Political correctness doesn’t begin to describe Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey Jr.’s outrageous comments, as alluded to by Jennifer, on the Sunday-morning talk shows concerning the Fort Hood massacre. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopolous whether the Army had “dropped the ball” in not recognizing that Hasan had become increasingly radical, Casey repeated the official mantra of the Obama administration, that we shouldn’t “jump to conclusions” based on what he described as “early tidbits” about Hasan’s motives (say, shouting “Allahu Akbar” before firing 100 rounds of ammunition into his fellow soldiers).

Taken at his word, Casey’s chief concern seems to be not protecting American soldiers from death at the hands of a jihadist in their midst, but preventing a “backlash” against “diversity.”

The speculation could heighten the backlash. What happened at Ft. Hood is a tragedy and I believe it would be a greater tragedy if diversity became a casualty here.

Casey made similar statements on CBS and NBC. The statements were offensive on several levels. It’s as if our leaders — civilian and, in this case, military — believed that Americans are a pack of bigots who’ll be beating up innocent Muslims on the streets and vandalizing mosques if given the least excuse. That hasn’t happened, even in the aftermath of 9/11. In fact, Jews are nearly eight times as likely to be victims of religiously motivated hate crimes as Muslims are, according to FBI statistics. In 2007, the last year for which figures are available, 133 such crimes were reported against Muslims, compared with 1,010 against Jews.

The only ones jumping to conclusions about Hasan’s motives seem to be those in government. From President Obama on down, including the military chain of command, government officials seem to want to squelch legitimate questions about the role that Hasan’s religious views played in his decision to open fire at Fort Hood. That kind of willful myopia will breed suspicion and distrust among the American people and put servicemen and women at risk. And if Gen. Casey truly believes that “diversity” is more important than protecting his troops, he should hang up his uniform.

We still don’t know what was behind the killings at Fort Hood this afternoon, in which 11 soldiers and the killer died, but President Obama’s rushed press conference was surprising in its flippancy nonetheless. Before he got to the issue on everyone’s mind — namely the deaths of Americans in uniform — the president gave a “shout-out” to government bureaucrats gathered for a previously scheduled conference at the Interior Department, complete with appreciative chuckles. He treated the event like a pep rally rather than a tragic occasion with a wider audience than those gathered in the room. I wonder how many media outlets will compare Obama’s performance to President Bush’s “Pet Goat” moment on 9/11. I won’t hold my breath.

Jonathan is right that we should pray for the continued health of Justice Kennedy, whose record on race cases is pretty good, but it is unfortunate that he and his fellow justices didn’t consider the Constitutional issues in the Ricci case, which would have made it far more difficult for Democrats in Congress to undo the results of the decision. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will try to reverse Ricci quickly by offering legislation to ensure that employers must use only employment tests that achieve equal results among different racial and ethnic groups.

It’s important to remember that the Ricci case grew out of an interpretation of 1991 amendments to the Civil Rights Act that tried to undo a previous court decision in Atonio v. Wards Cove. In that case, the court said that the burden of proof remained with the plaintiff in an employment discrimination case alleging disparate impact. Congress was so incensed with the decision that it passed the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which, among other provisions, shifted the burden of proof to the employer to justify a test that has a disparate impact. During the debate over the legislation, Republicans were able to include language prohibiting race-norming of tests (a practice used at the time, including by the federal government, which assigned percentile rankings within racial groups, so that the same raw score by a white, black, and Hispanic applicant would have different rankings depending on how each racial group fared overall on the test). But the impact of the 1991 Act was to make claims of discrimination easier for plaintiffs.

Justice Ginsburg hints that opponents to the Ricci case will take similar action (as they did recently in the Lilly Leadbetter equal pay case and in 1984 in the Grove City case), passing legislation that reverses the Court. If so, the Court may have to decide the issue on Constitutional grounds, but that will take a while, and who knows what impact Obama will have on the Court’s composition.

President Obama may be wearing out his welcome in prime time television, or so hinted the Washington Post’s Lisa de Moraes yesterday.  Obama’s decision to hold a news conference marking his 100^th day in office Wednesday will cost networks around $10 million in lost ad revenue-right in the middle of the May sweeps.  Noted de Moraes:

In fact, this makes the fourth time in three months Obama has preempted prime time to take his message directly to the people. Obama took over the 8 o’clock hour for a news conference Monday, Feb. 9; he gave his Not Quite State of the Union Address at 9 on Feb. 24. And he staged another news conference in the 8 o’clock hour on March 24.

