From the expected establishment endorsements of the Bush's, first Jeb, then H.W., to panicked conservatives Rubio and Ryan (Rubio's coinciding with Obama's treasonous whispers with Medvedev, and Ryan's lingering budget seeking approval), it seems as though the Party politicians want this primary over before it's done. Why a floor fight over principle is so terrifying in our fast-paced generation that's capable of unifying in a matter of a few months in order to defeat a very defeatable president is beyond me. It's only buying into the establishment and MSM lines to believe otherwise. However, not to dwell on Rubio's or Ryan's decision, it's there's to make like everyone else; but I nonetheless wholeheartedly disagree with it and would offer up a favorite site's sentiment to those making such 'counterproductive' arguments:
I’m still running hard with Santorum because I believe he is the better candidate and if Newt will drop out, it may give him the edge he needs to beat Romney in some of these blue states. I’ve got my fingers crossed. Oh, and as for you who say we’re hurting Romney by not supporting him now, just two words: SHOVE IT!
As theRightScoop went on to explain with one commenter, the primary process isn't hurting Romney...Romney's candidacy is hurting Romney. He's the one who's launched full scale negative attacks on his opponents, yet when conservatives mention this, well, we just need to "get used to it." Could not the same thing be said right back to those siding with the establishment candidate now? Could it also be said that Romney may indeed be the worst candidate to take on Obama? His unlimited flip-flops compete with Obama's, and Romneycare provides cover for this regime. All of this, when the 2012 election could, and should, easily be about core principles, as integral to conservatism as they are American.
It's no wonder with all of this that so many conservatives find camaraderie with Rush's 'mystery friend' as the host read an all-too-familiar sentiment on Friday's program:
"Well, looks like Romney, so I wish us much luck. Look at what happened. The Tea Party rises up, the Tea Party delivers the House of Representatives to the GOP, the Tea Party nearly takes out the Democrat Senate in 2010, and our nominee is gonna be a former RINO governor of Massachusetts who invented Romneycare. Rush, this could be ugly. And if Romney wins, the best we can say is he's not Obama. Which is important, but it's not enough to stem the tide of big government disaster. So the establishment's gonna win again. If Romney loses, which is possible, then everybody who has been trying to warn people about Romney are gonna be blamed for not getting behind him sooner. Like the left, the establishment Republicans can never admit responsibility for their own handiwork. We're all gonna be good soldiers, and we'll fight for our nominee even though they don't ever fight for ours. The Tea Party made this chance possible. The Tea Party did everything, and we get a RINO?"
"George Romney was a disaster. He was successfully blocked by conservatives. Mitt's no different. Mitt Romney is like Nixon. I can't name three serious conservative things he's ever done. I look at these endorsements. Bill Weld, Massachusetts, the Bush family, McCain, every Washington insider and former Republican politician. And they didn't do one thing to deliver the House to the Republicans. They didn't do one thing to help nearly take out the Senate, the Democrat Senate in 2010, they didn't do one thing. They sit there and they take all the spoils, but they didn't do one thing to help. Scary."
"The reason that we've had several wonderful days at the Supreme Court, although who actually knows what they'll do, is because conservatives are fighting the good fight. Conservatives are filing the briefs. Conservatives are making the arguments. Not establishment Republicans. Establishment Republicans don't even think the guy can be beat. It's frustrating, Rush, whatever progress is made on our side, it's always due to the conservatives, not Republican operatives, not the consultants, not the insiders, not the establishment."
As Rush concluded, "My friend obviously was hoping for a far more conservative nominee than an establishment guy. He doesn't have anything against Romney personally. It's not that. This is strictly there were so many hopes, the Tea Party, an uprising, conservative grassroots, and there is the old establishment GOP benefiting from it while not doing one thing to assist or to make it happen." Right there with ya, buddy.
And Romney just keeps digging the hole of suspicion and distrust deeper. He's like that pretentiously annoying friend who's not really concerned with how arrogant he comes off. And with the 'grits' and 'y'all' routine in the South, as well as 'trees and cars' and anything else he can think up across the Mid-West, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Romney comes across as the quintessential archetype of a carpetbagger. Just take for instance the gaffes and things that have come to light over just the past few days. Things that present themselves as red meat for effectively illustrating how 'out of touch with the average voter' he is:
On Wednesday, we hear about a joke gone south involving his father and lay offs...hilarious stuff.
