Tag Archives: Category: Miscellaneous

Samuel Gregg at Public Discourse: Natural law does not demand capitalism, but we can deduce from natural law that some institutions that are key to market economies are normally just, while practices key to socialist arrangements are usually unjust.

World Net Daily: The Internal Revenue Service, charged with implementing the biggest change in tax laws in 20 years due to Obamacare, has created eight offices and special “teams” to handle the chore, way more than initially revealed.

CNSNews: The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate the benefits of culturally targeted smoking cessation intervention for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender smokers,” the NIH grant description said.

AP: But some unions leaders have grown frustrated and angry about what they say are unexpected consequences of the new law – problems that they say could jeopardize the health benefits offered to millions of their members.

AP: Choosing future Navy and Marine leaders as his audience, President Barack Obama issued a pointed call Friday for an end to sexual assaults in the military, appealing to graduating midshipmen to display honor and moral courage to contain what has become a growing epidemic.

Washington Times: House Speaker John A. Boehner says it “really is inconceivable” that President Obama wouldn’t have known about the unfolding IRS scandal before learning about it from reporters, as the White House has claimed.

The Hill: Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius urged college graduates Wednesday to remember the insurance benefits available to them through ObamaCare.

The Hill: “I am not interested in debating what is not debatable,” Moniz said in his remarks at the Tuesday ceremony. “There is plenty to debate as we try and move forward on our climate agenda.”

NCPA Policy Digest: Two provisions in particular will require thousands of new IRS agents, and billions in funding, to enforce: the law’s individual mandate, forcing most Americans to buy government-approved health insurance; and its employer mandate, forcing most employers to take money out of workers’ paychecks to purchase costly health insurance on their behalf.

NY Times: The Federal Communications Commission’s attempt to defend its net neutrality rules against a court challenge got major support on Monday from the Supreme Court, which ruled in a separate case that regulatory agencies should usually be granted deference in interpreting their own jurisdictions.

AP: Members of the Cincinnati tea party will gather at noon Tuesday at the city’s Fountain Square, then march to the nearby federal building to continue the rally.

The Hill: “He thought the opposition to it would lessen after the [2010] election. I said, ‘It’s just the beginning.’ I said, ‘It’s going to grow because I can tell you it’s not going to go away and it’s going to get worse,’” Snowe said in a radio interview moderated by Julie Mason, host of SiriusXM’s Press Pool.

Washington Times: But by Monday, Mr. Jackson, the first black candidate Republicans have chosen to run statewide since 1988, was being slammed by critics for statements he’s made in the past likening Planned Parenthood to the Ku Klux Klan and that gays and lesbians are “very sick people psychologically, mentally, and emotionally and they see everything through the lens of homosexuality.”

The Hill: White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough and other senior officials knew of the general nature of the report but decided to keep the president in the dark about the report’s finding that the IRS had targeted conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny.

World Net Daily: The faux stone columns from his Denver acceptance speech are crumbling, the fireworks have fizzled and the unadulterated adulation of Barack Obama is a sour feeling of disillusion, as a new poll reveals half of Americans wants him impeached, including a stunning one in four Democrats.

Wall Street Journal: What to make of the political scandals that are dominating the headlines and forcing the Obama administration into Nixonian damage control? Technology is finally doing to big government what it has done to big business, big media and other institutions that once could operate with nearly full control over information. The government is losing the ability to manipulate information to avoid accountability.

Robert P. George at Public Discourse: Is the fundamental and essential point of forming the polity the polity itself, or is the polity primarily a means of protecting and achieving many other valuable ends?

Weekly Standard: “[I]f this fact came out in September 2012, in the middle of a presidential election? The terrain would have looked very different.”

Washington Examiner: Sarah Hall Ingram, the IRS executive in charge of the tax exempt division in 2010 when it began targeting conservative Tea Party, evangelical and pro-Israel groups for harassment, got more than $100,000 in bonuses between 2009 and 2012.

