The second day of ObamaCare testimony, and things are looking up for fans of limited, constitutional government. here’s a passel of links culled from Instapundit, TPPF, NRO and elsewhere:
Posts Tagged ‘Regulation’
Second Day of ObamaCare Arguments Roundup
Tuesday, March 27th, 2012First Day of ObamaCare Arguments Roundup
Monday, March 26th, 2012Today was the first day of oral arguments over ObamaCare at the Supreme Court. Here’s a roundup of some of the coverage:
Harry Reid Still Thinks SOPA/PIPA is Awesome, Vows to Bring It Up for a Vote When It’s “Fixed”
Friday, January 20th, 2012As per the Senate Democratic Majority Leader’s official statement:
Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid released the following statement today on the Senate’s PROTECT I.P. Act:
“In light of recent events, I have decided to postpone Tuesday’s vote on the PROTECT I.P. Act.
“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved. Counterfeiting and piracy cost the American economy billions of dollars and thousands of jobs each year, with the movie industry alone supporting over 2.2 million jobs. We must take action to stop these illegal practices. We live in a country where people rightfully expect to be fairly compensated for a day’s work, whether that person is a miner in the high desert of Nevada, an independent band in New York City, or a union worker on the back lots of a California movie studio.
“I admire the work that Chairman Leahy has put into this bill. I encourage him to continue engaging with all stakeholders to forge a balance between protecting Americans’ intellectual property, and maintaining openness and innovation on the internet. We made good progress through the discussions we’ve held in recent days, and I am optimistic that we can reach a compromise in the coming weeks.”
A “compromise.” That means “we only want to censor you a little. Or, we want to wait until the heat is off before we get back to screwing you. (Hat tip: Penny Arcade.)
Sadly, the Republican leadership isn’t sounding much better. My quick and dirty impression is that the rank-and-file Republican members of the House and Senate closest to the Tea Party have gotten the message, good and hard, but that the leadership is still putting their fingers in their ears and thinking they’ll be fine if they just keep humming until to furor dies down.
They must be disabused of this notion.
I would urge you to contact your representative and tell them you don’t want SOPA/PIPA “delayed” or “fixed,” you want it killed dead and a stake driven through it’s heart. Or, to quote Spinal Tap, “just crank that volume to the point of pain.” They must come to dread your wrath more than the thought of losing campaign contributions from the MPAA/RIAA.
You must teach them fear.
A Few More SOPA/PIPA Tidbits
Thursday, January 19th, 2012Here’s a visual representation of congressmen supporting and opposing SOPA/PIPA:
(Click to Embiggen)
By my eyeball count, 40 of those 65 congresscritters still supporting SOPA are Democrats (plus one gray box that I assume is Socialist Bernie Sanders), whereas 56 of 101 opposing it are Republicans.
Via Instapundit comes a commentator on lefty site FireDogLake raging about how Republicans have owned the issue:
Those of us charting the protest yesterday were struck by how most of the lawmakers turning against the bill were Republicans. If you look at the latest whip count on PIPA, for example, you see that more Republicans oppose it at this point than Democrats.
(snip)
The Tea Party has struck fear into their party; the progressive movement inspires laughter.
Finally, isn’t it funny how lots of the same people who decried the Citizens United ruling are singing the praises of Google, Wikipdia, et. al. for weighing in on SOPA?
If corporations have no First Amendment rights, why can’t federal or state or local governments single out, say, Wikimedia Foundation for its SOPA/PIPA blackout? Why can’t they penalize or fine or even dissolve it? Why can’t they single Wikimedia Foundation out for disproportionate enforcement of unrelated laws in retaliation for disfavored speech?
(Hat tip: Dwight)
Big Brother Ontario Bans Crystal Head Vodka
Sunday, May 23rd, 2010Ontario is banning Dan Aykroyd’s Crystal Head Vodka. Why? Because the bottle is shaped like a skull. Which is precisely the reason I bought Dwight a bottle of it for his birthday. I guess with the Tories in power in the UK, Canadians are hoping to win back the “Most Absurd Nanny State Law” crown.
Let’s hope nobody tells them about Halloween…
(Hat Tip: Instapundit.)
They’ll Get My Melatonin When They Pry It From My Calm, Well-Rested Fingers!
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010Just because Nancy Pelosi and company are doing their best to drag Zombie ObamaCare across the finish line doesn’t mean that there aren’t other bad ideas floating around Congress.
One bad idea that thankfully won’t be passing anytime soon was embodied in S. 3002, sponsored by none other than Sen. John McCain until he decided to withdraw it yesterday. It would have empowered the FDA to regulate food supplements, and regulating them would probably have meant banning some, and raising the prices of others in order to satisfy the FDA’s lengthy safety testing requirements.
This would have been a bad thing.
Make no mistake about it: There’s a whole lot of quackery in the health supplement business, with unprovable claims and inexplicable fads (shark cartilage, anyone?), and I’m sure that many health supplements (very possibly including some I take) do nothing more than make expensive urine. And like anything else, you can’t keep idiots from abusing them, which is why I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that some dope has managed to give themselves heavy metal poisoning or destroy their kidneys. (Just like those super-geniuses who managed to turn themselves blue ingesting colloidal silver.)
But the purpose of government is not to protect people from themselves, it’s to protect people from others. And my fear is that the FDA might well have started banning supplements left and right so as to respond to pressure from politicians who receive big bucks from the pharmaceutical industry (especially given how cozy the Obama Administration got with them when crafting the backroom deals to buy off their support for ObamaCare). Or maybe just because the employees of supplement makers aren’t members of the SEIU.
In my lifetime, I’ve probably benefited the most from two wonder drugs. One was Claritin, which managed to relieve allergies so well (without making you groggy the way old anti-histamines would) that it was well worth paying the $3 a pill price it went for if you didn’t have insurance just before it was made over-the-counter. (Now it’s more like 5 cents a pill if you buy the generic version at Sam’s.)
The other one was Melatonin. Throughout my 20s, I suffered from moderate chronic insomnia. My brain simply would not shut off when I laid down to go to sleep. And traditional anti-histamines-based sleep aids left me feeling like my skull was stuffed with cotton the next morning. When I was young I could get away with it, but the older I got the tireder I got. Until I tried Melatonin.
The difference was like (ahem) night and day. I take a pill a couple of hours before going to bed, resulting in a full night of REM sleep and no grogginess in the morning.here don’t appear to be any significant negative side effects, and my guess is that tens of millions of Americans are taking it to get a good night’s sleep.
Which is why I was worried that S. 3002 would have lead to a ban on Melatonin, especially since it’s already banned for over-the-counter use in Europe and Canada. Has it looked like it was going to pass, the first thing I was going to do was stock-up on a lifetime supply of the stuff. But why should I have to?
McCain evidently received a boatload of mail opposing the bill from constituents, and decided to actually pay attention to their complaints. (Which puts him one up on Obama, Pelosi and Reid.) So score one for the forces of liberty this time around.