Santorum fired back at the end of the week, saying Republicans won't win the presidency by nominating a candidate who jokes about firing people, suggesting that the quip is more evidence that Romney doesn't understand the struggles of working people.
On Thursday, we learn of his poorly timed renovation plans (i.e., tear it down and build a bigger one) for his multi-million dollar Californian beach house, complete with a “car lift” to transport automobiles between floors and his own lobbyist to shepherd through the San Diego bureaucracy.
Rich? Yep. Bad? Nope, not at all. Out of touch? Probably so. This just feeds right into the Left's Occupy line of referring to Mitt as Mr. 1%...how many times does Rush have to say it?!
Then on Friday, a double scoop of dupe: Free Republic recalls that lovelySalon piece, divulging campaign contributions paid to many of Romney's endorsers prior to the primaries; and reminding us just in time for Politico to call out the more obvious shilling Karl Rove is doing for Romney on Fox News.
As a political analyst on Fox News, Karl Rove is often asked to play the role of hypothetical adviser to various GOP candidates. And no matter how hard Sean Hannity teasingly tries to get him to admit who he supports, he refuses to endorse one. When he riffs about what a “terrific speech” that Mitt Romney made in November, he’ll make sure to interject, “I’m not here to make his case.”
But it’s hard to miss, among all of Rove’s Fox commentary and Wall Street Journal columns, that he seems to favor one candidate over the others. Over the last year, Rove has used these powerful media platforms to systematically undercut every rising Romney challenger in succession while lauding Romney’s victories as “historic.” The pattern has gotten under the skin of the supporters of Romney’s challengers, who argue that Rove has more ties to Romney and his super PAC than he is disclosing to his media audiences, and thus has no business assessing the Republican primary race as a purportedly independent analyst.
As Abie Rubin at RedState ponders with the rest of conservatives, "It is fascinating to watch more and more politicians come out and endorse Romney as his momentum builds and without a single exception they fail to include in their support for Romney the slightest mention of his governing record. They will tout his electability, organization, private business record, and so on, yet totally skip over his political experience despite it being the basis of his presidential run." Fascinating and frustrating, seeing as his governorship was not only lacking in conservatism, but was a disaster from his signature Romneycare to his tax policy, from the state's sluggish economy to the trampling on traditional values, all under Mitt's direction. Sticking with Rubin for a moment, she contrastingly points out in another piece that "Santorum has put forward an economic plan, a path to increase our energy, and his views on foreign policy," but "there’s one plan which he hasn’t put forward, as the others have, and I commend him for that." She's referring to the fact that Santorum has managed to both talk about these strict governmental functions, while also maintaining a moral core and discussing those distinctly American values, that some in the establishment feel "it’s not too popular especially amongst the youth and thereby bidding goodbye to a normal society." And this sentiment brings us full circle, reflecting both Rush's friend's feeling, as well as theRightScoop's point, that principles and values should matter, and they should be a distinct part of this election.
Aside from the very poignant argument that Santorum made to John King of CNN yesterday about how Paul Ryan "got it wrong" with the Romney endorsement, he also makes a compellingly clear case for why he not only must continue in this race, but why we need a genuine conservative as our nominee:
Well, our plan is to take this — take this all the way. We believe that a conservative will be the nominee of the party coming out of the convention and that if we don’t have a conservative, we’ll end up with the same situation we’ve had over the past 30 years, that over 100 years now, there’s only one Republican that’s ever defeated a sitting Democratic incumbent president, one.
And it’s the one time we ran a strong conviction conservative. In the — in the face of the party saying, no, no, no, we need a moderate, we need to win, we need to win, they always say that. And we always lose. And the one time we didn’t listen to the establishment, the Washington insiders, we had Ronald Reagan.
So right, folks. Let's think this out before anticipation gets the better of us. Principled conservative conviction can and will win this...anything less is a crap shot...and conservatives know it.
TheFoundry: This April Fool’s Day, the joke is on all of us. That’s because as of April 1, the U.S. now has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.
Our high corporate tax rate has long made the U.S. an uncompetitive place for new investment. This has driven new jobs to other, more competitive nations and meant fewer jobs and lower wages for all Americans.
Other developed nations have been cutting their rates for over 20 years. The U.S. did nothing.
