Court Decision A Bit Tardy, But Welcome Nevertheless

Excerpts from the article on Loving versus IRS, HERE, authored by law professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy:Obama_Hammer

In 2011, responding to concern about the performance of some paid tax-return preparers, the IRS issued new regulations.  Among other things, the new regulations require that paid tax-return preparers pass an initial certification exam, pay annual fees, and complete at least 15 hours of continuing education courses each year.  The IRS estimates that the new regulations will apply to between 600,000 and 700,000 tax-return preparers.

[snip]

… the Executive Branch never interpreted the statute to authorize regulation of tax-return preparers.  But in 2011, the IRS decided that the statute in fact did authorize regulation of tax-return preparers….  We agree with the District Court that the IRS’s statutory authority under Section 330 cannot be stretched so broadly as to encompass authority to regulate tax-return preparers.

[snip]

It might be that allowing the IRS to regulate tax-return preparers more stringently would be wise as a policy matter.  But that is a decision for Congress and the President to make if they wish by enacting new legislation….  The IRS may not unilaterally expand its authority through such an expansive, atextual, and ahistorical reading of [the relevant federal statute.]

Treasury, IRS, HHS Conspired to Create an Unauthorized, Half-Trillion Dollar Entitlement within ObamaCare

Michael Cannon at Forbes is reporting on a big revelation in the ongoing investigations (and litigation) over ObamaCare:GangstaGuv

In early 2011, Treasury and IRS officials realized they had a problem.  They unanimously believed Congress had intended to authorize certain taxes and subsidies in all states, whether or not a state opted to establish a health insurance “exchange” under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  At the same time, agency officials recognized: (1) the PPACA plainly does not allow those taxes and subsidies in non-establishing states; (2) the law’s legislative history offers no support for their theory that Congress intended to allow them in non-establishing states; and (3) Congress had not given the agencies authority to treat non-establishing states the same as establishing states.

Nevertheless, agency officials agreed, again with apparent unanimity, to impose those taxes and dispense those subsidies in states with federal Exchanges, the undisputed plain meaning of the PPACA notwithstanding.  Treasury, IRS, and HHS officials simply rewrote the law to create a new, unauthorized entitlement program …

The full article, well worth the time to read, is HERE.

Taking Up The POTUS Challenge — The 2017 Project

In a further reponse to President Obama’s SOTU challenge to Republicans to offer up a viable alternative, and coming only two weeks after the introduction of the Burr / Coburn / Hatch ObamaCare Replacement Plan, Bill Kristol and Jeff Anderson have posted in the Weekly Standard on another ObamaCare replacement plan, this one from The 2017 Project, a think tank headed by Anderson.

From the Introduction:

Before Obamacare, Americans had three core concerns with our health-care system, and a victorious alternative needs to offer compelling solutions to all three:  the large number of people without insurance; the no-man’s-land plight of those who are uninsured and have expensive pre-existing conditions; and the high cost of care.  To a large extent, the solution to all three problems involves fixing what the federal government had already broken even before liberal politicians defied public opinion and rammed Obamacare into law, making things far worse.

The two-page Executive Summary for the new plan is HERE, and the text of the full plan is HERE, both in PDF form.

Watch for it: The Debt Ceiling Whack-A-Mole is about to pop up again.

UPDATE

Just after noon today, House speaker John Boehner announced that he will bring a clean debt ceiling bill to the floor later this afternoon or evening.  According to Breitbart’s article, HERE:

President Obama and congressional Democrats had said they were opposed to even discussing spending cuts in the context of the debt ceiling.  But Republicans couldn’t even come together with their own plan.

“It’s a recognition that we don’t have 218 votes.  When you don’t have 218 votes, you have nothing,” Boehner said in a press conference.

House leadership began the effort offering to tack on relatively-modest GOP priorities like the Keystone pipeline on the debt ceiling increase.  That wasn’t enough for the right, who wanted to go big or go home.  “There’s only votes for something bold,” said Rep. Jim Jordan, a former chairman of the House Republican Study Committee, “I was willing to do something bold.”

In a related development, the Washington Times is reporting, HERE, that:

The Senate Conservatives Fund says that it is time for House Speaker John Boehner to go and they will keep track of the GOP lawmakers that support their effort to oust him from his leadership post.

