Stones Cry Out

In the latest episode of my new podcast project, I give my first look at what the Supreme Court’s decision on the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare(tm)) means. If you think there are places where government should just butt out of, you are not going to like what this bill let’s the government do.

A comment on a Facebook question posted by La Shawn Barber gives us a new perspective on how to deal with illegal immigrants.

You know those machines where you take the next number to be waited on? The government has one. It’s costs $19 million. Every year. Really.

And you know all those human interest stories that the media keep running to tell us that we really need ObamaCare? Do they compare to the 130,000 elderly patients in Britain that die every year so that costs can be kept down or beds can be freed up? Yup, 130,000. Every year. Really.

Click here for show notes, and ways to listen to the podcast; through iTunes, another podcatcher, or right on the web page. It’s politics in 10 minutes or less (8 minutes and 40 seconds, this time).

Good morning.

1. Start with some fun.
2. Mr Holder and the 17 Dems … one claim is that all 17 face difficult re-election campaigns.
3. Ice melt.
4. Experimental Platonic ethics considered.
5. Some Television recommended viewing.
6. Fur the carnivore.
7. Some pessimism regarding bureaucratic growth.
8. Hunting for a realistic broccoli example.
9. So its a tax. Let’s see, you’re 20 something have a modest income and good health. Pay $800 tax or $8k for heathcare. Hmm.
10. So girls, to be safe, drive and carry concealed.
11. And we’ll end (bookend?) with some grace and poise.

Calling the individual mandate a "tax" (which is something Obama himself expressly said it was not, by the way), the Supreme Court has upheld the core of the Affordable Care Act. There was a small limitation placed on Medicare changes, but overall it survived intact.

First of all, the election in November has come fully in focus because of this. There’s a clear distinction between the candidates now; one wants to keep this, and one wants to repeal it. The final fate of the ACA now falls into the hands of the voters, and there may be a huge backlash.

Secondly, the power of the Congress under the Commerce Clause was (at least) restricted, since the SCOTUS ruled that the way the mandate was written was outside that power. That at least was some silver lining around this cloud. It’s power via taxation, however, has now become absolute, going where I don’t think it’s gone before. There is no limiting principal on what they can do, or, more specifically, what they can make you do. The Constitution was written by guys who knew their history, and how government’s tendency is to grow and take over more and more power. It was written to limit the federal government. But now, that power has had one of its biggest shackles unlocked. As a precedent, it is incredibly dangerous.

And because of this, I want to say to anyone who has ever complained that the government should get out of any area of their lives where it has no business, just remember that now it can direct your every purchase if it so chooses. After it takes out taxes, it can still tell you how to spend the rest. If you supported this bill, then you have opened that door. You can no longer complain about government meddling in anything. You helped give it that power.

Good morning.

1. Google makes a political statement. Or is that religion? Or do they just not like to empower women?
2. Putting the Obamacare decision in perspective.
3. A real virus and horror fiction.
4. I haven’t read either report, although it brings to mind an experiment. My prediction (untested so far) is that Mr Scalia’s remarks are about Constitutionality of Mr Obama’s actions and none of Mr Dionne’s objections are about Con-law. Am I right?
5. Of oil pipelines and ancient Germanic gold.
6. A “zipper truck”.
7. Philosophy imitates comics … that is to say this particular ethics question was kinda the point of Joss Whedon’s X-Men story arc.
8. I really dislike the pretense of putting probabilities to judgements. You either think a thing is or it isn’t and you don’t do have any probabilistic metrics to apply.
9. The creative class myth.
10. Wood tube.
11. Circumcision and Germans some thoughts. More musings here.
12. A scientific funding proposal … so are you carbon/AGW supporters on board with that or not? It occurred to me that the atheists who by and large support AGW theory often use the argument “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” for God but not climate.
13. Totalitarian walls don’t hold against culture forever.

Woo hoo. I’m still here. Actually, weekend travel + Monday I was on site all day sans Internet, and then I’ve come down with laryngitis and between trying to work and sleep blogging has taken the hit.

1. Circumcision and Germany, two views here and here.
2. Magic … the interesting inclusion of “contagion” prompted me to link this … sounds kind like quantum entanglement, eh?
3. Unimpressed by a TV mini-series.
4. And a film review.
5. A thank you from Mr Barnett … I’d link a thank you from the other side of the aisle but didn’t find one. Is that to be expected? Why?
6. Big gun.
7. Speaking of guns (and bikes!?).
8. Economists you like.
9. The EU and unexpected exit advice.
10. Hunting for the honest liberal with respect to “judicial activism”?
11. Having a bad day … nature edition.
12. Freedom and university.
13. Chicago and stupidity around gun laws.
14. Modify the past to effect predictions is not warranted, …. right?
15. First birther. Heh.
16. Statistics of violent encounters.

