Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Graham on Egypt: Obama Admin Foreign Policy Is ‘Failing Across the Board’

'If Egypt becomes a failed fractured state, I just cannot 
imagine what Israel's future looks like'
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Egypt risks becoming a “failed state” if the recent outbreak of violence does not subside Wednesday on Fox News.
While Graham commended the Egyptians for their apparent rejection of Morsi and Islamism, he cautioned that Egypt needs a new constitution and new elections to get “out of this box.”
The South Carolina senator also blasted the Obama administration’s series of foreign policy failures that have led to unrest across the Middle East.
The United States needs to respond correctly to this crisis, Graham said, as the future of Israel and the broader region is at stake:
LINDSEY GRAHAM: Our friends are afraid and our enemies are emboldened. We’ve lost a lot of standing. This is a test for the president. I went over at the White House’s request to deliver a message to the military that we expect you to transition to civilian control and that the brotherhood overplayed their hand and this backlash against them is real, but the only way out of this box is a new constitution and new election. This is a test of American leadership, from Benghazi to Cairo, to Damascus, we’re — to Baghdad, we’re failing across the board. Obama’s foreign policy is not working. The Middle East is literally in flames. And the biggest prize of all is Egypt. If we lose Egypt, if Egypt becomes a failed fractured state, I just cannot imagine what Israel’s future looks like.
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Presidential Lawlessness: It's So Cool

When the law no longer commands respect, one can pretty well write off a nation that pretends to be a constitutional republic. But how can The People respect the law when the government doesn't? President Obama seems to regard the law as a mere inconvenience.
In his must-read August 5 article "The Front Man" at National Review, Kevin Williamson sums up our Harvard Law School president's taste for lawlessness: "He has spent the past five years methodically testing the limits of what he can get away with, like one of those crafty velociraptors testing the electric fence in Jurassic Park."
With a compliant Congress in his first two years, and a divided, gridlocked Congress thereafter, Mr. Obama has been able to "get away with" an awful lot. One of the ways the president flouts the law is by not enforcing it, such as in his recent "decision" to delay enforcing the employer mandate of ObamaCare. Where does the president get off thinking he has the authority to refuse to enforce a law? The president doesn't seem to understand his job.
Also, under Obama the executive branch just makes up law, a task generally reserved for the legislative branch. Williamson reports that "although the IRS has no statutory power to collect Affordable Care Act -- related fines in states that have not voluntarily set up health-care exchanges, Obama's managers there have announced that they will do so anyway."

Via: American Thinker

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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

[VIDEO] Fox Guest Slams Rodeo Clown Uproar: Liberals ‘Get to Talk, Everybody Else Shuts Up’

On Fox News Wednesday morning, talk show host Michael Graham and columnist Zerlina Maxwell sparred over the Missouri State Fair’s use of a rodeo clown dressed like PresidentBarack Obama, with Graham dismissing the bit as “a bad joke,” and Maxwell arguing that it tacitly encouraged violence against the president.
“Oh, my gosh, somebody making fun of a president?” Graham said. “That’s never happened before! I’m so glad when George W. Bush was president we didn’t see people with banners with him with a Hitler mustache, and plays on stage off-Broadway calling for his assassination. I’m so glad when Lincoln was president there weren’t cartoons portraying him as ape—oh wait! They were. Folks, it’s a joke. That’s all it was.”
“We’re not calling for a March on Washington, but it’s not funny,” Maxwell countered. “This president has received more threats than any president in American history. And I think it’s interesting that you compare it to Abraham Lincoln. Are you sure you want to do that?”
“At parade in the 1980s in Philadelphia, the guys who were sweeping up after the animals were wearing Reagan masks,” Graham pressed. “They were scooping up horse poop in Reagan masks! I don’t remember a single reporter going, ‘Oh my gosh, we made fun of president.’”
“You keep comparing it to presidents who have been shot, which is interesting,” Maxwell said. “I think there’s one standard. We shouldn’t do this with any president. I don’t think it’s appropriate for us to do it when it’s the President of the United States. You can disagree with his policies, but why are we mowing him down with a bull? Why are we cheering that?”
“There is only one difference: that is the double standard,” Graham said. “You call for limiting speech, because that is what the left does. You don’t believe in free discourse. You don’t believe in free speech. You believe you get to talk and everyone else shuts up. So W can be called on to be killed and nobody cares.”
Watch the full clip below, via Fox News:
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

[VIDEO] Dr. Ben Carson's Prescription for ObamaCare: Permanent Delay

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Well, the hits keep coming, tonight another "ObamaCare" delay, and this one hitting you directly in the pocketbook!

