White House Benghazi Scandal Spin Falling Apart

A single email obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act request sums up the Benghazi scandal, writes John Hinderaker:

This one, by Benjamin Rhodes, a White House political operative, shows the administration’s priorities on the Friday before Susan Rice’s infamous tour of the Sunday talk shows. ... The overriding imperative was to deflect attention from the 'broader failure of policy' that led to the disaster.

"In an effort to spin the situation, [White House press secretary Jay] Carney claimed the talking points provided to Rice [in the above email] were about the numerous protests occurring in the Middle East and weren't specifically about Benghazi," reports the Washington Free Beacon.

Fox News' Bret Baier calls Carney's performance "surreal" in his description of the White House press conference to Gretchen Carlson in this Fox News video, which also contains clips of a back-and-forth between Carney and ABC reporter Jonathan Karl:

Harvard's Revealing Poll of Millennials

The revelations in the latest Harvard Institute of Politics' (IOP) survey of the Millennial generation (MILs, ages 18-29) is surprising the left and the right.

MILs have lost much of their enthusiasm for elections. Paul Bedard writes:

The 25th “Survey of Young Americans' Attitudes Toward Politics and Public Service,” which interviewed 3,058 18- to 29-year-olds, revealed a swing away from Democrats since President Obama's reelection and the last midterm election in 2010. Harvard officials on a media call cited youth disillusionment with Obama. [snip]

Some 44 percent of younger Republicans said they will vote, compared to just 35 percent of younger Democrats, a group that pushed Obama across the finish line in 2012. Black and Hispanics, two other Democratic groups, are even less enthused, with just 19 percent planning to vote.

Overall, younger voters have the blahs, with just 23 percent saying that they will “definitely be voting” in the midterms. That number was 31 percent in 2010 and 36 percent in 2009.

A generation gap between younger MILs (18-24) and older MILs (25-29) is emerging. Michael Barone observes:

In the 2012 election, there was no significant difference between them: Older Millennials voted 60 percent to 38 percent for Obama, younger Millennials 60 percent to 36 percent.

But the Harvard IOP poll shows Obama approval among older Millennials at 48 percent and among younger Millennials at 45 percent. ... There is an even bigger, and statistically significant, difference between the two age cohorts on Hillary Clinton's favorability: 57 percent among older Millennials, 47 percent among younger Millennials. 

Barone hypothesizes that "attitudes continue to be affected by one's first years of interest in politics." Older MILs became politically aware during George W. Bush's unsuccessful term, while younger MILs came of age during Barack Obama's unsuccessful tenure.

MILs now have "historically low" levels of trust in government. Hunter Walker writes:

This chart created by the pollsters shows the steep declines in their "composite trust index," which is the level of trust on average in six different public institutions; the President, the U.S. Military, the Supreme Court, the federal government, and the United Nations. The drop is dramatic [chart by IOP, Harvard.edu]:

Harzani: 'War on Women' Schtick

Colorado proves the 'War on Women' schtick is coming for conservatives "whether you deserve it or not," writes David Harzani @ federalist.com. His post about the Colorado U.S. Senate race between challenger Cory Gardner and incumbent Mark Udall notes that the two are in a virtual tie, and 'War on Women' charges are flying.

As soon as Gardner cleared the GOP field, Udall ran an indictment against the Republican for imaginary crimes against women. The wonky Gardner, claimed Udall, has "championed a crusade" — a crusade — to "outlaw" birth control.

Now, I couldn’t find a single vote or speech or gaffe in which Gardner advocates for restrictions on birth control. Not during his time in congress or in the Colorado legislature or anywhere else, for that matter. Perhaps I missed something. Perhaps someone will soon unearth explosive video to share. Nothing in his record, though, indicates he’s a zealous culture warrior.  

Harzani has his own ideas on "meeting these sorts of attacks head on."

...it’ll be worth reminding Coloradans (often) that Udall, who allegedly believes the brave women of America have an enduring right to make their own health-care decisions, is a cheerleader of coerced participation in a state-run program that has separated thousands of Colorado women from their doctors. This not only highlights his hypocrisy, but makes him defend Obamacare.

And since this is a war, Gardner can do better. Instead of running from the debate, it would also be worth pointing out that as Udall is himself an extremist on the issue of abortion; a supporter of late-term abortions — a position that most Americans find repugnant. In fact, some polls show that the 20-week abortion ban is more popular among women than men. A Quinnipiac poll found that 60 percent of women support unrestricted abortions for only the first 20 weeks of pregnancy. Only 50 percent of men support the 20-week limit.  Other polls found similar results. [snip]

The War on Women shtick will be branching out to include the minimum wage and immigration, as well as income equality – and everything  else, really. And Colorado proves that it’s coming for you whether you deserve it or or not. Because even if you’re not Todd Akin, they know you really are.

Middle-Class Squeeze

A weekend Washington Post article laments the fact that "fewer Americans find themselves in the heart of the middle class with every passing year." The article is long on statistics, sociologists, and sad human examples to illustrate the problem, but short on the underlying causes of the problem and possible solutions to help the middle class. Perhaps we can offer one.

Sociologist Joseph Cohen makes two comments about the middle class squeeze worth pondering.

• “One of four biweekly checks can go to child care, if it’s done illegally,” he added. “If it’s done legally, it’s much more.”

Interestingly, child care was often a family, friend or neighborly endeavor forty years ago. One young mom often stayed home with her own children and chose to care for her neighbors' children to make a little extra money. It was a cost-effective beneficial solution for families, until government regulations in many states made these personal arrangements "illegal." Today a lot of families have only two "legal" choices: expensive professional nannies or state-certified child care centers.

• “America is a place where luxuries are cheap and necessities costly. A big-screen TV costs much less than it does in Europe, but health care will sink you.”

Cohen's choice of contrasts is ironic. With little government regulatory oversight, television innovation and manufacturing are largely a product of a more pure free-market system, and prices for TVs have continued to go down. In contrast, health care is a product of ever-expanding government central planning-and-control that began with government's Medicare program in 1965 and grows exponentially under Obamacare. Not surprisingly, health care prices are soaring.

WashPo writers seem to suggest that one solution to the middle class squeeze is for them to lower their expectations.

One factor behind the financial squeeze is that the middle class’s expectations — a house, music and dance lessons for the kids, the latest in home entertainment — have stayed the same or increased even as costs have soared.

