THE FOUNDATION
"Our obligations to our country never cease but with our lives." --John Adams, letter to Benjamin Rush, 1808EDITOR'S NOTE
In observance of Veterans Day, Mark Alexander will publish a special column -- "The High Cost of Freedom," a tribute to Chris Kyle -- this afternoon in lieu of his regular Wednesday column.Veterans Day 2014
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On the 11th Hour of the 11th Day of the 11th Month...
This day is set aside now, in honor of American Patriot Veterans, who have carried the banner of Liberty forward since the first shots at Lexington and Concord. And it is now time for us to deliver this banner to the next generation.Millions of Patriots -- American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coastguardsmen -- have for generations honored their oaths to "support and defend" Liberty, as "endowed by our Creator" and enshrined in our Constitution.
Today, and every day, we formally honor them. We remain the proud and the free because they have stood bravely in harm's way, and millions remain on post today. For this, we, the American People, offer our heartfelt thanks.
"Mighty men of valor, men trained for war, who could handle shield and spear, and whose faces were like the faces of lions." --1 Chronicles 12:8
"Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn." --Gen. Douglas MacArthur
"War is an ugly thing but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feelings which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." --John Stuart Mill
"Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." --John 15:12-14
American Patriot: Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
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TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
VA Secretary: More Smoke and Mirrors
The former CEO of Procter & Gamble is clearing house and reforming the Department of Veterans Affairs after the wait-time scandal broke this year. VA Secretary Robert McDonald plans to fire up to 1,000 people, hire 28,000 more health care workers, and insists on calling the veterans who come to the VA "customers" as a sign of commitment to them, not the bureaucracy. Of the people who are expected to get the pink slip, "The report we've passed up to the Senate Committee and House Committee, has about 35 names on it. I've got another report that has over 1,000," McDonald said. "We're simplistically talking about people who violated our values." And of those values, McDonald continued, "It's integrity, it's advocacy, it's respect, it's excellence. These are the things that we try to do for our veterans." This is obviously smoke and mirrors. If Barack Obama was really interested in veterans' health, he would not have pulled out of Iraq without a SOFA ahead of his 2012 election. More...Comment | Share
FBI: Crime Rates Are Down, Gun Ownership Up
The FBI released its report on the crime statistics for 2013. It was a good year for guns and a bad year for criminals. "[T]he estimated number of violent crimes in 2013 decreased 4.4 percent when compared with 2012 figures, and the estimated number of property crimes decreased 4.1 percent," the FBI wrote. "There were an estimated 1,163,146 violent crimes reported to law enforcement last year, along with an estimated 8,632,512 property crimes." This happened as law-abiding Americans underwent 21,093,000 background checks to purchase firearms last year. The public is also increasingly accepting of firearms. More guns, less crime. Liberty and personal responsibility for the win. More...Comment | Share
'Net Neutrality' Gets Obama's Vote
In January, the DC Circuit Court struck down the FCC's so-called "net neutrality" rules as being beyond the scope of the agency's authority. Undeterred, the FCC in May proposed new rules, tweaked to comport with the court ruling. Now, Barack Obama is inserting himself into the debate. The New York Times reports, "Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt the strictest set of neutrality rules possible and to treat consumer broadband service as a public utility, similar to telephone or power companies." Obama declared, "We cannot allow Internet service providers to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas." In other words, he wants to be the one to pick winners and losers. Two things: Obama doesn't have the authority over the FCC, which is independent, though his bullying may still influence things. And second, his involvement likely poisons the well for debate in Congress on a measure to reach a compromise because he's clearly aiming to please his leftist base. More...Comment | Share
ObamaCare Author: 'Stupid American Voters'
We don't know what's more worrying -- that one of the authors of ObamaCare admitted he lied to the American people, or that he doesn't care because, self-government be damned, he knew what was best for the country. In newly uncovered video, MIT professor Jonathan Gruber told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania last year the "Affordable" Care Act had to be written in a way that obscured what the bill was actually about because that was the only way it could have passed. "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," he said. "And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass." This political strategy has been the trademark political move of the Obama administration. They hide information and then call political enemies stupid. Meanwhile, when the video of Gruber's comments started to gain traction in the Right media, the university took the video down. So much for the free flow of ideas in the ivory tower. More...Comment | Share
HHS Lowers ObamaCare Expectations
New enrollment estimates from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) illustrate the degree to which ObamaCare is underperforming. The Hill reports, "HHS, which previously declined to project 2015 sign-ups, said that between 9 million and 9.9 million people are expected to participate in the exchanges in 2015. The figure was less than the [Congressional Budget Office's] projection of 13 million for 2015 enrollment, raising questions about the exchanges' performance, compared with expectations." As it stands now, roughly 7.1 million Americans are considered officially enrolled, meaning HHS expects only between two and three million additional customers next year. The CBO anticipated a collective 25 million by 2017. Clearly, there's work to do. Nevertheless, health officials touted HHS's "important and significant" estimate and defended the slow start with the usual plea to give the system more time. Considering that insurance premiums are going up because of ObamaCare, more time won't solve this problem. Bottom line: Consumers aren't buying what the government is selling. More...Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
ObamaCare's Built-in Road Hazard
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The original letter of the ObamaCare law states in plain English that health insurance subsidies would be available only to people who purchase coverage through state-run exchanges. To put it generously, this was meant as a carrot to encourage states to create their own exchanges. When 36 states opted out of becoming cogs of federal machinery, instead relying on the feds to set up the exchange in their states, the IRS stepped in and declared subsidies would apply to all exchanges, including the federal one.