The group, which is targeting several incumbent Republicans in primary races this year, said Mr. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has sold out small government principles on too many occasions and the last straw came this week when House GOP leaders signaled they were going to support a bill to increase the nation’s borrowing limit without attaching any strings to reduce spending.

“There’s only one solution.  John Boehner must be replaced as Speaker of the House,” said Matt Hoskins, group’s executive director.

“Conservatives helped Republicans win a majority in the House of Representatives, which made it possible for John Boehner to become speaker.  Unfortunately, he has chosen to ignore us and help President Obama enact his liberal agenda.”

About three weeks ago, the Obama administration’s Treasury Secretary Jack Lew advised Congressional leaders that the debt limit would need to be increased sooner than was earlier expected, stipulating late February as the latest point to which the legislation could be safely postponed.  Soon thereafter House speaker John Boehner’s spokesman Michael Steel said that a “clean” debt limit increase simply would not pass the House.

From Secretary Lew’s letter, sent to John Boehner and other Congressional leaders:

The length of time that the extraordinary measures can extend the nation’s borrowing authority is significantly shorter than it was in 2011 and 2013.  This is in large part because the government experiences large net cash outflows in the month of February, due to tax refunds.  For example, in 2013, the government experienced net cash outflows of approximately 230 billion in the month of February, as compared to average net outflows of 45 billion in the other months of the year.  Moreover, this year the payment of tax refunds will be particularly concentrated in the weeks after February 7th due to the delayed start of the tax filing season, which was caused by the government shutdown.

In addition, the amount of borrowing capacity that can be provided by the extraordinary measures is significantly more limited than in 2011 and 2013.  In February, we estimate that they could free up only about 200 billion, compared to 330 billion in 2013.  The difference results largely because some of the extraordinary measures are only available at certain times of the year.  For example, Treasury’s statutory authority to suspend the reinvestment of Treasury securities held by certain federal trust funds is of particular value when a large amount of securities mature in June of each year; the value of that suspension authority is much less in February.  The significantly smaller amount of headroom that can be freed up now will quickly be exhausted by the large obligations of the government that occur in the month of February.

I think we can expect more developments on this situation soon.

Marine Corps Times controversy: Are the Marines being further politicized?

The Marine Corps Times publication, like its sisters the Army Times and Air Force Times, are independent newspapers that are owned and published by media conglomerate Gannett.  There are other publications that focus on the Marines, on their employment and careers, on the working conditions of Marine service men and women, and on the issues affecting their families as well, but the sales of the Marine Corps Times outstrips them all.

The publication also dabbles in investigative journalism, and over the course of the last year or so they have run a number of articles about the inquiries underway into the activities of General Jim Amos, the current Marine Corps Commandant.  This seems to have rubbed the General the wrong way, and the Times published THIS ARTICLE yesterday questioning whether General Amos is retaliating.  An excerpt:

Marine Corps leaders have ordered the independent Marine Corps Times newspaper removed from its prominent newsstand location at base exchange stores worldwide and placed instead in areas away from checkout lines, where it is harder to find and fewer copies are available.

The move raises troubling questions about motive and closely follows a directive prohibiting commanders from using budget funds to buy Marine Corps Times and a number of other publications.

[snip]

Spokesmen for the commandant’s office would not answer questions about whether Amos or his staff were aware of or involved in the decision to relocate the newspaper, but a source with knowledge of the new directive said it was approved with the commandant’s knowledge.

“It is no secret [in the Pentagon] that the commandant does not like Marine Corps Times,” the source said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

And then there is a related story, HERE, concerning North Carolina Representative Walter Jones:

Frustration is building at Marine Corps headquarters over a congressman’s aggressive support for a whistle-blower who has accused the commandant’s office of abusing its authority.

Rep. Walter Jones, a North Carolina Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee, has taken an active interest in allegations the commandant, Gen. Jim Amos, took extraordinary measures to ensure Marines were punished for a video showing four scout snipers urinating on dead insurgents in Afghanistan.  Those claims, made last year by Marine attorney Maj. James Weirick, have landed at the Information Security Oversight Office, the federal agency responsible for policy and oversight of the government’s security classification system.

Sooo, It’s All In The Way You Look At It?

The Obama administration has come into a lot of well-deserved derision for trying to spin the recent CBO report that postulates the effect of ObamaCare on the labor force over the next decade.  I actually feel a little sorry for the desperation exhibited by some of them, ‘though.

