Internet Scofflaw

The EPA is considering a ban on ammunition containing lead, which is to say, most ammunition.

UPDATE: It shouldn’t have even gotten as far as a public comment period, insofar as the law explicitly excludes ammunition from EPA regulation, and, moreover, we have the Second Amendment. But the EPA has done the right thing and reversed course, denying the proposal just two days into the comment period.

The NRA credits a public outcry, which I’m sure there was, but since when does the EPA care about public outcry? I’m sure they got orders to make this thing go away; the last thing Democrats need right now is to energize the gun-rights movement.

The National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying Congress to require that FM radios be built into all cell phones.

The Hill reports:

ShoreBank, a Chicago-area community lender praised by Democrats, was taken over by the government Friday and its assets sold.

Chicago-area Democrats pushed hard for regulators to extend bailout money to the bank from the government’s $700 billion aid program. The bank, started in the 1970s, was praised by President Clinton and numerous other lawmakers and industry players.

In a statement late Friday, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said it had taken receivership of the failed bank.

Whatever virtues ShoreBank might have had, being a good bank was apparently not one of them.

President Obama’s loan modification program is a dismal failure:

Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.

The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say. . .

“The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

UPDATE: Stephen Spruiell explains that the program’s real purpose was never to aid homeowners, but Fannie and Freddie’s stockholders. So perhaps it wasn’t a failure after all.

The Obama administration puts fishermen out of work, deliberately, as a matter of policy. It’s part of a blatantly socialist plan to centrally manage the fishing industry.

UPDATE (11/13): I take it back. Iain Murray offers a compelling defense of the fishing rules. And I had forgotten about this.

As predicted, the credit card “reform” bill has resulted in soaring credit card interest spreads (credit card interest in excess of the prime rate). Spreads are now at their highest level in 22 years. Democrats thought that people with good credit should subsidize those with bad credit, and they’ve gotten their wish.

Is Feisal Abdul Rauf, the imam responsible for the Cordoba House project, really hoping to improve interfaith relations, as he claims? Or is he really trying to inflame interfaith relations in order to worsen perceptions of America abroad, as Victor Davis Hanson suggests?

Whatever his aims, certainly Rauf is accomplishing the latter, so we can get a good idea of his aims by looking at his reaction to the controversy. Does he lament how his project is hurting relations between Muslims and others? Nope:

The imam leading the construction of the so-called “ground zero mosque” said Sunday that the controversy surrounding the planned cultural center is a “sign of success,” the Associated Press reports.

Well then.

(Via Patterico.) (Previous post.)

Why is Education Secretary Arne Duncan speaking at a rally organized by infamous race hustler Al Sharpton? The Department of Education won’t say, and actually hung up on the Daily Caller when they called to ask.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is on the case of the stimulus propaganda signs, which are even more wasteful than you might expect. The sign below, outside Dulles airport, cost $10,000. Several Inspector General investigations found that the signs were required.

Toomey defeats Specter (Pennsylvania). Lee defeats Bennett (Utah). Rubio defeats Crist (Florida). Paul defeats Grayson (Kentucky). Angle defeats Lowden (Nevada). Buck defeats Norton (Colorado). Scott defeats McCollum (Florida). Miller apparently defeats Murkowski (Alaska).

Across the country, insurgents are defeating establishment candidates in Republican primaries. Nearly all of them are favored to win in the general election. Hopefully the GOP establishment is getting the message. If the GOP returns to power, we don’t want a repeat of their fecklessness from the last time.

The Obama administration claims that the NOAA’s recent assessment that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill is gone underwent peer review:

[NOAA Administrator] DR. LUBCHENCO: . . . The report was produced by scientific experts from a number of different agencies, federal agencies, with peer review of the calculations that went into this by both other federal and non-federal scientists.

and:

[Energy Czar] MS. BROWNER:  Can I just add another point?  This has all been — as Dr. Lubchenco said — been subjected to a scientific protocol, which means you peer review, peer review and peer review. You look at what the inputs are.  You look at what the models are.  All of this has been made available.

But, Bill Lehr, an NOAA scientist, is telling Congress that the report was released with peer review incomplete and the data are not yet being made available.

This would be the second time in recent weeks that the Obama administration has lied about peer review of a report dealing with the oil spill.

(Via Big Peace.) (Previous post.)

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

(Via Mark Tapscott.) (Previous post.)

When pollsters as questions on matters of fact, they nearly always report dismaying results. At first glance, then, there’s no reason to be particularly surprised by the recent poll showing that 18% of Americans think that President Obama is a Muslim. But is the question of Obama’s religion really a matter of fact?

For the record, I do not think Obama is a Muslim. But it is not necessarily ignorant to think he is. Pew’s question did not ask what Obama says is his religion, it asks what is his religion. Although I’m sure that some of the 18% is simply ignorant, I’m also sure that most of them believe he is lying.

ASIDE: Usually, a considerable fraction of the public despises the administration in office enough to believe nearly anything negative about them. The idea that Obama might be a Muslim is pretty mild compared to the 22% that believed in 2007 that President Bush knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance.

The press wants to treat this issue as a question of fact. Obama says he is a Christian, therefore he must be. MSNBC even goes so far as to say the fact that Obama gets Bible verses sent to his blackberry every day proves he is a Christian. For the press, Obama hits the sweet spot: religious enough not to damage his political prospects (if only they could get that stupid public to believe it), but not so religious as to actually affect his philosophy. Those guys, like George W Bush, are scary!

Personally, I don’t think that Obama has any well-defined belief system at all, Christian or Muslim. He says he is a Christian, but an interview he gave in 2004 shows he clearly is not, at least in any orthodox sense. I think he picked a church in Chicago for political benefit, and then spent years managing not to hear any of the hate preached from its pulpit. Having won the White House, he no longer saw any benefit to the trappings of religion, but with poll results like this and problems like the Cordoba House controversy, I think we will probably see him return to those trappings soon.

AP reports:

Already forced to apologize for saying he had served “in” Vietnam in the Marine Reserve rather than stateside, the state attorney general’s campaign for U.S. Senate is now being challenged to explain his assertion that he had “never taken PAC money” and has “rejected all special interest money.”

Federal records show that he has accepted $480,000 in political action committee money since he made that claim in January. Moreover, his Republican opponent, former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO Linda McMahon, points to nearly $17,000 Blumenthal received as a state legislative candidate in the 1980s — a figure Blumenthal’s campaign does not dispute.

I noted Blumenthal’s previous fabulism here.

How pathetic is the New York Times?

