Senate Democrats struck a deal Wednesday night with Republicans that will keep President Obama from making recess appointments while Congress is out of town campaigning for the midterm elections.
Democratic leaders have agreed to schedule pro-forma sessions of the Senate every week over the next six weeks, a move that will prevent Obama from making emergency appointments, according to Senate sources briefed on the talks. . .
Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had threatened to send Obama’s most controversial nominees back to the president if Democrats did not agree to schedule pro-forma sessions, according to a senior GOP aide. . .
Under Senate rules, the chamber may only carry over pending nominees during an extended recess if senators agree by unanimous consent. . . The deal saved several of Obama’s most controversial nominees from a reset.
The Venezuelan opposition has won a popular majority in legislative elections. Unfortunately, because of the way Chavez has rigged the electoral system, the opposition may still fall short of achieving the two-fifths of the seats that they need to prevent Chavez from ruling by decree.
The Obama administration is developing plans that would require all Internet-based communication services — such as encrypted BlackBerry e-mail, Facebook, and Skype — to be capable of complying with federal wiretap orders, according to a report published Monday.
This may or may not be a good idea (I think not), but of one thing you may be sure: If this were President Bush’s proposal, the left (in which I include the mainstream media) would be going beserk. There would not be enough trees for all the editorials the New York Times would write.
A new study has found that playing video games trains people to make correct decisions faster, and that skill applies to everyday activities as well. Interestingly, the effect applies to “action video games” but not “slow-moving strategy games”.
What I find most remarkable about the story is this comment:
The buyers of the first house are allowed to retain the house under Australian federal law. This law is designed to protect innocent third parties who are not responsible for questionable practices or illegal activity. They conducted a transaction in good faith and are not to be held accountable or fiscally responsible for the action.
The gentleman in question, Mr. Mildenhall, will be compensated from a fund set aside by the government to settle the dispute.
If this commenter is to be believed (and no one has contradicted him), Australia has decided that buyers of stolen property get to keep it. I find that amazing. Another commenter puts it well:
Having a law that “protects innocent 3rd parties” when they buy what amounts to stolen goods seems like a bad idea. If the purchaser loses some/all of their money when stolen property is reclaimed and returned to the original owner, then purchasers have an incentive to make sure they are purchasing legally-obtained goods from a legit seller. Australian law seems to encourage everyone to remain as ignorant of the circumstances as possible, so that they can buy things on the sly.
The Black Panther scandal has hit the big time, with the Washington Post deigning to cover Christopher Coates’s devastating testimony before the US Commission on Civil Rights:
A veteran Justice Department lawyer accused his agency Friday of being unwilling to pursue racial discrimination cases on behalf of white voters, turning what had been a lower-level controversy into an escalating political headache for the Obama administration.
During a daily intelligence briefing in May 2009, [national intelligence director Dennis] Blair warned the president that radicals with American and European passports were being trained in Pakistan to attack their homelands. [White House chief of staff Rahm] Emanuel afterward chastised him, saying, “You’re just trying to put this on us so it’s not your fault.”
To these guys, It’s not about protecting America. It’s about who the blame lands on.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wants to censor the Internet. Unlike Australia’s scheme, Leahy’s scheme is intended not for fighting child pornography, but for fighting copyright infringement.
Republicans aren’t innocent here either: Leahy has five GOP co-sponsors to go with his seven Democratic co-sponsors.
Scott Johnson has a post on the plight of Molly Norris, who had the idea for “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” and is now in hiding after a fatwa issued by Anwar al-Awlaki, the Al Qaeda imam.
With this sort of thing happening all the more often, I have a modest proposal. The US government should create a program to protect individuals who get Islamist death threats as a result of their free speech. This would be a concrete step that our government could take to defend free speech, and defending our rights is a core function of the government.
A newlandmark in the annals of big government: A new Spanish law requires that men share in the housework.
And, although the socialists are running the country, you can’t blame them exclusively:
The initiative has received the backing of all Spain’s political parties, including those of a conservative or traditionally Catholic bent.
Ms Uría said that the Socialists, who run Spain’s minority government and voted against the clause when the draft went through the commission, had told her that they, too, were now in favour of it.
The UK’s version of the IRS has a proposal for simplifying tax collection: confiscation. Employers would send paychecks to the government rather than employees. The government would then pass on to the employee what it thinks appropriate.
Newsweek is attacking the Republicans’ pledge to pass only constitutional bills, not as unnecessary, but actually as dangerous:
Not so harmless, however, is the promise to require every bill to be certified as constitutional before it is voted on. We have a mechanism for assessing the constitutionality of legislation, which is the independent judiciary. An extraconstitutional attempt to limit the powers of Congress is dangerous even as a mere suggestion, and it constitutes an encroachment on the judiciary.
Got that? For Congress to limit itself to constitutional legislation is dangerous. And it’s not just Newsweek. Does two make a meme?
