Gotta agree with Jonah here….fire Napolitano.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Sunday that the thwarting of the attempt to blow up an Amsterdam-Detroit airline flight Christmas Day demonstrated that “the system worked.”
Asked by CNN’s Candy Crowley on “State of the Union” how that could be possible when the young Nigerian who has been charged with trying to set off the bomb was able to smuggle explosive liquid onto the jet, Napolitano responded: “We’re asking the same questions.”
Napolitano added that there was “no suggestion that [the suspect] was improperly screened.”
The system worked? You have to be joking. How can she claim it worked when a man was able to get a bomb on board a plane and almost set it off were it not for a bad detonator and some heroic passengers?
Jonah:
That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is “working” when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it’s fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn’t go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have “worked” since it has done everything right.
And Obama picks a winner….again!
also:
Liberal celebration of O’healthcare may be premature as lawsuit challenges begin planning stages
The dancing in the Congressional halls may prove seriously premature as Fox News and the LA Times both report on various challenges in the courts begin taking shape even before the Senate’s final vote early Christmas Eve morning.
Organizations and lawmakers opposed to the health care reform package are getting their legal briefs in a bunch, threatening to challenge the constitutionality of the sweeping overhaul should it make its way to President Obama’s desk.
~~~Two key issues seem to be attracting the bulk of the legal threats: a mandate for individuals to purchase health insurance and the special treatment that states like Nebraska are getting in the bill.
On the first issue, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., on Tuesday renewed the call to examine the constitutionality of whether the federal government can require Americans to purchase a product.
“I don’t believe Congress has the legal or moral authority to force this mandate on its citizens,” Ensign said in a statement, raising what’s known as a “constitutional point of order.” Such procedural challenges are rare and typically lead to a vote.
The non-profit Fund for Personal Liberty, as well as a Virginia-based group called the 10th Amendment Foundation, already have threatened to file suit in federal court over this issue if the health care bill passes.
The Constitution allows Congress to tax, borrow, spend, declare war, raise an army and regulate commerce, among other things. Proponents of the insurance mandate point to the Commerce Clause in arguing that Congress is within its rights to require health insurance and dismiss such potential legal challenges.
But foes say the across-the-board requirement is too broad.
“I personally do not believe the Congress has the authority to enact an individual mandate requiring a person to purchase a product from a private seller,” said Kent Masterson Brown, lead counsel with The Fund for Personal Liberty. “I don’t think the power is there. This is not regulating anything.”
He said his group would be joined by the Washington Legal Foundation in filing suit against the health care bill.
“This thing may be stillborn, even if it passes,” he said.
I’ve mentioned before that a federal mandate on health insurance raises serious legal infringement on 10th Amendment rights. States maintain the rights to tag on their own mandates of medicine and insurance. Indeed, it is these separate mandates that makes one state’s insurance so expensive compared to another… lots of extras the state say *must* be included coverage.
This 10th Amendment crossover is also what makes portability more complex, but certainly not impossible. Base coverage could be provided by all insurance providers, and special riders applicable to each state could be added.
But the question is, what forms the basis to a federal mandate of coverage? Do they take the states’ with the most widespread coverage and make that the minimum, effectively raising the rates of the states with cheaper insurance? And what happens to the federal “minimum” when a state utilitizes it’s 10th Amendment right and tags on a few more ditties of coverage? Are those plans now automatically thrown into the “cadillac” taxable plans?
The 10th Amendment Foundation states any federal plan and mandate is unConstitutional. This newly founded non-profit suggests the alternative of allowing states to come together to form a “Uniform Health Insurance Regulation Act”, similiar to The Universal Commercial Code that governs interstate commerce. Caps on punitive damages, aka tort reform, is also a suggestion to lower medical costs.
The Fund for Personal Liberty, a libertarian non-profit organization, finds the concept of mandating the purchase of health insurance well beyonds the bounds of Constitutional powers. Instead the proponents continually make the erroneous comparison to auto insurance - insurance that is not mandated if you choose not to drive, is a state mandate… not federal, and is in place to provide liability coverage for others… not the individual.
This is certainly not the first foray into the health care overreach by The Fund for Personal Liberty. They are also active in helping fund and advance the Hall v Sebelius lawsuit I posted on August 3rd. To jog your memory, this is a lawsuit of several wealthy seniors who want to opt out of Medicare coverage for private insurance, but found that a Clintonian rule change prohibited that unless they were also willing to forfeit their Social Security payments.
