Archive for February, 2011

Bob Maistros

Obamacare is stuffed full of costly, ugly mandates – not just the individual mandate to buy insurance, but as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels pointed out in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, lots of expensive demands on states, not to mention insurance companies, employers and providers.

So the key question:  what to replace it with?

Take your medicine, says Washingon.

The GOP’s answer? Replace some, not all, of the bill’s mandates with their own mandates.

The Republicans would keep some of Obamacare’s really dumb burdens on insurance companies, styled as consumer protections – including a ban on exclusions for pre-existing conditions and the requirement to allow children up to 25 years of age to remain on their parents’ policies.

Moreover, the GOP plan would engage in its own interventions, including medical malpractice reforms, prohibitions on canceling policies, paying states that reduce premiums and the number of uninsured, and ordering the sale of health insurance policies across state lines.

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Dan Calabrese

I suppose you have to grudgingly admire this about our president: He will not hesitate to lecture people on a subject, even when they are deeply knowledgeable about said subject, whereas he knows nothing whatsoever about it.

So it’s no surprise that, this morning, he implored America’s leading CEOs to dip into their cash reserves and start spending it. Because, hey, who knows more about spending just for the sake of spending than Barack Obama?

Mr. Investment.

The Associated Press reports:

“I want to be clear: even as we make America the best place on earth to do business, businesses also have a responsibility to America,” Obama said. “As we work with you to make America a better place to do business, ask yourselves what you can do for America. Ask yourselves what you can do to hire American workers, to support the American economy, and to invest in this nation.”

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Bob Maistros

The great political philosopher Hannah Arendt – having observed the Adolf Eichmann trial and been appalled by Nazi horrors perpetrated by small men acting “normally” – coined the phrase “the banality of evil.”

In undercover videos taken by activist group Live Action at Planned Parenthood clinics in New Jersey and Virginia, we’re seeing banality done one better.  The videos demonstrate evil’s downright giddy side.

Let's get this party started.

A lot of attention has been paid to especially sinister aspects of the exposé such as the principals’ discussions of services for underage prostitutes and illegal aliens.

OK, sure.  All that spices up the story somewhat.

But the facet that stood out to me was just how routine — and even gleeful — the provision of abortion services appeared for the Planned Parenthood employees.

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Herman Cain

A week ago I attended and spoke at a private conference in California, which was hosted by two very successful and prominent businessmen. These businessmen and their wives have hosted this same conference in Palm Springs for the last eight years, where many of the invited attendees are also successful people.

Attendees heard presentations and participated in discussions on issues of national importance. The conference was held at a very nice private resort, but this year for the first time the conference was protested by 1,000-plus union members representing various labor organizations.

Lunacy.

They gathered across the street from the main entrance of the resort, hoping to get some media attention such that the conference would be disrupted. They did get some media attention, but the conference was not interrupted. Maximum on-site security plus local police assistance prevented that from happening.

Many of them wore their union-identifying T-shirts, such as Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and carried signs objecting to a private gathering by private citizens on private property.

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Dan Calabrese

Today’s Washington Post contains another fabulous smackdown of Ezra Klein, the 27-year-old moron who somehow scored himself a WaPo column.

Charles Lane is collegial to a point – they are colleagues after all – but he holds nothing back substantively in absolutely destroying Klein’s latest idiocy concerning the constitutional questions about ObamaCare.

Lane writes:

Apparently the Washington Post will make any complete moron a columnist.

My colleague Ezra Klein, for example, argues that “whatever the legal argument about the individual mandate is about, it’s not, as some of its detractors would have it, a question of liberty.” The individual mandate involves less intrusion in private markets and more personal choice than alternatives such as a single-payer system, Ezra notes — borrowing the point from no less a conservative eminence than Charles Fried of Harvard Law School. Indeed, quite a few liberty-loving Republicans have supported various individual mandates in the past. This proves, according to Ezra, that conservative and Republican opposition to the current iteration of the individual mandate is just legal pettifoggery and political opportunism.

Uh, no.

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication.

Greyscale version for newspaper publication.

To the tune of “Let it Be” with apologies to Lennon and McCartney:

Bob Maistros

When I find the world in times of trouble,
Brother Jimmy comes to me
Speaking words of weakness,
Let it be.
In Egypt’s hour of darkness
His example stands right out for me
Spurning our uniqueness
Let it be.

What? Me intervene?

Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be.
Though they Wikileak us, let it be.

And when freedom-desiring people
In Iran or China grieve,
And there’s an uprising,
Let it be.
For though they are inspiring
They will never hear a word from me,
Answer’s unsurprising.
Let it be.

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David Karki

The Senate voted down an amendment today that would have repealed ObamaCare. It failed on a 51-47 straight party line vote, after the House passed it by a larger margin than originally passed ObamaCare.  This came on the heels of a federal judge ruling the entire thing unconstitutional on the grounds that the Commerce Clause does not give government the power to force individuals to buy anything.

Let's get ready to rum-buuuuuuule!

This is an enormous ruling, which not only augurs the end of ObamaCare before it could even be implemented, but of a great many more liberal shibboleths. It once and for all sets in stone the illegitimacy of the long-standing Democrat habit of using one deliberately misapplied clause of the Constitution to obliterate all of the rest of the limits on government in the entire document:  commerce clause, due process clause, necessary and proper clause, general welfare clause, pick your favorite.

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Dan Calabrese

Since the news on Monday that U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson has struck down ObamaCare as unconstitutional, the law’s defenders have been trying to minimize the importance of the ruling, and one of their favorite arguments has been this one: “The score is 2-2!”

That refers to the fact that there have now been four federal court rulings on ObamaCare. Two judges appointed by Democratic presidents – George Steeh of Michigan and Norman K. Moon of Virginia – have found the law constitutional, while two judges appointed by Republican presidents – Henry Hudson of Virginia and the aforementioned Judge Vinson of Florida – have ruled against it.

Upper hand.

But this isn’t a best-of-seven series for the championship. The “score is 2-2″ argument implies that there is simply a chase going on for court rulings wherever they can be found – the more the merrier – and whichever side prevails in the most rulings gets its way. That’s not how it works. If it were, there would be no reason for the Obama Administration to appeal the Vinson ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals, which it is now doing. Read the rest of this entry »

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