TheFoundry: If you think a “global minimum tax” sounds like a whacky conspiracy theory, you’d be wrong. According to Vice President Joe Biden, it’s the answer for helping to spur manufacturing in the United States. Here are his remarks at a campaign event in Davenport, Iowa (in which he addresses the president of a manufacturing company):
"For years, American manufacturers have faced one of the highest tax rates in the world. We want to reduce that by over 20%. We want to drop the rate, particularly, for high-tech manufacturers like you, Mr. President, even further than the 20%."
"We want to create a global minimum tax, because American taxpayers shouldn’t be providing a larger subsidy for investing abroad than investing at home."
The problem is, America’s corporate tax rate is already exceedingly high — on Sunday, it will be the highest in the world. President Obama has offered a corporate tax reform plan that would wreak the same kind of harms that Biden’s global minimum tax would bring with it.
And this among four of the lib justices deciding the fate of Obamacare. It's best to just frame this starting with Rush's comments:
"This is a woman who taught law at Harvard. She was the dean of Harvard Law. Which means she's smarter than anybody else. She's smarter than the dean of law at Columbia and she's smarter than the dean at Stanford. She's just as smart as the dean over there at Oxford. There's nobody smarter. When you're the dean of Harvard Law, you're it. And she has no clue. She cannot conceive, she has no concept of the notion that the federal government cannot force citizens to buy anything. By the same token, the government can't force you not to buy anything. Works both ways. So the lawyers are talking about this using the term coercion, coerce people. This compulsory contract, which is an oxymoron. And she's frustrated. She doesn't understand why people don't understand this. She doesn't understand why people think this is unconstitutional. It's a mystery to her. You mean we can't give people health care? I don't understand. Here's how she said it."
Former Dean of Harvard-freakin'-Law School, and this genius says this is a 'gift'. This is what we get with an Obama appointee. Is there any wonder why the law profession has become so reviled?
Ed Henry (Fox News): Why did the President vote for the energy bill in 2005 as a Senator that had over $2 billion in tax breaks for the oil industry. They were making a lot of money then too.
Jay Carney (WH propagandist): What I can tell you Ed is that the oil and gas companies in this country are making record profits, now, in 2012. The price at the pump is very high and that is plenty of incentive for these companies to continue drill, to continue to explore, to continue to develop energy sources here in the United States and abroad. There is no reason for the American taxpayer to subsidize that activity.
Henry: So why’d he vote for it?
Carney: I haven’t examined the vote, or what the prices were at the time, or the whole bill it was attached to. What I know and what the President knows is that this year, 2012, when we are seeing high prices at the pump, high prices in the international oil markets and high profits for the oil and gas companies, there is no reason to continue these kinds of subsidies. Take that argument to the people, I don’t think they’ll go along with it.
There he goes with the 'subsidies' again...always spinning.
GatewayPundit: Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli agreed with Greta Van Susteren that the entire Obamacare Law must be thrown out because Democrats removed the severability clause in the bill when they voted on it in the US Senate. Therefore, if the Supreme Court decides that the individual mandate is illegal, then they must throw out entire law.
This should have been argued, but assuredly it will be a effective consideration.
And while the Obama team says there are no contingency plans for health care, Steven Den Beste at HotAir says, "know what the enemy’s strategy is," and as we've always known, that's single payer:
There are three basic questions that the Supreme Court is trying to decide.
1. Should they decide now, or wait? (That was argued on Monday.)
2. If they decide now, then is the individual mandate unconstitutional? (Tuesday.)
3. If the mandate is unconstitutional, then is it severable from the rest of the law? In other words, if SCOTUS strikes down the individual mandate, does that invalidate the rest of the law? (Wednesday.)
For Obama, the ideal outcome is 1. Now. 2. Unconstitutional. 3. It’s severable.
In other words, the mandate goes away but the rest of the law remains in force. That makes private health insurance economically unviable, and the insurance companies will all exit the business or they will go out of business. At which point the Democrats will try to implement “single payer”, a total nationalization of the entire health care industry, financed by a huge rise in taxes.
Single Payer is what they always wanted. The bill wasn’t originally written that way, though, because they knew that even with twin Democratic majorities, there was no chance of passing it. So they included the mandate instead.
