op ed review 7/27
THIS WEEK’S NEWS
In a potentially crippling blow to Obamacare, a federal
appeals court panel declared Tuesday that government subsidies worth billions
of dollars that helped 4.7 million people buy insurance on HealthCare.gov are
illegal. A judicial panel in a 2-1 ruling said such subsidies can be granted
only to those people who bought insurance in an Obamacare exchange run by an
individual state or the District of Columbia — not on the federally run
exchange HealthCare.gov.
President Obama’s old Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe,
said that he “wouldn’t bet the family farm” on Obamacare’s surviving the
ruling.
But within hours the same policy was held up by another
court, setting up a Supreme Court showdown.
To resolve, the Supreme Court may soon need to decide
whether the federal government can be considered a "state" in the
same sense that Iowa, Wyoming and Wisconsin are states. On the face of it, this
question may seem absurd.
Congressional investigators using fake identities were able
to obtain taxpayer-subsidized health insurance under Obamacare. The nonpartisan
Government Accountability Office says its undercover investigators were able to
get subsidized health care under fake names in 11 out of 18 attempts.
Just in time for the
midterm election: “Obama will take
executive action on immigration after summer, adviser says. The move could trigger impeachment proceedings
against President Obama, said his senior adviser.”
Istook: “Obama wants
to be impeached…..Obama uses a passive-aggressive strategy that can be judged
as a political maneuver, a personality disorder, or both.”
Rep. Gutiérrez (D-Ill): ‘I Think We Can Get 3 or 4, Maybe
Even 5 Million People’ Amnesty via Executive Action.
The Obama administration is preparing to effectively
"nullify" the immigration laws of the United States through an
executive action, says one Republican senator.
Americans should melt Congress’ phone lines, demanding their
members stop the unconstitutional action.
A Border Patrol report reveals that “unaccompanied minors”
are only one-fourth of the current invasion from Central America across our
Southwest border. The crossings by family units have increased almost five
times faster. This contradicts White House and media efforts to elicit public
sympathy by focusing public attention on children.
The U.S. Senate Appropriations Subcommittee approved a
DHS budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2015 that includes $87 million for the
transportation of illegal immigrants--most often via plane--from the
U.S.-Mexico border to federal facilities around the nation.
The Odds of a GOP
Wave Election Are Increasing
American flags were removed from atop the Brooklyn Bridge's
two towers Tuesday morning and replaced by white flags, sources said. White
flags are usually a military symbol for surrender.
For the past six months, welfare beneficiaries in Colorado
have repeatedly withdrawn their cash benefits at marijuana retailers and
dispensaries, according to a new analysis by National Review Online. At least
259 times in the first six months of legalized recreational marijuana in
Colorado, beneficiaries used their electronic-benefit transfer (EBT) cards to
access public assistance at weed retailers and dispensaries, withdrawing a
total of $23,608.53 in Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) cash,
NRO’s examination found.
President Obama arrives in Los Angeles for his $32,000 per
plate fundraiser at the home of a Hollywood producer.
How Obama spends taxpayer money to raise campaign cash for
the Democratic National Committee
President Obama and his wife plan to soon buy a home in
Rancho Mirage listed at $4.25 million.
Hillary Clinton has earned at least $12 million in 16 months
since leaving the State Department, a windfall at odds with her party’s call to
shrink the gap between the rich and the poor.
One of President Obama´s closest White House advisers,
counts among his key financial supporters a reclusive Swiss billionaire whose
company conducted illegal human experiments that resulted in the deaths of
three elderly patients.
Jim Gilchrist — one of the founders of the Minutemen Project
— said he’s reaching out across America to recruit at least 3,500 volunteers
who will go to the border to patrol and cover the “porous areas” between San
Diego and Brownsville, Texas. The campaign is called “Operation Normandy,” and
it’s set for May 1, 2015,
The attorneys general of 10 states have joined in Indiana’s
appeal of a federal judge’s ruling that found the state law banning same-sex
marriage unconstitutional
What planet does Joe Biden live on?: “Businesses Are Hiring at Historic Rates…”
______________________________________________________________________________
THIS WEEK’S FEATURED COLUMN
Donald Lambro 7/3
Republicans have a wealth of political issues that will
dominate the 2014 midterm election races and determine their outcome.
The national news media have done their best to try to bury
these issues, play them down or sugarcoat them, but the American people know
better. They have persistently put these issues at or near the top of every
voter poll in the last six years of Barack Obama's scandal-ridden,
trouble-plagued administration.
It's hard to break through the power of the Washington news
media that have worked hard to cover up the Obama White House's blunders. But
this will be the GOP's chief challenge in the next four months as we race
toward the fall elections.