 (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

 RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: The truth of the matter is that everybody's costs are going to skyrocket. That's the design of the plan so that you can't afford private sector insurance and have to go to government. Single payer is what they want!

 UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A new snag in "Obama care" to tell you about. The administration is delaying again yet another one of the provisions of the president's signature health care law.

 UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This time, the hangup is over costs for individual patients, specifically the part of the law that limits out-of- pocket insurance expenses for us. That will be pushed back to 2015.

Via: Fox News

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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Kerry: Obama Will Act on Climate Change Without Congressional Approval

kerryAt a joint news conference with his Brazilian counterpart on Tuesday, Secretary of State John Kerry praised Brazil for its commitment to climate change initiatives, and he promised that the Obama administration also is determined to do something about it.

"So the challenge is ahead of us, for all of us, and I know that the United States has a great commitment under President Obama to take our own initiatives, not even to wait for congressional action, but to move administratively in order to do our part. I know we can continue to work with Brazil on this issue of climate, and we look forward to doing so."

President Obama repeatedly has said he won't wait for Congress to act -- on jobs, recess appointments, immigration, gun control, and other issues -- where "we can act administratively without additional congressional authorization, and just get it done,” as he said in October 2011.

Congressional Republicans have done little more than complain about the president exceeding his constitutional authority. One of the most vocal critics is Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, who told Fox News on Monday that he agrees with those who say that Republicans should sue the president to check his executive overreach:

"I would sue," Paul told Sean Hannity. "We did sue over the recess appointments (to the National Labor Relations Board). Remember, the president declared a (congressional) recess even though we said we weren't in recess? And the court has rebuked him severely on this. When it goes to the Supreme Court, I think they're going to once again say he usurped power that's not his. We should do the same thing here," Paul said, referring to Obama's decision to delay various elements of the new health care law. 

 Via: CNS News

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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

The Disaster Called OBAMACARE

Here are just a few of the battles that are being fought in the war against OBAMACARE and the unmitigated disaster which it will become once it takes full effect January 1, 2014











Via: Fox News

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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

No OFA organizers to be found at OFA's 'Action August' anti-NRA event

Same thing happened yesterday.

It turns out that the “Action August” event promoted by Organizing for Action was not even organized by President Obama’s former campaign operation – now re-branded as a political action group.
A group of about two dozen protesters appeared in front of the National Rifle Association’s Headquarters in Fairfax, Va., Wednesday morning to mark the eighth month anniversary since the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
But according to local anti-gun organizers, they were the ones who brought the signs, stickers, and American flags to the event. No OFA representative was present.
The group displayed a clothesline of t-shirts featuring the name of the Sandy Hook victims and the victims of the Virginia Tech shooting. During the protest several drivers who drove by he NRA building honked in support of the group.
“The group gathers on the 14th day of every month since the shooting,” explained Joanna Simon of the Reston-Herndon Alliance to End Gun Violence, indicating that they protest and communicate with other local anti-groups.
Another McLean protest organizer explained that he routinely includes OFA in his e-mails promoting the protest event.
A volunteer for the Terry McAuliffe campaign showed up to collect emails, and quickly went on his way after speaking with a few of the protesters.
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Location: Fairfax, VA, USA