Catholic Culture: The Diocese of Kansas City, Missouri, has agreed to pay $600,000 to settle a lawsuit stemming from child-pornography charges against a priest of the diocese.

Jen Kuznicki at CNSNews: Byron York of the Washington Examiner wrote yesterday that the IRS scandal could lead to fears about the agency’s role in enforcing Obamacare: The IRS will also decide who is, and who is not, eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies. The law authorizes the IRS to share confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of determining those subsidies.”

Michael W. Hannon at Public Discourse: Our arguments for limited government should recognize political community as an intrinsic good, not mistake it for a merely instrumental one.

National Review: The Internal Revenue Service stole and improperly accessed 60 million medical records after raiding a California company, according to a legal complaint filed in March with the California superior court for San Diego. Fifteen IRS agents are now facing a class-action lawsuit in the matter.

Global Post (Reuters): The IRS is charged with distributing health insurance tax credits through the state exchanges. But the complaint argues that the federally created exchanges cannot deliver the tax credits because the law does not say explicitly that they can. The challengers are asking for a federal court order barring administration and enforcement of the healthcare law in these 33 states . . . At least six other lawsuits against the healthcare law are pending in court’s around the country. The case, No. 13-623 Halbig et al v. Sebelius et al, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Rasmussen Reports: Voters are now evenly divided when asked if elections in the United States are fair today, and a solid majority continues to believe that the U.S. government does not have the consent of the governed. But the Political Class strongly disagrees.

Simon Lazarus at the New Republic: But the bottom-line is not hard to grasp: If the case makes its way to the Supreme Court, and all five members of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc buy Carvin’s rationale, the result would, in rejectionist states, subvert the ACA’s central purpose and stiff the very population the law was enacted to benefit.

National Review: Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell tells National Review that Steven Miller, the acting head of the Internal Revenue Service, should step down.

Volokh Conspiracy: The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is telling universities to institute speech codes. And not just any old speech codes: Under these speech codes, universities would be required to prohibit students from, for instance . . .

KFOXTV.com: When you combine the results from polling firms like Gallup, Pew the General Social Survey there were 12 things 90% of American’s say they believed in.

Blog of the Legal Times: The thorny question of how to calculate restitution to victims of child pornography came back before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last week, with the U.S. Department of Justice defending a proposed formula.

Washington Post: Earlier this spring, Sen. Rand Paul and his wife, Kelley, invited a crew from the Christian Broadcasting Network into their Kentucky home for what turned into two full days of reality TV.

Oregonian: You might have thought John E. Brennan’s troubles were history after a judge last year acquitted him of wrongdoing for stripping at Portland International Airport to protest what he saw as ridiculously invasive security measures.

Joel J. Miller at Patheos: The book is The Humane Economy: The Social Framework of the Free Market, and I think it warrants quoting at length, particularly from the first chapter, which helps explain the crisis in modern Western social and economic systems and explains where Röpke was coming from in addressing the problem: People may be led by Christian and humane convictions to declare themselves in sympathy with socialism and may actually believe that this is the best safeguard of man’s spiritual personality against the encroachments of power, but they fail to see that this means favoring a social and economic order which threatens to destroy their ideal of man and human freedom. . . .

The Hill: The House on Thursday passed legislation that would allow the government to borrow money above the debt ceiling, but only to service U.S. bondholders and make payments related to the Social Security Trust Fund. The Full Faith and Credit Act, H.R. 807, was passed in a 221-207 vote that saw all but eight Republicans favor the bill, and every Democrat oppose it.

Jordan Bloom at the American Conservative: In honor of F.A. Hayek’s birthday, let’s consider for a moment how he misread himself. In his essay “Why I Am Not A Conservative,” the economist and philosopher argued for a radical anti-state program, …

Samuel Gregg at Public Discourse: Conservatives need to stop shying away from principled, as opposed to merely utilitarian, defenses of economic freedom and its associated institutions.