It's easy to see why the Obama administration enacted this arbitrary reinterpretation of a clearly worded statute. Without taxpayer-supported subsidies, many individuals and families would not be able to afford to purchase this so-called affordable insurance. The employer mandate would also no longer carry weight in those 36 states. The exchanges would collapse and ObamaCare's house of cards with it. But that's no excuse for the IRS or any other agency to just make up new rules without congressional input. And that's why King v. Burwell is headed to the Supreme Court.
Hard as it is to believe, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the administration's lawlessness. The administration lost a similar case, Halbig v. Burwell, before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit, though the full court later decided to rehear it en banc. That makes the Supreme Court's decision to take the case especially surprising because there is technically no circuit court split.
Writing for National Review Online, former Bush administration Justice Department official John Yoo expressed optimism that the High Court will rule correctly. Yoo points out, "If the Court agreed with the lower courts, or wasn’t sure about it, they could have just allowed the issue to further percolate." Furthermore, he wrote, "The grant of certiorari (which only takes four Justices) only makes sense if a majority wants to overrule the lower courts quickly."
Playing the guessing game of what the Supreme Court will do in any given case isn't for the faint of heart. Many people thought ObamaCare would be struck down two years ago, only to discover that Chief Justice John Roberts had practically rewritten the law to keep it alive.
If, in their majority wisdom, the Supremes do strike down the taxpayer-funded subsidy, all sorts of things could happen.
For starters, millions of Americans will lose their subsidies, making insurance far more expensive. Many will wind up uninsured. Beyond that, the employer mandate in 36 states would essentially become null and void. The currently delayed mandate requires employers with 50 or more employees to cover insurance should one of those employees purchase insurance with subsidies. No subsidies means no trigger for the employer mandate. Left in that situation, businesses would flock to the 36 states without exchanges to avoid being subject to the mandate, likely leading to the downfall of the mandate as a whole.
The individual mandate would also lose its teeth. One of the exemptions from being compelled to purchase insurance is if there are no affordable options available. Without subsidies, more Americans become exempt from the mandate. Insurance markets would be affected because the compulsory pool of purchasers would dry up.
On the flip side of all this is the fact that if the subsidy rule is struck down there may be intensified pressure for states to set up exchanges -- particularly those run by Republican governors who have so far been able to stand against the expansion of ObamaCare while still receiving taxpayer support from Washington in the form of benefits for their citizens.
Still, a Supreme Court rejection of the IRS's expansion of subsidies will likely stir the repeal debate. Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, they have the opportunity to dive deeply into extensive rewrites of the law, or push harder for outright repeal. They may find support among Democrats for some of these things, as ObamaCare was one of the many reasons they suffered such a drubbing at the polls last week. Indeed, as we predicted, it became a lightning rod.
Now, it's all up to the Supreme Court to, in a paraphrase of Nancy Pelosi, find out what's actually in the law.
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Courting Iran Is a Bad Idea
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The United States and Iran recently held secret meetings to discuss the future of diplomatic relations between the two nations. There is speculation of a new U.S. trade office opening in Tehran -- which would be the first diplomatic mission in the Islamic Republic since 1979, when it was overrun during Jimmy Carter's presidency. Recall that his foreign policy failure resulted in a hostage crisis.
As expected, U.S. officials deny this report. But how believable is this administration?
Obama declared during an interview with CBS on Sunday that there is still a “big gap” in nuclear negotiations with Iran and that we may not reach a permanent agreement before the Nov. 24 deadline. Yet something stinks here, especially since it came to light that Obama had written a secret letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei arguing the U.S. and Iran have shared interests in fighting ISIL.
Shared interests? Iran has been and continues to be one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism in the world. A recent Pentagon report reveals that “Iran continues to provide ‘calibrated aid to the Taliban’ in Afghanistan to help the group conduct attacks on U.S. and Western security forces operating in the country.” Iran does not share our interests in Afghanistan -- on the contrary, the Pentagon says Iran wants to “expand its sphere of influence” and minimize “Western presence and influence.” After all, in Iran's eyes, the U.S. is the "Great Satan.”
The United States is fighting terrorism while the radical regime in Iran is funding it. Yet Obama wishes to see Iran partner with America to fight against ISIL. Just how would this idea play out in our favor?
Iran’s opposition to the United States in Afghanistan alone should rule out any cooperation, but recall that this administration is desperate for help in fighting ISIL since Obama has tied our hands with his "no boots on the ground" promise.
Obama reportedly stated in his letter to Khamenei that a nuclear agreement could enable U.S-Iranian cooperation against ISIL. By this, Obama apparently means Iran can carry out its nuclear ambitions on condition of helping us fight. Making such concessions is more proof that Obama operates on foolish hope rather than reality.
Yet there is more bad news. Recent information from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an Iranian opposition group that has exposed Iran’s clandestine nuclear activities in the past, reveals that “a second device could be hidden at Iran’s Parchin military complex, or at some other site somewhere in Iran.” Further, the opposition group's leader stated, “Today's information uncovers a simple truth: The clerical regime is ceaselessly and secretly forging ahead with the military dimensions of its nuclear program and has no intention whatsoever of abandoning that program.”
It's time for Obama to wake up to the reality of the threat posed by a terrorist-supporting Iranian regime with nuclear capability. The survival of our greatest ally Israel is at stake, not to mention our own interests in the region. Short-sighted goals like hoping for help from an enemy to fight our enemy won't further our long-term objectives.
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