Erick Erickson's Blog, page 187

12 Convicted Murderers and Now a Traitor

As Governor Arkansas, Mike Huckabee issued 1,033 pardons and commutations, including for 12 convicted murderers.

Several have come back to haunt him.

But if 12 convicted murderers were not enough, Huckabee has gone across the final and furthest bridge. He's now all in favor of granting clemency to Jonathan Pollard — a traitor whose treason conducted on behalf of the Soviet Union (indirectly through others who forwarded on his intel) and others, including but not limited to Israel, caused deaths, destruction, and all sorts of havoc with our national security.

This is what we call a bridge too far around here.

Herman Cain & Me

As most of you know, Herman Cain has a radio show on WSB out of Atlanta, but he has formed a Presidential Exploratory Committee.

Tonight is Herman's last night on the radio.

Tomorrow, from 6pm to 8pm ET, I'll conduct an interview with Herman on WSB about his Presidential bid. You'll be able to listen, as always, at http://wsbradio.com. You can also call in and ask Herman your own questions.

Then, on Thursday, starting at 7pm, I'll be taking over that time slot on WSB. My show will run 7pm to 10pm each weeknight followed by Dave Ramsey. This is a big change for me and my family. I'll continue my CNN commitment and RedState too.

It'll make for a fun and exciting time!

Tonight, I'll broadcast my last show from 9pm to midnight. You can listen online and you can call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK. Starting Thursday, Atlanta drive time on the largest talk radio station in the nation belongs to me!

Obamacare Meets Its Death Panel

"Judge Vinson's ruling ultimately tells a group of people used to saying 'yes we can' that, in fact, 'no, you can't.' "

I am not, with this post, going to attempt a detailed exposition on Judge Vinson's ruling that declared the individual mandate unconstitutional and, due to the lack of a severability clause, struck the whole law as unconstitutional. But I will give you a brief overview and direct you to other good sources.

Here are the basics you will need to start your day.

First, you need to understand that the case before Judge Vinson was not directed at whether the federal government can involve itself in healthcare. Instead, the case was whether the individual mandate is constitutional.

The individual mandate is the keystone to the whole legislation. Without it, the funding mechanisms of the law collapse in on themselves. Judge Vinson ruled that forcing people to buy healthcare insurance, whether they want it or not, is unconstitutional.

As Judge Vinson put it rather directly,

It is difficult to imagine that a nation which began, at least in part, as the result of opposition to a British mandate giving the East India Company a monopoly and imposing a nominal tax on all tea sold in America would have set out to create a government with the power to force people to buy tea in the first place.

To understand this, you must understand there is a great difference between activity and inactivity. Congress certainly has the right to regulate activity in commerce, but Congress cannot compel you to act. The Obama Adminstration called this argument "novel" and "unprecedented," but as Kyle Wingfield points out, the judge turned this around on them and got to the core of the activity vs. inactivity debate.

According to the defendants [the Obama administration], because the Supreme Court has never identified a distinction between activity and inactivity as a limitation on Congress' commerce power, to hold otherwise would "break new legal ground" and be "novel" and "unprecedented." … First, it is interesting that the defendants — apparently believing the best defense is a good offense — would use the words "novel" and "unprecedented" since, as previously noted, those are the exact same words that the CRS [Congressional Research Service] and CBO [Congressional Budget Office] used to describe the individual mandate before it became law. Furthermore, there is a simple and rather obvious reason why the Supreme Court has never distinguished between activity and inactivity before: it has not been called upon to consider the issue because, until now, Congress had never attempted to exercise its Commerce Clause power in such a way before.

Having ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional, the judge then relied on the Obama Administration and Congress's own words to declare the whole law unconstitutional.

For a more thorough analysis of the severability issue, John at Powerline has a good write up. Suffice it to say, as Avik Roy notes in Forbes,

In order to overturn Judge Vinson's ruling upon appeal, it will be necessary for the government to rebut itself: to disprove its own arguments that the individual mandate is essential to PPACA.

