DAMAGING THE BRAND: Harvard sophomore faces federal charges after scare. I mean, this guy doesn’t seem very bright. . . . “He was motivated by a desire to avoid a final exam.”
Archive for 2013
December 18, 2013
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Ohio Lawmakers Want Social Workers to Have Veto Power Over Decision to Homeschool: Parents would have to submit to background checks and interrogations. I dunno, the way things are going it’s the decision to put your kids in public school that should arouse suspicions of parental incompetence.
MILTON WOLF: Sorry GOP, an ‘R’ Is Not Enough. “I’ve been a Republican all my life—a loyal Republican. The problem is, our party has not been loyal to its own principles. That is why I am running for the United States Senate.”
A REQUEST FROM MY COLLEAGUE, AND FORMER MARINE, BOB LLOYD:
Your used computer can help fight terror. As the American advisors pull out, the Afghan army needs computers for its JAG Corps headquarters. Having a transparent military justice system is crucial to having an army that can stand up to the Taliban, and right now the JAG Corps is struggling to keep up with paper records.
Security regulations prohibit turning over U.S. military computers, so the American advisors are asking for donations of used computers. Desktops, laptops, or whatever will be appreciated. It doesn’t matter how old they are. Hard disks will be wiped clean before U.S. personnel release them.
If you have a used computer you would be willing to donate please send it to:
Robin Kimmelman
205 CAT
FOB Lindsay
APO AE 09355Colonel Kimmelman is an Air Force lawyer who has been in Afghanistan for the past 13 months.
Hope somebody out there can help.
JAMES TARANTO: (Almost) Everyone Loses: Of course the uninsured hate ObamaCare too.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that the Congress exceeded its authority by “mandating” the purchase of health insurance, but it saved the law by construing the mandate as a tax on being uninsured. Being surprised that the uninsured would object to such a tax is like being surprised that yacht owners would object to George H.W. Bush’s luxury tax on yachts.
In short, what ObamaCare means to the uninsured who were not uninsurable is higher prices for a product they already were disinclined to buy, along with a punitive tax on not buying it. That seems more like a mugging than a benefit.
How many of the uninsured lack insurance because of pre-existing conditions? It’s hard to know, but it would appear the proportion is not high. A September Kaiser Family Foundation study reported that “the high cost of insurance is the main reason why people go without coverage.” It includes a pie chart with the following breakdown of reasons for lacking insurance: Insurance not affordable, 31.6%; lost job, 29.4%; other, 17.4%; no offer, 11.2%; aged out/left school, 8.8%; no need, 1.5%.
Arguably the problem of the uninsurable was a market failure that justified government intervention of some sort. If ObamaCare’s architects had approached the matter intelligently, they would have conducted research to identify the extent of that precise problem and carefully targeted their response. Government is quite capable of implementing even modest programs disastrously, but the hubris of demanding “comprehensive reform” gave us a law that had to be marketed via massive consumer fraud, and that harms almost everyone it affects.
How’s that hopey-changey stuff workin’ out for ya?
YA THINK? In Wake of Navy Yard Shooting, Senate Panel Questions Screening Procedures.
Three months after the day 12 people were gunned down in Washington’s Navy Yard, a Senate panel questioned whether screening is up to par at federal facilities and if privately contracted guards are adequately trained for active shooter situations.
“In the aftermath, it’s only natural that we wonder if all people entering a federal facility, even employees, should be screened in some way,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Thomas R. Carper, D-Del., said at Tuesday’s hearing. “Should we, to borrow an often-used phrase from Ronald Reagan, ‘trust, but verify’?”
Current Department of Defense policy does not require people to walk through a metal detection device, but it does allow for random screening of individuals, explained Stephen Lewis a deputy director with the DOD speaking on behalf of Michael Vickers, the under secretary for intelligence.
They needed to focus more on hiring screening. Remember this?
A month before Aaron Alexis killed 12 people in the Navy Yard rampage, police in Rhode Island sent word to the Navy that the 34-year-old Texas man reported hearing voices and thought he was the target of a “microwave machine.”
The Navy contractor was arrested in 2010 after firing a gun through the ceiling of his apartment. Adding to the list of run-ins with the law was a disorderly conduct arrest in Georgia in 2008. In 2004, he admitted shooting out the tires of a man’s truck in Seattle in what he told police was an anger-fueled blackout.
How someone with such a checkered background could have received a secret government clearance is raising broader concerns on Capitol Hill and in the White House about the security clearance process. President Obama ordered a review of security standards across government.
Why was he hired?
THE HILL: Tech executives to Obama: ‘Move aggressively’ to limit spy programs.
The technology companies — including Google, Facebook and Yahoo — have been lobbying the White House and Capitol Hill to scale back the National Security Agency surveillance programs.
Companies have complained that the NSA’s data-mining operations, revealed earlier this year in the Edward Snowden leaks, have hurt consumer trust in their services and led users to flee their networks.