But many of Mr. DeLay’s actions remain legal only because lawmakers have chosen not to criminalize them.

. . . your Aston Martin runs on bioethanol made entirely from wine.

My days of not taking Prince Charles seriously are certainly coming to a middle.

The DNC has pulled a laughable anti-Bush ad. Okay, the ad was just bad, but its deeper problem is the shelf life on blaming Bush has long since expired. In fact, Bush is more popular than Obama now, at least in the key districts Democrats would like to hold.

So what will be the Democrats’ national strategy? They can’t just attack Bush any more. They can’t ride Obama’s coattails; he is a net negative now. Issues don’t work: the Democratic recovery plan has failed, the public hates their health care nationalization bill, public support for Kagan is anemic, and what else do they have to say for themselves?

The Daily Caller takes a look at how the people who run the Cordoba House’s Twitter feed respond to criticism: sarcasm, vulgarity, and the occasional insult to Judaism.

Danny Glover, a new media strategist and editor of the Capitol Hill Tweet Watch Report, said that Park 51 hurt their brand far more by addressing criticism in such a manner.

“I think they clearly missed the boat,” Glover said. “The problem here is that you have someone trying to be snarky when you’re having a serious debate across the country about whether or not this mosque should be where they want it to be. So if you want people to debate serious issues like freedom of religion and free speech and you want people to take you seriously, then you have to tweet like an adult.”

(Previous post.)

(Via Campaign Spot.)

Before the financial crisis, Barney Frank wanted to “roll the dice a little bit more” with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now that the damage has been done, Barney Frank thinks the time has come to abolish them. Better late than never, I guess.

How much of a drag is President Obama on Democrats? An Obama endorsement is a net negative, even in Illinois!

(Via Campaign Spot.)

Los Angeles is seething after President Obama’s fundraising visit, reports the LA Times:

We have one word for you, Mr. President, the next time you want to sweep into Los Angeles late on a weekday afternoon: Helicopter. That way, you can avoid the streets the rest of us mere residents must use to get around.

President Obama’s fundraising mission in Los Angeles on Monday evening may have been a whirlwind trip for him, but it was a tedious slog for the thousands who found themselves in gridlock from the Westside to downtown.

Gateway Pundit had the story first.

Which party is it that likes to call their opponents un-American? Despite what the left likes to pretend, it’s nearly always the Democrats. For the latest example, I give you Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm:

Q: And we know you’ve had the disaster in the Gulf, you’ve had an oil spill in your own state. You know, you guys are doing a lot in making these investments in batteries and in new care. And here you have people like Rush Limbaugh, come out and say that the Volt is an “overpriced lemon.” What do you say to critics?

GRANHOLM: It’s just un-American. I can’t believe that somebody would say this about this American product. He hasn’t even driven it. He hasn’t sat in it. You know, why wouldn’t you be supportive of American manufacturers building American vehicles with American workers, who now have jobs as a result of this.

If you don’t like an American car, you’re un-American. Wow, that’s a lot of un-American Americans.

(Via AutoblogGreen.)

President Obama gave Donald Berwick a recess appointment to head Medicare in order to avoid public scrutiny. Now it seems that he may have more to hide than his radical views. The Washington Times has found that he failed to disclose several major donors to his foundation. His foundation, in turn, spends a significant portion of its budget on his pay.

Jim Treacher:

The NYT then cites a poll saying that 18 percent of Americans think Obama’s a Muslim. Which is ridiculous, because we all know he spent 20 years in a church where he didn’t hear a single thing the preacher said.

It’s a brave new rationing world: Medicare is reportedly poised to refuse to cover Provenge, a new anti-cancer drug, arguing that although the FDA is has found it to be safe and effective, it may not be “reasonable and necessary”.

(Via Althouse.)

Feisal Abdul Rauf has every legal right to build his mosque. If he owns the land, he can build a mosque on it, and the government has no right to interfere. The effort to block the project by making it a historical landmark was wrong-headed.

In fact, it’s nearly always wrong to block construction by creating landmarks. That sort of landmark preservation comes about when people want to preserve a site but don’t want to pay to do so. If people want to preserve a landmark, they should buy it and preserve it. If preserving the landmark is not worth the price, then the developer’s use for the land is more productive.

However, Americans have every reason to be offended by the project. The site is not just near Ground Zero, it is arguably part of Ground Zero: it became available only because the old Burlington Coat Factory building was hit by part of a hijacked plane and damaged beyond repair. The project’s own proponents have said that the location’s connection to 9/11 is one reason it was selected. To use the site to celebrate the same religion that motivated the terrorists that attacked it is a grotesque irony. If Rauf were really interested in interfaith dialogue, as he claims, he would avoid such a provocation. With all the locations he could build a mosque, why insist on one that offends so many?

The project becomes all the more offensive when you look at who Feisal Abdul Rauf is:  Rauf is an apologist for Hamas. He blames United States policy for the attacks. And, he published a book with a revealing title: A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11. An edition of the book was published in America (under a different title) with funding from Muslim Brotherhood front groups. Given who Rauf is, it seems all but certain that the project is a deliberate provocation.

So while the government has no place interfering with the project, society is right to be outraged and to bring social pressure to bear. What’s more, the public seems to understand the difference. According to a new poll, about two-thirds of New Yorkers agree with each sentiment.

Which brings us to President Obama. On Friday, Obama decided to wade into the controversy. He could have simply said what most Americans seem to believe: the mosque is a bad idea, but Rauf still has the right to build it. However, for some reason, Obama couldn’t bring himself to do that. (Transcript here.) Instead, he touched only on Rauf’s right to build his mosque, and gave no hint of any distaste for the project.

Everyone took his meaning; he was for the project. For instance, the New York Times story opened:

Obama Strongly Backs Islam Center Near 9/11 Site

President Obama delivered a strong defense last night of a proposed Muslim community center and mosque near ground zero in New York. . . After weeks of avoiding the high-profile battle over the center — his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said last week that the president did not want to “get involved in local decision-making” — Obama stepped squarely into the thorny debate, leaving little doubt about how he feels.

(Emphasis mine.)

But Obama’s clarity didn’t last long. Sensing the fury of the public and of vulnerable Democrats, he quickly moved to obfuscate his position. The next day, he announced:

I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there.

