Obama’s Imperial Overreach

From Kirsten Powers via Instapundit:

Notice that the former constitutional law professor did not make a substantive legal case in defense of his executive power grabs. He merely stated that what he did was popular, ergo his extra-constitutional actions are fine. A more reassuring answer would include explaining how his actions are consistent with the Constitution.
..................... Liberals who obsessed over President Bush's abuses of executive power are suspiciously silent now, or worse, defend the same behavior they found abhorrent in a Republican.

It's up to debate as to whether Boehner has standing for this lawsuit. If he does, count me as an unlikely supporter.

Like a handful of liberal voices, at the same time I support most of Obama's domestic policy initiatives, including those he accomplished through executive action, I can't support the way he has put them in place. We elected Obama president, not emperor.

If illegal actions are okay if they become popular, what happens when running Obama out of town on a rail becomes popular? Judging by the polls, the trend is not his friend. If only Obama had seen A Man For All Seasons. Or at least picked up a famous quote somewhere.

The Dear Leader has pen and a phone. He will use his executive power as he sees fit, since Congress won't act.

Question? Why has he not taken any executive action to deal with the flood of illegal immigrant children overwhelming the border?

Charles Krauthammer -- Quote of the Day

From Ace of Spades HQ:

"If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House? If they don't work, why is it that the Israeli fence which separate Israel from the West Bank has cut down terror attacks within Israel by 99%. Fences work. Yes, there are parts of the border where you can't have a fence, fine. So you don't have it in those areas and you do heavy patrols. But there is no reason why a rich country like us cannot put a fence across -- a double fence, a triple fence and patrol it all the time. That would have a tremendous impact."

-- Charles Krauthammer

Simple question, simple logic, unanswerable by the former constitutional lawyer.

America at the Crossroads on the Fourth of July

From Roger Simon at PJ Media:

We are living under the administration of a president that is now the least popular since World War II. A full one-third of those polled by Quinnipiac rate Barack Obama the worst president since 1945. (Reagan is rated the best.)

What accounts for this? There are dozens of reasons that have been detailed on these pages and many others. The man has lied to us multiple times — and to himself as well, no doubt — and many people now apparently sense this. But I think the deepest reason, the motivating cause, stems from a time Barack Obama actually didn’t lie, but told an important truth.

Back on July 27, 2004, a then obscure Illinois senator made himself famous by standing in front of the Democratic National Convention and speaking these words: “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. There is a United States of America. There is not a black America and a white America, a Latino America, an Asian America — there’s the United States of America.”

Did he believe those words?  Maybe. Once upon a time.  But evidently not very deeply. The fact is he betrayed them completely and almost everything he has done wrong has stemmed from that betrayal.  He has acted in the most partisan and deceitful manner, surrounding himself with a tiny group of yes-women and yes-men, making a mockery of his self-proclaimed transparency, shamelessly exploiting interest groups in a way that could only divide our society while diminishing America’s place in the world,  and allowing evil forces to grow across the globe.

All of this while being convinced he is always doing the right thing. The rest of us are wrong. He is not the commander-in-chief. He is the moral narcissist in chief. It’s not “I think, therefore I am.” It’s “I believe — therefore it is.”

The embolden line about should be the tweet of the day, regarding the Dear Leader.

Veteran Finally Gets VA Appointment, Two Years After His Death.

From Instapundit:

Annals of Government Healthcare

As if adding salt to the wound, her Vietnam veteran husband was denied veterans funeral benefits because he was never actually treated at a veterans’ hospital.

This is a preview of Obamacare. It will be a slow, inefficient, and ineffective as the British and Canadian systems.

Who’s your daddy? Study on genetic testing says parents don’t need to know

From Instapundit:

A paper published Monday in the leading journal Pediatrics tackles a controversial discovery that can come out of genetic testing: when a child’s biological parent turns out to be someone else.

Whether that occurs through a switch at the hospital, a swap of embryos or sexual infidelity, genetic testing can bring such previously unknown facts to light. No matter the cause, it presents an ethical dilemma for medical professionals and one likely to become more common as genetic testing more more widespread. It has triggered a fierce and complex debate about whether parents — or those who might find out they are not true parents — have a right to know such information.

In the Pediatrics paper, ethicists at the University of Pennsylvania argue in favor of letting the parents of patients know that these facts can generally be found in the course of a test but will not be revealed to them.
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Without such a policy, Fiester said, after the tests are run, parents might be confronted with being told that there’s something they may need to know about their parentage.

New paper argues that universal nondisclosure of child’s biological information causes less harm and confusion. I think this is playing God. People should have access to the truth. I’m not certain I’d favor mandatory paternity testing at birth, but I’d favor that before I’d favor keeping secrets.

I think the diliema is that this will cause all sorts of problems of who SHOULD be stuck with the bill of paying for raising the child. The women will not suffer, financially. They usually know who the Daddy is. The one stuck with the bills and the kids are the innocent victims of the indiscretion.

Sadly, today's current political environment will not allow the woman to be responsible.

The Time Has Come -- Defund The IRS

From Steve Forbes of Forbes Magazine:

The current IRS scandals are now bigger than those of Watergate in the 1970s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. The most powerful and feared government agency was turned loose on groups of citizens who the White House and congressional Democrats felt threatened their power. President Franklin Roosevelt used the IRS against opponents, as did Presidents John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Conservative think tanks were rightfully suspicious they were being singled out for tax audits during the Clinton Administration. But none of those abuses was of the sweeping nature of the ones that began in 2010 and have taken place against ordinary citizens who have spontaneously come together in countless organizations to fight the current regime’s egregious policies and threats to liberty.

IRS wrongdoing is symptomatic of the Obama Administration. Changing the law by executive fiat, creating law by executive decree, and abusing the law by employing police powers in federal agencies all fundamentally pervert and threaten the foundation of this Republic.

Congress has the power of the purse. Time to use it. Make the IRS produce ALL the data requested by ALL the committees of be defunded.

Ann Coulter -- America’s Favorite National Pastime -- Hating Soccer, Part Deux

Ann Coulter follows up her article last week, America’s Favorite National Pastime: Hating Soccer with the second article, Soccer: Part Deux.

