Charles Krauthammer: Soft on Terror

The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane — that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration — but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him. more…..

…………….

CNSNews: Obama Wrong on Claim about Supreme Court Ruling on Corporate Campaign Donations

The high court’s 5-4 ruling in a First Amendment case, Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission (FEC), lifted restrictions for companies, unions, and other organizations to make independent expenditures in political campaigns.

The court decision, however does not allow unlimited contributions directly to a campaign or in coordination with a campaign. Nor did the ruling lift existing law that blocks foreign contributions to political campaigns.

In his speech, Obama also claimed the court reversed 100 years of law when, in fact, it overturned a 1990 decision in Austin vs. Michigan Chamber of Commerce. Also, parts of the McCain-Feingold reform bill from 2002 that restricted independent political advertising in the closing days of an election were struck down. more…..

…………….

Red State: Chris Matthews and the Soft Bogotry of Low Expectations

So, after remembering that Obama is Black, Matthews then remembers that black = lesser. This sort of thinking is anathema to the ideas put forward by true deep thinkers and civil rights activists like MLK Jr., yet it is the wheelhouse of the left as Matthews continues to display. more…..

…………….

American Thinker: The Lesson of an Affirmative Action President

Affirmative action was allowed by the Supreme Court as a temporary exception to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution until blacks had the same opportunities others did. It has now been about forty years, and the goal posts have just moved farther and farther Left. Today it’s not just blacks — it’s women, homosexuals, and illegal aliens. And it’s no longer equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, which was the goal of Communism for seventy years in the Soviet Union, until the whole Soviet Empire crumbled as a result.  more…..

…………….

Nate Beeler: Explaining Healthcare Reform

…………….

Washington Examiner: A Speech With Nothing For Everybody

That was some performance Wednesday night by President Obama, delivering one of the longest-ever State of the Union addresses but offering no evidence whatsoever of a willingness to listen to the swelling nationwide chorus of voices of discontent with his policies. For example, rather than acknowledging that clear majorities of Americans have decisively rejected his signature health care reform plan and suggesting a different approach, Obama doubled down on his insistence that Congress approve his proposal to put federal bureaucrats between patients and their doctors. Thus, Obama’s congressional supporters get nothing on which to try to build a credible health care compromise, and his congressional critics come away with nothing beyond vague rhetoric about working together. more…..

…………….

Liberty Works: ObamaNomics: An Endless Downward Spiral

ObamaNomics is built on the assumption that politicians are better stewards of economic resources than the millions of individuals and business enterprises who created those resources.  The Democrats’ plan is to dramatically increase taxation to fund programs through which government can exert greater control over our lives.

But these data show that the private sector’s ability and willingness to generate wealth for government to seize through taxation is rapidly diminishing.  These data show that Obama’s own actions are are literally killing the goose that lays the golden eggs he needs to fund his agenda. more…..

…………….

Judicial Watch Uncovers New Documents Detailing Pelosi’s Use of Air Force Aircraft

“Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel. And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. more…..

…..

-Cnation

NRO: Obama must change course, or he’s sunk.

The president has three principal problems. He is well to the left of the public and of what he promised the voters in 2008, and his is an old, passé leftism — one that is authoritarian and deviously presented, and was discredited in this country decades ago; it featured the sort of nostrums that caused Bill Clinton and others to become “New Democrats.” Obama is increasingly perceived as having credibility problems and of being cold, cocksure, narcissistic, and intoxicated by what he modestly called “the gift” of his own articulateness. And, as president, he has been quite, and quite surprisingly, incompetent. more…..

…………….

CNN Poll: Most Americans applaud Democrats’ loss of supermajority

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Monday also indicates that 7 in 10 Americans believe that the Democrats’ loss of their 60 seat supermajority in the Senate is a positive move for the country. more…..

…………….

American Thinker: Time to Take On the Unions

The dearth of additional special elections in the near future will allow the conservative movement to target the underlying causes of our ailing national economy and diminished national pride. No other single cause has been more disruptive to our economy and the principles of the American Dream than the pernicious undermining of commonsense capitalism by the greedy bullies in the teachers’, auto workers’, and public sector unions. more…..

…………….

Missouri State Rep. Jeff Roorda, Douchebag

From Dana Loesch:

Rep. Jeff Roorda (D – Jefferson County) is the delightfully angry politician who decided to call about half the state a term used for sexual slang. These are the same people who had their menstrual cycles when Joe Wilson shouted “Liar!” on the floor, by the way. You know, the same people who defined the floor as a sacred place of political haranguing. more…..