So, here’s a thought.  Why not just let Obama and family have its own reality TV show.  That way we could follow Bo’s housebreaking, Michelle’s gardening, and the girls’ lemonade stand in real time, rather than have to wait until the morning papers filled us in on the latest doings of the First Family. And the president’s adoring fans could watch him minute by minute as he flip-flopped on whether to prosecute former Bush administration officials who sanctioned rough treatment of terrorists. Maybe Frank Luntz could hook up viewers to weigh in with those gadgets that chart audience approval or disapproval as the president wrestles with the economy or what to do about Iranian nukes.

Think of what Obamadrama would mean: millions in ad revenues for the networks, unparalleled transparency in government, and maybe even a respite for those who are getting tired of seeing President Obama constantly on camera.  After all, if he had his own show, the president might quit running around the country giving meaningless speeches and holding press conferences every few days. And the reporters who accompany him now could stay home and do some real reporting for a change.

Denying illegal migrants drivers licenses may make us feel better, but it’s not at all clear that it makes us safer. The problem, of course, is that there is no legal way for low-skilled immigrants to come to the United States, and like it or not, we still need such workers. Does it really make sense to insist that Americans who, on average, have 13-plus years of education work in poultry plants or slaughterhouses or pick lettuce and peaches?

The let’s-just-enforce-the-law approach ignores the fact that our legal immigration laws are ill-suited to our economy. We need workers at both ends of the skills spectrum — more engineers, mathematicians, computer software designers, etc., as well as more agricultural workers and semi-skilled laborers. And the hysteria over illegal immigration and amnesty has made it nearly impossible to make necessary changes to our immigration laws that would make them more responsive to market forces.

The groups screaming the loudest about illegal immigration, FAIR, Numbers USA, et al, also happen to be the ones most opposed to legal immigration. As Jason Riley points out today in the Wall Street Journal, the way to end illegal immigration is to admit more people legally, either as temporary workers or permanent residents.

The Obama administration now wants unfettered power to seize assets, abrogate contracts, and take over management of private corporations if it believes their failure would cause systemic damage to the economy.  This is how Robert Gibbs justified it this morning:

“We need resolution authority to go in and be able to change contracts, be able to change the business model, unwind what doesn’t work,” Gibbs said on CNN in one of several morning television interviews aimed at promoting the administration proposal. ” . . . This is the exact type of authority that will allow us to deal with the problems in AIG . . . that will address the systemic risk without having to put [a failing firm] in bankruptcy.”

On its face, this is an assault on free enterprise.  We’re no longer talking about companies coming hat-in-hand to the government begging for a bailout and agreeing to let the government tell them what to do. The Obama administration is now seeking the go-ahead to make these decisions on its own.  This is truly scary — worse than anything we’ve seen out of this crew so far.

These are the same people who believe that no threat to national security justifies warrant-less searches or electronic eavesdropping, not even on non-citizens who are outside the U.S.  But they are quite willing to bypass the courts in order to seize companies and rewrite contracts.  We already have an effective system through our bankruptcy laws to re-negotiate contracts (a system many Democrats seem to believe is too onerous to subject union autoworkers to). Beware the future if we give up on the notion that contracts are sacrosanct, subject to change only by the agreement of the parties, or through a carefully conducted bankruptcy procedure in which all parties who have a stake in the outcome have the chance to be heard. This is the path to economic ruin and tyranny.

I am really astounded by the backlash on the AIG retention bonuses. It may come from having actual experience in corporate America (I chair the comp committee of a NYSE company and have sat on boards of directors of public companies for more than a dozen years).  Most of the people weighing in on this issue seem not to have a clue about the ubiquity and reasonableness of such plans.

These are not bonuses based on performance — which is what we usually think of when we hear the word bonus: a reward for good performance.  These are financial incentives being given to people to stick around as a company is unraveling and the employees have safer and possibly more lucrative opportunities elsewhere. You often see such bonuses put in place when companies are about to go into Chapter 11 and bankruptcy judges usually approve them, with creditors’ assent, because without them you would lose key employees critical to reorganizing the company.

I don’t claim to be an expert on AIG’s problems.  But it seems to me entirely reasonable that the company needed experienced people in their Financial Products division to try to unravel the credit default swap mess.  The geniuses that got the company into trouble in the first place when these instruments were set up (and their risk not properly understood) have long gone.  Those employees left in the division, however, are still necessary to ensure that the company not implode but wind down in an orderly fashion.  And the U.S. taxpayer now has a direct stake in seeing this happen.

Congress has now decided to scapegoat these employees and is doing so in ways that will cause enormous harm.  There is plenty of blame to go around in the current financial mess, but Congress shares some significant burden in this regard.  The idea that Barney Frank is trying to tell anyone how to run a business is ludicrous.  Most politicians couldn’t assess a P&L statement if their life depended on it. Many of them have been on public payrolls or in the non-profit world all their lives, starting with the president.  This whole thing is not only unseemly, it’s dangerous.

