Barack Obama's Brazen Dishonesty - Rich Lowry - The Corner on National Review Online

Barack Obama's Brazen Dishonesty - Rich Lowry - The Corner on National Review Online

When it comes to ObamaCare... Apparently, Obama-don't-care to speak truthfully about the legislation he is trying to push onto the American people.
Here's Rich Lowry's lede from the above link:

"Maybe I'm naïve, but I continue to be shocked by Obama's willful and blatant dishonesty on health care. Again today, he said, "If you like your current plan, you will be able to keep it. Let me repeat that: If you like your plan, you'll be able to keep it." This is just not true..."

Read the whole thing (link above).

Separation of Church and State

Matthew J. Franck from Bench Memos at NRO offers insight to the much misunderstood topic of separation of Church and State and the so-called "legislating morality" issue. The case under discussion is the one being brought by David Boies and Ted Olsen to overturn California's Proposition 8 (now a CA state constitution amendment) which enshrines in law marriage between one man and one woman. Here is the excerpt that exposes the fallacy of needing to segregate religiously informed arguments out of the public square when considering legislating any law. His comments below have another case in mind as the reference point.

Because of the diversity of religious commitments in our society—and because it violates our constitutional morality, and no little part of our dominant religious morality, for anyone to be coerced in matters of faith and practice—we must express our moral opinions to one another in a shared language of reasons and arguments. This does not and cannot mean that the connection of our moral arguments to our religious sentiments is severed when we meet in the public square. But when all the arguments have been aired out, the moral view that prevails at the ballot box and in the legislative halls is entitled to have its way in public policy, barring any explicit constitutional obstacles to its enactment. The “separation of church and state” is not one of those obstacles. If it were, no law with any moral purpose that happened to coincide with the view of any religious community could ever be upheld.

All of this escapes the Iowa justices, whose view seems to be that if a moral argument finds support in any religious commitment, then the promulgation of that argument in law is a violation of the principle of religious disestablishment. This is logically fallacious, historically illiterate, and politically brutish.

The whole thing is worth reading...

National Healthcare anyone??

Yes, in the same way that trillions of dollars have been spent on the Great Society programs legislated in the 1960's under LBJ to "wipe out" poverty... what's that you say?... Poverty increased in the U.S. after Welfare and all it's sister programs were enacted?! And crime went up?... by how much? 20% or so?! Out-of-wedlock births skyrocketed?? Well, anyway the same people (Liberals, in case you aren't sure) who brought us those "successful" programs now have a new offering (chart above and link below)... National Healthcare, or is it ObamaCare?... for all... overseen and administered by the same "efficient" and "farsighted" politicians and entrenched bureaucrats that have proven time and time again that Nanny state knows best... at how to mess up things up and all the while stealing aspects of our liberty and "allowing" us to pay for it all through higher taxes.

So get in line and take a ticket stub, 'cause if this thing passes then the privilege of waiting in line for diminished healthcare services while paying higher taxes is surely something we all need to get in practice for... sheesh!!

To view an enlarged version of the above chart go HERE!

Dr. Jack

Leahy, a lying sack of...

Well whatever... below is Ed Whelan's fisking of Senator Patrick Leahy's disingenuous Orwellian clarification, i.e. lie, today regarding the Democrat Senate's abuse of Miguel Estrada's nomination from 2001 to 2003. I am posting the full excerpt from Bench Memos at NRO as posted by Ed Whelan.

Senator Leahy’s Level of Integrity [Ed Whelan]

When Senator Lindsey Graham used the example of Republican support for President Bush’s D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada to make the elementary point that Republican concerns about Judge Sotomayor are based on her judicial philosophy, not on her Hispanic ethnicity, Judiciary Committee chairman Pat Leahy saw fit to respond in this way:

I'd just note, just so we make sure we're all dealing with the same facts, Mr. Estrada was nominated when the Republicans were in charge of the Senate, was not given a hearing by the Republicans. He was given a hearing when the Democrats took back the majority in the Senate ….