…………….

Fox News: Obama Administration Steers Lucrative No-Bid Contract for Afghan Work to Dem Donor

Obama in 2008: “I will finally end the abuse of no-bid contracts once and for all”

Despite President Obama’s long history of criticizing the Bush administration for “sweetheart deals” with favored contractors, the Obama administration this month awarded a $25 million federal contract for work in Afghanistan to a company owned by a Democratic campaign contributor without entertaining competitive bids,  more…..

…..

‘Hope and Change’ is for suckers.

…..

-Cnation

Politico: The fallout: Democrats rethinking health care bill

Democratic leaders and the White House insisted ahead of the vote they aren’t preparing to desert health care. They admit they’ll have to come up with a new strategy to win passage, but said they didn’t want to allow one Senate race to take them off-course on the president’s top legislative item for the year.

But several House members said Tuesday night that they had no interest in pursuing the most likely scenario for moving ahead with a bill — approving the already-passed Senate version of health reform in the House – and some said President Barack Obama should step back and start over. more…..

…………….

Washington Post: With Brown victory, Webb calls for suspending health care votes

As Democrats reel from the loss of a U.S. Senate seat in deep blue Massachusetts, Virginia Sen. Jim Webb becomes the first senator we’ve seen tonight to call for suspending all votes on health care until newly elected Republican Scott Brown can take office.

Some Democrats had been mulling trying to complete health care legislation before Brown can be seated, to maintain their 60 seat super majority in the senate. But if Webb–or others–oppose the move, the 60-vote margin would be gone and the maneuverimpossible. more…..

…………….

Wall Street Journal: Brown Wins Massachusetts Senate Seat, Potentially Upending Obama Agenda

BOSTON — A little-known Republican upended the balance of power in Washington by winning a U.S. Senate seat in Massachusetts, a result that imperils President Barack Obama’s top legislative priorities and augurs trouble for his party in this year’s elections…The Brown victory forces the White House and Congressional leaders into a mad scramble to decide how—or whether—to salvage their long-sought health-care overhaul. Rushing the bill after losing Massachusetts carries political risks. So does allowing it to collapse. more…..

…………….

Red State: A Shot Across the Bow from the Bay State

Let’s cut right to the chase: Scott Brown’s resounding defeat of Martha Coakley demonstrates many things. Chief among these is the vulnerability of everyany vital race (Corzine, Deeds, Coakley….), and the true unpopularity of the health care monstrosity the Democratic supermajority has been fighting amongst itself to produce over the course of this last year. more….. Democrat in the current election year, the impotence of the Democrats’ current leader and sitting President to sway public opinion in

…………….

Boston Globe: Election dramatically alters trajectory of Obama’s agenda

Congressional strategists had warned in the closing days of the Massachusetts Senate race that a Coakley defeat had the potential to trigger a series of retirements within the Democratic ranks as members flee a political wave that could wash out dozens in the House and high single digits on the Senate side.

“My message to my clients? Jump ship now,” said one Democratic operative who advises a number of targeted Members of Congress. “Obama can’t help you.” more…..

…..

-Cnation

Behind Closed Doors, Unions Win, You Lose

Yesterday, President Barack Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and nine other lawmakers met face-to-face for seven hours to resolve differences between the House and Senate health care bills. At the same time these talks were going on, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern and United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger met with other Obama administration officials in a separate room in the White House. This all comes after these same labor leaders met personally with Speaker Pelosi yesterday, and after they met face-to-face with President Obama in the White House on Monday. Despite then-candidate Barack Obama’s explicit promises to the American people, absolutely none of these meetings were open to the public or televised on C-SPAN. In fact, Politico reports: “Those involved in the talks sought to keep details of their progress under wraps.”

And just what deals were Big Labor, the leftist majorities in Congress and the Obama administration making behind closed doors? How to pay for President Obama’s likely $1 trillion health care plan without raising taxes on one of the President’s most loyal constituencies: labor unions. Specifically, Big Labor reportedly has struck a deal with health care negotiators to exempt union members from the 40% excise tax on high-priced health insurance premiums. By some estimates, the tax would hit one in four union members. Now Big Labor will get all of the big government health care spending they always wanted, but they will not have to pay for it.

