US Supreme Court

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News/Politics 7-2-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Hobby Lobby hobbyhorse, and why liberals should get off of theirs.

From BloombergView  “After reading the Twitter reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Hobby Lobby case, I began researching a post on what women could do now that corporations have exactly the same rights people do, including playing power forward for the Miami Heat, and now that contraception has been outlawed throughout these great United States. Then I read the decision and, to my surprise, found that it didn’t quite say any of that.

So what does it say? The court found that owners of closely held corporations have the same rights as sole proprietors under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. They cannot be forced to violate their religious beliefs unless the government can genuinely find no other way to achieve a compelling public purpose.

But that sounds so boring compared to War on Women! And so that’s the narrative the Internet chose. Here’s a representative tweet from my feed this morning:

So let’s all deny women birth control & get closer to harass them when they’re going in for repro health services. BECAUSE FREEDOM.

Logically, this is incoherent, unless you actually believe that it is impossible to buy birth control without a side payment from your employer. (If you are under this tragic misimpression, then be of good cheer! Generic birth control pills are available from the drugstore for about $25 a month.)“

Or Wal-Mart has them for $9. But I guess mentioning Wal-Mart to a liberal would upset them too, so they would just climb back on their hobbyhorses again.

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2. The Supreme Court decision is already causing consequences for some other cases.

From HotAir  “Late yesterday, the first fruits of the Hobby Lobby decision fell into the lap of EWTN, the Catholic satellite television station which has fought the HHS mandate into the appellate court. Today would have been the first day that EWTN would have to start paying ruinous fines for refusing to provide free contraception and sterilization in its health insurance coverage. Fortunately, the Eleventh Circuit granted a stay not long after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby:

In a resounding victory for religious freedom, today EWTN was granted last minute relief from the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, one day before the world’s largest religious media network would be forced to violate its deeply help religious convictions or pay crippling fines to the IRS on July 1.

After the district judge recently issued a disappointing ruling against the global Catholic media network, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an emergency appeal to the Eleventh Circuit. Pending that ruling, the Becket Fund urged the Supreme Court and the Eleventh Circuit to step in to protect EWTN from being forced to provide contraceptives and potentially life-terminating drugs and devices that violate its Catholic teachings. Thanks to the Eleventh Circuit’s decision today to grant temporary emergency relief to the Catholic network, EWTN can now freely practice what it preaches while it pursues its claims in court.

“On the same day as the Hobby Lobby decision, the Eleventh Circuit protected religious ministries challenging the same government mandate,” said Lori Windham, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund. “It’s time for the government to stop fighting ministries like EWTN and the Little Sisters of the Poor, and start respecting religious freedom.”

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3. So how’s the ObamaCare website working out now that they fixed the problems?

Oh wait, no, they didn’t. 🙄

From FoxNews  “The Obama administration is struggling to resolve data discrepancies that could jeopardize coverage for millions who sought health insurance on the federal exchange HealthCare.gov, according to a watchdog report on the still-rocky implementation of ObamaCare. 

Though the system’s troubles have faded from the headlines since the problem-plagued launch last October, a report from the health department inspector general provided the first independent look at widespread issues the government is having effectively fact-checking the information applicants are putting in the system. 

According to the report, the administration was unable to resolve 2.6 million so-called “inconsistencies” out of a total of 2.9 million such problems from October through December 2013. “

So much for that magic 7 million number huh?

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4. Once again, the Obama admin seeks to silence potential whistleblowers with threats.

Also From FoxNews  “A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.

In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.

“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”

The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.”

Wait a minute…. Baptists have a security force?

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5. Yesterday I posted a video about allegations of vote buying against the Cochran campaign in Mississippi. Here’s a very detailed breakdown of the evidence so far.

From RedState  “An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats.

Before I get into the weeds of what is in the audio interview and transcript, which are both below, let me set up the stage a bit. What is alleged to have occurred is illegal and very serious business. Under Mississippi law the alleged crimes could lead to Thad Cochran being removed from the Senate. Everything that follows comes from sources either on the ground in Mississippi, or those working closely with them.”

