled, sighing, “Man, I was on the pot roast last night like you wouldn’t believe. I had, like, POTATOES in my EYEBROWS by 10 p.m.”

Then people would be able to address your dysfunction as openly as they do all the others. They could reply, “Whoa, maybe you should calm it down for a bit, my friend. I am the same. I did a three-hour session on the microwave lasagna last night. Perhaps we should go out to the country for a bit. Clean up our acts.”

Sin, confession, redemption. Mary Eberstadt thinks we’ve become puritanical about food. Maybe we’ve become papists about it too.

I'm not sure which stage of grief we're in with the Obama presidency but I rather enjoyed this headline from the Washington Post this weekend:

Can any president succeed in today’s political world?

Why, I haven't heard that question since the late 1970s!

Here's a snippet of the argument:

News is being made — and covered — literally every minute of the day across the world and, as president, Obama is forced to read and react to virtually all of it. (One advantage for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in the presidential election: As a challenger candidate, he can pick and choose where he sounds off.)

Layer over the constant stream of news with the fact that Twitter, blogs and cable television turn every slip of the tongue, misstatements or gaffe into a mountain — “the private sector is doing fine” being a prime, recent example — and it’s clear that the idea that the president can drive the hourly, daily or weekly message of his choosing feels outdated. The bully pulpit may still exist, but it’s far less bully than it once was.

That’s especially true not only because the fracturing of the media makes it hard to push a clear message but also because roughly half of the American public doesn’t want to hear the message (whatever it is) because it is of the other party.

As someone who thinks Americans place far too much trust and hope in their elected officials, I don't mind it if people realize that these politicians aren't so hot. But this almost seems more a lament for the loss of control the media once held than anything else.

And given how the media have frequently crafted narratives or pushed candidacies that hurt the country, I can't be too sad about it.

Still, this leads me to another question. Normally I argue that we can't analyze how well a presidency is going while we're in it. Even if you just look at the last several presidents, their good and bad decisions look different with a bit of distance. Do we have the perspective needed to judge this presidency?

When Mayor Bloomberg proposed a restaurant ban on soft drinks over 16-ounces, he cited research by Cornell professors Brian Wansink and David Just as the "science" behind the ban.  Now, both professors have taken to the Atlantic to explain why Hizzoner got it all wrong. 

Wansink and Just have performed studies showing that when you randomly give people large sizes of food like popcorn and French fries, they overeat.  But New Yorkers aren't having big drinks randomly served to them; they're actively seeking them out.  In fact, Wansink and Just's research suggests that Bloomberg's approach will backfire: when you overtly deny people the portions they want, they tend to eat more for the rest of the day.  "People reason that because they were forced to be good for one meal, they can splurge on snacks and desserts at later meals." (ht: Volokh Conspiracy).

Presidents often have complicated relationships with their dads.  Ronald Reagan certainly did.  And Bill Clinton never really knew his own father.  And Obama?  Don't get him started.

So did Gerald Ford.  From Newsmax:

At the other end of the scale ranks Leslie Lynch King Sr., Gerald Ford’s father. He fares badly for his heavy drinking, for leaving Ford’s mother just weeks after Gerald was born, and for refusing to pay child support. It was so bad that Gerald took his stepfather's surname and met his biological father only once.

And what about the dads who had a good impact on their White House-bound sons?

Teddy Roosevelt Sr. ensured greatness for his son — bringing him up with trips to the Amazon, private foreign language tutors, taxidermy instruction and a set of weights after an unpleasant physical altercation with a bully.
Prescott Bush, father of the first President George Bush and John Adams, whose son John Quincy Adams followed him into the presidency also rank highly.

People often say that you have to have something wrong with you to want to be president.  I'm not sure that's true.  But it does seem -- at least for a lot of American presidents -- that the kind of father you have matters.

True for us all, I guess.

Happy Father's Day.

My day so far:  After the kids made me scrambled eggs, I crawled back into bed to spend an hour reading The Far Side of the World, the tenth volume in Patrick O'Brian's irresistible series of novels about the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars.  (Our story so far:  Capt. Aubrey and ship's surgeon Maturin have just set sail on the H.M.S. Surprise for Brazil, intending to intercept the American ship, U.S.N. Norfolk.)  An hour to read--and not for business, but for pleasure.  Very bliss.

