The Specter of Tort Reform

No not related to the Obamacare fiasco, rather a little gift Arlen (D) wants to hand out to the bar.

Arlen Specter became a Democrat this year, but there’s one party we’re confident the Pennsylvania Senator will never abandon—the trial bar. He’s recently introduced legislation to repeal two important Supreme Court business rulings in order to create a new lawsuit bonanza.

In Stoneridge v. Scientific Atlanta, five Justices ruled in 2008 that companies can’t be sued merely for doing business with another firm that commits fraud. This followed the 1994 precedent in Central Bank of Denver v. First Interstate Bank of Denver, in which the Justices limited liability claims against alleged “aiders and abettors.” Both decisions undermine “scheme liability” suits, which are the kind of elastic legal claim that gives U.S. civil justice a bad name.

Enter Mr. Specter and Rhode Island’s Jack Reed, who say the decisions deny fraud victims their day in court. Their bill would amend the 1934 Securities Exchange Act specifically to authorize a private right of action for aiding-and-abetting liability. The two Supreme Court rulings interpreted the law narrowly to apply only to primary offenders, who can still be sued by genuine—and even not-so-genuine—victims of fraud.

Nice that he thinks so much of those poor lawyers that he want to help them make even more money against the fair decision by the SCOTUS.

Spending Like Barney Frank on Meth

This is disturbing. I was irritated when they were proposing four new planes which the Military didn't request, now they've jumped the number to eight.

WASHINGTON -- Bipartisan opposition is emerging in the Senate to a plan by House lawmakers to spend $550 million for additional passenger jets for senior government officials.

The resistance to buying eight Gulfstream and Boeing planes comes as members of both chambers of Congress embark on the busiest month of the year for official overseas travel. The plan to upgrade the fleet of government jets, which was included in a broader defense-funding bill, has also sparked criticism from the Pentagon, which has said it doesn't need half of the new jets.

"The whole thing kind of makes me sick to my stomach," said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D., Mo.) in an interview Sunday. "It is evidence that some of the cynicism about Washington is well placed -- that people get out of touch and they spend money like it's Monopoly money."

Several other senators said they share the concerns and will work to oppose the funding for the jets when the legislation is taken up by the Senate in September, including Sens. John McCain (R., Ariz.,) Jack Reed (D., R.I.), Richard Burr (R., N.C.), Christopher Bond (R., Mo.) and John Thune (R., S.D.).

The funding for new planes is "a classic example of Congress being out of touch with the realities of deficit spending," said Mr. Thune.

Nice to see that at least there is issues with this in both camps. This is completely out of control. They want to, allegedly, reduce the deficit, and pay for all these new entitlements, yet they still seem to think that spending more on toys for their own use is a good idea.

This makes the cash for clunkers spending seem responsible.

MaineCare the Smell of Obamacare

Here's something you should be interested in. Just think of this as the end game when it gets to the national level.

A hospital in Maine lost its challenge to a state law requiring all hospitals to provide free, unlimited health care to low-income families after the 1st Circuit sided with a lower court and tossed the complaint.
Franklin Memorial Hospital in Farmington, Maine, is a nonprofit hospital with a "tradition of voluntarily providing free and reduced price medical care to low income families," according to the ruling. It sued state officials, alleging that the free-care laws were tantamount to unconstitutional takings of property.
The hospital further argued that "there is no difference in the government occupying a room or the government ordering that a room be made available to someone it designates."
But the Boston-based federal appeals court sided with a district judge in dismissing the complaint, noting that the hospital "is not required to serve low income patients; it may choose to stop using its property as a hospital, which is what makes it subject to Maine's free care laws."
Maine has required hospitals to provide free, unlimited medical services to low-income patients without reimbursement since 1989. Maine pays for some treatment through its Medicaid program known as "MaineCare," but reimbursements are often well below the hospitals' actual cost.

Fascinating eh?

We Should Follow California Why?

Saw this at Q&O.

SAN FRANCISCO (CN) - Small businesses that received $682 million in IOUs from the state say California expects them to pay taxes on the worthless scraps of paper, but refuses to accept its own IOUs to pay debts or taxes. The vendors' federal class action claims the state is trying to balance its budget on their backs.
Lead plaintiff Nancy Baird filled her contract with California to provide embroidered polo shirts to a youth camp run by the National Guard, but never was paid the $27,000 she was owed. She says California "paid" her with an IOU that two banks refused to accept - yet she had to pay California sales tax on the so-called "sale" of the uniforms.

Now that is audacity at its most brazen. Where is the shame?

Why Not Fix the Parts That Are Broken

Krauthammer puts it in plain wording. Fix it first.

An authoritative Massachusetts Medical Society study found that five out of six doctors admitted they order tests, procedures and referrals -- amounting to about 25 percent of the total -- solely as protection from lawsuits. Defensive medicine, estimates the libertarian/conservative Pacific Research Institute, wastes more than $200 billion a year. Just half that sum could provide a $5,000 health insurance grant -- $20,000 for a family of four -- to the uninsured poor (U.S. citizens ineligible for other government health assistance).

What to do? Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.

The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.

(2) Real health-insurance reform: Tax employer-provided health care benefits and return the money to the employee with a government check to buy his own medical insurance, just as he buys his own car or home insurance.

There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It's economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness.

Read it. It's at least a logical way to start and would be in everyone's best interest. Well except for the lawyers.

The Reasoned Discourse Continues

Hmm. I wonder who called out the SEIU brown shirts? Oh, that would be Obama.

At a townhall last night in St. Louis, Kenneth Gladney, 38, a local conservative activist said he was attacked by Obama supporters, one of whom used a racial slur against him before the attack. From the emergency room at St. John’s Mercy Medical Center, Gladney, who is black, told the St. Louis Dispatch: “It just seems there’s no freedom of speech without being attacked.” In Tampa, Florida, protester Barry Osteen was pushed in the face by Democratic Club Treasurer Karen Miracle, and union members allegedly assaulted another concerned citizen. Both of the events were organized by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Asked about the possibility of people concerned about Obama showing up at their event, in Tampa, SEIU spokeswoman Kim Diehl told the St. Petersburg Times: “We’re prepared. We have strategies to deal with it if it should come up.”

And what did the Obamateur say?

Senior White House adviser David Axelrod and deputy chief of staff Jim Messina told senators to focus on the insured and how they would benefit from “consumer protections" in the overhaul, such as ending the practice of denying insurance based on preexisting conditions and ensuring the continuity of coverage between jobs.

They showed video clips of the confrontational town halls that have dominated the media coverage, and told senators to do more prep work than usual for their public meetings by making sure their own supporters turn out, senators and aides said.

And they screened TV ads and reviewed the various campaigns by critics of the Democratic plan.

“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard,” Messina said, according to an official who attended the meeting.

So much for rule of law. They should be very careful. They are inciting violence and the SEIU has started it. No doubt the nut jobs on the right will start showing up looking for a fight. And they will be prepared for more than this poor guy was.

If Obama really wanted civil discourse he wouldn't have been advising them to punch back twice as hard. This only will lead to escalation. Don't be surprised when it happens. But if you're there don't start anything and bring a video camera.