The single best line:

Further proof that soccer is a game for girls: Since my column came out, a guy from the Paraguay team (Uruguay? Who cares?) was caught biting an opponent in a match. Not punching. Not a cross-body block. BITING! How long can it be until we see hair-pulling in soccer?

Another take from Facebook:

New Data Refutes ‘Rape Culture’ Activists

From KC Johnson at Minding the Campus:

The Washington Post has helpfully compiled a table, using Clery Act statistics, of allegations of campus sexual assaults in 2012 (the last year for which figures are available, including all schools with 1000 or more students). To put it mildly, the data do not substantiate White House claims of a virtually unprecedented violent crime wave on today’s college campuses. The data also, as Reason has observed, suggest that reports of sexual assault are on the decline, further calling into question the “rape culture” panic that has emerged since the 2011“Dear Colleague” letter.

First, consider the schools with the most forcible sex offenses per 1000 students. Most of the schools that ranked the worst were small, residential, liberal arts colleges: Grinnell, Reed, Amherst, Hampshire, Swarthmore, and Connecticut College. Only one school in this list (Grinnell, 1.1 percent) had more than 1 percent of the student body reporting a forcible sex offense. The percentage of students at the other institutions—again, schools with the highest percentage of reported cases—ranged anywhere from 0.6 percent to 0.9 percent. (Note that these figures apply to reported cases, not to convictions.) Assuming that female students are 50 percent of the student body (underestimating the actual total) and that every reported instance actually was a crime, these figures would range from 4.8 percent to 8.8 percent of female students subjected to sexual assault—far below the 20 percent claimed by the administration. And, again, these totals come from the handful of schools with the highest reported percentage of cases.

Beyond the percentages, consider the schools with the most total forcible sex offenses in 2012. By far the highest was Penn State (56), followed by Michigan (34), Harvard, Indiana, Emory, Stanford, UNC, Ohio State, and Michigan State. Apart from Emory and Stanford, each of these schools has more than 28,000 students, suggesting that their rate of violent crime is not dissimilar from that of the general public—which, the current rhetoric implies, is not facing a comparable wave of violent crime.

Nor is there much evidence of a major uptick in violent crime.

Looks like the science (or math) is settled. or as Instapundit write:

You don’t want to be a science-denier, do you?

Florida Judge Dismisses Zimmerman Lawsuit Against NBC

From John Nolte of Breitbart's Big Journalism:

NBC News enjoyed a big win Monday after a Florida judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by George Zimmerman after the news outlet maliciously edited a call Zimmerman made to 911 in order to make it look as though the Hispanic Zimmerman had racially profiled Trayvon Martin, who was black.
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Breitbart News was the first media outlet to discover the fraudulent editing. The end result was three unnamed NBC News producers being fired.

Circuit Court Judge Debra S. Nelson ruled that Zimmerman was “unable to demonstrate that the editing choices at issue resulted in a materially false change in the meaning of what he actually said.”
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The judge also said that Zimmerman isn't protected like any other private citizen from libel because he deliberately and publicly added to “the public controversy surrounding race relations and public safety in Sanford,” and that Zimmerman “pursued a course of conduct that ultimately led to the death of Martin and the specific controversy surrounding it.”

The standard of libel and defamation with a public figure is higher than that of a private citizen. Zimmerman would have to prove NBC used "actual malice" against him. The judge did not believe the news outlet had.

This just seems wrong, Zimmerman was NOT a public person until the Drive-By-Media made him into a public person.

How Obama Lost the Middle East

From Victor Davis Hansen of National Review:

The president put politics and ideology ahead of preserving hard-won gains in the region.

In his first term, Barack Obama all but declared victory in America’s Middle East struggles.

As he precipitously pulled out all U.S. peacekeepers from Iraq, the president had his own “Mission Accomplished” moment when declaring the country “stable,” “self-reliant,” and an “extraordinary achievement.”

Those claims echoed Vice President Joe Biden’s earlier boast that Iraq somehow would prove Obama’s “greatest achievement.”

After the death of Osama bin Laden, and during Obama’s reelection campaign, the president also proclaimed that al-Qaeda was a spent force and “on the run.”
..........................................

So what happened?

In short, the Obama administration put politics and ideology ahead of a disinterested and nonpartisan examination of the actual status of the 2009 Middle East.

The Dear Leader looks at everything through a political lens, damn any other consequences than the next news cycle.

He is the very definition of a short term thinker.

He wants a legacy, but doesn't want to do the hard work to achieve it.

Obamacare is a prime example. He had nothing to do with the writing of the bill, it was essentially the Bill that Henry Waxman and TEd Kennedy have been wanted to get made into law for years. All he did was try to sell it. He let the leadership in Congress do all the leg work and then walked in when t passed both houses and claimed victory. Just like the Middle East. All the hard work was accomplished by the previous Administration. As soon as things looked stable, he took claimed victory and walked away. All the violence going on now, not his responsibility, since it was stable, WHEN HE LEFT.

Liberals’ Hobby Lobby Doublethink

From Jonah Goldberg of National Review:

If birth control is “not your boss’s business,” why do you expect him to pay for it?

Abortion-rights protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building on Monday holding signs that read “Birth Control: Not My Boss’s Business.”

Much to their chagrin, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito agreed in his ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.

Of course, that’s not how supporters of the government’s contraception mandate see it. They actually believe that birth control is their boss’s business, and they want the federal government to force employers to agree.

More on that later, but it’s first worth noting how we got here.

First, contrary to a lot of lazy punditry, there is no Obamacare contraception mandate. As my National Review colleague Ramesh Ponnuru notes, even President Obama’s liberal rubber-stamp Congress of 2009–10 never addressed — or even debated — the question of whether companies can be forced to provide contraceptive coverage. Department of Health and Human Services bureaucrats simply asserted that they could impose such a requirement.
............................  

Moreover, Hobby Lobby never objected to covering birth control per se. It already covers 16 kinds of birth control for its employees. But it objected to paying for what it considers to be abortifacients, which don’t prevent a pregnancy but terminate one. The pro-abortion-rights lobby can argue that “abortion” and “birth control” are synonymous terms, but that doesn’t make it true.

