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12 Mar 2010 16:08:05 GMT

Government & Politics
Obama Must Sign Healthcare Bill Before Changes Can Be Made
Source: The Hill
The Senate parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign the healthcare reform bill before Democrats can use special budget rules to pass changes demanded by the House. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, told colleagues about the ruling Thursday afternoon, according to a Democratic source familiar with the meeting. The ruling is a blow to Democrats who planned for Obama to sign in quick succession the Senate version of healthcare reform legislation and a companion measure with changes requested by House lawmakers. House lawmakers, who are distrustful of their Senate counterparts, have demanded that both measures pass Congress at the same time. Some House members worry that if they passed the Senate healthcare bill, senators would not approve the sidecar measure with the changes at a later date. Democrats acknowledged the parliamentarian's ruling was a setback but argued that it does not deliver a fatal blow...House Democratic leaders including Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) seemed surprised by the news. Neither Hoyer nor Assistant to the Speaker, Chris Van Hollen would say how the ruling would affect a House plan to vote as early as next week on a reconciliation bill along with the Senate bill. A House leadership aide, however, noted that the reported ruling would only restrict what the Senate can do, and suggested that its implications on the House would be limited to laying down no more than another mental hurdle for House Democrats to clear. Democratic lawmakers such as Conrad had thought the Senate could pass the sidecar bill under reconciliation after the House had passed the Senate version of healthcare reform. "The Senate Parliamentarian's office has informed Senate Republicans that reconciliation instructions require the measure to make changes in law," said a senior GOP aide. The Congressional Budget Office could give the broader healthcare bill an official cost estimate once the Senate and House acted. Conrad expected that would have been enough basis for Congress to then act on a reconciliation measure to make changes, such as increasing the threshold for taxing high-cost insurance plans. Alan Frumin, the parliamentarian, decided to hold the Senate to a stricter standard. "The parliamentarian is raising the bar but it's not an insurmountable hurdle," said the Democratic strategist.

American Fifth Column
Justice Dept. Shut Down Federal ACORN Investigation
Source: Judicial Watch
Judicial Watch, the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced today that it has obtained documents from the FBI detailing federal investigations into the alleged corrupt activities of ACORN. The documents reference serious allegations of corruption and voter registration fraud by ACORN as well as the Obama administration's decision to shut down a criminal investigation without filing criminal charges. The documents include background information on two specific complaints filed in October 2008 by Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges, Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively, during the 2008 election season. According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State's office. Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of "duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses..." Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old. The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation. However, the Obama Justice Department, while noting that ACORN had engaged in "questionable hiring and training practices," closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws. By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption in St. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season. Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with "concurrence" from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI. According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith "advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards." Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations. In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud...The ACORN documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN's policies and practices. The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

Government & Politics
Exports Nominee Tied to 2 Watch List Firms
Source: The Washington Times
President Obama's pick to oversee export controls at the Commerce Department is a trade lawyer whose recent clients include two companies on a government watch list and a shipping business that agreed to pay millions of dollars last year to resolve a federal probe into shipments to Iran, Sudan and Syria. All three companies have had recent interests before the government office that Eric Hirschhorn would oversee if he is confirmed as undersecretary of commerce for industry and security. Under Mr. Obama's ethics rules, appointees are prohibited from working on matters involving recent clients unless they obtain a special waiver. Administration officials say there are no plans to give Mr. Hirschhorn a waiver, nor has he requested one. "If confirmed, Mr. Hirschhorn will be required to recuse himself for two years on all matters in which his former clients are parties or represent parties," Commerce Department spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said. Mr. Hirschhorn's nomination has languished even as Mr. Obama makes a public push to double American exports over the next five years. In a trade speech Thursday, Mr. Obama called for "broader export control reform efforts." Mr. Hirschhorn would oversee the Commerce Bureau of Industry and Security, which controls exports of technology, software and dual-use items that can be used for both commercial and military purposes. The bureau processed more than 20,000 licenses in 2008. Another top export official at the department, Kevin J. Wolf, a trade lawyer recently confirmed by the Senate as assistant secretary for export administration, is recusing himself from matters involving 36 former clients, including major exporters such as Raytheon and Boeing.

