Experts Weigh in on Upcoming Hobby Lobby Decision

"The Supreme Court is set to make a decision in the famous Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby case by June 30," writes Claire Healey, "and religious employers are poised to see whether they will be allowed an exemption for their beliefs."

Adele Keim of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), and Heritage policy analyst Sarah Torre discussed the implications of the HHS mandate and the case at a Thursday event co-hosted by the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation.

Keim began the discussion by describing the background of the Hobby Lobby case. David and Barbara Green, the founders of the Hobby Lobby store chain, are devout Christians who object to the mandate because of its provision for companies to include the morning-after pill in the healthcare plans.

"Religious liberty is a human right, and all people deserve it," Keim said.

Keim explained that those against the HHS mandate are winning. In for-profit cases, courts have voted 40 times to protect religious liberty, while voting for the mandate only six times. At the non-profit level, 23 injunctions have been granted, while only five were denied. 

Rep. Lummis argued "there are many reasons to repeal this law, reform this law, replace this law." Sarah Torre "described other legislation bolstering Hobby Lobby's case, especially the Religious Freedom Restoration Act..."

Editorial: IRS Excuses for Obstruction Suggest Cover-Up

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

This is not a partisan witchhunt. It is an inquiry to determine whether a federal agency conspired with elected members of a political party to influence the outcome of an election. And it already screams of a cover-up.

This fiasco is an inevitable byproduct of the staggering amount of power the IRS has built off the complexity of its tax code, which allows the agency to intrude on almost every facet of our lives, from child care to health care to political activism. Holding Ms. Lerner and others accountable — whether through mass firings or criminal prosecutions — won’t be enough to rein in the IRS. The best way to prevent the IRS from abusing its power is to take away its power through massive tax reform and simplification.

Abused taxpayers and elected representatives need not make the argument. The IRS is taking care of that all by itself.

Video - Rep Paul Ryan to IRS: I Don't Believe You

At a Capitol Hill hearing today into the IRS Targeting, Rep. Paul Ryan "blasts IRS commissioner" saying, 'I don't believe you'. The YouTube video below courtesy of the Washington Free Beacon:

Klein: Poll Bad for Obama, Worse for Liberalism

"A new Wall Street Journal/NBC poll showing Americans with shattered confidence in President Obama's ability to lead may be bad news for him, but it's worse news for liberalism," writes Philip Klein @ Washington Examiner.

True, there are some issues, such as global warming, in which the poll showed the public closer to the liberal view. But not on the overarching question that has been at the center of American politics since the New Deal era.

According to the poll, just 46 percent of Americans agreed with the statement that, “Government should do more to solve problems and help meet the needs of people” compared with 50 percent who agreed with the view that, “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals.” In February 2009, right after he was sworn into office, the same poll found 51 percent thought government should do more and just 40 percent who thought it was doing too much. ...

It found that just 14 percent blamed the [Dept of Veterans Affairs] problems on “poor management by the Obama administration” compared with 61 percent who blamed “longstanding government bureaucracy.”

To the extent that Americans see problems as connected to Obama’s incompetence, it still provides an opening for another Democrat to implement the liberal agenda. But if Obama-era failures make Americans more skeptical about federal bureaucracy in general, it makes things that much more difficult. ... Obama set out to convince Americans that government could work, and as of this point in his presidency, he has failed.

Toensing: Doesn't Hillary Clinton Know the Law?

"Does the former secretary of state not know the law?" asks Victoria Toensing in the WSJ. "By statute, she was required to make specific security decisions for defenseless consulates like Benghazi, and was not permitted to delegate them to anyone else." Yet,

In her interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer last week, Hillary Clinton said "I was not making security decisions" about Benghazi, claiming "it would be a mistake" for "a secretary of state" to "go through all 270 posts" and "decide what should be done." And at a January 2013 Senate hearing, Mrs. Clinton said that security requests "did not come to me. I did not approve them. I did not deny them."

Toensing outlines the requirements of the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA) signed into law by her husband, President Bill Clinton, on November 29, 1999, and concludes with this observation.:

Mrs. Clinton either personally waived these security provisions as required by law or she violated the law by delegating the waiver to someone else. If it was the latter, she shirked the responsibility she now disclaims: to be personally knowledgeable about and responsible for the security in a consulate as vulnerable as Benghazi.

Lois Lerner's Vanishing Emails - A Crime in Progress?

That's the question editors at National Review Online are asking.

The matter at hand is a serious one. While IRS employees were openly campaigning for Barack Obama on agency time — a violation for which a handful were given largely symbolic reprimands — the very branch of that awesomely powerful law-enforcement agency charged with handling the affairs of nonprofit and tax-exempt groups was illegally targeting organizations based on their political affiliations while Democratic elected officials, Michigan senator Carl Levin among them, hectored the agency to do more.

This was not a lapse in judgment or a series of unfortunate events. This was an organized campaign to use IRS resources — including its ability to launch criminal prosecutions — for political purposes. We know from other Lerner e-mails that have been released that the IRS was, at the suggestion of Rhode Island Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse, looking for a way to “piece together” a criminal case against the groups it was targeting. Lerner and lawyers at the Justice Department discussed coordinating with the Federal Election Commission in this crusade. It is worth noting that the “crime” with which Lerner et al. wanted to charge those conservative nonprofits was failing to adequately disclose what political activities they would be engaged in — even though under the law they are explicitly permitted to engage in political activity.

We have no doubt that Lois Lerner’s hard drive has in fact been compromised. We’d be shocked if it hadn’t been. Goodness knows what else is being done with evidence while Congress proceeds at its customary majestic pace. The question here is not only the crime that has been committed but whether there is a crime in progress.

An Encouraging Post-Obama Economy?

If the Obama economy is depressing to you, Mark Perry's graphic—which suggests an amazing U.S. post-Obama economic potential—should cheer you up.

Perry has compiled this map of the 50 US states renamed for countries with similar GDPs (Gross Domestic Product):

The map above was created by matching economic output in US states in 2013 to foreign countries with comparable GDPs, using BEA data for GDP by US state and GDP by country from the International Monetary Fund, via Wikipedia here. For each US state (and the District of Columbia), I tried to find the country closest in economic size in 2013 (measured by GDP), and for each state there was a country with a pretty close match – those countries are displayed in the map above and in the table below. Obviously, in some cases the closest match was a country that produced slightly more, or slightly less, economic output in 2013 than a given US state.

It’s pretty amazing how ridiculously large the US economy is, and the map above helps put America’s GDP of $16.8 trillion in 2013 (and more than $17 trillion in Q4 2013 and Q1 in 2014) into perspective by comparing the GDP of US states to other country’s entire national GDP.

In one example, Perry argues that California produced $2.2 trillion of economic output in 2013, just slightly below Brazil's $2.24 trillion, with 80% fewer people! He calls that "a testament to the superior, world-class productivity of the American worker."

Now imagine what all the United States could produce if the nation had an administration with even a smidgen of economic good sense.