Internet Scofflaw

The Washington Examiner reports:

The voting public apparently agrees that nothing in life is free, especially health care. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 51 percent oppose free universal health care and a whopping 63 percent reject it if required to change their current insurance coverage to a free government plan.

UPDATE: And 72% believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

Polls suggest that the union effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker will fail.

Hollywood has been making anti-war propaganda films for years, which (if their press statements are to be believed) weren’t even intended to make money. But one pro-military film hits theaters and message films are suddenly bad.

As far as I can tell, they are serious about this:

(Via the Corner.)

Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face the Nation:

How do you go after Barack Obama, though, right now? I mean, the stock market is up. It looks like the unemployment is going down. David Axelrod in his campaign said the other day Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. It’s going to be a tough job for you, is it now?

Oh, geez. The economy is in shambles, our debt exceeds GDP, gas prices are soaring (on purpose), Iran is going nuclear, Islamists are taking power throughout the Middle East, health care is being nationalized, the White House thinks that the government should be able to dictate ministers to churches, and Schieffer can’t see any weakness in Obama’s record?

Even Schieffer’s talking points have negatives. Bin Laden was located using human intelligence of the sort that we will never be able to get again, now that President Obama has told the enemy, in complete detail, exactly what interrogation techniques we will use. And GM was “saved” by spending nearly $100 billion of the taxpayer’s money (at least a quarter of which we will never get back), screwing GM’s creditors, and giving the new GM to Obama’s union cronies.

Europe has invented a new reason to limit free speech:

At the end of January, Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, announced a sweeping new privacy right: the “right to be forgotten.” The proposed right would require companies like Facebook and Google to remove information that people post about themselves and later regret—even if that information has already been widely distributed. The right is designed to address a real and urgent problem in the digital age: It’s very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the digital cloud. But the right to be forgotten takes a dangerously broad approach to solving the problem. In fact, it represents the biggest threat to Internet free speech in our time.

The article is hard to summarize, but basically the new rights takes three forms, listed in order of increasing danger to free speech:

1. The right to delete material that you posted yourself.
2. The right to demand the deletion of material that you posted yourself and others have subsequently copied elsewhere.
3. The right to demand the deletion of material that others have posted about you.

(Via Althouse.)

The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the Obama administration’s pet green-energy company, has left behind drums of improperly stored toxic waste.

(Previous post.)

Growth of our economy versus growth of our debt:

This simply cannot work.

(Via Instapundit.)

The UK’s new 50% tax rate for incomes over £150k has reduced tax revenues.

The amazing thing is that anyone is surprised by this. The existence of a Laffer curve is unarguable (one cannot contest the simple observation that the government will receive no revenue at a tax rate of 0% or 100%), the only dispute is where the curve peaks. All the evidence shows that curve peaks much lower than 50%.

Of course, there are those who support counterproductive tax rates even knowing they are counterproductive, out of sheer spite.

Heh. Good thing the smart guys are running the country now. (Via Instapundit.)

Canada is close to repealing the “hate speech” section of its Human Rights Act, which is commonly used to suppress free speech. (And I mean that in the not at all hypothetical sense.) Better late than never.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m a little puzzled though, because I thought Section 13 was found unconstitutional years ago. I guess that decision must have been overturned.

(Via Instapundit.)

At the Daily Caller: The IRS is persecuting Tea Party groups.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who adds:

Well, when the President jokes about auditing his enemies, you can expect the worker-bees to pick up on the message. I warned at the time that the President’s thuggish “joke” would cause a loss of faith in the IRS.

The Canadian long-gun registry, now abolished, never solved a single crime. What’s $2.7 billion divided by zero?

As the old joke goes, how do you know that an Obama flack is lying? His lips are moving.

Here’s White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on the contraception mandate “compromise”:

That’s why he got the support of a range of groups, from the Catholic health association and Catholic charities, to Planned Parenthood.

White House spokesman Jack Carney:

And the organizations that will be most affected by this — Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association — have expressed their support for this policy, and we obviously appreciate that.