Conservatives and libertarians might offer a more middle class-friendly solution: substantially reduce government's regulatory interference in consumer transactions like child care, health care, housing, and a host of other areas in which "costs have soared," and let the free-market do for the middle class in these areas what it has done for them in televisions.

Breitbart: New Docs Show IRS, DOJ Collusion to Prosecute Tax Exempt Groups

The IRS abuse of conservatives has expanded to the Department of Justice. From breitbart.com:

Judicial Watch obtained a new batch of internal IRS documents revealing that Lerner directly communicated with the Department of Justice (DOJ) about whether it was possible to criminally prosecute certain tax-exempt entities.

The documents were dragged out of the Obama administration thanks to our October 2013 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the IRS, after the agency refused to respond to four FOIA requests dating back to May 2013.

The newly obtained IRS documents contain a revealing email exchange between Lerner and Nikole C. Flax, then-Chief of Staff, to then-Acting IRS Commissioner Steven T. Miller, discussing plans to work with the DOJ to prosecute nonprofit groups that “lied” (Lerner’s quotation marks) about political activities. The tell-tale exchange includes the following:

• May 8, 2013: Lerner to Flax:

I got a call today from Richard Pilger Director Elections Crimes Branch at DOJ … He wanted to know who at IRS the DOJ folk s [sic] could talk to about Sen. Whitehouse idea at the hearing that DOJ could piece together false statement cases about applicants who “lied” on their 1024s –saying they weren’t planning on doing political activity, and then turning around and making large visible political expenditures. DOJ is feeling like it needs to respond, but want to talk to the right folks at IRS to see whether there are impediments from our side and what, if any damage this might do to IRS programs.

I told him that sounded like we might need several folks from IRS…

• May 9, 2013: Flax to Lerner:

I think we should do it – also need to include CI [Criminal Investigation Division], which we can help coordinate. Also, we need to reach out to FEC. Does it make sense to consider including them in this or keep it separate?

Lerner then “handed off” scheduling the issue to Senior Technical Adviser, Attorney Nancy Marks, who was then supposed to set up the meeting with the DOJ. Lerner also decided that it would be DOJ’s decision as to whether her old co-conspirators from the Federal Election Commission would attend.

Take Daughters and Sons to Work Day

April 24th is Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. It was originally founded in 1992 by feminists as Take Our Daughters to Work Day because, they claimed, girls were disadvantaged.

Economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth argues that both the original premise (boys were the disadvantaged ones even then, certainly in educational achievement) and encouraging 25 million children to miss school are wrong-headed.

She cites several studies that show young people are not learning the kinds of skills necessary to fill many of the high-paying jobs that go begging today.Concludes the author,

 In order to learn about work, young people should have more vocational opportunities within a school curriculum, as many schools are starting to do now.

Someone should start the national Bring Work to Our Children Day.

Grab a Tissue before Watching This Political Ad

Dr. Monica Wehby, a pediatric neurosurgeon, is running for office in Oregon, and this is a TV ad she recently uploaded to YouTube (http://youtu.be/KXqHI059n90).

Dunn: Obama is Bursting the Left's Bubbles

Conservatives live adult-like in a world as it is. Liberals live child-like in a world of their dreams, and Obama is bursting the left's bubbles, writes J.R. Dunn.

Everyone, without exception, lives in a bubble, an area of individual consciousness made up of education, experience, and worldview. ...

But left-wing intellectual bubbles have been cold, desolate places since the Reagan era. With the catastrophe of the Great Society, the undeniable success of Reaganism, and at last the collapse of the USSR, leftist illusions were shattered, leaving little but blasted dreams and bitterness,  expressed as PC and related programs that amounted to little more than gestures of revenge.

Then came Obama, who brought it all back to life again.

Under Obama, however, Leftists' glorious dreams have turned to nightmares, and Dunn cites several examples: the military 'illusion', foreign policy, the 'surveillance state', 'climate change', and government-run health care.

The best way to undermine leftism is to let it operate for awhile. Expose the country at large to the nightmare realities of life under a Lyndon Johnson, a Jimmy Carter, or an Obama, and you will inoculate the citizenry for a generation to come.

This is occurring. We are seeing the utter collapse of the leftism program as it exists in the U.S., a collapse merely intensified and sped up by the fact that the Messiah has cut every corner and broken every rule of American governance. His abuse of pen and phone have so far produced only chaos. There is no reason to believe the next two years will be any different.

And all those bubbles?  They’ll begin to dim and cool down once again. The inhabitants -- the millions of true-believing Birkenstock wearers across the country -- will attempt to keep their spirits up with tales of betrayal and racism, but it won’t last. Eventually they will reach the same state they were in before Obama ever appeared. There they will remain, because the one thing Obama will have done is reinforce the legend of a leftist rebirth. These people will now never emerge into a real America. Instead they will wait for the appearance of a true messiah, sleeping until Der Tag in the same manner as Charlemagne or Barbarossa.

Sowell: High Cost of Liberalism's 'Open Space'

"[W]hen my wife wrote in a local Palo Alto newspaper, many years ago, that preventing the building of housing would cause existing housing to become far too expensive for most people to afford it, she was deluged with more outraged letters than I get from readers of a nationally syndicated column," writes Thomas Sowell. "What she said was treated as blasphemy against the religion of 'open space' — and open space is just one of the wonderful things about the world envisioned by liberals that is ruinously expensive in the mundane world where the rest of us live."

Sowell fast forwards to today and the outrageous prices of homes in Palo Alto.

The house is for sale at $1,498,000. It is a 1,010 square foot bungalow with two bedrooms, one bath and a garage. Although the announcement does not mention it, this bungalow is located near a commuter railroad line, with trains passing regularly throughout the day.

Lest you think this house must be some kind of designer’s dream, loaded with high-tech stuff, it was built in 1942 and, even if it was larger, no one would mistake it for the Taj Mahal or San Simeon.

This house is not an aberration, and its price is not out of line with other housing prices in Palo Alto. One couple who had lived in their 1,200 square foot home in Palo Alto for 20 years decided to sell it, and posted an asking price just under $1.3 million. Competition for that house forced the selling price up to $1.7 million.

Another Palo Alto house, this one with 1,292 square feet of space, is on the market for $2,285,000. It was built in 1895. Even a vacant lot in Palo Alto costs more than a spacious middle-class home costs in most of the rest of the country.

San Francisco, another liberal bastion, is in the same situation.

A local newspaper described a graduate student looking for a place to rent who was “visiting one exorbitantly priced hovel after another.”

That is part of the unacknowledged cost of “open space,” and just part of the high cost of liberalism.