And Obamacare’s Big Labor handouts don’t end there. The legislation also sets aside $5 billion to subsidize the costs of employer health benefits for early retirees. As Heritage fellow James Sherk notes, few nonunion employers, of course, pay pension and health benefits for workers to retire at 55. And then there’s the small business exemption from the employer mandate for businesses with less than 50 employees. At first this applied to all small businesses, but after aggressive lobbying by Big Labor, non-unionized construction businesses were unexempted. Big Labor lobbyists explicitly admitted they wanted to use Obamacare’s job-killing employer mandates as a competitive advantage to drive non-unionized firms out of business.

So where does the White House and Congress propose to regain the revenue lost from exempting unions from the health care excise tax? The people who fund job creation: investors. The Obama administration wants to apply the Medicare payroll tax not just to wages but to capital gains, and for the first time ever, to dividends and other forms of investment income. This tax will hit seniors the hardest since many of them live off their dividend and interest income, in addition to their pension and Social Security checks. But it also hurts us all since high taxes on capital gains, dividends, interest and business income increase the cost of capital, thus depressing investment at the very time the economy needs new investment to grow and create jobs.

Big Labor’s high wages and inflexible work rules have already bankrupted our nation’s once proud automobile industry. Across the country, their early retirement and exorbitant pensions are bankrupting states. The health insurance excise tax was once the signature health care spending cost cutter of Obama’s entire health care plan. Now it has been gutted at the altar of Big Labor power. The big loser in all of these cases is you, the American taxpayer.
Print | Comments | Forward

Bookmark It – foundry.org

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our redesigned blog, The Foundry, now available at www.foundry.org. The Foundry is the conservative policy news blog that offers the latest and greatest from The Heritage Foundation. Every day, Heritage experts and analysts provide insight into the day’s news, using well-crafted research, data, charts and analysis. You’ll also find commentary on breaking news, national policy, congressional events and the White House. If you’ve been a regular reader of The Foundry, you know about the great content we have to offer. Based on feedback from loyal readers like you, we’ve made it easier to navigate the site and interact with The Heritage Foundation. On the right side of the page, you’ll now be able to get to our Facebook or Twitter pages in one click, where you can become a fan or follower, interact with other likeminded readers, participate in live online events, share our articles with friends, and send us your feedback. You can browse our Flickr photo gallery and see the exciting events and personalities that Heritage welcomes daily. You can subscribe for our e-newsletters or our RSS feed, get the entire blog delivered to you daily on your Kindle, and of course, you can donate and become a Heritage member and help support the growing conservative renaissance. To make navigation easier, we’ve given you the ability to search by your favorite author or analyst and see our most popular, commented on, and linked-to articles so you never miss a thing. Interested in a particular policy area? Now you can click on the relevant Leadership for America Initiative to see all of our posts in that particular subject area. You can also watch streaming videos on site or visit our newly redesigned YouTube channel, which is home to hundreds of videos on a wide range of topics. We’ll post our favorite videos on The Foundry, and whenever a Heritage analyst or expert is on television, we’ll share their broadcast insights with you immediately. The Foundry is your one-stop shop. There is also a new and exciting edition to The Foundry called Foundry Features, which gives you quick access to our latest special features and content. Want to get plugged into the latest on health care reform or read our popular Morning Bell e-newsletter? They’re only a click away. In fact, joining 130,000 other Americans and getting the Morning Bell delivered to your mailbox has never been easier. Want to go behind-the-scenes and hear from the extraordinary guests who visit Heritage every week? Check out our In The Green Room weekly video feature. Outside the Beltway explores how conservatism affects local communities and states. In Their Own Words gives newsmakers an opportunity to speak for themselves and our Guest Bloggers offers insights directly from congressional leaders and policy experts. And if you’re a Capitol Hill junkie, you’ll love The Cloakroom, which gives you a look at what legislative issues Congress will be addressing in the coming week. We’ll also share with you some of our favorite videos and tweets, whether they are from @Heritage or another commentator on Twitter. And it’s easier than ever to share your favorite posts with your friends, family and colleagues by using the one-click “Tweet This” option on every post or by clicking on the Facebook icon next to the author’s name. As always, we want to hear from you. We encourage all of our members, guests and readers to comment on each and every post on The Foundry. We remind everyone that The Heritage Foundation promotes a civil society where ideas and debate flourish. That means we should all remember to be respectful of each other. While we may not always agree on policy, we should all agree that being appropriately informed is everyone’s intention visiting this site. Finally, we want to thank you. Without you, The Heritage Foundation would not be where it is today. We have more than 580,000 members and growing. We have more than 105,000 Facebook fans and growing. We have more than 32,000 people following us on Twitter and growing. And more than 130,000 subscribe to the Morning Bell every day, making it one of the most widely read, influential and premiere e-newsletters in Washington. We continue to grow because of you. Thank you for continuing to visit The Foundry and thank you for supporting The Heritage Foundation. We look forward to seeing you again shortly. And keep an eye out for a newly designed Heritage.org…coming soon. Print | Comments | Forward