If the mandate is struck down, then Congress will have to act. There won’t be any way to repeal the rest of the law because Obama will veto, and the Senate will sustain the veto. The only thing he will agree to is implementation of single payer.
However, Beste recognizes the same thing that Cuccinelli tells Greta:
And it’s going to be interestiing, because Congress didn’t include a severability clause in the ACA, which is usually routine boilerplate. It was in there originally, but got removed before the law was passed. The Obama administration is going to argue that nonetheless it should be treated as if there was a severability clause, despite evidence of Congressional intent to the contrary.
If the mandate is declared unconstitutional on a law that has no severability clause, even if the 111th Congress's crooked attempt was to fast-track single payer, the reality of the matter dictates that the Obamacare law must be thrown out in total.
TheHill: President Obama used a Rose Garden speech Thursday to ratchet up pressure on Congress to repeal billions of dollars in tax breaks for the largest oil companies, casting Republican opponents of the measure as pawns of Big Oil.
“Today, members of Congress have a simple choice to make,” Obama said. “They can stand with the big oil companies, or they can stand with the American people.”
The legislation, authored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), is expected to fail, amid opposition from Republicans and oil-state Democrats. But Obama and Senate Democrats have rallied around the bill as gas prices are soaring, reaching a national average of $3.92 per gallon on Thursday.
“Right now, the biggest oil companies are raking in record profits –- profits that go up every time folks pull up into a gas station. But on top of these record profits, oil companies are also getting billions a year, billions a year in taxpayer subsidies, a subsidy that they’ve enjoyed year after year for the last century,” Obama said.
“Think about that. It’s like hitting the American people twice. You’re already paying a premium at the pump right now. And on top of that, Congress, up until this point, has thought it was a good idea to send billions of dollars more in tax dollars to the oil industry.”
Obama’s remarks touched on common themes repeated in a slew of recent energy speeches...
Common themes of class warfare, anti-capitalism, etc. But past the rhetoric for a moment, let's look at the illogic: Let’s lower gas prices by raising taxes on Big Oil. Who thinks that's going to lower gas prices (aside from liberal drones)? Certainly not the average American feeling the pain at the pump, particularly those who have the common sense to understand how taxes on any product are passed down to the consumer. And thankfully, not the U.S. Senate either, as they voted to defeat the bill an hour later...
TheHill: The Senate on Thursday thwarted Democratic plans to strip billions of dollars in tax breaks from the largest oil companies, just an hour or so after President Obama urged the chamber to kill off the deductions.
Lawmakers voted 51-47 to block Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-N.J.) bill. Sixty votes were needed to advance the measure.
Two Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, both from Maine — crossed party lines and voted to repeal the tax breaks. Four Democrats — Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Mary Landrieu (La.), Ben Nelson (Neb.) and Jim Webb (Va.) — voted against the bill.
The outcome of the vote was not a surprise, given that a similar plan failed 52-48 last May. But the decision to take another shot at passing the bill— and the decision by the White House to wade into the fight — underscore the political salience of rising gasoline prices in an election year.
Predictable for the RINO Maine twins, but seemingly a moment of clarity with the four Democrats (or political expediency, but we'll take it in this instance). Aside from those political alignments, let's now factor Obama's rhetoric back into the way this argument is being framed...and SayAnythingBlog has framed it quite clearly:
First, saying that oil companies “receive” subsidies from the federal government is just plain inaccurate. We can argue about whether or not it’s good policy, or whether it’s policy that is overly friendly to the oil industry, but letting the oil industry keep more of their own money is not the same thing as giving them other people’s money.
Second, however you want to characterize these “subsidies” (or, more accurately, tax deductions), eliminating them is only going to raise the cost of doing business for oil companies. That means less development, fewer jobs and higher prices for the products they provide, most notably gasoline.
A president can’t both declare a policy war on the oil industry and claim he wants to make the prices of the goods that industry provides cheaper.
Indeed.
ADDENDUM: The Menendez bill is the same junk that they tried last year...with one exception: back then, they openly admitted that their tax hikes would have no impact on gasoline prices!
That's the big question. And moving from a riveting Day 2, Heritage Senior Legal Fellow Hans von Spakovsky fills us in on Day 3 of Supreme Court arguments:
The issue of severability was the leading argument...