EMP: A Frightening, Preventable Cyber Threat

Virtually everything we do today involves some kind of electronics or electronic devices: phones, computers, bank ATMs, store/market check-outs, hospital/medical equipment, heart pacemakers, vehicles, gasoline pumps—the list is endless. Now imagine if all those electronic devices were disabled or destroyed by an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) in a large region of the country. What would be the effect? Josh Peterson explains:

In the first few minutes of an EMP, nearly half a million people would die. That’s the worst-case scenario that author William R. Forstchen estimated in 2011 would be the result of an EMP on the electric grid — whether by an act of God, or a nuclear missile detonating in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

An electromagnetic pulse is a burst of electromagnetic energy strong enough to disable, and even destroy, nearby electronic devices.

The scenario sounds like something in a Hollywood film, but the U.S. military has been preparing its electronic systems for such an event since the Cold War. The protective measures taken to harden facilities against a nuclear attack also help in some cases to protect against EMPs.

The civilian world is another story.

Peterson writes that "[t]he catastrophic effects of an electromagnetic pulse-caused blackout could be preventable, but experts warn the civilian world is still not ready."

Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and director of the U.S. Nuclear Strategy Forum, both congressional advisory boards, said the technology to avoid disaster from electromagnetic pulses exists, and upgrading the nation’s electrical grid is financially viable.

“The problem is not the technology,” Pry said. “We know how to protect against it. It’s not the money, it doesn’t cost that much. The problem is the politics. It always seems to be the politics that gets in the way.”

He said the more officials plan, the lower the estimated cost gets.

“If you do a smart plan — the Congressional EMP Commission estimated that you could protect the whole country for about $2 billion,” Pry told Watchdog.org. “That’s what we give away in foreign aid to Pakistan every year.”

States and private companies have been working to improve EMP-preparedness, writes Peterson, "but experts continue to warn that time to do so is running out."

Read his full article, Experts: Civilians Not Ready for EMP-Caused Blackout

Ethanol Produces More Pollution Than Gasoline

"Well, this is going to be a heartbreaker for the hysterical global warming crowd," writes Katie Pavlich. "According to a new study, emissions from burning corn are worse for the environment and produce more CO2 or 'global warming' gases than the burning of traditional gasoline." She quotes from the AP story:

Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

Obamacare: "A Colossal Fiscal Disaster"

Describing the Affordable Care Act as possibly the "greatest act of fiscal irresponsibility ever committed by federal legislators," Charles Blahous, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University writes:

When new enrollment figures were released last week, the national discussion focused on whether the ACA is fulfilling its coverage expansion goals. The largely unwritten and more important story, however, is that the ACA is rapidly becoming a colossal fiscal disaster as enrollment proceeds heedless of the concurrent collapse of the law’s financing structure.

Blahous lists several of the ACA "funding mechanisms" that have fallen apart, leaving the federal government with no viable plan to finance the Obamacare program. Worse, legislators put the program into place at a time when existing entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security were already spinning out of control.

Consider this: just five years after enactment the ACA will absorb more of our total economic output than Social Security did fully sixteen years after it was enacted. [snip]

The ACA was enacted when legislators knew, or should have known, that they inhabited a fiscal environment in which such extravagance was unaffordable. Deficits (and debt) are far higher today than when the other major entitlement programs were created; millions of baby boomer retirements are swelling expenditures arising from previously-enacted Social Security and Medicare law. Someday historians will puzzle over the thinking that induced legislators to embark on a vast new spending program at the very moment it could least be afforded.

States Seeking to Reclaim Federal Lands

Lawmakers from several western states gathered to discuss the return to state control of "extremely valuable, oil and mineral rich lands currently under federal management," writes Rick Moran, citing a Salt Lake Tribune news story. (See another news account at the Christian Science Monitor, which also contains the map below.)

It’s time for Western states to take control of federal lands within their borders, lawmakers and county commissioners from Western states said at Utah’s Capitol on Friday.

More than 50 political leaders from nine states convened for the first time to talk about their joint goal: wresting control of oil-, timber -and mineral-rich lands away from the feds.

“It’s simply time,” said Rep. Ken Ivory, R-West Jordan, who organized the Legislative Summit on the Transfer for Public Lands along with Montana state Sen. Jennifer Fielder. “The urgency is now.”  [snip]

Fielder, who described herself as “just a person who lives in the woods,” said federal land management is hamstrung by bad policies, politicized science and severe federal budget cuts.

“Those of us who live in the rural areas know how to take care of lands,” Fielder said, who lives in the northwestern Montana town of Thompson Falls.

“We have to start managing these lands. It’s the right thing to do for our people, for our environment, for our economy and for our freedoms,” Fielder said.

Idaho Speaker of the House Scott Bedke said Idaho forests and rangeland managed by the state have suffered less damage and watershed degradation from wildfire than have lands managed by federal agencies.

The states with the highest federal ownership are:

• Nevada 84.5%
• Alaska 69.1%
• Utah 57.4%
• Oregon 53.1%
• Idaho 50.2%
• Arizona 48.1%
• California 45.3%
• Wyoming 42.3%
• New Mexico 41.8%
• Colorado 36.6%

Moran provides this list of "primary federal land holders" of state real estate:

• Department of the Interior
• Bureau of Land Management
• United States Fish and Wildlife Serice
• National Park Service
• Bureau of Indian Affairs
• Bureau of Reclamation
• Department of Agriculture
• United States Forest Service
• United States Department of Defense
• United States Army Corp of Engineers
• Tennessee Valley Authority

Obamacare Sending Insurance Premiums Soaring

"A recent survey of 148 insurance brokers shows that ObamaCare is sending premiums rising at the fastest clip in decades," writes Jim Angle, a national reporter for Fox News.

Rates vary widely, often depending on the state and how highly regulated it was to begin with. Analysts, however, say the main reasons for the higher costs are not medical inflation, but rather the requirements of ObamaCare itself.

"There are certain regulations and certain requirements that had to be in there. And because of that it's driven up the costs of these benefits," said John DiVito of the Flexible Benefit Service Corporation, which represents hundreds of agents.Rate hikes include ten essential health benefits along with more than 20,000 pages or regulations.

The reported hikes are for the first policies issued under ObamaCare in 2014.

The Morgan Stanley quarterly survey across all states found an average national premium increase of 11 percent in the small group market and 12 percent in the individual market.