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News/Politics 7-1-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. As I’m sure you’ve heard, the Supreme Court sided with Hobby Lobby over the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate. Despite that fact the ruling was a narrow one tailored to this case, and not the doom and gloom opening of the flood gates they’d like you to believe, the political left is losing their minds over it. While they’re a bit over-dramatic, it’s still fun to watch. 🙂

From HotAir  “I imagine the horrified shrieks that rose from the streets outside the Supreme Court on Monday as the decision in the Hobby Lobby case began to filter out into the crowd of liberal observers was reminiscent of those poor souls who watched helplessly as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire claimed the lives of 146 young, female garment workers.

In fact, the similarities are eerie. It seems that liberal commentators have convinced themselves that, just as was the case in 1911, the courts and the country have deemed women to be of lesser value than their male counterparts. The distinction between these two eras, of course, is that while that argument could be supported in 1911, it exists only in the heads of progressives in 2014.

NBC News journalist Pete Williams, an accomplished reporter who is not prone to indulge in speculation, went out of his way to insist repeatedly that the Court’s decision in this case was a narrow one. He noted that the decision extends only to the specific religious objections a handful of employers raised about providing abortifacients (as opposed to contraceptives). Williams added that Justice Anthony Kennedy allowed in his concurring opinion that the federal government can pay for and provide that coverage if employers would not.

The Federalist published a variety of other observations about this ruling which indicate that it was narrowly tailored to this specific case. The Court ruled that Hobby Lobby and other employers could not simply drop health coverage in order to avoid mandates. This decision does not apply to other government mandates like those requiring employers cover vaccinations. Finally, if the will of the public in the form of an electoral mandate creates a groundswell of support for a government-funded program which provides access to abortifacients, then that would be perfectly constitutional.”

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2. The Court also ruled against forced unionization of home care workers.

From TheFreeBeacon  “The Supreme Court ruled Monday in Harris v. Quinn that politicians can no longer force family members caring for disabled relatives into public sector unions.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court found the state of Illinois violated the constitution when imprisoned former Gov. Rod Blagojevich agreed to funnel a portion of home healthcare worker checks to political allies SEIU and AFSCME. The unions collected more than $50 million from about 20,000 such people over a five-year period.

The decision, authored by Samuel Alito, did not completely limit the ability of public sector unions to collect dues from employees who do not want to join unions. However, the court recognized a category of “partial public employees” and ruled that fees cannot be forcefully extracted from these people.

“PAs are much different from public employees,” Alito’s decision read. “Unlike full-fledged public employees, PAs are almost entirely answerable to the customers and not to the State, do not enjoy most of the rights and benefits that inure to state employees, and are not indemnified by the State for claims against them arising from actions taken during the course of their employment.”

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3. Despite his and his supporters claims about his legal prowess and constitutional scholarliness, Obama continues to lose in court on constitutional issues. It’s almost like they’ve over-hyped the guy. 🙄

From TheWashingtonTimes  “President Obama suffered two final defeats in the Supreme Court on Monday, capping a 2013-2014 term in which the justices delivered several judicial hits to the White House while taking a firm stand against the unchecked power of the state.

The administration’s losses on Obamacare rules and compulsory union dues served as a rebuke on the Supreme Court’s final day after months of judicial decisions to rein in big government on issues such as snooping without a warrant, campaign finance restrictions and Mr. Obama’s recess appointment powers.

Just as damning was the way the court ruled in some of those cases. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. corralled unanimous votes on privacy and recess appointments — cases that dealt stinging defeats to Mr. Obama, himself a lawyer and former lecturer on constitutional law.

In the more than five years that Mr. Obama has been in office, the court has rejected the government’s argument with a 9-0 decision 20 times. During the eight years each in the administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the government lost on unanimous votes 15 times and 23 times, respectively. That puts the Obama administration on pace to greatly exceed recent predecessors in terms of judicial losses.”

Don’t believe the hype.

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4. Maybe part of Obama’s problem is he speaks a different language, the language of despotism.

From Hoover.org  “Long before 1984 gave us the adjective “Orwellian” to describe the political corruption of language and thought, Thucydides observed how factional struggles for power make words their first victims. Describing the horrors of civil war on the island of Corcyra during the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” Orwell explains the reason for such degradation of language in his essay “Politics and the English Language”: “Political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.”

