The law is such an inconvenient thing: A second appeals court has ruled that Obama’s appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional.
Earth under fire from the Sun!
The Sun’s sunspot production might be down, but we are still in the solar maximum, weak as it is, and this last week the Sun has been producing the strongest flares in years. The sunspot producing these flares is now rotating into a position where any further flares will be aimed at the Earth. Should be interesting.
What could go wrong? In order to enforce Obamacare, the federal government, led by the IRS, is creating the largest federal database ever of the personal tax, income, and health records of American citizens.
Known as the Federal Data Services Hub, the project is taking the IRS’s own records (for income and employment status) and centralizing them with information from Social Security (identity), Homeland Security (citizenship), Justice (criminal history), HHS (enrollment in entitlement programs and certain medical claims data) and state governments (residency).
The data hub will be used as the verification system for ObamaCare’s complex subsidy formula. All insurers, self-insured businesses and government health programs must submit reports to the IRS about the individuals they cover, which the IRS will cross-check against tax returns.
Working for the Democratic Party: Two pro-life groups were told by the IRS that they had to change their position on abortion in order to get their tax exemption request approved.
In one case, the IRS specifically told them they had to guarantee in writing that their organization would not protest against Planned Parenthood.
In other news: The U.S. Departments of Justice and Education today demanded that every college and university in the United States establish strict speech codes that would violate the First Amendment and decades of legal precedent.
“They simply did what their bosses ordered.”
Remember this story when the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress try to pin the IRS scandal on a handful of low level IRS employees.
The IRS is deeply political — and very Democratic.
The analysis explains how President Obama doesn’t have to give an order to get what he wants. Instead, the partisan nature of the people who gravitate to these government jobs gives the Democrats an advantage, naturally.
In other words, you want freedom you don’t give power to the government, for it will eventually abuse that power, no matter what.
An evening pause: Some nice folk music, written by Eden MacAdam Somer and Larry Unger and performed by them live in 2010.
Did the IRS audit two long-established well-known Christian ministries because of their opposition to Democratic policies?
The timing of both audits is quite intriguing, especially considering that both organizations have existed for many decades without ever getting an audit. Note too that while the audits cost the organizations money, neither found anything wrong.
Sounds like harassment to me.
Working for the Democratic Party: After waiting fifteen months for IRS approval of its tax-exempt status and getting no response, a conservative group reapplied using a liberal-sounding name and got its approval in three weeks.
There are certainly a lot of caveats to this story, but the circumstances are quite interesting, considering all we now know about the IRS’s efforts to harass conservatives.
The Kepler mission has lost its second gyroscope, ending the ability of the telescope to aim precisely. More details here.
The telescope’s primary mission, to stare continuously at one section of sky, looking for exoplanet transits, is over, though it might still be re-purposed for other astronomical research.
Not in a vacuum: It appears that a number of Senate Democrats have been demanding, in writing, that the IRS harass conservative organizations since 2010. More details here.
The same Democratic chairman of the Senate Finance Committee who this week is calling for hearings into IRS activities, specifically called on the IRS to engage in that very conduct back in 2010. And he wasn’t the only one. Just last year, a group of seven Senate Democrats sent another letter to the IRS urging them to similarly investigate these outside political organizations.
I mean, really, what’s the IRS for if not to harass your political opponents?
Did the writings of a prominent Catholic professor, critical of Obama and Democratic Party policies, cause the IRS to audit her? Key quote:
Her writings for the Catholic Advocate soon ceased because, Hendershott admits, the IRS audit silenced her. If her suspicions are true, this may have been its chilling intention. “I haven’t written for them since the audit, because I was so scared,” she said (records show her last article for the organization was on July 10, 2010 — the same month the IRS audit unfolded).
So far, she has only shared her story with friends and those close to her, but in light of the recent IRS scandal, she has decided to speak out. “It was clear they didn’t like me criticizing the people who helped pass Obamacare,” she said of the audit,” later adding, ”The IRS is very frightening.”
Good news? New estimates of the 2013 federal deficit show it will be the lowest deficit since 2008.
The CBO claims that much of the reduction comes from new revenue, but I suspect that the real cause was sequestration, which actually forced real cuts in federal programs for the first time since Obama took office.
I put a question mark on the “good news” above in that the deficit will still be higher than $600 billion, and that spending is still out of control. This drop is merely the tiniest glimmer of hope in a black storm of disaster.
The IRS now faces a class action lawsuit over the illegal seizing of the medical records of 10 million patients.
In this case, the seizure, while illegal, was not for political reasons. It appears that in executing a search warrant for specific financial information, the 15 IRS agents also improperly grabbed the medical records.
Did the White House use the IRS to pressure this critic of Obamacare?