Obama's A La Carte Enforcement


Barack Obama's administration has, yet again, decided to unilaterally delay another part of ObamaCare.
The latest delay is for insurers and employers as it relates to capping out-of-pocket expenses. The administration delayed for one year (2015) the requirement that insurers limit out-of-pocket expenses to $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family. This will allow them a grace period to get their computer systems in place or something. Isn't that nice for them? Meanwhile, the rest of you individuals will get no such waiver for an adjustment period.
This just adds to the growing list of exemptions and unilateral delays that are making a mockery of ObamaCare and our system of laws. First we have the delay of the employer mandate until after the mid-term election and then we had the decision to essentially exempt Congress and its staffers from having to play by the same rules as average Americans who are forced into ObamaCare exchanges.
In other words, ObamaCare isn't ready to be forced on the American people. But rather than delaying it – preferably permanently – Obama has taken to asserting new-found powers as president, which I've yet to discover in our Constitution. The fact is that ObamaCare is the law and nowhere in the Constitution does it say that the president has the unilateral authority to simply ignore laws or change them. Yet this is exactly what is happening and it is dangerous if we put it in a larger context.
ObamaCare is just a recent example of Obama acting outside his authority as outlined in the Constitution. Obama feels no need to involve Congress in certain circumstances or to enforce the laws, which the last time I checked was what the executive branch existed for: Article II, Section 3 states, “[The President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed....” Yet the examples of Obama failing to do this are piling up: ObamaCare, immigration, DOMA, mandatory drug sentencing, the GM bailout. These are all examples where Obama has taken an a la carte approach to enforcing our laws, picking and choosing which ones he wants to enforce and which ones he'd like to change and make up his own rules. He's also stated many times that he is not going to wait around for Congress to take action on a whole host of issues including gun control, climate change, education, jobs, immigration. Apparently the separation of powers is completely useless to this president.
Senator Rand Paul and a few others have called out this president's actions as being what they are: Illegal. No matter which president is in the White House, he is sidestepping our Constitution and fundamentally undermining the rule of law and this is something we cannot tolerate.
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Location: New York, NY, USA

The New York Times takes down the Clinton Foundation. This could be devastating for Bill and Hillary

Is the New York Times being guest edited by Rush Limbaugh? Today it runs with a fascinating takedown of the Clinton Foundation – that vast vanity project that conservatives are wary of criticising for being seen to attack a body that tries to do good. But the liberal NYT has no such scruples. The killer quote is this:
For all of its successes, the Clinton Foundation had become a sprawling concern, supervised by a rotating board of old Clinton hands, vulnerable to distraction and threatened by conflicts of interest. It ran multimillion-dollar deficits for several years, despite vast amounts of money flowing in.
Over a year ago Bill Clinton met with some aides and lawyers to review the Foundation's progress and concluded that it was a mess. Well, many political start-ups can be, especially when their sole selling point is the big name of their founder (the queues are short at the Dan Quayle Vice Presidential Learning Center). But what complicated this review – what made its findings more politically devastating – is that the Clinton Foundation has become about more than just Bill. Now both daughter Chelsea and wife, and likely presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton have taken on major roles and, in the words of the NYT "efforts to insulate the foundation from potential conflicts have highlighted just how difficult it can be to disentangle the Clintons’ charity work from Mr Clinton’s moneymaking ventures and Mrs Clinton’s political future." Oh, they're entangled alright.
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Mark Levin: ‘Entrenched’ Republican ‘losers’ may cost GOP the House in 2014

Conservative talker Mark Levin blasted Republican House leaders on his Tuesday radio show, warning that by attacking more conservative members of the GOP, Speaker John Boehner and prominent Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are throwing away the 2014 midterm elections.
Levin, author of “The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic,” said the GOP establishment’s disparagement of conservative colleagues, could be a disaster in a midterm “turn out the base” election.
“This is my great fear,” Levin said. “My great fear is that guys like Boehner, and quite frankly Paul Ryan, and Eric Cantor and his goofball [Kevin] McCarthy — they don’t get it at all. Midterm elections in particular are base elections, they are turnout elections. And they’re doing everything they can to turn us off, to turn us off. Where are they standing ground and keeping ground and fighting? Instead it’s, ‘No, no we’re not going to shut down the government.’ Even if that’s your ultimate view, why do you reveal that to the leftists and the media? It’s like playing poker and the idiot shows his cards — and that’s what he does. ‘He look at this.’”
“And also, amnesty?” he continued. “Pathway to citizenship? This is their number one issue. No. And then we have Obamacare. The president of the United States, rubbing the Republican’s nose in it,acting like he’s king, and as I’ve been saying and now others, an imperial president. ‘No. we’ll follow this part of the law. No, I’m suspending this part of the law. No, I’m deferring this part of the law.’ What the hell is that? And what are the Republicans doing about it? Now the typical Republican response would be ‘well what do you want us to do about it?’”
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

DC Obamacare exchange awards $375k grant to Planned Parenthood


As part of its effort to boost enrollment in the exchange created by President Obama’s health care law, the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange doled out $6.4 million to 35 DC-based groups. (Thinkstock)


