Samizdata

…the state is not your friend.

Ira Stoll over on Reason.com has an excellent article drawing the obvious parallel between the Nazi era Reichsfluchsteuer tax imposed on fleeing Jews and the ‘exit taxes’ being imposed on US subjects seeking to leave the USA.

Read the whole thing.

I have a sense that, if what writers such as Roger Kimball of Pajamas Media say is correct, that it will become more politically palatable for parts of the mainstream media to address the sensitive issue as to whether Mr Obama actually is, by the usual tests required of a POTUS, American.

“So now Chris Matthews isn’t the only one experiencing a little thrill when he thinks about Barack (omit middle name) Obama. The recent revelation that from the early 1990s until the day before yesterday—or, to be more accurate, until Obama made his decision to run for president—a biographical pamphlet circulated by his literary agents described him as having been “born in Kenya” has been setting the world of Twitter atwitter. What should we think about that? An agency spokesman who claims to have been responsible for the “born in Kenya” wheeze has publicly said that it was a mistake, a typographical error, a slip of the pen that just went “unchecked” for, um, sixteen-seventeen years. I can understand that. She meant to write “Hawaii” and wrote “Kenya” instead. Could happen to anyone. They look and sound enough alike, don’t they, that no one noticed. You meant to write “there” and you wrote “their” instead. You meant to write “cup” and you wrote “floccinaucinihilipilification” instead. No one—no one at the literary agency, not the author himself—could be expected to notice. You understand that, right?”

The article then goes on to address to the extent to which various records about Obama (medical and college stuff,) have been sealed. And one commenter on the PJM site had this observation:

“The curious thing isn’t so much that these things are all sealed, but that the sealing is so effective. If this had been any Republican, or any ordinary Democrat, these things would all have been on Wikileaks years ago. The CIA can’t keep secrets this well. Not even the Mossad.”

But in the end, how much of this stuff about “Who is Barack Obama?” matters. He’s been in the job for four years. Although his period of office coincided with the very welcome disposal of Bin Laden, I cannot really think if a single serious positive accomplishment by Obama during his time in office, although I suppose his greatest might be his unintended one: the birth of the Tea Party movement, and an associated invigoration of the small government, libertarian strain within the Republican Party (well, even that might be debatable). Whatever doubts I might have about Mitt Romney, I just cannot go along with the idea of “to save the village we must destroy it” point of view, nor do I think we can finesse the situation if Obama wins, as argued by Tim Sandefur recently. (I don’t share Tim’s fear that we will see a dramatic loss of freedoms to the religious right, although I suppose anything is possible).