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), chairman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee:

And that’s why groups like Catholic Charities, the Catholic hospitals associations have said this is a fair compromise, that it accomplishes the goal of both women’s health as well as religious freedom.

Finally, here’s Catholic Charities:

In response to a great number of mischaracterizations in the media, Catholic Charities USA wants to make two things very clear:

1.  We have not endorsed the accommodation to the HHS mandate that was announced by the Administration last Friday.

2. We unequivocally share the goal of the US Catholic bishops to uphold religious liberty and will continue to work with the USCCB towards that goal.

Any representation to the contrary is false.

This broad attack on a single talking-point doesn’t happen by accident. Clearly, the Obama administration has decided that it serves their purposes to promulgate this lie.

(Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: Let’s not forget that the compromise itself is a lie. After announcing it, the administration went ahead and put the old, pre-compromise regulation into effect.

The New York Post reports:

On Dec. 6, nearly 300 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement flooded into East New York to begin what they considered phase two of their efforts. . . The group would take over an empty house, foreclosed on by a bank, fix it up and provide shelter to a homeless family. . .

Last week,Wise Ahadzi opened the door to the house he still owns, 702 Vermont Street in East New York. Inside is a war zone. The walls are torn down, the plumbing is ripped out and the carpeting has been plucked from the floor. It’s like walking through a ribcage.

Garbage, open food containers and Ahadzi’s possessions are tossed haphazardly around the house.
“This is where my kitchen was,” Ahadzi says. There is no sink, no refrigerator and no counter space. Instead there are dirty dishes piled high waiting for a dip in three large buckets of putrid water that serve as the dishwashing system. In a first-floor bathroom, Christmas lights dangle from a shower curtain rod. The only thing separating a toilet from the elements outside is a thin veil of paper. . .

Ahadzi thought about calling the police, until the embarrassed Occupy movement promised him that they’d repair the house and leave. Two weeks have already gone by since without any progress. Occupy hasn’t even offered to pay him for the damages.

Before and after:

The mistake here was expecting constructive action from socialist malcontents in the first place. (See also topic two here.)

(Via Instapundit.)

Mark Twain once (reportedly) said “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” As true as that was in the 19th century, matters are far worse in today’s administrative state. Today’s regulators can do whatever they want, and they are always in session.

Case in point: federal regulators are looking to ban all use of electronic devices while driving. And if that’s not bad enough, some even want to ban them for passengers as well.

(Via Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: A few years ago I took a look at what the research of cell phone use while driving actually says. It’ was much more nuanced than media reports would have you believe.

I also noted last December that the NTSB isn’t telling the truth about how many cell-phone-related accidents occur. It’s bad when regulators lie to support their position, for two reasons: it’s bad for them to lie, but also it suggests that they’ve decided what they are going to do, regardless of the facts.

Administration officials were warning about Solyndra as early as March 2010, but that didn’t stop the illegal bailout nearly a year later.

(Previous post.)

A group of CMU researchers have found that barely half of off-shore wind turbines will likely survive their full design life:

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

(Via Instapundit.)

David Brock’s gun-control hypocrisy is raising eyebrows:

The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting personal assistant acting as a bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group. Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on “gun and public safety issues.” At the same time, Media Matters’ gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security. . .

“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one Media Matters employee told The Daily Caller.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’ve noticed that this sort of hypocrisy is very widespread, and not just with guns either. There is a general phenomenon on the left of people believing that basic necessities not only should be provided by the government, but that they should be provided only by the government. Such people turn out to be hypocrites when it comes to their own consumption of those basic needs.

Those who believe that the government should be sole provider of protection from violence (i.e., gun control advocates) nevertheless carry guns or hire bodyguards who do. Those who believe that the government should be the sole provider of health care (e.g., many Canadians) nevertheless cross the border to obtain treatment for themselves. Those who believe that the government should be the sole provider of education (e.g., President Obama) nevertheless enroll their children in private schools. If the left ever succeeds in nationalizing food, the same bunch will be lined up at black-market groceries.