But all states are not equal. Scott Gottlieb notes that some states show increases 10 to 50 times that amount:

For the individual insurance market (plans sold directly to consumers); among the ten states seeing some of the sharpest average increases are: Delaware at 100%, New Hampshire 90%, Indiana 54%, California 53%, Connecticut 45%, Michigan 36%, Florida 37%, Georgia 29%, Kentucky 29%, and Pennsylvania 28%.

Tax Day: Thank the High Earners

We should thank top earners rather than target them for even higher taxation. "Top earners are the main target of tax increases," writes the Heritage Foundation, but top earners already pay a disproportionate share of all federal taxes—the "top 10 percent of income earners paid 71 percent of all federal income taxes in 2010, though they earned only 45 percent of all income."  Conversely, the bottom 50 percent of all income earners paid only 2 percent of all federal income taxes.

The Rule of Law as a Weapon

By every news account, Cliven Bundy does not have the rule of law on his side. Yet there is much in the rancher's Nevada standoff with armed federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents that warrants sympathy for him, particularly when the subtext of the story strongly suggests that the rule of law has become a tool used selectively by government to harass citizens rather than protect them.

It's stunning how much of the western states are "owned" by the federal government (noted in red in this graphic) and, as a consequence, how much more western citizens' lives are micromanaged by government agency bureaucrats.

In The Lesson of Nevada, C. J. Box writes @ ricochet.com:

In the west, the BLM is usually thought of as the least tyrannical federal land management agency. Unlike the National Park Service or the U.S. Forest Service or the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, there aren’t a lot of stories of rogue BLM toughs oppressing taxpayers. I guess that’s changed now. Hovering over all our federal agencies is the EPA, which doesn’t need no stinking land (they control the air we breathe and the water we drink) in order to impose their will. They have armed agents of their own.

When the managers of federal lands turn into an army of occupation amidst the people who pay their salaries, bad things are going to happen.

Kevin Williamson @ NRO argues that harassing the country has become federal policy. In The Rule of the Lawless, he writes:

Strangely, many of the same people who insist that Mr. Bundy must be made an example of for the sake of the rule of law protest at the same time that it is not only impossible but positively undesirable for the federal government to deploy federal resources to rectify the federal crime of jumping the federal border.

The relevant facts are these: 1) Very powerful political interests in Washington insist upon the scrupulous enforcement of environmental laws, and if that diminishes the interests of private property owners, so much the better, in their view. 2) Very powerful political interests in Washington do not wish to see the scrupulous enforcement of immigration laws, and if that undercuts the bottom end of the labor market or boosts Democrats’ long-term chances in Texas, so much the better, in their view.

This isn’t the rule of law. This is the rule of narrow, parochial, self-interested political factions masquerading as the rule of law.

Williamson offers a solution in a follow-up article, The Case for a Little Sedition:

If the conservatives in official Washington want to do something other than stand by and look impotent, they might consider pressing for legislation that would oblige the federal government to divest itself of 1 percent of its land and other real estate each year for the foreseeable future through an open auction process. Even the Obama administration has identified a very large portfolio of office buildings and other federal holdings that are unused or under-used.

By some estimates, superfluous federal holdings amount to trillions of dollars in value. Surely not every inch of that 87 percent of Nevada under the absentee-landlordship of the federal government is critical to the national interest.

His solution would solve two problems: bring desperately needed revenue into the debt-depleted federal treasury, and reduce the number of armed bureaucrats wielding selective rules of law on behalf of special interests.

Tax Day: Where All the Money Goes

From The Heritage Foundation's Morning Bell:

In 2013, the major entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health care consumed 49 percent of all federal spending. These programs, and interest on the debt, are on track to consume an even greater share of spending in future years, while the portion of federal spending dedicated to other national priorities will decline.

SHARE OF FEDERAL SPENDING IN 2013:

Solution to Illegal Immigration Problem

"The left intends to pummel American society into granting, out of pity, the right of anyone to come to America to live," writes Bruce Walker at American Thinker. But those who care about these people should look at why they are coming to the US and seek for them something better than submersion in the American underclass.

He argues that the US faces no tide of immigrants from Western Europe (or Canada, with whom we share one of the longest borders in the world) because those nations are more like America in terms of "religious tolerance, representative democracy, ordered liberty, and most of all, the rule of law..."

The American “immigration problem” of Hispanics is really a problem of misrule by many nations in Latin America.  Endemic government corruption, widespread gangsterism, and Marxist thuggery have kept lands that ought to be happy and prosperous into prisons from which millions of captive natives wish to flee.

The solution, then, is not for poor and desperate people to sneak into America and create a shadow life as illegals, and it is not to open America’s doors to let these people into our country. ...

What will end the pain of those who creep across our borders is not to change America, but to change the government, the politics, and the moral culture of those lands from which our illegal immigrants flee.  The very worst thing, of course, is to so flood America with illegal immigrants that this land of hope instead becomes another appendage in the empire of despair – yet that is what the left surely wants.

OCare: Like Paying $5 Per Text Message

Former NY Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey (pictured) explains the out-of-pocket costs of new Obamacare plan deductibles in a way that even the youngest cell phone user can understand (emphasis added):

First-time insurance purchasers, especially those living paycheck to paycheck, will be shocked by ObamaCare’s high deductibles, about $3,000 for the silver plan (the most commonly selected) and $5,000 for the bronze plan (the most affordable).

Basically, you’ll have to pay thousands out of pocket for appointments, tests and prescriptions until you reach your deductible.

Millennials who heard Obama say on “Between Two Ferns” that they can buy a health plan for the price of a cellphone contract won’t be laughing when they realize what the $5,000 deductible means. (It’s like a cellphone contract that makes you pay $5 a text for your first thousand texts.)

Read her full article, The Next ObamaCare Disasters.

"It's the Lying that Gets Toxic"

Ross Douthat at the New York Times finds self-deception and blatant dishonesty in the official institutional statements put out in the immediate aftermath of two recent controversies: the resignation of Mozilla CEO Brenden Eich and the withdrawal, by Brandeis University, of the honorary degree it had promised to the human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

In both cases, Mozilla and Brandeis, there was a striking difference between the clarity of what had actually happened and the evasiveness of the official responses to the events. Eich stepped down rather than recant his past support for the view that one man and one woman makes a marriage; Hirsi Ali’s invitation was withdrawn because of her sweeping criticisms of Islamic culture. But neither the phrase “marriage” nor the word “Islam” appeared in the initial statements Mozilla and Brandeis released. ...

Douthat argues that "what both cases illustrate, with their fuzzy rhetoric masking ideological pressure, is a serious moral defect at the heart of elite culture in America."