WashingtonExaminer: Justices on the U.S. Supreme Court this morning considered what to do with the rest of President Obama's national health care law if its individual health insurance mandate is struck down. Though it was difficult to get a clear read on their thinking as they asked tough questions of all sides, the Court seemed open to the possibility of overturning the entire law.
Paul Clement, arguing for the 26 states challenging the law along with the National Federation of Independent Business, started off the arguments by suggesting the Court look at whether Congress would have passed the law without the individual mandate.
The more liberal justices argued that there were plenty of elements of the law that had nothing to do with the mandate.
Clement argued, however, that so many provisions of the law were so interconnected that if they got rid of all of them, they'd only be left will a hollowed out shell of a bill, which they never would have passed. He said it's called the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" and the mandate is a key to what makes it affordable.
Deputy Solicitor General Edwin Kneedler, on behalf of the Obama administration, was arguing that only the ban on pre-existing conditions and cap on the cost of policies should be turned down if the mandate was gone. But interestingly, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued this could be seen as more “extreme” than simply striking down the whole law.
Let me make one correction... 'supposedly' affordable at the end of that fourth paragraph. In discussing the severability, Scalia confronted the unrealistic idea that the Court go through each provision of the 2700 page document and decide each one's fate (with the defense, again, laughed at).
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Toobin, referring yesterday to the defense of Obamacare and the law's fate as a "train wreck," today up's the ante to a "plane wreck," and says the individual mandate is "doomed."
However, there remains the lingering question: Will the body of Obamacare lurch on if the heart (i.e., the mandate) is ripped out? That monstrous zombie has yet to be determined.
ADDENDUM:Heritage's Todd Gaziano rejoins us for part II of Day 3:
Where the hell is Holder and the Department of Justice? That's rhetorical...we know. Sitting silent.
FoxNation: J. Christian Adams, a former Justice Department Attorney, talked to Brian Kilmeade on Fox & Friends this morning about why he felt the New Black Panther party were being ignored by Attorney General Eric Holder, despite their illegal threat to 'capture' Trayvon Martin shooter George Zimmerman.
You won't hear a word out of Holder over this, just as you won't hear a word from Obama over Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Black Panther), as WeaselZippers recalls, "reliving his glory days as “defense minister” of the Black Panther chapter he co-founded in 1968":
This hoodies-and-skittles symbolism (which is antithetical when you're actions reflect bully tactics) is looking a lot like an Occupy 2.0: more social diversions from the radical utopian statists direction of our current government.
ADDENDUM: Oh, and thank Spike for this one foolishness...
FoxNews: An elderly Florida couple have been forced to move into a hotel after their home address was wrongly tweeted as belonging to the man who shot teen Trayvon Martin.
The tweets were traced back to a man in California and the address was also reportedly retweeted by director Spike Lee to his almost 250,000 followers.
The couple, aged 70 and 72, have been harassed with hate mail, been hassled by media and had scared neighbors questioning them since the tweet, their son Chip Humble told the Orlando Sentinel.
While most were preoccupied with the Trayvon case, and the rest were listening to the Supreme Court hearings on Obamacare, the Executive branch was once again subversively flexing its muscle, via the EPA imposing the first greenhouse gas caps on power plants. Time to get ready for more brownouts and rolling blackouts?
TheWashingtonPost: The Environmental Protection Agency will issue the first limits on greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants as early as Tuesday, according to several people briefed on the proposal. The move could end the construction of conventional coal-fired facilities in the United States.
The proposed rule — years in the making and approved by the White House after months of review — will require any new power plant to emit no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced. The average U.S. natural gas plant, which emits 800 to 850 pounds of CO2 per megawatt, meets that standard; coal plants emit an average of 1,768 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt.
They forgot to mention 'behind closed doors' after "years in the making" and "months of review," as well as placing the adjective 'almighty' before the "White House." Look at how this provision narrowly targets coal-fired plants, which are the main source of electricity generation in America.
Anticipating the rule, the EPA began axing coal permits...and at least one federal judge is speaking out about it...
Politico: A federal judge slammed an Obama administration gambit to revoke mountaintop mining permits Friday, saying the EPA invented authority where there was none.
“EPA resorts to magical thinking” to justify nullifying permits issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for Arch Coal Inc.’s Mingo Logan mine in West Virginia, wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington, D.C.