Culture Wars
Pay Discrimination Bill Lets Gov't Collect Private Payroll Data
Source: CNS News
A bill taken up by a Senate panel on Thursday would empower the federal government to collect the payroll information of private companies and analyze it in an effort to prevent gender-based pay discrimination, which has been illegal since 1963. The law would compel the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to begin mandatory collection of payroll data from private employers, under penalty of law. These data must be broken down by job type, race, and, gender. The government would then analyze the data to determine if companies are violating equal pay laws, which prohibit pay discrimination based on gender. Known as the Paycheck Fairness Act, the law was passed by the House of Representatives more than one year ago - Jan. 9, 2009 - but had languished in the Senate until Thursday, when it was taken up in the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. EEOC Acting Chairman Stuart Ishimaru, who testified before the HELP committee on Thursday, said the law would require the EEOC to collect payroll data from private companies. However, he said that it was still "to be determined" if companies would have to report automatically, a decision that would be left up to the EEOC...The collection is not optional, and the government can sue companies who refuse to comply with the EEOC's order...Ishimura said that the EEOC would analyze the data to look for discrepancies that might indicate discrimination. If the EEOC determined that a company might be discriminating, it would then begin a full investigation.

Government & Politics
Airborne Laser Testbed Successful in Lethal Intercept
Source: US Missile Defense Agency
The Missile Defense Agency demonstrated the potential use of directed energy to defend against ballistic missiles when the Airborne Laser Testbed (ALTB) successfully destroyed a boosting ballistic missile. The experiment, conducted at Point Mugu Naval Air Warfare Center-Weapons Division Sea Range off the central California coast, serves as a proof-of-concept demonstration for directed energy technology. The ALTB is a pathfinder for the nation's directed energy program and its potential application for missile defense technology. At 8:44pm PST, February 11, 2010, a short-range threat-representative ballistic missile was launched from an at-sea mobile launch platform. Within seconds, the ALTB used onboard sensors to detect the boosting missile and used a low-energy laser to track the target. The ALTB then fired a second low-energy laser to measure and compensate for atmospheric disturbance. Finally, the ALTB fired its megawatt-class High Energy Laser, heating the boosting ballistic missile to critical structural failure. The entire engagement occurred within two minutes of the target missile launch, while its rocket motors were still thrusting. This was the first directed energy lethal intercept demonstration against a liquid-fuel boosting ballistic missile target from an airborne platform. The revolutionary use of directed energy is very attractive for missile defense, with the potential to attack multiple targets at the speed of light, at a range of hundreds of kilometers, and at a low cost per intercept attempt compared to current technologies. Less than one hour later, a second solid fuel short-range missile was launched from a ground location on San Nicolas Island, Calif. and the ALTB successfully engaged the boosting target with its High Energy Laser, met all its test criteria, and terminated lasing prior to destroying the second target. The ALTB destroyed a solid fuel missile, identical to the second target, in flight on February 3, 2010.

National & Local
Unemployment Tops 20% in Eight California Counties
Source: The Los Angeles Times
New county-by-county figures released by the state Wednesday showed that in eight counties, more than 1 in 5 people were out of work. Moreover, revised numbers for last year show that fewer people were employed than was previously believed. The state was one of five, along with Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina, that reached their highest unemployment rates since the government began keeping track in 1976, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. California's was 12.5% in January, up from 12.3% in December...The unemployment rate for the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area reached 15% in January, its highest since 1990, the earliest year for which the state has comparable data available. Unemployment in Orange County reached 10.1%, up from 9.1% in December. The state's revised data for last year showing elevated unemployment indicate that a recovery could take longer than previously predicted...Most counties were still struggling under the burden of joblessness, especially the eight counties where rates were higher than 20%. Merced County, for instance, had an unemployment rate of 21.7% in January, and Imperial County's rate was 27.3%. The national unemployment rate in January was 9.7%, and the country experienced a strong 5.75% annualized increase in gross domestic product in last year's final three months...Budget problems in state and local government are expected to further drag down the state's recovery, said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for Continuing Study of the California Economy. Even if they don't get pink slips, state employees are earning less money because of furloughs and salary reductions, which reduces consumer spending in the state.

