Today, President Obama spoke at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. A transcript of his remarks is here.

Only three GOP senators didn't sign the amicus brief that Sen. Mitch McConnell and the other 43 GOP senators signed in support of Florida's challenge to ObamaCare in the courts -- Sen. Jeff Sessions, Sen. Scott Brown, and Sen. Lindsay Graham.

In a statement, Graham spokesman Kevin Bishop explained that while the senator "strongly opposes Obama health care" and has voted for its repeal, "His energy is focused on the legislative repeal of Obamacare."

Sessions, meanwhile, who voted for the Obamacare repeal, customarily does not sign onto amicus briefs.

Sen. Brown's office did not respond to a request for comment.

The previous story is below:

Forty-four GOP senators have signed onto a brief filed in support of several states' challenge to ObamaCare, which is being spearheaded by Florida (this is different from Virginia's lawsuit against ObamaCare that had hearings in the 4th Circuit yesterday).

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's letter to colleagues highlights two key points of the case: first, that the federal government forces Americans to buy something via the individual mandate, an alarming precedent to establish, and, second, that "there will no longer be any meaningful limit on Congress’s power to regulate its citizens under the Commerce Clause." 

"Congress’s specific power under that clause will be transformed into a general police power," the letter says, explaining this basically eliminates the distinction between federal and state regulatory authority.

Here are the senators who signed the brief: Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), Sen. John Boozman (R-AR), Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), Sen. Daniel Coats (R-IN), Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen.  Mike Crapo (R-ID), Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC), Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY), Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Sen. Dean Heller (R-NV), Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND), Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), Sen. Mike Johanns (R-NE), Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), Sen. James Risch (R-ID), Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Sen. John Thune (R-SD), Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), Sen. David Vitter (R-LA), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS).

For every dollar that the federal government taxes each of us to pour into the great, yawning, national debt-black-hole, it is important to remember that we are not merely being deprived of a dollar. We are also missing out on the opportunity costs associated with that dollar – that is, the other ways in which we might have spent or invested it and helped to contribute to our own personal wealth and the country’s economic growth. The government is currently taking out massive loans in our name, deciding how we should spend that money based upon political goals, and meanwhile, China collects the interest.

Plug in your stats at MyGovCost.org and see how you are being pilfered of your potential future wealth!

Yep.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), who is poised to launch his presidential campaign tomorrow, said this week he would not have authorized the mission that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden, arguing that killing bin Laden was unnecessary and that he has "respect for the rule of law."

In a radio interview with WHO Newsradio 1040, Paul told radio host Simon Conway that, had he been president, he would have pursued an alternate strategy.

"I think things would be done somewhat differently," Paul said, of how he would have handled the situation, citing "respect for the rule of law and world law and international law."

Paul says that instead of sneaking into Pakistan and killing bin Laden, he would have cooperated with the Pakistani government and put the al Qaeda leader on trial - a strategy, he argues, that has worked for the United States in the past.

"I would suggest ...the way they got Khalid [Sheikh] Mohammed," Paul told Conway. "We went and cooperated with Pakistan. They arrested him, actually, and turned him over to us, and he's been in prison."

The House succeeded in passing HR 1231, a third in a slate of energy bills designed to help promote offshore drilling and thus less dependence on foreign oil. The three bills "could create 250,000 jobs short-term and 1.2 million jobs long-term," according to the GOP Natural Resources Committee press release, quoting statistics from a professor and economist at Louisiana State University.

HR 1231 requires that a production goal be set for each of the 5-year lease plans an administration puts forth, and it sets one already for the Obama administration: 3 million barrels of oil per day and 10 billion cubic feet of natural gas per day by 2027.

It also requires that the five year plans conduct lease sales where there is the greatest amount of natural reserves.

With all of the climate change scaremongering going on out there, environmental anxiety abounds and it can be pretty easy to fall prey to the perception that environmental quality is always getting worse. Many are under the impression that we are spewing out ever-increasing amounts of damagingly toxic gases and that we are on the fast-track to the end of the world. Au contraire!

Since 1980, the United States’ GDP has increased by 122%, the population has increased by 35%, and the number of miles we travel annually has increased by 95%. And yet, somehow, our total carbon dioxide emissions have only increased by 28% and our total energy consumption has only increased by 22%.(This is all data from the EPA, by the way.)

Our energy consumption and carbon emissions have not even remotely kept pace with the number of miles we drive and our productivity, and that’s not all. The EPA identifies six criteria pollutants that hinder air quality: carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, ozone, particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. The level of each of these pollutants in the atmosphere has decreased since 1980. Put together by Environmental Trends:

The EPA interprets these trends as “an indicator of the effectiveness of our programs.” I interpret them as an indicator of the inherent merits of a prosperous, free-market based economy that rewards businesses and entrepreneurs for developing progressively efficient technologies. And make no mistake about it – if allowed to do so, private individuals and businesses will continue to invent, expand, streamline, and become ever-increasingly efficient, and these environmental trends will continue in the right direction. The notion that we will never get there without the government's guidance is just plain wrong.

Notice that these trends do not follow partisan lines. If the environmentalists are not careful about forcing green industry upon us and the subsequent hampering of our economy, they may bring about the very environmental degradation they claim to want to avoid.

A few initial reactions to Mitt Romney's healthcare presentation in Ann Arbor, Michigan this afternoon:


(1) I use the term "presentation" rather than "speech" because Romney did not use a prepared text or a teleprompter.  Instead, he delivered off-the-cuff (surely rehearsed) remarks at the beginning, then talked through a powerpoint presentation outlining his plan to replace Obamacare -- which he said should be repealed.  He also chose a relatively small venue, speaking to an intimate audience of what looked like about 100 people.  He fielded several questions at the end.  To project a sense of informality onto what many pundits have pointed to as a pivotal speech, Romney went tie-free.  Stylistically, he performed very well.  He was smooth, detailed, knowledgeable, and on message.  In general, he presented himself as a sharp guy in full command of facts and details. 