One lesson here is that overreaching can have unintended consequences.

As has been said before, but not by the activists, the Hobby Lobby case was never about denying women ACCESSS to birth control, it was about who was going to PAY for it.

By the way, the D.C. Circuit might nuke ObamaCare tomorrow

From Allahpundit at Hot Air:

Remember the Halbig case? If not, catch up right now by re-reading this post from January, written after a D.C. district court judge ruled in Obama’s favor. O-Care is a famously complex law but the lawsuit that could end up demolishing it is surprisingly simple. In a nutshell, there’s a line buried deep in the statutory text that says federal subsidies for insurance premiums will be available to anyone who buys a plan on “an Exchange established by the State.” Question: Does Healthcare.gov, the exchange built by the federal government after 34 states refused to build their own exchanges, qualify as an “Exchange established by the State”? Or do only state exchanges qualify? If it’s the latter, then millions upon millions of people who’ve signed up for O-Care through Healthcare.gov since October in the expectation that Uncle Sam will be paying part of their bill are in for a nasty surprise. The only fix that’s available (unless His Majesty tries some executive gambit, of course) is for Congress to amend the statute so that subsidies are available on the federal exchange too, but what are the odds of the House GOP agreeing to that?

Let's hope for a direct reading of the law.

Failed President Now Helpfully Offering GOP Advice

From Jammie Wearing Fools:

Where would the Republicans be without their political enemies graciously offering them advice? Especially from the worst president in modern American history.
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Translation: Go along with me and good things will happen, or something. And to think there are some weak-kneed Republicans who probably believe this nonsense. Any damn fool Republican who would take his advice, like McCain, well is a damn fool and should be bounced from the party. The Dear Leader has been one of the most partisan Presidents ever. Does anyone really believe, except for McCain and David Brooks, that Obama, Schumer, and Harry Reid really want to help Republicans win?

Christie Vetoes Gun Control Bill

From NJ.com via Ace of Spades HQ:

Christie vetoes gun control bill to reduce size of ammunition magazines

Gov. Chris Christie today vetoed a gun control bill that would have reduced the permitted size of ammunition magazines, saying it would do nothing to reduce gun violence.

“This is the very embodiment of reform in name only. It simply defies common sense to believe that imposing a new and entirely arbitrary number of bullets that can be lawfully loaded into a firearm will somehow eradicate, or even reduce, future instances of mass violence,” Christie said. “Nor is it sufficient to claim that a ten-round capacity might spare an eleventh victim.”
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Christie conditionally vetoed the legislation (A2006), but he did more than propose changes. He completely rewrote it, eliminating the ammunition capacity reduction and suggesting in its place several changes to the state’s mental health system that he first proposed more than a year ago.

Considering he is an establishment RINO, this all but let's everyone know that he is planning to run for President.

GM goes all in on recalls.

From Instapundit:

One story you could tell is that this just goes to show how little GM has been able to change from its disastrous old ways. Low quality, indifference to the consumer … meet the new GM, same as the old GM.

But I wonder if something else isn’t going on, something smarter. I wonder if GM hasn’t decided to go hog wild on the recalls because at this point they have nothing to lose.

There’s a point in a bad scandal where things have gotten about as bad as they could possibly get. New revelations don’t make things worse, because they hardly could be any worse. Instead, they get lost in the deafening noise of prior bad news.

At that point, it’s a good idea to announce anything that you’ve been worrying about might one day come out. People won’t really notice now, and by the time they’ve recovered sufficiently to take an interest, your worrisome story is old news.

This was the logic behind “big-bath accounting,” which became very popular during the dot-com era. And it was sound logic. So I wonder if GM has decided to do something similar here. To wit: Recall every part that has ever given anyone any trouble. Suffer through the hit to your brand. And then know that you’re sailing into the future clean, without any potential scandals lurking under the rocks of your customer-service organization.

Yeah, but if you’re GM can you ever be sure of that? And how much did the U.S. Government know about this stuff before it sold its stock?

Lois Lerner Targeted Chuck Grassley After He Blocked Obama’s DOJ Tax Nominee

From The Daily Caller:

Ex-Internal Revenue Service official Lois Lerner tried to audit Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley after Grassley blocked President Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice (DOJ) tax division, an executive branch insider told The Daily Caller.

Grassley made it more difficult for the IRS and DOJ to work together to target conservative groups by blocking Obama’s political appointee Mary L. Smith from taking over the DOJ Tax Division, which prosecutes criminal cases for the IRS. Grassley held up the nomination in early 2010, just as Lerner and fellow IRS officials were mapping out their targeting strategy. The White House later withdrew Smith’s nomination.

The source confirmed to The Daily Caller that the White House and IRS officials “were very upset at Senator Grassley and Republicans for blocking a vote on Mary Smith’s nomination.”

The IRS relies on the DOJ Tax Division to prosecute both criminal and civil cases, and has entire legal teams devoted to making DOJ referrals. Placing a political appointee as assistant attorney general for the DOJ Tax Division was a top priority for the Obama White House.

Grassley made sure that no Obama political nominee got confirmed for the post, and kept in a “career,” or non-political, DOJ tax head for another two years.

Another case where the timing is suspicious.

Hmmmm. Coincidence? Must be.

Leader of Murrieta Protests: 'Repatriate the Aliens'

From Breitbart California:

Busloads full of illegal aliens, many of them children, from overcrowded detention facilities in Texas were flown into San Diego Tuesday morning before being driven north to Murrieta for processing, but plans changed when over 100 protestors prevented the bus from entering the Murrieta Border Patrol facility.

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, Patrice Lynes, the organizer of the Murrieta protests, recounted the events that led to the buses turning back, and what demonstrators wanted to convey.

When Lynes heard of the transfers, she gathered a couple of friends and began staging demonstrations against the transfers, as well as in support of Border Patrol agents. On Sunday, June 28, the group that joined Lynes grew to a couple dozen. Lynes also gathered about 25 people--including moms, students, and former Border Patrol agents--to meet with staff in the office of U.S. Rep. Kevin Calvert (R-CA) to voice their concern over the lack of enforcement of current immigration laws.

