Public Approval of Health Care Law

Polling Data

Poll	Date	Sample	For/Favor	Against/Oppose	Spread
RCP Average	10/1 - 10/20	--	39.9	48.7	Against/Oppose +8.8
CNN/Opinion Research	10/18 - 10/20	841 A	41	56	Against/Oppose +15
ABC News/Wash Post	10/17 - 10/20	1002 A	46	49	Against/Oppose +3
Rasmussen Reports*	10/12 - 10/13	1000 LV	47	52	Against/Oppose +5
NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl	10/7 - 10/9	800 A	38	43	Against/Oppose +5
Associated Press/GfK	10/3 - 10/7	1227 A	28	38	Against/Oppose +10
FOX News*	10/1 - 10/2	952 RV	36	52	Against/Oppose +16
CBS News	10/1 - 10/2	1021 A	43	51	Against/Oppose +8

All Public Approval of Health Care Law Polling Data

RCP POLL AVERAGE Public Approval of Health Care Law

39.9 For/Favor 48.7 Against/Oppose +8.8

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Via: Real Clear Politics

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FISA Court renews phone metadata program, declassifies order Posted by Ali Watkins on October 21, 2013

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced late last week that it would declassify the recent court order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that renewed the National Security Agency's hotly-contested telephone metadata collection program.

The program, which was the subject of the first documents leaked by former defense contractor Edward Snowden and operates under Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act, collects domestic telephony metadata from third party telecommunications companies. This metadata includes time and duration of calls, along with the number dialed. Content of communications and location data is not included, officials have said.

Despite a wave of public outcry against the NSA's surveillance program after its unauthorized disclosure in June, the court order cited congressional oversight and previous court interpretations as the grounds for the program's renewal. The program was due to expire on October 11, 2013.

The ODNI's declassification of the FISA court order in the immediate aftermath of the program's renewal signals a bow to growing calls for transparency in the wake of Snowden's leaks. The expired court order that had previously authorized the program was not declassified until months after the bulk metadata collections were revealed in June.

The new order renews the program for less than three months, and is due to expire on January 3, 2014. It's likely that some kind of legislative changes to the NSA and the FISA Court will come from Congress before the new order expires.

Via: McClatchy 

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Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/10/21/205970/fisa-court-renews-phone-metadata.html#storylink=cpy

Christie Drops Opposition to Gay Marriage, Becomes Legal in Jersey

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie on Monday withdrew legal opposition to gay marriage, making same-sex nuptials the law in the state.
The move makes New Jersey the 14th state in the nation to legalize gay marriage.

On Friday, the state Supreme Court refused to delay a lower-court order for the state to begin recognizing same-sex marriages. On Monday morning, Christie said in a statement that he ordered an appeal dropped.

"Chief Justice Rabner left no ambiguity about the unanimous court's view on the ultimate decision in this matter when he wrote, 'same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today," Christie said.

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"Although the governor strongly disagrees with the Court substituting its judgment for the constitutional process of the elected branches or a vote of the people, the Court has now spoken clearly as to their view of the New Jersey Constitution and, therefore, same-sex marriage is the law.

"The governor will do his constitutional duty and ensure his Administration enforces the law as dictated by the New Jersey Supreme Court."

One second after midnight in Lambertville, a city of just under 4,000 people on the Delaware River, Beth Asaro and Joanne Schailey said "I do" in what they believed was the state's first such ceremony. Their union before Mayor David DelVecchio was held in a municipal meeting hall.

Via: Newsmax

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HealthCare Dot Commie

Obamacare’s “insurance marketplace” works just as well as every other Soviet-style system.

The most surprising thing about the botched launch of Obamacare’s “online insurance marketplace” is that the failure surprised anyone. From the moment, during the 2008 presidential campaign, that Barack Obama began promising to reform our medical delivery system, conservatives have repeatedly warned the public that his view of the issue was distorted by tired statist shibboleths. We pointed out that Obama’s closest friends and most influential mentors were communists and that, for him, “reform” was a euphemism for “federal take-over.” Based on these realities, we predicted that Obama’s brave new health care system would be a government-dominated, command-and-control disaster.

Nonetheless, there was widespread shock and bewilderment when the government bureaucrats steering Obamacare’s flagship ran it aground on its October 1st maiden voyage. How can anyone be surprised? The story of PPACA’s online marketplace is just another cliché-filled scene in the tragicomedy of centrally planned, government-run systems. It doesn’t matter if they are conceived in Moscow or inside the Beltway. All such systems meet the same fate. Whether imposed by well-meaning but naïve zealots or foisted on the electorate by despots who simply lust after “command” and “control,” they are always holed below the water line by the sheer incompetence of government bureaucrats.

Yet Obamacare’s advocates thought their pet project would be different. And it’s not like we right-wing knuckle-draggers were the only doubters. The HHS bureaucrats themselves feared that the technology of HealthCare.gov would not be ready for prime time by October. A mere six months before go-live, the government apparatchik overseeing its software development had given up on the possibility that it would be efficient and was obviously clinging to the pathetic hope that he was headed for a little rough weather rather than an outright shipwreck. He told a national policy meeting of America’s Health Insurance Plans, “We are under 200 days from open enrollment, and I’m pretty nervous.”

Via: The American Spectator

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The Obamacare website: The world outruns the government — by a decade

We recently found out that the incredibly effective ObamaCare exchange website is – well, not exactly state-of-the-art.

The federal health care exchange was built using 10-year-old technology that may require constant fixes and updates for the next six months and the eventual overhaul of the entire system, technology experts told USA TODAY.

The site could be perfect, but if the systems from which it draws data are not up to speed, it doesn’t matter, said John Engates, chief technology officer at Rackspace, a cloud computer service provider.

“It is a core problem in the sense of it’s fundamental to this thing actually working, but it’s not necessarily a problem that the people who wrote HealthCare.gov can get to,” Engates said. “Even if they had a perfect system, it still won’t work.”

Way to keep up, Washington. Ten years ago was one year before Facebook even existed. It was four years before the first iPhone. Ten years ago was the first ”Pirates of the Caribbean“ movie. The biggest song was 50 Cent’s “In Da Club.”

Government is nothing if not perpetually behind the curve.

The Obamacare website is a quintessential example of government process and technological prowess. (And reflects the effectiveness of the $80 billion a year they so prudently spend on IT.)

The site was was certainly worth the $634 million of our money the Barack Obama Administration spent. On a no-bid contract. Given to a huge Obama campaign donor. Who was previously fired for serial incompetence by the Canadian government.

All for a law We the People have never liked or wanted. Which is in the process of destroying not just private health insurance sector – but the entire private sector.

But this is what government does. To paraphrase Sir Ernest John Pickstone Benn, “Government is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy.”

Government’s motto should be; When in doubt, don’t.

Via: The Daily Caller

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