The defect, crucially, is not this culture's bias against social conservatives, or its discomfort with stinging attacks on non-Western religions. Rather, it's the refusal to admit — to others, and to itself — that these biases fundamentally trump the commitment to "free expression" or "diversity" affirmed in mission statements and news releases. ...

Instead, we have the pretense of universality — the insistence that the post-Eich Mozilla is open to all ideas, the invocations of the “spirit of free expression” from a school that’s kicking a controversial speaker off the stage.

And with the pretense, increasingly, comes a dismissive attitude toward those institutions — mostly religious — that do acknowledge their own dogmas and commitments, and ask for the freedom to embody them and live them out.

It would be a far, far better thing if Harvard and Brandeis and Mozilla would simply say, explicitly, that they are as ideologically progressive as Notre Dame is Catholic or B.Y.U. is Mormon or Chick-fil-A is evangelical, and that they intend to run their institution according to those lights.

I can live with the progressivism. It’s the lying that gets toxic.

Moore: Game Up for Climate Change Believers

In a review of Rupert Darwall's new book, The Age of Global Warming, Charles Moore offers a helpful summary of an era of catastrophic global warming predictions that ended last month with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report's admission that "the answer to the problems of climate change lay in adaptation, not in mitigation." [Fox News reporter Doug McKelway filed this news report on the latest IPCC study and Washington's reaction to it.]

Most of us pay some attention to the weather forecast. If it says it will rain in your area tomorrow, it probably will. But if it says the same for a month, let alone a year, later, it is much less likely to be right. There are too many imponderables.

The theory of global warming is a gigantic weather forecast for a century or more. However interesting the scientific inquiries involved, therefore, it can have almost no value as a prediction. Yet it is as a prediction that global warming ... has captured the political and bureaucratic elites. All the action plans, taxes, green levies, protocols and carbon-emitting flights to massive summit meetings, after all, are not because of what its supporters call “The Science”. Proper science studies what is – which is, in principle, knowable – and is consequently very cautious about the future – which isn’t. ...

Like most of those on both sides of the debate, Rupert Darwall is not a scientist. He is a wonderfully lucid historian of intellectual and political movements, which is just the job to explain what has been inflicted on us over the past 30 years or so in the name of saving the planet.

The origins of warmism lie in a cocktail of ideas which includes anti-industrial nature worship, post-colonial guilt, a post-Enlightenment belief in scientists as a new priesthood of the truth, a hatred of population growth, a revulsion against the widespread increase in wealth and a belief in world government. ...

These beliefs began to take organised, international, political form in the 1970s. ... The G7 Summit in Toronto in 1988 endorsed the theory of global warming. In the same year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was set up. The capture of the world’s elites was under way.  Its high point was the Kyoto Summit in 1998 ...

The final push, brilliantly described here by Darwall, was the Copenhagen Summit of 2009. ...The warmists’ idea was that the global fight against carbon emissions would work only if the whole world signed up to it. Despite being ordered to by President Obama, who had just collected his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the developing countries refused. ... The developing countries were perfectly happy for the West to have “the green crap”, but not to have it themselves. The Western goody-goodies were hoist by their own petard.

Last week, the latest IPCC report made the usual warnings about climate change, but behind its rhetoric was a huge concession. The answer to the problems of climate change lay in adaptation, not in mitigation, it admitted. So the game is up. 

Liberal Senators' Gender Pay Gaps

Liberals' gender pay gap ploy is flopping badly, even among some liberals. The Washington Post's Fact Checker awarded President Obama 2 Pinocchios for his '77-cent' gap claim, and Ruth Marcus post is headlined Democrats' Revolting Pay Demagoguery.

There's plenty from the right on it, but the best on the web is Jennifer Rubin's Right Turn post, in which she lists several embarrassing 'oops' cases where "the war on women is causing Democratic casualties," including this:

Next, the folks at the National Republican Senatorial Committee are blasting out an e-mail telling the press that it started looking at the pay rates in offices of incumbent red-state Democratic senators. You guessed it:

It turns out President Obama isn’t the only hypocritical Democrat, in fact Senate Democrats have their own problems when it comes to equal pay. We pulled the official payroll records of various offices and calculated the average pay for men and women in each office for the most recent 6 month period available. Since some employees only worked a portion of the six month period, we calculated how much each person was paid per day in order to give an accurate representation. Here’s what we found:

• Mark Udall pays women 85 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
• Mary Landrieu pays women 88 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
• Mark Begich pays women 82 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
• Mark Warner pays women 75 cents for every dollar that a man makes.
• Gary Peters pays women 67 cents for every dollar that a man makes.

That means on average, these five Democrats on the ballot in battleground states pay women in their office 79 cents for every dollar made by a male employee.

Yup, oops.

Internal Revenge Service

IRS Poster Girl Lois Lerner

The news emerging about the Internal Revenue Service is of a government agency converted into an Internal Revenge Service under the Obama Administration. (That it is also slated to be a major player in every American's access to health insurance is beyond terrifying at this point.)

There is no greater evidence of the need for Congress to completely overhaul the U.S. tax code system and purge the IRS of its opportunity to abuse power than this week's revelations and headlines:

• Ethics Watchdog: IRS Customer Representative Urged Vote for Obama (Politico)
• Displays of Obama, Democratic Support Common At Some IRS Offices (Washington Times)
• IRS Under Fire: Vote for Obama Stickers, Campaign Cheerleading Commonplace (Washington Times)
• Lerner Mentioned Working for Pro-Obama Group Amid Scandal (Washington Post)
• Lerner Mentioned Organizing for Action Job (The Hill)
• IRS Agents: No Liberal Groups Were Targeted (PJMedia.com)
• IRS Agents' Testimony: NO Progressive Groups Were Targeted by IRS (Daily Caller)
• Breaking: Emails Show Lois Lerner Fed True the Vote Tax Information to Democrat Elijah Cummings (Townhall.com)
• Bombshell: Emails Show Democrat on Oversight Committee Was Working with Lois Lerner to Target True the Vote (PJMedia.com)
• Darrell Issa Says Emails Suggest Elijah Cummings Prompted IRS Targeting of True the Vote (Washington Examiner)
• House Committee Votes to Request Criminal Prosecution of ex-IRS Official Lois Lerner (Washington Post)

Attorney Jay Sekulow argues that "the Ways and Means report raises the possibility that Lerner (and perhaps others) violated a number of federal statutes. It's clear — regardess of criminality — that they also violated the Constitution."