Note: When I did a google search of this incident I only got 18 hits on the victims name. I wonder where the Ministry of Truth has been.

Jeanne Shaheen - Coward

She makes me nauseous.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) on Thursday issued a harshly worded press release condemning the Tea Party Coalition “and other groups opposed to health care reform” for protesting staff office hours on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Protesters were present at office hours held today in Grafton and yesterday in Hampstead,” the press release states.

“It’s a disgrace for an organization to deliberately try to prevent people from getting help from their elected representatives,” said Shaheen. “The people who come to my office for help are veterans needing assistance with the VA, senior citizens who need help with Social Security, and small business owners who are having trouble in our tough economy. New Hampshire citizens have a right to get the help they need from the federal government. Their rights have been trampled on.”

“These are not town hall meetings but rather office hours that we host in Town Halls across the state in order to make our caseworkers available to New Hampshire citizens who need help,” said Shaheen. “The organizations that staged these protests knew these weren’t town hall meetings because we called them to tell them so. I recognize the right of people on both sides of the aisle to protest, but impeding the ability of New Hampshire citizens to get the help they need is a line that shouldn’t be crossed. They should be ashamed.”

Ah yes thank you Jeanne. Please now provide us with the details of the "organization" that you keep blaming, but you seem unable to name. I really really think your constituents need to know who this evil enemy is.

Oh and don't forget that Jeanne isn't having any face to face town hall meetings that I've been able to find. It appears she's doing them in meetings where you have to phone in. How quaint. Can't even face the constituents that may be displeased. Coward.

Can't take the heat, maybe you should stay the hell out of politics.

White House Snitch Line

I've been mulling this over for a bit. This article gets to the point that I have been pondering.

So what has the White House told supporters to do when you run across those who spread "disinformation" about the new attempt by the Obama administration to install the anti-competitive practices of a "public option" into a federalized universal health care initiative?

Report them.

Whether its communicated through e-mail, web sites, blogs, or even casual conversation the executive branch of the federal government is asking you to make them aware of this "disinformation" because they can't keep track of all of the dissenters themselves.

From Tuesday's White House blog entry:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain e-mails or through casual conversation. Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Pardon me for asking such an obvious question, but what concern is it to the president or his administration if private citizens have disagreements, discussions, and dissections of his proposed take over of the health care industry?

Last I checked I had the constitutional right to do so.

Do you find it disturbing that the White House is collecting information from citizens on those that oppose them? I do. Where does it lead? Terrorist watch list? Do you get a visit from the Secret Service or the FBI? Especially if you are making an impact?

There could likely be many good reasons for the White House to set up an e-mail address "flag@whitehouse.gov." -- Like reporting a suspicious truck parked in a place it's not supposed to be. Or the systematic movement of people that seek to attack the nation. Or even a suspicious piece of baggage that should not be left unaccompanied.

But reporting your neighbors for simply disagreeing on the unknown outcomes of a federally controlled, centralized universal governmental control of health care is not an acceptable use of such an effort.

Perhaps it would be different if we felt the administration was dealing with us honestly. At this point, they've all but admitted that they will have to raise taxes on the middle class. That cheery news, coupled with catching significant personalities on video--i.e. Barney Frank, Jan Schikowski, and President Obama -- all opining about their desire for a new "public option" to lead to a single payer system, gives the nation pause and little confidence to think that what the president says at prime time press conferences is genuine.

So what should our response be?

Greater demands for free speech...

Louder volumes at town hall meetings...

Bigger belligerence the tighter they squeeze...

In short, when free speech is threatened, screeching screams of volition are the only thing preventing the mandated, manhandled, chokehold of silence.

So go ahead... report me... I will shout louder!

Hmm. Probably a good idea. Probably also a situation to start applying the Rules for Radicals. Shouldn't we be making a new rule #4?

RULE 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." If the rule is that every letter gets a reply, send 30,000 letters. You can kill them with this because no one can possibly obey all of their own rules. (This is a serious rule. The besieged entity's very credibility and reputation is at stake, because if activists catch it lying or not living up to its commitments, they can continue to chip away at the damage.)

Think on this, if they have a snitch program, start using it. Find where the populists vary from the elitists and report them. And then report the elitists as well. Report newspapers who report even moderate disagreements with the Administration. Report the CBO.

Now how do I get some group to actually ask its members to do this?

My Guess is Simon Jester

Heh, this is pretty funny.

The Obama-Joker poster shows President Obama with white face paint, dark eye shadow and smudged red lipstick and also has the word "socialism" printed in bold, dark letters under the image of his face.

It's unclear who created the image and who is posting it across the city. No one has taken credit so far.

Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction, politically mean spirited and dangerous.

Hutchinson is challenging the group or individual that put up the poster to have the courage and decency to publicly identify themselves.

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson, "it is mean-spirited and dangerous."

What a shame that it bothers him so much. I guess I can post the image.


This is something that Simon Jester would definitely do.

UPDATE: Been googling this stuff and found that Vanity Fair did this to Bush. Though I have to say that this representation on Obama is a bit more sinister. (Obviously Bush was EVIL and Obama is the ONE.)

And does this fall under Rule #5?

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions. (Pretty crude, rude and mean, huh? They want to create anger and fear.)

I wonder why the tea party organizations don't use more of Alinsky's rules? Turn about is fair play.

Troubling Restriction of Rights

I'm a bit fascinated that this is the Administrations position.

Earlier this year, at Supreme Court oral argument in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the government raised eyebrows by arguing that it believed that it can constitutionally ban the publication of books (if, as is always the case, the publisher is a corporation) that contain even one line arguing for the election or defeat of a candidate for federal office. The government based its belief on the Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which upheld a blanket ban on corporate political spending in order to prevent "distortion" of campaigns. Faced with the full constitutional ramifications of Austin — for the government's position flows naturally from Austin — the Supreme Court asked the parties to reargue the case on September 9, to consider whether Austin should be overruled.

Austin was based on the assumption that the government could limit some speech in order to enhance the voices of others, although the case tried not to frame it that way. Rather, the Austin Court argued it was dealing with a "different type of corruption, the corrosive and distorting effects of immense aggregations of wealth... ." To most people, that sounds like an egalitarian argument, not one about "corruption." Which would be fine — it is perfectly acceptable to favor things on egalitarian grounds — except that the First Amendment to the Constitution appears to forbid the government from making such determinations. As the Supreme Court stated in in the landmark case Buckley v. Valeo, "the concept that government may restrict the speech of some elements of our society in order to enhance the relative voice of others is wholly foreign to the First Amendment, which was designed "to secure 'the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources,'" and "to assure unfettered interchange of ideas for the bringing about of political and social changes desired by the people."

Worrisome in how this could spread. Could this move to stifle blogs since they are published by large corporations? Just because a corporation is the means of the free speech does that mean that you have no right to use that mechanism?

Please read all of the article. It has more perspective.