And the White House’s defense of the programs was complicated further by a federal judge who ruled Monday that the administration’s phone surveillance program appeared to be unconstitutional. The judge’s order has been stayed pending appeals, but the ruling has again thrust the controversial programs into the spotlight.
The White House said in a statement that the meeting was an “opportunity” for Obama to “hear from CEOs directly” on their concerns about the intelligence programs.
Related: Obama ‘hijacks’ tech executive meeting to make ‘PR pitch’ on Obamacare website fix instead of dealing with NSA surveillance. This guy always changes the subject when he’s in trouble.
OF COURSE, BROOKS IS ALWAYS A CONTENDER IN THAT DEPARTMENT: David Brooks’ Paean to Presidential Power Is Year’s Worst Op-Ed: You’d think it’s nearly April Fools’ Day, not Christmas.
MERRY CHRISTMAS: “A Glock? You shouldn’t have . . .” “The Florida Department of Law Enforcement says it is on target to conduct nearly 1 million background checks this year on private firearm purchases. The projection comes as the department is reporting a record number of reviews conducted over the Thanksgiving weekend that typically kicks off the year-end holiday shopping season.”
TOO LATE: Worried about looking ‘ignorant,’ Team Sebelius seeks media help. But there’s no need to hire people to distil the media coverage — just read InstaPundit. Though if you choose to buy HHS’s office supplies via my Amazon link that would be okay.
HUNGER GAMES 2013: D.C. far outpaces nation in personal earnings.
The District’s total personal income in 2012 was $47.28 billion, or $74,733 for each of its 632,323 residents, according to the Office of the Chief Financial Officer’s Economic and Revenue Trends report for November.
The U.S. average per capita personal income was $43,725. The highest of the 50 states, Connecticut, fell 25 percent short of D.C.
Personal income is a combination of work and non-work related components — wages and salaries, employee health and other benefits, proprietor’s income, property income and transfer payments (such as Social Security).
Yes, life’s always fat in Capital City.
YES. ALSO PROSECUTED: Should false rape accusers be sued?
Eighty years — that’s about how long it took the state of Alabama to posthumously pardon the last three of nine men who were falsely accused and wrongly convicted of raping two white women on a train. They infamously were called the Scottsboro Boys, because the nine black men were just 12- to 19-years-old when they were arrested in 1931.
It turned out that the women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, had lied to police about the rapes. At one of the trials, Bates recanted her testimony, saying she had made it all up. Still, the all-white jury convicted the boys, one after another.
Forty-three years later, a similar story: This time it was Delbert Tibbs, who died recently of cancer. Tibbs spent nearly three years in prison in Florida after he was convicted in 1974 of a rape and murder that he had nothing to do with, according to the Florida Supreme Court. . . .
In 2002, Brian Banks was one of those unfortunate statistics. He was just 17 when a classmate, Wanetta Gibson, 15, falsely accused him of raping her at school. Banks, then a top football talent, spent more than five years in prison and five years on probation for rape and kidnapping.
He was exonerated after he got his accuser to admit on tape that she lied about the rape. Banks later explained that his attorney had advised him to take a plea bargain and avoid a jury trial because “… I was a big black teenager, and no jury would believe anything I said.”
The Long Beach Unified School District sued his accuser, and she has been ordered to repay the $750,000 she was awarded in a lawsuit against the district.
Read the whole thing.
IS CONGRESS TRYING TO TAKE TELEVANGELISTS OFF TV?
NEW YORK TIMES: Rethinking Our Ban On Polygamy.
MICKEY KAUS: Obamacare Escapes the Chains of Law.
HHS has pretty clearly escaped the rule of law and entered a world of corporatist haggling, where political leaders and a few big industry types sit around the table and work everything out. True, they have a mutual interest in doing so–Obama needs Obamacare to work, insurers are counting on it working well enough to make them money. The interests aren’t symmetrical though—at some point, long before Obamans give up on Obamacare, insurance companies could decide to cut their losses, bail, and go make money somewhere else. That gives HHS a motive to make sure they get enough money to keep them in the game: ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it up to you later.’ This is a policy best announced at a small table in a noisy restaurant, not in the semi-judicial proceedings required for formal rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act.
It’s likely to end badly. I expect the Cruz Administration will vigorously pursue any lawbreakers.
December 17, 2013
MARK STEYN: A Useful Chap In The Foxhole. “Gee, thanks! As Voltaire said, I disagree with what you say, but I will personally feel a little uneasy when they take away your right to say it. . . . As I learned during my battles in Canada, when it comes to free speech principled lefties are thin on the ground.”
The thing with lefties is that for most of them, tribal loyalty trumps any principle. This is why even vague expressions of unease must be prefaced with statements demonstrating that, first and foremost, one still belongs to the herd.
ED DRISCOLL: Mister, we could use a man like Richard Nixon again. Didn’t need to pull our weight, ’cause we have a welfare state, gee that healthcare website runs great . . .