No, not Al Gore.

Lovelock is a world-renowned scientist and environmentalist whose Gaia theory — that the Earth operates as a single, living organism — has had a profound impact on the development of global warming theory.

Unlike many “environmentalists,” who have degrees in political science, Lovelock, until his recent retirement at age 92, was a much-honoured working scientist and academic.

His inventions have been used by NASA, among many other scientific organizations.

Lovelock’s invention of the electron capture detector in 1957 first enabled scientists to measure CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other pollutants in the atmosphere, leading, in many ways, to the birth of the modern environmental movement.

But this father of a movement has some scolding for his children. In a previous interview, he noted, “the problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago.” This was in acknowledgement of the fact that global temperatures just haven’t gone up the way the computer models predicted. Acknowledging that error is certainly a step in the right direction, but let’s not forget that the massive drain on our economy that Greens the world over would have wanted to implement based on those flawed models would have made this recession even worse.

Now, he’s not renouncing man-made global warming, but he is asking folks who do agree with him to just calm down a bit and look at some realities. His advice?

• He’s for more nuclear power and natural gas "fracking".
• Ratchet back the whole green "religion" guilting.
• Modern economies will not be powered by windmills and "so-called ‘sustainable development’." That is "meaningless drivel".
• No, the science isn’t settled. That’s not how science works.

Read the whole thing.

Just the higher-profile ones.

The Arizona Immigration Law: The court struck down 3 of the 4 provisions, and upheld the portion that requires police to check the immigratio status of someone they think is here illegally. However…

The court struck down these provisions: requiring all immigrants to obtain or carry immigration registration papers, making it a state criminal offense for an illegal immigrant to seek work or hold a job and allowing police to arrest suspected illegal immigrants without warrants.

Governor Jan Brewer is trying to put the best face on it, by saying:

“Today’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court is a victory for the rule of law. It is also a victory for the 10th Amendment and all Americans who believe in the inherent right and responsibility of states to defend their citizens,” Gov. Brewer said in a statement. “After more than two years of legal challenges, the heart of SB 1070 can now be implemented in accordance with the U.S. Constitution.”

This, however, isn’t necessarily the end of the road for legal challenges of this particular provision, and the Justices said as much. So the governor is really trying to do damage control.

I understand that we don’t necessarily want 50 different standards on immigration to this country, but the federal government, in picking and choosing what laws it will enforce, forces states to do the job that the people’s representatives said the Fed ought to be doing. Arizona may have overstepped its constitutional authority somewhat, but I expect (I hope) that this will get the people to start electing a federal government that will indeed enforce the laws that are passed.

No automatic life without parole for juveniles: This does not mean that life without parole entirely; only that states cannot impose that penalty automatically for certain crimes. The liberal justices said it was "cruel and unusual", the conservatives ones said, "Neither the text of the Constitution or our precedent prohibits legislatures from requiring that juvenile murderers be sentenced to life without parole." Tough call. Constitutionally, can see both sides, but in practice, it does seem that life for a minor without the possibility of parole is very harsh. But since the ruling does allow it for individual cases, I can get behind it.

Rejects corporate spending limits: This was basically a reaffirmation of the Citizens United case from 2010, but saying that it applies to the states as well. Corporations have interests in how elections go, and should be allowed to contribute to issue-oriented campaigns. Restricting speech, especially political speech, is a slippery slope away from government accountability. Money is a corrupting influence in Washington, no doubt, but that’s mostly what politicians can do with taxpayer money. Political speech, should it be restricted by Washington, could make it more corrupt, since it would then get to decide what others say about them. The solution to bad speech is more good speech, not curtailing all speech.

Coming Thursday, the big ObamaCare ruling. Expect a frenzy around 10am Eastern Time on Thursday.

35 Years later – Interstellar Space in sight
From FoxNews,

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a new environment more than 11 billion miles from Earth, suggesting that the venerable probe is on the cusp of leaving the solar system.

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Does MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell not think?
In this day and age, and in Western culture, cameras – especially video cameras – are ubiquitous. Anyone at a public event had better think twice before selectively editing a video of said event.

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Is the world overpopulated or are we just lousy stewards?
Interesting graphic comparing the world’s population with the density of major cities.