RECENT ENTRIES Tweet of the Week: Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) The Cloakroom: January 11-15 The Few Standing Between Current Law and Tax Payer Funded Abortion Obama’s Green Jobs Plan Will Do More Harm Than Good Something Fishy in the Ministry of Defense QUICK HITS Nearly three years after Congress House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp,” no member of Congress has been punished for wrongdoing. Regulators from around the U.S., including Kansas, Pennsylvania, Florida and California, are calling on the EPA to go slow with its greenhouse-gas emission rules, warning that the administration’s approach could overwhelm them with paperwork and delay construction projects. Conservatives are collecting signatures for a ballot initiative that would suspend California’s cap-and-trade scheme until their unemployment rate falls below 5.5%. According to an analysis by the Associated Press, reviewed by independent economists at five universities, the surge in spending on roads and bridges from President Barack Obama’s first economic stimulus plan has had no effect on local unemployment. In today’s New York Times, Reagan administration Attorney General Edwin Meese III, explains how the judge presiding over California’s same-sex marriage Proposition 8 trial, is stacking the deck against supporters of traditional marriage. Share Today’s Morning Bell Facebook Myspace Digg Linkdin Twitter

Heritage Foundation’s Morning Bell for 1/7/2009

The Democratic Party was shaken to its core on Tuesday when Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Gov. Bill Ritter (D-CO) announced they would not run for re-election in 2010, all on the same day. The source of these Democrats’ fears in facing the American people at the polls is no secret: the American people believe the state of the economy is poor and getting worse. Responding to this dismal environment, Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) told the Fremont Tribune on Tuesday: “I think it was a mistake to take health care on as opposed to continuing to spend the time on the economy.” While we agree with Nelson that President Barack Obama’s health care priorities have been grossly misplaced, we shudder to think what more “time on the economy” would have meant from this White House.

Recent Entries How Big A Failure Was Copenhagen? China Is Not America’s Banker Let’s Make a Deal: Immigration Reform Unions Using Obamacare to Punish Small Business Beware a Public Health Plan in Private Disguise

Just last month in a speech to The Brookings Institution, President Obama outlined his proposal for a third round of stimulus funding on top of the $787 billion stimulus he signed into law last February. Third stimulus you say? Yes, third stimulus. Any fair accounting of government deficit spending in response to this recession must also include President George Bush’s failed 2008 $168 billion economic stimulus bill. Why did these first two economic stimuli fail? For the same reason any third stimulus will also fail: government spending does not inject any new money into the economy. Heritage Foundation Senior Policy Analyst Brian Riedl explains:

Congress does not have a vault of money waiting to be distributed. Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy. No new spending power is created. It is merely redistributed from one group of people to another.
…
Yes, government spending can put under-utilized factories and individuals to work–but only by idling other resources in whatever part of the economy supplied the funds. If adding $1 billion would create 40,000 jobs in one depressed part of the economy, then losing $1 billion will cost roughly the same number of jobs in whatever part of the economy supplied Washington with the funds. It is a zero-sum transfer regardless of whether the unemployment rate is 5 percent or 50 percent.

The fact that the money for government spending does not just fall from the sky is no secret. As Senior Research Fellow Ronald Utt has detailed, multiple government entities acknowledge this fact, including the General Accountability Office and the Congressional Research Service, who concluded:

To the extent that financing new highways by reducing expenditures on other programs or by deficit finance and its impact on private consumption and investment, the net impact on the economy of highway construction in terms of both output and employment could be nullified or even negative.

Like government spending, the wrong kind of tax cuts can also be worthless in spurring economic growth. Riedl explains:

Many tax cutters commit the same fallacy as do government spenders when asserting that tax cuts spur economic growth by “putting spending money in people’s pockets.” Similar to government spending, the tax-cut cash does not fall from the sky. It comes from reduced investment and a higher trade deficit (if financed by budget deficits) or from government spending (if offset by spending cuts).