Next up:  The missus and I will be loading the younger kids into the car to drive up to San Francisco, where we'll be meeting up with our oldest daughter, who turns 21 this very day, to ramble.  Maybe we'll go to the zoo, maybe to the marina.  I only know for certain that we'll end up for dinner in a Chinese restaurant, where yours truly will be very likely to indulge in a libation like the one pictured here.

That's this father's Father's Day.

Yours?

My last post, Why Mission Statements Suck, spurred a healthy discourse on the process and the result. Seems past experience with missions/vision left many ricochet commenters unimpressed. This post concerns itself with an equally controversial business document, the mid-term strategic plan. I've seen a heap of useless ones over the years, but I remain a proponent of the concept – provided the plan can fit onto a single page. I've encountered so many leaders who are flabbergasted by the concept. They think their businesses are too complex for 1 page. They're wrong.

Short or long, a strategic plan better begin with deep strategic thought and the right conviction. Plans put together by leaders with a ‘do-more-of-the-same but better’ attitude are destined for mediocrity. The strategic plan is not the annual budget. This should be a break from day-to-day operations; it is the organization’s future. The senior folks charged with preparing the plan must enter the process with a mindset that is analytical, intuitive and creative. By its very nature, the 1-pager doesn’t offer much real estate to work with, even with a small font. One page forces folks to think about the content that really matters –the well-defined strategies, the initiatives and the projects that will make the difference in taking the organization to the next level. Crafting strategic change is all about leading the race to the future. Here’s your basic content checklist.

1. On a landscape page layout, establish your Mission and/or Vision at the top. If your company has both a mission and a vision, a sentence for each is all you need. This becomes your guide for defining the strategies necessary to achieving the goals.

2. Now divide the page in two. On the left is your Financial History and Outlook. Quantify two years of history, your best estimate for the current fiscal and your 3-Year outlook. For these 6 years, enter sales, costs, margins, income and key financial ratios such as return on investment, return on assets, and return on sales.

3. On the right side of the page under the same 6 years, include other Key Business Indicators. KBI’s are those factors that determine performance against the vision and/or mission – measurements of the things that make your business tick. A company with differentiated branded consumables might measure market share, brand awareness, brand image, and margin development. A service business will likely target measurables such as customer service, on-time delivery, stock-outs and customer satisfaction levels. Low-cost producers watch costs, productivity, sales/profit per employee and overall employment. Some firms track new product launches, some measure employee engagement. No matter the company type, the CEO is responsible for increasing shareholder value. Measure it. If your company is not public, look at the industry multiples and decide on a ratio in conjunction with your Board of Directors. Set your objectives annually and check your progress over the term of the plan.

4. Culture and Credo can be stated below the vision or after the quantitative section. Limit this to 4 or 5 existing traits and/or articulate the cultural values that will inspire and engage the company’s human resource. For example, you may say, “Become more focused on fewer, bigger ideas so that we are quick and nimble, proactive rather than reactive. ‘Simplify and Go’ is the modus operandi.”

5. Finish with the Key Strategic Initiatives. This is where the rubber hits the road – the stuff that drives the business forward. I liked to limit the initiatives to no more than six, and I tred to represent each department. However, this is not always prudent, depending on the situation and the needs of the organization.

Once you’ve crafted your medium term plan, share it with your employees. Explain what you want to do, why it is important that it be achieved and why you can’t make it happen without them. Keep the plan handy. That's the easy part; after all, it is only 1 piece of paper. Monitor your progress. Enjoy the results.

The Hinderaker-Ward Experience (HWX) returns for another Saturday Special Edition podcast.  It’s the latest in insightful, entertaining commentary from John Hinderaker from Power Line and Brian Ward from Fraters Libertas and our big fat faces (at least according to some of our admirers – tune in for the full audio of that).

Brian and John are joined by the great Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute and Power Line.  Steve brings his always enlightening perspective to our discussion on President Obama’s recent speeches on the economy and easing immigration enforcement and on Mitt Romney’s increasingly positive-looking prospects in November.

Later, a special Loon of the Week testifying on the death of Democracy.   Then, This Week in Gatekeeping probing the subtle differences between Puerto Rico and Cuba, with a special introduction by Juan Williams.

We hope you enjoy and as always, comments are most welcome.  Unless you have further fat face observations, those has already been duly noted.