The House Ways and Means Committee released a letter Wednesday detailing what it believes to be criminal misconduct by Lois Lerner, the former IRS official at the center of the ongoing IRS Tea Party targeting scandal. For those who want to understand how partisan bureaucrats can manipulate a powerful federal agency, the letter is a must-read.

The list of newly-disclosed acts of political bias and manipulation are astounding:

—After meeting with an outside group (Democracy 21) that claimed both conservative and liberal groups were violating IRS rules, Lerner chose to focus like a laser only on the conservative groups, with particular emphasis on one of the largest, Crossroads GPS.

—In fact, her focus on Crossroads GPS included demanding to know why Crossroads had not yet been audited combined with plans to deny Crossroads’ application for tax exempt status. She showed no such similar interest in liberal groups.

—She showed astounding sensitivity to reporting from ProPublica, a George Soros-funded media nonprofit, at one point forwarding a ProPublica article mentioning conservative groups and demanding a meeting on the status of those groups’ tax exemption applications.

Read the rest at The Lois Lerner Files: A Partisan Bureaucrat at Work (Fox News).

Actress Kirsten Dunst Under Fire From Feminists

From US Magazine:

Feminist are chanting "Off with her head!" after Marie Antoinette star Kirsten Dunst's latest comments on gender roles were revealed in the May issue of Harper's Bazaar UK.

The 31-year-old cover girl has a more traditional view when it comes to relationships between men and women.

"I feel like the feminine has been a little undervalued," she told the magazine. "We all have to get our own jobs and make our own money, but staying at home, nurturing, being the mother, cooking – it’s a valuable thing my mom created."

The Midnight Special star, who has been dating actor Garrett Hedlund since the Sundance Film Festival in January 2012, argues that finding a manly man is necessary.

"And sometimes, you need your knight in shining armour," continued Dunst, whose exes include Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire, and Justin Long. "I’m sorry. You need a man to be a man and a woman to be a woman. That’s how relationships work."

Naturally, her comments have stirred up controversy on the Internet. Sites like Jezebel and Uproxx have bashed Dunst's comments.

“Kirsten Dunst is not paid to write gender theory so it shouldn't surprise anyone that she's kind of dumb about it,” Jezebel writer Erin Gloria Ryan wrote.

Hmmm. Sounds like those who are paid to write gender theory are quite dumb to come out with an indiscriminate comment like that.

Pro-Business versus Pro-Market

In What Principles Rule the GOP?, Jonah Goldberg reminds GOP leadership of the distinction between being "pro-business" and "pro-market," and says party leadership's understanding of that distinction will be put to the test when they consider reauthorization of the Export-Import Bank next year.

Just to clarify, the difference between being pro-business and pro-market is categorical. A politician who is a "friend of business" is exactly that, a guy who does favors for his friends. A politician who is pro-market is a referee who will refuse to help protect his friends (or anyone else) from competition unless the competitors have broken the rules. The friend of business supports industry-specific or even business-specific loans, grants, tariffs or tax breaks. The pro-market referee opposes special treatment for anyone.

Goldberg argues the GOP can't play the crony capitalism game of the Democrats any longer.

GOP politicians can’t have it both ways anymore. An economic system that simply doles out favors to established stakeholders becomes less dynamic and makes job growth less likely. (Most jobs are created by new businesses.) Politically, the longer we’re in a “new normal” of lousy growth, the more the focus of politics turns to wealth redistribution. That’s bad for the country and just awful politics for Republicans. In that environment, being the party of less — less entitlement spending, less redistribution — is a losing proposition.

Also, for the first time in years, there’s an organized — or mostly organized — grassroots constituency for the market. ... Now, there’s an infrastructure of tea-party-affiliated and other free-market groups forcing Republicans to stop fudging.

Video - The Groundhog Day Debt Limit

The Heritage Foundation has put together a little video to illustrate the Groundhog Day nature of debate on the federal debt ceiling in Washington.


http://youtu.be/pNG3IAKCUSM

Gender Wage Gap Myth

"If women were paid 77 cents on the dollar, a profit-oriented firm could dramatically cut labor costs by replacing male employees with females," write Mark Perry and Andrew Biggs. But they don't, because the claimed gender wage-disparity doesn't exist.

Progressives' perpetuation of the gender wage-disparity and their proposed solution—to make it easier for women to sue employers for equal pay—are designed to enrich lawyers, not women. Worse, the authors' note, progressives' proposal would "create a disincentive for firms to hire women."  [Update: See also Scott Johnson's post, Obama's War on Science and Gullible Women.]

Researchers: Tobacco Plant Key to Beating Cancer?

"The tobacco plant’s natural defence mechanisms could be harnessed to kill cancer cells in the human body," reports the UK Daily Mail.

Scientists have identified a molecule in the flower of the plant that usually fights off fungi and bacteria - and were stunned to find it also has the ability to identify and destroy cancer.

Called NaD1, it works by forming a pincer-like structure that grips onto lipids present in the membrane of cancer cells and rips them open, causing the cell to expel its contents and explode.

‘There is some irony in the fact that a powerful defence mechanism against cancer is found in the flower of a species of ornamental tobacco plant, but this is a welcome discovery, whatever the origin,’ Dr Mark Hulett of the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science in Melbourne said.

The next step is to undertake pre-clinical studies to determine what role NaD1 might be able to play in treating cancer.' The preclinical work is being conducted by the Melbourne biotechnology company Hexima. 'So far the preliminary trials have looked promising,' said Dr Hulett. ...

The results are published in the journal eLife today.

‘One of the biggest issues with current cancer therapies is that the effect of the treatment is indiscriminate,’ Dr Hulett said.

‘In contrast, we’ve found NaD1 can target cancerous cells and has little or no effect on those that are healthy.’

Percent Uninsured Worse Under Obama than Bush

Commenting on Gallup's graphic of the percentage of uninsured people (right), Charlie Martin at PJTatler writes:

At the start of the Obama Administration, the rate was 15.6 percent; the peak was 18 percent — in roughly the third quarter of last year. Remember that, when people were objecting because they'd had their insurance canceled? Harry Reid said all those people were lying, but Gallup says different. In fact, 1 percentage point on this chart is, roughly, 3 million people. The change from Q1 to Q3 was about 2 percent — or roughly 6 million people who became uninsured.

