Recently in Imperial Judiciary Category

In his deficit reduction "vision" speech on Wednesday, President Obama tried to distinguish his plan from that of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan by using a rather crude analogy. The president said, "We have to use a scalpel and not a machete to reduce the deficit."

But when it comes to tax hikes -- to extend the analogy -- the Obama administration's 2012 budget is charging at business partnerships of all sizes with what could be described as a Texas-size guillotine.

WASHINGTON -- It is a bloodbath over at National Public Radio. First this pinhead, Ron Schiller, resigns after initially being defended by NPR then by the end of the day Tuesday being given the Shuffalo to Buffalo. Then Vivian Schiller, no relation to Ron Schiller, resigns the next day as chief executive officer and president of NPR. Ron Schiller was caught on tape saying NPR did not need its subsidy from the federal government to survive, but I guess the Board of Directors of NPR is taking no chances. Off with both of the Schillers' heads.

In 2006, Virginia sent an interesting and unlikely Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Jim Webb was a decorated Marine who served as Ronald Reagan's secretary of the navy. He left the administration to oppose defense budget cuts, especially those which threatened the 600-ship Navy Reagan had built. Just six years before winning the Democratic senatorial nomination, Webb had endorsed both George W. Bush and George Allen.

Although Webb opposed the Iraq war, he hated the McGovernites who had taken over his ancestral Democratic Party. "Jane Fonda can kiss my ass," he once told a radio interviewer. "I wouldn't walk across the street to watch her slit her wrist." He wasn't very fond of Bill Clinton either. "Every time I see him salute a Marine," Webb remarked, "it infuriates me." When Clinton left office, Webb gave him this raspberry on the page of the Wall Street Journal op-ed page: "It is a pleasurable experience to watch Bill Clinton finally being judged, even by his own party, for the ethical fraudulence that has characterized his entire political career."

The big news this week is that in the Senate the Democrats have joined with the Republicans to pass tax relief contained in an extension of the hated Bush tax cuts. Certainly by early next week the House of Representatives will have done the same. Thus the burden overhanging the economy of a huge tax increase is eliminated for two years. After that it sounds like our president, if he still is our president, threatens to raise taxes.

Somehow he came around to accepting the argument that one does not raise taxes in a recession. A few months back it appeared that in the unlikely event that the senators and the congresspersons extended the hated Bush tax cuts, our president would veto the bill. Now he has accepted it. Has he learned anything?