Washington, D.C.’s health insurance exchange has awarded a $375,000 grant to abortion provider Planned Parenthood to help enroll participants in Obamacare, the exchange announced on Tuesday.
As part of its effort to boost enrollment in the exchange created by President Obama’s health care law, the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange doled out $6.4 million to 35 DC-based groups. Those groups include local churches as well as health care and community organizations.
One of the largest awards went to Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington D.C. A full list of groups is available here.
“We are excited to create these partnerships with trusted organizations that have deep roots in the communities that make up the District of Columbia,” Diane C. Lewis, chair of the exchange’s executive board, said in a statement.
According to the exchange, 150 representatives will undergo 30 hours of “rigorous training” to enable them to answer questions about Obamacare for those seeking to enroll. They will be tasked with helping participants evaluate their options and assist them in applying for benefits.
The exchange is scheduled to be open for applicants on Oct. 1, with benefits kicking in on Jan. 1, 2014.
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

New Insurance Mandate Forces Businesses Cut Employees’ Hours

In Case You Missed It...                                                   August 14, 2013
New Insurance Mandate Forces Businesses Cut Employees’ Hours
Another day, another report of ObamaCare forcing small businesses across the country to cut employees' hours, curtail hiring or reduce wages – all while almost 12 million Americans are still struggling to find work.  The report below from NBC News adds to the growing list of evidence that employers are preparing for the negative impact ObamaCare will have on their businesses and their employees.  The concerns come from employers and employees alike:
  • A small business owner speaks of the real impact of cutting hours: “Losing five or six hours a week, that's $50, $60 a week or a couple hundred dollars a month, that's a car payment.”
  • Part-time math professor Tracy Sullivan lost half her income as a result of the law: “I never thought it would impact me directly. I was stunned.”
  • And United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) President, Joseph Hansen, notes that the worst may be yet to come: “Wait a year, you'll see a tremendous impact as workers have their hours reduced and their incomes reduced.”


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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

MSNBC’s Alex Wagner and White House chef Sam Kass dating

White House chef Sam Kass, right, and chef Jose Andreas demonstrate chemistry in cooking for Walker Jones ES students. (James M. Thresher for TWP) Dating: Alex Wagner and Sam Kass. The White House chef, 33, and the MSNBC host, 35, have been quietly dating for the past year or so. He’s the heartthrob behind the first lady’s White House garden and “Let’s Move” initiative who just landed at No. 3 on the Hill’s “Most Beautiful” list (where he reported his relationship status as “private”); she’s the gorgeous D.C. native/political analyst with her own show on MSNBC.

 How did two such public pretty people avoid the spotlight? By keeping everything discreet and low key: The two were spotted together at the White House Correspondents’ parties, but no red carpets or public PDAs, so they blended into the crowds.

 Via: Washington Post

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Location: Washington, DC, USA

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Americans are having babies early to save on their taxes

Katherine Heigl does an impression of my face when I discovered there was a pretty huge research literature on this question. (Apatow Productions)Thanks to medical advances like Caesarian sections and induced labor, women finally have a small degree of control over when they give birth. And where there are humans making choices, there are public finance economists asking how tax incentives influence them.

So it shouldn’t be too surprising that Williams’s Sara LaLumia, the University of Chicago’s James Sallee and the Treasury Department’s Nicholas Turner took it upon themselves to figure out if policies like the Child Tax Credit (CTC), the dependent exemption and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC, which is more generous for families with more children) are pushing mothers with due dates in January to move their children’s births forward, so as to reap another year of tax benefits.
They actually aren’t the first ones to tackle this question. They cite at leastfour previous studies that found that parents alter birth timing to maximize tax and other public benefits. And sure enough, their research backs that up. LaLumia, Sallee  and Turner used a Social Security Administration database to get the Social Security numbers for every child born between 2001 and 2010, and then collected all tax returns that included those SSNs in the year of the child’s birth (if you’re doing work like this, it really pays to have access to sensitive government data).
They then limited the sample to children born between Dec. 25 and Jan. 7. For each return in the sample, they use a tax calculator to estimate how much tax savings the parents of December babies got because of the early birth, and how much the parents of January babies lost out on. Then they get their linear regression on.

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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA

Why do Californians use less electricity than everyone else?