ASIDE: New York Times has duly airbrushed its story in light of Obama’s declarification, which is why you won’t see the final phrase there any more. You can see it in the Winston-Salem Journal’s version of the story. You can also see it, for now, in Google’s cache, which I’ve screenshotted for when it changes:

What did Obama really mean to say? Your guess is as good as mine, but I don’t think Obama was using his remarks just to agree with the conventional opinion. If he intended to disagree with conventional opinion, there are only three possibilities: (1) he approves of the mosque, as was originally reported by his supporters, (2) he thinks erroneously that Americans want the government to block the mosque, or (3) both. A fourth possibility, suggested by Byron York, is that Obama was fumbling an attempt at Bill Clinton’s rhetorical trick of making remarks that are simultaneously interpreted differently by different groups. None of those possibilities reflect well on him.

POSTSCRIPT: At least Obama recognizes that it’s okay to oppose the mosque. Not Nancy Pelosi; she says there should be an investigation into the mosque’s opponents.

POST-POSTSCRIPT: While all this is going on, Feisal Abdul Rauf is on a Middle East tour, paid for by the US State Department.

The United Federation of Teachers fires a staffer for trying to organize its staff:

In a move of stunning hypocrisy, the United Federation of Teachers axed one of its longtime employees — for trying to unionize the powerful labor organization’s own workers, it was charged yesterday. Jim Callaghan, a veteran writer for the teachers union, told The Post he was booted from his $100,000-a-year job just two months after he informed UFT President Michael Mulgrew that he was trying to unionize some of his co-workers.

The union reportedly said it was important that it be able to fire anyone it needed, and unionized employees would interfere with that. No word on whether they saw the irony.

(Via No Left Turns.)

The misery of being exploited by capitalists is nothing compared to the misery of not being exploited at all.

Joan Robinson, Economic Philosophy

(Via the Economist.)

You can’t sing the national anthem at the Lincoln Memorial. (Via Instapundit.)

Paul Krugman is a liar. Moreover, as I have noted before, he is the worst kind of liar, a man who dishonestly accuses others of lying. Case in point: Krugman’s recent column attacking Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as a “charlatan” and a “flimflam man”. For the record, Ryan is the only politician with a serious plan to solve our government’s structural deficit.

Krugman doesn’t like Ryan’s plan, but does he offer a serious critique of the plan? No. Instead, he offers a dishonest attack on Ryan’s integrity. In his column and two subsequent blog posts, he says Ryan is a “flimflammer” because he never got the CBO to score the revenue effects of his plan.

Megan McArdle notes that Krugman’s attack misses the mark, for several reasons:

1. Ryan did request the CBO to score the revenue side, but the CBO declined because:
2. The CBO does not do revenue estimates, the JCT does that.
3. Ryan requested the JCT to score the revenue side, but the JCT does not do projections more than ten years out.
4. Ryan’s office has been very diligent about responding promptly (within 30 minutes!) to questions. Krugman could have learned any of the above facts if he had simply called Ryan’s office to ask.

So who is the flimflammer? The man with the serious plan, or the man throwing around unfounded accusations who doesn’t even know how Congress estimates revenues?

But, rather than slink back into his hole, Krugman doubled down. He said that Ryan is still a flimflammer, indeed somehow is even more so, because — according to Krugman’s reading of Ryan’s response — Ryan didn’t ask for the 10-year estimate that JCT was willing to do.

McArdle, continuing her yeoman’s work, determined that Krugman’s second attack isn’t true either:

To be honest, I too found that passage ambiguous. Which is why I contacted Ryan’s staff, who were happy to clarify that yes, they asked the JCT to do a forecast, and JCT said no. I don’t understand why Krugman keeps diving deeper into these Talmudic interpretations rather than just calling to ask, when their phone number is easily available on their website. There are some questions that are easier to resolve by talking to a live human being than by re-parsing a report, and this happens to be one of them.

Ryan’s a nice guy. I’m sure he’d have been happy to take the good professor’s call.

Once again, Krugman was wrong, which he would have known if he’d made any effort at all to learn the facts.

ASIDE: Krugman, who has used over 1800 words in a column and three blog posts attacking Ryan, also mocked Ryan’s “snow storm of words” in his response. Ryan’s letter was less than 800 words long.

Setting Krugman’s serial libels aside, the substantive question is whether Ryan’s inability to get a JCT evaluation of his plan somehow makes it worthless. McArdle tackles that one as well:

Eakin [former director of the CBO] said that what Ryan had done seemed entirely reasonable: he did his own analysis, and then faced with a different model that conflicted with his results, said that he would be happy to tweak his numbers until he got either the spending side down, or the tax side up. Many policy proposals that have been marinating considerably longer than Ryan’s roadmap have to go through grueling marathons of tweaking and resubmission until they get a good score.

POSTSCRIPT: James Capretta, watching Krugman’s performance, adds that those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

The Economist has an interesting article on why America’s system of rail freight is the best in the world (hint: deregulation had something to do with it), and how the president’s effort to repurpose it for high-speed passenger trains could ruin it.

In America, we use rail for freight and highways for passengers. In Europe, rail is used for passengers, and highways for freight. America’s system is the more sensible one: humans prefer to travel on their own schedule, and to do so quickly. In contrast, freight usually doesn’t care; the most important factor is cost. Keeping freight transportation cheap reduces the cost of nearly everything. Alas, freight trains don’t look cool.

How much are Americans willing to spend in increased costs for nearly everything, just in order to have cool-looking high-speed passenger trains? We may find out.

National Review has a great story on how Chris Christie is winning battles to fix New Jersey.

Even the Washington Post is against the bailout for teachers’ unions:

TO GOVERN is to choose, and nothing lays bare a government’s true priorities like the choices it makes about spending taxpayers’ money. In that regard, the Senate’s decision to spend $10 billion on education jobs this week is revealing — and deeply discouraging.

The crusade for an education jobs bill, led by the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress, has always struck us as more of an election-year favor for teachers unions than an optimal use of public resources. Billed as an effort to stimulate the economy, it’s not clearly more effective than alternative uses of the cash. Yes, school budgets are tight across the country, but the teacher layoff “crisis” is exaggerated. In fact, as happens each year, many teachers who got pink slips in the spring have been notified that they’ll be hired after all. Many layoffs could have been — and indeed have been — avoided by modest union concessions.

As of last school year, the money for 5.5 percent of the 6 million K-12 jobs nationwide came from Washington through the 2009 stimulus; the new money reinforces this dangerous dependency.

