Reagan Strikes Back: Judge Rules All ObamaCare Unconstitutional

January 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Ben Johnson, FloydReports.com

President Obama’s health care takeover just fought the U.S. Constitution, and the Constitution won.

Earlier today, Judge Roger Vinson of the district court in Pensacola, Florida, issued a 78-page decision striking down all of the president’s heath insurance “reform” as unconstitutional. Vinson ruled the individual mandate, which requires all Americans to purchase health insurance, violated the Commerce Clause. He found that mandate cannot be separated from the rest of the bill, so the entire bill is unconstitutional:

I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate…Because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire act must be declared void.

Vinson, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, made clear his opposition to the bill came from its gross violation of the Constitution. Vinson wrote, “If Congress can penalize a passive individual for failing to engage in commerce, the enumeration of powers in the Constitution would have been in vain.” He concluded, “Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution.”

This lawsuit was filed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, a former Republican Congressman, and ultimately joined by 26 states.

Today’s ruling raises several significant points….

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Video of the Day: Egyptian Leader, Muslim Brotherhood Terrorists Are Like Evangelicals

January 31, 2011 By 18 Comments

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Internet Kill Switch Reintroduced as Egypt Shuts Down the ‘Net

January 31, 2011 By 10 Comments

Gautham Nagesh, The Hill

The news of Egypt’s crackdown on Web access is raising new concerns over a comprehensive cybersecurity bill that critics claim gives the president a “kill switch” for the Internet.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) recently indicated they plan to re-introduce their bipartisan legislation, which passed the Senate Homeland Security Committee last year only to get mired in a standoff with Senate Commerce Committee members over which panel should have oversight of civilian cybersecurity.

Civil rights advocates such as the ACLU also raised concerns about the bill, which they claim gives the president the ability to shut down the Web in the event of a catastrophic cyber-attack.

Specifically, observers are concerned the new version of the bill will reportedly not allow for judicial review when the administration shuts down a network under attack.

Those concerns have been heightened by the Egyptian government’s move this week to cut off communications amid ongoing protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak. Both the U.S. government and Web firms like Facebook have criticized the move.

“Those in Congress who have proposed an ‘Internet Kill Switch’ for the U.S. should realize the danger of their proposal now that Egyptian President Mubarak has flipped such a switch to stifle dissent in Egypt,” said Berin Szoka, president of the libertarian think tank TechFreedom.

“This incident also demonstrates a more subtle point: Maintaining the rule of law in times of crisis demands judicial review for the president’s decision to designate something a ‘critical asset’ subject to government diktat in the name of protecting ‘cybersecurity.’ ”

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Report: Black Panther Case Put Politics Above Law

January 31, 2011 By 14 Comments

Hans von Spakovsky, The Foundry Blog

The final version of the Interim Report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the investigation of the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case was released late last week and is available on the commission’s website. Get it while it’s hot.

With the expiration of the terms of several commissioners, new appointees by President Obama and others doing the administration’s bidding will soon control a majority of the commission seats.  It seems unlikely the new majority will continue the investigation into the real reason for the dismissal of the NBBP lawsuit.

Given the raucous and obstreperous behavior of the Democratic commissioners, with the unfortunate help of Vice Chairman Abigail Thernstrom, to stymie the investigation and protect the Obama administration, it is also almost a sure bet that nothing further will be done to investigate the sworn testimony about the hostility to race neutral enforcement of civil rights laws at Justice that the Commission uncovered, or the unlawful stonewalling by the Department of the Commission’s investigation.

The Commission’s report is devastating, particularly the statements of Commissioners Todd Gaziano (with whom I work at Heritage), Gail Heriot, and Peter Kirsanow, and their rebuttals to the nonsubstantive, almost comical dissent of Democratic Commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan Melendez.  Also worth reading is a post on the report of The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin., as well as comments by former Justice Department lawyer J. Christian Adams.

As Commissioner Gaziano says in his statement that is included in the 210-page report, the Commission’s investigation was about a possible cover up of a:

racial double standard in law enforcement in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The usual Washington refrain is that the cover-up is always worse than the original offense.  But in this case, the underlying problem may be as damning as the wrongful cover-up – and possibly worse….[Justice Department lawyers testified] that there is a pervasive hostility to the race-neutral enforcement of the civil rights laws….Such a racial double standard in law enforcement would be at war with the very notion of a federal Civil Rights Division devoted to the equal protection of the laws.  Yet, the Department of Justice is unquestionably hostile to any serious investigation of these allegations.

The dissenting commissioners make the false claim that there was no evidence to support any of the allegations, disregarding and ignoring the sworn testimony of two Justice Department whistleblowers and numerous other witnesses.  But as Jennifer Rubin succinctly points out for The Washington Post, the report shows that….

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Comedy Round-Up: Three Years of Late Night Jokes About Obama

January 31, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Tom Purcell, FloydReports.com

How is President Obama doing as he enters the second half of his first term?

Late-night comics know better than pundits. Let’s start with some of their earlier jokes:

• Jay Leno — “President Obama plans on training 10,000 new math and science teachers. How about teaching math to that economic team of his?”

• Jimmy Fallon — “In an interview with Rolling Stone, President Obama said he has Stevie Wonder, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones on his iPod. Unfortunately, the question was, ‘Do you have a plan to fix the economy?’”

• Fallon — “A year into Obama’s first term in office, unemployment is higher, the national debt is higher and there are more soldiers serving in Afghanistan. When asked about it, Obama was like, ‘Well, technically that is change.’”

The 2010 elections worsened the comics’ tone:

• David Letterman — “Voters didn’t like how President Obama was handling the economy. Wait a minute — he was handling the economy?”

• Leno — “President Obama will be laying out a new economic plan. Apparently, we had an old economic plan.”

• Leno — “(President Obama and President Bush) had a cordial conversation. President Bush said for the last 19 months, he’s been relaxing and playing golf. President Obama said, ‘You too?’”

Obama’s government expansion and increased spending — trillion-dollar deficits making us more dependent on the Chinese — have the comics worried….

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