After public outcry over the transfers, some plans to fly the detainees to California were canceled, but Tuesday's flights did take off, one of which headed for San Diego. After the plane landed, the 140 illegal aliens on board were escorted onto buses and driven up to the Murrieta Border Patrol station for processing.

Why can't these children be repatriated?

Janet Reno, Eric Holder's boss during the Clinton Adminstration repatriated Elian Gonzalez.

If Lois Lerner's Computer Gave Her The "Blue Screen of Death," As a Witness Claims, That Means The Data On It The Hard Drive Was Probably Recoverable

From Megan McCardle at Bloomberg News.

[T]he Blue Screen of Death is an operating system error. The operating system lives on the hard drive. Which raises a question: If Lerner’s hard drive was so thoroughly malfunctioning that no one could even get the data off of it, how was it booting up far enough for the operating system to malfunction? This is not the description of the problem that I would have expected to hear; I would have expected to hear that her computer wouldn’t really boot up at all, perhaps while horrible grinding noises emanated from its innards. In most cases, a computer displaying the Blue Screen of Death is a computer with a hard drive functioning well enough for data recovery. If I were Lerner's IT support person, I would waste no time in getting the hard drive to a working computer, where I’d connect it as a secondary drive and transfer off all the files, because the Blue Screen of Death is often a harbinger of future hard drive failure. But it was not, in my experience, usually a symptom of the actual failure.

Hmmmm, so what lie are they going to try next.

BTW, as a guy who has fixed a few computers myself, McCardle's solution to the problem is exactly what I would have done. It does not explain, however, how all the data on the backup system was lost.

Obama Is First As Worst President Since WWII

From Jammie Wearing Fools:

Jimmy Carter can finally exhale after all these years. He’s no longer the worst president in modern U.S. history.

In a new Quinnipiac University Poll, 33% named Obama the worst president since World War II; another 28% put Bush at the bottom of post-war presidents.

“Over the span of 69 years of American history and 12 presidencies, President Barack Obama finds himself with President George W. Bush at the bottom of the popularity barrel,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
.....................

Ronald Reagan topped the poll as the best president since World War II, with 35%. He is followed by presidents Bill Clinton (18%) and John F. Kennedy (15%).

Just imagine the disparity between Obama and GWB if the media hadn’t spent the past eight years publicly fellating Obama. Let’s face it, there really are no positives for this loser. Note the issues important to most Americans and contrast it with what Obama has been running around focusing on. Talk about a disconnect.

What more can you say? As the article says, the Drive-By-Media has been the PR team for the Dear Leader during his ENTIRE Presidency. Just imagine his poll results, if the DIDN'T like him.

Free Speech Movement -- Four lawsuits challenge campus censorship.

From James Taranto at Opinion Journal:

FIRE is attempting to light one. The Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education today filed four lawsuits challenging campus censorship at institutions across the country:

• At Citrus Community College in Glendora, Calif., Vincenzo Sinapi-Riddle “was threatened with removal from campus by an administrator for asking a fellow student to sign a petition protesting NSA surveillance of American citizens.” He was accused of expressive activity without a permit and outside the designated “free speech zone,” which according to FIRE’s calculations “comprises just 1.37% of campus.”

• At Iowa State University, two members of the campus chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, had “received university approval for a group T-shirt that featured ISU mascot Cy the Cardinal’s head in place of the ‘O’ in NORML.” But “criticism from members of the public and state officials” led the university not only to rescind approval of the shirt but to ban another “that simply said ‘NORML ISU Supports Legalizing Marijuana.’ ”

• At Chicago State University, the plantiffs are faculty members who write for a blog called CSU Faculty Voice, which “is often highly critical of the CSU administration’s perceived corruption and incompetence.” The blog’s logo is a photo of a CSU sign, with “Chicago” crossed out and “Crony” written in, along with the logo “Where we hire our friends.”

• At Ohio university, student Isaac Smith belongs to a group called Students Defending Students, which “provides free assistance to students accused of campus misconduct.” Administrators ordered Smith and his fellow members to stop wearing a shirt promising “We get you off for free,” on the ground that it “objectified women” and “promoted prostitution.”

The four cases are part of a new FIRE effort called the Stand Up for Speech Litigation Project, which also encompasses two earlier cases, one from California’s Modesto Junior College and one from the University of Hawaii at Hilo, in which–no joke–administrators tried to prevent students from distributing copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus. Although he wasn’t referring to these cases, they bring to mind Ezra Klein’s infamous observation: “The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago.”

Time for another RICO lawsuit based on violating the 1st Amendment, add it to the Title IX lawsuits and defund these schools.

Student loans -- Taking away the free ride for colleges.

From the American Enterprise Institute via Instapundit:

Looking at the rapid growth of student loans and the escalating price of college from a financial perspective, we see a typical interaction of credit expansion and price, quite similar to what happens in a housing bubble or any other bubble. Pushing credit at a sector makes its prices rise. The rising prices, in the cases of both housing and higher education, lead to cries that since the prices are now unaffordable, there has to be more credit. More (and more heavily subsidized) credit the politicians often enough deliver, and the escalation goes on.
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Among the things to be done to improve the student loan-college price spiral is to address the free riders in the student loan sector: namely, the colleges. They should cease to be free riders on other people’s credit risk and credit losses. Here I have one firm recommendation and one further possibility to suggest.

First, the colleges should definitely have “skin in the game” in student loan credit risk, just as the need for “skin in the game” was one of the biggest lessons of the mortgage bubble.

Each college should be financially on the hook for at least 20% of the losses its own defaulting students cause. This would certainly improve what is now a complete mismatch in incentives, and thus improve educational, as well as financial, performance.

A second idea (wittily suggested to me by Arthur Herman of the Hudson Institute) is one which should strongly appeal to everyone on the leftward side of this discussion. It is to have a wealth tax on rich colleges to help fund the cost of student loans.