The average Californian uses about 33 percent less electricity at home than the average American in the rest of the country. That shouldn’t be overly surprising, given the state’s mild weather.
What is surprising, though, is that California’s electricity use has basically stayed flat for the past four decades, in stark contrast with the rest of the United States
california electricity use per capita
Since 1960, household electricity use in the rest of the United States has more than tripled, climbing past 12,000 kWh per person on average (although it has plateaued of late). By contrast, in California, electricity use per capita doubled in the 1960s but then more or less stopped growing for the next four decades.
Why would that be? One popular theory is that California’s particularly aggressive green policies should get credit. Back in the 1970s, the state began adopting stringent standards to promote energy-saving appliances and home insulation. Then, in 1982, California tweaked its utility regulations, in a policy known as “decoupling.” Power companies would no longer get paid based on the number of electrons they sold. Instead, they’d have incentives to promote efficiency.

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Location: California, USA

My Week in Oil Boom Country By Amy Harder

WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA—I had zero cell-phone service when I landed in Bismarck. I know this state is mostly rural, but how was I supposed to know Sprint doesn't operate here? Two hours, $183, and one new cheap smartphone later (thanks, Radio Shack!), I was on the road for an almost four-hour drive to Williston, the heart of America's oil boom.
Monday
Everyone warned me that the 132-mile drive between Dickinson—another town booming from all the oil—and Williston was going to be longer than advertised. They were right. Trucks hauling oil, fracking material, and heavy equipment were hogging the roads and tearing them up. Construction just started to expand this small two-lane road built for sleepy farm towns to a four-lane highway so it can handle all the newfound traffic of the past four years. Like many parts of the oil-boom status quo, this construction is temporarily exacerbating the way of life here, but eventually, it will permanently benefit everyone. That is the goal, anyway.
Four hours later, I finally arrived in Williston, a town the Census Bureau bills as the fastest growing small city in the country. Its population in 2010 was 14,000; today it's at least 26,000 and possibly as high as 33,000.
I had managed to secure a last-minute dinner with Harold Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, an independent oil company that had the earliest and still has the largest footprint in the Bakken oil fields of Western North Dakota. (He was also Mitt Romney's energy adviser during the presidential election.)
We made reservations at The Williston, the fanciest restaurant in town, for 6:30. Hamm was running late but would still make it to dinner, I was told. I decided to head over to The Williston around 7 p.m. and wait at the bar. After driving my Altima rental car around potholes and construction (a scene almost more common than the oil industry itself in the oil patch), I found the restaurant and situated myself at a corner bar stool.
Forty-five minutes past. Hamm stood me up. I sighed. He was a gentleman about it, though. He called me and told me he was stuck in traffic near Watford City, an even smaller town that locals here say is really the heart of the oil boom. Isn't that ironic: The man most responsible for the Bakken oil boom is stuck in traffic created by the Bakken oil boom. We made arrangements for breakfast the next morning at 7:30.
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Location: North Dakota, USA

US government seeks to block American-US Airways merger

The Justice Department and a number of state attorneys general are challenging the proposed $11 billion merger between US Airways Group Inc. and American Airlines' parent company, AMR Corp. (Aug. 13)
By Gregory Karp  In a surprise move Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department sued to block the $11 billion merger of American Airlines and US Airways, which would create the world's largest airline.


The hookup had been viewed by many as a culmination to a wave of major-carrier consolidation that has helped put major U.S. airlines on more sound financial footing.
Watch this video

However, the Justice Department said it would harm competition and U.S. consumers, as just four airlines would control more than 80 percent of the U.S. commercial air travel market.
"The department sued to block this merger because it would eliminate competition between US Airways and American and put consumers at risk of higher prices and reduced service," Bill Baer, head of the Justice Department Antitrust Division, said in a statement. "Both airlines have stated they can succeed on a standalone basis, and consumers deserve the benefit of that continuing competitive dynamic."

The department took action against this merger, yet recently let go other combinations between major airlines.

