Obama criticizes Republican "phony scandals," "short-term thinking"

When questions arise about why four American foreign service personnel died at the hands of Libyan terrorists, or why a Border Patrol agent was murdered by Mexican drug cartel thugs possessing US-provided guns, or why the Internal Revenue Service improperly delayed action on some religious and conservative applicants for non-profit status, or any of the numerous other irregularities under this administration, Democrats and the agenda-driven media say, "That's old news. Move on," as if relevance depends upon the calendar, not the substance of the events.

And that is a pretty convenient modus operandi: They avoid coming clean with the American people on legitimate questions of competence for months on end, virtually never hold guilty parties accountable, and then complain that those asking the questions are living in the past and the answers they seek no longer matter. And they do so knowing that millions of people won't care.

All the while President Barack Obama blames every problem in the country on someone or something else, and calls the government's disgraceful handling of the aforementioned boondoggles a bunch of "phony scandals" manufactured by Republicans. It's a great game of Beat the Clock.

But honest Americans realize that their government failed miserably to do its job as dictated by the US Constitution and want to know who screwed up and what penalty they will pay for their gross incompetence and/or illegal behavior. So far, only lip service has been paid to accountability, and some of the most likely culprits have escaped reaping their just reward, while others have been promoted to higher positions.

Several months after Mr. Obama took office the Department of Justice's (DOJ) gun running operation known as Fast and Furious began. Intended to track gun sales to Mexican drug cartels, it backfired and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered in 2010 by people possessing two of those guns provided by the DOJ. The Obama administration's response was something like: "Ooops! Gawrsh, we didn't expect any o' them guns to be used against us. Sorry 'bout that. Nothing to see here; keep moving."

On September 11, 2012, after multiple requests to beef up security at the American diplomatic sites in Libya had been denied or ignored, terrorists attacked the facilities in Benghazi, resulting in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens, foreign service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

Politics demanded that 2 months before a presidential election no screw-ups be under investigation or terrorist activity be fresh in voters' memories, since President Obama had declared the War on Terror over, so the administration concocted a lame excuse that a video that hardly anyone in the entire world had seen, let alone in Libya, caused a spontaneous demonstration at the US consulate. That idiotic story was repeated for weeks by administration spokespersons, including President Obama himself.

Barack Obama, the “news” media, and millions of liberals showed little interest in the inconveniently-timed deaths of these brave Americans.

Unanswered questions persist, but instead of keeping these important events in front of the American people, the media most recently have focused on the shooting of a black high school student by a "white Hispanic" in Florida and the birth of a future monarch in Great Britain. Perhaps if the five murdered government employees looked like Trayvon, Mr. Obama and the media would give a hoot.

Not everyone is as cavalier about these tragic government failures as the administration, Congressional Democrats and the agenda-driven media. A group called Special Operations Veterans, the mission of which is to uncover the truths about the Benghazi terror attack, took its demands to Capitol Hill last week in the form of a 60-foot-long petition, which was unfurled near the steps of the Capitol. It demanded that the government “End the cover-up” of the attack. The petition was signed by more than 1,000 people and called for a special congressional committee to investigate the incident.

Each of us either believes that the deaths of the five government workers are important, or we don't. Apparently, most people don't, or are too-easily satisfied with the partial information provided that doesn’t explain what went wrong.

The Internal Revenue Service targeted scores of conservative religious and political organizations seeking non-profit status with improper questions, and denied action on their applications for up to two years, then tried to blame it on a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati, Oh. It turns out there were 12 different IRS offices involved. Now the administration tells us that the targeting was actually non-partisan. That's a low threshold; even one liberal organization makes that technically true. But the reality is that 292 were conservative; 6 were liberal.

Each of us either believes that our government must operate honorably and follow the rules set forth for it in the US Constitution, or we don't. There is a shockingly large faction of Americans that apparently don't, because they are not demanding answers to these questions, or that people responsible for these events be disciplined, or that such dishonorable and un-American activities be stopped and government restored to functioning constitutionally.

Which side are you on: Honorable government or the status quo?

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Obamacare’s serious weaknesses driving even strong supporters away

Commentary by James H. Shott

Although Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) only recently acknowledged that the health care reform bill he helped create – the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare – is a “train wreck,” most Americans suspected that at its creation.

Things are so bad that President Barack Obama, trying to prevent some of the disastrous results, did something he is not allowed by the U.S. Constitution to do: postpone implementation of part of the law by suspending the employer mandate until 2015 and leaving the rest of the law intact. The Executive Branch of our government is obligated to enforce the laws – all of them, and all of each of them – and does not have the power to choose which ones, or parts thereof, it will enforce.

The House of Representatives passed two measures delaying the employer and individual mandates for one year, with 35 and 22 Democrats respectively joining in those efforts, which Mr. Obama has curiously threatened to veto.

And more recently, one of Obamacare’s most devoted groups of supporters has jumped ship. In a letter to Democrat Congressional leaders, Teamsters union president James Hoffa, and the presidents of two other unions, said this: “Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”

The law has already encouraged some employers to trim their staffs to fewer than 50 full-time employees to avoid the expense of the mandate, and in other cases to decide against providing insurance altogether, and pay a much cheaper fine.