And now for the punchline: Since Obama was inaugurated in 2009, the net change is from 15.4 percent uninsured to 15.6 percent. So the net effect has been that by the Gallup Survey the number of uninsured has improved in the last year, but gotten worse since Obama was inaugurated, and is 1.2 percent worse than under Bush.

Unmarried Women Voters

"Unmarried women made up a quarter of the electorate in 2012 and gave two-thirds of their votes to President Obama," writes Democracy Corps, a literal organization founded by political consultant James Carville and pollster Stan Greenberg.

But unmarried women are not happy right now, and liberals are worried.

When we asked last March whether the national political debates were addressing the issues most important to them, 60 percent of unmarried women said, “no,” and did so with real intensity. As we learned in 2010, these voters are critical to Democrats’ fortunes, but they are unlikely to vote, and less likely to give Democrats big margins, if Democrats are not laser focused on the issues that matter most to them.

So Democracy Corps (DC) joined with Women's Voices Women Vote Action Fund to identify a women's economic agenda (below) that they hope liberals can use to get unmarried women energized this fall.

Perhaps we're mistaken, but this looks like the same old liberal agenda to us. (Cue the violins...)

Women succeed with pay equity and equal health insurance:
Help women succeed by passing legislation to make sure women
get equal pay for equal work and make sure insurance
companies no longer charge women more than men.

Help working mothers by protecting jobs, paid leave and
childcare: Finally recognize that working mothers need help by
protecting pregnant workers and new mothers from being fired
or demoted, making sure they have paid sick days to care for
their children and access to affordable childcare.

Raise wages for working women with equal pay and increased
minimum wage: Raise wages for working women by passing
paycheck fairness legislation and raising the minimum wage to
$10.10 an hour and increase it with inflation.

Help with higher pay by increased minimum wage, scholarships
and affordable college: Raise the minimum wage to $10.10 and
expand access to scholarships and get school costs down so
working women can continue their education and train for
better jobs with higher wages.

Help to be good parent and worker with child care, paid leave
and sick days: Ensure that you can be a good parent and good
employee by expanding access to high-quality affordable
childcare by ensuring people have paid leave to care for a new
child or to recover from a serious illness

When is Your Tax Freedom Day?

"Tax Freedom Day is the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for year," writes the Tax Foundation, which does the calculations each year.

In 2014, Americans will pay $3.0 trillion in federal taxes and $1.5 trillion in state taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.5 trillion, or 30.2 percent of income.

This year, Americans' federal "Tax Freedom Day falls on April 21, or 111 days into the year," but their state tax freedom day varies widely.

The 10 states with the smallest tax bite, and earliest Tax Freedom Day, are:

• Louisiana - Tax Freedom Day is March 30
• Mississippi - April 2
• South Dakota - April 4
• Tennessee - April 5
• Alabama - April 7
• Kentucky & New Mexico - April 8
• South Carolina - April 9
• West Virginia - April 10

The 10 states with the biggest tax bite, and latest Tax Freedom Day, are:

• Connecticut & New Jersey - May 9
• New York - May 4
• California - April 30
• Massachusetts & Minnesota - April 29
• Illinois & Maryland - April 28
• North Dakota & Washington - April 25

Sullivan Disgusted with Gay Activists

"The guy who had the gall to express his First Amendment rights and favor Prop 8 in California by donating $1,000 has just been scalped by some gay activists," writes Andrew Sullivan.

Will he [Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich, who resigned under pressure] now be forced to walk through the streets in shame? Why not the stocks? The whole episode disgusts me – as it should disgust anyone interested in a tolerant and diverse society.

If this is the gay rights movement today – hounding our opponents with a fanaticism more like the religious right than anyone else – then count me out. If we are about intimidating the free speech of others, we are no better than the anti-gay bullies who came before us.

Rep Paul Ryan's 2015 Budget Proposal

Guy Benson offers a quick primer on the GOP 2015 budget proposal put forward by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan.

Entitled "The Path to Prosperity," it (among other things) balances the budget within 10 years, reduces federal spending by $5.1 trillion by slowing spending growth, affords flexibility to states by block-granting Medicaid, strengthens work requirements for able-bodies adults receiving welfare and food stamps, and closes deductions and loopholes in exchange for a simpler tax system and lower tax rates for individuals and corporations. It also addresses social security and Medicare reforms. (Read Benson's primer for more.)

In contrast, Benson points out, the Senate Democrats have produced no budget proposal for 2015 whatsoever. President Obama's 2015 budget proposal never balances (ever), increases spending $1 trillion beyond the unsustainable current trajectory (more steeply and sooner than the above chart shows), raises taxes by $1.8 trillion, and makes no attempt at reforming Social Security and Medicare entitlements.

Benson concedes the budget proposal has "zero chance of becoming law, but its very existence makes clear that Ryan and his colleagues take their responsibilities — and the law — seriously."

Supreme Court Campaign Finance Decision

"On Wednesday, the Supreme Court released another ruling on campaign donations," writes Ashe Schow @ the Washington Examiner.

Naturally, those who fundraise off the idea that donating to campaigns equals more free speech for the wealthy were apoplectic.

So, for those screaming about “bribery” and “money in politics,” here’s a simple breakdown of the decision:

1. You can now donate to as many candidates, committees and PACs as you want.

2. You can still only donate $2,600 to each candidate.

The decision struck down the limits on total campaign donations - currently set at $74,600 for committees and PACs and a separate $48,600 cap on direct candidate contributions.

Why Large Employers Won't Be Hiring

From Paul Mirengoff @ powerlineblog.com:

"...it’s time for a sober look at the costs of [Obama's] signature program. Our friend Tevi Troy, head of the American Health Policy Institute (AHPI), provides that look in a study called “The Cost of the Affordable Care Act to Large Employers.”

The study is based on internal cost data from more than 100 large employers (10,000 or more employees each) doing business in the United States. ...The study’s main findings are that over the next decade:

Obamacare will cost large U.S. employers between $4,800 to $5,900 per employee.

Large employers expect overall Obamacare-related cost increases of between $163 million and $200 million per employer, or an increase of 4.3 percent in 2016 and 8.4 percent in 2023 over and above what they would otherwise be spending.

Based on these data, the total cost of Obamacare to all large U.S. employers will amount to between $151 billion and $186 billion, or 5.9 percent more than what they would otherwise be spending.

Tevi concludes that “these data demonstrate that the added mandates, fees and regulatory burdens associated with the ACA are increasing the cost of employer-sponsored health care plans, with implications for both employers and employees.” I’ll say.

