A Grant of Dominion

Posted on 10 May 2013 by eehines

…of one group of Americans over another, courtesy of President Barack Obama, congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (D, CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV), and their Obamacare.

Dr Ezekial Emanual, ex-health-care adviser to Obama and presently senior fellow at the Center for American Progress strongly recommended this grant in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.

In touting Obamacare’s health “insurance” exchanges, he recommended government add overt pressure on our young to buy health “insurance,” in addition to the existing Individual Mandate requirement, because their participation is a necessary subsidy for others’ purchase.

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Obama’s Regulation Costs

Posted on 8 May 2013 by eehines

Heritage Foundation estimates that annual regulatory costs increased during Obama’s first four years by nearly $70 billion—with more regulations in store for term two.

And that’s just the 130, or so, so-called major regs. President Barack Obama’s EPA accounted for $45 billion all by themselves.

So much for Obama’s “commitment” to cut the red tape in Washington.

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The Convenience of Government

Posted on 1 May 2013 by eehines

President Barack Obama has decided to appeal last fall’s ruling of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that invalidated his “recess” appointments of three people to the NLRB. The Court ruled that since the Senate wasn’t in recess, the appointments were unconstitutional and so invalid.

Obama’s grounds for appeal would be laughable if the matter weren’t so serious. He

urged the Supreme Court to rule that presidents have broad authority to make certain appointments without Senate approval.

This from a Lecturer in Constitutional law. Presidents have the authority to “make certain appointments” that the Constitution gives them, and not a particle more.

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A Thought on Gun Control

Posted on 15 April 2013 by eehines

Recall that last November the 2^nd Circuit upheld a New York law requiring those who want to carry handguns to show “a special need for self-protection.”

There is an underlying problem with this. The Federal Constitution does not allow the Federal government to decide the purposes for which it will permit citizens to “keep and bear arms.” The Constitution requires the Federal government not to infringe citizens’ right to keep and to bear, period. There is no “except for when the government deems otherwise” caveat; the clause reads the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

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Gun Control…Ignorance

Posted on 8 April 2013 by eehines

…or outright dishonesty. As one demonstration, we have a breathtakingly ignorant claim from the Congresswoman who’s pushing a gun control bill in the House of Representatives. Congresswoman Diana DeGette (D, CO) actually said this, out loud and in public, about firearm magazines and the usefulness of banning them:

These are ammunition, they’re bullets, so the people who have those now, they’re going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high-capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won’t be any more available[.]

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It’s Bad

Posted on 7 April 2013 by eehines

…when the court pokes fun at a case.

In Bayou Lawn, et al., v Department of Labor, Bayou Lawn, the Chamber Of Commerce of the United States of America, the National Hispanic Landscape Alliance, the Silvicultural Management Associates, Inc., and the Professional Landcare Network, among others, objected to a number of wage rules and bureaucratic requirements related to the H-2B visa program that had been promulgated by DoL. Among other things, these groups doubted DoL’s authority even to write such rules.

Nor were DoL’s rules insubstantial:

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Are Bank Depositors’ Funds at Risk?

Posted on 2 April 2013 by eehines

…from yet more government confiscation schemes? It seems that Euro Group President Jeroen Dijsselbloem’s remark that raiding Cypriot depositors’ deposit accounts to bail out failed banks in that country ought to be the model for the rest of the eurozone wasn’t so far off the mark after all, the publicly pronounced opprobrium notwithstanding. This condemnation, for instance, came from Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker:

It disturbs me when the way in which they tried to resolve the Cyprus problem is held up as a blueprint for future rescue plans. It’s no blueprint. We should not give the impression that future savings deposits in Europe might not be secure. We should not give the impression that investors should not keep their money in Europe. This harms Europe’s entire financial center.

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The Arrogance of Government

Posted on 2 April 2013 by eehines

Here is an example of why we have a Constitution that explicitly limits the power of the Federal government and within that Constitution a Bill of Rights that both explains those limits and explicitly reserves the infinity of remaining rights and powers to the people and to the states.

This example, though, is by one of those state governments, the government of Maryland which also says it’s legal for approved gangs to commit trespass and terrorize children inside their own homes. State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D, Dist 27) said this in all seriousness:

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Extremist Left on the Prowl, Again

Posted on 30 March 2013 by eehines

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is attacking a Viet Nam War memorial, and it’s attacking Coos Bay, OR, for having it.

The atrocity this time is a small memorial erected by the local Jaycees in 1972—as that war was winding down—and that has a Latin cross atop it*:

FFRF attorney Rebecca Markert, in a letter to City Manager Rodger Craddock, wrote—and she was actually serious

We have no objection to the veterans’ memorials. Our objection is to the message of endorsement of Christianity over other religions and non-religions. The Christian-only memorial sends a message that the government only cares about the deaths of Christian soldiers, not Jewish, other non-Christian, and non-religious soldiers[.]

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Bias, Redux

Posted on 29 March 2013 by eehines

I wrote about a case here, a case involving a Florida Atlantic University student being taken out of class a and facing expulsion because he objected to a class assignment that had him write Jesus’ name on a piece of paper, put the paper on the floor, and then stomp on it. I closed that post with a note that FAU had “apologized” for their attack on the student.

Now more information has come to light on that case and on FAU’s “apologies.” The latter are even more cynical than at first appeared.

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