In the case of the North Carolina school that replaced a child’s home-packed lunch because it wasn’t nutritious enough, the school says they know nothing about the incident:

Reached again, a different representative said they had “no information at this time” about the situation. A West Hoke Elementary official similarly denied any knowledge and referred all questions to the school district.

The school district says it was just a misunderstanding:

Bob Barnes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, told the McClatchy News Service Thursday that the first preschooler to make headlines just misunderstood her teacher when she thought she was told to ditch her homemade lunch for one from the cafeteria . . .

“We are not the lunch bag police,” Barnes told McClatchy. “We would never put a child in any type of embarrassing situation. . .”

Barnes confirmed there was an agent from Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education at the school Jan. 30 who examined six student lunches and determined one did not make the nutritional cut — presumably the first little girl whose story made news.

And the state says they aren’t doing any such inspections:

In a statement to The Blaze, the Division of Child Development and Early Education said it is investigating what happened but flatly denied any of its employees or contractors “instructed any child to replace or remove any meal items.” The division issued a similar statement to McClatchy even after Barnes said it was one of their agents who examined the lunches.

“It is not DHHS’ policy to inspect, go through or question any child about food items brought from home. The facts we have gathered confirm that no DHHS employee or contractor did this,” the statement said.

These stories contradict each other, so they can’t all be true. Most likely, none of them are, because we a second incident has now come to light:

Now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter. . .When [Diane] Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria.

The lunch Zambrano packed for her daughter? A cheese and salami sandwich on a wheat bun with apple juice. The lunch she got in the cafeteria? Chicken nuggets, a sweet potato, bread and milk.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

Nancy Pelosi and MoveOn.org are pushing a completely bogus graphic, purporting to show that, deficit wise, Barack Obama is the most responsible president in years, and Reagan was the least.

(Via Instapundit.)

Carolina Journal reports:

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. . .

When the girl came home with her lunch untouched, her mother wanted to know what she ate instead. Three chicken nuggets, the girl answered. Everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste.

The school also told the child that her mother wasn’t packing her lunch properly, and billed the mother for the replacement lunch.

I’m tempted to quip that I’m glad North Carolina has solved every real problem facing the state and can afford to waste money on lunch inspectors. But, in truth, this would be an outrage if it cost nothing at all.

POSTSCRIPT: The governor of North Carolina is Bev Perdue (D, of course), of we-should-suspend-elections-for-two-years fame.

David French has an interesting post at NRO on how Governor Romney fought to protect freedom of conscience in Massachusetts. Your mileage may vary, but I find it persuasive.

Jack Lew, who was President Obama’s budget director before becoming chief of staff, pretends he doesn’t understand how the budgeting process works.

UPDATE: Glenn Kessler:

We might be tempted to think Lew misspoke, except that he said virtually the same thing, on two different shows, when he was specifically asked about the failure of Senate Democrats to pass a budget resolution. He even prefaced his comment on CNN by citing the “need to be honest.”

He could have tried to argue, as some Democrats do, that the debt-ceiling deal last year in effect was a budget resolution. Or he could have spoken more broadly about gridlock in the Senate, after acknowledging a traditional budget resolution had not been passed. Instead, the former budget director twice choose to use highly misleading language that blamed Republicans for the failure of the Democratic leadership.

I missed this one in January:

I’ve never gone ad hominem on [my critics].

Oh my.

On the very first day in an introductory economics course, one learns that price caps lead to shortages. Case in point: price controls on prescription drugs lead to shortages. Good thing we’re extending price controls to all medical care. . .

President Obama’s compromise on the contraception mandate is a complete fraud. Instead of requiring Catholic organizations to offer contraception, they require insurance companies to provide the contraception “free of charge”. Of course, “free of charge” means that the insurer will pass the cost on the payer (the aforementioned Catholic organizations), but it’s okay (we are told), because the insurer won’t be allowed to list contraception as a specific line item. Instead, the insurer will have to spread the cost throughout.