Well, let’s “make sure we’re all dealing with the same facts,” Senator Leahy:

1. President Bush announced his nomination of Estrada to the D.C. Circuit on May 9, 2001. Fifteen days later, Senator Jeffords left the Republican Party and flipped control of the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats. Leahy surely remembers that well, both because Jeffords was his fellow Vermonter and because the flip made him chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

2. When Leahy says that Estrada “was not given a hearing when the Republicans were in charge of the Senate,” he is technically accurate in that Senate Republicans did not try to hold a confirmation hearing on Estrada’s nomination within its first 15 days. Had they tried to do so (even before the ABA completed its evaluation of Estrada), Democrats never would have permitted it.

To put this timing in context: During the Bush 43 administration, the average time from nomination to hearing for federal appellate nominees was 166 days overall, and 197 days while Leahy was chairman. No federal appellate nominee other than Clinton renominee Helene White (the beneficiary of a special deal) received a hearing in less than 30 days. And of President Bush’s first batch of nominees, the first to receive a hearing waited 62 days.

3. Leahy finally gave Estrada a hearing on September 26, 2002—more than 16 months after his nomination—but it was clear that Democrats would not vote Estrada out of committee. Once the Republicans regained control of the Senate in 2003, the Judiciary Committee promptly voted Estrada out of committee on a party-line vote (Republicans in favor, Democrats opposed). Democrats then filibustered his nomination on the Senate floor, defeating a record seven cloture votes.

4. It is outrageous of Leahy to give his grossly misleading account of the Estrada nomination in a context that vilely insinuates that Republican opposition to Sotomayor is based on her Hispanic ethnicity.

The "Caring" Tyranny of the Liberal State

Mark Steyn has a good article on the 'all-encompassing justification' of the ever-increasing tyranny of the modern western state... all for the good of mankind, mind you... But the main cost, if you take time to notice, is the shrinking liberty of real individuals.

Here's an excerpt:

Environmentalism... seeks to return us to the age of kings, when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite. Sometimes they will be hereditary monarchs, such as the Prince of Wales. Sometimes they will be merely the gilded princelings of the government apparatus — Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi. In the old days, they were endowed with absolute authority by God. Today, they’re endowed by Mother Nature, empowered by Gaia to act on her behalf. But the object remains control — to constrain you in a million ways, most of which would never have occurred to Henry VIII, who, unlike the new cap-and-trade bill, was entirely indifferent as to whether your hovel was “energy efficient.” The old rationale for absolute monarchy — Divine Right — is a tough sell in a democratic age. But the new rationale — Gaia’s Right — has proved surprisingly plausible.

Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you from getting ill in the first place — by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts “the environment,” then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It’s the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe’s new book rightly identifies as “soft despotism.”

Jonah Goldberg on the 4th of July:

I read this over at The Corner and thought it the best thing I had read today:









"I Wish the Fourth of July Would Never End" [Jonah Goldberg]

I just returned from the annual 4th of July parade (and party) in my neighborhood. It's really becoming one of my favorite traditions, in part because it's one of the few times when DC feels like any other American town. My daughter loves to lunge for candy thrown from the amateurishly decorated cars and trucks. We all applaud the local swim team and the boy scouts and the "different drummer" marching band (complete with lavish gay patriotism), we even cheer — or at least smile — when Marion Barry comes up MacArthur blvd like an American general liberating some French town. The kids dance when the Bolivians come by, and they cheer when the DC horsemen (all African-American) trot past like cowboys heading home. There was a small scare at the fair when the moon bounce briefly deflated and the five-and-older kids nearly rioted. But otherwise, fun was had by all. The lines for the free hotdogs were too long and the balloon animal tent too. But everyone was in good cheer and parents did their best to keep kids from cutting in line. Lucy got an American flag painted on her face and chased bubbles from the bubble machines on the old fashioned fire engine. On the way home, I bought her a lemonade from a stand on someone's porch and told her we still had fireworks to look forward too, as well as the noisemakers we bought her. She squeezed my hand and said, "Daddy, I wish the Fourth of July would never end."

I squeezed her hand back, just a little, and said: "Me too."


Me: it doesn't get much better than that...