Why? Because, according to Judge Vinson, and again from his actual decision at pages 68-70 as quoted by Avik Roy:

Moreover, the defendants have conceded that the Act's health insurance reforms cannot survive without the individual mandate, which is extremely significant because the various insurance provisions, in turn, are the very heart of the Act itself. The health insurance reform provisions were cited repeatedly during the health care debate, and they were instrumental in passing the Act. In speech after speech President Obama emphasized that the legislative goal was "health insurance reform" and stressed how important it was that Congress fundamentally reform how health insurance companies do business, and "protect every American from the worst practices of the insurance industry." See, for example, Remarks of President Obama, The State of the Union, delivered Jan. 27, 2009.28 Meanwhile, the Act's supporters in the Senate and House similarly spoke repeatedly and often of the legislative efforts as being the means to comprehensively reform the health insurance industry…

Congress has also acknowledged in the Act itself that the individual mandate is absolutely "essential" to the Act's overarching goal of expanding the availability of affordable health insurance coverage and protecting individuals with pre-existing medical conditions: "[I]f there were no [individual mandate], many individuals would wait to purchase health insurance until they needed care . . . The [individual mandate] is essential to creating effective health insurance markets in which improved health insurance products that are guaranteed issue and do not exclude coverage of pre-existing conditions can be sold." Act § 501(a)(2)(I) (emphasis added).

In other words, the individual mandate is indisputably necessary to the Act's insurance market reforms, which are, in turn, indisputably necessary to the purpose of the Act. This is obviously a very different situation than in Alaska Airlines, Inc., supra, 480 U.S. at 694 n.18 and 696 (unconstitutional provision severed from rest of statute where the provision was "uncontroversial," and the debate on the final bill demonstrated its "relative unimportance"), and is more in line with the situation alluded to in New York, supra, 505 U.S. at 187 (suggesting by implication that the entire legislation should be struck when "the purpose of the Act is . . . defeated by the invalidation" of one of its provisions).

The Left's reaction has been humorous. Powerline notes Ezra Klein's particular reaction. Klein, you will remember, only a few short weeks ago declared the constitution difficult to understand because it was written more than 100 years ago. He then, being a non-lawyer, did his best to explain Judge Vinson's decision to readers of the Washington Post and bungled badly.

Bush v. Gore is the best comparison the left can come up with while attacking Judge Roy's political motivations.

Jen Rubin makes mincemeat out of these arguments by succinctly noting

These are complaints, not legal arguments. And they suggest that the left was totally unprepared for the constitutional attack on their beloved handiwork. After all, the recent mocking by the left of conservatives' reverence for the Constitution suggests they are mystified that a 200-year old document could get in the way of their historic achievement. They are truly nonplussed, and so they vamp, not with reasoned analysis but with an outpouring of adjectives.

Precisely.

The left had plenty of warning from constitutional scholars and Congress's own in-house non-partisan researchers that the individual mandate may be unconstitutional. The Democrats chose to ignore all that and proceed. In so doing, they did not just embrace the individual mandate, but they made it the keystone of the legislation — a vital and essentially necessary part of the legislation for it all to work.

In a move that will surely make Mr. Obama bristle, Stephen Dinan at the Washington Times points out, Judge Vinson used Barack Obama's own words against him.

"I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that, 'If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,'" Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of his 78-page ruling Monday.

A bit of buzz has come up over Judge Vinson refusing to enter an injunction. In fact, some initial statements by several Governors and Attorneys General suggested the states would continue making preparations for Obamacare should the Supreme Court not agree with Judge Vinson. But a close reading of his opinion suggests the 26 states involved in the lawsuit may not have to begin preparations. According to Judge Vinson

"there is a long-standing presumption 'that officials of the Executive Branch will adhere to the law as declared by the court. As a result, the declaratory judgment is the functional equivalent of an injunction.' … There is no reason to conclude that this presumption should not apply here."

By my reading, Judge Vinson is saying that there need be no injunction because the law is unconstitutional and need not be complied with. That took some testicular fortitude to get to that point.

All the White House and its minion lawyers and leftists can do tonight is call Judge Vinson's very traditional reading of the constitution "odd and unconventional."