Here are the issues Republicans must pound between now and
then, and where they stand today:
(1) The Obama economy: No other issue is more critical in
the minds of the voters as they have watched the once-mighty U.S. economy grow
weaker, repeatedly turning in one mediocre, lackluster performance after
another. Six years into the so-called
recovery, economic growth isn't just weak; it was actually shrinking in the
first three months of this year by a shocking 2.9 percent. Our exports were
anemic, and business inventories were down. It was the worst quarter for
economic growth since the middle of 2009.
Obama's been running around the country telling us that manufacturing is
exploding. In fact, orders to U.S. factories fell in May by 0.5 percent. It's not going to get much better. The
Federal Reserve forecasts that growth will stumble along at little more than 2
percent this year, held back by Obama's anti-business, anti-growth policies.
(2) That leads to the second most important issue: jobs. The
average unemployment rate has fallen to 6.1 percent. But that's largely due to
millions of discouraged, long-term jobless workers who have stopped looking for
work and thus are no longer counted among the unemployed. If the same percentage of these adult workers
who've dropped out of the labor force were looking for work again, as when
President Obama took office, the real jobless rate would be 10.2 percent, says
economist Peter Morici at the University of Maryland's Smith School of
Business. Fed Chair Janet Yellen says
this is one of the most serious problems confronting the economy, and the labor
force participation rate is not going away soon. Our once-muscular workforce is
shrinking, a disturbing sign of an economy and a nation in decline. Hidden or downplayed in the June jobs numbers
is the harsh reality that many of them are low-paying temp jobs. Nearly 80,000
of them were added to the labor force last month, according to the ADP payroll
processor's latest survey.
(3) Persistently sky-high, $600 billion budget deficits and
a growing $17 trillion debt threaten our economic security as never
before. Americans are justifiably
worried about our debts and want the government to abandon its spendthrift
ways. The GOP House has passed one budget after another to do that, only to see
the Senate refuse to negotiate commonsense ideas to slow down the rate of
spending.
(4) Obamacare: There's a huge scandal brewing in the
president's 2010 Affordable Care Act that was revealed in two reports this week
by the Inspector General's Office in the Department of Health and Human
Services. They reported serious
inadequacies and shortcomings in the system's "internal controls"
that may have allowed millions of people to sign up for cut-rate health
insurance benefits who were ineligible for the subsidies, tax credits and other
financial help under the law. Of the 2.9
million "inconsistencies" found in the records of the new state-run
health insurance marketplaces, two of the most common dealt with the
applicants' income and their citizenship, which were not verified…..Obamacare
and its impact on small businesses, the economy and ordinary working Americans,
who are finding it harder to afford steadily rising premiums, will be a big
issue this year. And this week's investigative reports will only add more
political fuel to the fire.
(5) Incomes and rising poverty: Obama and his party consider
themselves the champions of the poor and the middle class. But the harsh and
painful reality of their anti-wealth creation, anti-business policies is
growing poverty and, for many Americans, a struggling middle class. According to a recent U.S. Census Bureau
report, one in five neighborhoods have incomes that are below the poverty
income level. But the report's most explosive finding is that poverty has
worsened under the Obama administration.
By 2010, the share of people living in these rapidly expanding poverty
areas had grown to 25.7 percent, up from 18.1 percent in 2000.
No doubt Republicans will be pounding other issues --
including inflation, higher taxes, rising gas prices, and the veterans scandal
that has turned many independents and some Democrats against Obama and his
party. But the five issues listed above
are the major ones that will drive the GOP's political offensive to win back
the Senate in the next four months.
Obama and his party will fight back with the usual class
warfare tactics. They will try to frighten voters into believing the GOP will
take away their Social Security. It will be the same old demagoguery that
worked for the president in 2012. It's
not going to work this time. Voters across the board have lost confidence in
his promises, his presidency and his party. On Nov. 4, it's going to be a bloodbath
________________________________________________________________________
FROM OTHER COLUMNS
"Racial preferences in college admissions give
elementary schools, middle schools and high schools a free hand to continue
their destructive educational policy. If colleges did not have special
admissions practices for black students, there would be far fewer blacks in
colleges, and the fraud would be more apparent to parents. They might begin to
ask why so many blacks with high-school diplomas could not get into college. If
the civil rights establishment and the progressives have their way, blacks will
have to rely on special privileges in perpetuity.”
-Walter Williams
“The New York Times
chided President Obama for appearing disengaged from the world’s crises. That’s
just not fair. Last week, when Obama got the call that the airliner had been
shot down and that Israel had invaded Gaza, he asked the next three groups if
he could play through.”