Take Representative Gwen Moore (D-WI) for example, who said in an interview with MSNBC, “You could say people don’t want a promotion, because if they make more money they’ll have to pay more taxes.”

Which reminded me of a rural farm neighbor of ours who, upon hearing my father declare that he had to leave because dusk was approaching and his hogs needed to be fed, said “I sure am glad I don’t have any hogs to feed.”

Or the Castro government’s assertion on the State-owned Cuban television in 1969 that the nation’s meat ration had been cut because Cuban nutrition scientists had discovered that eating meat caused cancer.

Just when you think that the absurdity had topped Mount Everest, you can count on the Obama administration to reach a new high.

Justice Scalia on Kelo and Korematsu

One of the Volokh Conspiracy pundits, Ilya Somin, writes to highlight some recent remarks by the ever interesting Antonin Scalia.  First, on Kelo versus New London, which ruled that government can condemn private property and give it to other private owners to promote “economic development”, Scalia

… reiterated his 2011 prediction that the decision will eventually be overruled, stating that it “will not survive.”  Kelo was a closely divided 5-4 decision (Scalia voted with the dissenters) that generated an unprecedented political backlash across the political spectrum, and has also been repudiated by every state supreme court which has considered the question of whether to adopt it as a guide to the interpretation of their state constitutions’ public use clauses.  In 2011, Justice John Paul Stevens, the author of the Kelo majority opinion, conceded that he made a significant, “embarrassing to admit” error in his analysis of precedent (though he continues to defend the result on other grounds).

Scalia did not predict that Korematsu (the 1944 SCOTUS case that validated 6-3 the WW2 Japanese internments) would be overturned, but he did say that the ruling was wrong, which puts him at odds with a “small but noteworthy group of conservatives who have defended the decision in recent years, such as Judge Richard Posner and columnist Michelle Malkin.”

“But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again,” he said.

He used a Latin expression to explain why.  “Inter arma enim silent leges … In times of war, the laws fall silent.”

“That’s what was going on – the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot,” Scalia said.  “That’s what happens.  It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again – in time of war.  It’s no justification but it is the reality.”

ObamaCare’s Employer Mandate Extended Again

This afternoon, the White House announced that it would give employers with between 50 and 99 employees another year to provide health GangstaGuvinsurance to their workers.  This would make them exempt until January 1, 2016.

From the article in the Washington Post, written by reporters Juliet Eilperin and Amy Goldstein:

Firms with at least 100 employees will have to start offering this coverage in 2015.

By offering an unexpected grace period to businesses with between 50 and 99 employees, administration officials are hoping to defuse another potential controversy involving the 2010 health-care law, which has become central to Republicans’ campaign to make political gains in this year’s midterm election.

Even the nation’s largest employers got a significant concession: They can avoid a fine [ $2,000 per worker ] by offering coverage to 70 percent of their full-time employees in 2015 and 95 percent starting in 2016.  Under an earlier proposal, employers with at least 50 employees would have been required to offer insurance, beginning 2015, to 95 percent of those who work 30 hours or more a week, along with their dependents.

No reliance on Congress for legislative support, of course, because the President has a pen with which to sign an executive order.  If your blood pressure will take it, the full article is HERE.

President Obama Labors to Perpetuate the Myth of the Gender Wage Gap

A great deal has been written to debunk the myth of the “gender wage gap” in the days since President Obama’s 2014 SOTU speech made reference to it anew, in a pitifully transparent attempt to enlist the women’s vote on behalf of Democratic candidates during the upcoming mid-term election season this fall.  However, this short video from American Enterprise Institute scholar Christina Sommers does a pretty good job of encapsulating the salient points that reveal what an outright lie this Democrat talking point really is:

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For a far greater in-depth read on this topic, HERE is the transcript of the testimony of Hudson Institute Senior Fellow Diana Furchgott-Roth before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee in September of 2010, testimony of which the President must surely be aware.  An excerpt from her opening statement:

… average wage gaps do not represent the compensation of women compared to men in specific jobs, because they average all full-time men and women in the population, rather than comparing men and women in the same jobs with the same experience.

And for another perspective, THIS short article from Camille Paglia, well-known lesbian author and social commentator, on the folly of the current feminist effort to diminish the role of men in American society.

