Category Archives: Law
The President’s Lawn
The president thinks the National Mall is his lawn. He used park service storm troopers to try to keep veterans and everyone else – except illegal immigrants – away from the mall and memorials. Maybe the illegal immigrants were represented by illegal immigrant lawyers.
Lawn Job
Over the weekend veteran groups uprooted park service barricades and dumped them on the White House lawn.
No Defund or Delay
Actually this is more of a matter of , what was I thinking?
These two don’t seem to be having any second thoughts, even though Republican approval is down to 28% and there is no chance Obama would ever sign a bill to defund ObamaCare. Nor will His Highness consider a delay to his train wreck of a rollout which has contributed to his own 37% approval rating.
ObamaCare 404
Republican efforts to stave off ObamaCare may have been unnecessary. The government’s own website seems to be doing a pretty good job of that. People can’t get on the poorly designed site and if they do they can’t get out.
The administration refuses to say how many have signed up.
So, as it stands now you can be fined for failing to buy a product the government can’t provide.
Harry Reid Doesn’t Hate Kids with Cancer
Harry Reid got into trouble with children with cancer last week.
The NIH includes children in some of its cancer research programs. It became a victim of the government shutdown. The House wants to pass bills to fund NIH as well as other popular programs that are being shutdown, but the senate refuses to go along.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “But if you can help one child who has cancer why wouldn’t you do that?” Reid: “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force Base who are sitting at home.” He then went on to call Bash “irresponsible or reckless”.
Reid later apologized but still refuses to pass any bills the don’t include funding for everything including ObamaCare.
Why Harry Doesn’t Want to Help Kids with Cancer
Seth Mandel, in Commentary, thinks this is a strategy to avoid exposing just how much government spending really is non-essential:
“That raises a different question: if Republicans are willing to pass all these spending bills, why won’t they just remove the strings and fund the whole government? And the answer is because they are–intentionally or not–demonstrating just how much of the government is not essential. John Steele Gordon wrote yesterday that the shutdown exposes the waste in the federal government: if most employees are non-essential, what on earth are taxpayers paying all those salaries and benefits for?”
The Atlantic Wire posted the headline, “Come on, no. Harry Reid Doesn’t Hate Kids With Cancer”.
The WSJ’s Best of the Web James Taranto says, “When you feel compelled to answer a question like that, it’s a sign you aren’t winning the argument.”
ObamaCare Subsidy for Congress
You get an ObamaCare subsidy if you make less than 40% of the poverty level. The poverty level bar is lower for persons of Congress. They make $174,000 and get and still get a subsidy.
When the Affordable Care act was being passed late in the night, Republican Senator Charles Grassley got members of Congress to agree to go to the exchanges, just like everyone else, to buy health care.
Except the political class isn’t like everyone else. They get gold-plated coverage mostly paid for by the government. Grassley’s plan meant they would now be liable for thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses.
Congress Gets Its Subsidy
Well, the political class takes care of its own and President Obama got the Office of Personal Management to restore the subsidy. You’d think Republicans would raise a stink about this and try to blame Obama for shutting down the government in order to save subsidies for politicians.
But we didn’t hear that so much. The reason, according to Forbes, is that it was Speaker Boehner, working behind the scenes, who pushed Obama to push to restore the subsidies.
Update: Michael Tanner of Cato Institute points out that 780 companies and 451 unions have received exemptions from ObamaCare.
House Republicans offered an amendment to strip out the ObamaCare subsidy for Congress but the Senate refused to bring it to a vote.