Tyrannical power and its abuses comprise the “indefensible” that must be verbally disguised. The gulags, engineered famines, show trials, and mass murder of the Soviet Union required that it be a “regime of lies,” as the disillusioned admirer of Soviet communism Pierre Pascal put it in 1927.

Our own political and social discourse must torture language in order to disguise the failures and abuses of policies designed to advance the power and interests of the “soft despotism,” as Tocqueville called it, of the modern Leviathan state and its political caretakers. Meanwhile, in foreign policy the transformation of meaning serves misguided policies that endanger our security and interests.”

“No foreign policy crisis, however, is more illustrative of the “regime of lies” and abuse of language to serve “indefensible” aims than the conflict between Israel and the Arabs. The Arabs’ aim, of course, is to destroy Israel as a nation, a policy they have consistently pursued since 1948. Since military attacks have failed ignominiously, an international public relations campaign coupled to terrorist violence has been employed to weaken Israel’s morale and separate Israel from her Western allies. An Orwellian assault on language has been key to this tactic.”

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News/Politics 6-4-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. The more we know, the worse it gets….

From CNN  “Former Army Sgt. Evan Buetow was the team leader with Bowe Bergdahl the night Bergdahl disappeared.

“Bergdahl is a deserter, and he’s not a hero,” says Buetow. “He needs to answer for what he did.”

Within days of his disappearance, says Buetow, teams monitoring radio chatter and cell phone communications intercepted an alarming message: The American is in Yahya Khel (a village two miles away). He’s looking for someone who speaks English so he can talk to the Taliban.

“I heard it straight from the interpreter’s lips as he heard it over the radio,” said Buetow. “There’s a lot more to this story than a soldier walking away.”

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2. The President says Congress was briefed. The facts say otherwise.

From Politico  “House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on Tuesday said that Congress hadn’t heard from the Obama administration since 2011 on the possibility of a prisoner swap with the Taliban.

The Michigan Republican also cast doubt on the administration’s claims that it had to act due to Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health, saying, “Their public rhetoric does not match the facts on the ground.”

President Barack Obama, speaking in Poland earlier Tuesday morning, said administration officials “have consulted with Congress for quite some time” about the possibility of a prisoner exchange.

But Rogers, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said Congress hadn’t heard anything from the White House in years and that the administration only informed them of the deal after it had already taken place.”

Harry Reid says he was told, but he can’t remember when exactly. Sure Harry. 🙄

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3. And since I mentioned Reid….

From TheWashingtonTimes   “A leader of the Tea Party Patriots filed an ethics complaint Monday against Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for “abuse of political power” in his crusade against Republican mega-donors Charles and David Koch.

“It’s been generations since a member of the Senate has abused the power of his office to attack private citizens the way Harry Reid has sought to vilify Charles and David Koch,” said Tea Party Patriots co-founder Jenny Beth Martin.

Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, has regularly spoke on the Senate floor about the need to rein in spending by the Koch brothers, which he says has undermined the democratic process in America. Ms. Martin accused Mr. Reid of “abusing his office in pursuit of naked political purposes.”

“Reid’s repeated and mean-spirited attacks violate federal laws and Senate rules against using taxpayer-funded resources for partisan politics and he knows it, yet he repeatedly takes to the floor of the Senate and the media to attack those with whom he disagrees — and then turns around and devotes the Senate floor to a ‘talk-a-thon’ on a major donor’s key issue of climate change,” she said.”

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4. This is fighting terrorism Obama style. First you release 5 of the worst international terrorists out there, then you pursue made up terrorists at home.

From Yahoo  “The United States is reviving a law enforcement group to investigate those it designates as domestic terrorists, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.

Following hate-motivated shootings such as the one at a Jewish Community Center in Kansas City, Missouri in April, federal prosecutors have pressed the need to coordinate intelligence about such criminals on a national level, Justice Department officials said.

The Department of Justice will reconstitute a task force that was originally formed after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing but dissolved after the Sept. 11, 2001 hijacked plane attacks as law enforcement agencies focused on threats from militants abroad.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement that the United States remains concerned about threats from Islamic extremists, but the group will focus on other motives for attacks within U.S. borders.”

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5. This one will be interesting to watch for anyone who works in a state they don’t live in.