Hillary in 2016: Now comes the Diane Blair eruption

Over the weekend, the Washington Free Beacon began publishing some Hillary_2of the papers of the late Diane Blair.  Mrs. Blair’s husband was Jim Blair, a former Chief Counsel at Tyson Foods, and Diane Blair was a political science professor.  The couple were long-time friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton dating from the days before Bill Clinton became the Arkansas Attorney General, and Mrs. Blair conversed with both Clinton’s on a regular basis until her death in 2000.  She also kept detailed records of the conversations in the form of diaries, correspondence, memos, etc., all of which her husband donated to the Special Collections library at the University of Arkansas after his wife’s death.

As one might expect, the collection includes many potentially embarrassing revelations about the Clintons, and particularly about Hillary.  If she runs in 2016, some portions of the papers from this collection will come to the fore.  This one, for example:

On February 23, 1993, Blair joined the Clintons for a family dinner at the White House.  The subject of health care reform came up.

“At dinner, [Hillary spoke] to [Bill] at length on the complexities of health care—thinks managed competition a crock; single-payer necessary; maybe add to Medicare,” Blair wrote.

The account is at odds with public statements by the former First Lady that she never supported the single-payer option.  In an interview with the New York Times as she ran for president in 2008, Hillary Clinton said she had never seriously considered adopting a single-payer system, in which the government, using funds appropriated from taxpayers, pays for all health care expenses.

“You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system,” said Clinton in the interview.

The Washington Free Beacon article is HERE, and the transcription of the Diane Blair papers is HERE.

Michelle Malkin: School Choice and Common Core are Mortal Enemies

EndCommonCore_LogoA couple of weeks ago, conservative activist and author Michelle Malkin recounted the experiences of her and her husband in pursuing the best possible education for their children, and how Common Core is a force that acts in opposition to their goal.  Some key excerpts:

Every family in America deserves maximized, customized choices in education.  It is the ultimate key to closing that “income inequality” gap the politicos are always gabbling about.  Yet, the White House and Democrats beholden to public school unions and their money are the ones blocking the school choice door.

[snip]

Family participation is not an afterthought. It’s the engine that drives everything.  The dedicated parents, grandparents, foster parents, and legal guardians I’ve met in the charter school movement and homeschooling community see themselves as their children’s primary educational providers.  Not the U.S. Department of Education.  Not the White House.  Not GOP politicians cashing in on top-down “education reform.”

Derek Anderson is the principal of Ridgeview Classical Schools in Fort Collins, Colorado, where Malkin sends her two kids to school.  Malkin continues:

PARCC is the behemoth, federally funded testing consortium (the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers) that raked in $186 million through President Obama’s Race to the Top program to develop nationalized tests “aligned” to the top-down Common Core program.  [Principal Derek] Anderson and informed administrators, educators, and parents like him understand: “PARCC is truly the enforcement mechanism that will coerce schools into adopting the Common Core curriculum.  We cannot do this.  It is entirely against the mission and philosophy of our school.”  It is, in short, sabotage.  Anderson calls it an “almost existential dilemma.  Our mission and philosophy are irreconcilable with Common Core’s.”

Read the whole article, HERE.

The Man Behind The Recent CBO Job Loss Numbers

… is University Of Chicago economics professor Casey Mulligan.  Last week, reporter Joseph Rago of the Wall Street Journal interviewed Professor Mulligan, HERE, on how the Congressional Budget Office came to be enlightened by his research on how government policies drive the incentives and dis-incentives for work, and how that effects the national economy.

It is Time that We Step Up our Opposition to Police Militarization & Lawlessness

As a conservative, I am generally very supportive of law enforcement.  CopsAbusePowerHowever, I have long thought that the trend toward militarization and lawlessness of the police in American is becoming very problematic.  It is another example of how we lose our rights, not by some grand gesture on the part of a President, and not by some radical legislation passed by Congress.  Rather, we lose them by a creeping erosion that brings about deterioration so slowly that we barely even notice, and therefore do not find as alarming as we should.

Police lawlessness and misconduct can take many forms.  One abusive practice that takes place on almost a daily basis in America is police over-reaction to being photographed or videotaped by the citizenry during the performance of their duties.  This has become so troublesome that there is a website, administered by an often-arrested professional photographer, that exists to document and highlight such excesses.  This post if not about this situation in particular, but for those interested in exploring the depth of this issue the photographer is Carlos Miller and the website is known by the acronym PINAC, for Photography Is Not A Crime.

