THE DEATH OF THE OMNIBUS. You can thank your local Tea Party.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Two Californias. Now read this.

I think 10 years is a best-case scenario.

OUR ALICE IN WONDERLAND PRESIDENT: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. If only we could.

WHAT’S THE BIGGEST THREAT to free speech?

WHERE FREEDOM GOES TO DIE: the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

It should be renamed the Center for Stupidity not in the Public Interest.

I WAS GOING TO COMMENT ON E. J. DIONNE’S LUNACY, but Peter Wehner beat me to it.

What Dionne and those of his ilk fail to realize is that the progressive movement has gone so far to the left that the mainstream ‘independents’ and conservative ‘right-wing extremists’ are essentially the same political distance away.

MUCH OF OBAMA’S AGENDA in hands of courts. Why do I have a bad feeling about this news?

FROM MICHELLE BACHMAN:

What do Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have in common? As I type this email, they're all trying to push a new back-room tax deal through Congress that will move our country in the wrong direction.

This bill passed the Senate last night and is now moving towards the House and could be voted on as early as today.

You may have seen reports that Tea Party activists are joining together in opposition to this bill. I oppose this deal for a number of reasons, because most importantly, this tax deal does not live up to the constitutional values we share.

First: This bill will not make the current lower tax rates permanent for all Americans.

Second: This bill will add to our already massive deficit.

Third: This bill will re-institute the death tax - charging some Americans with a new tax as high as 35%. The death tax currently stands at zero. Americans already pay taxes on their money once to the government during their lifetime; the government should not take 35% of the estate from their heirs at death.

Another bill making its way through Congress is the 1.1 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill containing 6,600 earmarks. These bills show contempt for you and our efforts to return fiscal sanity to our government.

Remember, the Federal Reserve also announced they are embarking on a policy of Quantitative Easing Part II, which means between Quantitative Easing II, the omnibus spending bill and the tax compromise your Democrat-controlled Congress will spend 4.8 trillion dollars over the next 24 months.

How will we ever dig our way out of this debt?

As Tea Party conservatives, you and I must adhere to our shared conservative values or we risk losing the support and organization we have worked so hard to build. Most of my fellow Tea Party activists oppose this bill because it does not meet the fiscally conservative principles we stand for.

Today, I'm asking you to join me in opposing this legislation.

Many Washington politicians remain deaf to November's election results and have grown more out-of-touch with American public opinion. They are ignoring the will of the people. Americans from coast to coast delivered a resounding victory for a constitutional conservative majority in the House of Representatives on Election Day and polling suggests Americans do not want to see their taxes or the national deficit increased.

But that's exactly what this bill will do if Obama, Pelosi and Reid get their way. They are trying to rush this bill through Congress straight to the President's desk and if we don't act immediately, the consequences for our shared principles could be dire. I'm working with other members and Tea Party activists to stop this tax and deficit increase from becoming law. But, there is extreme pressure from both sides to pass this law. I need to know you stand with me in opposition to this back-room deal.

Oh, they got the message all right. They’re desperate to enact as much of their agenda as possible before they get thrown out and replaced by a new Congress.

VOTE NOW: Should the Senate pass the earmark-laden spending bill?

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA signed an executive order establishing the White House Council for Community Solutions: "The Council will provide advice to the President on the best ways to mobilize citizens, nonprofits, businesses and government to work more effectively together to solve specific community needs."

How about just getting out of the way and leaving us alone?

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, we’d be preparing for nuclear war - and they were right.

JEFF JACOBY: Why do the liberals rage? "[E]nvy and resentment, which liberals think of as sensitivity and compassion, are at the very core of the liberal conception of good government."

MORE MADNESS: Montana honor student faces expulsion for leaving hunting rifle in car while at school.

When I was in high school, during deer season nearly every student's pickup truck had one or more rifles on the gun rack hanging inside the back window in the cab. Occasionally, there'd be a deer tied to the fender of the car or in the bed of the pickup.

I don't recall any shoot-outs on campus.

[Update] Sanity prevailed.

COLOR ME NERVOUS: we have Barack Obama to lead us.

DON’T GET COCKY: “[T]he United States will come up with different judges.”

Anyone who believes the feds won’t go judge-shopping is seriously deluded.

YOU MUST GET GUN RANGE TRAINING. But you can’t get gun range training.

Linked from Instapundit.

WHO’S THE REAL PRESIDENT - Bill Clinton? Or Michelle Obama?

IF THE MANDATE AUTHORITY (in Virginia v. Sebelius, the Virginia challenge to Obamacare) somehow survives the Supremes, shouldn't we anticipate that the federal government can then require Americans to purchase Chevy Volts ... whether they are licensed to drive or not?

VICTORY! from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli:

Virginia won the first round of the constitutional fight over the federal health care law. I also told you I'd get back to you with more details later in the day, and I'm keeping my promise.

Arguments and Outcomes

There were two basic arguments in this case.

First, Virginia argued that the individual mandate was beyond the power of Congress and the President to impose under the Constitution. Specifically, Congress claimed that their regulatory power under the Commerce Clause allowed them to order you to buy their government-approved health insurance, even if you decide not to buy health insurance.

The judge ruled that the federal government does not have the power to compel you to buy health insurance as part of its attempt to regulate the entire field of health care and health insurance. Thus, Virginia won this argument.

Second, the federal government advanced a 'fallback' argument in case it lost on its commerce clause argument. The feds' fallback argument was that the financial penalty you have to pay if you don't buy the government mandated health insurance is a tax.

This may sound like an odd argument from a political standpoint - usually they say everything is NOT a tax (in fact, they argued the penalty was not a tax while they were trying to get the bill passed); however, they changed position after the bill became law to try and save the bill. What they were trying to do was to get the courts to agree that because the penalty would presumably raise some revenue, it was therefore a 'tax' under the taxing and spending for the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution.

No judge in the country has bought this argument, and Judge Hudson was no exception. He ruled that the taxing power of Congress does not save the bill, because the penalty for not buying the mandated health insurance is not a tax.

The federal government only had to win on either of these two arguments, while Virginia needed to win both to prevail, and we won both!

What's Next?

Certainly the federal government will appeal their loss in the district court to the 4th circuit court of appeals within the next 30 days. And whichever side loses in the 4th circuit will certainly appeal to the Supreme Court. And no one has any serious doubts that ultimately the constitutionality of the individual mandate will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That could take approximately (very rough approximation) two years. We are discussing with the Department of Justice accelerating the case, and those discussions have been very cordial thus far. More on that later.

Conclusion

Today is a great day for the Constitution. Today the Constitution has been protected from the federal government, and remember, an important reason for the constitution in the first place was to limit the power of the federal government.

Today is also a day of a small degree of vindication. When we first filed suit, the screeching of the liberals was deafening. Everything from accusing us of playing politics instead of practicing law, to filing what they called a 'frivolous' lawsuit.

I want you to know, that our team makes decisions based on the Constitution and the laws. Period. We deal with the consequences of our decisions separately, but first and foremost we have been and will continue to be true to the Constitution and laws of the United States and Virginia, regardless of whether it's easy or hard in any particular case.

There’s a long way to go, but this is an excellent start.

YA THINK? One nation, under too many laws.

This, from a newspaper that never saw a law it didn't like.