POSTSCRIPT: Taking this drivel more seriously than it deserves, RameshPonnuru offers a substantive rebuttal: Marbury v. Madison, the Supreme Court case that invented judicial review, specifically cited Congress’s duty to consider the constitutionality of legislation.
Does the FDIC maintain a list of politically connected banks that get special treatment? The FDIC says no. The Washington Post says yes:
A Washington Post review of documents and interviews with many involved in the decisions show that regulators flagged [OneUnited Bank] early on for its “highly visible” connection – in OneUnited’s case, a former board member who is married to Waters, the chairman of an important banking subcommittee. The alert was part of a previously undisclosed practice at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. of trying to identify banks that might cause “unnecessary press or public relations” problems, according to testimony a top FDIC official gave to House ethics investigators.
Then, the bank won a rare chance to make its case for help to top Treasury Department officials.
The owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal has for the first time been hit with a counterclaim over its online copyright infringement lawsuit campaign, with attorneys for the Electronic Frontier Foundation accusing the newspaper of entering a “sham” relationship with the Review-Journal’s copyright enforcement partner Righthaven LLC — and accusing Righthaven of copyright fraud.
The EFF is also recruiting attorneys to represent Righthaven’s victims free of charge.
When Tennessee passed a law allowing permit holders to carry guns in state parks, gun opponents claimed there would be a surge of violence. Parks would become free-fire zones. They always say things like that. And, as always, they were wrong.
The New York Times reporter who has been covering the Ground Zero Mosque story was trained by Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam leading the project, or so claims Rauf’s organization.
John Podhoretz explains where Christine O’Donnell came from. She’s much better than the “bearded Marxist” she’s running against, but it’s hard to be convinced that Delaware Republicans made the best choice.
Have you been encouraged by the way Americans have been paring down their debt in the last couple of years? Don’t be. Essentially all of it is due to defaults. Setting defaults aside, Americans have been cutting debt at a 0.08% rate.
That’s how the administration can claim to have created 200k green jobs. The other trick, of course, is the usual one: to look at only one side of the ledger, and not count the jobs that were destroyed by the same policies.
WJLA-TV has fired veteran anchorman Doug McKelway for a verbal confrontation this summer with the station’s news director that came after McKelway broadcast a sharply worded live report about congressional Democrats and President Obama. . .
[General Manager Bill] Lord took exception to McKelway’s reporting and asked to meet with him, according to several station sources who were granted anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel matter. A shouting match between the two men ensued, leading to McKelway’s suspension, sources said.
Megan McArdle does her Krugman fact-checking bit again:
This is sort of impressive: Paul Krugman simultaneously castigates Republicans for the fiscal irresponsibility of wanting to extend tax cuts for the rich that cost about $700 billion–and for irresponsibly threatening the extension of tax cuts for the middle class which cost three times as much. Yet you could read the entire column and not realize that it’s the middle class tax cuts which are the really expensive, budget-busting bit.
By ordering polling places to report temporary workers as employees, the IRS could add hundreds of thousands of imaginary jobs (30k to 36k in New York City alone) to the October employment report.
Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s legal writer, not only thinks that legislators should ignore the question of whether their bills are constitutional, she thinks that to do otherwise is simply bizarre:
I have been fascinated by Christine O’Donnell’s constitutional worldview since her debate with her opponent Chris Coons last week. O’Donnell explained that “when I go to Washington, D.C., the litmus test by which I cast my vote for every piece of legislation that comes across my desk will be whether or not it is constitutional.” How weird is that, I thought. Isn’t it a court’s job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn’t that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?
Lithwick is also apparently ignorant of basic constitutional case law, the very subject she presumes to write about. The concept of judicial review does not appear explicitly in the Constitution; it was introduced by the Supreme Court in Marbury v. Madison.
I’ll give Lithwick this though; she has summarized the left’s take on the Constitution perfectly. To wit: flagrantly disregard it, and see if anyone ever reels you in.
Jimmy Carter says his philanthropic work is “superior” to that of other former presidents, citing his activism on the environment and leadership filling “vacuums in the world.”
Helmke also says he gets “nervous” when gun advocates “talk about taking up arms against the government.” He explained, “When someone thinks that they, on their own, can decide that somehow the government is tyrannical and that they can start a revolution, start a civil war, then we’re not following the process that our founding fathers set up.”
Actually, that’s exactly the process that our founding fathers used.
In testimony before a Congressional committee on Thursday, Schapiro defended the legislation, section 9291 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which allows the SEC to reject some requests for documents.
The provision “enhances the commission’s ability to examine regulated entities by making clear that the commission may protect, in appropriate circumstances, information gathered in the examination process,” Schapiro said.
Of course, every regulatory agency gathers information. How the SEC is different from the rest is beyond me.
But have no fear:
But Schapiro said the SEC will not use the law to cover up its mistakes. To the contrary, she said, the agency has issued guidance to ensure that its employees remain committed to “principles of open government.”