From HotAir  “A rather wonky interstate commerce case has been granted a writ of certiorari and will be heard by the Supreme Court during the fall session. The reason this particular petition should interest you is that it has the potential to affect so many people, specifically those who derive income from any sources outside the state where they live. As explained in this Forbes article, the fundamental question being put to the court is as follows:

Does the United States Constitution prohibit a state from taxing all the income of its residents — wherever earned — by mandating a credit for taxes paid on income earned in other states?

In this case, a married couple, the Wynnes, reported taxable net income of approximately $2.7 million. More than half of that amount represented a share of earnings in an S corporation with operations in several states. The Wynnes claimed a credit on their Maryland tax returns for taxes paid to 39 other states but not for any county or local government taxes. The State of Maryland denied the credits and issued a notice of deficiency and the Wynnes appealed. At a hearing, the assessment was affirmed.”

“So the Wynnes lost the first two rounds in court, even though they were apparently taxed by the states where the income was generated and then taxed again in Maryland But they then amended their original request, asking the courts to answer the question, “whether a state had the unconditional right to tax all income based on residency.”

After the question was changed, the courts have now sided with the Wynnes’.

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News/Politics 4-23-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. I can’t help but wonder if it’s intentional.

From TheNYPost  “A computer meltdown is crippling the nation’s immigration courts — creating an overwhelming backlog of deportation cases, The Post has learned.

The problem began April 12, when five servers that help power a nationwide computer network failed and shut down the entire system, an insider at the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement revealed.

Without access to the electronic records, court proceedings have slowed to a crawl and officials are resorting to old-fashioned methods — including paper, pens and cassette recorders — to keep track of cases.”

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2. Of course she did.

From TheDailyCaller  “When the embattled Kathleen Sebelius announced her intention to resign as secretary of Health and Human Services, she pledged to stay in President Barack Obama’s cabinet until her replacement was confirmed by the Senate.

Turns out, there may be a financial incentive for the former Kansas governor to take her time getting out of Washington.

Next week, Sebelius becomes eligible to receive a government pension and continue certain taxpayer-funded health-care benefits when she hits her five-year employment mark with the federal government, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) policy indicates.

Under OPM rules, Sebelius, who was sworn into office on April 28, 2009, would be eligible to receive these benefits after completing five years of continuous service in the federal government.”

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3. This is why even Democrats won’t vote for this joke of a budget.

From CNSNews  “In the budget proposal he presented to Congress last month, President Barack Obama called for what would be the highest level of sustained taxation ever imposed on the American people, according to the analysis published last week by the Congressional Budget Office.

Under Obama’s proposal, taxes would rise from 17.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product in 2014 to 19.2 percent in 2024. During the ten years from 2015 to 2024, federal taxation would average 18.7 percent GDP.

America has never been subjected to a ten-year stretch of taxation at that level.”

Just put it on the taxpayers’ tab, right Barry?

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4. Meanwhile these same people can audit you and threaten your tax exemptions, just for who you support politically.

From TheAP  “The Internal Revenue Service has paid more than $2.8 million in bonuses to employees with recent disciplinary problems, including $1 million to workers who owed back taxes, a government investigator said Tuesday.

More than 2,800 workers got bonuses despite facing a disciplinary action in the previous year, including 1,150 who owed back taxes, said a report by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration. The bonuses were awarded from October 2010 through December 2012.

George’s report said the bonus program doesn’t violate federal regulations, but it’s inconsistent with the IRS mission to enforce tax laws.

“These awards are designed to recognize and reward IRS employees for a job well done, and that is appropriate, because the IRS should encourage good performance,” George said. “However, while not prohibited, providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.”

Gee, ya think? 🙄

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5. The Supreme Court dealt a blow to Affirmative Action fans yesterday. Justice Sotomayor, being a liberal and an AA beneficiary, used it as an opportunity to play the race card. How original. 🙄

Thankfully, Scalia called her on it.

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia faulted Justice Sonia Sotomayor for making what he regards as a “shameful” suggestion that the Michigan voters who decided to ban affirmative action in college admissions were motivated by racism.

Scalia wrote a concurring opinion upholding a 2006 ballot initiative that amended Michigan’s constitution to ban affirmative action.