Berman Jackson said the EPA’s effort to revoke permits already issued by the Army Corps lacked the backing of any statutory provision or regulation. “It posits a scenario involving the automatic self-destruction of a written permit issued by an entirely separate federal agency after years of study and consideration,” the opinion says.
“Poof! Not only is this nonrevocation revocation logistically complicated,” the ruling said, but it also robs industry of the only way they can possibly measure compliance with the Clean Water Act — a permit.
But you see the pattern with this administration, even beyond past ones who've also participated in this destruction of industry? They hit an energy sector with some BS environmental argument, then attempt to regulate it out of existence with no backup plan, just green rhetoric attached to nonexistent alternatives, even after 40+ years of repeating the same damn thing! First they hit oil, and that lie continues to burst...
...and now they're targeting our electricity? Yep...if you decrease the production of oil and electricity, then all energy rates will indeed 'necessarily skyrocket'. Utopian motives are behind this, folks, because it's not logically thought-out policy.
ADDENDUM: And just to remind you how long the utopianism has been ruminating in that cranium, here's a 2007 piece that precedes the "necessarily skyrocket" comment in '08...
U.S. President Barack Obama covers the microphone as he arrives at the plenary session of the Nuclear Security Summit at the Coex Center in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, March 27, 2012. (via WeaselZippers)
On Tuesday, Obama began the day with this image, mocking legitimate concerns about his national defense motives if, God forbid, he is reelected.
Later, while in Seoul, South Korea, he tried to BS his way out of the whispers...
AP: President Barack Obama said Tuesday he is not trying to “hide the ball” in negotiations with Russia over U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe, trying to put to rest a controversy over comments to Russia’s leader that were picked up by an open microphone...
“I want to reduce our nuclear stockpiles. And one of the barriers to doing that is building trust and cooperation around missile defense issues,” he said while he and Medvedev made a separate announcement about nuclear materials cleanup on the sidelines of a major security conference here. “And so this is not a matter of hiding the ball,” Obama said. “I’m on record.”
Well it's kind of hard to 'hide the ball' when you've already let the cat out of the bag. This President has perfected the art of backtracking, along with deceiving. Moving on...
TheRightScoop has done an excellent job in compiling the chronology of Obama's long, consistent history of being against the idea of missile defense.
In 2001 Obama told a Chicago public TV host that he did not agree with a missile defense system:
Fast forward to 2008 where Obama pledges to cut investments in ‘unproven’ missile defense systems:
And fast forward to yesterday where Obama tells Medvedev that he’ll have more flexibility on solving missile defense systems, according to Jake Tapper:
Critics have lined up to comment on this disturbing exchange:
Krauthammer focuses on 'last election'
Bolton: Obama's comment was a 'firebell in the night'
PJtv's Trifecta (Bill Whittle, Scott Ott & Stephen Green): Did President Obama's open mic remarks to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev constitute impeachable treason, or is he just one practical politician talking with another?
I think it's important to repeat Scott Ott's recitation of the U.S. Constitution, and lay out the entire reading of those specified Articles (BOLD is my emphasis in relation to this particular incident):
ARTICLE III, Section 3: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
ARTICLE II, Section 4: The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.
We know who the Russians are, we know the former KGB ties that are instilled in their leadership...has Obama not given 'Aid and Comfort' to them? And on 'Testimony' of well over 'two Witnesses'...how about being broadcast across the entire Nation?! Well beyond any entanglements of a birther argument, here's the clear-cut path to the same impeachable goal...is anyone listening? But rest assured, our shameful elite Washington ruling class won't even consider this.
With Day 1 down, we once again return to the Heritage Foundation's Todd Gaziano to help frame Day 2:
BusinessInsider: The Supreme Court just wrapped up the second day of oral arguments in the landmark case against President Obama's healthcare overhaul, and reports from inside the courtroom indicate that the controversial law took quite a beating.
Today's arguments focused around the central constitutional question of whether Congress has the power to force Americans to either pay for health insurance or pay a penalty.
According to CNN's legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, the arguments were "a train wreck for the Obama administration."
"This law looks like it's going to be struck down. I'm telling you, all of the predictions including mine that the justices would not have a problem with this law were wrong," Toobin just said on CNN.
Toobin tried to put a little bit of a spin to entice the liberal audience with the Roberts comment, and of course these are all assumptions at this point, but the liberal media is in shear panic mode over the direction of today's proceedings and the skepticism among many of the justices. This is not just going to be the cake walk they'd hoped for.