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On the power of Christian apologetics
As a Facebook friend of mine said,

…the ‘objective morality can only come from a Person’ argument did the trick!

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Should you home school your child?
A college prof weighs in.

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Newspapers – “Yesterday’s news, tomorrow.”

Good morning.

1. Protestant and the Theotokos.
2. See, for liberals … whose motivations are unquestionably (unlike conservatives) in the right place, laws are kinda like guidelines, so who needs careful guidelines anyhow?
3. If you have time … Fast and Furious explained.  While somebody didn’t do their homework at all.
4. So was the President involved in Fast and Furious … or is he lying (a point missed by the cartoonist)? Executive privilege invocation is there to protect conversations between the President and his advisers.  So either he was involved and is invoking this correctly (which in turn is not such a good thing) or he’s dishonestly invoking the privilege.
5. But we know he tells lies (big ones too getting “4 Pinocchio’s” ) … so … believe what you will.
6. Uruguay makes a move.
7. Why does motivated reasoning always affect the “other guy”. It’s “you are affected” not “we are affected”.
8. A reminder why an elephant is a mouse to government specs in the context of the new Obama DREAM directive.
9. Our network of premises.
10. Zooom.
11. Pretend to be gay or Christian akin to the Turing test.

Good morning.

1. Executive privilege and flip flops. Soon we’ll see Mr Obama’s remarks on Mr Bush’s use of privilege I suspect. Interesting to watch defenders of Mr Bush’s use of this now attack Mr Obama and vice versa. A pox on all your houses.
2. Like that noted here.
3. So … has Mr Obama said he is involved in the Fast/Furious programme by his words that is what it would take to involve executive privilege.
4. Faint praise for Mr Obama.
5. Never fear, the left won’t hear you … that’s a message they’ve conditioned themselves to not hear.
6. It is not however on account of epistemic closure, a term misused widely. Now that you know what epistemic closure actually is, we can all stop misusing the term.
7. Exegesis and the detective narrative.
8. Technical know-how and the US.
9. Basic education and college costs.
10. Intelligent TSA screening … hmm.
11. And computers are relatively simple … but make a good argument about central planning.
12. Praising the hybrid, and missing the points of why the don’t “kick ass”, which is that hybridization of vehicles only pays if they are already far too heavy (you get less and less payback from hybridizing as the vehicle gets lighter).
13. On religious freedom …

With Attorney General Eric Holder facing contempt of Congress charges it seems that the ATF operation Fast and Furious has finally made it into the mainstream news. However, would this have been possible without New Media (i.e., pajama-clad bloggers on the internet)?

For those completely unaware, this short video summarizes the issues surrounding Eric Holder, Fast and Furious, and Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

The blog Sipsey Street Irregulars first reported on Terry’s death being linked to an ATF-smuggled rifle in December of 2010. It was information gathered from the CleanUpATF forum. The forum post reads,

Word is that curious George Gillett the Phoenix ASAC stepped on it again. Allegedly he has approved more than 500 AR-15 type rifles from Tucson and Phoenix cases to be “walked” to Mexico. Appears that ATF may be one of the largest suppliers of assault rifles to the Mexican cartels! One of these rifles is rumored to have been linked to the recent killing of a Border Patrol Officer in Nogales, AZ. Can anyone confirm this information?

Besides Sipsey Street Irregulars, David Codrea, at Gun Rights Examiner, has also been instrumental in providing news and updates on this story long before the mainstream media took interest. Codrea wrote about “Project Gunrunner”, back in early 2011,

• ATF management was allowing potentially hundreds of semiautomatic firearms to be walked across the Mexican border in order to pad statistics used to further budget and power objectives.
• Mexican authorities were kept in the dark, and protests that they should be informed were overridden, first by the Phoenix ATF office, and ultimately by higher-ups in Washington, DC.
• A gun used in this operation was involved in a December 2010 incident in which a Border Patrol agent was killed.

While most in mainstream media ignored the story, Sharyl Attkisson of CBS was one of the first (if not the first) to report on it.

Of course, there will be accusations that the operation started under the Bush administration (you remember the drill, right? – when in doubt, blame Bush). The only problem being that the operation under the Bush administration was designed to nab illegal arms sales and not let the firearms leave the country. And Holder himself has had to retract his claim that the Bush administration’s attorney general knew about gunwalking. But of course, the blame Bush diversions are just that – diversions. Indeed, in accusing the Republicans of playing politics is nothing more than playing politics from the other side of the fence.

