Category Archives: Law
Nation of Laws
The constitution says the president must take care that the laws be faithfully executed.
David Mamet says our president is a tyrant. Our president says he’s a pragmatist. He also says we are a nation of laws and that he doesn’t have the power to issue executive orders ending deportations.
Except that he did issue an executive order limiting deportations after the Senate voted down the Dream Act. And he just overturned parts of his own health care law by unilaterally issuing waivers to cronies, suspending the employer mandate, and telling insurance companies to stop canceling policies that ObamaCare requires them to cancel.
Other than that he’s a helpless pragmatic bunny.
Nation of Laws
Kevin D. Williamson, in National Review, agrees that Obama is a pragmatist – a lawless pragmatist. He says Obama believes in committees of experts rather than the constitution:
Harry Reid has just helped take the brakes off of President Obama’s lawless agenda, for the purpose of installing friendly judges who will look the other way when his agenda is put to the legal test.
President Obama and his admirers choose to call this “pragmatism,” but what it is is a mild expression of totalitarianism, under which the interests of the country are conflated with those of the president’s administration and his party.
Update:
Professor Johathan Turley says The One We’ve Been Waiting For “has become the very danger the constitution was designed to avoid”.
Nuclear Option
Harry Reid pulled the trigger on the so-called Nuclear Option on Thursday. The move changed a 200 year old rule that allowed filibusters against presidential appointments. Now the Senate can confirm nominees with a simple majority. That can happen with a straight party line vote – the same way ObamaCare was passed.
As usual, hypocrisy is non-partisan here. The Republicans threatened the same thing when President Bush was having trouble getting his judicial nominations confirmed in the Senate.
Nuclear Option
Here are some strong arguments against the Nuclear Option – from Harry Reid, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden.
JFK and a Silly Little Communist
Kennedy Week was a very good week for Ira Stoll’s book Kennedy, Conservative. He makes the case that JFK was an anti-communist supply sider and would be a conservative today.
Maybe. Most of the other 11 year olds I knew in those days were anti-communist too. Not so sure about the supply side part – my peer-group wasn’t up to speed on tax policy. A quick look at Youtube, however, does show Kennedy was for tax cuts to increase employment and cut the deficit.
He was also in favor of civil rights. At least his wife thought so:
“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.”
Which brings us to this piece by Rich Lowry. He complains that James McAuley, in a NYT oped, pins the murder on “Dallas, a city of hate with a death wish in its eye”. (Now we know who shot JR.) Manny Fernanez, also in the NYT, blames it on an “angry anti-Washington culture”.
I think President Kennedy was swell but where can I sign up for this Angry Anti-Washington Culture?
JFK and A Silly Little Communist
The real conspiracy about the Kennedy Assassination is the myth built by the left that sinister right wing forces cut down the young president – when it was really just a silly little Communist.
Young Healthies of Our American Family
In times of trouble President Obama is fond of mistaking “We the People” for “Our American Family”.
Makes sense in a sick sort of way. We’ve had Soccer Moms, NASCAR Dads, and now we have “Young Healthies”.
Young Healthies are the underemployed, student loan indentured, basement dwelling scions of our “American Family”. And while they stand to reap an unhealthy inheritance of $17 trillion in debt, their most immediate concern is to support the lifestyles of the “Old and Sick”.
Traditionally this support has been in the form of the employment tax which covers social security and medicare expenses. Ok, it doesn’t exactly cover them – see the $17 trillion debt inheritance. Anyway, a new turn of the screw has been added. The Young Healthies are required by law to buy insurance they don’t need so that their modest wealth can be transferred to the Old and Sick.
Young Healthies and young Our American Family Go Down Together
For some reason the Young Healthies were enthusiastic about this arrangement in the abstract in 2008, but not so much now that it’s real. That’s too bad, because if the Healthies don’t cough up the money they don’t have, Our American Family goes into a “Death Spiral“.
Young Voter Base
The president is punishing his base. Young voters delivered for him in both elections. Their reward is to be asked to subsidize older and sicker voters through ObamaCare. It’s a scheme to spread the wealth from the relatively poor to the relatively affluent.
Can’t say he didn’t give the “young healthies” an important job. If they don’t sign up, ObamaCare could go into a death spiral. Or not.
Carl Schramm in the WSJ cites this Manhattan Institute study:
A Manhattan Institute analysis of Health and Human Services numbers notes that a 27-year-old male will pay 99% higher premiums under ObamaCare than he would under previously prevailing market rates. One reason is that the law now limits insurers to charging the sickest seniors no more than three times the amount they charge their youngest customers. Given that 64-year-olds use on average six times as much health care as 19-year-olds, the Affordable Care Act forces young people to pay considerably more than the cost of their own care.
Young men and women who pay a fine instead of buying coverage are not making an irrational choice. They know how little care they need and use. They also may be beginning to understand that the high cost of their plans reflects the redistribution of their wealth to older people and a bunch of mandated services that don’t make sense for them.