National & Local
Ground Zero Workers Reach Deal Over Health Claims
Source: The New York Times
A settlement of up to $657.5 million has been reached in the cases of thousands of rescue and cleanup workers at ground zero who sued the city over damage to their health, according to city officials and lawyers for the plaintiffs. They said that the settlement would compensate about 10,000 plaintiffs according to the severity of their illnesses and the level of their exposure to contaminants at the World Trade Center site. Lawyers from both sides met on Thursday to discuss the terms of the settlement with Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Payouts to the plaintiffs would come out of a federally financed insurance company with funds of about $1.1 billion that insures the city. At least 95 percent of the plaintiffs must accept its terms for it to take effect. If 100 percent of the plaintiffs agree to the terms, the total settlement would be $657.5 million. But if only the required 95 percent agreed, the total would shrink to $575 million. Lawyers for the plaintiffs estimated that individual settlement amounts would vary from thousands of dollars to more than $1 million for the most serious injuries. The settlement, which took two years to negotiate, raises the prospect of an end to years of complex and politically charged litigation that has pitted angry victims against city officials, who questioned the validity of some claims and argued that the city should be immune from liability.

Islamist Terrorism
Suicide Blasts in Pakistan's Lahore Kill 45
Source: AlertNet.org/Thomson-Reuters
Suicide bombers targeting the Pakistani military killed at least 45 people in Lahore on Friday, officials said, in a challenge to government assertions that crackdowns have weakened Taliban insurgents. "Two suicide bombers attacked within the span of 15 to 20 seconds and they were on foot," provincial police chief Tariq Saleem Dogar told reporters. Those killed in the attack, the bloodiest this year, in a military neighbourhood of the city near the border with India included nine soldiers, military officials said. Almost 100 people were wounded. Pakistani authorities have said security crackdowns have weakened al Qaeda-linked Taliban militants fighting to topple the US-backed government. But the Taliban have renewed pressure on unpopular President Asif Ali Zardari, who faces calls from opponents to hand over his strongest powers to the prime minister. If that does not happen, Pakistan could face new political turmoil while being pressed to defeat the Taliban. There have been five blasts this week alone, including a car bomb suicide attack on a police intelligence building in Lahore on Monday that killed 13 people, and a shooting and bombing at a US-based aid agency that killed 6 in the northwest.

Islamist Terrorism
Hundreds Flee Fresh Clashes in Mogadishu
Source: AFP/News.com.au
Hundreds fled Mogadishu as warring sides clashed for a third day today, wounding at least 19 and flattening homes in the violence-wracked Somali capital, witnesses and medical sources said. African Union-backed government forces and radical Islamists exchanged artillery fire in a southern neighborhood, sparking the exodus...A medical official in the city's Daynile hospital said, "We have received 19 civilians who were injured in the shelling this morning. Three of them were seriously injured and one them was a child.'' More than 40 civilians have been killed in two days of fighting between the government forces and the Al Qaeda-linked Shabaab in rebels who control much of the capital. The rebels attacked their rivals in northern Mogadishu on Wednesday, sparking heavy exchanges that left some 23 civilians dead. In a strident retaliation yesterday, AU tanks and armored vehicles raided the insurgents' position in the same area and more than 20 civilians were killed. The government, which announced a broad offensive to dislodge the Islamists from Mogadishu, said an onslaught was imminent. "We call on residents to stay away from the fighting zones because the big offensive to sweep rebels from the whole city is imminent,'' Mogadishu Mayor Abdirizak Mohamed Nur told reporters. The Shabaab claimed inflicting heavy damage on their rivals, who briefly occupied one of their strongholds in the north of the seaside city.

