A culture of corruption: Documents show that Obama’s FCC used its regulatory muscle to destroy LightSquared’s competition.
The world turned upside down: A New Hampshire homeowner was arrested for firing his gun into the ground in order to catch a suspected burglar.
More than 2500 religious leaders released a letter yesterday condemning the Obama administration’s healthcare mandate as ““a severe blow” to religious liberty.
Obama’s war on religious liberty.
I would simply say that this is a war on liberty. You take away someone’s freedom to pray or practice their religion as they wish, you also take away their liberty. And if you can take their liberty, you can take anyone’s. For those who like the idea of forcing every insurance company and private institution to provide contraceptives, remember, if this administration gains that power, future administrations will have that power as well. And there is no guarantee that those future administrations will impose policies you agree with. To paraphase an old quote, “First they came for the Catholics, and I did nothing, because I wasn’t a Catholic…”
“Occupy Wall Street protesters have been occupying federal property for months, but when we kneel in prayer, the police are called in and we are arrested.”
All they did was quietly pray, in front of the White House. How dare they?
The White House chart that illustrates the irresponsible nature of Obama’s proposed budget.
Yes, that’s right, the chart is from the White House itself, which means they themselves know how useless their proposed budget is, and how little they care. More here, including video of a truly entertaining but clarifying exchange between Congressman Paul Ryan and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.
“Government by presidential fiat.”
The president of the United States has just ordered private companies to give away for free a service that his own health and human services secretary has repeatedly called a major financial burden.
On what authority? Where does it say that the president can unilaterally order a private company to provide an allegedly free-standing service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries?
Repeal this damn law (Obamacare), and fire the goddamn politicians that had the hubris to force it on us.
From Obama’s own Treasury Secretary, describing Obama’s own budget proposal:
Even if Congress were to enact this budget we would still be left with – in the outer decades as millions of Americans retire – what are still unsustainable commitments in Medicare and Medicaid.
The day of reckoning looms.
Surprise, surprise! A new study in China has found that electric cars are more harmful to public health per kilometer traveled than conventional vehicles.
The problem here isn’t the effort to develop electric cars in the hope they can reduce pollution. The problem is that our government is imposing its preference, prior to anyone finding out if this technology can actually do the job.
Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist and Jewish leaders all testified at a Congressional hearing today that they would go to prison rather than obey the Obamacare mandates being imposed by the Obama administration. Key reaction from one Congressman:
“Well, just so everybody understands what is going to happen: These guys are either going to go to jail because they won’t violate their religious beliefs, or the hospitals and the schools are going to close, which means governemnt is going to get bigger, because they’re going to have to fill the void that is left when you guys quit doing it. And maybe that’s what [the Obama administration] wanted all along.”
When did we become a nation where government officials can order anyone to do anything, even if that order contradicts a person’s personal religious beliefs? And if you are a Democrat and don’t mind Obama’s orders because you agree with them, just remember that the Democrats are not going to be in power forever. Do you want a conservative Republican to have that same power?
In a free society, no politician should ever have such power. It is essential that everyone stand up against this attack on freedom. And it is even more important that these thugs be removed from office as soon as possible.
The manslaughter trial of six scientists and one government official continued yesterday in Italy over their reassurances to the public prior to a deadly earthquake in 2009.
Guido Bertolaso, former head of the Department of Civil Protection and De Bernardinis’s direct superior, had not been indicted and was originally expected to appear as a witness. But a few weeks ago a wiretap revealed that he had apparently set up the meeting to convey a reassuring message, regardless of the scientists’ opinion. He also seemed to be the source of the “discharge of energy” statement. He thus found himself under investigation and, at the beginning of the hearing, he was officially notified that he too may soon be formally indicted for manslaughter.
Bertolaso was asked by the prosecutor to explain that telephone conversation. He defended himself by saying that by defining the meeting as a “media move”, he was not trying to downplay risks but rather to put some order into the contradictory information that was reaching the citizens in those days. In particular, he referred to Giampaolo Giuliani — a laboratory technician and amateur seismologist who was alarming the population with claims that a major shock was coming — and to a newspaper article that had misquoted some Civil Protection experts and stated that the shocks would soon be over. The meeting, he said, was meant to make clear that both were wrong and that no deterministic prediction could be made. [emphasis mine]
This increasingly appears to be another case of science being corrupted by politics.
Obama administration has decided that volunteering will work to forgive a student loan — as per the law that Congress passed — as long as that volunteer work is not for a religious organization.
Congress created the loan forgiveness program in 2007 to encourage graduates to enter the public service field. In exchange for that service, the remaining balance of student loans would be considered repaid after 120 full payments.
To qualify for the loan forgiveness, one must now work for a federal, state or local government agency or organization, including public water, bridge or housing districts, or nonprofit organizations designated as tax exempt by the Internal Revenue Service.