My version of this idea is that the wealth tax should apply only to the top 1% of college endowments (of course not to the 99%). There are about 2,800 four-year degree granting colleges, so the top 1% would be 28 of them. You could easily guess most of the prestigious names on this list. They represent an “inequality” problem of a severe kind: the top 1% of endowments have 51% of the total college endowment wealth. This is obviously unfair! So as suggested by the current darling of the left, Thomas Piketty, a 5%-10% wealth tax on the assets of this unfairly advantaged 1% might seem about right.

However, in my proposal, a college or university would be exempt from this wealth tax if less than three of its faculty members have publicly argued for higher taxes on the wealthy. But if three or more of its faculty members have promoted more taxes on the wealthy, the tax would apply to that member of the college 1%.

I imagine that with this criterion, all 28, except perhaps the University of Chicago [Editor's Note, Univ. of Chicago was the home of Milton Friedman], would be paying. A higher degree of poetic justice would be hard to find.

I think he's on the right path. The "tax" in the Elite schools is mostly a cheap shot, since they are dominated by Progressive.

I think the Schools should be the one who have to make the loans as well as be on the hook for them. Make them 100% financially responsible. Add another requirement, any debt not paid after 6 years shall be forgiven. 6 years is 50% longer than it took to earn the degree, so it's about the right duration. By making the Universities having some skin in the game, many soft/fuzzy/squishy Department/Studies areas will disappear, since someone getting a "comparative religion" degree can't make a living, after 6 years their debt disappears and eventually the funding for those Department will disappear, since there will be no students studying those fields.

Win-Win

Hillary Takes Six-Figure Speaking Fees From Universities Raising Student Tuition

From Breitbart's Big Government:

The Washington Post reports that likely 2016 presidential contender Hillary Clinton made somewhere around $1.8 million from eight universities in just nine months. While paying the former Secretary of State anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 per speech, some of these schools were raising tuition prices on students already burdened by the growing student loan bubble.

Clinton was paid $251,250 from the University of Connecticut not long after the school hit its students with 6.5% tuition increase. At UNLV, where tuition will jump 17% within the next four years, Clinton accepted a $225,000 speaking fee. The student government has since sent Clinton a letter asking her to return the money.

If a public university can afford to spend this type of money on speakers, then it shouldn't be allowed to raise the student's tuition rates.

Instapundit makes note of a Washington Post article:

“In one previously undisclosed transaction, the University of Connecticut — which just raised tuition by 6.5 percent — paid $251,250 for Clinton to speak on campus in April. Other examples include $300,000 to address UCLA in March and $225,000 for a speech scheduled to occur in October at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

He calls describes the expensive speaking fees as the "academic establishment laundering contributions to an ally."

UPDATE: A reader notes that the President of the University of Miami, another Hillary-subsidizing school on the list, is none other than “Donna Shalala … Bill Clinton’s HHS secretary.”

Congressman Denied Entry to HHS Facility Housing Unaccompanied Minors

From Breitbart's Big Government:

An Oklahoma congressman says he was denied access to a Health and Human Services housing facility for unaccompanied minors in his own state.

Oklahoma Republican Rep. Jim Bridenstine revealed Wednesday that he was not allowed to view an HHS facility housing approximately 1,200 unaccompanied illegal immigrant minors at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, on Tuesday.

“There is no excuse for denying a Federal Representative from Oklahoma access to a federal facility in Oklahoma where unaccompanied children are being held,” Bridenstine said in a statement.

According to Bridenstine's office, an HHS official told the congressman he could schedule an appointment for July 21. The congressman took issue with the wait.

“Any Member of Congress should have the legal authority to visit a federal youth detention facility without waiting three weeks,” he said.

Bridenstine subsequently followed up with HHS Deputy Director of the Office of Public Affairs, Ken Wolfe, requesting to view the facility.

“What are they trying to hide?” Bridenstine wrote in an email, released by his office, to Wolfe. “Do they not want the children to speak with Members of Congress? As a Navy pilot, I have been involved in operations countering illicit human trafficking. I would like to know to whom these children are being released.”

What is the Regime trying to hide?

Another federal judge tells IRS to explain itself on lost emails

From the Washington Examiner:

IRS attorneys will be even busier than normal next week, because another federal judge has told them to show up in court July 11 to defend the federal tax agency.

They will have to explain to U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton why the IRS shouldn't be required to let an outside expert evaluate whether emails on the computer hard drives of former IRS official Lois Lerner and six colleagues really are lost forever, as the agency recently told Congress.

Responding to a motion filed Monday by True the Vote, a Houston-based conservative nonprofit at the center of IRS targeting during the 2010 and 2012 campaigns, Walton issued an order Tuesday to hear arguments next week.

The IRS recently told Congress that a mysterious crash of the hard drives last year irretrievably destroyed nearly two years of emails to and from Lerner and the others to and from people in other federal agencies, including the White House.

But True the Vote wants a digital forensics expert from outside the IRS to assess the evidence.

Lois! You got some 'splaining to do.

6 Stupid Arguments About Hobby Lobby From Dumb Liberals

From The Federalist:

1) The Supreme Court is denying access to birth control.

I'm kind of hungry for lunch, but my employer doesn't buy my lunch for me. It gives me cash to buy food. Which means I'm going to starve.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 30, 2014

2) The Supreme Court is discriminating against women.

3) The men on the Supreme Court shouldn’t be allowed to rule on decisions that affect women.

Senate ML Harry Reid on SCOTUS Hobby Lobby ruling: "It's time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women."
— Susan Ferrechio (@susanferrechio) June 30, 2014

Good call, Harry.

Remember that time @SenatorReid praised the all-female circuit court panel for slapping down Planned Parenthood's TX abortion law challenge?
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 30, 2014

...............

5) The Supreme Court decision just proves that GOP wingnuts want to control my bedroom.

"Get your politics out of my bedroom!" "Not a problem. I'm just going to grab my wallet before I leave." "The wallet stays, bigot."
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) June 30, 2014

6) Your boss shouldn’t make health care decisions for you.

Except when it comes to paying for it. MT @SandraFluke A woman’s boss should not have a say in her health care decisions
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) June 30, 2014

This entire case can be summarized with this single tweet.