What I like about this is the unmasking of the teachers’ unions, one of the key tribes that make up the Democratic party. For a long time the teachers’ unions have been generally well regarded by much of the public — they’re teachers after all! — despite the fact that they consistently work against the interests of students. Of course, this is the ordinary role of unions: to advance the interests of the union (and occasionally the rank-and-file) against the interests of the employer, but they’ve often been able to disguise that fact. For example, they use names (e.g., National Education Association) that suggest that they are education groups instead of labor groups. Now people are getting to see the teachers’ unions behaving like (gasp) unions, refusing even modest concessions while everything collapses around them.

The Washington Post reports:

When General Motors went through bankruptcy last year, it suspended its political donations. Now that it’s owned by the U.S. government, it’s donating to lawmakers’ pet projects again.

(Via Instapundit.)

Outrageous, yes. Surprising, no.

Megan McArdle is aghast:

If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability to prevent housing market bubbles, well, I give you Exhibit 9,824: the government’s new $1000 down housing program.

No, really. The government has apparently decided, in its infinite wisdom, that what the American economy really needs is more homebuyers with no equity.

Last December, the Obama administration gave Fannie and Freddie a blank check, planning to cover unlimited losses. With that blank check in place, rumor has it that President Obama is poised to use it to buy votes:

Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth. An estimated 15 million U.S. mortgages – one in five – are underwater with negative equity of some $800 billion. Recall that on Christmas Eve 2009, the Treasury Department waived a $400 billion limit on financial assistance to Fannie and Freddie, pledging unlimited help. The actual vehicle for the bailout could be the Bush-era Home Affordable Refinance Program, or HARP, a sister program to Obama’s loan modification effort. HARP was just extended through June 30, 2011. . .

What is happening is that the president’s approval ratings are continuing to erode, as are Democratic election polls. Democrats are in real danger of losing the House and almost losing the Senate. The mortgage Hail Mary would be a last-gasp effort to prevent this from happening and to save the Obama agenda. The political calculation is that the number of grateful Americans would be greater than those offended that they — and their children and their grandchildren — would be paying for someone else’s mortgage woes.

Frankly, I think he is miscalculating, and that America will be outraged at another bailout. But that won’t get the money back.

UPDATE: A Wall Street Journal editorial argues that this probably won’t happen, but they sound less than completely certain.

The lawlessness of the DOJ’s civil rights division under Eric Holder is breathtaking:

The Justice Department has found a new way to pursue civil rights lawsuits, using the powers of the Civil Rights Division not just to win compensation for victims of alleged discrimination but also to direct large sums of money to activist groups that are not discrimination victims and not connected to a particular suit.

In the past, when the Civil Rights Division filed suit against, say, a bank or a landlord, alleging discrimination in lending or rentals, the cases were often settled by the defendant paying a fine to the U.S. Treasury and agreeing to put aside a sum of money to compensate the alleged discrimination victims. There was then a search for those victims — people who were actually denied a loan or an apartment — who stood to be compensated. After everyone who could be found was paid, there was often money left over. That money was returned to the defendant.

Now, Attorney General Eric Holder and Civil Rights Division chief Thomas Perez have a new plan. Any unspent money will not go back to the defendant but will instead go to a “qualified organization” approved by the Justice Department. And if there is not enough unspent money — that will be determined by the Department — then the defendant might be required to come up with more money to give to the “qualified organization.” . . .

The new Civil Rights Division tactic represents a departure from a fundamental principle of such cases, which is the pursuit of justice on behalf of actual victims. “If the Department of Justice recovers funds for alleged civil rights violations, the money should go to compensate victims or to the Treasury,” says Bob Driscoll, who was a top official in the Civil Rights Division during the first two years of the George W. Bush administration. “The practice of the Civil Rights Division steering settlement funds to favored advocacy groups is at odds with both civil rights laws and common sense. If Congress wants to fund certain advocacy groups or set up grants for agencies to award in order to promote non-discrimination, it can. But allowing the Civil Rights Division to steer a defendant’s money to its ideological allies is offensive.”

(Via Hot Air.)

Shockingly, the federal government has been lying about body scanner images:

For the last few years, federal agencies have defended body scanning by insisting that all images will be discarded as soon as they’re viewed. The Transportation Security Administration claimed last summer, for instance, that “scanned images cannot be stored or recorded.”

Now it turns out that some police agencies are storing the controversial images after all. The U.S. Marshals Service admitted this week that it had surreptitiously saved tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system at the security checkpoint of a single Florida courthouse.

This follows an earlier disclosure (PDF) by the TSA that it requires all airport body scanners it purchases to be able to store and transmit images for “testing, training, and evaluation purposes.” The agency says, however, that those capabilities are not normally activated when the devices are installed at airports.

So when the TSA said images cannot be stored, what they meant was images can be stored, and that capability is routinely used by the federal government. Now TSA says they don’t use that capability. Are they telling the truth now? Certainly they’ve given us no reason to trust them.

Via Instapundit, who adds:

Whenever the government collects information, it lies about what it will do with it. This is a near-universal law.

Missouri just held a vote on a ballot measure that would prohibit the government from imposing an individual mandate to purchase health care. It was almost entirely symbolic, since states cannot override the federal government, even when the federal government oversteps its constitutional powers. Still, it’s a very good indication of the voters’ opinion of Obamacare in a key bellweather state.

The result was a smashing verdict against Obamacare:

Ed Morrissey notes two other interesting facts about the vote. Interest in the proposition was high: more people voted on Proposition C than voted in both Senate primaries combined. Also, considerably fewer people voted against Proposition C than voted in the Democratic primary. At least 14% of Democratic primary voters either opposed Obamacare or declined to vote.

UPDATE: Opponents of Proposition C (i.e., Obamacare supporters) outspent supporters 4-to-1. (Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: Michael Barone does his thing.

Two new horrifying stories of the British National Health Service. President Obama’s appointment to run Medicare and Medicaid wants our health care to be run like theirs.

A new Rasmussen poll finds that (as John Hinderaker puts it) the sell-by date has finally passed on President Obama’s finger-pointing:

For the first time since President Obama took office, voters see his policies as equally to blame with those of President George W. Bush for the country’s current economic problems. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters now think Obama’s policies are to blame for the continuing bad economy, up three points from last month. Forty-seven percent (47%) say the recession that began under Bush is at fault.

In fact, as Hinderaker points out, this result may even overestimate the degree to which the public still blames President Bush since the two options were not parallel: Obama on one hand, and the recession that began under Bush on the other.

The Washington Post, which rejected two offers for Newsweek on ideological grounds, has sold the failed news weekly for $1 to Sidney Harman, the husband of Democratic representative Jane Harman (CA). (Harman also agreed to assume Newsweek’s debts.) Harman’s bid won out because he pledged to keep more staff than the other contenders.