International
Portuguese Police Arrest ETA Suspect
Source: The Times of London
Portuguese police have arrested a suspected member of ETA, the Basque separatist group, in Lisbon as he tried to board a flight to Venezuela, according to reports in Spanish media. Andoni Zengotitabengoa, 30, was hoping to fly to Caracas, the capital, but was detained at Lisbon airport after he presented a Mexican passport which turned out to be false, the online edition of daily Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported. He had been on the run since police last month found hundreds of kilograms of explosives at a house in Casal da Avarela, near the central Portuguese city of Obidos, which he occupied with another suspected ETA member who is still on the loose. His arrest comes less than two weeks after Spanish High Court judge Eloy Velasco accused Venezuela's left-wing government of providing support for ETA, which has Marxist origins, and left-wing Colombian rebel group FARC. Mr. Velasco charged 13 ETA and FARC members with plotting to kill Colombian politicians in Spain, including President Uribe, with Venezuelan "governmental cooperation." This move prompted tension between Madrid and Caracas and led to the two governments issuing a joint statement stressing their ties in the fight against terrorism. Velasco based his case largely on information found in the computer of Raul Reyes, FARC's former number two who was killed in Ecuador in March 2008 in a Colombian military operation. But the Venezuelan Government argues the e-mails found in Reyes's computer may have been manipulated by the Colombian authorities.

American Fifth Column
Court Dismisses ACORN Suit Against O'Keefe, Giles
Source: BigGovernment.com
A state court in Baltimore has dismissed ACORN's lawsuit against James O'Keefe, Hannah Giles, and Breitbart.com LLC after the plaintiffs failed to serve the complaint on the defendants within Maryland's 120-day limit. It was with great fanfare that ACORN, along with two recently-fired employees of its Baltimore office, sued last September over the surreptitious taping of the employees advising O'Keefe and Giles on running a prostitution business out of a house. ACORN's general counsel, Arthur Schwartz, told the Washington Post at the time that the defendants, young filmmakers O'Keefe and Giles, plus Andrew Breitbart's Breitbart.com LLC, which disseminated the videos, had committed "clear violations of Maryland law" against audio recording without consent from all parties. But ACORN appears to have lost interest in the case since filing it, confirming my suspicion that it was little more than a press release on pleading paper. Under Maryland Rule 2-507(b), "An action against any defendant who has not been served or over whom the court has not otherwise acquired jurisdiction is subject to dismissal as to that defendant at the expiration of 120 days from the issuance of original process directed to that defendant." That's exactly what the court did March 4, with no apparent notice from the media that covered the filing of the lawsuit. The court's dismissal was without prejudice, meaning that the plaintiffs could theoretically re-file. But, as I argued shortly after it was filed, the lawsuit has substantive flaws that go well beyond the plaintiffs' apparent lack of interest in pursuing it.

American Fifth Column
Study Debunks Myths About Vulnerability of Rain Forests
Source: ScienceDaily.com
A new NASA-funded study has concluded that Amazon rain forests were remarkably unaffected in the face of once-in-a-century drought in 2005, neither dying nor thriving, contrary to a previously published report and claims by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. "We found no big differences in the greenness level of these forests between drought and non-drought years, which suggests that these forests may be more tolerant of droughts than we previously thought," said Arindam Samanta, the study's lead author from Boston University. The comprehensive study published in the current issue of the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters used the latest version of the NASA MODIS satellite data to measure the greenness of these vast pristine forests over the past decade.A study published in the journal Science in 2007 claimed that these forests actually thrive from drought because of more sunshine under cloud-less skies typical of drought conditions. The new study found that those results were flawed and not reproducible. "This new study brings some clarity to our muddled understanding of how these forests, with their rich source of biodiversity, would fare in the future in the face of twin pressures from logging and changing climate," said Boston University Prof. Ranga Myneni, senior author of the new study. The IPCC is under scrutiny for various data inaccuracies, including its claim -- based on a flawed World Wildlife Fund study -- that up to 40% of the Amazonian forests could react drastically and be replaced by savannas from even a slight reduction in rainfall.