In short, this “compromise” doesn’t change anything whatsoever. It’s true, this sort of shell game often fools those who wish to be fooled, but so far the Catholic bishops don’t seem to be buying it.

But wait, it’s worse than that. The whole thing is a lie. The administration isn’t even implementing the supposed compromise. The final regulation was promulgated Friday. After 17 pages of smokescreen, it contained the actual legal language, of which the very last paragraph reads:

Accordingly, the amendment to the interim final rule with comment period amending 45 CFR 147.130(a)(1)(iv) which was published in the Federal Register at 76 FR 46621-46626 on August 3, 2011, is adopted as a final rule without change.

(Emphasis mine.)

UPDATE: Greg Mankiw puts it nicely:

Consider these two policies:

A. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance. The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

I can understand someone endorsing both A and B, and I can understand someone rejecting both A and B. But I cannot understand someone rejecting A and embracing B, because they are effectively the same policy.

Of course, the fact also remains that the policy is actually staying at A.

UPDATE: The Obama administration didn’t even consult with the Catholic church in determining its “compromise”.

UPDATE: More on how the “compromise” hasn’t even been implemented. (Via Instapundit.)

Bill Maher is projecting:

Honestly, if Sarah Palin were president and terrorists struck New York again she would say two things. First, is Mount Rushmore okay? And two, well at least they didn’t hit the “real America.” Democrats don’t do this. Jerry Brown doesn’t stand under the Hollywood sign and say “Now, I don’t know if this will play in Texas or down on the farms where they have no values and f*** chickens. But you here in Hollywood are the real Americans.” It never happens.

We needn’t speculate, since 9/11 did happen. No prominent Republican, Sarah Palin included, said anything like that. It’s hard to imagine that a Republican would, since conservatives still believe that politics ends at the water’s edge. But one prominent Democrat did. Michael Moore’s lament was that the terrorists hit the wrong target:

They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC and the plane’s destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

(Via the Corner.)

Labor unions are paying people $60 a head to join Occupy DC’s protest of the CPAC conference.

Eric Holder has already changed his story about when he learned of the Fast and Furious operation:

During a May 3 House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder told Congressional investigators at least twice that he had only learned of the controversial Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program a “few weeks” beforehand. But testifying Tuesday, Holder’s timeline changed. . .

“I did say a ‘few weeks,’” Holder clarified Tuesday, responding to questions from Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I probably could’ve said ‘a couple of months.’ I didn’t think the term I said, ‘few weeks,’ was inaccurate based on what happened.”

Now his story has to change again. However bad “[a] few weeks” is as a description of  a six-week period, it’s even worse as a description of a five-month period:

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice dumped documents related to Operation Fast and Furious on congressional officials late Friday night. Central to this document dump is a series of emails showing Holder was informed of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder on the day it happened – December 15, 2010.

Holder’s office was notified of Fast and Furious on the very day Agent Terry was murdered. Five months later he told Congress that he had just learned of it. That’s perjury.

We still don’t know when Holder first learned of Fast and Furious. Holder said it was shortly before May 3, 2011. We later learned it was by March 2011, then January 2011, and now December 2010. This could be the end of the walkbacks, but that’s not the way to bet.

(Previous post.) (Via Hot Air.)

I’m pretty sure that if Elizabeth Warren were a Republican, this would be a big deal:

One of the Harvard professor’s many well-compensated part-time gigs included consulting for Travelers Insurance. I know that it is hard to believe that on one hand, Democrats would be bashing an industry, and on the other hand they are making money from it. To be a Democrat is to be a hypocrite.

What did Lizzy do to earn $44,000 in compensation from the insurance company? She made it harder for claimants to collect. Warren helped establish the bankruptcy strategy for companies to avoid crushing lawsuits. In short, go bankrupt to avoid paying victims.

More here.