“As Justice Harlan observed over a century ago, ‘[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,'” Scalia concluded, quoting the dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson. “The people of Michigan wish the same for their governing charter. It would be shameful for us to stand in their way.”

“And then, the Parthian shot: “And doubly shameful to equate ‘the majority’ behind [the constitutional amendment] with ‘the majority’ responsible for Jim Crow,” he added in a final footnote, citing the first two pages of Sotomayor’s dissent.”

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News/Politics 1-14-14

What’s interesting in the news today?

1. Every 96 seconds Planned Parenthood ends a life. With the aid of 540.6 million taxpayer dollars.

From CNSNews  “In its latest annual report, released in December,  Planned Parenthood says it did 327,166 abortion procedures in the  course of one year and 2,197 adoption referrals. That works out to  approximately 149 abortions for each adoption referral.

The data comes from an accounting of “patient care” Planned  Parenthood says its “affiliate health centers” did in the year that ran  from Oct. 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2012.

Planned Parenthood says in it new annual report that it received a total of $540.6 million in  government grants and reimbursements for the fiscal year that ended on  June 30, 2013. That accounted for almost 45 percent of the  organization’s total revenue of $1,210.4. “

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2. The Benghazi transcripts  further expose the lies from the Obama admin.

From FoxNews  “Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward. 

 Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief. “

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3. The justices voiced their doubts yesterday on some of the Obama admins claims relating to executive authority.

From TheNYTimes  “In an extended argument that contained large doses of constitutional history and practical politics, the Supreme Court on Monday seemed skeptical of the Obama administration’s contention that it could bypass the Senate to appoint officials during short breaks in the Senate’s work.

Justices across the ideological spectrum appeared prepared to rein in the ability of presidents to make appointments without obtaining the Senate’s advice and consent by invoking the Constitution’s recess-appointments clause, which says “the president shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate.”

“Justice Elena Kagan said the clause may be a “historic relic” from “the horse and buggy era,” when presidents needed the authority to fill vacancies because lawmakers were out of town and could not return on short notice. More recently, she said, presidents of both parties have used the appointment power “as a way to deal, not with congressional absence, but with congressional intransigence, with a Congress that simply does not want to approve appointments that the president thinks ought to be approved.”

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4. Obama deciding to bail out insurance companies will cost taxpayers up to a trillion dollars due to the rollout debacle. Affordable Care Act? I think not.

From TheWeeklyStandard  “Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.”  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers.

For some reason, President Obama hasn’t talked about this particular feature of his signature legislation.  Indeed, it’s bad enough that Obamacare is projected by the Congressional Budget Office to funnel $1,071,000,000,000.00 (that’s $1.071 trillion) over the next decade (2014 to 2023) from American taxpayers, through Washington, to health insurance companies.  It’s even worse that Obamacare is trying to coerce Americans into buying those same insurers’ product (although there are escape routes).  It’s almost unbelievable that it will also subsidize those same insurers’ losses. “

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5. Darryl Issa is saying the Obama admin is waging a war on guns, and like with Fast and Furious, using questionable methods.

From TheDailyCaller  “California Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, accused the Obama administration of waging “a war on guns” after new reports of “rogue” sting operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) conducted during 2013.

Issa spoke to Fox News’ Shannon Bream Sunday about a report by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which claimed that ATF agents operating firearm stings in 6 separate cities “took advantage of the mentally ill, set up stings near churches and schools and made decisions which some claim actually increased crime in their neighborhoods.” Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley sent a letter to ATF Director Todd Jones this week to demand answers on the tactics and how often they’ve been used.”

“This is ‘Fast and Furious’ revisited,” he began, referencing the infamous gun-running operation that saw thousands of small arms fall into the hands of drug cartels. “You finally have a confirmed director, Todd Jones, who was supposed to clean up these operations. And instead — what you see in many of these cases — they’re continuing. They’re continuing to have this be what’s called a ‘rogue organization.’ But I think for the members of the ATF, I want to make sure I make one thing clear. The ATF never acts alone. The FBI and the U.S. attorneys in each of these areas — political appointees — they work hand in hand… This is the president, President Obama’s Department of Justice that continues to support these sting operations, these ‘rogue operations’ as they’re called, that lead to harm in communities.”

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