According to SCOTUS, corporations have more religious freedom than taxpayers do: http://t.co/Tvm05rLEpS @ForbesOpinion #HobbyLobby
— Avik Roy (@Avik) July 1, 2014

What Does the Left Think the Supreme Court Is?

From Charles C. W. Cooke at National Review:

Hobby Lobby exposes mass incomprehension of the role of courts in a constitutional republic.

Conspicuously absent from yesterday’s post-Hobby Lobby hullabaloo was the acknowledgment on the left that the decision was the product of a court. Distilling into a single line what was a popular and widely disseminated critique, the New York Times’s Nick Kristof tweeted a picture of Justices Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, sardonically labeling the quintet as “The experts on women’s health on the Supreme Court who ruled today against contraception coverage.” A few hours later, Senator Harry Reid’s office pushed out an assessment that was cut from the same unlovely cloth. “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women,” Reid tweeted.
.....................

The justices are jurists not doctors — they are nine appointed attorneys whose role in the American settlement is to provide legal answers to legal questions. Man or woman; straight or gay; handsome or ugly; Jew, Catholic, or protestant — the law must remain the law, regardless of in whose name its intricacies are decided. The alternative would be disastrous. Does Harry Reid aspire to see Roe v. Wade, which was decided by nine men, overturned?

I wish someone would ask Dingy Harry that question.

"Affirmative Consent" -- The Sex Police on the Defensive

From Cathy Young at Real Clear Politics via Instapundit:

While the bill has been criticized across the political spectrum as an intrusive and bizarre attempt to micromanage sexuality, its defenders are mobilizing as well. They claim that “affirmative consent” is meant simply to ensure that all sex is wanted sex and that its critics are either rape-loving misogynists or misguided folks confused about what this standard actually means.

So, how convincing are those defenses?

A rather strongly worded diatribe against “rape apologists”—and, specifically, yours truly—comes from firebrand feminist blogger Amanda Marcotte on RawStory.com. According to Marcotte, I am a “professional female misogynist” who thinks that women “exist in a state of consent all the time” unless they explicitly say “no.” Of course, what I actually wrote was that consent is usually given through nonverbal cues—often, especially in first-time sex, in a gradual buildup of physical contact.

The California Legislature, whose combines IQ points might reach double digits, ironically, is trying to legislates what goes on in the bedroom, after spending decades castigating Republicans for doing the same thing. Especially when it comes to abortion and gay marriage. This is part of the Democrats current election cycle "cause de' jour."

Hillary deeply disturbed that Supreme Court upheld statute signed into law by her husband

From Hot Air:

Thanks to AG Conservative for that headline. First “don’t ask, don’t tell,” then DOMA, now RFRA: Precisely how many statutes signed by Bill Clinton are the Clintons currently horrified by?

It’ll be fun during President Hillary’s administration to try to identify the various laws that Senator Chelsea will be forced to repudiate circa 2036.

Hillary must be the most tin-eared politician there is out there running for President. Any other would have been shammed into quitting.

Let's label Lerner guilty, just like IRS does to us

From The Arizona Republic via Instapundit:

When I filed my taxes, I was targeted for an audit due to my casualty loss. When I told the wonderful agent at the IRS that all my records (along with most other possessions) had been lost in the hurricane, the sympathetic, caring agent opened up three years for audit. They then computed what they thought I should owe for the three years and demanded payment. As my records were destroyed, I had no way to fight them.

The IRS’ officials rules are that they are right unless I can prove different. In other words, guilty until proven innocent. Why, then, cannot former IRS administrator Lois Lerner be held to the same standards? Guilty until the IRS provides the proof of innocence.

Rules are for the little people.

I like this idea! ! ! !

The Clerisy strikes another blow against freedom.

Birth Control Can Cost As Little As $3.77 Per Month

From Breitbart's Big Government:

While Democrats attempt to use the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision as a political weapon against Republicans, the fact is women can purchase birth control for as little as $3.77 per month.

Writing at his blog called the Self-Pay Patient, Sean Parnell, author of a book by the same name, helps people who are paying for their own healthcare to find avenues for the highest quality, inexpensive options. His latest post addresses purchasing birth control.

Neither Parnell nor this author are claiming to endorse artificial birth control, but while the Obama administration tries to whip uninformed women into a frenzy about how Republicans don’t want them to have birth control, it’s good to revisit how easy and inexpensive it is for women to purchase it on their own.

“The first (and pretty much only) thing for people to understand is that shopping for birth control pills as a self-pay patient is no different than shopping for any other sort of prescription medicine as a self-pay patient,” writes Parnell.

The case was not about denying women ACCESS to birth control, it was about a case of whether an employer would be FORCED to provide it.

More on the IRS’s Illegal Destruction of Evidence

From John Hinderaker of Powerline Blog:

Under federal law, a party has a duty to preserve data that may be relevant to any actual or likely lawsuit. This duty arises from the party’s own knowledge; it is not necessary for a court to tell it not to destroy information, or for an adverse party to make such a request. The fundamental, shocking fact that is emphasized in True the Vote’s brief is this: at the time of Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash in June 2011, the IRS was already under a legal duty to take steps to ensure that information was not lost, and had been under such a duty for nearly a year, at a minimum ........... Federal law probably imposes a higher duty on federal agencies, but that is a subject for another day.

But, according to IRS representatives who have testified before Congressional committees, the IRS ignored the law. Instead of making sure that relevant information was preserved, the IRS blithely continued erasing back-up email tapes every 90 days. Further, the IRS continued its policy of assigning each employee a ridiculously small space on an email server, and then authorizing employees (like Lois Lerner) to delete at will to keep space open. And, finally, when Lerner’s hard drive crashed ten months after the Z Street case was commenced, the IRS made no effort to preserve it, but rather, by its own account, recycled the hard drive in a business-as-usual manner.”
....................

But, according to IRS representatives who have testified before Congressional committees, the IRS ignored the law. Instead of making sure that relevant information was preserved, the IRS blithely continued erasing back-up email tapes every 90 days. Further, the IRS continued its policy of assigning each employee a ridiculously small space on an email server, and then authorizing employees (like Lois Lerner) to delete at will to keep space open. And, finally, when Lerner’s hard drive crashed ten months after the Z Street case was commenced, the IRS made no effort to preserve it, but rather, by its own account, recycled the hard drive in a business-as-usual manner.