Industry experts said the move was out of step with past practices and would potentially leave US Air and American, which is emerging from bankruptcy, at a competitive disadvantage.
Travel industry analyst Henry H. Harteveldt called the suit "unprecedented." He couldn’t recall a time when Justice had sued to block an airline merger. Typically, the Department of Transportation raises objections that are worked out between the government and the airlines.
"The time for the DOJ to act was five or six years ago when this wave of mergers started," he added.
Via: Chicago Tribune
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Location: Washington, DC, USA

Bozell Column: Levin to the Rescue

Brent Bozell's pictureOnly those happily trampling on the last vestiges of freedom will deny that our federal government as a constitutional republic has ceased to function. The president can no longer control (nor does this one want to control) the enormous and ever-expanding bureaucracy functioning as a government by fiat. The legislative branch, so corrupted, so drunk by the allure of power, so disdainful of its constituents, is unable to  stop its bankrupting ways. The judiciary is perhaps the worst. The Supreme Court is openly rejecting the authority of the Constitution itself.

If the federal government refuses to adhere to the enumerated powers of the Constitution, what can the citizenry do about it? The events of the past five years (more, actually) prove this. It has become virtually impossible to stop the agenda of a radical Chief Executive who brazenly uses the federal government as his personal political machine. It is almost impossible to defeat an incumbent member of Congress with all the advantages it has awarded itself. For all intents it is impossible to replace a member of the Supreme Court.
The left is content with this terrible turn of events. By “transformation” they meant the transfer of power to the state. Conservatives are loath to declare American exceptionalism dead, yet are powerless to stop the statist steamroller. With every cycle the situation worsens. At some point the unthinkable -- tyranny -- is upon us. We are running out of time. Only radical surgery will save the patient now.

Enter Mark Levin, M.D., with his new book, "The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic." Levin is a Constitutional scholar -- and he shines. He argues passionately that the federal government can be brought under control only if new limitations are thrust upon it by its citizenry. He proposes a Constitutional convention, not one called by Congress but one impaneled by two-thirds of state legislatures, and which would require a three-fourths margin to pass any new amendments. It is the lesser known of the two options provided by Article V of the Constitution.

What should a Constitutional convention tackle? Levin offers eleven amendments for consideration, with appropriate subdivisions, each carefully researched and each designed to reduce the power of the state.

Term limits for  Congress is the first liberty amendment Levin offers. It is my view also the most important.  Only when there are limits (12 years of service) will Congress be populated by men and women driven only by the call to service, not the siren song of power. The millions delivered by special interests for the re-election of incumbents who, in turn, reward said interests with billions in grants, contracts, tax shelters and the like -- will cease.
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SoCal Senator Pushes For Ammunition Buying License

gun sales ammo gunsLOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A controversial gun measure proposed by a Southern California lawmaker that would require background checks for all ammunition purchases statewide is moving forward in Sacramento.

 Senator Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles) first introduced Senate Bill 53 last December, which would require anyone wishing to purchase ammunition in California to first obtain a Ammunition Purchase Permit issued by the Department of Justice, valid for one year from the date of issuance.
To obtain such a permit, the holder would have to pass a traditional background check as well as a mental health check, according to De León. The legislation would also ban online and mail order sales of ammunition to Californians.
In addition, SB 53 would require all ammunition sales to take place at a limited list of State-approved “ammunition vendors”, who would also be required to submit sales records to the CA Department of Justice.
But De León told KNX 1070 NEWSRADIO the legislation is intended to address an apparent loophole in California law that allows anyone – including convicted felons – to buy ammunition just about anywhere.
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Location: California, USA

Obamacare Delays: A User’s Guide

Government delays cost control measure in latest of series of Obamacare hiccups
APThe decision to delay a provision that was meant to limit the out-of-pocket health costs paid by individuals is the third such deferral of a key Obamacare component since July.
“The administration has delayed until 2015 a significant consumer protection in the law that limits how much people may have to spend on their own health care,” the New York Timesreported on Monday.
The provision limited out-of-pocket and deductible costs to $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a family.
However, “federal officials have granted a one-year grace period to some insurers” that enables them to either eradicate these limits or increase the threshold and set higher maximums.
The change was published on the Department of Labor’s website in February, but went unnoticed until it was explained in Part XII of “FAQs about the Affordable Care Act Implementation.”
The modification joins a growing list of provisions that have been pushed to the side in what critics say is an effort to soften the blow of a flawed piece of legislation.
The employer mandate was delayed for a year in July. Officials pointed to feedback from businesses as the reason for the delay, noting there were “concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively.”
The administration announced that same week that Health and Human Services (HHS) would rely on consumers’ “self-reports” to determine eligibility for Obamacare benefits. Critics said the change would invite fraud.
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Location: Los Angeles, CA, USA
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