A new example of another type of police lawlessness occurred recently in Ankeny, Iowa, and has been featured in two articles by journalist Radley Balko, a former Cato Institute policy analyst and someone who has researched and written about this topic extensively.  I will try to summarize the salient points of both in the text below the following video.

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First, the police have tried to justify their behavior based on their prior knowledge that an occupant of the house, a man named Justin Ross (who had recently been honorably discharged by the US Army), held a concealed carry permit.  Ross, however, was not a target of the police investigation and was not suspected of any illegal behavior.

Second, in order to conduct this raid the police had to get a warrant.  They had a choice of what type of warrant to ask for, and they requested a “knock and announce” warrant as opposed to a “no-knock” warrant.  It is important to understand that the premise of a “knock and announce” warrant is that the police will knock on the suspect’s door, loudly announce that they are law enforcement officers, and then give the suspects the customary time to answer their door, thus avoiding property damage and other unnecessary disruption.  In the video, it is plainly apparent that the police executed as if they had a “no-knock” warrant when they did not, even to forcing the door open with a battering ram and ripping a video surveillance camera off the porch wall.

Third, consider how the police looked when they came up the driveway to the home.  They were nine officers dressed in “swat team” type uniforms with boots, helmets, bulletproof vests, and hoods, and with guns drawn and held at the ready.  This appearance can have an intimidating effect, and the police can be forgiven for using that to their advantage when confronting hardened criminals with a record of violence.  It has no place, however, when serving warrants on those suspected of non-violent crimes.

Fourth, the two people who were the target of the warrant were suspected of credit card fraud, a non-violent crime.  The presence of a law-abiding armed citizen in the home was therefore no legal basis for requesting a “no-knock” warrant, let along executing the raid as if they had one when they didn’t.  Although the police did take two houseguests into custody, the two were charged with probation violation and drug possession, neither of which is a violent crime.

One of the many disturbing aspects of this event is that the police in Ankeny insist that they did nothing wrong.  That may speak volumns about how far the public has allowing this trend to progress.

Law enforcement needs to be frequently reminded that there are limits, lines that must not be crossed.  And that even their personal safety does not justify disregarding the Bill Of Rights.

For more on this story, Radley Balko’s two articles, both published in the Washington Post, are HERE and HERE.

Bill Hench Says There Are Other Examples of IRS Malfeasance

In Scott Johnson’s PowerLine post of earlier today, William Hench, an attorney in the IRS Office of the General Counsel offers an indictment of Obama_Hammerthe IRS unrelated to their disgraceful persecution of conservative groups.  An excerpt:

… I have personally witnessed improper giveaways of billions of dollars to taxpayers with inside access at the agency, bullying of elderly taxpayers, the cover-up of managerial embezzlement and misappropriation of thousands of dollars in government funds, and a retaliatory audit.  I have also heard credible accounts of, among other things, further improper giveaways, blatant sexual harassment, and anti-Semitism.  All of these matters have been swept under the rug.

Read the entire post, HERE.

Syria’s President Assad Seems To Have Checkmated Obama/Kerry

On September 19th of last year, I entered this post on the Facebook page of the Crystal Coast Tea Party:

Last night, an intrepid spy from the Israeli Mossad agency slipped into the sleeping quarters of Syrian President Bashar Assad to dust his pajama How2Tweakbottoms with itching powder.  While there, the spy noticed this book on Assad’s bedside table.

The book cover [ click the image to enlarge ] was fake, of course, and my Facebook post was a lighthearted way of expressing my disdain for President Obama’s perspicacity in dealing with the tactics that Syrian President Assad would employ in order to weasel out of abiding by the chemical weapons agreement.

Last night, Fox News reported that, although Syria was supposed to have turned over 90% of their chemical weapons stockpile by this time, they have actually turned over only 4%.

And today, in summarizing the current status, Walter Russell Mead has up an article entitled “Chemical Weapons Deal Helped Assad”, which can be accessed HERE.

By not employing more forceful measures when he had the chance, President Obama has let Russian President Putin and Syrian President Assad box him in.  Is anyone out there counting the “numbered days” that Assad had left, according to Obama’s assurances during the October-2012 presidential election debate with Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Florida?