The American takes a look at Mitt Romney’s job-creation record at Bain Capital, and finds: “The companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.” Read the whole thing.

Of course (as Glenn Reynolds remarks) even creating one job (heck, even destroying just a few million) would be a big improvement over President Obama’s record.

POSTSCRIPT: For readers with an Economist subscription, the Economist also has an informative column about Romney and Bain.

Warren Buffett, President Obama’s pet billionaire, will profit handsomely from Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Solyndra phenomenon isn’t just a federal problem, green energy subsidies are running into trouble at the state level as well. (Via Instapundit.)

Several other ventures in President Obama’s green energy program are also in distress.

A three-year-old girl can’t have a kidney transplant because she’s “retarded” (the hospital’s word, not mine).

Just to be clear, the parents weren’t asking to be placed on the list for a kidney. They wanted to transplant from a family member, but the hospital refused to do it.

Now this family can still potentially get the operation done by going to a different hospital. But under health care nationalization, we are on a slippery slope to all medical decisions being made centrally. Then people like this will have no recourse.

The Daily Mail reports:

Iran has demonstrated further evidence of its strict regime after the government cut internet links leaving millions without email and social networks. . .

Gmail, Google and Yahoo are all thought to have been restricted, and users have been unable to log in to their online banking.

‘The interesting thing is that when asked, they deny the fact that all these services are all blocked,’ an Iranian contacted by CNET said.

‘I don’t know the the infrastructure that they will use but I don’t think we have a way out of that one.

(Via Instapundit.)

President Obama is fulfilling a key campaign promise:

Ohio based FirstEnergy Corporation announces it will close three coal fired power plants in West Virginia by this fall. The closings come directly from the impact of new federal EPA regulations. . .

The three plants produce 660 megawatts and about 3-percent of FirstEnergy’s total generation. In recent years, the plants served as “peaking facilities” and generated power during times of peak demand for power.

(Via Instapundit.)

Hundreds of Congressional staffers are delinquent on their taxes, to the tune of $10.6 million.

POSTSCRIPT: On the other hand, Mitt Romney paid more taxes than he owed.

LightSquared tried to buy off Sen. Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican leading the Senate’s investigation into the LightSquared scandal.

(Previous post.)

Some rare sanity in federal energy regulation:

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved the first new nuclear power project in more than three decades. The panel on Thursday approved plans from Southern Company for two reactors at a Georgia site. The $14 billion reactors could begin operating as soon as 2016 and 2017.

A new study finds that red-light cameras lead to more car crashes. Of course, that’s not surprising, since that’s what all the previous studies have found as well:

The results didn’t surprise Rajiv Shah, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who studied the effectiveness of red-light cameras in Chicago and concluded in 2010 they offered “no significant benefit.”

“I’d say that’s very consistent with what cities across America have found,” he said of Kansas City’s results. “There’s not really a hard connection between reducing accidents and red-light cameras.”

Red-light cameras are just a very inefficient tax.

(Via No Silence Here, via Instapundit.)

LightSquared’s latest test confirms that it could crash planes:

Transportation deputy secretary John Porcari told a House subcommittee on Wednesday that LightSquared’s planned wireless network is “not compatible” with flight-safety GPS devices used in commercial aircrafts.

He told lawmakers on the House Transportation and Infrastructure’s subcommittee on Aviation that LightSquared would disrupt GPS systems that pilots use to help them navigate in low altitudes, including devices that warn them when they are getting too close to terrain.

The FAA also pointed out how ridiculous it is that we keep spending taxpayer money to test this privately owned system:

Porcari said the Federal Aviation Administration has spent $2 million testing LightSquared’s network. He called spending that amount of money to review a private company “quite unusual.”

“However, due to the Administration’s commitment to increased access to broadband, the investment was merited, but given the results we reviewed, further investment cannot be justified at this time,” he said.

Pssst, it’s not because of any commitment to broadband that this has been going on; it’s because of the administration’s commitment to paying off its cronies.