They called my editor and feigned concern that the Washington Times was taking advantage of me… by publishing my op-eds critical of Barack Obama. Around the same time the IRS put a hold on our tax refund that required an arbitrator and several months to resolve. We finally received our refund (and interest) but never an explanation. The local IRS office and the arbitrator seemed genuinely confused by the ordeal using terms like “very strange” and “unusual” but never could explain why it happened. One wonders. [emphasis mine]
A lot of these stories have been popping up in the news since the IRS scandal broke last week. In these examples, which differ from the IRS scandal itself in that the IRS hassled an individual in some petty way, the harassment occurred soon after it was clear that this individual was publicly critical of Democratic Party policies,
The competition heats up: Richard Branson recently told an audience in Dubai that the first commercial flight of SpaceShipTwo will occur before the end of 2013, and that commercial flights from Dubai will occur two years later.
The competition heats up: Russia’s Proton rocket successfully put a commercial communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit on Wednesday.
This is the third successful Proton launch this year and the third since a December launch failure. It appears the Russians have ironed out the kinks in the Briz-M upper stage, and are ready to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. In fact, at the moment they are the only ones who can compete with the Falcon 9, at least when it comes to price.
Finding out what’s in it: The IRS scandal and the fact that Obamacare uses the IRS for enforcement now has the public increasingly frightened.
What could go wrong? No one at the IRS would ever target you and your healthcare coverage because of your politics. Such things never happen in America!
According to two Congressman, almost 500 conservative organizations were targeted for harassment by the IRS, significantly more than the IRS has admitted to.
Working for the Democratic Party: When the IRS harassed this tea party group in Toledo in 2011, demanding what books they read or discussed, they responded by sending the IRS a copy of the Constitution.
“They wanted a synopsis of all the books we read,” Bower said. “I thought, I don’t have time to write a book report. You can read them for yourselves.”
Sadly, I doubt the IRS did that.
The myth of the scientific liberal.
The core trait of a scientific mind is that when its commitments clash with evidence, evidence rules. On that count, what grade do liberals deserve? Fail, given their reaction to the latest evidence on universal health care, global warming, and universal preschool.
The author then delves into each of these topics and shows how the liberal community refuses to deal with the evidence.
Heh: Economic crisis forces Detroit to cancel half its murders.
Such an announcement has left both the city’s homicidal and non-homicidal residents in shock and despair, as the routine murder-capital of the United States prepares to spend the rest of 2013 experiencing only 175 murders instead of the 350 the small but deadly city has come to expect annually. With only 175 murders to boast, residents know their beloved city doesn’t stand a chance to compete with other cities like Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, or even Baltimore.
City council president Charles Pugh broke the bad news to reporters outside Detroit City Hall Monday evening, following a 6-to-3 council vote on the matter. “After great debate and weeks of agonizing,” said a visibly somber Pugh, “Mr. Orr’s report has left us with little choice. We regret to inform the people of Detroit that based on our city’s economic state, the number of Detroit’s murders will have to be cut in half beginning in June.”
A judge has ruled that JPL had no right to displine five scientists for sending emails at work, protesting the security measures taken by the Bush administration after 9/11.
I have no problem with this decision, and in fact I applaud it, as I think it completely inappropriate for JPL to discipline anyone for expressing their opinions about the politics of our time. I contrast this ruling however, which essentially celebrates the freedom of JPL employees to attack the policies of a Republican administration using government resources, with the case of David Coppedge, who was fired by JPL because he happened to express conservative religious opinions while working at JPL. In the case of Coppedge, the courts ruled that it was okay for JPL to fire him.
The contrast illustrates the double standard of our time. In modern America, you are always allowed to express liberal or Democratic Party values, anywhere, anytime, and with whatever resources you can take advantage of. Freedom insists that you have that right. Should you express conservative values, however, be careful. You can be punished for doing so. For some reason (political I suspect) freedom does not permit the expression of these ideas, in all circumstances.
Three astronauts safely returned from ISS today.
Finding out what’s in it: Seventeen of the nation’s largest healthcare insurance companies now say premiums will rise from 100 to 400 percent under Obamacare.
The key reasons for the surge in premiums include providing wider services than people are now paying for and adding less healthy people to the roles of insured, said the report.
Now ain’t that a surprise? The rates go up when you require insurance companies to provide more services while simultaneously requiring them to insure more sick people! Who wudda thunk it?
Actually, every Republican and conservative in the nation, as well as millions of Americans at townhall meetings in 2010, were screaming these basic facts of reality to the Democrats. They just refused to listen.
Working for the Democratic Party: Documents now show that IRS officials in Washington DC and California were also involved in targeting conservative organizations.
IRS officials at the agency’s Washington headquarters sent queries to conservative groups asking about their donors and other aspects of their operations, while officials in the El Monte and Laguna Niguel offices in California sent similar questionnaires to tea-party-affiliated groups, the documents show.
The IRS tried at first to make it sound as if only low level employees in Ohio were involved. That lie isn’t standing up very long.
The state of Obamacare in Hawaii: “We’re not going to have any health care.”
The article is a compilation of stories from Hawaii about the train wreak that is Obamacare and the difficulties it is causing to the healthcare industry there.