Judge Vinson's ruling ultimately tells a group of people used to saying 'yes we can' that, in fact, 'no, you can't.' And only in that sense can anyone view this as "odd and unconventional." A limited federal government is, after all, what the founders had in mind.

Morning Briefing for February 1, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For February 1, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Obamacare Meets Its Death Panel

2. Susan Collins, Queen of Denial

3. The Debt Ceiling Spin Begins From the Democrats

4. Hollywood's Green Screen, Take 1 Kabillion

5. YouCut Can't Cut a $100 Billion?

6. Morrissey interviews Breitbart about Pigford story

———————————————————————-

1. Obamacare Meets Its Death Panel

I am not, with this post, going to attempt a detailed exposition on Judge Vinson's ruling that declared the individual mandate unconstitutional and, due to the lack of a severability clause, struck the whole law as unconstitutional. But I will give you a brief overview and direct you to other good sources.

Here are the basics you will need to start your day.

. . . .

Judge Vinson's ruling ultimately tells a group of people used to saying 'yes we can' that, in fact, 'no, you can't.'

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. Susan Collins, Queen of Denial

I want to be very clear about the Internet Kill Switch plan. The plan by Susan Collins and Joe Lieberman has now passed the Democrat-controlled Senate Committee claims to be a grand venture for "Cybersecurity," but the plain fact is the plan as written is unworkable as a security venture, but only works as a tool to let the government control or even destroy the internet.

Yes, just like in Egypt.

Susan Collins, Queen of Denial, claims her plan is nothing like what's going on in Egypt because her motives are pure. I believe her motives are pure, but I also believe she simply doesn't understand the issues at hand.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The Debt Ceiling Spin Begins From the Democrats

As I noted earlier, if we reach the debt ceiling, the United States does not automatically default on its loans. The issue, however, is priority of payment. We will bring in more each month in tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury than we will need to pay out to our lenders.

It requires Tim Geithner (why is he still on the job anyway?) to prioritize and pay our debt obligations first. But there is no law requiring him to do so. Senator Pat Toomey is proposing legislation that would require Geithner pay our debt obligations before all other obligations if we hit the debt ceiling.

The left, naturally, is crying foul.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. Hollywood's Green Screen, Take 1 Kabillion

We all know what a green screen is. It's that solid-color screen actors stand in front of while being filmed, in order that a scene may be digitally added behind them later. James Cameron uses them quite a bit in his films. But there's another "green screen" that's just as ubiquitous in Hollywood.

For example, we've discussed here before James Cameron's environmental hypocrisy; a "green screen" covering his lavish lifestyle. It's something altogether common in the "movement."

For today's episode, we're talking about so-called environmental "superhero" Robert Redford.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

5. YouCut Can't Cut a $100 Billion?

I'm going to be honest. I never liked the Republican Pledge to America. It wasn't much of a governing document and completely lacked the sort of boldness needed to give a new Republican Congress a real mandate to fix the massive problems facing the nation. But the argument at the time was one of deliverables. House Republicans wanted to promise less and deliver more. Or so they said.

One of their key pledges was to shed a mere $100 billion "in the first year alone" to return non-security discretionary spending to the FY 2008 levels. Unfortunately (or conveniently), they did not specify whether they were talking about fiscal year 2011 or 2012 as the first year. This distinction is relevant because the Democrats failed to complete the spending bills for the current fiscal year (2011), and passed a short-term continuing resolution to keep the government operating until March, leaving decisions to still be made for fiscal year 2011. House Leaders are saying that because the fiscal year is already four months in that the $100 billion should be construed as "an annualized" or "prorated" figure and only half should be done now. (The distinction about the number of months into the fiscal year is also not particularly meaningful—just because the money has been appropriated to the agencies doesn't mean that it can't be rescinded.)

Thankfully 89 members of the conservative Republican Study Committee are arguing that the "first year" means exactly that.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

6. Morrissey interviews Breitbart about Pigford story

From Hot Air, an update from Andrew Breitbart on the developing Pigford story, which is a sordid tale of fraud and scandal. This story has been investigated chiefly by Lee Stranahan, a liberal Huffington Post contributor who hasn't been afraid to find the truth, or timid about posting his findings at BigJournalism and BigGovernment.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Obamacare Meets the Death Panel — The Erick Erickson Show

The Erick Erickson Show starts off a bit late tonight due to a basketball game. We'll go live at 10:06 p.m.

