In his State of the Union Address, Obama proposed job training programs to end unemployment. There’s just one problem It’s been tried and failed miserably. Here’s what one of the scholars at the Heritage Foundation had to say about the matter:

More Job Training Programs on Top of All the Other Redundant and Ineffective Programs – David B. Muhlhausen, Ph.D.

Tonight, President Obama called for the federal government to engage in new job training and employment initiatives, especially for the hard to employ.

Before Congress signs off on any new initiatives, we must recognize that President Obama wants to add several new programs on top of the 47 job-training programs already operated by the federal government. Further complicating the matter, the U.S. Government Accountability Office has concluded that there is little evidence that these programs are effective.

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One of the attorneys who fought a court case over Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court says he fears that even if the U.S. Supreme Court declared Obama unqualified, he’d simply ignore the ruling and continue issuing orders.

The comments came today from Leo Donofrio, who led the pack in filing lawsuits over Obama’s 2008 election and his subsequent occupancy of the White House.

He was commenting on today’s hearing before a Georgia administrative law judge on complaints raised by several state residents that Obama is not eligible to run for the office in 2012. That hearing went on after Obama and his lawyer decided to snub the court system and refuse to participate.

A decision from the judge, Michael Malihi, is expected soon.

The Georgia residents delivered sworn testimony to a court that, among other things, Obama is forever disqualified from having his name on the 2012 presidential ballot in the state because his father never was a U.S. citizen. Because the Constitution’s requirement presidents be a “natural born citizen,” which is the offspring of two citizen parents, he is prevented from qualifying, they say.

The historic hearing was the first time that a court has accepted arguments on the merits of the controversy over Obama’s status. His critics say he never met the constitutional requirements to occupy the Oval Office, and the states and Congress failed in their obligations to make sure only a qualified president is inaugurated, while his supporters say he won the 2008 election and therefore was “vetted” by America.

In Georgia, the law requires “every candidate for federal” office who is certified by the state executive committees of a political party or who files a notice of candidacy “shall meet the constitutional and statutory qualifications for holding the office being sought.”

State law also grants the secretary of state and any “elector who is eligible to vote for a candidate” in the state the authority to raise a challenge to a candidate’s qualifications, the judge determined.

Citizens bringing the complaints include David Farrar, Leah Lax, Thomas Malaren and Laurie Roth, represented by Taitz; David Weldon represented by attorney Van R. Irion of Liberty Legal Foundation; and Carl Swensson and Kevin Richard Powell, represented by J. Mark Hatfield. Cody Judy is raising a challenge because he also wants to be on the ballot.

Donofrio’s case – like all the others that have reached the Supreme Court – simply was refused recognition….

Read more from Dave Tombers, WND.com.

An internal memorandum from the Office of the Solicitor General (OSG) reveals that Justice Elena Kagan “substantially participated” in a health care case in San Francisco in which the Justice Department argued over the effect of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This raises grave new doubts about the appropriateness of Kagan’s participation as a justice in the Obamacare lawsuit scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in March.

There has been a lot of debate over Kagan’s direct involvement in defending the PPACA while she was still the Solicitor General. Despite emails showing her initial involvement in formulating DOJ strategy to defend the legislation, Kagan has claimed that she had no “substantial involvement” (even though that is not the applicable standard). Attorney General Eric Holder claims Kagan was “walled off” from the case while her Supreme Court nomination was pending.

By May 2010, emails show that Kagan was well aware of the possible conflict, writing that the OSG’s message pertaining to her involvement in the matter “needs to be coordinated.”

When asked if his superior had played a role in consultations about defending the law, Neal Katyal, her deputy, wrote: “No, she has never been involved with any of it.” But email traffic suggests that far from being completely “walled off” from the process, Kagan did indeed participate in efforts to defend the PPACA.

A partially redacted email from Katyal to other OSG personnel states that “Elena would definitely like OSG to be involved” in preparing the PPACA defense and that he would “bring in Elena as needed.” Two months later, after being invited by Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli to a meeting of the President’s health care policy team to “help us prepare for litigation,” Katyal forwarded the message to Kagan, writing “I think you should go, no? I will, regardless, but I feel like this is litigation of singular importance.” Kagan’s response: “What’s your phone number?”

