What’s interesting in the news today?
1. Most transparent administration evah!
From NationalReview “Health and Human Services officials will allow reporters to visit a military facility housing some of the immigrant children who have arrived at the southern border in recent weeks, but only if the media promises not to record anything, not to ask any questions during the tour, and not to talk to any of the staff members or children.
“This violates the First Amendment,” Representative Jim Bridenstine (R., Okla.), who represents the congressional district containing the housing facility at Fort Sill, said of the HHS invitation to the media. “This is not transparent. HHS is trying to muzzle the media and hide the human tragedy that has resulted directly from the administration’s failure to enforce the law.”
HHS attached seven rules “in order to protect the safety and privacy of the children” for the media who come to the tour, according to an HHS invitation released by Bridenstine’s office:”
Oh. I see.
It’s for the children. 🙄
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2. This is why I don’t believe amnesty groups or the Chamber of Commerce when they say the visa program for foreign workers needs to be expanded. It doesn’t.
From TheAP “The dream didn’t last long. Parker claims she was laid off one year later after she trained her replacement, a newly arrived worker from India. Now she has joined a federal lawsuit alleging the global staffing firm that ran Harley-Davidson’s tech support discriminated against American workers — in part by replacing them with temporary workers from South Asia.
The firm, India-based Infosys Ltd., denies wrongdoing and contends, as many companies do, that it has faced a shortage of talent and specialized skill sets in the U.S. Like other firms, Infosys wants Congress to allow even more of these temporary workers.
But amid calls for expanding the nation’s so-called H-1B visa program, there is growing pushback from Americans who argue the program has been hijacked by staffing companies that import cheaper, lower-level workers to replace more expensive U.S. employees — or keep them from getting hired in the first place.
“It’s getting pretty frustrating when you can’t compete on salary for a skilled job,” said Rich Hajinlian, a veteran computer programmer from the Boston area. “You hear references all the time that these big companies … can’t find skilled workers. I am a skilled worker.”
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3. The Hobby Lobby case continues to anger liberals, even the dissenters to the opinion.
From HotAir “After the Hobby Lobby decision, a number of people pointed to a reference to the so-called “accommodation” for religious-oriented organizations in the HHS contraception mandate to conclude that the Supreme Court’s decision would be limited to the for-profit sector, and only to certain methods of contraception. A series of orders the next day showed the latter was not true, and a decision late yesterday suggests the former isn’t, either. An emergency injunction on behalf of Wheaton College sparked the ire of three Supreme Court justices, who issued an angry dissent to the unsigned order that temporarily sets aside the “accommodation”:
Today, the Supreme Court granted Wheaton College an injunction pending appeal against enforcement of the contraception mandate, even though Wheaton was eligible for the accommodation HHS has provided for religious non-profits. Specifically the Court ordered:
If the applicant informs the Secretary of Health and Human Services in writing that it is a non-profit organization that holds itself out as religious and has religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, the respondents are enjoined from enforcing against the applicant the challenged provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and related regulations pending final disposition of appellate review. To meet the condition for injunction pending appeal, the applicant need not use the form prescribed by the Government, EBSA Form 700, and need not send copies to health insurance issuers or third-party administrators.
This prompted three of the four dissenters in Hobby Lobby to issue a statement scolding the rest of the court for ignoring what they claim had been decided on Monday:”
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4. ISIS is set to destroy some biblical history.
From YahooNews “No trace ever has been found of the Garden of Eden, said to have lain near the confluence of the Tigris and Euphrates, but one of the great prizes the excavators did discover was Senaccherib’s capital, Nineveh, which the biblical prophet Nahum called “the city of blood, full of lies, full of plunder, never without victims!”
Last month, a new marauder descended on Nineveh and the nearby city of Mosul. He, too, came down like the wolf on the fold, but his cohorts brandished Kalashnikovs from pickup trucks, not shining spears; their banners were the black flags of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham.
Soon afterward the minions of the self-appointed caliph of the freshly self-declared Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, paid a visit to the Mosul Museum. It has been closed for years for restoration, ever since it was looted along with many of Iraq’s other institutions in the wake of the culturally oblivious American-led invasion of 2003. But the Mosul Museum was on the verge of reopening, at last, and the full collection had been stored there.
“These groups of terrorists—their arrival was a brutal shock, with no warning,” Iraqi National Museum Director Qais Hussein Rashid told me when he visited Paris last week with a mission pleading for international help. “We were not able to take preventive measures.””
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5. But the President said ObamaCare would shorten ER waits because folks would have a regular doctor. Guess that promise had an expiration date too.
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6. And since the other ObamaCare shoe (the employer mandate) is about to drop, the President is trying to pre-empt the sticker shock.
