At The Hill Jonathan Turley makes an observation in rebuttal of the present debate about whether President Trump has the authority to build his wall without Congressional approval by declaring an emergency:

Congress has refused the funds needed for the wall, so Trump is openly claiming the right to unilaterally order construction by declaring a national emergency. On its face, that order would undermine the core role of Congress in our system of checks and balances. I happen to agree that an emergency declaration to build the wall is unwise and unnecessary. However, the declaration is not unconstitutional. Schiff, now chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, insists that Trump “does not have the power to execute” this order because “if Harry Truman could not nationalize the steel industry during wartime, this president does not have the power to declare an emergency and build a multibillion dollar wall on the border.”

The problem is Trump does have that power because Congress gave it to him.

I would be completely delighted if President Trump started building his wall without Congressional authorization, the case were challenged in court, and the Supreme Court issued a broad ruling striking down all similar abrogations of authority to the executive as unconstitutional.

Getting elected to Congress should not be a lifetime sinecure. It should be so difficult and exhausting a job that no one wants to hold it for a lifetime or, indeed, is able to. Congress should not be able to escape its responsibilities by delegating them to a president whom they find congenial only to panic when a president they despise takes office. Sadly, the Court is disinclined to issue such sweeping opinions, a case of the Court’s delegating its own authority to the Congress by showing excessive deference to a Congress unwilling to do its job.

I listened to President Trump’s address on television last night. I thought it was okay—I wasn’t particularly impressed one way or another. My wife, no Trump fan, thought it was presidential in content and delivery and ventured that if Trump had been behaving this way for the last two years rather than tweeting he wouldn’t be getting the sort of news coverage he’s been getting. I disagreed with that. I think he would get the sort of news coverage he has regardless of his demeanor if for no other reason because he’s not Hillary Clinton. As evidence I would submit the coverage of the address today from the major media outlets. They’re not reporting on the address. They’re reporting on their opinions of the underlying policy.

I thought that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer looked old and tired.

Did you listen to the address? What did you think?

Well, this is interesting. According to a preliminary estimate of 2018 carbon emissions from the Rhodium Group, U. S. carbon emissions increased sharply last year despite notable reductions on the use of coal and gasoline:

After three years of decline, US carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose sharply last year. Based on preliminary power generation, natural gas, and oil consumption data, we estimate emissions increased by 3.4% in 2018. This marks the second largest annual gain in more than two decades — surpassed only by 2010 when the economy bounced back from the Great Recession. While a record number of coal-fired power plants were retired last year, natural gas not only beat out renewables to replace most of this lost generation but also fed most of the growth in electricity demand. As a result, power sector emissions overall rose by 1.9%. The transportation sector held its title as the largest source of US emissions for the third year running, as robust growth in demand for diesel and jet fuel offset a modest decline in gasoline consumption. The buildings and industrial sectors also both posted big year-on-year emissions gains. Some of this was due to unusually cold weather at the start of the year. But it also highlights the limited progress made in developing decarbonization strategies for these sectors. The US was already off track in meeting its Paris Agreement targets. The gap is even wider headed into 2019.

Since the most likely approaches to implementing a carbon tax (cf. France’s “Yellow Vest” protests) would in all likelihood exempt diesel, that suggests that reductions in emissions can’t be accomplished just on the basis of a switch to natural gas and implementing a carbon tax could be more painful than some have assumed.

And the foolish reliance on the moral core of politicians doesn’t end with reliance on Democrats. Here’s the conclusion of Steve H. Hanke and Stephen J.K. Walters’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the costs of socialism:

It is foolish to hope that the Democratic Party will join in reversing this trend any time soon. As it has moved left, it has embraced ever more deceptive prices for reforms to government services, labor (Fight for $15!), health care, higher ed, housing and much else.

This is a cynical strategy, and it creates a dangerous political feedback loop. First, progressive thinking leads to bigger, debt-financed government. But debt-financed government, and the lying prices it embodies, also can lead to more progressive thinking. Absent honest signals about government’s full costs, more voters are likely to shrug and assume it’s a good buy.

