What’s interesting in the news today?
Open Thread, with a few to start things off.
1. Looks like some Democrats are waking up to the unworkable realities of ObamaCare. But the President is still threatening to veto a legislative fix. He changes it illegally anytime he wants, so he’s probably unfamiliar with the concept of legal legislative fixes.
From TheWashingtonTimes “Congressional lawmakers, including Democrats, rebuked the White House on Wednesday for refusing to allow tweaks to Obamacare, saying President Obama is reneging on his promise to work to fix problems in the law.
A day after the White House said it would veto a bill to re-establish the 40-hour workweek standard, House and Senate members said they would press ahead and dare the president to oppose them.”
“Under Obamacare, businesses must count as full-time employees anyone who works at least 30 hours a week.
Critics say that is pushing employers to cut some workers’ hours to stay below the threshold for having to comply with the Obamacare business mandate. They want to restore the 40-hour definition.”
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2. One of the 3 suspects in the attack on a French paper’s office has turned himself in.
From APNews “One man sought in the deadly shooting at a French satirical paper has turned himself in, and police hunted Thursday for two heavily armed men with possible links to al-Qaida in the military-style, methodical killing of 12 people at the office of a satirical newspaper that caricatured the Prophet Muhammad.
President Francois Hollande, visiting the scene of France’s deadliest such attack in more than half a century, called the assault on the weekly newspaper Charlie Hebdo “an act of exceptional barbarism.”
France raised its terror alert system to the maximum — Attack Alert — and bolstered security with more than 800 extra soldiers to guard media offices, places of worship, transport and other sensitive areas. Fears had been running high in France and elsewhere in Europe that jihadis trained in warfare abroad would stage attacks at home.
French brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, in their early 30s, should be considered armed and dangerous, according to a police bulletin released early Thursday. Mourad Hamyd, 18, surrendered at a police station in Charleville-Mezieres, a small town in France’s eastern Champagne region, said Paris prosecutor’s spokeswoman Agnes Thibault-Lecuivre. She did not offer details on Hamyd’s relationship with the men.”
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3. Isn’t Graham kinda stating the obvious here?
From HotAir “Before you start in the comment section, I know. It’s Lindsey Graham. He’s a RINO. Amesty or something. In response to the terrorist attack this morning in Paris, he’s the first elected official to call it like it is, firmly and unreservedly. In an interview taped just a few minutes ago with Hugh Hewitt that will air at 7:06 EST, the senior senator from South Carolina had this to say, especially after Egypt’s President al-Sisi spoke out publicly for the need to reform Islam.
LG: I think the President of the United States is undercutting the president of Egypt. We’re in a religious war. These are not terrorists. They’re radical Islamists who are trying to replace our way of life with their way of life. Their way of life is motivated by religious teachings that require me and you to be killed, or enslaved, or converted. The President of the United States tip-toes around the threats we face, and he is trying to diminish the religious aspect of this war. Why? I don’t know. And he is not engaging the enemy in an aggressive fashion, which makes it more likely we’ll get attacked. What he’s doing is pretending to want to destroy ISIL when in fact, he’s trying to get out of office without having to commit American ground forces to do the job as part of a team in the region, because he made a campaign promise. His campaign promises, Hugh, are getting a lot of people killed.”
“I hope so, because this is not a cartoon problem. Our way of life doesn’t fit into their scheme of how the world should be. If you stopped talked about radical Islam, if you never did a cartoon again, that’s not enough. What people need to get is they can’t be accommodated. They can’t be negotiated with. They have to be eventually destroyed. And the way you destroy them over time is to have the people within the religion turn on them, have the capability to keep them at bay within the countries where they exist. That requires capacity building. That requires partnerships. But the way you defeat radical Islam is the way the KKK was defeated. People in the South over time turned against them. They got more educated. They rejected the extreme philosophy. And we’re going to have to invest in countries and people that would reject radical Islam, side with them, partner with them to keep the war over there. And here’s what I would say to President Obama. Your strategy of containing or destroying ISIL will not work. Your goal of containing them until you get out of office puts our country at risk. You’re not a very good commander-in-chief. Your policies to take the intelligence gathering process and destroy it by treating terrorism as a common crime is going to hurt this country. And to my fellow members of Congress, you’re part of the problem, too. If you don’t find a substitute for these Defense and intelligence cuts, you’re reducing our ability to defend this nation. There’s a perfect storm brewing, and I am going to keep talking about this until we get some action.”
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Wandering Views 