-Argus Hamilton
_______________________________________________________________________
BOOKS, FILM
There are many ways to lose freedom -- conquering armies,
surrendering without a fight. Unfortunately, we are currently surrendering our
freedom, not to a foreign power, but to our own government. The growth, reach, and cost of big government
is happening before our eyes and eroding our liberty, largely because too many
Americans are not familiar with the brilliant system of government our Founders
established. Progressives prefer a "living Constitution," which is
constantly changing to conform to their ideology. What it is not is the
Constitution established by the Founders. In a comprehensive publication, "The
Roots of Liberty: Unlocking the Federalist Papers," edited by Scott D.
Cosenza and Claire M. Griffin, it attempts to remind us of the Founders' intent
and why their vision, if not renewed by each generation, will quickly fade,
America along with it.
New book on the Clintons:
“If author Ronald Kessler is correct, Bill Clinton's days of serial
womanizing aren't behind him. Kessler writes in his upcoming book, "The
First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of
Presidents," that Bill has a mistress who regularly visits his Chappaqua
home. Her unofficial code name is "Energizer," and Kessler quotes a
Secret Service agent saying, "You don't stop her, you don't approach her,
you just let her go in." Kessler also says Hillary's detail informs Bill's
detail whenever she's on her way home so Bill has time to get
"Energizer" out and remove any evidence. As for Hillary's detail,
Kessler notes, "Because she is so nasty to agents and hostile to law
enforcement officers and military officers in general, agents consider being
assigned to her detail a form of punishment.”
_________________________________________________________________________
LEFTIST WATCH
New study from Duke University: “the political regime of socialism has a
lasting impact on citizens' basic morality…..they cheat more.”
Even as Hillary Clinton looms as the overwhelming favorite
for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, the party’s base is stirring
for a primary fight. There’s a pining for someone else, and a medley of
ambitious Democrats are making moves — many of them previously unreported — to
position themselves to perhaps be that someone.
The Left’s favorite alternative to Hillary, Elizabeth
Warren, lists her “11 Commandments of Progressivism”
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/elizabeth-warren-s-11-commandments-of-progressivism-20140718
____________________________________________________________________________
ISLAM
Islamic law is nowhere you want to be. Unfortunately it’s
made it to the United States. A Muslim leader showed a considerable lack of
brotherly love in Philadelphia last week, when he tried to cut off the hand of
a man accused of stealing from the local mosque. Philly.com reported that
Mitchell and the mosque’s imam invoked Sharia Law which states, “As to the
thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands; a punishment by way of example
from Allah for their crime.”
Jihadists in Iraq have ordered that all women between the
ages of 11 and 46 undergo female genital mutilation, a UN official said
Thursday.
For the first time in 1,600 years, Mass is not being said in
Mosul: an ancient culture has been wiped out in a matter of weeks. It´s a war
crime that, strangely, no one seems to want to talk about. Mosul is the
second-largest city in Iraq and the place where many Christians believe Jonah
was buried. Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) rode into town,
their faith has been forced underground. Bells have been silenced, the hijab
enforced with bullets. Tens of thousands fled after being offered an
unattractive choice: convert, pay a religious tax, or be put to the sword.
The ISIS deadline for Christians to leave Mosul ended at the
weekend, and thousands of people who follow the religion have left the city.
And as the last group of Christians made their way out, the militants torched
the 1,800-year-old Assyrian Christian church.
In a region where Christians predate Muslims by centuries,
over one million Christians have been killed or have had to flee because of
jihadi persecution, while America is basically standing by and watching.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, stated on
Wednesday that the only solution for the middle east is the destruction of
Israel, and that the armed confrontation must expand beyond Gaza.
Members of the Islamist extremist militia blamed for the
Benghazi terror attack had moved in next door to the U.S. Consulate months
before the strike but “nothing was done” despite concerns about the dangerous
neighbors, sources tell Fox News.
The notorious underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab
had his plot in 2009 to blow up a plane on Christmas Day fail because the
explosives became ´degraded´ after he wore the same pair of underpants for two
weeks, according to a U.S. official.
_____________________________________________________________________________
ARTICLES
Could the next generation of Republicans already
be here?
Texas Governor Rick Perry went on Hannity to discuss the
illegal immigrant crisis at the US southern border. Perry shared these shocking
numbers on the current crisis. “Sean, there have been over the course of the
last five years, since the fall of ’08, over 203,000 individuals who have come
into Texas illegally who have been booked into our county jails. Those
individuals have accounted for over 3,000 homicides and over 8,000 sexual
assaults. We can’t afford to wait for Washington to secure this border. We’ve
had enough.”
_________________________________________________________________________
WEBSITES
VIDEO: Black Conservatives Met With Hostility,
Harassed at NAACP Convention...
Joan Rivers defends Israel in an emotional rant at LAX.
_________________________________________________________________________
WISE WORDS
“It will be of little avail to the
people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so
voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be
understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or
undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day,
can guess what it will be to-morrow.”
–James Madison
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