ADDENDUM: More Levin analysis, via theRightScoop, "Levin plays clips from today and explains why the Solicitor General’s argument to regulate your inactivity amounts to nothing less than Totalitarianism." And similarly, he expounds on his website:
The government is trying to make the argument that because you may eventually need something, such as food, that the government can tell you what to do and how to get it. The "Anticipatory participation," argument can't work because then government would control the whole field. The Obama Administration is pursuing Obamacare because they see it not as a benefit for healthcare, but as a power grab opportunity that helps advance the cause of statism.
ADDENDUM II: Here's more of those hard-hitting questions of Day 2...
Justice Kennedy expresses the concern of the mandate fundamentally changing the relationship of a citizen with the government.
Justice Roberts: Mandate cell phones?
Justice Alito: Mandate burial services?
Justice Scalia 'benchslaps' Solicitor General Verrilli with the Constitution!
ADDENDUM III: This is great. A new RNC ad, with a description via Freedom's Lighthouse:
Here is a new ad put out by the Republican National Committee (RNC) on the difficulty Don Verrilli, Jr. – the lawyer representing Barack Obama’s “ObamaCare” Health Law – had in making the case for “ObamaCare” before the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday. Many on the Left are horrified at the job Verrilli did yesterday, choosing to focus on him rather than obvious reality that ObamaCare is unconstitutional. It’s just hard to defend, a “tough sell,” which is the point of this ad.
Dan Miller does a great job of filling in the expanse of details occurring over the past week in the identity politics playing out in the month-old shooting death of black Florida teen, Trayvon Martin, so I'll refer you to his knowledge-base for those particulars. However, in as few words as I can muster, 'race-baiting media circus' comes to mind. And coincidentally timed too, just as the fever-pitch of the Fluke war-on-women fallacy subsides to mask the government's overreach in mandates on religious institutions violating the First Amendment, so now this local matter becomes the media distraction of the moment as our federal administration is dragged into the High Court to challenge the constitutionality of its benchmark edict. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but It's quite peculiar which stories the news media decides to sensationalize, as opposed to objectively presenting 'the news'.
I can't help wondering that if we heard this report first...
...then perhaps we could have avoided the Duke lacrosse-like witch-hunt that's ensued. Instead, we've ended up with our post-racial President 'racially' personalizing this story well beyond the Gate's 'Beerfest': "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon..."
...we've got anyone from GOP presidential candidates on down being duped into making judgment calls based on media assertions...
...we've got the usual race hustlers taking their place in all of this misinformation to create an attempted Rodney King/O.J. Simpson 2.0 case...
...and why the HELL is THIS being allowed in the United States of America?!
Silence from the nation's leaders, including the President...
All of this because the media decided to run with the narrative of 'another innocent black kid gunned down by an evil, racist white guy'. They had to tweak this one a bit though, after it was discovered that George Zimmerman is a "white hispanic"...oops. And that softened image of the baby-faced Martin in the hoodie that's become synonymous with this case, yeah, that's been photoshop'd. Many of the others are undated, but obviously younger photos of the teen...but that's not skewed reporting, right? Oh, and everyone seems to be cashing in on this controversy as well: the Obama 2012 hoodie, some unfortunate t-shirts by a local FL company, and even Trayvon's own mother seeks to trademark her late son's name!
Has the media asked the President or the New Black Panthers or Jackson or Sharpton about John Sanderson? Or what about the 13-year-old son of Melissa Coon? Or how about Bob and Nancy Strait? Who? Exactly. Crime happens, and it's heinous everytime, despite color or creed. But it's not up to the President of the United States, or for any of these so-called leaders, to pick and choose which cases we should launch into a frenzy over, particularly before knowing the facts. In 2008, I though we were striving for a post-racial America? At points like this, it seems as though we've arrived at a reversed-racial America.
Of course the death of a young person is tragic. That's inarguable. But to cloud the reality of the situation in media sensationalism and race baiting is also a tragedy. And now that this story has leapt into the political circuit, the truth in this case is further mired with agenda-driven incitement. And unfortunately, far too many have taken the plunge into snap judgments condoned by a racialized, media-driven, kangaroo court of public opinion.
