Internet Scofflaw

And Freddie Mac is probably not far behind, AP reports:

Fannie Mae plans to tap $11 billion in new government aid after posting another massive quarterly loss as the taxpayer bill from the housing market bust keeps growing. . .

Fannie Mae’s new request for $10.7 billion from the Treasury Department will bring the total for Fannie and Freddie to nearly $96 billion. Freddie is expected to report its quarterly results on Friday.

(Via Instapundit.)

Fannie and Freddie are doing such a terrific job, they are the model for the cooperatives being considered for health reform on the Senate side.

The “public option,” in the words of its own supporters:

When these people say you can keep your current health care, they are lying. You may keep it at first, but eventually everyone will be forced into the government plan. That’s not a side-effect. That’s the point.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: There’s also Barney Frank:

I’ve been a co-sponsor of single payer for a very long time. . . If we get a good public option, it could lead to single-payer, and that’s the best way to reach single payer.

The White House is upset about “disinformation”:

Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to “uncover” the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions.

In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to “eliminate” private coverage, when the reality couldn’t be further from the truth.

As proof that health reform will not eliminate private coverage, Douglass offers us the president’s promises. He said he wouldn’t! Proof!

Never mind that the actual bill being prepared by the president’s allies in Congress would eliminate private coverage. Contradicting the president’s promises constitutes “disinformation”. Let’s keep this in mind as we read on:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

(Emphasis mine.)

If you hear any disinformation, which is to say anything that contradicts the president’s rhetoric, even in private conversation, they want you to report it to the White House. In short, the White House is asking asking us to report anyone that disagrees with the president.

That sounds a bit sinister, but it gets worse. Lawyers for the Senate Judiciary Committee have determined that the information collected would probably not be covered by the Privacy Act (meaning that the White House can keep records on our protected speech without our permission), would not be covered by the Freedom of Information Act (meaning that we can not find out what records they are keeping), but would be covered by the Presidential Records Act (meaning that the records must be permanent).

To sum up: the White House is collecting a secret, permanent database of incidents in which people contradict the president, even in private conversation.

(Via the Corner.)

Roll Call reports:

Last year, lawmakers excoriated the CEOs of the Big Three automakers for traveling to Washington, D.C., by private jet to attend a hearing about a possible bailout of their companies.

But apparently Congress is not philosophically averse to private air travel: At the end of July, the House approved nearly $200 million for the Air Force to buy three elite Gulfstream jets for ferrying top government officials and Members of Congress.

The Air Force had asked for one Gulfstream 550 jet . . . but the House Appropriations Committee, at its own initiative, added to the 2010 Defense appropriations bill another $132 million for two more airplanes and specified that they be assigned to the D.C.-area units that carry Members of Congress, military brass and top government officials.

(Via Instapundit.)

Oh, come on. The automakers are horribly mismanaged, operate in the red, suffer under huge legacy costs, and are dependent on the taxpayer to survive. How can you compare them to the government?

According a 1977 book co-written by John Holdren, President Obama’s science advisor, trees should have the legal standing to sue:

Since the 1970s, some radical environmentalists have argued that trees have legal rights and should be allowed to go to court to protect those rights.

The idea has been endorsed by John P. Holdren, the man who now advises President Barack Obama on science and technology issues.

Giving “natural objects” — like trees — standing to sue in a court of law would have a “most salubrious” effect on the environment, Holdren wrote the 1970s.

“One change in (legal) notions that would have a most salubrious effect on the quality of the environment has been proposed by law professor Christopher D. Stone in his celebrated monograph, ‘Should Trees Have Standing?’” Holdren said in a 1977 book that he co-wrote with Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich.

“In that tightly reasoned essay, Stone points out the obvious advantages of giving natural objects standing, just as such inanimate objects as corporations, trusts, and ships are now held to have legal rights and duties,” Holdren added. . .

“Slight changes in the legal notions and diligent application of the legal machinery are all that are necessary to induce a great reduction in pollution in the United States,” Holdren added.

Holdren has previously distanced himself from his 1977 book, when it was discovered that the book endorsed forced abortions, universal sterilization, and a “Planetary Regime” to administer natural resources and human population. He now claims that he never held the views in his book.