Staffing decisions will, of course, be among the “implications.” If the estimates contained in the AHPI study are even close to accurate, Obamacare will likely prove to be a significant job-killer.

In a related story, Elizabeth Harrington reports @ the Washington Free Beacon:

Health care costs have already been increasing for large businesses, which spend $578.6 billion each year to provide health coverage for 170.9 million employees, retirees, and dependents. However, numerous studies suggest that Obamacare is adding to employers’ burdens.

For instance, a report by the Urban Institute found that Obamacare increased large employer health costs by $11.8 billion in 2012, and the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that the excise tax on high-cost plans would cost $32 billion from 2018 to 2019.

The novel survey by the American Health Policy Institute asked companies directly what their costs will be, rather than “speculating from the outside.”

Who Are the Biggest Campaign Donors?

"Big money in politics isn't two libertarian billionaires in Kansas," writes Kevin Williamson @ NRO.

Of the 20 largest current overall political donors, the majority favor Democrats, and favor them strongly: 62 percent of the biggest donors’s money goes to Democrats. They are, in descending order: 

1. a couple of hedge-fund guys who give 100 percent of their donations (more than $11 million) to Democrats, 
2. people associated with the city government of New York (84 percent to Democrats), 
3. the Democratic Governors Association, 
4. the National Education Association (89 percent to Democrats), 
5. the Carpenters and Joiners Union (79 percent to Democrats), 
6. the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal employees (100 percent to Democrats), 
7. the AFL-CIO (81 percent to Democrats), 
8. (our first GOP-leaning group comes in at No. 8) the National Association of Realtors (53 percent to Republicans), 
9. the electrical workers unions (97 percent to Democrats), 
10. AT&T (62 percent to Republicans), 
11. Lockheed Martin (61 percent to Republicans — you’ll notice a trend in the pro-GOP groups),
12. Comcast (58 percent to Democrats), 
13. the engineers union (79 percent to Democrats), 
14. Northrop (57 percent to Republicans), 
15. the American Association for Justice (i.e., lawyers, 96 percent to Democrats), 
16. Honeywell (58 percent to Republicans), 
17. Boeing (57 percent to Republicans), 
18. Votesane PAC (70 percent to Republicans), 
19. Every Republican Is Crucial PAC (100 percent to Republicans), and 
20. the laborers’ union (90 percent to Democrats).

KS and AZ Win Case to Require Proof of Citizenship for Voting

"Kansas and Arizona scored a big victory on ballot box integrity laws, one that the losing side is already appealing," reports Ken Kulkowski @ Breitbart.com.

In a 2013 case, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that state voting laws are generally preempted by federal law.

But in his opinion for the court, Justice Antonin Scalia noted that federal law allowed states to request that the Election Assistance Commission (EAC)—a federal agency created in 2002—include citizenship documentation items in any state’s customized version of the “Federal Form” designed by the EAC. ... Scalia noted that Louisiana had received such permission years ago; therefore, there was no good reason for denying it to Arizona or other states. He added that any state requesting a citizenship-proof requirement could sue if its request was denied.

Kansas and Arizona followed Scalia's roadmap, making requests to the EAC and subsequently suing after the EAC denied them.

Now they have won in federal district court in Wichita, Kansas. In a 28-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren ordered the EAC to grant the requests Kansas and Arizona made months ago.

“Judge Melgren’s decision is very carefully researched and well-reasoned,” [Kansas Secretary of State Kris] Kobach, who is also an accomplished law professor, told the media. “This is going to be a difficult decision for them to overturn on appeal.”... This case will now go to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver.

In a related article, Bryan Preston writes:

Critics claim that the citizenship requirement is discriminatory, but Senior Legal Fellow of the Heritage Foundation, Hans von Spakovsky, who studies the impact of election integrity laws on elections and called that charge “silly,” noting that it’s a felony for non-citizens to vote in US federal elections. Therefore, verifying citizenship is just a matter of enforcing existing election law.

Von Spakovsky made his comments Tuesday evening on a conference call organized by True the Vote. The Houston, Texas-based organization is a grass-roots group dedicated to improving the security and integrity of elections across the United States. Its president and founder, Catherine Engelbrecht, moderated the conference call.

Von Spakovsky noted that the court found that the federal government acted well outside its legal powers, when it fought against requiring proof of citizenship and tried to force Kansas to change its own voter registration forms.

Interestingly, jury pool integrity is a secondary reason for requiring proof of citizenship when individuals register to vote, since jury pools are drawn from voter registrations. Klukowski reports Arizona's experience:

“There were over 200 people who swore on jury commissioner forms that they were not citizens who were found to have registered to vote,” Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne explained to another outlet. Noting that only ten percent of voters receive a jury summons, Horne reasoned that this means a bare minimum of 2,000 fraudulent registrations had occurred, and he noted that statewide races had been lost by fewer votes than that.

These 200 people admitted they were not citizens. One can only wonder if there have been others who lied about their citizenship status on jury commissioner forms and ended up casting a vote in a jury decision.

Why 7 Million Signups Won't Save OCare

Scoffing at Obamacare supporters for cheering 7.1 million Obamacare sign ups, Ben Domenech argues "the 7 million figure as salvation from supporters of the law is completely bonkers."

The reason the number of people signed up for Obamacare – via the exchanges or Medicaid – matters is that it is, unexpectedly, a much smaller number than originally anticipated. This is in part due to the failure of the approach, and in part due to failure of execution.  What is truly surprising is the degree to which the previously uninsured have not signed up for either program. We’re dealing with a far smaller magic number of beneficiaries than CBO expected:

The health care law’s stumbles out of the gate were unexpected, and it’s understandable that supporters would look for any silver lining as a sign of hope that this approach would be a success. But it is a mess. It will continue to be a mess. The winners are heavily outnumbered by the losers at the current moment, and there is no sign that a bend in the cost curve or a shift in premiums will change that dynamic. Supporters of the administration will try to find poll numbers that indicate avenues to success or achieve more support for the law. But the negatives of the law have eroded support among the very constituencies who were supposed to love it.

President Obama promised that under his law, we could keep our plans, we could keep our doctors, and our premium costs would go down. None of that has happened. And unfortunately for supporters of the law, that’s what people care about. All Obamacare had to do to be a popular success was to work – was to match up with the expectations President Obama and the Democrats set for it. If it did, they would be running on the issue for a generation – if it didn’t, the issue would be a weapon for the other side.

It hasn’t. They can’t. It is. And if you think I’m wrong, there’s a handy test for that this fall: it’s called the ballot box.