Rich Lowry has the right take on the Obama administration’s decision to have Medicare cover end-of-life counseling despite Congress’ rejection of the idea.

On Fox News’s Special Report tonight, discussing potential new Cabinet members for President Obama, Weekly Standard senior writer Stephen Hayes dismissed former senator Chuck Hagel as “an anti-Republican Republican — somebody who’s officially a Republican but in fact isn’t all that Republican.”

Really?

It’s true that Hagel didn’t always march in lockstep with the Bush-Cheney administration, whose loyal amanuensis Hayes has been. But is this really an “anti-Republican” record?

• Voted for the Iraq war
• Voted for the Patriot Act
• Voted for the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts
• Voted against No Child Left Behind
• Voted against Bush’s Medicare prescription drug bill
• Voted against McCain-Feingold

That’s not a down-the-line Bush-McCain record. But would Hayes say it’s not a Republican voting record? Hagel had a lifetime rating of 84 percent from the American Conservative Union and consistent A and B grades from the National Taxpayers Union. He did emerge in 2006 as a critic of the Iraq war. And his wife endorsed Obama in 2008.

I never really bought the “epistemic closure” charge against movement conservatism. But if a leading conservative TV commentator can call Chuck Hagel an “anti-Republican Republican” when his actual record is more traditionally Republican than the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration, then there’s an odd sort of blacklisting going on.

This post could be entitled, “So many bad decisions, so little time,” but let’s have some fun and turn it into a contest. Which bone-headed decision by a local government best exemplifies mindless bureaucracy, politically correct nonsense, and government waste?

Contestant Number One is an officer of the Baltimore County Natural Resources Police, who fined two men $90 each for the vicious, horrible, nasty crime of … (please don’t faint) … rescuing a deer. Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. Two hardened criminals used an inflatable raft to free a helpless animal, but they flouted the law by not wearing life jackets. Since I already did a blog post about a man being fined for rescuing a wounded deer, I guess the moral of the story is that bureaucrats don’t like Bambi.

Contestant Number Two is the Metro Police in Washington, DC, which has decided to harass random travelers by searching their bags before they board the subway. This is akin to the TSA’s mindless bureaucracy — but even worse. There surely are nut-jobs who would like to blow up Americans, but they could do that on a bus, on a crowded street during rush hour, or any other place where a large number of people are gathered. Heck, they can drive a car into a crowd. Good intelligence by the CIA and FBI is the way to stop these crackpots, not empty security theater that makes life more difficult for law-abiding people.

Contestant Number Three is the St. Paul School District in Minnesota, which has turned all schools into “sweet-free zones.” This ban also applies to salty foods, however that is defined, and deals “a blow to booster clubs and parent organizations, too, which won’t be able to sell hot chocolate, doughnuts, candy bars and cookies at school events.” I actually agree with Michelle Obama that American kids are overweight, but I also know that government intervention isn’t going to solve the problem unless we want a police state that bans video games, TVs, computers, and the other technological developments that are responsible for sedentary kids.

Contestant Number Four is Battlefield High School, in Haymarket, VA, which disciplined 10 unrepentant gang members. What did these thugs do to warrant detention? Brace yourself and make sure no children are looking over your shoulders, because these hoodlums belong to a particularly nasty group called the Christmas Sweater Club and they got in trouble for handing out miniature candy canes. One school administrator (Mrs. Grinch?) explained that “not everyone wants Christmas cheer,” thus turning Jay Leno’s parody into reality.

So who wins the prize? The only thing we can really conclude is that governments do dumb things. That’s true at the national level, the state level, and the local level.

I just wish I could write like Dave Barry. He had a hilarious column many years ago that was based on various examples of government stupidity. This post is more likely to make you cry rather than laugh, which is not good at this time of year.

The editorialists at the The New York Times are out of sorts this morning over a Tea Party backed constitutional amendment that would give state legislatures the power to veto any federal law or regulation if two-thirds of the legislatures approved. Despite the backing of incoming House majority leader Eric Cantor and legislative leaders in 12 states, the proposal has little chance of succeeding, the Times avers, “but it helps explain further the anger-fueled, myth-based politics of the populist new right.” Indeed, it expresses “with bold simplicity the view of the Tea Party and others that the federal government’s influence is far too broad.”

Well? Isn’t that what the election last month was all about? But right there, for the Times, is the problem: “In past economic crises, populist fervor has been for expanding the power of the national government to address America’s pressing needs. Pleas for making good the nation’s commitment to equality and welfare have been as loud as those for liberty.” With the Tea Party, however, the tables have turned. What most troubles the Times, it seems, are Tea Party signs that say “We Want Less!”