While there is at present no direct evidence that Kagan attended the meeting in question, other emails indicate her knowledge and participation in OSG legal strategy over the PPACA. For instance, when the Justice Department became aware in March 2010 that the Landmark Legal Foundation, headed by Mark Levin, was preparing litigation over the “Slaughter rule” that would have “deemed” the health care law to have passed the House through the passage of another unrelated bill, Katyal cc’d Kagan on a message admitting that OSG “could be in court very soon” and must have its reply brief “ready to go.” As further evidence of Kagan’s knowledge of the underlying legal issues of the potential case, when asked whether she had read Judge Michael McConnell’s op-ed on the unconstitutionality of the Slaughter rule, she replied: “YES – HE IS GETTING THIS GOING.”

But it is Kagan’s involvement in another case, Golden Gate Restaurant Association v. San Francisco, which reveals still more about the extent to which Kagan formulated the government’s legal opinion regarding the PPACA and why she should seriously consider disqualifying herself from the pending Supreme Court case.

In 2006, San Francisco enacted its own version of Obamacare. The local ordinance was intended to provide health care for uninsured residents and to force employers to make minimum “health care expenditures” on behalf of covered employees. The Golden Gate Restaurant Association filed a federal lawsuit claiming the new ordinance was preempted by federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

While the restaurant association won its lawsuit at the district court level, it lost in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The association filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court, asking the court to review the case. The Supreme Court denied certiorari, but only after it requested the Solicitor General to express the views of the United States. In May of 2010, the OSG filed an amicus brief telling the Supreme Court that it should not take the case.

The amicus brief contains an extensive discussion of the Obamacare legislation. In fact, the OSG’s arguments on the PPACA take up at least six pages—almost half of the 13 pages of “Discussion” in the brief. The OSG informs the court that the Department of Labor decided….

Read more from Hans von Spakovsky at The Foundry Blog.

Presidents often use State of the Union Addresses to articulate a more comprehensive ideology of government or society. In the 2012 SOTU, what did President Barack Obama hold up as his ideal? Military life.

Obama took the name of the armed forces in vain, twice, simultaneously claiming undeserved credit for killing Osama bin Laden and forecasting the way his opponents should fall in line, salute, sit down, shut up, and follow his commands. Soldiers, he said, trust each other. “They don’t obsess over their differences,” Obama enthused. “They focus on the mission at hand. They work together.”

“Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example,” he said.

At the end of his speech, he returned to his theme, making special mention of the way he degraded the U.S. armed forces for social engineering purposes:

Those of us who’ve been sent here to serve can learn from the service of our troops. When you put on that uniform, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white; Asian or Latino; conservative or liberal; rich or poor; gay or straight. When you’re marching into battle, you look out for the person next to you, or the mission fails. When you’re in the thick of the fight, you rise or fall as one unit, serving one nation, leaving no one behind.

Exactly who is the commander-in-chief in Obama’s model? Whose orders are unquestioningly executed without regard for personal reservations about their wisdom or likelihood for success? Obama noted in the Situation Room where he quivered in fear after finally ordering the troops to take out Osama, he “sat next to Bob Gates, a man who was George Bush’s defense secretary; and Hillary Clinton, a woman who ran against me for president.”

America’s decision makers in this fantasy are Barack Obama, a radical anti-American socialist; Hillary Clinton, a European welfare state socialist; and a Republican willing to go along with their plans.

Do we want to live the military life? The dehumanizing basic training, designed to break the individual and mold him into an element of a larger collective and hierarchical force? The rigid regimental conformity imposed from above upon all? The rationing and lack of individual choice over one’s own fate? The harsh punishment meted out to those who disobey?

Obama has stoked the idea of a civilian defense corps and turned shoppers into snitches with his “If You See Something, Say Something” campaign. Collectivism made its greatest strides in the United States during the Great Depression and World War II. A military mindset reinforces Obama’s regal pretensions and siege mentality. Americans interested in maintaining constitutional liberties should want nothing to do with his plans or ideology.

As the late folk troubadour Phil Ochs once sang, “Before the end even treason might be worth a try. This country is too young to die.”

– Ben Johnson, The White House Watch.