So, here we are. The story is gaining ground, so much so that even NBC, which had yet to mention Fast and Furious, resorted to reporting on it (yet note how they refer to the power struggles between the congress and the executive branch as “broken politics”). But Border Patrol agent Brian Terry deserves more than a “broken politics” excuse. And, as Sipsey Street Irregulars is now reporting, the reprocussions of this operation extend to another federal agent – one Jaime Zapata.

This story should not be seen as a fight between the Left and the Right. It has always been a fight for the truth.

Update:  Info on Operation Wide Receiver (in case anyone asks)

Update 2:  Sorry, I missed this important point.

And BIll Whittle tells us who the real racists are.

Good morning.

1. While the left seems unaware of the workings of sexual apparatus (apparently they are unaware that the fetus gestates in something called the uterus at the same time ignore the whys and wherefores of polite discourse) …
2. they also continue to blithely ignore and keep quite about larger problems or the elephant in the room.
3. Demographics of abortion and political party.
4. Hmm. I thought it would have had something to do with the serial killing of women and children that the Palestinians keep doing.
5. The (real) medical problems of the sort not addressed by the Democrat vision of how to fix things with redistribution.
6. An economist look at what the medical fixes that the right might have suggested/supported.
7. Killing from a distance is not COIN and no way to “win hearts and minds” at all.
8. This sort of thing, if the press was honest and unbiased, would have come out more than 4 years ago.
9. Some reading suggestions.
10. There’s some missing logic here (looking at his enumerated list of logic leading to inflation or not) … look at college costs and its rampant rise ahead of inflation (with no concomitant rise in quality) due in a large part to “free money” pumped in by government grants and loans. Prices can inflate in the presence of money unforced by supply.
11. DREAM … out the window.
12. Of partisanship and undercover journalism.
13. And someday perhaps the disgusting unaffirmative action supported by liberals will end in our schools too.
14. Is this right? How about Constitutional?

Apparently common construction practice is to build the sewage out piping from your house to extend 3-4 feet with heavy cast iron piping and to use two to three foot lengths of clay pipe after that. A consequence of this is local bushes and trees have roots seeking water sources find the joints in those clay pipes, insinuate themselves and eventually block the pipe. Which in turns either backs up in a basement drain or in a basement toilet, whichever is lower. Ours chose the drain … and a wonderful outflow of stuff was discovered late last night in our laundry room.

Synchronicity abounds however in that we were this weekend (and still have not finished) watching In Darkness, a WWII film concerning a group of less than a dozen Jewish men, women, and children hiding in the sewers in the then Polish Lwow, now Ukrainian city of Lviv. These people owed their life to an anti-semitic sewer worker and the complex nature of Polish/Ukrainian <=> Jewish Polish/Ukraine is explored in the movie. The book on which this is based Girl in the Green Sweater, by my understanding was authored by one of the young girls who survived that which the movie portrays. The synchronicity of course points to the sewage flowing in our basement and in the film … on the same day.

1. Besides questions of liberty … Obamacare has other issues, in that it ain’t solving the problem it pretends to address. Lower the supply to lower costs. What economic principle is that?
2. The sort of tyranny that Obamacare is part (and soda size regulations).
3. That soda size thing … “based on research” … and what do those researchers actually say about the ban?
4. Some verse for fathers day.
5. The other part of the health care Constitutional challenge, i.e., the part people aren’t talking about.
6. An approach to confronting hackers and crackers.
7. This last Sunday ends the Lenten/Paschal cycle.
8. Solar heating on the cheap.
9. Well, I suppose you’ll have to contrast with Obama’s record of holding employment down and improving taxes.
10. Our public schools and their purpose.
11. Speaking of public schools, we have our public sector teachers union to thank for crap like this.
12. Democrats think we should keep the influence of the wealthy out of politics … so what is this then if not the influence of the wealthy in politics? Perhaps they just want to keep the “other guys” wealth out of politics … which alas sounds a lot less principled (because it is).
13. Heck the casualty rates of the Civil War should have been enough warning.
14. A bad day at work.
15. The real consequence of our marriage crises … and SSM has nuttin to do with it, except to serve as a distraction.

The Carnitas Platter at Barra Barra, in San Diego, CA.

Carnitas are typically made by taking pork shoulder, roasting it, and then broiling sections or chunks of it – all with exquisite and spicy seasoning, of course. This particular dish had guacamole and sour cream on the side, as well as the requisite refried beans and Spanish rice. It should be noted that the flour tortillas are made on the premises (a BIG PLUS in my book). The meal was very good, even if the carnitas themselves could have been a bit crisper.

Enjoy!

– image © 2012 A R Lopez