The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Profiles in Courage
At least one member of Congress has changed his mind on the bonus-confiscation bill, Politico reports:
Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the top Republican on the budget committee, said Thursday he would have voted against the 90 percent tax increase if he had known that legal scholars would deem it unconstitutional.
“Now, that I know–which I didn’t at the time–that this is unconstitutional, I wouldn’t have voted the same way,” Ryan said during a taping of C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” on Thursday–the show is set to air on Sunday. POLITICO was one of the participants in the Ryan interview.
Ryan blames confusion about the constitutionality of the plan on Democrats for rushing the bill through the House.
“You rush this thing to the floor. Nobody had time to review it,” Ryan said on the C-SPAN program, adding that lawmakers “got conflicting advice on it” before the vote.
This is an odd claim. For one thing, Ryan does not “know” that the bill is unconstitutional. It hasn’t even been enacted, much less tested in court, and legal scholars are far from unanimous as to whether it is unconstitutional or, if it is, why. For another, as shown in the roll call, whatever confusion Ryan might have experienced did not prevent 87 Republicans (and six Democrats) from voting against the legislation.
Ryan has been touted as one of the GOP’s most promising young leaders on Capitol Hill. And certainly it’s to his credit that he regrets having joined last week’s political mob scene–which is to say, it’s better than not regretting it. But this is far from an impressive show of leadership.
He Didn’t Get the Memo
The Middle East Media Research Institute transcribes a sermon Sunni Islamic scholar Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi delivered last month on Qatari TV:
A few days ago, a Muslim asked me if we were allowed to possess WMDs–nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. I said to him: “Yes, we must possess such weapons, but not use them.” We must possess such weapons in order to strike terror in our enemies–“Strike terror in the hearts of the enemies,” and frighten them.
Is this guy illiterate or something? Everyone knows it’s not called “terror” but “man-caused disaster.”
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