Permanent cuts to marginal to high marginal tax rates can encourage more business investment and economic growth. But Bush’s 2008 tax cuts and Obama’s 2009 tax cuts were both just tax rebates which, especially when they are given to people with no tax liability to begin with, are economically indistinguishable from government spending.

The economy’s own self-correcting mechanisms have already begun to move the economy out of recession. Now is no time to stall the recovery before it gets going with another round of deficit spending on top of our existing $1.4 trillion deficit.

QUICK HITS

American Thinker: The Jihad Decade Cometh

And so successful was the Left at infiltrating our government, schools, and institutions that eight years after the most heinous attack on American soil, we elected an icon of our mortal enemy. A Kenyan, Indonesian, third-worldish boulevardier with as much understanding of the American experience as any foreign national. Don’t call me a racist for calling him what he is — I am not interested in the color of his skin, but in the content of his character. His lack of experience in all relevant areas to the office of the president is breathtaking. And his bowing to Islam and our enemies worldwide is disastrous.

Bush’s premise was false, but Bush was a patriot. Bush loved America, and he protected America, even if he refused to see the enemy for who and what it was. It was no accident that America was safe for eight years post-9/11. Eight years of safety is cracking apart now under a weak and pro-Islamic president. The jihadi attacks on America in 2009 were staggering. And it has only just begun. Dismantling the Bush protections against jihad and launching attacks on Americans, bloggers, tea partiers, town hallers, patriots, and vets is incomprehensible — and if I hadn’t lived through it, I wouldn’t believe it possible. more…..

…………….

Byron York: Key Democrats and Republicans give Napolitano vote of confidence

Appearing on ABC’s “This Week,” Sen. Joseph Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, was asked if Napolitano is the right person for the job. “Yes, she is,” Lieberman answered. On the same program, Sen. Susan Collins, the committee’s ranking Republican, was asked if she has confidence in Napolitano. “I do,” Collins answered.

“I will say that her initial comments were bizarre and inappropriate,” Collins added. “It baffled me that she said that the system worked very, very smoothly when clearly it did not. Nevertheless, I believe that Secretary Napolitano is working very hard, and she will cooperate with our efforts to ensure that these breaches will not happen again.” more…..

…

Janet Napolitano has proven time and again that she is unfit for the job of Homeland Security Secretary. She has all but shut down workplace enforcement of immigration laws (despite her blatantly and demonstrably false claims to have actually increased workplace enforcement), weakened overall interior enforcement, emasculated border security, and then came out the other day after a jihadist detonated a bomb aboard an airplane carrying 278 passengers, and said that “the system worked“.

Remember, the bomb was detonated. The only reason those 278 passengers aren’t dead is because the bomb didn’t work properly.

Lieberman…I know, good guy and all that, but if he can openly support such a blazingly incompetent and dangerous woman as Janet Napolitano, he needs to go. As for Susan Collins, it is a mystery to me why the good people of Maine would continue to support her, as she continues to disgrace both the republican party and her country.

…………….

Politico: Democrats’ worst nightmare: Terrorism on their watch

From the time he launched his campaign for president three years ago, Barack Obama had to consider how he would react to the first serious act of terrorism during the campaign, or if he won, on his watch. His fellow Democrats had been thinking about the moment even longer – since the September day in 2001 when attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon defined George W. Bush’s presidency and gave Republicans a decisive advantage on a defining political issue.

And yet the White House’s response to last week’s attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight to Detroit could rank as one of the low points of the new president’s first year. Over the course of five days, Obama’s Obama’ reaction ranged from low-keyed to reassuring to, finally, a vow to find out what went wrong. The episode was a baffling, unforced error in presidential symbolism, hardly a small part of the presidency, and the moment at which yet another of the old political maxims that Obama had sought to transcend – the Democrats’ vulnerability on national security – reasserted itself. more…..

…………….

Red State: Barack Obama’s Vulnerabilities Will Get Us All Killed

Within twenty-four hours of the terrorist trying to blow up the plane, the White House was giving briefings by a “Senior Administration Official” who mostly like was Obama, Axelrod, or Jarrett, pointing out that the terrorist watch list was created by the Bush administration.

Then the White House Counsel’s Office sent out a memo demanding any and all documentation to show that the Bush administration had done worse.

Then the White House decided it needed to look into the “systemic failures” of the operation that George Bush had put in place.

234 days into George W. Bush’s first contentious year in office, four planes were hijacked and used as missiles to strike the United States. Shortly thereafter, Richard Reid tried to blow up another jet.