The Washington Post is a publicly traded company. I wonder if we’ll see a shareholder lawsuit.

UPDATE: How Newsweek went wrong.

FactCheck.org reports:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner made a false claim about the size of government spending being proposed by the Obama administration.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” July 25, he said the president is proposing spending “as a share of our economy” that is “lower” than it was during the Bush administration and “comparable” to what it was under Ronald Reagan. Neither claim is true.

The administration’s own estimates project spending next year that is higher as a percentage of the economy than in any year since the end of World War II. The average projected by Obama’s budget officials is significantly higher than the average under Reagan or Bush (father or son).

POSTSCRIPT: I would add that the 2009 budget, which they charge to President Bush, was actually prepared by President Obama.

UPDATE: I would also add that the last two years, in which the budget starts to fall, are the hypothetical estimates of years that are at least a year away. Older estimates had the deficit falling in 2010 and 2011 as well, but those estimates fell by the wayside by the time those years actually happened.

(Via TaxProf.)

Politico reports:

House Democrats proposed repealing a piece of the health care overhaul Friday, a move designed to thwart Republican efforts to do the same thing and declare an early victory in their efforts to repeal the whole law.

Democrats proposed repealing new IRS reporting requirements that small business has warned would be overly burdensome. But they attached a new tax on Americans conducting business overseas— essentially a poison pill for Republicans who are unlikely to support a new tax.

I wrote about the 1099 provision last May. The Politico article assumes that the Democrats are in earnest about this, and simply differ from Republicans over whether a tax increase ought to be attached to the repeal. But that might not be the right assumption. Politico notes that the Democrats came up with their own proposal only when the Republican proposal was on the verge of passage:

The bill gives Democrats cover for not supporting a similar amendment that Republicans had planned to propose Thursday evening. It also would have repealed the new reporting requirements but would have had different ways to pay for it. Democrats blocked the amendment from coming to the floor when it became clear that it could have passed.

The other way to read this is as an attempt to block the repeal. Somebody put that provision into the bill for a reason. What could be the reason for so costly and unnecessary a provision? A good theory is it was to be the first step toward a VAT.

We don’t have to guess at the Democrats’ intentions. They considered the repeal under a special rule that required two-thirds support. If they try again under normal order and pass it, we’ll know they were in earnest. If they never get around to it, we’ll know they weren’t.

(Via TaxProf.)

Is the Coast Guard partly to blame for the oil spill disaster?

The Coast Guard has gathered evidence it failed to follow its own firefighting policy during the Deepwater Horizon disaster and is investigating whether the chaotic spraying of tons of salt water by private boats contributed to sinking the ill-fated oil rig, according to interviews and documents.

Coast Guard officials told the Center for Public Integrity that the service does not have the expertise to fight an oil rig fire and that its response to the April 20 explosion may have broken the service’s own rules by failing to ensure a firefighting expert supervised the half-dozen private boats that answered the Deepwater Horizon’s distress call to fight the blaze.

An official maritime investigation led by Coast Guard Capt. Hung M. Nguyen in New Orleans is examining whether the salt water that was sprayed across the burning platform overran the ballast system that kept the rig upright, changing its weight distribution, and causing it to list.

In light of this, questions are also being asked about President Obama’s deep cuts in Coast Guard funding.

(Via Hot Air.) (Previous post.)

Here’s an indication of how seriously the Democratic leadership takes Charles Rangel’s (D-NY) criminal conduct:

Democratic leaders and major party donors plan to hold a lavish 80th birthday gala for Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) at The Plaza Hotel in Manhattan next month, despite 13 ethics charges pending against the veteran lawmaker.

Lobbyists and other party donors received invitations this week to join Sens. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and New York Gov. David Paterson (D) at one of New York’s finest hotels to celebrate Rangel’s birthday.

Gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg are also listed as featured guests, according to an invitation viewed by The Hill.

Brian Seltzer, a reporter for the New York Times, tweets:

While working on conservative press/race story (http://nyti.ms/90TtFE) I pulled Nielsen #’s for African American cable news viewership…

Fox, as we all know, has biggest audience in prime time. But among African Americans, it’s smallest– 29k vs. 134k for CNN, 145k for MSNBC.

Matt Lewis of Politics Daily rebuts:

This of course, played into the “Fox is racist” meme, and, not surprisingly, Stelter’s words were retweeted many times (and also inspired several media blogs to further discuss Fox News’ lack of diversity).

Interestingly, though, the media site where Stelter primarily blogs (New York Times’ Media Decoder) suffers from the lowest percentage of African-American readers (4.6%) when compared to comparable media sites like Mediaite (5.8%), Gawker (6.4%), Mediabistro (9.2%), etc., according to Nielsen Media Research.

That’s fair enough — people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones — but I think it’s the wrong rebuttal.

More to the point: everyone knows that African-Americans tend to be strongly Democratic. Also, everyone knows that Fox News is right-leaning (only slightly, but perceived as more so).  So it’s no surprise that African-Americans, like other predominantly Democratic groups, would not tend to be fans of Fox News. This is just a threadbare attempt to advance the failing idea that opposition to the Democrats is racist.

This smear doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously, but for a moment, let’s pretend it’s offered in good faith. We can all agree that it is racist to refuse to do business with any particular racial group. Fortunately, that kind of overt racism is all but stamped out in America today. What is suggested here is quite different. Seltzer is implying that when members of an underprivileged racial group decide not to partake of a business’s product as much as other racial groups do, that makes the business racist!

This is nonsense. A businessman sells a good or service that he thinks someone will buy. He doesn’t (or shouldn’t, anyway) care who that person is, as long as their money is good. Hardly any product will appeal to all demographics precisely equally. Were we to limit ourselves to such products, we would severely impoverish our society, thereby creating a bland, homogeneous marketplace in the name of “diversity”.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Democrats’ new financial regulation bill exempts the SEC from the Freedom of Information Act. The SEC is already using the provision to insulate itself from scrutiny.

The SEC’s web site (archived here) still talks about their commitment to the Freedom of Information act, but I imagine that will be airbrushed soon.

In regard to the president’s deficit commission, Glenn Reynolds remarks:

When they say “everything’s on the table,” they don’t really mean “everything, including elimination of the Department of Education, and privatization of Social Security, and a 15% across-the-board cut in federal payrolls.”

Or to put it more bluntly, when they say everything’s on the table, they are lying.

President Obama is taking four vacations in a little over a month. Hey, anything that keeps him out of the White House is fine by me.