Oh, they promise not to abuse their power? I’m so relieved.
Charlie Crist, the RINO turned not-Republican-at-all running for Senate from Florida, pushed for an audit of Florida Republican Party credit cards. His Republican opponent, Marco Rubio, has taken some heat for misuse of party credit cards and Crist thought an audit would embarrass him further.
Some of the country’s most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.
Who ever could have predicted such a thing?
The usual suspects are, of course, outraged that companies are pulling out of a sector that the government has made into a money-losing proposition:
“We’re just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds,” Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group, said in a statement. “[It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest.”
I always find it amusing when the left is deeply offended at its inability to repeal the laws of economics.
BONUS: Even from a leftist viewpoint, in what sense is it “patently dishonest”? Rome himself, in the very same statement, acknowledges the reason for the company’s decision, even as he deplores it. So how are the insurance companies being dishonest? It seems that the health-care-nationalization crowd is so used to calling their opponents dishonest that they don’t even notice when it makes no logical sense.
We really didn’t like getting 2% back on all our credit card purchases. So thanks, Democrats, for putting a stop to that with your new credit card law. We’ll take comfort in the fact that all that money will now go to subsidize people with bad credit.
New documents obtained by Judicial Watch prove that, contrary to statements made the Justice Department (some of which were under oath), the decision to dismiss the voter intimidation case against the Black Panthers was made by political appointees, not career staff.
RELATED: Glenn Fine, the DOJ inspector general, will investigate Eric Holder’s voting rights record. However, Fine is a Clinton appointee, so don’t be shocked if he come back with a whitewash.
This morning I decided that there’s no future in Computer Science, and I’m going to go into business for myself. I’ve decided to become a lobbyist.
For a long time I’ve kept my telepathic powers secret, but today I’m coming out of the closet. I will use my long-distance mind-control powers turn the levers of government in favor of my clients. There will be a hefty fee of course, but nothing compared to what those other lobbyists cost. They have to spend lots of money actually meeting with politicians. My way is much more cost-effective.
I understand that some of you may be skeptical of my powers, so I’ve carried out a small demonstration. Without leaving the comfort of my office, I have telepathically persuaded Sen. James Inhofe to oppose cap-and-trade. I have also gotten Rep. Ron Paul to support a return to the gold standard. Furthermore, unlike many lobbyists, my influence is not limited to one party. I have telepathically induced President Obama to favor heavy interference in the financial industry and oppose tax cuts for the wealthy, and I’ve induced Rep. Dennis Kucinich to oppose space-based mind control weapons (I can’t have the competition, you know).
Attention all special interests! Now that you can see my powers, I’m sure that you will want to retain my services immediately.
No? Why on earth not? I am at least as effective as that lobbyist mentioned in that New York Times article who got John Boehner to oppose cap-and-trade and various tax increases and price controls!
I was all set to do a blog entry lambasting Microsoft for teaming with the Russian government to use charges (often bogus) of software piracy to persecute human rights organizations. The title was going to be Evil empire meets evil empire.
But Microsoft did the right thing. Within a day of the New York Times story, Microsoft issued a blanket license for human rights groups. The license applies automatically, without any need to apply. I have no doubt that Russia will find other ways to persecute its dissidents, but they won’t be able to use Microsoft to do it.
Democrats often accuse Republicans of questioning their patriotism, and those accusations almost never have any merit. On the other hand, when a politician really does question his opponents’ patriotism, it’s pretty much always a Democrat.
Power Line is up in arms over the NYT’s hatchet piece against likely-soon-to-be-Speaker John Boehner (R-OH). They’re right of course; the NYT piece was absurd. It actually claimed — no joke — that Boehner is in the pocket of lobbyists because he opposed cap-and-trade, caps on debit card fees, tax hikes on hedge funds, and various other idiotic Democratic policies that Republicans oppose already.
But what I think is more interesting is the timing of the NYT piece. If you do a search on New York Times stories about John Boehner, you don’t see a lot of hatchet jobs. Boehner simply hasn’t been a target for the NYT. But, the NYT hopped on the anti-Boehner bandwagon within three days of White House’s decision to campaign against him. The only other NYT attack piece I could find directed at Boehner is a Paul Krugman column that also came out after the White House designated its target.
There is no plausible inference other than this: The New York Times takes its cues from the Democratic leadership.
There’s an interesting coda to Kathleen Sebelius’s overt threats against health insurers that tell their customers that premium increases are resulting from Obamacare. Sebelius claimed that administration experts had determined that Obamacare’s early provisions would have a “minimal impact on premiums”.
That’s ridiculous on the face of it: if the cost of the new benefits were minimal, insurers would be offering them already. But we needn’t rely on economics and common sense. Sebelius’s own agency found that the new provisions would increase some premiums by as much as 7%. In comparison, the premium increases that she is blasting range from 1% to 9%. Even at the high end of that range, they’re not much higher than HHS’s own estimate.
Posted by K. Crary 