Yesterday's post clearly struck a nerve with several of you, both libertarian and non-libertarian. I'd like to engage in a bit of follow-up to clarify a thing or two.

First, regarding my comment that libertarians have never amounted to anything as a political movement. I intended this to be a distinction, but perhaps I should've given it more emphasis. Instead, I'd argue libertarians have amounted to a great deal as a policy movement. Where political movements demand tent-construction and coalition-building to achieve a critical mass of votes from the electorate, movements designed simply to win a particular policy argument within a legislative or legal arena have more to do with the intellectual and historical strength of the argument advanced. Here, libertarians have thrived.

A perfect example is about to come down from the Supreme Court, within the health care policy space where I work. It was libertarians like Randy Barnett,  and libertarians alone, who advanced the (much-mocked) argument that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, something even many conservative Republicans didn't believe at the time.

Yet time and again, we see libertarians function as their own worst enemies when it comes to building support for ideas, forming factional lines which prevent them from working with other people of like mind on a significant portion of their policy views, often because of cultural divides over hot button social issues.

These cultural differences have lead some libertarians into ill-thought alliances with the left - the short-lived liberaltarian movement was an example of this, but so are the voting patterns of many in the libertarian movement. Much as I respect my friends at Reason, I am still aghast at the number of them and their colleagues who voted for and ardently supported Barack Obama in 2008. These libertarian commentators pronounced McCain-Palin as due for punishment for "eight years of military adventurism, unfettered executive power, and disregard for civil liberties" as representing "a southern-centered party based on social division and cultural resentment", one "in thrall to troglodytes".

Here's a general rule of thumb: if your votes over the past decade were for Ralph Nader, John Kerry, and Barack Obama - as more than one of those prominent libertarians admitted - stop fooling yourself about which tent you're in.

I once had a conversation with a fairly prominent urban libertarian who went on a lengthy discourse about how the future of the right in America depended on the Republican Party finally getting its act together and rejecting the "Bible-thumping fetus-obsessed" in order to achieve political victory. I let him go on for a bit before pointing out the error of his calculations, from my perspective - that in fact, without the support of the faith and freedom folks, the Republican Party would've gone the way of the Whigs, that Ron Paul himself has been a strong and consistently pro-life leader in the Congress, and that if he'd like to see how a fiscally conservative pro-choicer would do at the box office, he should use the Gary Johnson campaign as a barometer.

Libertarians are often absolutely correct about the direction of policy because they alone are willing to ask the right questions - questions such as, "should government even be doing this thing?" - whether or not they have the right answers. Those who I work with in the activist movements at the state level are also often socially conservative themselves, or at least traditionalist "leave us alone" types, and therefore are more pragmatic about cooperating with conservatives to achieve policy change. My hope is that more of these individuals will rise through the ranks to prominence within the libertarian movement. Without that happening, I suspect it will remain limited by this unfortunate factionalism, and instead, the more pragmatic types will stick to what they've been doing: trying to win arguments within the Republican Party, not outside of it.

I've been super-busy with freelance projects and my two new jobs: I'm now a (Senior!) fellow of the American Foreign Policy Council and a (Senior!) Fellow of the Gatestone Institute--where they both promised I could write as much about Turkey as I want and they'd never complain. So I haven't had as much time for Ricochet. But I'm always reading what you're up to, and I really miss our conversations. (They both lured me away from you with that "Senior" title. I love the way that sounds. I can't wait for Gatestone to put my name and title on the site.)

Anyway, if you've been wondering what I've been up to, here's a piece I just wrote about the World Economic Forum in Istanbul called Davos on Tour:

The arrival of the World Economic Forum in Istanbul this week was overshadowed in the Turkish media by the arrival of Madonna and her entourage, although there was a symmetry in events—massive security, caravans of expensive cars with tinted windows, snarled traffic and cab drivers cursing them all. Tagging behind the Material Girl was her twenty-four-year-old lover, Brahim Zaibat; tagging behind Turkey’s mercurial prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. In both cases, the pair looked every inch the happy couple. ...

I've also got a long piece about the Gülen movement coming up in City Journal. (Pity my editors: They asked for four thousand words and I sent them ten thousand. They're probably tearing their hair out right about now. But really, you can't sum that story up in four thousand words. In fact, you can't sum it up in ten thousand, but I figured they'd plotz if I sent them a 20-volume treatise, complete with footnotes and bibliography.) 