Health Care "Rights"

This bit is very important:

The interesting thing is that it seems Americans have discovered that talk of health care as a “right” doesn’t mean expanding their own freedom. It means, at best, expanding the options of others at the expense of the middle class and, naturally, “the rich.”

Polling by the centrist think tank Third Way finds that the pivotal question for Americans is, “What’s in it for me?” And it seems President Obama hasn’t answered that to their satisfaction. Sixty percent of Americans think Obama’s health care plan will help someone other than them.

That isn't an opinion so much as a fact. It will be those that pay taxes subsidizing those that don't. And getting less themselves in the long run.

The discussion focusing on the rationing should also make another point that no one wants or seems to be pondering, where will the benefits creep? You'll ration the things that lots of people require like heart surgery and cancer treatments, but what about those things that people don't require? Plastic surgery because your shrink says you need it for your mental health, or a sex change operation. Massachusetts requires that insurance pay for fertility treatments, which you well understand is extremely expensive. Will this make its way on to the required coverage? What about ED drugs? Or the pill for that matter. Or abortions.

Who makes the decision on what is required to cover and what isn't? And, what will those writing the rules now say when an opposition party is in power and changes the rules that they so covet? Should we even mention that the rules can be changed by amendments to laws having nothing to do with healthcare and slip by because no one actually reads these giant tomes of bills?

Do we really want a politician deciding what medical treatments we need?

Over at the Munchkin Wrangler he has a similar discussion on the "right" to health care.

Quick Lesson on why We Shouldn't Follow California

Nice bit from Reason magazine on the Climate Change bill that will slowly strangle California's economy.

The study projects that Californians will offset higher electricity and gasoline bills by driving more fuel efficient cars, by adjusting their thermostats to 68 degrees in winter and 78 degrees in summer, and by using energy efficient appliances at home. The idea is that while electricity will cost more, Californians will do things like switching from incandescent bulbs to energy thrifty compact fluorescent bulbs to reduce their energy usage.

But are these projections accurate? The study's economic peer reviewers don't think so. For example, UCLA economist Matthew Kahn warned that the cap "is presented as a riskless 'free lunch' for Californians." He noted that California's electricity prices are projected to increase by 14 percent, yet manufacturing employment is also supposed to increase by 0.4 percent. "This is a surprising finding," writes Kahn. "The micro-econometrics literature has concluded that increased energy prices retards manufacturing employment growth." He cites studies showing that cities with high electricity prices lose manufacturing jobs. Another peer reviewer, Harvard University economist Robert Stavins, bluntly states that the study's analysis is "systematically biased (and remarkably, internally inconsistent) in ways which lead to potentially severe underestimates of costs."

No one denies that energy prices will go up. Successful implementation of the Global Warming Solutions Act requires that 33 percent of the state's energy come from renewable sources by the 2020 deadline. Recent research finds that when states establish renewable portfolio standards for electricity, they pay on average 2 cents more per kilowatt-hour more than states that do not have such standards. That might not sound like much, but it's an 8 percent increase. California already ranks seventh in the nation based on how much California businesses, on average, spend for electricity. Only businesses in three very hot southern states and three very cold northern states spend more.

California gasoline taxes amount to 63.9 cents per gallon, the highest in the nation. Gasoline costs more in the Golden State than anywhere else in the lower 48 states. It is true that California is the fourth lowest state in per capita energy consumption. While some of the lower energy usage can be attributed to higher residential energy efficiency standards, substantially higher than average residential and commercial electricity rates also depress demand. The new mandates would add to the heavy regulatory burdens under which California businesses already groan. The Small Business Survival Index ranks California 49th among all states for business friendliness, just beating out New Jersey as the least business friendly state in the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council's annual rankings.

Imagine this in states that don't have the wealth basis that California already has. They'd dry up and blow away in a very short period.

Time to stop following California's lead since they have yet again proven they don't know what they are doing.

ObamaCare for the Elderly

An interesting article from the WSJ. I just don't understand why AARP is supporting this.

Since Medicare was established in 1965, access to care has enabled older Americans to avoid becoming disabled and to travel and live independently instead of languishing in nursing homes. But legislation now being rushed through Congress—H.R. 3200 and the Senate Health Committee Bill—will reduce access to care, pressure the elderly to end their lives prematurely, and doom baby boomers to painful later years.

The Congressional majority wants to pay for its $1 trillion to $1.6 trillion health bills with new taxes and a $500 billion cut to Medicare. This cut will come just as baby boomers turn 65 and increase Medicare enrollment by 30%. Less money and more patients will necessitate rationing. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that only 1% of Medicare cuts will come from eliminating fraud, waste and abuse.

The assault against seniors began with the stimulus package in February. Slipped into the bill was substantial funding for comparative effectiveness research, which is generally code for limiting care based on the patient’s age. Economists are familiar with the formula, where the cost of a treatment is divided by the number of years (called QALYs, or quality-adjusted life years) that the patient is likely to benefit. In Britain, the formula leads to denying treatments for older patients who have fewer years to benefit from care than younger patients.

I can understand why my parents are nervous about stuff like this. I also wonder what isn't being told to the public in general. These mammoth bills that no one actually reads hands the interested parties whatever they like and unless someone catches them, they just cruise on. I really hope that no bills get to a vote this week, though a house vote would be very informative.

Also you may wish to checkout the possibility that you won't have any ability to purchase any private health insurance that doesn't have the governments seal of approval. You can follow the links from the discussion at Q&O.

And here's a bit of distraction from Mark Steyn on the ObamaCare distraction.

Furthering the Taste of Post-Racial Shoe Leather

So the President continues his self justifications on his post-racial response to a question. He appears now to be chewing on his ankle.

“I think it was a pretty straightforward commentary that you probably don’t need to handcuff a guy, a middle-aged man who uses a cane, who is in his own home,’’ he said in an interview that aired last night on ABC’s “Nightline.’’

Despite his “extraordinary respect’’ for police work, the president told ABC News, “my suspicion is that words were exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates’’ and anger got the best of them. Obama said he understands that Sergeant James M. Crowley, the white Cambridge police officer who arrested Gates, is an “outstanding’’ officer, but ultimately “it doesn’t make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he’s not causing a serious disturbance.’’

Earlier yesterday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that while the president did not regret the remark, he wanted to clarify that Obama did not insult Crowley. “Let me be clear, he was not calling the officer stupid,’’ Gibbs told reporters as Obama landed in Cleveland for two healthcare events.

Well, apparently Obama still hasn't bothered to get any information, readily available from the MSM, on the topic. A good break down of the reports is in this opinion piece by Ann Woolner.

You also have to love listening to Gibbs. How can anyone with the least amount of intelligence come to the conclusion that Obama didn't call the officer stupid? He didn't say it literally, but the statement was they acted stupidly. No doubt Obama's buddy Skip was the completely rational and reasonable. Of course, the newspaper reports must be wrong on his actions.

Then there is this entertaining demand that Crowley apologize to Gates.

"I think he owes me an apology for what he did," Gates told NewsCenter 5's Liz Brunner in an interview Tuesday night. "He should look into his heart and know that he is not telling the truth and he should beg my forgiveness."

What an asshole.