Any private company that conducted itself in this way would be crucified.

Ask yourself, one simple question, would the IRS accept that answer from a regular citizen?

In Major Announcement, FIRE Says It Will Sue Every College With a Speech Code Until Speech Codes Die Forever

From Reason via Instapundit:

During a Q and A session, Lukianoff was asked why he thought now was the time for such a litigation effort. He explained that the massive expansion of college bureaucracy poses a grave threat to students’ rights. There are now more administrators on campuses than ever before—far more bureaucrats than teachers, in fact—which has led to a ‘mindless application of ridiculous rules,’ he said.

Removing Speech Codes from College campuses is the first step to claiming our Nation back from the Progressives.

Obama, quit crying 'crisis'

From Jonah Goldberg in USA Today via Instapundit:

Politicians and journalists have a common interest in crises. When there’s a crisis, people buy newspapers and turn on the news to learn how our political leaders will fix the problem. Indeed, crises give politicians more power, which is why so many politicians are fond of the phrase “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

President Obama has been particularly fond of fomenting a sense of crisis — environmental, economic and social — because he thinks doing so will advance his agenda. But every now and then, the truth comes out.
...................

Indeed, at times it seems as if there’s an inverse relationship between the scope of a problem and the hysteria around it. For instance, today, college campuses are in a panic about a “rape epidemic.” Meanwhile, forcible rapes are down 80% in the U.S. since 1973.

Another source of anxiety these days is “white supremacy.” No doubt there is still racism in America — both structural and intentional — but can anyone outside the hothouse of racial paranoia at MSNBC really dispute that there is less today than there was at any other period in American history? And let’s not even dwell on a “war on women” that is largely defined as opposition to unnecessarily subsidized birth control.

Rahm Emanuel; current Mayor of of Chicago, former Obama Chief of Staff; once say to never let a crisis go to waste.

White House Spokesman -- "The Constitutional Lawyer in the White House" Disagrees with the Supreme Court

From the Washington Free Beacon via Ace of Spades HQ:

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the “constitutional lawyer in the Oval Office” disagreed with the Supreme Court’s assessment of religious freedom Monday during his daily press briefing.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday in favor of the Christian-owned company Hobby Lobby, saying by a 5-4 vote that Obamacare’s mandate that companies pay for insurance coverage for contraception violated its religious freedom.

“There are now a group of women of an indeterminate size who no longer have access to free contraceptive coverage simply because of some religious views that are held not by them, necessarily, but by their bosses,” Earnest said.

Typical Liberals, they want someone to pay for their stuff.

Rape Culture Theory Ensnares Innocent Men

From Legal Insurrection:

No one wants a woman blamed for being sexually assaulted because she wore a skimpy outfit. Likewise, many fear a sexually assaulted woman will be blamed because of her drunkenness. It is common thinking that because no one should ever be sexually assaulted, no blame should ever be put on them.

Under the new sexual assault definition, though, a consenting woman can later claim (and have a charge initiated because) there was really no consent because she was too drunk.

So if the male doesn't call her after ward or simply gets her mad at him. These new proposed rules allow the woman to change her mind about consent, after the fact. She can make a sexual assault accusation out of spite.

Booth noted that incidences in which the woman is drunk beyond her ability to consent are the ones that “encompass the bulk” of the sexual assault cases she sees.

Studies have shown that the majority of unwanted sexual encounters experienced by collegiate women occurred when they were intoxicated. Yet the roundtable panelists adamantly rejected the suggestion that sexual assault prevention education should encourage reduced alcohol consumption. ..................

In fact, take the case of Lewis McLeod. He is suing Duke University for expelling him for what he and the local police say was a false allegation of sexual assault.

Attending the trial, John H. Tucker of Raleigh-Durham’s Indyweek reported, dean Sue Wasiolek was asked in court whether both parties would be considered guilty of rape and thereby expelled if they engaged in sex while both were intoxicated to “incapacity.”

This is the same "Dean Sue" the false accused Duke Lacrosse players were told to trust after the false rape allegation.

The dean responded, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”

In the new climate of sexual assault pseudolaw, the female apparently has no responsibility other than to say yes, which can be revoked anytime, including after the sex is over.

Let that sink in. The dean responded, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”

The woman does have ANY responsibility in this scenario. The dean responded, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”

And the Feminist wonder why men don't take them seriously. The dean responded, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”

It seems as if the new system is designed to destroy as many men as possible. The dean responded, “Assuming it is a male and female, it is the responsibility in the case of the male to gain consent before proceeding with sex.”

Title IX civil right lawsuit for discriminating against men! ! ! ! !

Why Democrats insist on lying about how ‘poor’ they are

From the NY Post via Instapundit:

Hillary Clinton claimed that, at the moment she and her husband were signing up for $18 million in book deals, that they were “dead broke.”

Harry Reid (who lives in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel) said liberals are getting bullied by Republican billionaires but the Democratic Party “doesn’t have many billionaires” behind it.

Joe Biden (family earnings: $407,000 last year plus a free house, driver, meals, etc.) claims he “I don’t own a single stock or bond. . . . I have no savings accounts . . . I’m the poorest man in Congress.” (Triple fail: Joe isn’t poor, isn’t in Congress and wouldn’t be the poorest member of it if he were.)

Right here in New York, we’ve learned that City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, the daughter of a wealthy doctor who left a $6.7 million inheritance, took advantage of a no-interest loan intended for underprivileged New Yorkers to buy a Harlem townhouse. Then she forgot to declare the rental income on required city disclosure forms. The townhouse you and I helped buy her for $240,000 is today worth $1.2 million.

The more Democrats insist on their proletarian cred, the more absurd it gets. They’re no longer just holier than thou: Now they’re prolier than thou.

They believe the rules don't apply to them.