The late economist William Niskanendocumented the relationship between deficits and spending, showing that attempts to “starve the beast” of big government via tax cuts don’t work: As tax receipts decrease, spending rises. In his words, “a tolerance for deficits leads to increased government spending.” Polls confirm this trend. Since 2011 the proportion of voters who worry “a great deal” about federal spending and deficits has fallen from 64% to 51%, while the national debt has risen 45%.

Before such tolerance for debt and a concomitant fondness for “freebies” afflicts a majority of the electorate, it would be wise for the party of Lincoln to seize the political, fiscal and moral high ground, steer clear of lying prices, and rebrand: Goodbye, Grand Old Party, and hello “Honest Abe Party.” Attempting to out-lie the Democrats is, in the long run, unlikely to be successful politically, and certain to be disastrous economically.

In trying to appeal to a moral core in the Republican Party leadership they are relying on something that does not exist.

The editors of the Washington Post just can’t let go of the idea that the Democratic leadership has some inner moral core:

Rather than talk about the immorality of a wall, Democrats could use their leverage to achieve a truly moral purpose. In return for a few billion dollars for a segment of the president’s wall — which would immediately be challenged in court by property owners along the border — Democrats might permanently shield from deportation well over 1 million “dreamers,” young migrants primarily brought to this country as children by their parents. They might also protect tens of thousands of Haitians, Salvadorans and Hondurans whom the administration is preparing to expel after having lived legally in this country for years under a program known as Temporary Protected Status.

They don’t have such a core. Their interests are solely about power and influence and the wealth that comes with them.

Is there anything that could disabuse them of their absurd view? Or has partisan politics become their religion?

Speaking of the world’s worst regimes, I’m glad to see the editors of the Washington Post taking a stand on the Chinese regime’s treatment of the Uighurs:

Up to 1.1 million people, or 11.5 percent of the Uighur population between the ages of 20 and 79, are believed to be held in the camps. There they are forced to renounce the Muslim religion and Uighur language, and memorize and recite Chinese characters and propaganda songs. The “vocational training” is actually forced labor. Torture and deaths are common. Thousands of children have been separated from their parents and placed in a separate network of orphanages.

A Canadian parliamentary report issued last month echoed others in saying that “what is happening to Turkic Muslims is unprecedented in its scale, technological sophistication and in the level of economic resources attributed by the state to the project.” Yet thanks to China’s growing power, global reaction has been muted. Muslim nations have been shamefully silent, and while some Western democracies have spoken up, the Trump administration has also largely ignored the issue.

The vacuum in Washington should be filled by Congress. Bipartisan legislation that would create a special coordinator to respond to the Xinjiang crisis and prepare the ground for sanctions on Chinese officials involved in the repression failed to pass the last Congress. It should be promptly taken up this year.

even if it’s as weak sister a response as that. I’m a bit curious. If the editors had known about the German concentration camps in the 1930s and 1940s, would they have recommended a “special coordinator”?

I recognize it’s hard for them to get their heads around but the reality is that the Chinese authorities basically don’t give a damn about anyone who isn’t Han Chinese and barely about those who are. If racist, repressive, and murderous isn’t enough to warrant a full-throated condemnation, what is?

In response to their whining about “Muslim nations”, the unity of Islam has been, shall we say, greatly exaggerated. Arab countries don’t much care about anyone who isn’t an Arab and Saudi Arabians barely consider anyone who isn’t a Saudi an Arab. Anything else is just for the cameras.

Hugh Hewitt leaves me puzzled in his latest column in the Washington Post. It contains any number of statements, claims, and conclusions that I do not understand. So, for example, he implies that he approves of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements about the Golan Heights. Under UN Security Council Resolution 497 Israel’s annexation of the Golan is illegal. It is an act of war, aggression.

Or there’s this, something else of which he apparently approves:

On Sunday, the two men appeared together, with Netanyahu bluntly stating that Israel would never leave the Golan Heights, which abuts Syria, and Bolton underscoring the strength of the Trump-Netanyahu bond and emphasizing that Iran poses the most serious threat in the region.

“Despite getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, despite the sanctions,” Bolton said to Netanyahu, “we have little doubt that Iran’s leadership is still strategically committed to achieving deliverable nuclear weapons.”

