As with most other issues, Sarah Palin’s record on health care reform is, well, thin. But what we do know suggests that she leans in the right direction. She has said that the key to health care reform is to “allow free-market competition and reduce onerous government regulation.” As governor, she called for abolishing Alaska’s anti-competition certificate-of-need (CON) requirement. (CON requires that health care providers seek state approval before building or expanding hospitals, purchasing capital equipment, or offering new or expanded services). She also established a state office to provide health care consumers with information about price and quality. While this should more properly be handled by the private sector, it shows she understands the importance of making the health care system more transparent and putting consumers at the center of any health care reform. Given the dismal record of most politicians from both parties on this issue, Palin’s record should be considered limited but encouraging.

The bureaucrats at the European Commission are still upset that Irish voters had the gall to reject the statist EU Constitution (even though it was repackaged as the Lisbon Treaty in an attempt to deceive voters). A private European Commission memo circulating in Brussels was obtained by the Irish Times, which notes that the bureaucrats are particularly upset with private media outlets, which refused to act as lapdogs for the Commission’s propoganda campaign:

In a private briefing document circulated by the [European] commission in Brussels, it warned that Ireland’s “changing media landscape” between 2002 and 2008 has implications for public opinion about the European Union. …“There is a shift away from the State news radio and TV stations. This means that the quality of debate has suffered. Commercial radio and local radio are increasingly important to reach — and their style is different from the old State broadcasters,” it said. …The development of a conservative religious press since the second Nice Treaty is particularly noted by the commission… Though the circulation of ALIVE!, which targets conservative, older readers, is unknown, the paper claims that 365,000 copies a month are handed out, the commission briefing went on.

Glenn Greenwald has a good roundup of militarized police actions in St Paul.

Radley Balko looks at police actions in Denver. 

For related Cato work on this disturbing trend, go here and here. We’ll be hosting a forum on no-knock police raids here at Cato next week.

Why did McCain pick the governor of Alaska instead of the governor of South Carolina? Sarah Palin may well be generating more instant buzz than Mark Sanford would have. But much of it is negative, as people discuss whether someone who has been governor of a very small state for less than two years is ready to be a heartbeat away from making national security decisions. Even the devout conservative Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review can’t avert his eyes from the problem: “Palin has been governor for about two minutes. Thanks to McCain’s decision, Palin could be commander-in-chief next year. That may strike people as a reckless choice; it strikes me that way. And McCain’s age raised the stakes on this issue.”

Mark Sanford was a congressman for six years, where he served on the International Relations Committee as well as the Joint Economic Committee. Palin has been governor of 670,000 people for about 18 months, while Sanford has served for five and a half years as governor of a state with 4.3 million people. Like Palin, Sanford is a social and economic conservative. He has taken on the Republican establishment in his state government and has a strong record on both school choice and pork-barrel spending. He has four children and a modern political wife who worked on Wall Street for six years and has managed his campaigns.

So what advantage does Palin bring to the McCain campaign that Sanford wouldn’t? Well, she’s a woman. Pure identity politics, the sort of thing Republicans deplore but often practice.

Bill Kristol says that the difference between Palin and Obama is that the Democrats are running an inexperienced guy for president, while the inexperienced Republican would only be vice president. A fair point. But as McCain himself has said, his age guarantees greater scrutiny of whether his vice presidential candidate is, as the saying goes, “ready on day one to lead.” (When I Googled that phrase, Google asked me if I meant “ready one day one to lead.” Maybe she will be, one day.)

McCain likes to talk about his 95-year-old mother. But his father died at 70 and his grandfather at 61, so his age is a real concern.

Mark Sanford would have been an experienced executive who has already dealt with national and international issues and a great next leader of the Republican party. Sarah Palin? We’ll see.

Sarah Palin may be the first woman to serve as vice president, and she would now have to be considered the most likely candidate to be America’s first woman president. But she won’t be the first woman to receive an electoral vote. That title goes to — anyone, anyone? That’s right — everyone knows that the first woman to receive an electoral vote was Geraldine Ferraro, running mate of Walter Mondale in 1984.

But no. Everyone is wrong. The actual first woman to receive an electoral vote was Tonie Nathan, the Libertarian vice presidential nominee in 1976. Nathan was a radio/​television producer in Eugene, Oregon, when she attended the first presidential nominating convention of the Libertarian Party in 1972. She was selected to run for vice president with presidential candidate John Hospers, chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Southern California. Although the ticket received only 3,671 official votes, Virginia elector Roger L. MacBride chose to vote for Hospers and Nathan rather than Nixon and Agnew.

Find out more about Tonie Nathan — and the man she ran with and the man who cast his electoral vote for her — in the comprehensive new Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, which will be unveiled at Cato​.org next week.

I really dislike political speeches, and the “bigger” the speech, the worse. More faux earnestness. More lofty rhetoric about “pulling together to realize the American dream.” More heartstring-pullers about “a man I met in [insert heartland state here] who has played by the rules, but who is on the brink of losing his house because this year’s crop was destroyed by a plague of locusts and his job at the vacuum-tube factory was off-shored to Bangladesh.” You know what I mean.

Despite this, last night I was torn. I really didn’t want to listen to Barack Obama’s speech — Logical Neal had read lots of Obama’s issue positions and didn’t see anything that struck him as the least bit new — but Optimist Neal said surely there must be something to all this talk of “change.” So I tuned in.

Stupid Optimist Neal!

There wasn’t a thing in last night’s spectacle that didn’t come right out of the shopworn (but, of course, not open-shop!) Democratic tool bag and Big Book of Clichéd Political Speeches. Demonizing corporations and “the rich”; assuming that “caring” is synonymous with “more government”; pronouncing that all of this is what it really means to be American — it was all there!

Now, I know that no one reads what I have to say to get my take on pure politics. I’m an education guy! Fortunately, I can make my point by sticking with what I know. Obama’s rhetorical exploitation of education and “the children” was his tired speech in microcosm:

• Demonize opponent because he hasn’t proposed new programs — you know, because Washington spends nothing on student aid — to send kids to college?

Check!

“I don’t believe that Senator McCain doesn’t care what’s going on in the lives of Americans. I just think he doesn’t know…How else could he offer a health care plan that would actually tax people’s benefits, or an education plan that would do nothing to help families pay for college…”

• Talk like kids aren’t getting a decent education because government hasn’t done enough?

Check!

“Ours is a promise that says government cannot solve all our problems, but what it should do is that which we cannot do for ourselves, protect us from harm and provide every child a decent education…”

• Make huge promises to spend more on just about every imaginable education program, as if we haven’t already been spending more on almost every imaginable education program?

Check!

Oh, and promise to pay teachers—your most important foot soldiers and powerful lobby—more?

Check on that, too!

“I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American — if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

I won’t go on. I’m sure you get the point. There’s nothing new — there’s no “change” — with Obama. There’s just the same old promise that whatever your problem, government will solve it, and there’s just another reminder that I should never, ever, listen to Optimist Neal.

The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that delegates listening to Bill Clinton at the Democratic convention “waived American flags.” No doubt many of them did, but on my television a lot of them were waving American flags.