Editorials

12 Mar 2010 16:06:02 GMT

We Simply Can't Afford Another Entitlement Program
by Frank Salvato, Managing Editor, The New Media Journal

Congressional Progressives are arm-twisting, threatening, promising and cajoling each and every member of the Legislative Branch in an effort to advance proposed healthcare insurance reform legislation. They are setting the stage to use the reconciliation process to advance the legislation in the Senate, even though the process was created to address budgetary financial issues, exclusively. And one House member, Louise Slaughter (P-NY), is even concocting procedure that would literally bypass any need for the House to vote on the Senate proposal. The effort that is going into circumventing the will of the American people is wickedly stunning..
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Counting the Votes Before They Are In
by Nancy Salvato, Senior Editor

Everyone can identify with foreshadowing, you know what I'm talking about, the part in a book or a movie or a play when you have that sense of foreboding that something isn't quite right, that the characters are celebrating too early. Maybe the real killer is still lurking out there, somewhere, waiting for the right moment to pounce. You're sitting on the edge of your seat, wanting to shout, wait, no, be careful! But to no avail. Sometimes, like in 24, the hero, Jack Bauer, comes in to save the day, just in a nick of time. Sometimes, as in Silence of the Lambs, the killer escapes the odds and disappears, no one knowing just when he will resurface. How many reincarnations of Jaws movies are there? Events don't always come to what feels like proper closure, for example, in Gone Baby Gone, folks may question their values of right and wrong and wonder about whether the ends or the means is more justifiable. The point I'm making, if I haven't made myself abundantly clear, is that I'm feeling a bit unsettled whenever I read or hear about how optimistic Republicans are about the 2012 elections. As if status quo Republicans coming into more power will settle our problems.

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Analysis

12 Mar 2010 16:05:28 GMT

What Are They Teaching America?
by Thomas D. Segel, The New Media Journal
There is a lot of noise being made these days about what is being printed in Texas textbooks. Reviews show a distinct secular and liberal bias in some of the writings. The concern is because the annual buy of the Lone Star State is in excess of 48 million books. This volume almost assuredly dictates what will be printed for the remaining 49 states. Having once served on the textbook committee I am not overly concerned about the end result of these multiple reviews. The thing that really does concern me is what is being taught young Americans attending the colleges and universities of this country.

Every American Is a Criminal...or Soon Will Be
by Ron Ewart, The New Media Journal
We have repeated the following phrase several times in our articles, since repetition seems to be the only way to get a message across. Your money is government's major power over you. The first power that government has over you is your perception that your money is their money. The second power that government has over you is by using the money they take from you by force, against you. But, the third power that government has over you is that you will religiously obey their laws, no matter how many they pass, or how unconstitutional those laws may be.

The FOX Becomes a Hen
by Paul L. Williams, PhD, TheLastCrusade.com
Former prominent guests on Fox News, including Walid Shoebat, contend that the News Corporation has surrendered its "fair and balanced" coverage of Islam and events in the Middle East for a fistful of Saudi cash. Their contention is based on a series of recent developments within the media giant.

'Acceptable' Risk: Holder's Undisclosed Padilla Connection
by Bill Burck & Dana Perino, The National Review
Attorney General Eric Holder and others in the Obama administration have advocated trying Khalid Sheik Muhammed, and acquiring intelligence from Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, in the criminal-justice system. The protections afforded individuals in the criminal-justice system generally exceed those afforded in the military system, so one might think terrorists would be put at an advantage if they are treated as criminals rather than enemy combatants. But we must reject, the president has told us, "the false choice between our security and our ideals."

The Wind-Energy Cover-Up
by Chris Horner, The Washington Times
Barack Obama promised many things on his way into office. Key among these was transparency and a vow to banish lobbyists from insider roles in the policy process. Using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Competitive Enterprise Institute has confirmed that both promises are being aggressively violated. In 2008 and 2009, Mr. Obama told Americans on no fewer than eight occasions to "think about what's happening in countries like Spain [and] Germany" to see his model for successful "green jobs" policies, and what we should expect here. Some Spanish academics and experts on that country's wind- and solar-energy policies and outcomes took Mr. Obama up on his invitation, revealing Spain's policies to be economic and employment disasters.

Click on the Analysis section header to read more...