Paul Ryan Talks Out Of Both Sides Of His Mouth – Again

I had high hopes for Paul Ryan, but alas, he seems to be trying to deliberately deceive the GOP’s conservative base on the nature of the House Republican plan for immigration reform legislation.Illegal_Immigrants_2

Mickey Kaus, former at his blog the Kaus Files and now from the Daily Caller blog and elsewhere, has been one of the more persistent reporters on the subject of immigration reform.  Earlier this week he reflected on the recent contradictions between the stories given by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) before different audiences.  The text of the Daily Caller article appears below, with my slight editing for brevity:

Here is Rep. Paul Ryan talking  about the Republican leadership’s immigration plan on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos last Sunday:

“[F]irst we have to secure the border, have interior enforcement, which is a worker verification system, a visa tracking program.  Those things have to be in law, in practice and independently verified before the rest of the law can occur.  …  “So it’s a security force first, non-amnesty approach.  …  “And if we can get security first, no amnesty, before anything happens, we think that’s a good approach.”

When I saw that interview, I initially tweeted that Ryan “still pretends his plan is Enforcement-1st.”  But that wasn’t really accurate.  Ryan isn’t pretending his plan is an Enforcement First plan.  He’s not spinning.  He’s not obfuscating and he’s not shading the truth.  He’s lying.  I apologize for the error.

When Ryan went on ABC, he’d already gone on Chuck Todd’s MSNBC program a few days earlier and said, quite clearly, that the GOP leadership plan he’s talking about would give illegals a “work permit … while the border is getting secured, while interior enforcement [sentence trails off] …”

In other words, the border isn’t secured “before anything happens.”  Something happens!  Illegals get to work and live here legally (on “probationary” status that can later turn into permanent status).  The border security measures do not have to be “in practice” before “the rest of the law can occur” – the part of the “rest of the law” that makes illegals legal occurs immediately, long before security measures are in place (reducing the political pressure, of course, to ever get them in place at all).

Ryan must have known all this when he falsely described the GOP plan to Stephanopoulos half a week later.  In contrast to the  GOP leaders’ written immigration “principles,” Ryan did not artfully leave himself Clintonian wiggle room.  There is no wiggle room (“anything”).  It’s a flat contradiction.  He apparently didn’t care.  The job of conning conservatives into supporting the leadership’s amnesty plan – by making them think it’s “security first” when it’s “legalization first” – takes precedence over conventional Spin Etiquette (‘deceive, distort, dissemble but don’t flat out lie’).  Distorting and dissembling weren’t getting the job done, I guess.

That’s one reason why opponents of legalization suspect Ryan was trying to lull them into complacence when he suggested on ABC that the GOP leadership amnesty drive had stalled (“clearly in doubt”).  If it’s stalled, it’s only a temporary, probationary stall.  Amnesty is a zombie, as Breitbart‘s Jonathan Strong observes.  The only way to keep it at bay – or kill it for the 2014 term – is for opponents to keep the heat on.

Ryan’s diligent work on budget plans in past years is certainly praiseworthy, but his deceitful conduct in pursuit of immigration reform has been a big disappointment.  And we conservatives must keep this in mind when considering his appeal as a Presidential candidate.

Obama May Let Individual Health Insurance Policyholders Keep The Coverage For Another Three Years

From an Associated Press ARTICLE today (02/06/2014):

The Obama administration is considering an extension of the president’s decision to let people keep their individual insurance policies even if they GangstaGuvare not compliant with the health care overhaul, according to two top industry officials.

Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson said Thursday that the administration may let policyholders keep that coverage for an additional three years, stressing that no decision has been made. Policymakers are waiting to see what rate hikes health insurers plan for the insurance exchanges that are key to the overhaul’s coverage expansions.

The Phrase “Going Postal” May Now Have A New Meaning

Kit Daniels at the InfoWars blog is reporting that the Postal Service has now joined a growing list of Federal non-LEO agencies that are making significant purchases of weaponry and ammunition.  At the end of January, the USPS purchasing office posted a notice soliciting registration of contractors interested in bidding on contracts for “assorted small arms ammunition”.   This puts the Postal Service in the same category as the Department Of Education and the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration as agencies purchasing weapons and ammo even though they would not seem to have a LEO (Law Enforcement Officer) force, and therefore no need for small arms.