It would be nice if they would actually release the police recordings of the incident so we can hear for ourselves if Gates is justified or not. My guess is that we'll never hear those tapes. Can't besmudge the ONE's opinion no matter how foolish it may have been.

Our "Post-Racial" President

You really have to love Obama's reaction to this. Best comes with his admission that he didn't know all the facts yet condemns the police as stupid racists.

What's been reported though is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house. There was a report called in to the police station that there might be a burglary taking place. So far, so good, right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into -- well, I guess this is my house now, so... (laughter) ... it probably wouldn't happen. But let's say my old house in Chicago. (laughter) Here, I'd get shot.

I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.

As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in the society.

I'm still trying to figure out how the profiling part is relevant. In fact he had enough information to know that the police were reacting to a call not driving around profiling.

The linked Wizbang article even links to pictures and witness reports that Skip was behaving unreasonably. I agree with Kevin that if I had acted as the good professor had I would have been arrested as well.

This had nothing to do with racism and the fact that the President played it that way really should make people question his claims to being a "post-racial" president.

UPDATE:
Arresting officer teaches racial profiling classes at the police academy.

So the president gives himself the big distraction to his health care plans. Who's stupid here?

Salt Marsh Harvest Pork

I've read about this a bit. I have to laugh at the Dems ingenuity of denying that they did anything for the Harvest Mouse and then fund it none the less. It's a bit of prestidigitation on their part no doubt. Smoke and mirrors are probably in there as well.

Remember the salt marsh harvest mouse? We wrote about the mouse here and elsewhere. When the "stimulus" bill was being debated, Republicans charged that among the absurd pork that the bill would fund was a pet project of Nancy Pelosi's: protecting the habitat of the salt marsh harvest mice in the San Francisco Bay area. At the time, Democrats vigorously denied the charge and pointed out that the mouse was not named in the bill.

True enough: that was one of the major problems with the bill. It allocated enormous amounts of money to be spend on a department by department basis without specifying what the money was to be spent on. The real intent was mostly sub rosa. Thus, Republicans have been reduced to using Google to try to identify local government units and others that have received "stimulus" money.

Now, notwithstanding the Democrats' outraged denials that the mouse was one of the objects of their largesse, it turns out that the Republicans' suspicions were correct after all:

Frankly, I don't mind some funding for pet projects and no doubt it will be stimulative for a short period. But the stimulus money really should have been used for more long term employment. All these pay-and-pave projects are blips on the economy. They do nothing more than FDR did with his CCC, WPA or PWA. Temporary stimulus will not cause recovery.

The unfortunate side effect is that you can't make long term employment from this type of stimulus. So maybe we really should just stop throwing money at things and denying that they aren't stimulative. But then, you have to watch out, because big brother doesn't like you when you question his methods.

A Republican proposal to halt spending on federal stimulus projects has prompted a partisan dustup this week in Arizona, where defeated GOP presidential candidate John McCain has waded into the fight with his old Democratic rival, Barack Obama.

The conflict began after Arizona's junior senator, Republican Jon Kyl, who has called President Obama's economic recovery plan ineffective, wrote on his Senate website last week that the government should "cancel the rest of the stimulus spending." Kyl repeated the suggestion during a talk show appearance Sunday.

The Obama administration responded Monday with letters from four Cabinet secretaries to the state's GOP governor, Jan Brewer, outlining the transportation, housing, education and other projects that would be canceled in Arizona if stimulus spending came to a halt.

"If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, please let us know," wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a fellow Republican and former House member.

If that isn't a threat to a state to force conformance of a political opposition member, I'd really like to know what it is. Four separate letters from four cabinet secretaries is a definitive threat.
[Oh and just because LaHood is a Repug doesn't mean he isn't a shill for the Administration. ]

The flap underscores the dangers for both sides in the debate over the $787 billion stimulus package, which has come under increasing attack from Republicans as the unemployment rate continues to climb. But many Republicans who voted against the package have also sought to take credit for projects in their own states, and the White House has become increasingly aggressive in pressing its case.

Hmm. Why should there be any threat at all? Each state should be entitled to stimulus at least based on what they put into the pot originally. Kyl's proposal struck me more as a call for a stop to what the administration themselves state isn't working. So how is it reasonable to call for shutting down a state because their political representative is calling for a reasonable end to a disfunctional program?

Health Care Public Option

A glimpse at the Mitt Romney abomination in The Peoples Republic of Massachusetts.

The Massachusetts law, which was championed by former GOP Governor Mitt Romney, imposed an individual mandate, requiring nearly all residents to buy health insurance or else pay a penalty. (The exceptions are those who qualify for the state's public program.) This was supposed to cover everybody and save money too. We've written before about how costs have exploded, but it also turns out that consumers have other ideas.

For 15 years Massachusetts has also imposed mandates known as guaranteed issue and community rating -- meaning that insurers must cover anyone who applies, regardless of health or pre-existing conditions, and also charge everyone the same premium (or close to it). Yet these mandates allow people to wait until they're sick, or just before they're about to incur major medical expenses, to buy insurance. This drives up costs for everyone else, which helps explain why small-group coverage in Massachusetts is so much more expensive than in most of the country. Mr. Romney argued -- as Democrats are arguing now -- that the individual mandate would make that problem disappear, since everyone is always supposed to be covered.

Well, the returns are rolling in, and a useful case study comes from the community-based health plan Harvard-Pilgrim. CEO Charlie Baker reports that his company has seen an "astonishing" uptick in people buying coverage for a few months at a time, running up high medical bills, and then dumping the policy after treatment is completed and paid for. Harvard-Pilgrim estimates that between April 2008 and March 2009, about 40% of its new enrollees stayed with it for fewer than five months and on average incurred about $2,400 per person in monthly medical expenses. That's about 600% higher than Harvard-Pilgrim would have otherwise expected.

The individual mandate penalty for not having coverage is only about $900, so people seem to be gaming the Massachusetts system. "This is a problem," Mr. Baker writes on his blog, in the understatement of the year. "It is raising the prices paid by individuals and small businesses who are doing the right thing by purchasing twelve months of health insurance, and it's turning the whole notion of shared responsibility on its ear."

Nice. Makes you wonder what federal laws exist that will pile on the mess that the Dems are presently proposing in the US system. The MA system is frankly insane. I wonder how the insurance companies share those costs out. Sooner or later this will end up with insurance companies refusing to do business in MA. And no doubt businesses will start dumping their employees on the public option because it will be cheaper than paying insurance fees to support people who are allowed to play the system and get a free ride.

Karl Rove had an interesting article a month ago on the arguments against a public option.

The first is it's unnecessary. Advocates say a government-run insurance program is needed to provide competition for private health insurance. But 1,300 companies sell health insurance plans. That's competition enough. The results of robust private competition to provide the Medicare drug benefit underscore this. When it was approved, the Congressional Budget Office estimated it would cost $74 billion a year by 2008. Nearly 100 providers deliver the drug benefit, competing on better benefits, more choices, and lower prices. So the actual cost was $44 billion in 2008 -- nearly 41% less than predicted. No government plan was needed to guarantee competition's benefits.