Our various stimulus boondoggles are more expensive than the war:

(From National Review.)

Der Spiegel reports:

With expensive accounting rules, an increased threat of litigation and hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for some firms, the once prestigious New York Stock Exchange and other American markets have become unattractive to Germany’s biggest companies. Daimler and Deutsche Telekom have fled this year and the few remaining are likely to follow.

How sad is it that (at least in this regard) America’s free market is now weaker than Germany’s? Friedrich Hayek must be rolling in his grave.

(Via Instapundit.)

Timothy Geithner says we are early in the recession (!):

“Right now, the best thing the government can do…is help create the conditions for the private sector to start to invest in hiring again,” [Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner] said. “Now, we’ve seen six months of positive job growth by the private sector. That’s pretty good,” Geithner said. “Pretty good this early in a recession.“

(Emphasis mine.)

Early in the recession? Which would be scarier: if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, or if he does?

(Via Hot Air.)

As predicted:

Some major health insurance companies have stopped issuing certain types of policies for children, an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law, state officials said Friday. Florida Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty said in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually. Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner Kim Holland said a couple of local insurers in her state have done likewise.

Starting later this year, the health care overhaul law requires insurers to accept children regardless of medical problems. Insurers are worried that parents will wait until kids get sick to sign them up, saddling the companies with unpredictable costs.

No one should be surprised by any of this. Of course insurers are going to stop writing policies for children! The new rules make them unprofitable. Family plans will survive (for now), because even those abusing the system will have to pay for the whole family, and probably the whole family isn’t sick. Existing policies will survive as well; those people aren’t abusing the system.

An unintended consequence? Perhaps. A predictable consequence? Definitely.

(Via Hot Air.)

I don’t know which is more shocking, that public-sector employers aren’t required to participate in Social Security, or that public-sector pensions are so insolvent that they’re thinking of giving up such a plum privilege.

Rasmussen reports that we truly are governed by an elite class at odds with the people:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure. . .

America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin. However, among Mainstream voters, 90% prefer the free market.

Outside of the Political Class, free markets are preferred across all demographic and partisan lines. This gap may be one reason that 68% of voters believe the Political Class doesn’t care what most Americans think. Fifty-nine percent (59%) are embarrassed by the behavior of the Political Class.

ASIDE: Rasmussen defines the political class (4% of the population), as those whose answers to a set of questions show an affinity for government. The mainstream class (65%) answer the opposite way.

Rasmussen also notes an interesting gap between affinity for “capitalism” and “free markets”:

A Rasmussen Reports survey last year caused quite a stir by showing that just 53% of Americans prefer capitalism over socialism. That stat even made its way into a Michael Moore film. By April 2010, the preference for capitalism was up to 60%. However, there is still a significant gap between support for capitalism and support for free markets. While some politicians and economists use the terms interchangeably, just 35% believe a free market economy is the same as a capitalist economy.

One reason for the gap in support for capitalism and free markets is clearly the behavior of some large American corporations. Seventy-three percent (73%) of Americans believe that Goldman Sachs is likely to have committed fraud as charged by the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. Seven-out-of-10 Americans believe that government and big business work together against the interests of consumers and investors.

John Kerry, 2004:

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, frequently calls companies and chief executives “Benedict Arnolds” if they move jobs and operations overseas to avoid paying U.S. taxes.

John Kerry, 2010:

Sen. John Kerry, who has repeatedly voted to raise taxes while in Congress, dodged a whopping six-figure state tax bill on his new multimillion-dollar yacht by mooring her in Newport, R.I.

Isabel – Kerry’s luxe, 76-foot New Zealand-built Friendship sloop with an Edwardian-style, glossy varnished teak interior, two VIP main cabins and a pilothouse fitted with a wet bar and cold wine storage – was designed by Rhode Island boat designer Ted Fontaine.

But instead of berthing the vessel in Nantucket, where the senator summers with the missus, Teresa Heinz, Isabel’s hailing port is listed as “Newport” on her stern. . .

Cash-strapped Massachusetts still collects a 6.25 percent sales tax and an annual excise tax on yachts. Sources say Isabel sold for something in the neighborhood of $7 million, meaning Kerry saved approximately $437,500 in sales tax and an annual excise tax of about $70,000.

Just to be clear, Kerry’s not doing anything wrong by mooring his yacht in Rhode Island. He’s merely doing what anyone would do to avoid high taxes. The point is that Kerry is an idiot and a hypocrite.

The secondary point is the Massachusetts “sails tax” is stupid. It’s easy for people to move their boats, so what the tax does is push business out of state.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

President Obama came Donald Berwick a recess appointment to head Medicare and Medicaid, even though the appointment was not stalled, in order to avoid public scrutiny for his radical views. The Wall Street Journal has compiled a handy list of some of those views. (I can’t speak to the context of these statements, but given Berwick’s other statements, we have every reason to believe they are not out of context.)

For central planning, and against individual autonomy and markets:

• “I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations of a system as massive and complex as health care. That is for leaders to do.”
• “The unaided human mind, and the acts of the individual, cannot assure excellence. Health care is a system, and its performance is a systemic property.”
• “Please don’t put your faith in market forces. It’s a popular idea: that Adam Smith’s invisible hand would do a better job of designing care than leaders with plans can.”
• “Indeed, the Holy Grail of universal coverage in the United States may remain out of reach unless, through rational collective action overriding some individual self-interest, we can reduce per capita costs.”

For rationing:

• “It may therefore be necessary to set a legislative target for the growth of spending at 1.5 percentage points below currently projected increases and to grant the federal government the authority to reduce updates in Medicare fees if the target is exceeded.”
• “A progressive policy regime will control and rationalize financing—control supply.”
• “One over-demanded service is prevention: annual physicals, screening tests, and other measures that supposedly help catch diseases early.”
• “The decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” [This one is from here, not from the list.]

Health care should be run by bureaucrats, not doctors:

• “I would place a commitment to excellence—standardization to the best-known method—above clinician autonomy as a rule for care.”
• “Young doctors and nurses should emerge from training understanding the values of standardization and the risks of too great an emphasis on individual autonomy.”

Those last two are possibly the most chilling. Berwick is saying that we must provide one-size-fits-all care, and not give doctors (let alone patients) the power to do what they think is best.

This is the man who is now running Medicare and Medicaid.

But Berwick himself has no stake in the program; he has made arrangements never to need Medicare. His foundation, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, has pledged to give him and his wife health care from retirement until death.

