Monday, July 02, 2012

"MICKEY KAUS catches the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne admitting that Fast and Furious 'was designed to show how terrible our gun laws are, how much our gun laws are feeding guns down into Mexico....'”
LET THE 'DEATH PANELS' BEGIN: California patients struggle to transition to managed care system.
CONGRESS MAY NOT BE ABLE TO MANDATE BROCCOLI ... but a tick can.

Moral of the story: ticks are more important than congresscritters.
CLAUDIA ROSETT: Bothered in the Broccoli Republic. Read the comments as well.
DEMOCRATS CAN'T HELP providing Republicans with campaign fodder.
A RARE GOOD USE OF TAXPAYER FUNDS: Group turns in broken guns to “gun buyback” program, raises money for NRA youth shooting camp.
DO I LOOK like someone who gives a sh*t? Anderson Cooper announces he's gay.
WE'RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT ... and we're making you fat.
NOT TALKING ABOUT DISASTER RELIEF; doing it.
NASA CELEBRATES Kennedy Space Center's 50th year. "KSC opened July 1, 1962, as NASA’s Launch Operations Center during the Space Race with the Soviet Union. The Merritt Island complex was renamed Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 29, 1963, one week after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated...."

I was first there in 1965. At that time, KSC was only a very small part of the U.S. Air Force's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.
DENY, DISSEMBLE, AND SPIN: Administration Struggles to Defend Obamacare Tax. Best comment: "If sense ever becomes common, then the Democratic Party will go extinct."
SOME THOUGHTS on the Supreme Court's ObamaCare decision. Initially I was simultaneously shocked, angered, and in despair over the ruling. However, having finally completed reading the text of the ruling, I'm mildly optimistic.

For starters, the opinion seems to pretty well block any future use of the Commerce Clause as a tool for future mandates. In fact, I'm beginning to think we'll soon see challenges to other past court decisions based on the new limitations.

Overturning the Medicaid mandate on the States seems to me to be an implicit decision to return the 10th Amendment [The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people] to its proper place in the Constitution as a limitation on federal intrusion into the State's proper role in government.

The decision to deny that the mandate as constitutional under the Commerce Clause and uphold it under the taxing power of the Federal government seems, on reflection, a wise move accomplishing two goals: (1) it puts into question the status of other fees, assessments, penalties, and 'sin' taxes as methods to coerce 'proper' behavior and (2) it throws ObamaCare squarely back to the Congress for a redo (with the admonition that the Supreme Court reviews laws for constitutionality, not stupidity).

Charles Lane, the Washington Post's only sensible columnist (well, after Charles Krauthammer, of course) put it well on Fox News Sunday's panel when he said (paraphrased) that Chief Justice Roberts is playing chess when his opponents are playing checkers.

For concurring opinions, go here, here, and here. For a dissenting opinion, here's the always readable Mark Steyn.
WSJ CHIEF ECONOMIST: 75% of Obamacare Costs Will Fall on Backs of Those Making $120K or Less.

JEFF CARTER: Should Start Up Companies Get Political? On this one, I disagree with Carter. I don't think start-ups have any choice but to 'get political' in order to survive.
POLITICALLY CORRECT T-SHIRT.


ObamaCare is now a "big freakin' tax."
E PLURIBUS UNUM. Why am I not surprised?
SUNDAY REFLECTION: The Supreme Court, Obamacare and 'legitimacy'.

Read carefully. There will be an exam in November.