Nevertheless, Mr. Obama declared last week that "the law is working the way it was supposed to for middle-class Americans,” and criticized House Republicans for trying to dismantle it.

Polling data from five different polling organizations from mid-May through July 13 shows continuing disfavor among Americans, with the disparity of opposition-to-support running from as little as 5 points to as much as 15 points, and the Real Clear Politics average of the five polls at 10.2 points.

According to the Gallup poll from late last month, 42 percent say that in the long run the law will make their family's healthcare situation worse, and only 22 percent say it will make it better. And 47 percent believe the law will make the healthcare situation in the U.S. worse, while only 34 percent say it will make it better.

Republicans also are criticized for offering no alternatives while trying to dismantle the measure. “Three years after campaigning on a vow to ‘repeal and replace’ President Barack Obama’s health care law, House Republicans have yet to advance an alternative for the system they have voted more than three dozen times to abolish in whole or in part,” Sunday’s editorial in The Washington Post complained. That ignores, however, H.R. 3400 - Empowering Patients First Act, introduced in 2009 before Republicans campaigned for and won control of the House.

And now there is another, H.R. 2300 – the Empowering Patients First Act of 2013. Its principal sponsor is Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.), who sponsored H.R. 3400, and he has credentials for health care issues matched by few in the Congress. Rep. Price is also Dr. Price, a physician who actually delivered and understands patient care.

This measure allows patients, families and doctors to make medical decisions, not Washington, DC. That is an excellent place to begin improving health care. What a shame that wasn’t the driving factor behind the ACA.

“You can get folks covered, you can solve the insurance challenges, and you can save hundreds of billions of dollars in this health care system,” said the physician/Congressman, “all without putting Washington or health insurance companies in charge of those decisions that ought to be between patients, and families and doctors.”

How can H.R. 2300 – a bill of only 249 pages, less than a tenth the length of the monstrous Obamacare bill – accomplish this?

Rep. Price describes it as comprehensive legislation under which “every single American has the financial feasibility to purchase the coverage they want, either through tax deductions, or credits, or advanceable credits or refundable advanceable credits so that they can purchase the coverage they want for themselves or their families, not what the government forces them to buy.”

He says further that everyone owns their own coverage, like a 401k plan, so if they change their job or lose their job, they take their coverage with them, and it allows all of those with pre-existing conditions to pool together, giving them the purchasing power of millions so that no one person’s adverse health status will change the cost for anyone else, including that one person.

While H.R. 2300 has the great advantage of being properly focused on patients and physicians, trying to straighten out the voluminous failures of the ACA in one bill is a Herculean feat. Obamacare needs to be repealed in total, and as soon as possible, and then Congress must undertake a sensible approach to correcting the problems of the health care system without turning it over to the government.

Cross-posted from Observations

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The Obama “War on Coal” is a disgusting government over-reach

President Barack Obama continues working to destroy the coal industry, most recently by changing carbon emission standards in such a way that a) coal-fired power plants will be heavily affected, b) encourages plant owners to convert to natural gas, and c) will discourage the construction of coal-fired plants overseas.

Rather than work to solve the very real problems of the nation – like unemployment, the economy, his scandal-ridden administration and the troubles on the international scene – he chooses to fight a war on coal through agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency, which impose extreme regulations and severe penalties on the industry.

Federal agencies routinely put regulations in effect without regard for the chaos and harm they will cause. Coal mining and related job losses and other financial repercussions just don't matter to the president and the bureaucrats. To them, the jobs of tens of thousands of Americans and the economies of 27 states are far less important than their narrow ideological goals.

These agencies criminalize behavior through regulations and impose fines or jail time as if those regulations were law. But according to Article I of the U.S. Constitution, only Congress can make law.

These agencies create regulations and penalties because Congress repeatedly fails to determine how measures it passes should be implemented, and allows or directs the Executive branch to decide how to do that. But the Constitution does not provide the Legislative branch the authority to transfer its law-making obligation to Executive branch agencies.

The Founders deliberately set up a tripartite government with specific and limited roles for each of the branches and a system of checks and balances specifically to prevent any of the three branches from assuming too much power, all based upon the concept of a limited government with few and specific responsibilities.

Briefly summarized, the Legislative branch makes laws, the Executive branch administers and enforces laws, and the Judicial branch rules on questions of law and operates the court system.

By abdicating its duty to complete the lawmaking process, and leaving part of that function to the Executive branch, the Congress has failed in its fundamental duty, which is a basic tenet of the Constitution, and it abets the Executive branch in developing its evolving tyrannical persona.

Since the nation's law-making authority resides with the Legislative branch, the rules and penalties federal agencies wield so freely and often arbitrarily are void of any true authority. It is time, therefore, for the people and the states to stand up and say, like Howard Beale in "Network": "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

The federal government collectively does not have the authority to target a given industry for destruction, and the Executive branch darned sure doesn't have that authority all by itself.

If any one or more of the 27 states that mine coal want to mine continue doing so, they need to do it as responsibly as is possible and feasible, and tell the federal government officially and formally to buzz off. The time-honored mechanism for restraining an over-reaching federal leviathan is known as "nullification."