For their part, LightSquared is sticking with their “it’s not us, it’s everyone else” routine:

The company says the problem is that GPS receivers are poorly designed and are receiving signals from outside their designated frequency bands.

Yeah, 75% of all GPS receivers are poorly designed. . .

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

The ACLU has come out in support of the Obama administration’s mandate requiring the Catholic Church to change its position on contraception. I can’t say this surprises me. The ACLU has been very weak on religious freedom; opposing it more often than defending it.

POSTSCRIPT: A new Rasmussen poll finds that the public opposes the mandate 50-39.

Big Brother is watching you:

Hawaii’s legislature is weighing an unprecedented proposal to curb the privacy of Aloha State residents: requiring Internet providers to keep track of every Web site their customers visit.

Which party runs Hawaii again?

(Via Instapundit.)

Yet another Democratic politician compares Republicans to terrorists. (Via Instapundit.)

By a 54-17 margin, Americans want the Supreme Court to throw out health care nationalization.

President Obama says the entire country should be run like the military. Enough talk of freedom; America is best when everyone does what they are told.

I do find it striking that the left doesn’t find any of this stuff sinister.

Don Surber writes:

No matter who you support this year, you have to admit Mitt Romney went about becoming president the wrong way. Instead of wasting his time learning how business works and building a multi-billion-dollar company that really did save or create hundreds of thousands of jobs, Mitt should have lived off his daddy’s fortune like Jack Kennedy. Chasing skirts and molesting teenage virgin is a lot more fun than figuring out how to revive an old business.

Instead, Mitt Romney gave his inheritance to charity. Who does that anymore? . . .

And what was with graduating in the top third of his class at Harvard Law School and going into business? He should have parked his butt in Chicago thanks to a two-book deal and a handsome advance and written a couple of autobiographies. Practicing one’s faith by spending 2 1/2 years as a missionary? That’s for suckers. Write about it instead of living it. As “The Audacity of Hope” shows, that is where the money is — and best of all, the press treats you like a living god when you write instead of do.

Marrying into wealth may get you better press, but as John Kerry and John McCain discovered, the press can carry you only so far.

Hard work though. Who does that? Small wonder the public is so suspicious.

(Via Instapundit.)

Tom Friedman’s proof that Republicans have gone off the deep end: Fidel Castro is attacking them. No, really.

Megan McArdle comments on the Obama administration’s order for Catholic hospitals to dispense contraceptives:

Everyone . . . seems to assume that we’re doing the Catholic Church a big old favor by allowing them to provide health care and other social services to a needy public. Why, we’re really coddling them, and it’s about time they started acting a little grateful for everything we’ve done for them!

These people seem to be living in an alternate universe that I don’t have access to, where there’s a positive glut of secular organizations who are just dying to provide top-notch care for the sick, the poor, and the dispossessed.

What McArdle is insufficiently cynical to recognize is that the far left doesn’t care whether anyone can do what the Catholic Church does. To that bunch, it’s better for the unfortunate to go without, than for them to be served by people who don’t answer to the government.

High-ranking ATF officials have ties to the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. (Via Instapundit.)

Kathleen Sebelius, in a USA Today op-ed, lies through her teeth:

The public health case for making sure insurance covers contraception is clear. But we also recognize that many religious organizations have deeply held beliefs opposing the use of birth control. That’s why in the rule we put forward, we specifically carved out from the policy religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith.

This is untrue, and don’t think for a moment she doesn’t know it. Alan Sears explains:

The mandate explicitly does not exempt groups merely if they primarily hire members of their own faith. It forces those groups to violate their beliefs, unless they also primarily serve persons of their own faith. So a Christian hospital would have to turn aside Jews and Muslims at the door to be “religious enough” under the president’s aggressively secular policy.

POSTSCRIPT: Actually it’s worse than that. Just in case the exception still happened to apply to someone, it contains several other provisos as well, the sum of which is to ensure that no one will ever be exempt.