That's an interesting bit that isn't seen often in the MSM. I would have thought it would have cost more than was estimated, but it is fascinating that it actually cost substantially less.

There are four other reasons that you can read for yourself.

Rule 1: Would You Give this Power to the Opposition Party?

Apparently Alcee Haystings is up to more vague legislation that would hand the present administration sole power to define who is a terroroist. Mark Tapscott from the original article discussed at HotAir.

Rep. Alcee Hastings - the impeached Florida judge Nancy Pelosi tried to install as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee until her own party members rebelled - introduced an amendment to the defense authorization bill that gives Attorney General Eric Holder sole discretion to label groups that oppose government policy on guns, abortion, immigration, states' rights, or a host of other issues. In a June 25 speech on the House floor, Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ, blasted the idea: "This sounds an alarm for many of us because of the recent shocking and offensive report released by the Department of Homeland Security which labeled, arguably, a majority of Americans as 'extremists.'"

This obviously doesn't pass the basic sniff test. Just think in the simplest terms, would you want your opposition party having these powers? What would have been said if Bush and the Repugs had provided this bit of legislation?

And don't forget the most basic of considerations, should anyone be given the sole ability to make these definitions without oversight? Should any bureaucrat be given this level of discretion or is it more intelligent to have those voted in by the people be the ones to make those definitions? At least you can hold the politicians liable for their actions.

There are a couple other interesting, it illegitimate bills discussed in the article. Please read.

Critiques of the Obamateur in Russia

I think from what I've read he's gotten a failing grade. No shock there.

In his Moscow speech, Obama delivered what is by now familiar as his trademark mix of historical omissions and revisions, sweeping statements about the "arc of history" and phrases of hope, change and moral equivalency. He brought up, yet again, America's "imperfections," dismissed as outdated the brand of American moral certitude and leadership that brought victory in World War II and called for collaboration, convergence and partnerships forged on common ground and progress toward a shared future. Call it Brotherhood 2.0.

Were it not for such obstacles as history, vast vested interests and human nature, it's a vision that just might work. But in the real world, as a basis for state policy, this is a time-tested recipe for disaster. There may be no venue better suited to underscore that lesson than Russia, home during most of the last century to a colossal and devastating experiment that began with fraternal ideals of communism and led to the gulag, mass deprivation and aggressive expansion. To this day, the ruinous inheritance of Soviet communism lingers on, from Cuba to China to North Korea, to the Soviet-tutored terrorist incubators of the Middle East, to the despotic currents running deep within Russia itself.

In Obama's version of history, Soviet communism (which he referred to not by name but as "old political and economic restrictions") came to an end through some sort of brotherly mass movement: "The change did not come from any one nation," he told an audience of Russian students. "The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."

Whew, talk about missing the realities of the recent past. It wasn't because the people of Russia wanted it to be peaceful, it's the fact that their socio-political and economic solution failed dramatically, not to mention devastatingly. Far too much of it came from a weapons race that bankrupted the country that demanded that communism worked better than capitalism.

Then there is this article about the retreat of the Obamateur.

Obama had a chance to redeem himself with a speech to the New Economic School, a college funded by Westerners to teach Russians something real about business policy. But the speech positively dripped with equivocation and weakness. Here’s how he chose to warn Russia not to invade Georgia for a second time this summer, as many worry Putin plans to do:

State sovereignty must be a cornerstone of international order. Just as all states should have the right to choose their leaders, states must have the right to borders that are secure, and to their own foreign policies. That is true for Russia, just as it is true for the United States. Any system that cedes those rights will lead to anarchy. That’s why we must apply this principle to all nations — and that includes nations like Georgia and Ukraine. America will never impose a security arrangement on another country. For any country to become a member of an organization like NATO, for example, a majority of its people must choose to; they must undertake reforms; they must be able to contribute to the Alliance’s mission. And let me be clear: NATO should be seeking collaboration with Russia, not confrontation.

An extraordinary amount of doubletalk, surmounted by the ominous use of the term “collaboration.” Not simply cooperation but collaboration, Mr. President? Are we going to collaborate with Russian if it moves soldiers back into Georgia, or into Ukraine, or launches another brutal cyber war against them or against Estonia? If Georgia has the “right to borders that are secure,” then doesn’t that mean Abkhazia and Ossetia must be returned from Russian annexation? Obama’s equivocation makes it very difficult to say.

Yike. I'm fascinated that he honestly wants NATO to collaborate with Russia. Maybe we could collaborate on more is they would start collaborating on some things of importance, say Iran. But since they are selling so much technology into Iran I doubt they have any interest in harming those sales for a country who doesn't appear to have Moscow as a primary target.

Well, I'm just cynical in thinking that you should be wary of the Russian bear. No doubt Obama is much more full of hope and change than I could be.

TSA Loses Mission Creep Lawsuits

Schneier has this on his blog. After reading his entry all I could think of was how TSA is showing the usual mission creep. Then I read the WSJ linked article and got a chuckle in that is what they discuss.

But two court cases in the past month question whether TSA searches—which the agency says have broadened to allow screeners to use more judgment—have been going too far.

A federal judge in June threw out seizure of three fake passports from a traveler, saying that TSA screeners violated his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. Congress authorizes TSA to search travelers for weapons and explosives; beyond that, the agency is overstepping its bounds, U.S. District Court Judge Algenon L. Marbley said.

“The extent of the search went beyond the permissible purpose of detecting weapons and explosives and was instead motivated by a desire to uncover contraband evidencing ordinary criminal wrongdoing,” Judge Marbley wrote.

In the second case, Steven Bierfeldt, treasurer for the Campaign for Liberty, a political organization launched from Ron Paul’s presidential run, was detained at the St. Louis airport because he was carrying $4,700 in a lock box from the sale of tickets, T-shirts, bumper stickers and campaign paraphernalia. TSA screeners quizzed him about the cash, his employment and the purpose of his trip to St. Louis, then summoned local police and threatened him with arrest because he responded to their questions with a question of his own: What were his rights and could TSA legally require him to answer?

Mr. Bierfeldt recorded the encounter on his iPhone and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in June against Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, claiming in part that Mr. Bierfeldt’s experience at the airport was not an anomaly.

“Whether as a matter of formal policy or widespread practice, TSA now operates on the belief that airport security screening provides a convenient opportunity to fish for evidence of criminal conduct far removed from the agency’s mandate of ensuring flight safety,” the ACLU said in its suit.

Nice to hear the ACLU actually doing something worthwhile.

I'd read about Bierfeldt's issue when it happened. I was surprised the TSA took such a antagonistic reaction to his question. I doubt I would have asked it, but it wasn't an unreasonable question.

“TSA agents don’t get to play cops,” says Ben Wizner, an attorney who filed Mr. Bierfeldt’s suit. The ACLU has heard an increasing number of reports of TSA agents involved in what he called “mission creep,” he says.