Greed is certainly a vice; but so is envy. And the latter is not only one of the Seven Deadly Sins, it happens to be forbidden by the Ten Commandments.  We’re not going to be better off if we get rid of excessive greed but replace it with something just as unsavory.

Can we please have a moratorium on the gallery of heroes gig in presidential speeches. Yes, I know, Ronald Reagan started it with Lenny Skutnik, but this is getting old and stale.

There was not a single new idea in this speech. This was warmed over campaign rhetoric.  And he didn’t even deliver it well. He stumbled more times than I have ever heard him before.  It was all platitudes about American can-do, promises that our government would take care of our all problems, and that we wouldn’t have to pay for it, we could simply tax the rich for all America’s needs.  This was a disappointing performance. 

Well he could have begun by insisting his fellow Dems cut the pork from the so-called stimulus bill. And he’s going to cut subsidies to agribusiness–that is unless its for renewable bio fuels.  Oh and let’s beat up on outsourcing, that’ll sure cut the deficit. But here’s the kicker: we’re going to increase taxes on the rich. Yeah, that’s the ticket. We can tax the rich right out of this deficit.  Oh, and create 4 million new jobs while we’re at it.

New incentives for teacher performance? Gee that didn’t get many applause from the left side of the aisle.  Nor did they much like the stuff about charter schools. As for improving teacher performance, it was called No Child Left Behind, you know, that Bush program the unions have tried repeatedly to kill.

Hmmm. A health care related bankruptcy every 30 seconds.  I find that hard to believe.

Invest in government, that’s always Obama’s answer.  A vision for America, a blueprint–that’s what he calls his forthcoming budget.  He claims there will be sacrifices to be made by everyone–but I’ll bet the cuts come almost exclusively from Defense and national security.  He won’t touch entitlements. And he’ll up the money for energy, health care and education.  Read that as government giveaways to “alternative fuels”–but not nuclear or coal; a government mandate for struggling employers for health programs they can’t afford; and education pork to feed teacher unions, not educate kids.

So exactly how many trillions more is it going to take, Mr. President?  Boy, this is scary stuff. Any bets on how far the Dow is going to dive tomorrow . . .

He’s right it is the lifeblood of our economy, but he has yet to show that he has a clue about how to restart it. The only new idea has been to nationalize the banks, even if they won’t call it by its real name.  A simple change in mark-to-market accounting rules would do more than anything the Obama administration has so far announced to restore the balance sheets of banks burdened with mortgage debt.

He understands the skepticism–that’s why he’s assigned Joe Biden to lead a tough oversight assessment because nobody messes with Joe. Puhleez.

The first standing ovation and nary a Republican to be seen.

Well, President Obama didn’t take long to try to set a more upbeat tone in this first joint address.  We will emerge stronger he promises, now let’s see if he can tell us how.

By all means we need a little moral courage when it comes to discussing race — and Eric Holder was in a perfect position to begin that discussion.  But instead, he simply trotted out the well-worn shibboleths about intolerance and racial division.  He might have taken another course.

The elephant in the room in discussions of race isn’t white prejudice; it’s the breakdown of the black family and all the attendant social pathologies that emanate from it.  When 7-out-of-10 black babies are born to single women and more than half of black children spend most of their childhood without a father at home, there are consequences: lower academic performance, more juvenile delinquency and adult crime, more dependence on government assistance, and a greater likelihood to repeat the cycle again by having more children born out of wedlock to the next generation. Yet virtually no one in the black community in any position of authority and responsibility is willing to talk about this issue.

President Obama, whose own African father abandoned him, has talked about it fleetingly, choosing instead to focus mostly on the virtues of the single mom and grandparents who raised him.  In his book, The Audacity of Hope, he has a few lines about “the casualness toward sex and child rearing that renders black children more vulnerable — and for which there is simply no excuse.” But he has never made ending black illegitimacy or restoring the importance of marriage in the black community part of his policy agenda. So it’s no surprise his appointees avoid the subject as well.

It’s too bad.  Instead of lecturing us on cowardice, Eric Holder could have talked about the relationship between family breakdown and crime.  He could have talked about why it is that young black men aged 14-24 represent only 1 percent of the U.S. population but committed almost 28 percent of the nation’s homicides in 2005, according to his own department’s statistics.  He could have talked about what it means to have fatherless teenage boys grow up in neighborhoods where your chances of being killed are greater than they were on the streets of Baghdad at the height of the insurgency.  He could have talked about why it is that schools systems presided over by black superintendents in cities governed by black elected officials produce black high-school graduates who read at the eighth-grade level.  He could have talked about why it is that illegal Mexican immigrants with a sixth grade education are more likely to be employed in a steady job than young black men with a high-school education.

Now that would have taken some courage.

