Hot Air: Breaking: Lieberman wins, Senate drops Medicare buy-in
Major Garrett’s in the hall outside the Democratic caucus room and tweeting the word from Tom Harkin. Can’t really call this good news, as it makes passage much more likely, so let’s call it slightly-better-than-worst-case-scenario news. No more public option: more…..
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Byron York: Did AmeriCorps official lie about possible First Lady link to IG firing?
Congressional investigators looking into the abrupt firing of AmeriCorps inspector general Gerald Walpin have discovered that the head of AmeriCorps met with a top aide to First Lady Michelle Obama the day before Walpin was removed.
According to Republican investigators, Alan Solomont, then the chairman of the Corporation for National and Community Service, which oversees AmeriCorps, had denied meeting with Jackie Norris, at the time the First Lady’s chief of staff. But recently-released White House visitor logs show that Solomont met with Norris on June 9 of this year (as well as on two earlier occasions). President Obama fired Walpin on June 10 after an intense dispute over Walpin’s aggressive investigation of misuse of AmeriCorps money by Obama political ally Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento, California. more…..
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Human Events: Obama’s Assault on Economic Freedom
Yesterday, President Obama’s two principal economic advisors — National Economic Council Director Larry Summers and Council of Economic Advisors chair Christina Roemer — gave us a glimpse into the continued tumult in the White House’s over how to restart America’s economic engines.
Summers said, “Today, everybody agrees that the recession is over, and the question is what the pace of the expansion is going to be.”
Roemer — asked if the recession is over — said, “”Of course not. For the people on Main Street and throughout this country, they are still suffering, the unemployment rate is still 10 percent.” She also said that the recession won’t be over until unemployment reaches “normal levels,” about 5%. more…..
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FOX: Congressmen Call on Justice Department to Appeal ACORN Ruling
Two congressmen called on the Justice Department Monday to appeal a recent decision in federal district court that found the government’s move to cut off funding to ACORN was unconstitutional.
In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Reps. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., described the Dec. 11 decision by Judge Nina Gershon as “preposterous.”
“The district court’s decision is troubling in many respects, but most significantly, if allowed to stand, it would effectively excise from the Constitution Congress’ express Spending Clause power to refuse to appropriate federal funds to an organization that has shown itself likely to misuse those funds in the future,” the letter reads. “Such a conclusion is nothing short of preposterous.” more…..
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Washington Examiner: Government salaries soar in bad times
Something President Obama said during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in Oslo about making foreign policy is equally applicable at home, namely, that the world must be dealt with as it is, not as we might wish it to be. This was highlighted by a USA Today investigative report published last week that found “federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.” In other words, bad times for the rest of us are good times for the federal establishment. more…..
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Big Government: False Populism, Real Profits for Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
The third step in Robert Creamer’s ten-step plan for imposing universal health care on America, according to his prison memoir, is to attack the private insurance industry: “Our messaging program over the next two years should focus heavily on reducing the credibility of the health insurance industry and focusing on the failure of private health insurance.”
Accordingly, Creamer’s spouse, Rep. Jan Schakowsky—whose campaigns Creamer has assisted through his Strategic Consulting Group—declared at a rally for health care reform in April 2009 that she would “put the private insurance industry out of business.” more…..
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NRO: Harry Reid: Racial Bomb Thrower
It is outrageous to equate those who seek the defeat of Reid’s 2,074-page, $2.5 trillion legislative monstrosity with people who applauded while blacks were chained, robbed of their back-breaking labor, and traded hither and yon like cattle. The fact that Reid uses such insulting, insensitive language shows that he has run out of credible arguments to defend his own proposal.
… Reid presumably intended to hammer Republicans for blockading the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Did he flunk American history? more…..
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American Thinker: We Are In Big Trouble
Our country is in big trouble…huge trouble. It is time for Americans to take a hard look at our values, our conception of justice, and our standards for truth. This piece is intended as a first step in that direction. more…..
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Baldilocks: Why Black Americans Think That the Federal Government is Our Friend
While hanging out yesterday at Ace’s yesterday as he was flogging racists, I happened to mention that many if not most black Americans view the federal government as beneficial and friendly. Some other commenters were surprised and I was surprised at their surprise, because it isn’t difficult to figure out why this is. Whether it’s the Emancipation or the desegregation of the Armed Forces or Brown v. Board or the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the federal government for the most part had seemed to be on the side of the black American as his constitutional rights were being oppressed by state or local governments.
What needs to be spelled, however is what the federal government did in the above-mentioned areas: it legally removed obstacles to the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of Americans who are black. And that is what it was supposed to do. more…..
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-Cnation