I'm going to spend a lot of time on Obamacare and also the gays and Chick-Fil-A. That should be fun.

You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK.

Consider this an open thread.

Obamacare Unconstitutional

A Reagan appointed federal district judge in Florida has ruled key portions of Obamacare, namely the individual mandate, unconstitutional. Because Congress expressly did not put a severability clause in the legislation, the judge has ruled the whole law unconstitutional.

The left is, naturally, shocked and appalled that the judge did not let the rest of Obamacare stand as a judge in Virginia did. They are calling today's judge "an extreme activist."

Let's clear this up: activism is when a judge changes a law in a way he wants, even if Congress did not intend it or when a judge imposes his own policy prescriptions into a law or the constitution.

What we are seeing here today is something extremely rare — a humble judge. Instead of trying to salvage a law with no severability clause, he followed long held precedent.

Congress typically puts severability clauses in legislation so that if one part of the law is unconstitutional the other parts stand. Congress chose not to in this case. Instead of the judge deciding whether or not Obamacare could or should stand on its own, the judge has decided he is not a legislature. Consequently, he's thrown the whole thing out instead of letting his own policy prescriptions stand in the law to hold it up.

If that is activism, give me more of it.

Ultimately we should not get too excited. In reality, there is only one person's opinion on this matter that counts — the opinion of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

But we've bought some time.

The Debt Ceiling Spin Begins From the Democrats

As I noted earlier, if we reach the debt ceiling, the United States does not automatically default on its loans. The issue, however, is priority of payment. We will bring in more each month in tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury than we will need to pay out to our lenders.

It requires Tim Geithner (why is he still on the job anyway?) to prioritize and pay our debt obligations first. But there is no law requiring him to do so. Senator Pat Toomey is proposing legislation that would require Geithner pay our debt obligations before all other obligations if we hit the debt ceiling.

The left, naturally, is crying foul. For the absurdity of it, read this 'article' of leftist spin.

The full impact of an actual default is unclear, but Treasury, and independent experts have warned that it would among other consequences, cause an enormous loss of wealth among U.S. citizens. Under the circumstances, one would think that the government's top priority would be ensuring that citizens owed money by the Treasury would take precedence over, say, foreign governments. But that wouldn't be the case if Toomey and some House Republicans, including Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), get their way.

The Treasury Department likewise is crying foul, saying it would still amount to default — only it wouldn't. And we know it wouldn't based on simple math. Revenue will continue being greater than expenditures to pay interest and principal on our debt obligations.

But the left is pushing back and using the Chinese boogeyman in their playbook. Here, though, is the ultimate point — we would not be in the mess we are in, but for Obama kowtowing to China to begin with.

Might Someone Please Educate Fox News and the Rest of the Media?

Fox News has an article on its website about John Boehner's remarks on raising the debt ceiling. But in this objective report there is a great and dangerous falsehood. The article, which has no author attached to it, reports

In order for the debt ceiling to rise, Congress must approve taking on more debt, which currently is growing by more than $4 billion per day. If it doesn't approve raising the ceiling, then the U.S. will default on its loans and lose its standing as the globe's most reliable bet.

There is no other way to put this than it is an out and out lie.

In fact, Neil Cavuto interviewed Senator Pat Toomey back on January 6, 2011, and Toomey himself noted

The debt service, interest on our debt is about 6 percent of everything the federal government has to pay. So, we would be taking in enough revenue to cover more than 10 times all the interest that we owe. There is no reason we would have to default on our interest obligations.

That is it precisely. Greg Ip noted in the Economist a couple of weeks ago

A default would result from failure to pay principal or interest. The debt ceiling doesn't bar either. Treasury can roll over maturing issues so long as the overall stock of outstanding debt doesn't rise. (A caveat: Treasury must invest surplus Social Security and Medicare taxes by issuing non-marketable debt to the plans' trust funds, which erodes the remaining capacity for marketable debt.) As for interest, even in today's straightened circumstances, revenue is more than enough to cover interest charges.