The full article, HERE, is worth reading.

So Medics Can Stop Carrying Tampons Soon?

From a new article in Popular Science:

When a soldier is shot on the battlefield, the emergency treatment can seem as brutal as the injury itself.  A medic must pack gauze directly into the wound cavity, sometimes as deep as 5 inches into the body, to stop bleeding from an artery.  It’s an agonizing process that doesn’t always work–if bleeding hasn’t stopped after three minutes of applying direct pressure, the medic must pull out all the gauze and start over again.  It’s so painful, “you take the guy’s gun away first,” says former U.S. Army Special Operations medic John Steinbaugh.

Even with this emergency treatment, many soldiers still bleed to death; hemorrhage is a leading cause of death on the battlefield.  “Gauze bandages just don’t work for anything serious,” says Steinbaugh, who tended to injured soldiers during more than a dozen deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.  When Steinbaugh retired in April 2012 after a head injury, he joined an Oregon-based startup called RevMedx, a small group of veterans, scientists, and engineers who were working on a better way to stop bleeding.

Read the rest HERE.

Victoria Jackson: SNL Alum, Grandmother, and the Tea Party Candidate for County Commissioner from Thompson’s Station, Tennessee

Remember the blonde girl on Saturday Night Live who used to recite poetry while doing a handstand?  She now lives with her police-officer husband in Thompson’s Station, TN, and is the Tea Party oriented candidate for a Williamson County Commissioner seat.  Go HERE for more on her candidacy, and HERE for her website.

On the flip side, the WaPo reported this morning that former Georgetown University law student and birth control activist Sandra Fluke is planning to run for retiring California Rep. Henry Waxman’s congressional seat.  For more on that development, the full article is HERE.

UPDATE:  The Daily Caller is reporting that Fluke has changed her mind, and now intends to run for a seat in the California State Senate.

Joe The Plumber Runs Afoul Of An Unhinged Greenie

Remember Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher?  Just for jollies, watch this two minute video of his and his family’s encounter with a woman (Roseanne Barr, maybe?) who becomes greatly incensed with him because he left the engine idling in his pickup while he left his daughter inside to run an errand.  Anyone care to guess how much hot air she contributed toward global warming with her ranting?

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Are Boehner, Cantor, and Ryan Now Playing Possum?

In today’s Washington Examiner, reporter Byron York looks at the question of whether the Republican House leadership has begun a strategy of Illegal_Immigrants_2downplaying the odds of immigration reform passing this year in order to take the focus off the issue and to thereby facilitate a “stealth” plan for actually getting the legislation through.

An excerpt:

Republican Representative Paul Ryan, a leading House advocate of immigration reform, sounded decidedly cautious when asked on ABC Sunday whether Congress can pass a reform bill to send to the president this year.  “I really don’t know the answer to that question,” Ryan said.  “That is clearly in doubt.”

[snip]

But Ryan’s words still set off suspicions among opponents of immigration reform.  They’ve heard such pessimistic talk from reform advocates before and believe it has been an effective rhetorical tool for supporters of Gang of Eight-style reform.

In this way: If the public hears constantly that immigration reform is in trouble on Capitol Hill, that it has little or no chance of passage, then conservative activists, reassured that there’s no threat, aren’t likely to mobilize against it.  What’s the need?  It’s going to fail anyway.  But if the public hears that immigration reform is steaming ahead, that the House leadership is determined to pass a bill, or bills, that will end up in conference with the Senate’s already-passed Gang of Eight comprehensive immigration reform measure — if the GOP base hears that, it will recognize the risk, speak out, and at the very least make things more difficult for immigration reform advocates.

The full article is HERE.

Bill O’Reilly’s Pre-Super Bowl Interview of President Obama

Before the big game, O’Reilly gets ten minutes with the President to play the little game.  Or is it the other way around?

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Common Core Promoter: Your Children Are Belong To Us

EndCommonCore_LogoPenny Starr of CNS-News reports on some of the doings at an event held to promote Common Core earlier this week:

In addressing criticism of the Common Core national education standards, a panelist at the Center for American Progress (CAP), a liberal think tank, said critics were a “tiny minority” who opposed standards altogether, which was unfair because “the children belong to all of us.”