That isn’t what the U. S. intelligence community has said. My recollection is that their finding is that Iran ended its nuclear weapons development program more than a decade ago. And does Iran actually “pose the more serious threat in the region”? I would say that distinction belongs to Saudi Arabia or, perhaps, Israel.

This is a near-perfect example of the U. S.’s pursuing someone else’s foreign policy objectives rather than our own. IMO the correct posture for the U. S. WRT Iran is what’s been called “strategic patience”. I understand that Iran’s threats against Israel are taken seriously by the Israelis and understandably so. One nuclear weapon is enough to destroy Israel. But is Iran actually the gravest threat?

In contrast Saudi Arabia is murdering journalists or dissidents or both, is one of the most repressive of women in the world if not the most repressive, finances radical imams throughout the world who promote hatred of the West, and supports terrorist groups.

Their latest editorial against President Donald Trump may well be the editors’ of the New York Times harshest yet. In it they accuse him of insanity—the title of the piece is “Borderline Insanity”, cruelty:

Any attempt to sell Mr. Trump’s cruel immigration agenda with a veneer of humanitarian measures should be viewed with skepticism. This administration has long held that the best way to deal with asylum seekers fleeing the horrors of their home countries is to increase their suffering upon reaching the United States to discourage others from even trying.

and spite:

Mr. Trump’s spiteful choice to shut parts of the government is only making the situation messier. Immigration judges are being furloughed, further slowing the processing of asylum requests. Border Patrol agents are working without pay, eroding morale. In perhaps the choicest twist of fate, some $300 million in new contracts for wall construction cannot be awarded until the shutdown ends.

Far be it from me to defend President Trump but I think this latest offering is excessive. For example here:

In a letter Sunday to lawmakers, the White House laid out its latest proposal for addressing the border tumult. The administration called for more immigration and Border Patrol agents, more detention beds and, of course, $5.7 billion to build 234 new miles of border wall. The White House also demanded an additional $800 million for “urgent humanitarian needs,” such as medical support, transportation and temporary facilities for processing and housing detainees.

Translation: Mr. Trump’s mass incarceration of migrant families is overwhelming an already burdened system that, without a giant injection of taxpayer dollars, will continue to collapse, leading to ever more human suffering.

they’re condemning the very policies that they, the editors of the Washington Post, and any number of other members of the punditry have been recommending. I guess it’s petty of me but I would also point out that under our system of government the primary responsibility for planning and preparedness belongs to the Congress not the president. I yield to no one in my despite of Congress’s fecklessness.

I do have a question. Are President Trump’s policies creating the rush of migrants to the border or has that been abetted by extending promises of legal entry to people who do not qualify for it under the law? Where does the cruelty lie?

At long last James Capretta, writing at RealClearPolicy, points out the elephant in the health care room:

Opponents of Medicare for All shouldn’t try to defend the dysfunctional status quo. Instead, they should advance reforms that would make the system work better for patients, and bundle them as the alternative to Medicare for All.

The last two years have demonstrated how difficult this challenge will be for Republicans. The GOP failed in its attempt to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) largely because the Trump administration had no clear vision of where it wanted to take the health system, and House and Senate Republicans had too many conflicting objectives to put together a coherent plan. In the end, the GOP fell short on repeal because they couldn’t agree on replace.

That problem persists. A handful of Senate Republicans have been pushing an alternative vision for the health system built on federalism. In its first iteration, this idea was sponsored by Senators Lindsey Graham, Bill Cassidy, and Bill Johnson, as well as former Senator Dean Heller. The Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson plan proposed to convert the new funding for health coverage provided in the ACA into block grants provided to the states. Those funds, combined with a reformed Medicaid program, could be used by the states to provide insurance coverage in ways that differ from the ACA’s framework.

I disagree with his diagnosis of the problem with our system and I disagree that a “functioning market” for health care can be constructed without addressing the supply side. Our problem, as pointed out by Uwe Reinhardt some time ago is it’s the prices, stupid. Unless and until they can find a way to address that the pressure to do something will be irresistible.