The Pelican Brief with a twist

I’m about to take you on a brief but uncomfortable journey into the land of tin foil hat wearing conspiracies. I’m not going to ask you to believe it, just consider it. Think about it. Think outside the box, and as you do, consider all that has taken place over the last few decades, with particular emphasis on the last five years.
Listeners to The Hagmann & Hagmann Report and my appearances on other radio programs might recall my source within the Department of Homeland Security making vague references on at least two occasions to the fictional novel written by John Grisham titled The Pelican Brief. The book came out in 1992 and was made into a movie in 1993 starring Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington. There was no clarification and no clarity offered by my source in terms of the reference he made. I was just told to keep that book/movie in mind in the coming weeks and months.
Given the passage of the Affordable Care Act with Supreme Court Justice John Roberts as the deciding vote, the reference to The Pelican Brief might be making more sense now. Did Roberts appear comfortable in his public pronouncement with regard to “Obamacare?” Did you look into his eyes, the window of one’s soul when he made his announcement? To those with discernment, what did you see?
Remember, this is the same Supreme Court Justice who “flubbed” the swearing-in of Barack Hussein Obama, requiring a do-over behind the scenes. No video, no audio, no exposure of the “legitimate” oath given to Obama by Roberts. Does anyone outside of that room know what was really said at that private, unprecedented swearing-in ceremony? Like I said, folks, it’s full blown tin-foil hat territory in which we are now treading. But just hang in there with me for a bit longer, and maintain your ability to think outside of the box.

Read more: http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/47701

Ranking the Presidents

In 1948, Arthur Schlesinger Sr. wrote for Life magazine a controversial article on a subject that has been the cause of spirited and acrimonious debate ever since. He listed the consensus of our academic elite as to which American presidents had been Great, Near Great, Average, Below Average and Failures.
Leading the list were Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and FDR. Below, but also among the Greats, were Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. The Near Greats were Theodore Roosevelt, Grover Cleveland, John Adams and James K. Polk.
In 1962, Schlesinger followed with a New York Times piece, also based on the responses of historians, political scientists and journalists. This list had the same top seven. But Jackson had fallen to Near Great and Polk, who took the Southwest and California away from Mexico, had risen from 10th to eighth.
Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and others have since produced their own rankings. The latest in the field is Robert Merry, a lifelong journalist and now editor at The National Interest. In Where They Stand: The American Presidents in the Eyes of Voters and Historians, Merry adds a new criterion. Did this president win a second term, and was he succeeded by a man of his own party?
For this would mean his contemporaries, the American people of that era, had judged him to be a good, successful or even great president.
In the 20th century, McKinley, twice elected, but assassinated in 1901, left his office to Theodore Roosevelt, who won in his own right in 1904 and was succeeded by his friend and ally William Howard Taft. FDR won four terms, and on his death in 1945 was succeeded by Vice President Harry Truman, who won in his own right in 1948. Ronald Reagan won two landslides, pulled us out of the economic malaise of the Jimmy Carter presidency, won the Cold War and was succeeded by his vice president, George H.W. Bush, who swept 40 states in 1988.
Yet some historians have rated Carter, repudiated after one term, higher than Reagan, which tells us more about who has been doing the ranking than it does about Ronald Reagan.

Read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/ranking-the-presidents/

The Healthcare Myths We Must Confront

As debate about whether ObamaCare is a good idea continues, rejecting four major misconceptions about healthcare is crucial to any chance of our eventually emerging with a better system.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ObamaCare decision, we must refocus. The Court’s decision was never about whether ObamaCare was a good idea, only about whether it was constitutional. The Court found a convoluted way to uphold the law.
That’s done, but the debate on whether ObamaCare’s provisions are good ideas will continue. To date, this debate has been unable to shake off a lot of mythology—things believed about healthcare and our healthcare system in general, or ObamaCare specifically—that simply are not so.
The goals of healthcare reform—covering more Americans, improving outcomes, and doing so more cost effectively—are all laudable, but are all hampered by the continued belief in these myths. Rejecting these misconceptions is crucial to any chance of our eventually emerging with a better system.
Myth #1:  Healthcare prices have soared in the recent past

If we choose to subsidize a portion of the population we should do so openly, using taxation and government spending, which at least shines sunlight on the cost, not through tricky regulation that hides it.

Everyone knows that healthcare prices have soared, but everyone may well be wrong. The statistics we see are always about the amount we spend on healthcare, not the price of healthcare. Consider a comparison of healthcare in the 1950s versus today. In the 1950s, you had none of the subsequent developments in pharmaceuticals, surgery, diagnosis, etc. How much would you pay for that versus today’s healthcare? Not so much, I’m guessing. In fact, if you look around the world, in impoverished countries you can probably find a reasonable facsimile of this 1950s healthcare at a low cost. While this example is intentionally extreme, the measurement problem it illustrates is important. The quality of the best healthcare has soared over time. This measurement problem is not unique to healthcare. Measuring the price inflation in computers is incredibly difficult. If the price of a laptop today is the same as 20 years ago, but the laptop is ridiculously better now, hasn’t the price really fallen dramatically?

Read more: http://www.american.com/archive/2012/june/the-healthcare-myths-we-must-confront

Holder's Contempt: Who Owns the Government?