At the Core of the IRS Saga -- Tax Collectors as Political Hitmen

From J.D. Tuccille at Reason via Instapundit:

It’s all good fun to mock the Internal Revenue Service’s plausibility-challenged explanations for just how potentially embarrassing (to the IRS) emails were lost and why they can’t be recovered, but let’s not forget what’s at the core of the story: the tax collection agency’s long and storied history as a political hitman. IRS audits have been targeted at political opponents of incumbent presidents, tax information has been leaked about enemies of powerful members of Congress, and the agency’s own employees have abused their power for personal reasons.

Remember, the 2nd article of impeachment against was ATTEMPTING to use the IRS against his political opponents.

So what does it say about the Dear Leader since he was successful?

Sandra Fluke on Hobby Lobby -- 'A Woman's Boss Should Not Have a Say'

From Joel Pollack of Breitbart California:

Sandra Fluke, whose campaign for free contraception elevated her to national prominence while she was still a law student at Georgetown University, denounced to the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case: "A woman’s boss should not have a say in her health care decisions," Fluke stated on Twitter.

A woman’s boss should not have a say in her health care decisions-stakes are too high for us to be silent #HobbyLobby http://t.co/xZ247dqtMf
— Sandra Fluke (@SandraFluke) June 30, 2014

Fluke seems to have misunderstood--or miconstrued--the case. Hobby Lobby sued precisely because it did not want to have a say in, or be forced to pay for, the private contraceptive decisions of its employees. The company, which is run according to the owners' religious principles, objected to contraceptives that act as abortifacients.

Similarly, CNN's asked Hobby Lobby's attorney, Lori Windham, why she wanted to "bring the employer into what should be a very private decision-making process between a woman and her doctor." Windham's response: "Hobby Lobby would love to stay out of this, and leave this decision to a woman and her doctor."

Fluke's logic process can be summarized below:

Court Grants Judicial Watch Hearing over Missing IRS Emails

From Breitbart's Big Government:

Judicial Watch filed a Motion for Status Conference in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to confer about the emails of Lois Lerner and other IRS officials, which were the subject of longstanding Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and a lawsuit, and which the IRS now claims to have “lost” (Judicial Watch v. IRS (No. 1:13-cv–1559)). U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan almost immediately granted our request and ordered a federal court hearing on the missing IRS emails be set for July 10!

The emails Judicial Watch has sought since May 2013 cover portions of the same period for which the IRS on June 13, 2014 notified the House Committee on Ways and Means were lost or destroyed. Yet, as we informed the Judge Sullivan today, the IRS failed to notify either Judicial Watch or the court concerning the “lost” emails:

Plaintiff’s FOIA requests and the Committee’s request indisputably seek the same emails of Lois Lerner and the other IRS officials, including Nikole Flax, from January 1, 2010 to the present. Despite the obvious relevance, IRS has still not notified the Court or Plaintiff of the destruction of emails and whether the same issues relating to production of emails of Lois Lerner or the other six IRS officials exist in this lawsuit. Plaintiff only learned of the destroyed records on June 13, 2014, when the news media reported on the existence of IRS’s letter to Congress about the status of the emails.

In May 2013, Judicial Watch submitted four separate FOIA requests for IRS communications concerning the review process for organizations seeking tax exempt status. One of the FOIA requests specifically sought Lerner’s communications with other IRS employees and with any government or private entity outside the IRS regarding the review and approval process for 501(c)(4) applicants from January 1, 2010, to the present. A second request sought communications for the same time frame between the IRS and members of Congress and other government agencies, as well as any office of the Executive Branch. After the IRS failed to provide the information, Judicial Watch filed a FOIA lawsuit on October 9, 2013.

And there is little doubt that our FOIA lawsuit led to the discovery of the “lost” emails:

As revealed in the announcement by the Committee, IRS confirmed that it first knew of the lost emails in February 2014. See Exhibit 3. This was during the same time frame IRS made its first production of responsive records to Plaintiff in this case on February 26, 2014. See IRS’ Status Update Report (ECF No. 15). The timing of these events reveals that the discovery of the supposedly lost emails was triggered by this lawsuit. However, IRS has still not informed this Court or Plaintiff regarding the missing emails in this litigation.

And, to put it charitably, the IRS subsequently may have intentionally omitted material information from the court:

On April 30, 2014, IRS submitted its Status Update to the Court (ECF No. 15) regarding its ongoing search and production in this case, which was after the discovery of the missing records. Although IRS had knowledge of the missing Lois Lerner emails and of the other IRS officials, it materially omitted any mention of the missing records in its Status Update.

This FOIA lawsuit led to key revelations, including emails showing that, in response to pressure from Senate Democrats, the IRS and Lerner communicated with the Department of Justice about possibly prosecuting tax-exempt groups involved in political speech. And last month, the lawsuit forced the release of IRS documents showing, contrary to what President Obama has said, the delays of Tea Party applications were directed out of the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. The documents also show extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative-leaning tax-exempt organizations.

It is well past time for the Obama administration to answer to a federal court about its cover-up and destruction of records.

This should be fun to hear the IRS explain to a Federal Judge why the didn't follow the law.

Will the Judge throw the book at them?

Popping popcorn.

IRS missing emails explaination even too too smelly for Candy Crowley

From Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker:

The Democrats have no more loyal a media servant than Candy Crowley, who proved her devotion by derailing scrutiny of Benghazi and the phony video cover story in a 2012 presidential debate. Yet even Candy can’t accept the line that the destruction of Lois Lerner’s emails is a pure coincidence.

Josh Feldman writes in Mediaite:

William Taylor, the attorney for embattled IRS official Lois Lerner, sat down with CNN’s Candy Crowley today [Sunday] to push back against the “election-year politics” of the GOP-led IRS hearings. Crowley asked Taylor that given what the House is investigating, the fact that a chunk of her emails has gone missing isn’t just a little too convenient.

Crowley said it’s odd that the emails are just “irretrievable,” but Taylor insisted that Lerner was just as frustrated to find out her hard drive crashed and did everything she could to recover the data. Crowley suggested it’s very “suspicious” for these emails to go missing and for the IRS to disclose this fact in the middle of an investigation.

She might have realized that she has no credibility left after the 2012 Presidential debate and sudden decided she needs to actually be a journalist, not a PR hack.