Felix Salmon, writing for Reuters, expands on Greg Ip's point.

In any given month, the government's income dwarfs its debt-service obligations, which means that the government could simply pay all interest on Treasury bonds out of its cashflow. Greg hasn't run the numbers on principal maturities, but I'm pretty sure that they too could be covered out of cash receipts—and when that happened, of course, the total debt outstanding would go down, and we wouldn't be bumping up against the ceiling any more.

The point here is that the government has enormous expenditures every month, and debt service constitutes an important yet small part of them. If the debt ceiling weren't raised, it stands to reason that just about any other form of government spending would get cut before Tim Geithner dreamed of defaulting on risk-free bonds.

It is, in other words, flat out not true that a failure to raise the debt ceiling will cause a default on American obligations.

The media continues to get it wrong.

Morning Briefing for January 31, 2011

RedState Morning Briefing

For January 31, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

1. Might Someone Please Educate Fox News and the Rest of the Media?

2. The "President to doom gun control"

3. The American Left's Role in Leading Mid-East Regime Change

4. President Obama's Big Diplomatic Test - Egypt

———————————————————————-

1. Might Someone Please Educate Fox News and the Rest of the Media?

Fox News has an article on its website about John Boehner's remarks on raising the debt ceiling. But in this objective report there is a great and dangerous falsehood. The article, which has no author attached to it, reports

"In order for the debt ceiling to rise, Congress must approve taking on more debt, which currently is growing by more than $4 billion per day. If it doesn't approve raising the ceiling, then the U.S. will default on its loans and lose its standing as the globe's most reliable bet."

There is no other way to put this than it is an out and out lie.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

2. The "President to doom gun control"

President Obama's going to be starting a push for "gun control" next month, sayeth insiders - which is a statement that would worry me more if the President hasn't been a bit of a jinx at using the bully pulpit up to this point. I'm trying - and failing - to come up with something where his "assistance" has been a net positive: all of the Democrats' dubious legislative successes have been on the Congressional level thus far, and when it comes to skill at advocacy Obama, well… is awful. One wonders what the man hopes to accomplish.

And no, I don't know what the heck "gun control" has to do with the economy, either.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

3. The American Left's Role in Leading Mid-East Regime Change

As the world watches Egypt crumble into chaos, with over 100 dead and 2000 injured, the Obama administration continues to be somewhat and rather curiously ambivalent. On the one hand, on Friday, Vice President Biden came to the defense of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, saying that he shouldn't step aside. Yet, on the same day, the Telegraph (ala Wikileaks) reported that the U.S. had planned "regime change" for the "past three years" while both President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton demand that internet be restored to the Egyptian protesters. This morning, Secretary of State Clinton again clarified the United States' official position, "We do not want to send any message about backing forward or backing back."

For all the lack of clarity on where the Obama administration stands, one thing is becoming more and more clear: Signs are beginning to point more toward the likelihood that President Obama's State Department, unions, as well as Left-leaning media corporations are more directly involved in helping to ignite the Mid-East turmoil than they are publicly admitting.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

4. President Obama's Big Diplomatic Test - Egypt

It is clear that the Obama Administration is facing a big diplomatic test in dealing with the fast developing situation in Egypt. On one side is the Obama Administration's interest of promoting freedom and democracy for the people of Egypt. On the other side is the national security interest of maintaining a strong pro-Western U.S. ally in the Global War on Terror in Egypt. These are very difficult interests to balance.

The big fear in the West is that if this revolution is a success, and the Muslim Brotherhood or another extremist group seizes power in Egypt, the Egyptian people will not secure liberty and freedom. Two co-workers of mine at The Heritage Foundation, James Phillips and James Carafano, have produced excellent analysis that may help conservatives to navigate and understand this difficult issue.

Please click here for the rest of the post.

Podcasts of the Erick Erickson Show

Since many of you have asked, yes you can get my radio show via iTunes. I've got all three hours of each night's show up there.

Follow this link and it'll take you right where you need to go.

For those of you without iTunes, you can go to http://feeds.wsbradio.com/TheErickEricksonShow to get the show.