TSA spokesman Greg Soule says airport screeners are trained to “look for threats to aviation security” and discrepancies in a passenger’s identity. TSA says verifying someone’s identity, or exposing false identity, is a security issue so that names can be checked against terrorism watch lists. Large amounts of cash can be evidence of criminal activity, Mr. Soule says, and so screeners look at the “quantity, packaging, circumstances of discovery or method by which the cash is carried.”

Questioning travelers is part of TSA’s standard procedures, and the agency gives its employees discretion. “TSA security officers are trained to ask questions and assess passenger reactions,” Mr. Soule says. “TSA security officers may use their professional judgment and experience to determine what questions to ask passengers during screening.”

I would really like to know how much training TSA officers get on law and policing. Do they get as much training as a street police officer in a regular town? It doesn't sound like it, but it would be something to look up.

Schneier made a very good point about searches performed by TSA.

The Constitution provides us, both Americans and visitors to America, with strong protections against invasive police searches. Two exceptions come into play at airport security checkpoints. The first is "implied consent," which means that you cannot refuse to be searched; your consent is implied when you purchased your ticket. And the second is "plain view," which means that if the TSA officer happens to see something unrelated to airport security while screening you, he is allowed to act on that.

Both of these principles are well established and make sense, but it's their combination that turns airport security checkpoints into police-state-like checkpoints.

The TSA should limit its searches to bombs and weapons and leave general policing to the police - where we know courts and the Constitution still apply.

I have a bit of snark related to the last sentence that I'll keep to myself, but the rest is very important. You can't mix the two exceptions without making such a search an unreasonable act in the spirit of the fourth amendment.

The Constitution is Obviously Just Words

This is fascinating.

With the clock running out on a new US-Russian arms treaty before the previous Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, expires on December 5, a senior White House official said Sunday said that the difficulty of the task might mean temporarily bypassing the Senate’s constitutional role in ratifying treaties by enforcing certain aspects of a new deal on an executive levels and a “provisional basis” until the Senate ratifies the treaty.

"The most ideal situation would be to finish it in time that it could be submitted to the Senate so that it can be ratified," said White House Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction, Security and Arms Control Gary Samore. "If we're not able to do that, we'll have to look at arrangements to continue some of the inspection provisions, keep them enforced in a provisional basis, while the Senate considers the treaty."

Samore said administration lawyers are exploring the "different options that are available. One option is that both sides could agree to continue the inspections by executive agreement; that would work on our side. On the Russian side, as I understand it, that would require Duma approval."

The fact that the administration is preparing for such an extraordinary measure shows just how much pressure the two administrations are under to arrive at an agreement before the 18-year-old treaty expires. While resident Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are expected to announce progress tomorrow on a nuclear arms reduction treaty – nicknamed “New START” -- to take effect in just five short months, many sticking points that remain unresolved.

I'm sure this political appointee just mispoke. I'm amazed that this report is still on line. No doubt it will be clarified and neutralized shortly.

It appears that Obama is living up to the FDR comparison. No doubt he'll be willfully bypassing more and more of the Constitution and being cheered on by the Ministry of Truth.

Obama's Honduran Adventures

I caught this Bloomberg article from a commentary at Legal Insurrection.

I still don't understand why this isn't getting more play in the MSM. (Better known as the Ministry or Truth depending on your choice of realities.)

Honduras’s military acted under judicial orders in deposing President Manuel Zelaya, Supreme Court Justice Rosalinda Cruz said, rejecting the view of President Barack Obama and other leaders that he was toppled in a coup.

“The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” Cruz, 55, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.”

Cruz said the court issued a sealed arrest order for Zelaya on June 26, charging him with treason and abuse of power, among other offenses. Zelaya had repeatedly breached the constitution by pushing ahead with a vote about rewriting the nation’s charter that the court ruled illegal, and which opponents contend would have paved the way for a prohibited second term.

She compared Zelaya’s tactics, including his dismissal of the armed forces chief for obeying a court order to impound ballots to be used in the vote, with those of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

“Some say it was not Zelaya but Chavez governing,” she said.

If Obama and his ilk are so concerned about the rule of law, why does he continue to ignore what appears to have been the lawful removal of a treasonous president?

And why does he put such effort into tampering with a country that is much less significant than say Iran, where rule of law appears to have been completely ignored?

What is his reasoning? I wish someone would ask him. But then you'd have to get past his crafted and controlled press conferences.

ABC's ObamaCare Informercial

Caught this linked at Wizbang. It's the Cato Institute speaking to the infomercial that ABC provided for our entertainment.


Takes about 5 minutes and cuts to the points that should have been made.

I wonder how well this snake oil sale went.

Forbes has a list of Obama's Top Five Healthcare Lies. Pretty much a digest of what I've heard commented on in separate discussions.

Obama's Selective Tampering

Funny how Obama was so very very sensitive to the Iranian elections not to tamper, yet when it comes to Honduras it's a completely different thing. Maybe he is more nuanced than I am. No doubt he'll talk them into giving their president his job back, or maybe he'll hold hands with Chavez as he invades their country.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday the coup that ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was illegal and would set a "terrible precedent" of transition by military force unless it was reversed.

"We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the president of Honduras, the democratically elected president there," Obama told reporters after an Oval Office meeting with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Zelaya, in office since 2006, was overthrown in a dawn coup on Sunday after he angered the judiciary, Congress and the army by seeking constitutional changes that would allow presidents to seek re-election beyond a four-year term.

Strange thing is, I found in the WSJ a piece that makes it sound like it's not a coup:

Honduras's Supreme Court gave the order for the military to detain the president, according to a former Supreme Court official who is in touch with the court.

Later, Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.

I would have sworn that usually a coup doesn't include official actions of the other branches of government against the president. Make one wonder what exactly he was up to.

"What was done here was a democratic act," Mr. Micheletti, who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon, said to an ovation. "Our constitution continues to be valid, our democracy continues to live."

Mr. Micheletti is a member of Mr. Zelaya's Liberal party. But he had opposed his plans for a referendum that could have led to overturning the constitution's ban on re-election, allowing Mr. Zelaya to potentially stay in power past January, when his term ends.

Mr. Zelaya, a frequent critic of the U.S., has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country's Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the referendum -- planned for Sunday -- that would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country's elites.

The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution's own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.

I wonder why this hasn't gotten much press coverage.

The Telegraph has a quote:

"Today's events originate from a court order by a competent judge. The armed forces, in charge of supporting the constitution, acted to defend the state of law and have been forced to apply legal dispositions against those who have expressed themselves publicly and acted against the dispositions of the basic law," the country's highest court said.

I'm wondering how exactly this removal was illegal when, as reported, the courts and congress had him replaced because of his own disregard for the law.

Conyers in the News

Well first there is Senator Corruption himself:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. has backed off his plan to investigate wrongdoing by the liberal activist group ACORN, saying "powers that be" put the kibosh on the idea.

Mr. Conyers, Michigan Democrat, earlier bucked his party leaders by calling for hearings on accusations the Association of Community Organization for Reform Now (ACORN) has committed crimes ranging from voter fraud to a mob-style "protection" racket.

I'd like the list of who is the "powers that be" so we can taken them out behind the woodshed for a little discussion on ethics. No doubt we never will.