George Bush never tried to disown 9/11 or Richard Reid. He never tried to say, “hey, it was Clinton’s problem.” Sure, in fact, a lot of what led to 9/11 happened on Bill Clinton’s watch and he failed in most every measure to shut down Al Qaeda. But after 9/11, George Bush didn’t spend his first day, second day, or third day blaming Clinton. He set out to destroy Al Qaeda. more…..

…..

-Cnation

HATCH,BLACKWELL AND KLUKOWSKI: Why the Health-Care Bills Are Unconstitutional

If the government can mandate the purchase of insurance, it can do anything.

President Obama’s health-care bill is now moving toward final passage. The policy issues may be coming to an end, but the legal issues are certain to continue because key provisions of this dangerous legislation are unconstitutional. Legally speaking, this legislation creates a target-rich environment. We will focus on three of its more glaring constitutional defects.

First, the Constitution does not give Congress the power to require that Americans purchase health insurance. Congress must be able to point to at least one of its powers listed in the Constitution as the basis of any legislation it passes. None of those powers justifies the individual insurance mandate. Congress’s powers to tax and spend do not apply because the mandate neither taxes nor spends. The only other option is Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

Congress has many times stretched this power to the breaking point, exceeding even the expanded version of the commerce power established by the Supreme Court since the Great Depression. It is one thing, however, for Congress to regulate economic activity in which individuals choose to engage; it is another to require that individuals engage in such activity. That is not a difference in degree, but instead a difference in kind. It is a line that Congress has never crossed and the courts have never sanctioned. more…..

…………….

American Thinker: Health Care and Our Inalienable Rights

With threats from federal officials to seize control over the health care system and further intrude into our private matters, many Americans are trying to find ways to protect their lives and liberty. Given America’s dysfunctional economic situation that the federal government caused and has been making worse, government can only make the health care system go from dysfunctional to despotic. The regulations, mandates, and restrictions currently in place already violate the individual citizen’s God-given, inalienable natural rights to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” referred to in the Declaration of Independence.

Leftist supporters of government health care do not seem to understand or are hostile to the concept of the individual’s right to life and liberty. Leftists prefer that the collective have power to make demands on the individual, and that the individual be dependent on the state for cradle-to-grave care. A system of cradle-to-grave care necessitates state control over the individual, as we have seen in places such as the former Soviet Union, and eradicates the individual’s right to control one’s own life. It is a system of massive invasion of liberty.  more……

…………….

Newsweek: Obama’s Health-Care Gamble…And why he may come to regret it.

…The effort to jam the bill through Congress made the public dubious. Most Democrats voted for a version of the bill on the first round without having read, let alone digested, its thousands of pages. As the Christmas Eve vote approached, desperate last-minute stocking stuffers appeared in the small print, such as a $1.2 billion payoff to the state of Nebraska that secured Sen. Ben Nelson’s reluctant vote. Obama had promised us a transparent “Google Government,” but now we know what Obama government actually looks like: ambitious and generous, perhaps, but also secretive, Chicago-style, and way too complicated. Fewer than half of voters now support the legislation, murky as it still is to them. Crucially, support has cratered among independents. more…..

…………….

NRO: It’s Not Inevitable

There is not nearly enough belief circulating that Obamacare can be defeated in the coming weeks. The House clearly couldn’t have passed the Senate version of the bill. The Senate clearly couldn’t have passed the House version. And the blended (mostly Senate) version is going to be very ugly for somebody (in addition to the American people), most likely in particular for pro-life Stupak Democrats in the House, who are just over ten months away from facing reelection verdicts in (mostly) Republican districts.

Sen. Ben Nelson is now 31 percentage points behind in the polls and has become a lightning rod for Nebraskans who oppose Obamacare, eschew special privilege, and take pride in their patriotism and sense of fair play. Think he isn’t tempted to cast the one vote that could redeem him in their eyes? Think the Democrats haven’t noticed that likely voters oppose the bills by about 15 percentage points, that both seniors and independents — yes, independents — oppose the bills by margins of greater than two-to-one, and that the USA Today/Gallup poll shows that support for President Obama has plummeted since January from 83 percent to 49 percent (a 34-point drop!)? Think Indiana’s Evan Bayh, Virginia’s Jim Webb, North Dakota’s Kent Conrad, and hordes of red-state House Democrats are feeling comfortable?  more…..

…………….

Politico: Ben Nelson to Henry McMaster: ‘Call off the dogs’