More and more, it is obvious that this administration and those who support it are hostile to religion (except for Islam), hostile to freedom, and focused on gathering all power and control to the federal government.
Detroit: the triumph of progressive public policy.
Imagine a city where all the major economic planks of the statist or “progressive” platform have been enacted:
- A “living wage” ordinance, far above the federal minimum wage, for all public employees and private contractors.
- A school system that spends significantly more per pupil than the national average.
- A powerful school employee union that militantly defends the exceptional pay, benefits and job security it has won for its members.
- Other government employee unions that do the same for their members.
- A tax system that aggressively redistributes income from businesses and the wealthy to the poor and to government bureaucracies.
Would this be a shining city on a hill, exciting the admiration of all? We don’t have to guess, because there is such a city right here in our state: Detroit.
Read the above article and then compare it to this essay: A thought experiment: Imagining the Republican majority in the House in complete control of Washington.
The contrasts are most illuminating.
Finally doing its job: The FCC moved Tuesday to kill LightSquared’s broadband service license request.
There will be a lot of screaming and howling in the coming days about the proposed 2013 NASA budget [pdf], released today by the Obama administration. Though I have many bones to pick about this budget proposal, a longer view of the budget suggests it is merely a reflection of the transitions going on both in NASA and the federal government.
First, some bullet points:
» Read more
Fiddling while Rome burns: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Saturday that Iran will reveal “several major achievements in the nuclear domain” within days.
The reaction from religious organizations to Obama’s proposed heathcare rule compromise has not been good.
It is an attempt to deal with a matter of religious conviction with an accounting gimmick,
And this:
“The President’s statement today is an insulting affront illustrating a basic lack of understanding that this issue will not be solved by sleight-of-hand word games.
Similarly, the insurance companies have their own objections.
What must be noted is that the language of Obamacare is so flawed that it basically puts us in a situation where one man, Barack Obama, can simply dictate policy hither and yon, based merely on political expediency. Such a situation makes this a country ruled by the opinions of men rather than by the rule of carefully worded law.
The sooner we repeal this horrible legislation the better.
We’re here to help you: A woman was forced to miss her flight because no female TSA agent was available to pat her down.
We’re here to help you: FAA regulations have forced a volunteer pilot program in Alaska to cancel its support of the Yukon Quest International Dog Race.
The rules prohibit private pilots from accepting cost deferments such as fuel, accommodations and food. According to the agency’s regulations, allowing private pilots to accept compensation for costs is commercial activity, and commercial aviation is heavily regulated.
In other words, because these volunteers are simply getting reimbursed for their expenses the FAA forbids them from volunteering. Isn’t it great how the government is so helpful?
Several Catholic lay organizations have now filed suit against the new Obamacare regulations requiring them to provide contraception services in violation of their religious beliefs.
“EWTN’s lawsuit is important because the network is not a church. They are a lay-run organization, and they have a right to live by and practice their faith and project the messages they want to project. For the government to say that only churches have religious liberty — but individuals do not — is contrary to what the First Amendment is all about.”
The day of reckoning looms: “We only have two or three years before we get into a very ugly debt-crisis austerity mode.”
According to scientists, Obama’s proposed budget — to be announced on Monday — will severely cut NASA’s planetary program.
We will find out if this is true on Monday. However, I suspect it is, as all the rumors have pointed that way for months.
Meanwhile, Congress is forcing NASA to spend $3 billion on the Space Launch System (SLS), a rocket that will never get finished. As I have written previously, this is a very bad use of the taxpayer’s money. Better to get rid of SLS, put half the savings into the science program (which would almost certainly increase its overall budget) and pocket the rest as budget savings.
The correct response: Two Christian leaders said today that they’d go to jail rather than comply with the new Obamacare regulations.
HHS is Health and Human Services, the federal department tasked with running Obamacare.
The important thing to note about this story is how completely normal it seems for a government agency like HHS to have significant problems keeping track of its money and operations. No one is ever surprised when a government agency is found incompetent in this manner, and in fact, it happens frequently. And yet, the President and the Democrats in Congress thought it perfectly reasonable to hand over control of healthcare to that same government.
Not only is this story further evidence that Obamacare should be repealed, it illustrates again how clueless the Democrats were who voted for it.
A rabbi speaks out in defense of the Catholic Church and against the Obama administration.
Therefore, as a Rabbi, an Orthodox Jew, and an American, I stand with the Catholic Church and its right to freedom of conscience. If President Obama can force Catholics to pay for abortions, then no religious belief is safe in America, and an America in which religious beliefs are not sacrosanct is an America that is unsafe not only for Jews but for all people of conscience — whether people of faith or secularists.
