The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Hold the Pickle, Hold Your Horses
“Burger King Admits It Has Been Selling Beef Burgers and Whoppers Containing Horsemeat”–headline, Daily Mail (London), Jan. 31
That Rules Out the Hamburglar
“In Brief: Burglar Made Burritos, Police Say”–headline, El Paso Times, Feb. 1
Bottom Stories of the Day
- “Snow, Slick Roads Cause Small Number of Accidents”–headline, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, Feb. 1
- “Police Find Nothing at Warner Robins Lowe’s”–headline, WMAZ-TV website (Macon, Ga.), Jan. 31
Trust Buster
A new poll from the Pew Research Center finds that “for the first time in at least the last two decades, a majority of Americans say Washington actually poses a threat to their ‘personal rights and freedoms,’ ” the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake reports:
And it’s not just tea party supporters, Republicans and gun owners.
Nearly two-fifths of Democrats (38 percent) say the government is a threat to them personally, as do 45 percent of non-gun owners.
Overall, the percentage of Americans who view the federal government as a threat has increased from 36 percent in May 1995 to 53 percent today. It rose late in the 1990s and then dropped again after 9/11, down to 30 percent.
Blake argues that this should give pause to gun-control advocates. “While polls show broad support” for certain gun restrictions, this support may not be deep: “The flip side of that is that many Americans are wary of their government going too far in restricting their constitutional rights–be it on guns or anything else.”
It seems to us that this point applies more generally. To the extent that Barack Obama’s Democrats have succeeded in increasing the power of the government without maintaining trust in the government, they have created an opening for the opposition.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”