Joining The Fund for Personal Liberty in their challenge against unConstitutional federal health mandates is The Washington Legal Foundation (also occasionally referred to in articles as the Washington Legal Fund. The WLF - sort of the anti-ACLU in their interpretation of law - is active in a wide spectrum of litigation areas over the years, including filing amicus briefs along with the US Chamber of Commerce against. PA Dem governor, Ed Rendell, and the plethora of Gitmo detainee cases (i.e. Hamdi, Hamden, Boumediene, etal). (See some litigation cases and docs here)
The WLF is another entity not new to the health care battles. Since 2007, they have been been battling the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for denying Medicare/Medicaid coverage for numerous cancer uses of ESAs - despite their FDA approval status.
But the battles are not confined to the legality of mandates and states rights. Indeed the very behavior of the various lawmakers on the take, and the others already lining up for special favors are raising the ire in many States, incensed at what results in the states *not* on the take carrying what is an unfair burden.
Other legal objections are emerging in the wake of a concession that Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., won for his state as a condition for his support of the health care bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to provide for full and permanent federal aid for Nebraska’s expanded Medicaid population. It was only one of a slew of hand crafted sweetheart deals for those senators who agreed to support the bill.
But the Nelson deal swiftly drew the ire of Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who has asked his state’s attorney general to give the issue a legal review. He told Fox News on Tuesday that other states can probably bring a “constitutional challenge” over the issue. He said it’s unfair for one state to get special treatment while others pick up the tab.
The non-profit Liberty Legal Institute is poised to assist states that are considering filing suit against the government over the health care bill. The group would not disclose where the suits might come from, but claimed great interest in putting health care reform to the legal test.
“There are a lot of states that are concerned that this violated the 10th Amendment and they are weighing their options,” Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel, said in a statement. The 10th Amendment declares that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution are “reserved” for the states or “the people.”
The Liberty Legal Institute is already on the media radar as those representing Hannah Giles in her defense against ACORN lawsuits. Columnist Giles and her filmmaker cohort, James O’Keefe, catapulted to fame with their undercovers ACORN expose’ series. (See some FA posts here by Curt, Mike’s A, and myself.)
Obviously no challenges can be mounted until there is a law…. rather an ugly truth we need to accept. Depending on whether the chambers go thru the traditional reconciliation of two different bills, or whether they opt for a conference where Pelosi persuades her own to simply embrace the Senate bill as written, it’s going to be Herculean to be on the POTUS desk before the State of the Union. This gives time for more solid brief foundations, and more players to join the rush against blatant Constitutional corruption by this Congress and POTUS.
Finally:
Media cover-up of Democrat responsibility for the mortgage meltdown changed the course of the nation
Rasmussen’s latest tracking poll shows 46% strongly disapprove of Obama’s performance as president. That is compared to 43% who strongly disapproved of George W. Bush at the end of his presidency. But how much worse would Obama’s numbers be (and how much better Bush’s) if not for this Rasmussen finding:
One bright spot in the numbers for the President is that 51% of voters still say former President George W. Bush is more to blame for the nation’s economic woes. Just 41% point the finger of blame at the current President.
In fact, the mortgage meltdown was overwhelmingly a Democrat production, and one in which Barack Hussein Obama played a crucial double role, while George W. strove mightily for 8 years to secure much stronger oversight for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The only media outlet to tell the truth about Bush’s efforts to rein in the Democrat’s reckless government subsidized lending policies was Fox:
Fox was also the only major media outlet to explain why Obama was the second largest recipient of Fannie and Freddie lobbying money, behind only corrupt Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd. It is because there are two sides to the affirmative-action lending scheme that destroyed the U.S. mortgage market, and Obama was crucial to both of them.
The seeds of the meltdown were planted by the Clinton administration’s creative use of lawsuits to force banks to implement affirmative action in the issuing of housing loans. Listen to Clinton Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Andrew Cuomo announcing a multi-billion dollar settlement under which banks would lower their lending standards for low income and minority borrowers. Cuomo explicitly calls it “affirmative action” (at 2:40), and explicitly acknowledges that the loans will not be economically rational (that they will have higher default rates than normal, profitable loans, at 2:20 and 3:00):
But Democratic administrations bent on establishing affirmative actions loans were only half the equation. Clinton needed boots on the ground: minority activist groups who could push lawsuits through the legal floodgates that the Clinton lawyers were opening up. To create a sea change in lending practices, there needed to be this hounding legal threat, and this is where Obama came in.
The boots on the ground were provided by the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN), which was getting legal advice from Obama. This is the “community organizer” work that constitutes Obama’s entire pre-electoral resume. He was helping groups like ACORN use bogus claims of racial victimization to extort, not equal treatment for blacks, but special treatment, on unprofitable terms for the extorted parties. (Obama acknowledges this work at 5:20 above. Background on the Community Reinvestment Act that Obama and ACORN used–signed by President Carter in 1976–begins at 3:50.)