CNS News: And, as the poll suggests, young people share this belief: 66 percent of the students polled had a positive opinion of “entrepreneurship,” 44 percent found “free markets” positive, and 42 percent believe the federal government is an opponent rather than a partner in the pursuit of the American Dream.

Former Sens. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) and Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) at The Hill: After trying private negotiations, bipartisan commissions, informal “gangs” and a supercommittee, the search for a long-term federal fiscal plan has come full circle back to where it started — regular order under the budget process in Congress. Or has it?

Politico: Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) proposed two amendments to the Gang of Eight immigration legislation to extend legal rights to gay couples, one of whom is foreign born.

AP: Richard Land, a leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, told reporters on a conference call Wednesday that evangelicals are hopeful the bill will remain focused on immigration and steer clear of gay rights.

AP: In a story of political redemption, Mark Sanford is headed back to Congress after his career was derailed by scandal four years ago.

USA Today: A report showing that sexual assaults in the military jumped by more than one-third since 2010 led Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on Tuesday to order the armed services to take immediate steps to curb the problem among troops.

CNBC: Get ready for the Internal Revenue Service to play a dominant role in health care. When Obamacare takes full effect next year, the agency will enforce most of the laws involved in the reform—even deciding who gets included in the health-care mandate.

Lee Hieb at WND: The big picture is: This is a three-step shell game to bring about the death of private practice medicine in America. Here is how it will work.

The Hill: House Republicans are trying once again to enact a law that would prevent Congress from naming monuments, buildings or other structures after themselves.
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George F. Will at Washington Post: The government retains a narrow authority to prevent deceptive advertising practices. But as the airlines argued in petitioning the Supreme Court to hear their case, the government is micromanaging their speech merely to prevent the public from understanding the government’s tax burdens.

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy: his morning, a unanimous panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in National Association of Manufacturers v. National Labor Relations Board, struck down a new NLRB regulation requiring employers to post a notice of employee rights under the National Labor Relations Act on their properties and websites.

AP: The sexual battery arrest of the Air Force officer who led the service’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response unit underscores how far the Defense Department has to go in addressing the plague of sexual crimes in the military, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said Tuesday.

Volokh Conspiracy: Last week, several small business owners and individuals filed suit challenging the legality of an IRS rule purporting to authorize tax credits for the purchase of qualifying health insurance policies in federal exchanges.

Cassell, Paul G., Marsh, James and Christiansen, Jeremy M., The Case for Full Restitution for Child Pornography Victims (2013). George Washington Law Review, Forthcoming; University of Utah College of Law Research Paper. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2260479

Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian: On Wednesday night, Burnett interviewed Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent, about whether the FBI would be able to discover the contents of past telephone conversations between the two. He quite clearly insisted that they could . . .

NCPA Policy Digest: Twenty states and the District of Columbia have signed on to the expansion, and 14 are planning to decline. But 16 remain in limbo as lawmakers clash in the final days and weeks of the legislative calendar, when many must come to a decision in time for the provision to kick in next year.

EagNews.org: We’ve seen a growing number of local unions break ties with state and national unions in K-12 school districts in recent years. Now unionized college employees are getting in the act.

York Daily Dispatch: At 7 p.m. May 23, the zoning hearing board will mull whether the establishment – innocuously named “The Office” – is welcome in the township based on the law of the land.

Rasmussen: A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 59% of Likely U.S. Voters think free market competition would do more to reduce health care costs than more government regulation.

CBS: Washington Redskins quarterback Robert Griffin III took to Twitter on Tuesday to complain about the “tyranny of political correctness” he believes is holding American culture “hostage.”

Americans for Tax Reform: sked about Senator Max Baucus’s (D-Mont.) recent “train wreck” comments, President Obama today said, “A huge chunk of it [Obamacare] has already been implemented.” Unmentioned was the wave of destructive Obamacare tax increases that will begin to hit Americans during the next tax filing season and beyond . . .