Then there is Mrs Corruption.

Detroit City Council President Pro Tem Monica Conyers pleaded guilty this morning to conspiring to commit bribery and is free on personal bond.

U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn said, "The defendant now stands convicted."

The one count of conspiring to commit bribery is punishable for up to five years in prison.

No sentencing date has been set and it is not immediately clear if the plea deal requires Conyers to cooperate with the feds in the ongoing probe of city corruption.

Conyers, the wife of powerful Democratic congressman U.S. Rep. John Conyers, appeared before Cohn to answer charges in connection with the wide-ranging probe of wrongdoing at Detroit city hall.

I find it highly improbable that there is any connection, but you can bet that she'll never see a day of prison time. Not to mention if it were you or I we'd be in jail right now not on personal bond.

Nice to see that they both reached the news together.

Americorps IG Firing Causing a Stir

No doubt the reader has seen the reports on the Americorps IG who was fired by Obama due to a "Loss of Confidence" which no doubt stems from his investigating one of Obama's big supporters. It is refreshing to see that the Congress is calling for more information and not just giving Obama a pass.

In a statement, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) says, "The White House has failed to follow the proper procedure in notifying Congress as to the removal of the Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service. The legislation which was passed last year requires that the president give a reason for the removal. ‘Loss of confidence’ is not a sufficient reason. I’m hopeful the White House will provide a more substantive rationale, in writing, as quickly as possible."

McCaskill was the lead Senate sponsor on the Inspectors General Act of 2008 and is a loyal supporter and friend of President Obama. Her statement is the first significant sign of Democratic concern with this matter.

Well, McCaskill is showing concern. At least her concern is based on law, unlike the outrage over the Bush AG firings which was completely baseless.

Just Not Thinking

So Insty links to an article related to a wheat fungus and then remarks:

Read the whole thing. It’ll probably hit America right after the “supervolcano” under Mt. St. Helens erupts (”These enormous eruptions can spew enough sunlight-blocking ash into the atmosphere to cool the climate by several degrees Celsius”), or something, in the middle of a Swine Flu pandemic. Oh, wait . . . .

Slight problem with his statement. This fungus is quite easily transportable, and could easily be brought and spread in the US by an enemy. Though more likely than not it will be brought here innocently and have major issues with the US wheat crop.

Or did Insty forget about little things like Dutch elm disease? It's not a matter of whether it will get into the US wheat crop as it is when.

DHS Support from McCarthyites

Some nutcase white supremacist goes out for a little killing spree and now the left is going nuts.

Greg Sargent's reaction to the murder at the Holocaust Museum yesterday -- "it's time to revisit criticism of 'right-wing extremists' report" -- wasn't atypical. You could hear the same insta-reaction around the Web, as confirmation bias did its work and two or three crimes by far-right figures were transformed into something larger. Here's Andrew Sullivan: "That DHS report doesn't look so iffy any more, does it?" Markos Moulitsas: "Attempt by Cons to justify their critique of prescient DHS report are an extra special dose of stupid." Benjamin Sarlin at The Daily Beast writes that "a much-maligned Department of Homeland Security memo on right-wing extremism is looking more accurate by the day." Doug J. at Balloon Juice says, "How many acts of right-wing terrorism have to occur before DHS is allowed to start keeping track of it?"

Nice. Wonder what these bastions of bullshit would be saying if it had been ELF or some "progressive" type that did something of the kind.

Similar crap coming out of the extreme Right on any Islamic nut job attacking people. Only a bit of difference being that the recruiting station that had a couple of military people killed got a minor note by the MSM (aka Ministry of Propaganda) while the abortionist and the Holocaust Museum attacker got major and repeated coverage.

But lets get to the point on DHS.

Why did the DHS report come under such fire? It wasn't because far-right cranks are incapable of committing crimes. It's because the paper blew the threat of right-wing terror out of proportion, just as the Clinton administration did in the '90s; because it treated "extremism" itself as a potential threat, while offering a definition of extremist so broad it seemed it include anyone who opposed abortion or immigration or excessive federal power; and because it fretted about the danger of "the return of military veterans facing significant challenges reintegrating into their communities." (Note that neither the killing in Kansas last month nor the shooting in Washington yesterday was committed by an Iraq or Afghanistan vet.) The effect isn't to make right-wing terror attacks less likely. It's to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the right, just as the most substantial effect of a red scare was to make it easier to smear nonviolent, noncriminal figures on the left. The fact that communist spies really existed didn't justify Joseph McCarthy's antics, and the fact that armed extremists really exist doesn't justify the Department of Homeland Security's report.

DHS isn't there for politics, though you'd think otherwise having read anything reported on Napolitano's watch. The issue erupting from all of this will likely cause more issues for people who have nothing to do with violent actions. And with the governments well understood ability to entice (read as "entrap") individuals into actions they would not take without that stimulus, can we doubt that people will be going to jail because someone believed they could be a threat and not that they actually were?

CNN Tubing while Fox Ascending

Ed Driscoll points out the Huffington Post entry from CNN's co-founder.

CNN co-founder Reese Schonfeld tells the Huffington Post (huh, why would a CNN man go there to post?) that “seven months after Barack Obama’s victory, CNN’s ratings have gone down the drain”:

Nine years ago, when FoxNews sprinted past CNN to become America’s number one news network, I attributed its ratings gains to the election of George Bush and the triumph of Fox-watching conservatives. I figured conservatives would be savoring their victory while liberals were averting their eyes in disgust. For the next eight years, I measured political sentiment in the United States by comparing the size of the FoxNews audience with the combined size of the CNN/MSNBC audience. In this space, I even predicted, with reasonable accuracy, the percent by which Barack Obama won the election based on the split in the news audience.

Now, seven months after Barack Obama’s victory, CNN’s ratings have gone down the drain. From May of last year to May of this year, CNN lost 22% of its total primetime audience. MSNBC was down 2%, while FoxNews was up 24%. In the key advertising demographic (25-54), Fox was up 31%, CNN was down 37% and MSNBC was down 26%. In hard numbers, Fox had 109,000 more viewers than last year while CNN lost 113,000. CNN averaged fewer than 200,000 25-54 viewers in primetime. Even MSNBC averaged more viewers than that.

Total day was nearly as bad, with Fox up 24% and CNN down 7%. MSNBC was down 2% in total viewing. Fox is beating CNN almost two-to-one in most categories.

There’s no need to throw any more numbers at you–Fox is gaining, CNN is wilting. Why is this happening when the country still seems about 58-42 in favor of Obama? My best guess is the passion of those who detest Democrats, liberals, and in particular, Barack Obama.

You don’t think it could also have anything to do with moments such as this and this, do you? And as P.J. Gladnick of Newsbusters asks, “Maybe the TV audience is growing weary of the MSM treating Barack Obama as Sort of God and want some realistic news coverage of his administration.”

It is odd that they always want to posture their losses as to being something wrong with Fox veiwers. Fox obviously gained many veiwers when they started because the conservative half of the country didn't want to listen to the propaganda the MSM or MoP if you like, was forcing down their throats. Now that Fox is gaining even more, would you think maybe the change is more complicated than the old "they hate the One" theme these companies have been pushing?