NMJ Radio

12 Mar 2010 16:01:52 GMT

The Debate Is Over...Let the Debate Begin
by Peter Lemiska
On March 3, Barack Obama announced, with obvious frustration, that the healthcare debate was over. Everything to say has been said, and every argument has been made. No doubt the public agrees with those comments. After a year and a half, they've heard and seen it all. They're growing weary of the orchestrated photo ops that exploit doctors, technicians, researchers, and sundry white-suited medical professionals in a clumsy effort to sway the American people. They're tired of watching the impassioned speeches before hand-picked audiences, reinforced by the obligatory nodding of on-stage supporters. And though they are sympathetic to the plight of those who have fallen through the cracks in our healthcare system, they've had enough of the countless heart-breaking anecdotes suggesting mass victimization by ruthless health insurance companies.

There Is Method in Obama's Healthcare Madness
by AJ DiCintio
President Obama and other liberal elites can lie until the limousines come home that the near landslide majority of Americans who reject Obamacare have been duped by fear mongering geniuses of a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. But that won't change the truth: This majority have simply combined their knowledge of the bill's various incarnations with their experience, common sense, and understanding of arguments made by experts and thoughtful commentators to arrive at the conclusion that Obamacare is a treacherous scheme concocted by liberals to federalize 16% of the nation's economy.

Musings on Mores-Manners
by Ercille I. Christmas
For the past two weeks, the Winter Olympics and "reform" of health care dominated the news cycle. The bobsledding, curling, snowboarding, and other forms of physical activities have ended with the closing of the Winter Games. But, the other "games" of health care reform go on, and on. "Reform" has become like twin 800-lb gorillas, at almost 5000 pages for the two bills proposed by the legislative branches, squatting in our living rooms, waiting for a medal, if only for survival! "They" are sitting on me and I cannot get out or up! In order to salvage the two reform bills that the majority of Americans do not want, the health care summit was tried, modeled after that Beer summit, but minus the beer, I think. To put it bluntly, the summit lacked dignity.

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Polls

12 Mar 2010 16:01:50 GMT

Pres. Obama
Positive: 48.5% (-0.1)
Negative: 46.0% (-0.1)

Congress
Positive: 19.3% (+0.3)
Negative: 75.7% (+0.1)

Sen. Reid
Positive: 24% (-7.0)
Negative: 56% (+5.0)

US Rep. Pelosi
Positive: 29% (-4.0)
Negative: 64% (+7.0)

US Debt as of Feb. 2010
US National Debt: $12.434 Trillion
US Unfunded Liabilities: $107.643 Trillion

International

12 Mar 2010 15:49:30 GMT

Globalization: Curse or Cure?
by Jagadeesh Gokhale, CATO Institute

Globalization holds tremendous promise to improve human welfare but can also cause conflicts and crises as witnessed during 2007-09. How will competition for resources, employment, and growth shape economic policies among developed nations as they attempt to maintain productivity growth, social protections, and extensive political and cultural freedoms? Regardless of how globalization progresses, policymakers in developed nations remain concerned about whether domestic output and employment growth can recover as rapidly as after recessions past. Those concerns are magnified by prospective population aging in developed countries. This paper offers policy recommendations for developed nations to reduce globalization's negative effects and, indeed, harness it for solving aging-related economic challenges...

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Islamist Terrorism

12 Mar 2010 15:49:28 GMT

Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project: Material Support at SCOTUS
by Stephen I. Landman, InvestigativeProject.org

Since September 11, 2001, the majority of "national security" cases to make it to the Supreme Court have dealt with America's military strategy in the War on Terrorism -- namely our policies at Guantanamo Bay. Although these cases have focused on detention authority and due process rights in a time of war, they represent only one facet of what is at least a two-front war. Alongside our military efforts, the United States has been engaged in domestic law enforcement to target international terrorist groups long before September 11th. At the forefront of that battle is the "material support" statute -- 18 U.S.C. § 2339B. Although both maligned and lauded, subject to numerous amendments and frequent litigation, the constitutional challenges have never made their way to our nation's highest court -- until now...