Religion News Service: A former adviser to Sarah Palin and an attorney with a long record of advocating conservative causes, will become the first spokeswoman for the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB announced Monday (April 29).

Blog of the Legal Times: If you give money to the Socialist Workers Party, your name won’t show up in Federal Election Commission records.

Breitbart: Barack Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is panicked enough about the collapse of ObamaCare that they have hired a public relations firms at a cost of $8 million to sell the program to the public.

Forbes: Michigan’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, was among the many GOP state executives who made national headlines this winter by endorsing Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, America’s government-run health insurance program for the poor. But what isn’t making headlines is that Michigan’s legislature, like its counterparts in Florida, Ohio, and Arizona, is not going along.

Politico: Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join as part of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, sources in both parties said.

God Discussion: Howard Philips, who co-founded the so-called “Moral Majority” and is considered an architect of the modern Christian Right has died at 72 on Saturday. He had been suffering from dementia before his death according to Salon. L. Brent …

Lund v. City of Fall River, No. 12-1758 (1st Cir. April 22, 2013)

Washington Post: The story suggests immigration reform could “cripple Republican prospects in many states they now win easily.” Assuming all 11 million illegal immigrants could vote and that 71 percent supported President Obama in 2012 (his share of the Hispanic vote last fall) the article says that he would have significantly narrowed the GOP’s margin in Arizona, Georgia and Texas.

NY Times: Free Speech and an Anti-Prostitution pledge.
Compelling that speech is unconstitutional, as are other forms of compulsion by government, like requiring schoolchildren to salute the flag as a condition of going to public school, which the Supreme Court rejected in a landmark case as “official control” over personal beliefs.

The Hill: The other retiring Democrats are Sens. Tom Harkin (Iowa), Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), Tim Johnson (S.D.), Carl Levin (Mich.) and Frank Lautenberg (N.J.).

Executive.gov: Eric Fanning Confirmed As Af Under Secretary LGBTQ Nation: Senate confirms Eric Fanning as Under Secretary of the U.S. Air Force Fanning, who is openly gay, was nominated to the second-highest civilian position in the Air Force by President …

AP: Prosecutors say a Virginia man who planned a mass killing at the Washington headquarters of a conservative Christian lobbying group should spend 45 years in prison for his plot.

AP: Rejecting the Medicaid expansion in the federal health care law could have unexpected consequences for states where Republican lawmakers remain steadfastly opposed to what they scorn as “Obamacare.”

Barna Group: But that also makes it difficult to define. Leadership is one of those “if you see it, you know it” kind of qualities. It’s something Americans clearly value, all the way from their immediate employer to their minister to their president. And, according to a new survey conducted by the Barna Group, more than eight in ten (82%) Christian adults believe the United States is facing a crisis of leadership because there aren’t enough leaders. What do people value in a leader? What is the Christian perspective of leadership? And is the younger generation looking for a different type of leader?

AP: Arkansas’ plan to use federal money to buy private insurance for low-income residents won final approval from state lawmakers Wednesday, endorsing a model that several other states are eyeing as a possible alternative to expanding Medicaid.

Illinois Review: Illinois Republican House members crossed the aisle, citing compassion and mercy on patients in need of pain relief, and came to the aid of State Rep. Lou Lang (D-Chicago) in a vote to legalize medical pot Wednesday. At the same time, those Republicans relieved Democrats in conservative-leaning districts from explaining support to their constituents for voting to legalizing marijuana.

Politico: Blindsided by news that Sanford’s ex-wife has accused him of trespassing and concluding he has no plausible path to victory, the National Republican Congressional Committee has decided not to spend more money on Sanford’s behalf ahead of the May 7 special election.

McConnell, Michael W., In Defense of Citizens United (March 29, 2013). Yale Law Journal, Vol. 123, No. 2013. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2241682