My debut piece for Gatestone will be published on Monday--it's about the Turkish Supreme Court's war on porn, and the dilemma this poses for Turkish blackmailers. So stay tuned and watch this space. 

Oh! And I finally got around to posting the English version of a piece about Margaret Thatcher that was published last March in the German Financial Times. At least, I think that's what was published--I don't read German very well, so I don't know if the translation was accurate.

Life is good here in Istanbul in the springtime, even though the world's a mess--my garden's in bloom, my cats are happy, and so am I. I hope you're all busy and thriving, too.

I'm often here, even if I don't have as much time to post anymore.

So mind your manners, because you never know when I might be reading. 

Love,

Claire

PS: If you're really jonesing for my non-stop Turkey updates, you can always follow me on Twitter: @claireberlinski. Never a dull moment, I promise you. 

President Obama's claim that he can refuse to deport 800,000 aliens here in the country illegally illustrates an unprecedented stretching of the Constitution and the rule of law.  He is laying claim to presidential power that goes even beyond that claimed by the Bush administration, in which I served.  There is a world of difference in refusing to enforce laws that violate the Constitution (Bush) and refusing to enforce laws because of disagreements over policy (Obama).

Under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, the President has the duty to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."  This provision was included to make sure that the President could not simply choose, as the British King had, to cancel legislation simply because he disagreed with it.  President Obama cannot refuse to carry out a congressional statute simply because he thinks it advances the wrong policy. To do so violates the very core of his constitutional duties.

There are two exceptions, neither of which applies here.  The first is that "the Laws" includes the Constitution.  The President can and should refuse to execute congressional statutes that violate the Constitution, because the Constitution is the highest form of law.  We in the Bush administration argued that the President could refuse to execute laws that infringed on the executive's constitutional powers, particularly when it came to national security -- otherwise, a Congress that had a different view of foreign policy could order the military to refuse to carry out the President's orders as Commander-in-Chief, for example.  When Presidents such as Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR said that they would not enforce a law, they did so when the law violated their executive powers under the Constitution or the individual rights of citizens.

The President's right to refuse to enforce unconstitutional legislation, of course, does not apply here.  No one can claim with a straight face that the immigration laws here violate the Constitution.

The second exception is prosecutorial discretion, which is the idea that because of limited resources the executive cannot pursue every violation of federal law.  The Justice Department must choose priorities and prosecute cases that are the most important, have the greatest impact, deter the most, and so on.  But prosecutorial discretion is not being used in good faith to cancel all prosecutions of an entire class of federal laws.  A President cannot claim discretion honestly to say that he will not enforce an entire law -- especially where, as here, the executive branch is enforcing the rest of immigration law.

Imagine the precedent this claim would create.  President Romney could lower tax rates simply by saying he will not use enforcement resources to prosecute anyone who refuses to pay capital gains tax. He could repeal Obamacare simply by refusing to fine or prosecute anyone who violates it.

So what we have here is a President who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress's policy choices.  This is an exercise of executive power that neither the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive -- nor the Framers -- can support.

More than one commenter on this new series has asked for a few pointers on various basics of cocktail-making. Today let's answer one of the key questions about the proper way to make a twist, and use that in a drink designed to cool anyone down on a hot day.

Here's the thing about asking for a twist: in my experience, 9 times out of 10, you'll get something that's an embarrassment to the idea. You'll end up with a withered bit of lemon that's been sitting on the bar half the day, or a full slice of lemon as if you'd ordered an iced tea. The other day I watched in horror in Washington, D.C.'s Oceanaire as a bartender prepared their twists for drinks by chopping off both ends of a lemon with a butcher knife, cutting out the center, and then slicing the thick rind of it into chunks. This will not do, people.

The key to a good twist is understanding that what you're really trying to get at is that wonderful, flavorful zest that citrus fruits throw off. Without that, it's just a bit of floating color in your glass. Instead, you want a nice thin strand, cut with a peeler. Here's an excellent video guide from the folks at CHOW:

Now, your twist need not be as dramatic as this fellow's - but the same general principle applies - and be sure to cut it above the glass, and if you can't smell it in the air as you're cutting it, you're doing it wrong. If you'd like to apply that twist today, why not try a Lemon Drop? It's a cocktail many of my friends in the fairer sex approve of, and it's a fine sweet citrusy treat for the summer. One tip: avoid mixes for Lemon Drops, as they tend to be disgustingly sweet. My own suggestion:

2 parts vodka (for cocktails like this, I suggest Grey Goose)
.75 part fresh lemon juice (fresh makes a difference!)
.5 part Cointreau
.5 part Simple Syrup 

Combine in a shaker with ice, shake til frigid, pour into a martini glass and add your lemon twist. Feel free to adjust the amounts of Simple Syrup and lemon juice depending on your tilt toward tart or sweet. Enjoy!