ADDENDUM: Thank goodness for voices of reason speaking up!
TheDailyCaller: Former NAACP leader C.L. Bryant is accusing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton of “exploiting” the Trayvon Martin tragedy to “racially divide this country.”
“His family should be outraged at the fact that they’re using this child as the bait to inflame racial passions,” Rev. C.L. Bryant said in a Monday interview with The Daily Caller.
The conservative black pastor who was once the chapter president of the Garland, Texas NAACP called Jackson and Sharpton “race hustlers” and said they are “acting as though they are buzzards circling the carcass of this young boy.”
Preach it, Pastor! They should be outraged...unfortunately, that's hard to see happening when his own mother is attempting to shamelessly trademark his name!
UPDATE: This one's fizzling fast as more evidence comes to light of doctored audio...
From NBC's Today Show (03/27/12):
From Hannity (03/29/12):
...and misleading video...
...on the part of the MSM to progress a narrative of guilt on Zimmerman's behalf, devoid of the evidence. Disgustingly typical.
UPDATE II: Two months later and more evidence piles up in favor of Zimmerman's defense...and against a liberal media who jumped the gun for their own misleading narrative.
UPDATE III: And more evidence just keeps mounting that backs up Zimmerman's account...
ABCNews: Two police reports written the night that George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin said that Zimmerman had a bloody face and nose, according to police reports made public today.
The reports also note that two witness accounts appear to back up Zimmerman’s version of what happened when they describe a man on his back with another person wearing a hoodie straddling him and throwing punches.
In addition, Trayvon Martin’s father told an investigator after listening to 911 tapes that captured a man’s voice frantically callling for help that it was not his son calling for help.
The likes of race-baiters like Sharpton & Jackson, both with a President & a Media propaganda-wing in tow, attempted to recreate a Duke Lacrosse scenario for political gain. Dishonest, disgusting and dismissive.
Here's a quick summation of what basically happened this morning on the first day of Obamacare hearings in the Supreme Court...
Though the top Obama administration's attorney would like to have it both ways, referring to the fine for not purchasing insurance under the mandate as both a “penalty” and a “tax,” at least two justices prodded at this notion to the point of Obama's man being laughed at!
Here's the entire hearing of Day 1 for those interested.
ADDENDUM I: Rick Santorum took to the steps of the Supreme Court following Monday's oral arguments, positioning himself as THE candidate to make the repeal of Obamacare a leading issue in the 2012 race.
ADDENDUM II:Mark Levin led the first couple of segments in Monday's program delving into Day 1 of this most important issue:
TheRightScoop: Mark Levin explains what happened on the first day of Obamacare at the Supreme Court and why Obamacare’s individual mandate penalty cannot be a tax. Not only that, but he also includes audio of Obama in 2009 making a compelling argument that it can’t be a tax and Acting White House Budget Director Jeff Zients agreeing as well.
"The fate of the nation in many respects is being argued in the Supreme Court this week during the Obamacare hearings. The Administration wants to fundamentally change the relationship between the citizen and the federal government by forcing a person to pay into a healthcare plan that they may not want. The individual will no longer have the power to make voluntary, free thinking decisions."
ADDENDUM III:CNSNews points out a noteworthy exchange on Monday in which Justice Samuel Alito forced solicitor general Donald Verrilli to admit that under Obamacare 'free riders' will not be eliminated despite the individual mandate; that is, a select group of people will be permitted to receive health care benefits, but not have to pay for it, not be compelled to purchase insurance, nor will they be required to pay a penalty. Basically, more subsidized freebies. Huh, kinda sounds like class or racial profiling...
FoxNews: President Obama assured Russian President Dmitry Medvedev Monday that he'd have "more flexibility" after the November election, during a conversation that appeared to focus on the touchy issue of missile defense.
Obama, during a sit-down with Medvedev in Seoul, urged Moscow to give him "space" until after November. The conversation was relayed by a TV pool producer who listened to the recording from a Russian journalist.
“This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility,” Obama told Medvedev.
Obama appeared to be asking Medvedev to relay this point to Vladimir Putin, who recently won election to return to the Russian presidency.
“On all these issues, but particularly missile defense … this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space,” Obama said.
Medvedev told the president he understood the “message about space. Space for you …”
After Obama noted he’d have more flexibility in the future, Medvedev told him: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”