From HotAir “And well they might. Insurers got a close look at the profiles of the enrollees in the individual health-insurance market this spring, and they turned out to be sicker than projected, as the “young invincibles” took a pass on ObamaCare in 2014. That means that premiums will go up in the fall in order to cover the added expense of the higher-risk enrollments — and that has the Obama administration spin team working extra hard this summer to cover their rear ends just before the midterms:
Most state health insurance rates for 2015 are scheduled to be approved by early fall, and most are likely to rise, timing that couldn’t be worse for Democrats already on defense in the midterms.
The White House and its allies know they’ve been beaten in every previous round of Obamacare messaging, never more devastatingly than in 2010. And they know the results this November could hinge in large part on whether that happens again.
So they’re trying to avoid — or at least, get ahead of — any September surprise.
This assumes that the problems with ObamaCare only have to do with messaging. That’s only true to the extent that the previous messaging from the administration has been proven either entirely wrong or flat-out lies. “You can keep your plan” ended up as the Lie of the Year for 2013 when millions of people who already had insurance got kicked out of their existing plans for 2014, and forced to pay more for less coverage in many instances. Barack Obama had promised that his reforms would lower premiums by $2500 a year for a family of four, but premiums have skyrocketed since the passage of ObamaCare, and they’ll do the same again in September.”
Messaging isn’t the problem. Your product sucks, and is too expensive. That’s the problem.
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Wandering Views 
#3. I don’t understand none of that.
This issue of contraceptives has never been a practical issue. It is a political soccer ball, kicked about but never going anywhere. The liberals don’t want it solved because it’s a good campaign issue. But, if it is, there is always something else. The Overton Window at work.
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1. Its always for the children. A good drinking game would be to sit in on teacher union-school board negotiations and have a drink each time a person says its for the children.
2. Canada has the same issue with their Temporary Foreign Workers program. Our conservative gov’t has had to cutback on its acceptance rate or face the wrath of the voting public. I agree with the idea that any additions to the work force should come from increased immigration so that they have same employment rights and don’t face pressure and exploitation due to their temporary nature.
3. They did say their decision was to be applied narrowly and then expanded it the next day — the female Supremes were not impressed. An interesting theory make the rounds of leftist sites has the HL decision having far reaching implications to corporate law. Basically, HL breaks down the separation between the corporate-person and the owners. This so-called corporate veil shields the owners in case of corporate bankruptcy and malfeasance and makes “risk” more acceptable. By stating the corporate-person shares the religious convictions of the owners, the idea of two separate legal persons is broken. Interesting if the legal implications are drawn out that way — the Supremes did say it was narrow in scope but then expanded it the next day.
Previously Gitmo prisoners were not considered persons for the purpose of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act but since the Act now applies to corporations, lawyers for Gitmo are asking the courts to revisit the decision. After all if Hobby Lobby is a person why aren’t the prisoners?
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bob — re: yesterday’s comments. My apologies for the short and missing info.
My colleague was in the Legion for 5 years. He was stationed in French Guyana (chasing the Colombian cartels), Chad (fighting Libya) Congo (guarding French companies from Mobutu and Mobutu’s enemies) Somalia (with NATO), and the Gulf War. It was during the Gulf War where he was shot at by American troops who mistook his French for Arabic and then thought his English was too foreign. He spent some time with UK, American and Canadian troops and decided that if the Legion was going to spend any more time with regular armies he was out . He thought the Brits were highly professional but the Canadians too naive. I don’t think he ever forgave the Americans for shooting at him (more than once) among other things. He finished his career with the Legion as an instructor and MP. In the early 90s, the Legion accepted ex-secret service from Eastern Bloc countries who would desert once they received new ID — he would then chase them around Europe and arrest them as they owe two years of service for that ID.
I’m sure there are highly reputable men and women in the US army but despite its volunteer nature it stills serves as a welfare institution where people can receive free education, health care, a new start, etc. There’s nothing wrong with being a welfare institution. Sometimes even its volunteers t mistake the army for a welfare institution — witness the desertion rate during the second Iraq. Many were upset that they were expected to actually do something (ie fight in Iraq) for their free education.
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The biggest threat to Texas does not come from the Hispanic immigrants who clean our houses, fix our cars and tend our yards. It comes from the Yankee immigrants that sue our school boards, try to remove prayer from our public ceremonies and promote perversion to our youth.
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HRW, Until Little Bush invaded Iraq, I thought that defense spending was the least harmful of all federal spending programs. That enterprise proved as destructive as Medicare, Medicaid, green energy subsidies, aid to education, Food stamps, Section 8 housing, farm subsidies, Social Security Disability, export subsidies, foreign aid, etc.
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