And nowhere is that better captured than when the Times speaks of “the mistaken vision of federalism on which [this amendment] rests. Its foundation is that the United States defined in the Constitution are a set of decentralized sovereignties where personal responsibility, private property and a laissez-faire economy should reign. In this vision, the federal government is an intrusive parent.”

If that vision is “mistaken,” so too, apparently, were the Founders, because it was their vision as well. To be sure, the Constitution they crafted held “competing elements, some constraining the national government, others energizing it,” as the Times writes. And true also, the government they shaped was meant “to promote economic development that would lift the fortunes of the American people” — but mainly by securing the framework for liberty, the rule of law, not by pursuing prosperity through government programs. In particular, the Framers believed in personal, not government, responsibility; private, not collective, property; and a free, not a planned, economy. And they left most power with the states, where it would be exercised responsibly, or not — something to keep in mind as we watch our “failed states” asking Washington (read, the other states) to bail them out.

Assorted media clips worth catching up with over the holiday:

• You’ve probably seen the ongoing scandal about how local officials used the southern California city of Bell to enrich themselves at taxpayer expense. A Los Angeles Times investigation finds that the city was milking small tradespeople too: “Legal experts point to a lack of due process and judicial oversight in hundreds of ‘civil compromises,’ in which plumbers, carpet cleaners and bottle-gatherers paid up to $1,000 for alleged code violations.”
• “To get the check, you’ve got to medicate the child”: a horrifying Boston Globe series exposes how the incentives created by the federal SSI dependent disability program result in the overdiagnosis of disability among school-age kids. The result can be lifelong dependency, especially when grown kids realize that entering the labor force would make their families worse off by losing the “disability money.” [first, second, third parts, more]
• A U.S. Congressman ousted by Ohio voters in last month’s election is suing a PAC that campaigned against him, saying its unfair ads deprived him of his “livelihood” [Cincinnati Enquirer, Politico]
• The supposedly poisoned town of Hinkley, Calif., made famous by the Julia Roberts vehicle Erin Brockovich, turns out to have cancer rates a bit below the average, a new epidemiological study finds [more];
• Aside from the morality aspects, there are really good reasons not to steal a meerkat (via).

On his “700 Club” program this week, Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson endorsed the decriminalization of marijuana. He says, “We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes. I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.” Check out the video:

Robertson’s comments come a few days after other conservatives, including Ed Meese and Gov. Rick Perry, have joined to encourage new conservative thinking about who should go to jail. Now far be it from me to recommend any policy on the grounds that it’s endorsed by Pat Robertson. But I do have this question for Republican members of Congress: Do you really want to be to the right of Pat Robertson on the issue of marijuana prohibition?

Related: For an interesting look at how socially and economically conservative different Republican presidential candidates are, check out this graphic by Ben Adler at Newsweek. There’s actually some surprising consistency. Mike Huckabee is the least libertarian candidate on economic issues, and exceeded only by Rick Santorum in his un-libertarianism on social issues. Gary Johnson and Ron Paul are most libertarian on both economic and social issues.

Is there something special about December? Perhaps it’s the spirit of giving that had the Federal Communications Commission voting yesterday to regulate Internet service. At the beginning of the month—December 1st—the Federal Trade Commission issued a report signaling its willingness to regulate online businesses.

No, it’s not the fact that it’s December. It’s the fact that it’s after November.

November—that’s the month when we had the mid-term election. The FCC and FTC appear to have held off coming out with their regulatory proposals ahead of the elections because the Obama administration couldn’t afford any more evidence that it heavily favors government control of the economy and society.

There was already plenty of evidence out there, of course, but the election is past now, and the administration has taken its lumps. It’s an open question whether there will be a second Obama term, so the heads of the FCC and FTC are swinging into action. They’ll get done what they can now, during the period between elections when the public pays less attention.

And that is a challenge to the Tea Party movement, which would be acting predictably if it lost interest in politics and public policy during the long year or more before the next election cycle gets into full swing. Politicians know—and the heads of independent agencies are no less political than anyone else—that the public loses focus after elections. That’s the time for agencies to quietly move the agenda—during the week before Christmas, for example.

So it’s not the spirit of giving—it’s the spirit of hiding—that has these independent agencies moving forward right now. It’s up to the public, if it cares about liberty and constitutionally limited government, to muster energy and outrage at the latest moves to put the society under the yoke of the ruling class. Both the FCC and the FTC lack the power to do what they want to do, but Congress will only rein them in if Congress senses that these are important issues to their active and aware constituents.