At a CAP event to promote Common Core on Friday, CNSNews.com asked about the critics who say federal monetary incentives attached to Common Core is driving the states to implement the standards.

[snip]

Paul Reville, the former secretary of education for Massachusetts and a Common Core supporter, said,  “To be sure, there’s always a small voice – and I think these voices get amplified in the midst of these arguments – of people who were never in favor of standards in the first place and never wanted to have any kind of testing or accountability and those voices get amplified.”

[snip]

“Why should some towns and cities and states have no standards or low standards and others have extremely high standards when the children belong to all of us and would move [to different states in their educational lives]?”

“And the same logic applies to the nation,” Reville said.  “And it makes sense to educators.  It makes sense to policymakers, and it’s why people have voluntarily entered into this agreement.”

The full article is HERE.

Guess We Must Be Doing Something Right

The Tea Party News Network (TPNN) reported yesterday that:

Far-left congressman from California, Henry Waxman, a 40-year House veteran, announced his retirement Wednesday, blaming the pro-constitution, limited government Tea Party movement.  “It’s been frustrating because of the extremism of Tea Party Republicans,” said Waxman. “Nothing seems to be happening.”

Now, if only this view were to infect the attitude of Waxman’s contemporaries, like Nancy Pelosi.

Today is the First Anniversary of the Death of Chris Kyle

One year ago, retired Navy Seal sniper Chris Kyle died in Texas at the hands of Eddie Routh, a man whom he had befriended and was attempting to help.  Last April, author Michael Mooney wrote THIS excellent article about the exceptional life and tragic death of the man who deployed four times to Iraq, who afterwards wrote the book American Sniper, and who is credited with a kill shot on the battlefield of 2100 yards.  Kyle was a warrior and an outstanding individual, and we should lament his passing.

Torch Energy Announces Termination of the Mill-Pond Wind Turbine Farm Project

MillPondPost_LogoWith my slight editing, the Carteret News-TImes reports, HERE, that Torch Energy:

… will abandon plans to develop a hybrid wind and solar facility near Mill Pond outside Newport.  “In light of the unlikely prospect of acquiring a variance from the county’s current tall structures ordinance, we have decided not to move forward with the project,” Torch Energy’s vice president of development, Rocky Ray, said in a prepared release.

[snip]

“All I can say is that the current ordinance in place had to have factored into their decision,” said (Carteret County Commission) Chairman Jonathan Robinson of the announcement.  “I’m sure that, and the climate, and the controversy that surrounded this proposal led to their decision (to terminate).”  Mr. Robinson said he felt the board acted in due diligence imposing the moratorium and would continue to look at the ordinance, despite the project retraction from Torch.

The variances necessary for the project, cited by Torch in the release, are likely alterations to the ordinance’s 3,300-foot setback requirement, said County Manager Russell Overman.   The proposed project would require smaller setbacks to the perimeter to facilitate placement of all 40 of the structures, according to information gleaned by county officials.  Mr. Overman said the county was given notice of the dropped proposal Friday afternoon.

This most-welcome result is due in substantial measure to the unrelenting efforts of several county residents, most notably John Droz, Jr. of Morehead City, whose expertise as a physicist and environmentalist lent gravitas to his leadership in bringing this to pass.  Kudos, John, and many thanks.

Immigration Reform: A Look Back

All of us will be hearing and reading a lot about immigration reform in the coming weeks, and a few of those missives may even be mine.  In the Illegal_Immigrants_2meantime, those interested in a look back at how our national immigration policy has evolved over the last century or so may wish to check out these two essays that I wrote on the subject about a year ago.

One helluva chopper pilot!

This post title may sound familiar to some.  I have linked to this one-minute video twice previously, once in a post on the Crystal Coast Tea Party’s Facebook page, and again on my vanity website, so I will apologize in advance to those who may have seen it before.  However, I think it displays exceptional helicopter piloting ability, and well worth a look for those who have not seen it.

The video shows a large double-rotor Chinook helicopter being used in the mountains of Afghanistan to extract a team of Special Forces soldiers back in 2008 or so.  The terrain was mountainous, and the extraction site so steep, that the pilot actually backed the hovering helicopter up to a crop cultivation step at the end of a valley, where the crew dropped the rear ramp onto the step long enough to load the team while the pilot maintained the hover.  You gotta see it to believe it.

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