President Clinton signed legislation forcing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to underwrite the unprofitable loans. (Fannie and Freddie are public-private corporations that back private loans with repayment implicitly guaranteed by the federal government. That implicit guarantee has been made explicit through the ongoing bank bailouts). Without this underwriting, the damage from the Obama-ACORN extortion racket would have been limited. The banks that knuckled under would have lost value accordingly, which would have stiffened resistance and probably would have led to the Community Reinvestment Act being declared unconstitutional. But with government underwriting, the financial risk could be passed on to taxpayers, making the banks happy to write as many bad loans as they could find takers for, poisoning the entire financial system, as Obama fully understands.
“Sub-prime lending started off as a good idea,” Obama says (at 6:30 above):
…helping Americans buy homes who previously couldn’t afford to. Financial institutions created new financial instruments that could securitize these loans [losses?], slice them into finer and finer risk categories, and spread them out amongst investors and around the country, as well as around the world. In theory this should have allowed mortgage lending to be less risky and more diversified.
No, mixing bad loans with good was not a way to make mortgage lending less risky, no matter how it was securitized. The securitization just allowed this insane mixing to proceed on a massive scale.
But while Obama knows how the “sub-prime mortgage fiasco” came about, and his own role in it, he constantly blames the disaster on the one person who did the most to try to stop it. Bush tried and failed to roll back the reckless government foray into the backing of uneconomic loans. After the Democrats regained Congress in 2006 they kept expanding government’s exposure to bad loans, a course they are still pursuing today, even after bringing the world economy to the brink of collapse.
If you prefer to read rather than watch, Stanley Kurtz wrote an excellent summary of the ACORN-Fannie-Freddie-Obama ménage for the NY Post in October 2008.
Orson Scott Card wrote a nice pre-election bit on the media’s systematic (and ultimately successful) efforts to keep the American electorate ignorant of Democrat and Obama culpability for the financial meltdown.
Ace of Spades was one of many to note many examples of media cover up as they transpired. One instance here.
So this is how Obama got elected. The media systematically fooled the electorate about who was responsible for the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent recession, to the point where people voting first and foremost on the state of the economy voted for the one man most responsible for creating the financial chaos.
The current Rasmussen poll indicates that the people are still duped and it is hard to see what will ever shake them out of it. People who get their information from our Democrat-controlled media will never have any reason to think they are not blaming the right people. However bad the economy gets, their Democrat information sources will never blame the Democrats, and anyone who has imbibed the anti-conservative bigotry of the established media to the point of being invested in it will resist turning to the alternate media–which is the only available source of honest information.
This dire predicament is exactly what we should expect. A society that allows all of its information industries to be taken over by leftist demagogues has gotten itself into a very bad fix, with no easy way out. (That would be our news media, academia, the big charitable foundations, our professional associations and the government.)
Maybe the collapse of the CO2-warming fraud will wake people up to the fact that our information industries are indeed capable of lying systematically and en masse for years on end. Even in the so-called “hard sciences,” if the players are Democrats, they are prone to be utterly and constantly dishonest: pure political animals, with many rationalizations, but no principles beyond their grab for power.
If it is our quiet sun that alerts the duped masses to the systematic dishonesty of our Democrat elites it will be one more exhibit for the proponents of a providential history of America, and the country will certainly require a re-awoken rationality and moral consciousness if we are to successfully negotiate any serious downturn in global temperature. There will be no more room to throw away our prosperity on attempted usurpations of our republic a la California’s death by public union payoffs or Obama’s mimicry of Hugo Chavez. If the sun stays quiet, nature will strip our prosperity for us, unless we are able to compensate by freeing liberty to maximize progress.
The first step to economic recovery is to end the insane Democrat war against energy. They want an excuse to tax this life-blood of the economy as a way to fund their broader war against liberty (the socialization or communization of everything). As I put it in my Copenhagen post:
We ought to be developing energy resources as fast as humanly possible in preparation for the likelihood of global cooling. Energy development would also save the economy, and even allow the United States, which sits atop the world’s largest fossil energy resources, to pay off the killing debt that Obama is dropping on us like a rain of battleships.
But we can’t do anything until we get rid of the Democrats. According to Rasmussen, that would be accomplished in very short order if we could just wise our fellow countrymen up to one easily verifiable truth: that it is the Democrats who were and are responsible for the financial meltdown, with President Obama being the one figure who worked both sides of this dirty street, generaling the boots-on-the-ground extortion racket on the one hand, while working as a legislator to bill the whole resulting mountain of bad debt to the American taxpayer.
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