In many ways, Obamacare clarified the problem of the administrative state. Congress routinely writes vague laws, delegating its authority to bureaucrats who make detailed regulations covering every aspect of our lives: from the light bulbs we use to the health care coverage we purchase. In passing Obamacare, Congress transferred important aspects of its legislative authority to various administrative agencies. Obamacare created a multitude of new federal agencies and empowered unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to write detailed rules controlling one-sixth of the economy. This terribly unpopular law led millions of citizens to …
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) has offered a Sense of the Senate Amendment to the Patent Reform Act of 2011 (S.23) testing the waters on the idea of a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution (Senate Amendment 115). This will be a referendum to testing the waters for the idea of a balanced budget amendment in the Senate. The details of any mechanism to cut spending is very important and should be studied in great detail. There are two very important priorities for any process changes. First, conservatives need to make …
Just as it did last year in the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court today upheld the First Amendment in a virtually unanimous opinion in a very difficult case. In Snyder v. Phelps, the Court held that the First Amendment shields the Westboro Baptist Church from a state tort claim. Albert Snyder filed a lawsuit in Maryland against the founder and members of the church for intentional infliction of emotional distress, intrusion upon seclusion, and civil conspiracy after they picketed the funeral of Snyder’s son, Matthew Snyder, a Marine Lance …
San Francisco’s environmentally friendly low-flush toilets are doing what they’re supposed to do: save water. The toilets reduced the city’s annual water use by 20 million gallons, but they have had the unintended consequence of causing sewage problems. The San Francisco Chronicle reports: Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months. The city has already spent …
Today’s murder of Pakistani Minority Affairs Minister Shahbaz Bhatti by religious extremists establishes a pattern of growing religious intolerance. It is undermining Pakistan’s struggling democracy by shutting down free speech and political expression in the name of a ruthless ideology disguised as religion. The murderers left pamphlets at the scene of the crime, explaining that they killed Bhatti because of his opposition to controversial blasphemy laws, which are often misused against Pakistan’s religious minorities. Some Pakistani officials had sought to argue that the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer at …
Today at noon, the National Treasury Employees Union plans to rally at the U.S. Capitol in support of public-sector employees. The rally follows ongoing protests in Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio — demonstrations that are part of broader budget battles playing out across America. The entrance of federal workers into the debate only further illustrates the hypocrisy of the protests, given the great disparity between the pay and benefits of public-sector employees and their private-sector counterparts. According to a House Republican Study Committee policy brief, federal-sector employees have posted surprising salary …
On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing to explore the impact of Obamacare on the states and the federal roadblocks to state-based reforms. Front and center at the hearing was Medicaid. Obamacare puts an additional 18 million people in this federal–state health care program for the poor. According to a report from the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committees, this will burden states with at least $118 billion in additional costs through 2023. Medicaid is already on track to put state budgets deep in …
The recent effort to revive nullification may have just met its high water mark. In the last 6 months, various laws with the objective of “nullifying” Obamacare have been introduced in thirteen states: Arizona, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Texas, and Wyoming. To date, the farthest along had been Idaho, where a nullification bill declaring Obamacare “void and of no effect” and stopping its enforcement had passed the House and the governor was itching to sign it in to law. But in …
Yesterday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a 345-page report detailing 34 major areas of wasteful government spending that Sen. Tom Coburn (R–OK) says could save the federal government $100 billion or more every year. Conservatives jumped on the news, with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R–VA) office releasing a statement:“That is why House Republicans are hard at work cutting spending and getting our fiscal house in order – we need to prevent taxpayer dollars from being wasted and put Washington on a budget so we begin to live within …
On March 18, the United Nations Human Rights Council is scheduled to consider its final report of Libya’s human rights record that was conducted under the body’s Universal Periodic Review. The first part of the human rights review of the “Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”, conducted on November 9, 2010, was an all too typical dog and pony show. Libya’s submission to the Council asserted that the regime observed and protected a host of basic human rights including freedoms of expression, religion, and association. During the review, governments lined …