Berwick wants to ration care and to standardize care, but for everyone else, not himself.

POSTSCRIPT: Berwick’s foundation is a funny thing. In 2008 (the most recent year available), it received $12.2 million in revenue. (Republicans would like to know where that money came from, but since Democrats avoided holding a hearing for Berwick, they never had the chance to ask.) In that same year, it compensated him $2.3 million in pay and benefits. That’s nearly a fifth of the foundation’s entire revenue.

A new Quinnipiac poll:

A year after President Barack Obama’s political honeymoon ended, his job approval rating has dropped to a negative 44 – 48 percent, his worst net score ever, and American voters say by a narrow 39 – 36 percent margin that they would vote for an unnamed Republican rather than President Obama in 2012, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

Unfortunately for Republicans, they can’t nominate an unnamed Republican. Anyway, I agree with Patterico that the remarkable thing here isn’t the result, but the fact that Quinnipiac would be willing to embarrass President Obama by asking the question. His stock certainly has dropped.

Set aside the moral issue of abortion for a moment, and just think of it as a medical-ish service. Dan Mitchell notes that the stability of the price of abortion illustrates the power of market forces, in contrast to the third-party payer problem for most health care:

Many people think that market forces don’t work in the health care system and that costs will always rise faster than prices for other goods and services. There are a few examples showing that this is not true, and proponents of liberalization usually cite cosmetic surgery [chart here] and laser-eye surgery as examples of treatments that generally are financed by out-of-pocket payments. Not surprisingly, prices for these treatments have been quite stable — particularly when increases in quality are added to the equation.

I just ran across another example, and this one could be important since it may resonate with those who normally are very suspicious of free markets. As the chart from the Alan Guttmacher Institute shows, the price of an abortion has been remarkably stable over the past 20-plus years. [Chart here.] Let’s connect the dots to make everything clear. Abortions generally are financed by out-of-pocket payments. People therefore have an incentive to shop carefully and get good value since they are spending their own money. And because market forces are allowed, the cost of abortions is stable. The logical conclusion to draw from this, of course, is that allowing market forces for other medical services will generate the same positive results in terms of cost and efficiency.

You don’t say:

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that a majority of retirees say they expect their current [Social Security] benefits to be cut, a dramatic increase in the number who hold that view. And a record six of 10 non-retirees predict Social Security won’t be able to pay them benefits when they stop working.

Skepticism is highest among the youngest workers: Three-fourths of those 18 to 34 don’t expect to get a Social Security check when they retire.

Actually, this seems low. A quarter of young people think they might get Social Security? Other than wishful thinking and/or ignorance, I can’t account for it. Social Security is already losing money, nine years early.

What would a completely failed economic policy look like? Pretty much like this, I’d say:

After you’re done gasping, also notice how the graph remains within the usual range until right around the beginning of 2009.

A few days ago it was revealed that at least two states (Pennsylvania and New Mexico) were covering abortion in federally funded high-risk health insurance pools. Now the AP is reporting that the Obama administration has issued rules barring such pools from covering abortion in most cases. If true, that’s welcome news. It would also be very surprising, coming from this administration, so I’m waiting to hear of a loophole.

Meanwhile, the Reproductive Health Reality Check, while bleating about how awful this is, underscores the fact that abortion funding is permitted under the health care nationalization law:

But here’s the catch, nothing in federal law actually restricts the use of federal or state money for abortion in PCIPs.

Recall how we were repeatedly told that the Hyde amendment would magically prevent any federal money from being spent on abortion. As I noted previously, that was a bald-faced lie. (The Hyde amendment only applies to Medicaid.) Now that the bill has been passed, the left has no reason to deny it any more.

(Via the Corner.)

In a preview of what we can expect nationwide as Obamacare takes effect, Massachusetts firms are dumping their health insurance:

The relentlessly rising cost of health insurance is prompting some small Massachusetts companies to drop coverage for their workers and encourage them to sign up for state-subsidized care instead, a trend that, some analysts say, could eventually weigh heavily on the state’s already-stressed budget.

Since April 1, the date many insurance contracts are renewed for small businesses, the owners of about 90 small companies terminated their insurance plans with Braintree-based broker Jeff Rich and indicated in a follow-up survey that they were relying on publicly-funded insurance for their employees. . .

The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Finance and Policy annually surveys employers and found no significant drop in coverage as of the end of 2009, when more than three-quarters of companies offered health insurance.

But insurance brokers say the pace of terminations has picked up considerably since then among small companies, of which there are thousands in Massachusetts. Many of these companies — restaurants, day-care centers, hair salons, and retail shops — typically pay such low wages that their workers qualify for state-subsidized health insurance when their employers drop their plans.

(Via Power Line.)

The Economist has a column against the idea of fairness as an organizing principle for government.

A sense of fairness, as any parent knows, develops irritatingly early. A wail of “It’s not fair!” is usually the first normative statement to come out of the mouths of babes and sucklings. People seem to be hard-wired to demand fairness. Studies in which people are offered deals that they regard as fair and unfair show that the former stimulate the reward centres in the brain; the latter stimulate areas associated with disgust.

For the British fair play is especially important: without it, life isn’t cricket . . . The French have taken to using le fair-play in sport, presumably because (as their coach’s refusal to shake hands with his opposite number after losing to South Africa suggested) their own culture finds the concept rather difficult. When talking politics, however, the French, like the Americans, tend to go for the more formal notion of justice. But fairness appeals to the British political class, for it has a common sense down-to-earthiness which avoids the grandiosity of American and continental European political discourse while aspiring to do its best for all men.

I didn’t realize that this was a societal difference between America and Britain, but if it is, good for us. (And for France, I suppose.)

Fairness is a pernicious concept because it is totally subjective. It can mean anything to anyone, so it really means nothing at all. Consider two children: Alice (age 15) and Bob (age 10). Alice’s bed time is 10:30, and Bob’s bed time is 10:00. Both children are unhappy: Bob because Alice’s bed time is later, and Alice because when she was 10 years old her bed time was only 9:30. It’s not fair.

In politics, progressives tend to put things in terms of fairness: The rich aren’t paying their fair share of taxes. What exactly would be their fair share is never stated, but it’s always higher than they are paying now. (In 2007, the top 10% paid 70% of the income tax.) Free trade isn’t fair trade. (Whatever that means.) We need a Fairness Doctrine to shut down conservative talk radio.

ASIDE: Even when progressives use the word “justice” (e.g., “social justice”), they usually don’t actually mean objective justice, but some sort of subjective concept — which is to say fairness. We need to defend the word “justice”. The left has perverted the word “liberal” to the exact opposite of its historical meaning, we can’t let them have “justice” as well.