Maybe the public is tired of the slanted and irresponsible reporting. Or maybe they want reporting that doesn't just carry a party line. (I'm not saying Fox doesn't carry a party line, I'm saying they report less of the party line than the others do.)

You'd think that the MSM would learn from trends and maybe do a better job at analysis rather than falling for these moronic whines.

Under the Bus, but Never Got on Board

Amazing.

Mr. Mudd is a well-regarded career intelligence officer who has worked in senior positions at the FBI and CIA, including deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Mr. Obama nominated him on May 4 amid fulsome praise from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. But in a statement issued by the White House on the eve of a late spring weekend, Mr. Mudd said he was withdrawing so as not to become "a distraction to the president and his vital agenda."

The truth is that he risked being a distraction to Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democrats, who suddenly don't want to talk about what they knew about the interrogation techniques they once endorsed and long funded but now denounce. So Ms. Pelosi doesn't have to answer any questions about her changing claims about her CIA briefings, but a foot soldier like Mr. Mudd who did what his country asked him to do to keep the country safe is blackballed.

Another wonderful start. Makes you wonder what Obama is willing to do to get his act together when he has to continue to solve conflicts with the liars in his own party.

Political Favors for Poll Place Intimidators

Thanks Barry. Politics gets Black Panther poll intimidators off the hook. Wonder how he and Holder line this up with actually enforcing laws.

Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

Just makes you thankful that the post-partisan post-racial president can over look partisan and racist acts. Oh wait, that's right, these guys were black so they couldn't possibly have been racist. Silly me.

Ethics of the Lawyers

Well, I don't have much nice to say about lawyer's ethics, but in this case the discussion gives some perspective on the "torture" memos. (h/t Powerline)

Government lawyers in the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) appear to have leaked to the press parts of a confidential--and classified--draft report concerning the actions of Bush administration lawyers. The report calls for state bar associations to investigate, and perhaps discipline, attorneys who provided sensitive legal advice to President Bush's administration concerning the legal limits of coercive interrogation methods against high-level al Qaeda terrorists. That advice was, of course, controversial. It is now, in the current political climate, highly unpopular in certain circles. OPR has determined, apparently, that it was "unethical" to give it and that the lawyers involved should be punished.

How many things are wrong with this picture? From the perspective of legal ethics, constitutional law, and good government, I count at least five big problems.

You can read the rest for yourself.

Deflection or Perspective

Apparently the Dems don't like the CIA releasing facts on their culpability with respect to the use or enhanced interrogation methods. I find this curiously funny.

Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.

“I think there is so much embarrassment in some quarters [of the CIA] that people are going to try to shift some of the responsibility to others — that’s what I think,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who sat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was briefed on interrogation techniques five times between 2006 and 2007.

Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said he finds it “interesting” that a document detailing congressional briefings was released just as “some of the groups that have been responsible for these interrogation techniques were taking the most criticism.”

Asked whether the CIA was seeking political cover by releasing the documents, Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said: “Sure it is.”

Well, let's see, you are trying to get these people jail time for things they were told were legal, and you don't think they should have any right to defend themselves? How fascinating. Funny that these politicos are now trying to deflect this information as being for political purposes when in fact their initial attacks on these people were for political purposes. Irony?

Of course the article has a bunch of quotes as to who really requested the release, but no real facts. Just politicians and unnamed sources pointing fingers. Frankly, I wouldn't blame the CIA personnel involved for releasing this. Better now than when the congress starts their McCarthy-esque fact finding committees that can't seem to figure out that all information, including that of their own involvement, is relevant to the public opinion.

Maybe She Just Misremembered

Guess she's been having repeated senior moments.

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

I think I'm more interested in the committee investigations now. Maybe we'll find out just how big a liar the Dems who are screaming for heads really are.

Paté or Dog Food

Came by this from QandO. Had to agree with Billy Hollis on just how funny this is.

Considering the similarity of its ingredients, canned dog food could be a suitable and inexpensive substitute for pâté or processed blended meat products such as Spam or liverwurst. However, the social stigma associated with the human consumption of pet food makes an unbiased comparison challenging. To prevent bias, Newman's Own dog food was prepared with a food processor to have the texture and appearance of a liver mousse. In a double-blind test, subjects were presented with five unlabeled blended meat products, one of which was the prepared dog food. After ranking the samples on the basis of taste, subjects were challenged to identify which of the five was dog food. Although 72% of subjects ranked the dog food as the worst of the five samples in terms of taste (Newell and MacFarlane multiple comparison, P<0.05),>

Damn. I don't have much of an opinion on Paté but I doubt I'll be having any based on this.

Bill Whittle Giving Stewart a Little History Lesson

Nice piece this. Bill goes into quite a bit of details on why John Stewart is clueless.

Just go to the link.

Obama's GITMO Military Tribunals Rethought

The NTtimes give us this fairly well hidden report on Obama's rethinking the Military Tribunals at GITMO.

The Obama administration is moving toward reviving the military commission system for prosecuting Guantánamo detainees, which was a target of critics during the Bush administration, including Mr. Obama himself.

Officials said the first public moves could come as soon as next week, perhaps in filings to military judges at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, outlining an administration plan to amend the Bush administration’s system to provide more legal protections for terrorism suspects.

Continuing the military commissions in any form would probably prompt sharp criticism from human rights groups as well as some of Mr. Obama’s political allies because the troubled system became an emblem of the effort to use Guantánamo to avoid the American legal system.

Officials who work on the Guantánamo issue say administration lawyers have become concerned that they would face significant obstacles to trying some terrorism suspects in federal courts. Judges might make it difficult to prosecute detainees who were subjected to brutal treatment or for prosecutors to use hearsay evidence gathered by intelligence agencies.

Looks like reality has set in on the political meanderings of the Obamateur. I wonder if Soros gave him permission.

And as Darren Hutchinson notes:

But Obama has embraced many of the same positions that liberals and Obama himself criticized. For example:

* Obama and members of his administration have embraced the use of rendition. Many of Obama's most ardent defenders blasted progressives who criticized Obama on rendition as jumping the gun. Today, their arguments look even more problematic than in the past.

* Obama has invoked the maligned "state secrets" defense as a complete bar to lawsuits challenging potential human rights and constitutional law violations.

* Obama has argued that detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan do not qualify for habeas corpus rights, even though many of the detainees at the facility were not captured in the war or in Afghanistan.

* Even though it no longer uses the phrase "enemy combatants," the Obama administration has taken the position that the government can indefinitely detain individuals, whether or not they engaged in torture and whether or not they fought the United States on the "battlefield." This logic combined with the denial of habeas to detainees in Afghanistan could make Bagram the functional equivalent of Guantanamo Bay.

No doubt he'll be waffling over this. Who knows where this will end up.

Wonder how it makes him feel to find that Bush was actually doing the smart thing with all these issues.

Hitchen's and Hanson on Buchanan's WW2 Revisionism

I'm adding this so I can watch it later without losing the link. An Excellent piece from what I've seen so far.