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Government & Politics

12 Mar 2010 15:49:26 GMT

The Health Insurance Reform Debate
by Scott E. Harrington, American Enterprise Institute

At least three broad problems characterize US health care and insurance: 1) high and rapidly growing costs, 2) large numbers of non-elderly people without insurance, and 3) enormous projected Medicare deficits and continued Medicaid cost growth. The health care reform debate and reform proposals have focused largely on expanding the number of people with health insurance. On November 7, 2009, the US House of Representatives narrowly approved legislation to mandate that all individuals be covered by health insurance coupled with Medicaid expansion, premium subsidies for low income persons, creation of a health insurance exchange (or exchanges) with strong restrictions on health insurance underwriting and pricing, and creation of a government-run health insurer to compete with private health plans. While the details differ, on November 21 the US Senate voted 60-39 along straight party lines to approve for floor debate a bill with the same broad outlines...

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National & Local

12 Mar 2010 15:49:24 GMT

The 2009 Index of Dependence on Government
by William W. Beach, The Heritage Foundation

Despite the famed 1996 Welfare Reform Act and the more recent welfare adjustments in 2006, 60.8 million Americans remain dependent on the government for their daily housing, food, and health care. The number of taxpayers is shrinking--and the country may be rapidly approaching the point where more than one-third of Americans do not pay taxes for benefits they receive. In February 2009, the Democrat-controlled Congress and the new Obama Administration may have driven the final stake into the heart of any semblance of fiscal responsibility when they enacted the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--essentially overturning the fiscal foundation of welfare reform. Starting in 2016, Social Security will not collect enough in taxes to pay all of the promised benefits-- which is a problem for all workers, but especially for the roughly half of the American workforce that has no other retirement program. Add in spiraling academic grants, flat-out farm socialism, and the swelling ranks of Americans who believe themselves entitled to public-sector benefits for which they pay few or no taxes--and Americans must ask themselves whether they are near a tipping point in the nature of their government...

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American Fifth Column

12 Mar 2010 15:49:21 GMT

Perfect Storm Is Brewing for the IPCC
by Christopher Booker, The London Telegraph

The news from sunny Bali that there is to be an international investigation into the conduct of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and its chairman Dr Rajendra Pachauri would have made front-page headlines a few weeks back. But while Scotland and North America are still swept by blizzards, in their worst winter for decades, there has been something of a lull in the global warming storm - after three months when the IPCC and Dr Pachauri were themselves battered by almost daily blizzards of new scandals and revelations. And one reason for this lull is that the real message of all the scandals has been lost. The chief defense offered by the warmists to all those revelations centered on the IPCC's last 2007 report is that they were only a few marginal mistakes scattered through a vast, 3,000-page document. But this completely misses the point. Put the errors together and it can be seen that one after another they tick off all the central, iconic issues of the entire global warming saga. Apart from those non-vanishing polar bears, no fears of climate change have been played on more insistently than these: the destruction of Himalayan glaciers and Amazonian rainforest; famine in Africa; fast-rising sea levels; the threat of hurricanes, droughts, floods and heat waves all becoming more frequent...

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Culture Wars

12 Mar 2010 15:49:19 GMT

Immigration, Political Realignment & the Demise of GOP
by James G. Gimpel, Center for Immigration Studies

How has the growth of the immigrant population changed the political partisan leanings of the places where immigrants have settled? The answer to this question is of considerable interest to academic specialists, journalists, interest groups, and political parties engaged in the immigration policy debate. If the impact of mass immigration is politically neutral, there is no reason to be concerned that constituencies will change appreciably by the settlement and naturalization of new arrivals. In that case, immigration might have economic and cultural impacts that should be anticipated, but no one need be concerned about political shifts. On the other hand, if immigration does change the politics of locales, districts, and even entire states, then what might those changes entail? Certainly one important implication will be a resultant public shift toward favoring governmental activism -- a belief that government should do more, rather than less. Latino voters, for instance, are presently among the demographic groups that are most strongly behind an activist government. This is undoubtedly because they have, on balance, lower incomes, and concentrate in areas monopolized by Democratic Party politics into which they are easily socialized...

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Quote of the Day & This Day in US History

12 Mar 2010 15:49:17 GMT

Quote of the Day
"Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph."
-- Thomas Paine

Contra-Quote of the Day
"It's time that we raise up above immature name-calling and start talking to the teabaggers"
-- Mike Elk, Campaign for America's Future

This Day in US History
March 12, 1947: In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for US assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations. Historians have often cited Truman's address, which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, as the official declaration of the Cold War.