Did you ever wonder what conversations between the Hemingways were like? No, you didn't? Well, we taped one for you anyway. Yes, it's the inaugural Mr. & Mrs. Hemingway podcast you've all been clamoring for! Mark swears our relationship is more than a "dyspeptic Punch and Judy routine," but tune in and judge for yourself!

We discuss President Obama's excellent few weeks, including reasons why his campaign might be struggling.

We wonder if the media -- unable to get their legs all a-tingly over Obama this time around -- are projecting their passion in a new direction (against the Roman Catholic Church).

We go on to discuss how becoming parents has made us more judgmental.

And, as a special bonus, we reveal that cannibals have strained our marriage. We picked the wrong week to stop sniffing bath salts.

Note from the Blue Yeti: This debut episode of The Hemingways is free (Ricochet Podcast subscribers, you'll get this automagically), but if you want to hang out with America's coolest couple in the future, you have to be member. Join today!

President Obama today, speaking from the Rose Garden, commenced the latest leg on our fundamental transformation from a constitutional republic into something different:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Good afternoon, everybody.

This morning, Secretary Napolitano announced new actions my administration will take to mend our nation’s immigration policy, to make it more fair, more efficient and more just, specifically for certain young people sometimes called DREAMers.

. . .

That’s what gave rise to the Dream Act. It says that if your parents brought you here as a child, you’ve been here for five years and you’re willing to go to college or serve in our military, you can one day earn your citizenship. And I’ve said time and time and time again to Congress that — send me the Dream Act, put it on my desk, and I will sign it right away.

Now, both parties wrote this legislation, and year and a half ago, Democrats passed the Dream Act in the House, but Republicans walked away from it. It got 55 votes in the Senate, but Republicans blocked it. The bill hasn’t really changed; the need hasn’t changed. It’s still the right thing to do. The only thing that has changed, apparently, was the politics.

. . .

Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people. Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.

Am I overwrought in thinking this latest move of more than questionable illegality?  Allow me to quote noted constitutional authority and President of the United States Barack Obama, speaking in 2011:

The fact of the matter is there are laws on the books that I have to enforce. And I think there’s been a great disservice done to the cause of getting the Dream Act passed and getting comprehensive immigration passed by perpetrating the notion that somehow, by myself, I can go and do these things. It’s just not true.

What has changed?  Well, the polls aren't looking good for Mr. Hope and Change.  The War on Women was a bust; weighing in on Trayvon didn't help; must be time to dust off the War on Immigrants.  So the us-versus-them administration has run this latest divisive issue up the flagpole.  

Question:  Is this just another sign of desperation, or is Mr. Obama onto something here?

In her thought-provoking post about marriage (below), Rachel Lu contends that gays should accept civil unions rather than marriage.  Like Rachel, I'm a supporter of traditional marriage, but I'm increasingly of the opinion that the best policy for the state to follow is not to make marriage universal, but to make civil unions universal.  In other words, get the state out of the marriage business.

The real sticking point in the marriage debate is not economic, it's cultural.  In California, for example, the civil partnership law confers the same benefits as marriage (even Judge Vaughn Walker conceded the point), but the plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case insist that the state must refer to their relationship as "marriage."   But marriage is an ancient term in our civilization; it's a religious sacrament, and the state has no business, you might say, monkeying around with centuries of tradition.

Agreed -- so why give the State the power to define "marriage" in the first place?  Granted, the state must (I think) have something like marriage, for purposes of tax filing, survivor's benefits, intestate succession, and the like.   Civil unions do that.   So why not get rid of state marriage licenses, and create a civil union regime that would be open to same-sex couples?  If you want to get married, go to a church.   Sort of like the formalities around birth: the state issues a birth certificate, but you go to church or temple to arrange baptism or bris. 

I know there are counter arguments; that's why I'm posting this here.  Hit me with your best shot -- as the man said.  What do you think?