If you thought Cash for Clunkers was terrible public policy, just wait till you hear the latest from Massachusetts: Federal economic stimulus cash was handed out to cons behind bars in Bay State prisons after a bureaucratic snafu resulted in $250 checks being sent to some inmates – and now red-faced feds want it back. “Taxpayers already believe the inmates are running the asylum in Washington,” U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said in a statement. “Now it appears they are being compensated for their efforts.”
In June of 2008, while campaigning for the election of President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder promised the leftist American Constitutional Society: “We owe the American people a reckoning.” Yesterday, Holder escalated his “reckoning” campaign by appointing a prosecutor to re-investigate nearly a dozen CIA interrogators and contractors alleged to have abused detainees in 2002 and 2003. This is nothing more than an all out war on the CIA by the left at a time when the President desperately needs to shore up trust with his base in the …
Don’t look now, but the FCC is back in business. For some nine months the Federal Communications Commission had been operating with no permanent chairman, and with 3 of its 5 commissioner seats vacant. Now, with the confirmation of new chairman Julius Genachowski, and new commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker, the agency is locked, loaded, and ready to go. It’s first target? Not broadcasters, despite talk of a revived Fairness Doctrine, or Internet providers, despite talk of “net neutrality” regulation. Their turn may come soon, but first up …
Rather than debate the substance, the White House is in full campaign mode in order to label any opposition to its government-heavy health reform agenda as “misinformation” or “myths you’ve heard.” Case in point: The White House now has a taxpayer-funded Web site to “reality check” credible criticisms and arguments. We encourage you to go visit their site. You’ll find a stark difference between their videos and ours. To say their videos “debunking” each “myth” are low on facts is an understatement. Visit fixhealthcarepolicy.com/reality to see more videos like the …
D.C. School Choice Supporters Protest Education Secretary Duncan This morning, Education Secretary Arne Duncan held a joint press conference at a school in Washington, DC marking the start of the new school year. Sec. Duncan was there to speak about the challenges schools face related to the flu and H1N1 virus. But the Secretary was reminded about the administration’s decision to take away school choice scholarships from 216 children living in DC by a group of protestors led by school choice activist Virginia Walden Ford. As children in D.C. head …
According to a report this afternoon from The Washington Post, Attorney General Eric Holder has decided to appoint a prosecutor to re-examine whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. According to the New York Times, these cases were all already investigated and referred to the Justice Department by the C.I.A.’s Inspector General. There is no indication from the Washington Post or the New York Times that Attorney General Holder …
We’ve already identified some possible constitutional issues Obamacare raises including whether the delegation of power to the “Health Choices Commissioner” violates the separation of powers and whether a government run health plan is one of the enumerated powers granted to Congress. David Rivkin and Lee Casey also have constitutional concerns. Their Washington Post op-ed argues the individual mandate would not pass muster: President Obama has called for a serious and reasoned debate about his plans to overhaul the health-care system. Any such debate must include the question of whether it …
We’ve poked fun at the proliferation of czars under the Obama administration, but we lost track of how many he’s actually created. Now PJTV has put together a helpful video detailing all 36 of Obama’s czars and czarinas: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMryl34YwE0[/youtube]
That’s what David Schoenbrod and Richard B. Stewart call Waxman-Markey in their Wall Street Journal op-ed today: As a candidate for president in April 2008, Barack Obama told Fox News that “a cap-and-trade system is a smarter way of controlling pollution” than “top-down” regulation. He was right. With cap and trade the market decides where and how to cut emissions. With top-down regulation, as Mr. Obama explained, regulators dictate “every single rule that a company has to abide by, which creates a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and often-times …
The Obama administration’s Cash for Clunkers program is supposed to run through 8 PM tonight, but as the Wall Street Journal reports, dealers across the country are ending their involvement early. The reason? “They worry that if a last-minute rush to enter applications jams the system, they will be on the hook for rebates already given to customers.” And dealers have every reason to worry. Last week the National Automobile Dealers Association reported that the nation’s car dealers have already submitted $3.3 billion in “Cash for Clunkers” claims despite the …
