So says federal Judge Henry E. Hudson ruling on the individual mandate.
Here’s the actual opinion. It’s not searchable, and I haven’t read the whole thing, but I do note he rejected the risable notion than the individual mandate was a “tax” rather than a “penalty.” His ruling that the individual mandate is in fact “severable” from the rest of the bill seems to contradict most of the analysis I’ve read.
Remember Steve Driehaus, the Ohio Democratic and Stupak-bloc flipper who went down in flames in November? You probably thought you’d seen the last of him.
Think again.
Driehaus is filing a lawsuit against the Susan B. Anthony List for “defamation of character” for billboards that: A.) Told the truth about him, and B.) Were never actually put up.
And the truth is: Steve Driehaus voted for an ObamaCare bill that provided public funding for abortions. And that’s a major reason he lost the election. No amount of litigation is going to change that fact.
Though the lawsuit does require adding one more description to Steve Driehaus: sore loser.
I haven’t been covering the Wikileaks story much because, well, there’s just too much to cover. Obviously, many people in charge of government data security need to be fired.
Dr. Alieta Eck of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons points out that the same people who couldn’t keep secret diplomatic cables private are asking you to trust them with their medical information:
In ObamaCare, the federal government is offering every physician $44,000 in taxpayer dollars to set up a new electronic medical record system. And if this is not enough of an incentive, Medicare is threatening to cut doctors’ pay in the next few years if they do not sell out their patients’ privacy. One of the specifications will be that these records be accessible online to “authorized users,” most notably the government. We are promised very strict privacy measures so that the records can never fall into the wrong hands. Oh, really?
(snip)
So why does the government want to see your medical records? Might it be planning to limit your care once you reach a certain age or develop a certain level of mental deficiency? Knowledge of recent history suggests that governments can use such information to blackmail and smear those considered troublemakers or enemies of the state. Now it is offering to pay for access, but later the government could make your doctor’s license to practice medicine dependent on complying with the EMR mandate. History tells us it is not a good thing when a government has total control of physicians.
(snip)
Do not depend on the government to protect your medical records. Under ObamaCare, the government seeks the right to mine your most private information just as it wants to peer under your clothing in the airport. This is another important reason why ObamaCare must be repealed.
Just think, thanks to ObamaCare, your private medical records will soon be treated with the absolute sanctity afforded the tax records of the Koch Brothers or Joe the Plumber.
Or “Democratic House Members Held Hostage: Day 15” (Imagine dramatic Nightline opening theme music here.)
You might have noticed we had an election a couple of weeks ago. Democrats didn’t do so well. Especially in the House, where Democrats lost 60 61 62 seats and counting. The House lead by Nancy Pelosi. The Nancy Pelosi who forced ObamaCare through despite widespread public opposition, a huge contributing factor in the democrats’ electoral slaughter.
Given that, common sense would suggest that Pelosi step aside and not run for Minority Leader. But Nancy Pelosi has never been one to let common sense stand in her way.
The voices are growing louder asking for Pelosi to step down.
On the other hand, her hardcore liberal supporters are rallying around her: “Her talents are unique.” Well, yes. Not even Tom Foley managed to lose 60+ seats in 1994. That takes the special kind of high-handed, self-righteous, tone-deafness that Pelosi excels in.
Blue Dog Coalition member Heath Schuler is threatening to run against her. Then again, if House Democrats are picking their next quarterback, maybe they’ll want someone with a higher lifetime passing rating then 54.3%.
The Congressional Black caucus has decided that they may not want to be lead by Pelosi.
Pelosi says it’s not her fault:
The California Democrat attributes the loss of at least 60 seats to high unemployment and “$100 million of outside, unidentified funding.”
“Any party that cannot turn (9.5% unemployment) into political gains should hang up the gloves,” she said.
But now Democrats seem poised to elect her to Minority Leader later today. Republicans are already licking their chops over 2012 attack ads…
I’m sure the average BattleSwarm reader came to this conclusion heretofore, but Derek Thompson provides a statistical roundup in The Atlantic that proves it. They also find lesser effects for the other three votes I’ve highlighted here (Stimulus, TARP, and Cap-and-Trade):
For Democrats in the least Democratic districts, the model suggests a loss of about 4 percent for every yes vote. If vulnerable Democrats hadn’t voted for any of the four bills, he concludes, Democrats would have won 32 more seats, enough to retain control of the House. Even after you remove TARP (which was a must-vote in scary times), the three-vote impact was 24 seats — not enough to keep the House, but close.
Although at least one study he cites shows no effect for the last that can’t be explained for the other three.
But it all comes back to what all non-liberal Americans have been telling Democrats for a year or longer: It’s the ObamaCare, stupid.
I have a heavy weekend of activity (reviewing a movie, dinner, a party, Halloween, and another party), so blogging may be lighter than I would like for the weekend right before an election.
So. Some links:
This Frank J. Fleming piece over on Pajamas Media is too funny (and dead on) not to quote copious sections from:
So the Democrats sucked. But not just plain old, usual politician sucked, but epic levels of suck where it’s hard to find an analogue in human history that conveys the same level of suckitude. It was sheer incompetence plus arrogance — and those things do not complement each other well. We’re talking sucking that distorts time and space like a black hole.
It’s Godzilla-smashing-through-a-city level of suck — but a really patronizing Godzilla who says you’re just too stupid and hateful to see all the buildings he’s saved or created as he smashes everything apart. Or, to use Obama’s favorite analogy, you have a car stuck in ditch, so you call the mechanic, but the only tool he brings with him is a sledgehammer. And then he smashes your car to pieces and charges you $100,000 for his service. Finally, he calls you racist for complaining. Obama and the Democrats have been so awful, it’s hard for the human brain to even comprehend.
But the Democrats will counter that the Republicans also suck. And while this is true, it’s not really going to help them. As I pointed out before, both a dog incessantly barking and a zombie apocalypse are things that everyone would agree suck. Yet no one during a zombie apocalypse, while hiding out in a boarded up mall, would turn to the other survivors and say, “We don’t want to kill all the zombies; then we’d have to go back to being woken up at night by that annoying dog next door.” But this is the best argument the Democrats can come up with. “Remember how awful the Republicans and Bush were? You hated them. You don’t want to go back to that.” Yes, why would people want to go back to when 6% unemployment was considered high?
People do remember how much the Republicans suck, and they know where it tops out … and that is nowhere near as bad as the Democrats are today. Like with the barking dog, it’s annoying, but you know it’s not going to cause the collapse of civilization as we know it. Not so with the zombie apocalypse; who knows how bad that could get if left to continue? Same with the Democrats and Obama; people have never dealt with anything this horrible their entire lives, and they aren’t that curious to see how much worse it can be.
So the Republicans kinda suck, and that’s why they’re going to win huge this November. Because in the land of epic, mega, ultra, apocalyptic levels of sucking, those who kinda suck are king.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)