Mike Huckabee

Olympic gold medalist Shaun White acquitted himself pretty well after allowing the American flag to drag behind him on the snow as he walked from the medal ceremony.

Wow, we didn’t want to see that. At the same time, it’s certainly understandable that with the thrill of the win and the need to juggle heavy gloves and more –- he didn’t win the gold for juggling, after all –- he might have accidentally let the flag slip from his grasp and drag on the snow without realizing it. Still, it would have been nice for him to remember at his moment of glory that he had just won for the USA and to take pride in holding that flag as high as he could. Some took to Twitter to ream him out six ways from Sunday for disrespecting the flag, but others sympathized. And his apology did seem genuine.

“I remember being handed the flag,” he said, “but I was trying to put on my gloves and hold the flag and get the board. Honestly, if there was anything, I definitely didn’t mean any disrespect." He added, “The flag that’s flying on my house right now is way up there.”

I’ll bet somebody went over there right away to check.

I’d like to think that this isn’t one more example of Americans taking for granted the freedoms symbolized by the Stars & Stripes. We’ve seen way too much disrespect, and it's getting worse in some corners of our land. But in this case, it doesn’t really seem to be that. I hope Shaun --- and every one of us --- realizes that if he’d been part of the North Korean team and had disrespected his nation’s flag on the world stage like that, he would have been summarily stood up against a wall and shot. His family, too. After brutal torture. Yay, USA!

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Mike Huckabee

Ah, polls. They certainly have their limitations. They can’t reliably forecast very far ahead, and they’ve been known to fail spectacularly in their predictions, especially since Donald Trump entered the political fray. But among the relatively well-respected polls, Rasumssen has some interesting results about President Trump’s popularity related to some of the events in the news.

The Rasmussen Presidential Tracking Poll from Friday shows that likely U.S. voters are split almost 50-50 on Trump’s performance in office. What you won’t hear from mainstream news is that since his State Of The Union Address last week, his job approval numbers have been running ahead of Obama’s for the same period in his presidency.

It’s also interesting that half of Americans now believe senior law enforcement officials probably broke the law in an effort to keep Trump out of the Oval Office. That is stunning. And 34 percent believe that the FBI is more likely to have meddled in our election than the Russians are. Among Republicans, that number is 55 percent.

This is with the mainstream media steadfastly refusing to cover the Hillary/FBI morass for what it is: perhaps the most serious political scandal we’ve ever had in this country. We know that if a Republican administration had been using the same lowdown tactics to sabotage a Democratic candidate for President, there wouldn’t be a typeface big enough for the front page of the New York Times and the Washington Post. Because it stems from the Obama administration and Hillary’s campaign, we get crickets instead. But thanks to Judicial Watch and dedicated Congressional investigators, plus a small minority of stellar reporters and commentators, the facts are making an impact and voters are gradually catching on. Various investigations percolate under the radar for now, but with the Inspector General’s report on the FBI coming out soon, expect those poll numbers to grow.

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Mike Huckabee

There are many on the left who constantly argue that America needs to be more like the Scandinavian socialist paradises of Europe, and one of the things they most admire is government health care that allows assisted suicide and “death with dignity” for the terminally ill. They poo-poo objections that it’s a slippery slope to let the government determine who can live or die because when the budget gets tight (as it inevitably will with government health care), decisions about who lives or dies might start trending more toward who’s costing more money to keep alive than who’s really suffering.

(Of course, liberals often argue that “slippery slope” arguments are never valid, even as they fight tooth-and-nail against even the most reasonable restrictions on late-term abortion for fear they’ll lead to Roe v. Wade being overturned).

But the latest case of assisted suicide to hit the news should give pause to anyone who wants to import the Scandinavian medical morality to the US like an IKEA sofa. Friday in the Netherlands, doctors helped a 29-year-old woman commit suicide who had no physical illness at all. She did suffer from lifelong psychological problems, and she said the demons in her head made every second “torture.” She argued, "I think that after such a rotten life I am entitled to a dignified death…People who have a serious illness get a chance for a worthy ending, so why is it so difficult for people who are psychologically out?"

Not to diminish her suffering, for which we all should feel sympathy, but the compulsion to commit suicide is by definition a psychological disorder. Should the government help everyone who suffers from it kill themselves instead of treating the disorder?

For the government to okay helping her kill herself because of psychological issues should send a chill through any reasonable observer. But if that doesn’t chill you, try this: In the Netherlands, approximately 9 percent of patients who ask to be killed because they have psychological problems already have their request granted. What made this one newsworthy is that the applicant was unusually young. But now that they’ve crossed that barrier, don’t expect it to remain unusual much longer.

American-based ethicists are pointing out the way that assisted suicide laws, enacted with the noblest of intentions, tend to start expanding the definition of what’s allowed (for instance, “progressives” in the Netherlands are also arguing for helping people over 75 kill themselves, even if they’re completely healthy). This is an issue that’s already taking root in the US: in the first year of California’s assisted suicide law, 111 people were helped to die. Want to lay odds that the number will only grow larger and the reasons looser?

At the link are more details and responses from medical ethicists, one of whom described the latest incident in the Netherlands perfectly. He said some may call slippery slope arguments a fallacy, but this case shows that "the slope is covered in a sheet of ice."

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