Who owns the documents being suppressed in the clumsy Fast and Furious cover-up? Murder-gate would be a descriptive moniker. Could some intrepid reporter ask the hapless Jay Carney if the POTUS believes that the U.S. Government is "of the people, by the people, and for the people"? If he believes that, then surely he should understand that every document generated by that government is the property of the American People. There should be a high bar to clear before declaring any document confidential. To simply assert blanket executive privilege without a strong explanation is outrageous. A power-corrupted Department of Justice is a grave danger to every citizen who is not a favored political ally.
President Obama has raised the stakes. This not just a political dust-up; not merely a healthy test of strength between two co-equal branches of government. The rule of law is being challenged by Mr. Holder and the President. The Constitution invests tremendous power in the federal government. In return we the people are entitled to full transparency and accountability from its officials. A routine congressional investigation has evolved into a monstrous scandal and cover-up. It is as if they have missed the lessons from all the failed cover-ups of their predecessors. Congress and the Courts should act with haste and conviction to bring the perpetrators to justice.
The hive has been abuzz in the past few weeks trying to discredit the whole Congressional investigation of F&F. They say it started under Bush. What if it did? The requested documents should help to prove that, if it is true. They say the requested documents contain information pertaining to ongoing criminal investigations.  They could prove that by letting Chairman Issa and his committee see them in executive session. Are they less entitled to see those documents than the low level DOJ investigators working on the cases? In their partisan fury, they see no issue of accountability to the American People. No objective observer can deny the likelihood that the requested documents would lead to charges of perjury. In seven months or so there will be a new sheriff in town. Will the documents still exist?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/holders_contempt_who_owns_the_government.html#ixzz1zB0Hjob9

Liberals may come to regret parts of the Obamacare ruling, experts say

The United States Supreme Court on Thursday largely upheld President Obama’s controversial healthcare law by a narrow 5-4 majority.
Chief Justice John Roberts surprised many by siding with the four liberal justices in upholding the individual mandate to purchase health insurance, the central—and most contentious—provision of the law that many court watchers had predicted would be struck down as unconstitutional.
Though the Court ruled that the mandate was not permissible under the Commerce Clause, as the administration had argued in defense of the law, it also ruled the mandate could be upheld under the federal government’s power to tax. Had Roberts joined with the four dissenting justices, the entire law would have been invalidated.
The law’s supporters reacted triumphantly to the ruling.
“Today’s decision was a victory for people all over this country whose lives will be more secure because of this law,” Obama said from the White House. “Today, I’m as confident as ever that when we look back five years from now, or 10 years from now, or 20 years from now, we will be better off because we had the courage to pass this law.”
DNC executive director Patrick Gaspard expressed his delight in more colorful fashion, tweeting: “it’s constitutional. Bitches.”
Republicans expressed disappointment with the ruling, but reiterated their pledge to repeal and replace the law should they take power in 2013.
“We cannot allow this healthcare law to go into effect,” said Sen. Jim DeMint (R., S.C.). “This problem will only be solved when we replace this president.”

Read more: http://freebeacon.com/win-some-lose-some/

Why Roberts saved Obama's healthcare law

In the end, it all came down to Chief Justice John Roberts, the sphinx in the center chair, who in a stunning decision wove together competing rationales to uphold President Barack Obama's healthcare plan.
Roberts' action instantly upended the conventional wisdom that he would vote with his four fellow conservative justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and undercut the agenda of a Democratic president, who as a senator in 2005 had opposed Roberts' appointment to the bench.
But Thursday's extraordinary conclusion to the bitterly fought healthcare battle was quite ordinary in some ways. Roberts hewed to a traditional Supreme Court principle that if the justices can find any constitutional grounds on which to uphold a law, they should do so. The 57-year-old chief justice also followed a stated principle of his own: narrowly deciding cases and trying to preserve the integrity of the judiciary in polarized Washington.
While he has voted consistently with the conservative bloc on social issues, such as abortion rights and racial policies, Roberts in his public remarks has suggested that he seeks, as chief, to transcend an ideological label. He routinely refers to the court's place in history and has bristled at polls and public commentary that suggest the high court acts in the same political realm as the two elected branches of government.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/29/us-usa-healthcare-court-roberts-idUSBRE85S02U20120629

SCOTUS Exposes the ObamaCare Tax Lie

The United States Supreme Court reaffirmed the power of words and rhetoric.  Take a bow, Progressives.  Clap.  Clap.  Clap.  Clap. 
But beware the Pyrrhic victory, dear friends on the left -- the victory that cost too much.  The Court has called you to account.  This decision wraps and ribbons a gift to Republicans, the gift of a core issue that remains very unpopular with much of the voting public.
Lemons to lemonade, they say.  This decision presents the opposition with a rallying cry.  If intuition serves, the Supremes have re-irritated an already addled giant.  Make hay when it shines, they say.  Republicans can now, more than before, in unison, call for the repeal of the Mandate Tax on the grounds that it was sold as not a tax.  It was sold as a bill of goods.
It was bait-and-switch, and the power-holders knew it all along.  They knew all along that they had authority to mandate as a tax, but they also knew they couldn't call it a tax for getting re-elected reasons. 
Which goes to account for the stunned progressive reaction to the challenge in the first place.  How dare anyone question their authority?!  But the Court today makes them look cowardly, for having the lust for their convictions but not the courage of them.
This interpretation shows the Court remonstrating Democrats, saying, "You passed a tax, by God -- now you call it a tax."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/06/scotus_exposes_the_obamacare_tax_lie.html#ixzz1zAz0Amgq