The author shies away from a full-throated condemnation of fairness, but I think all this what he is getting at in his conclusion:

Yet the fact that everybody believes in fairness is a clue to what’s wrong with the notion. Like that other warm-blanket word, “community”, it signals limp thinking. What exactly is “fair” about restricting trade, for instance? Or “unfair” about letting successful people in business or other fields enjoy the fruits of their enterprise without punitive taxes?

“Fairness” suits Britain’s coalition government so well not just because its meanings are all positive, but also because—like views within the coalition—they are wide-ranging. To one lot of people, fairness means establishing the same rules for everybody, playing by them, and letting the best man win and the winner take all. To another, it means making sure that everybody gets equal shares.

Those two meanings are not just different: they are opposite. They represent a choice that has to be made between freedom and equality. Yet so slippery—and thus convenient to politicians—is the English language that a single word encompasses both, and in doing so loses any claim to meaning.

Fairness is fudge. This newspaper will have none of it. We reject the wide, woolly notion of fairness in favour of sharper, narrower words that mean what they say, like just or cruel.

It turns out the health care nationalization act imposes a sales tax on real estate sales. A story in the Washington Post purports to debunk it, but actually just argues semantics:

• It’s not a sales tax or a transfer tax, it’s a Medicare tax. Why I should care about the label is beyond me.
• It doesn’t affect anyone making under $200k per year. First of all, taxes are a drain on the economy whoever pays them. Second, $200k is not $250k, the level at which Obama promised we would not face a tax increase. But, most importantly, sales taxes are invariably passed on to the buyer, so the fact that the tax is levied on the “rich” has no bearing on who actually pays it.
• The tax is levied only on the profit. Untrue. More precisely, it depends on how you define profit. The calculation of profit doesn’t figure in inflation, nor does it figure in the amount spent maintaining the home (major improvements, on the other hand, are figured in), so one could easily end up paying the tax despite taking a loss in real terms. Indeed, if inflation soars in the coming years (as it seems like it must) most of the price of a home will be “profit”.
• The tax is calculated using a very complex formula. Can’t argue with that one.

(Via Cato@Liberty.)

Wait, I thought this wasn’t supposed to happen.

We already knew it was a lie that health care nationalization would not pay for abortions, but we didn’t (or, at least, I didn’t) know how many ways it would fund abortion, and how quickly that funding would start: Obamacare will be funding abortions in Pennsylvania and New Mexico beginning pretty much immediately.

That’s two of the four plans for which the National Right to Life Committee was able to find language, so there will surely be dozens more.

Earlier this week, I wondered if, by passing a fake budget, Democrats were giving up the ability to ram legislation through the Senate using reconciliation. The Washington Independent says the answer is yes:

Recognizing that Democrats would be reluctant to record “yes” votes for a budget that would augment the deficit, the House leadership opted to deem as passed a “budget enforcement resolution” instead, just before the July 4 recess. While the distinction between an enforcement resolution and a full budget is largely technical, there is one crucial difference: Under the enforcement resolution, Democrats can no longer use a parliamentary tactic known as budget reconciliation next year — a process Democrats had hoped might allow them to pass key pieces of legislation, such as a jobs bill, with 51 votes in the Senate, as opposed to the usual 60 needed to overcome a filibuster.

The fake budget may be a bad thing in terms of the honesty of the budget, but I’d say this consideration outweighs that, particularly with the specter of a mad duck session on the horizon.

(Via the Corner.)

Another reason to despise BP (there are so many):

The oil giant BP faced a new furor on Thursday as it confirmed that it had lobbied the British government to conclude a prisoner-transfer agreement that the Libyan government wanted to secure the release of the only person ever convicted for the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing over Scotland, which killed 270 people, 189 of them Americans. . .

BP’s statement on Thursday repeated earlier acknowledgments that it had promoted the transfer agreement to protect a $900 million offshore oil-and-gas exploration deal off Libya’s Mediterranean coast. The British justice minister at the time, Jack Straw, admitted after Mr. Megrahi was repatriated and freed that the BP deal was a consideration in the review of his case.

(Previous post.)

I’d say Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) is pretty well disqualified from opining on history from now on:

Mark Hemingway writes in the Washington Examiner:

Democrats refused to allow a vote today on an amendment introduced today by Rep. Paul Broun, R-Ga., to ensure press access to the gulf oil spill. Broun’s amendment was a response to numerous reports that government authorities and BP are keeping the press away from areas affected by the spill. The amendment reads as follows:

Except in cases of imminent harm to human life, federal officials shall allow free and open access to the media of oil spill clean up activity occurring on public lands or public shorelines, including the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Also, the Coast Guard says it has lifted its policy of keeping the media back from the spill, which is good but proves that such a policy did exist.

(Previous post.)

The handpicked co-chair of Obama’s debt commission is panning Obamacare:

The Democratic co-chair of President Obama’s fiscal commission said Wednesday that the president’s health care bill will do very little to bring down costs, contradicting claims from the White House that their sweeping legislation will dramatically impact runaway entitlement spending.

“It didn’t do a lot to address cost factors in health care. So we’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Erskine Bowles, former White House chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, speaking about the new health law, which was signed into law by Obama this past spring after a nearly year-long fight in Congress.

AP reports:

After a day of delay, BP is again prepared to test a new cap fitted over the gushing Gulf of Mexico oil leak. National Incident Commander Thad Allen said at a Wednesday news briefing that testing will go ahead after 24 hours of carefully reviewing plans for the test. He said the testing would begin shortly.

The federal government had ordered the testing held up until BP could answer questions about whether the work could further damage the leaking well.

I suppose a mere one day delay is pretty good compared to the government’s record so far. Nevertheless, why not just go ahead with it? Could it really make the problem worse?

(Previous post.)

The Senate’s proposed NASA budget would keep the Space Shuttle running another year. I certainly hope so. The idea that we would depend on Russia for access to space is absolutely insane.

(Via Patterico.)

Despite the recent (and belated) White House denial of NASA’s Muslim outreach program, there’s considerable evidence that it is real (or was real, anyway):

• Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), ranking Republican on the House Space and Aeronautics subcommittee, says NASA administrator Charles Bolden confirmed it to him.
• Bolden has been talking about it for months.
• The text of a speech by Bolden at American University in Cairo discussing the program is still posted on NASA’s web site.

Now Robert Gibbs says that Bolden merely misspoke? Give me a break.