President Obama wasted no time paying back his labor union supporters. He signed three executive orders today that he claims will level the playing field for organized labor. One of Obama’s executive orders will ensure that federal contractors be prohibited from doing anything to discourage unionization among their workers. Another is ostensibly aimed at informing workers of their rights to join a union. Both of these orders will encourage unionization in the private sector, which could be costly in this flailing economy.  But their real intent is to reward unions for their help in getting him and his fellow Democrats in Congress elected.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, unions donated $68 million directly in the 2008 election cycle, 91 percent of which went to Democrats.  But they also provided campaign volunteers (often paid union staff), printed campaign literature, and mobilized voters to get to the polls.  It’s difficult to know exactly how much unions spent on these activities, but some estimates put the number at 10 times or more than what they give directly.

For all the professed interest in protecting workers’ right to choose, the Obama administration is not likely to care much about protecting the rights of workers who don’t want to be forced into a union.  It is simply not in the Democrats’ self-interest to enforce the 1988 Beck decision, which gave workers covered by union contracts the right not to have to pay for the political activities of the union.

Timothy Geithner has just taken the oath and is testifying before the Senate Finance Committee. But most Americans won’t see it-not even those glued to cable news.  Both CNN and Fox have chosen instead to broadcast the National Prayer Service in Washington.  Apparently Americans haven’t gotten enough pomp and ceremony over the last four days and need complete coverage of this last minute-by-minute celebration to feel complete.In his opening statement, Geithner addressed what he called “careless mistakes” in failing to pay the taxes he owed and took “full responsibility. It’s a little better than “I dunno,” but not much. But the lack of media attention suggests he’ll get away with it.

Everything depends on the public’s reaction come Wednesday, Jen.  The new administration is taking a risk here, similar to the one the Clinton administration took in 1992 with Zoe Baird.  Even after learning of Baird’s nanny problem, the Clinton team decided to move ahead with hearings and it wasn’t until those hearings generated public disapproval that the nomination went down.

The fact that the Obama team hasn’t pulled the plug yet doesn’t mean that they won’t if the public outcry is loud and sustained. So far, we haven’t seen much outrage from ordinary Americans, but then the media haven’t exactly given the story the kind of coverage that might generate indignation either. And the Republicans aren’t eager to look like spoilers.

When the satellite trucks camp outside Geithner’s doorstep, we’ll know he’s in trouble.  Until then, “I dunno” might be his best bet.

What a difference eight years make.  Some may recall that my nomination as Secretary of Labor in 2001 was derailed when the press learned that I had taken an illegal alien into my home a decade earlier.  I was accused of everything from hiring an illegal “nanny” (she wasn’t an employee she actually worked for someone else and my kids were in high school at the time) to practicing slavery or indentured servitude.

Reporters camped out on my front lawn, and the issue was the top item on both network and cable news for days. I decided I was becoming a distraction, so I withdrew, holding a press conference with a half dozen other individuals — most of them immigrants to whom I had given financial assistance or taken into my home over the years. (The most accurate news story on the controversy didn’t appear until weeks after I withdrew.)

Geithner’s treatment suggests that Republicans want no part of the search-and-destroy tactics that Democrats practiced eight years ago.  That is a good thing, by and large.  But it remains to be seen, even with the press playing down Geithner’s tax problems and many Republicans ready to forgive him, whether the American public will look as  lightly upon someone who failed to pay more than $43,000 in taxes owed, a sum equal to more than the average American’s yearly wage.

The incoming Obama administration will have to deal with the issue of racial preferences sooner rather than later thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision today to take up an appeal in an affirmative action case, Ricci v. DeStefano.  New Haven firefighter Frank Ricci and 18 others sued after the fire department failed to promote them when they scored well on the department’s promotion exam.  Since too few black firefighters scored high enough to justify promotions, the city threw out the exam altogether.

Ricci and his co-plaintiffs-including one Hispanic-argue that their promotions were denied solely because of their race, and it’s hard to see it any other way. Of course the city says that they abandoned the test-which had been carefully constructed to eliminate any racial bias-because they were afraid that if they failed to promote enough black firefighters to satisfy affirmative action goals, they’d be sued for discrimination.   A lower court threw out the case, and a closely divided Second Circuit voted against hearing the appeal.

Obama tried hard to dance around the issue of affirmative action during the campaign, but no doubt his Justice Department will weigh in on this case.  It will be interesting to see whether they have any new arguments to justify ignoring racial discrimination when it’s practiced against whites (and in this case, at least, Hispanics).

To the end, John McCain was the patriot. I have never heard a concession speech as eloquent or gracious as the one he gave.  He is clearly a man at peace with himself.    There is almost nothing Barack Obama could say in victory that will match McCain’s selfless grace in the face of defeat.