The United States seems to be infected by a philosophy like that expressed by entertainer Britney Spears, whose inferior talent actually looks good compared to her abysmal thinking: "I think we should just trust our president in every decision he makes and should just support that, you know, and be faithful in what happens."

Fortunately, Ms. Spears' naive reasoning was not shared by Thomas Jefferson, who had a better idea and suggested that rather than just sit back and allow a president or Congress or judges to arbitrarily alter the meaning of the Constitution, we must make only those changes that have popular consent and do so through the amendment process, which the Founders sensibly included in the Constitution.

Not all amendments have been good ones, of course, as evidenced by numbers 16, 17, and 18 (which was repealed), but that process is far superior to what we have done and are doing to the first 10 amendments the other way.

It is indeed sad to observe the embarrassing and shameful lack of knowledge and understanding of the founding principles of our country and how legions of Americans who don't know or understand them threaten our very survival as a free nation.

But as bad as that is, it is far worse when our elected officials, who took an oath to "preserve, protect and defend" the United States Constitution, share in this ignorance. Or worse, if they ignore their oath in favor of not preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution in order to "fundamentally transform the United States of America" to meet some foreign ideological vision.

Just how many of our 535 elected representatives in Congress and the hundreds of thousands of other federal employees – including the president and his cabinet – really understand the supreme law of the land, the United States Constitution, is unknown. But watching Mr. Obama's behavior and the behavior of the rest of the government suggests that number is horrifyingly small.

Ignorance is bliss, they say. But not in our government.

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Data mining breeches our Founder’s concept of liberty and privac

Collecting data from phone calls of Verizon customers is one thing. Collecting email information on millions of Americans is something else. Both of these activities stir concern and break the bounds of constitutionality, but the invasion of privacy is far greater in the collection of email data.

Phone call data consists of phone numbers, dates and call duration, but not the conversation itself. Email data, on the other hand, not only has email addresses and date information, but the actual message as well, which often includes names and attached text and media files.

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The potential for misbehavior is enormous, particularly with email data, given the nature of the information available to prying eyes. Some comfort may be taken from the idea that intelligence personnel who use this information are not susceptible to political influences unlike, say, Internal Revenue Service workers. That does not relieve the concern for our privacy, however.

Hardly anyone doesn't want to the government to find plotting terrorists or discover terrorist plans before they are acted upon, even if it involves tapping phones, capturing emails or other covert measures. But the routine collection of massive amounts of data in the hopes of finding a couple of useful pieces of information is over-the-top and unjustified. Its use has increased since the practice was first introduced after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and has increased exponentially under the Obama administration, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

The way it is supposed to work is that when the government has reason to believe that one or more individuals – like let’s say Irv Huffington or Ahmed Ali-Yahoo – may be planning an attack, it goes to court to seek an order allowing it to tap their phone or take whatever actions it proposes to do. It doesn't simply start collecting the records of millions of people hoping to find the Huffington or Ali-Yahoo needle among millions of data bits in the haystack.

Here's what the 4th Amendment to the US Constitution says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

That language is precise and unambiguous. It does not allow judges to give anyone, or anyone to just take the information of millions of Americans in the hope of finding something hidden away among huge collections of data.

In order to get permission to breech a citizen's privacy, the government must request permission by offering a compelling reason and support that assertion under oath, describing explicitly the place and persons under suspicion. Nowhere in the 4th Amendment is the term "fishing expedition" mentioned or implied, nor is there language allowing nosing around in the private lives of millions of citizens who empower the government because it makes things easier, and it does not depend upon what the meaning of "is" is.

The Founders viewed "general warrants," or dragnet searches such as we are witnessing today, as tyrannical. That view is not mitigated by the advent of terrorist acts that kill dozens, hundreds or thousands, nor by the amazing technological advances since the mid-18th century; general warrants still are tyrannical.

The United States has Constitution protections for a reason: because the Framers understood from first-hand experience how government can slither into impropriety, tyranny and oppression unless it is clearly and firmly prevented by statute from doing so. The U.S. Constitution was created not to limit what the people may do, but to limit what the government may do.

We are told, and many of us believe, that in order to be safe in these perilous times, we must give up much of our liberty and privacy for security, but Benjamin Franklin expressed this idea about that: Those who willingly give up liberty for security will have neither, and deserve neither.

It is a point of shame for the citizens of the United States that so many Americans have no functional knowledge of the principles upon which our nation was created or of the meaning or power of the US Constitution. That is a prime reason that so many on the political left are able to mis-think so many things with such great success. 

As a nation we have grown lazy and tone deaf as our government has grown to gargantuan proportions and ridiculous levels of expense, and burst through the top and sides of the constitutional box our much-smarter-than-we-are Founding Fathers built for it.

When they look out on the US landscape and see that some things that aren't working well, they think becoming more like left/liberal Europe is the answer, without even the suspicion that the reason things aren't working is because they have been trying for decades to become more like Europe and less like the United States of America, which under the US Constitution became the freest, most prosperous and most successful nation in human history, while liberal socialist and communist governmental models have always failed.

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