(2) I suspect many conservatives will come away from Romney's presentation acknowledging that he's an impressive guy, but still thoroughly unconvinced by his rationalizations of previous policy positions -- namely, his signature 2006 Massachusetts healthcare law, which features an individual mandate.  Romney defended the policy against conservative critics -- arguing that states, and not the federal government, have the right to experiment in "laboratories of democracy."  This appeal to federalism is fine, but how can it be parlayed into a compelling case against Obamacare?  Romney essentially says, we were right to try this system on a limited scope at the state level, but President Obama is wrong to have implemented a very similar regime nationally.  Is that a distinction that will resonate with voters? 

(3) If, hypothetically, Romney were arguing that his experiment failed in many respects, and therefore shouldn't be repeated at the federal level, that could be quite powerful.  But he's still insisting that Romneycare was and is a success.  "I did what I think was right for the people of my state," he told the audience today.  I'll quote again from today's Wall Street Journal editorial, which persuasively dissents from Romney's optimistic assessment of the Massachusetts law:

The only good news we can find is that the uninsured rate has dropped to 2% today from 6% in 2006. Yet four out of five of the newly insured receive low- or no-cost coverage from the government. The subsidies will cost at least $830 million in 2011 and are growing, conservatively measured, at 5.1% a year. Total state health-care spending as a share of the budget has grown from about 16% in the 1980s to 30% in 2006 to 40% today. The national state average is about 25%.

The safety-net fund that was supposed to be unwound, well, wasn't. Uncompensated hospital care rose 5% from 2008 to 2009, and 15% from 2009 to 2010, hitting $475 million (though the state only paid out $405 million). "Avoidable" use of emergency rooms—that is, for routine care like a sore throat—increased 9% between 2004 and 2008. Meanwhile, unsubsidized insurance premiums for individuals and small businesses have climbed to among the highest in the nation.

(4) I think the most damning portion of the event was Romney's detailed and unapologetic defense of the individual mandate -- the central pillar of both his and President Obama's respective healthcare policies.  Romney's justification for its implementation was virtually indistinguishable from the arguments advanced by the Obama White House.  The mandate is anathema to conservatives, and could very well be ruled unconstitutional.  How can Romney credibly argue that an outrageous, unworkable federal intrusion into every single American's life is totally unacceptable, but an outrageous, unworkable state-level intrusion into every single Massachusetts resident's life is just fine?  As the WSJ elegantly puts it, "Because the states have police powers under the Constitution, Mr. Romney's plan posed no legal problems. His blunder was his philosophy of government."

(5) After offering his robust defense of the MA healthcare kaw (Philip Klein lists and explains what he calls "failed defenses" HERE), Romney moved on to unveiling the broad strokes of his new healthcare plan for America.  Much of it sounded sensible, but a key question will linger in the minds of many primary voters:  If Mitt Romney got it wrong in Massachusetts with a failed big-government solution, and has refused to admit his mistake -- all while attacking President Obama for making virtually the exact same mistake on a larger scale, why should he be trusted to make sound policy decisions in the Oval Office?  It's a question of trust and judgment.  Based on initial reactions to the speech, it seems many conservatives still consider that at least a very open question.


The aforementioned Philip Klein -- a healthcare policy wonk at the Washington Examiner -- just unloads on the speech:

...We judge candidates based on what they actually did when they were in office, and Romney supported all the key principles of ObamaCare in the law he signed.

Most notably, Romney supported the individual mandate, which he again defended today, arguing that it was put in place to combat free riders. But that's precisely the argument the Obama administration is making, not only publicly, but in federal court to combat challenges to its constitutionality. Romney even described the mandate as a matter of “personal responsibility.” In the actual text of ObamaCare, the official name for the mandate is the “individual responsibility requirement.”

...Because the plans are so similar in structure, every time Romney defends his Massachusetts law, it is a de facto defense of the national health care law.

If Romney really is interested in repealing and replacing ObamaCare, the best thing he could do to help the cause is to stop running for president.

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post is similarly unimpressed.


Hugh Hewitt, who's a vocal admirer of Gov. Romney, offers his pre-analysis of the speech:

I will play excerpts of the speech Mitt Romney gives on health care on today's program.  ABC's The Note gives a good summary of the good and bad of Romney's plan in Massachusetts, but what matters much more than how that plan has worked is what Romney proposes be done by the federal government if he is elected president.  I suspect he will say about the Massachusetts plan that "some of it worked, some didn't."  But what he's got to say about Obamacare is that he has a plan to get rid of it and quickly.

Lots of Romney opponents argue that Massachusetts' plan sinks the Romney candidacy.  Take it form someone who was certain that Senator John McCain's amnesty bill, Gang of 14 ploy and campaign finance reform law would doom his candidacy, voters look forward, not backward, and it is about the choice they are offered the week they are voting not what a candidate did legislatively years earlier.

I respectfully disagree with the bolded sentence, for reasons explained in point #5.  I like and respect Mitt Romney, but I have major reservations about his Romneycare baggage.  Today's speech did not assuage those concerns.

For two reasons, religious issues should prove less damaging to the 2012 presidential candidacy of Ambassador Jon Huntsman than they were for his fellow Mormon Mitt Romney in 2008. 

 

With two Mormons in the race, the novelty factor is diminished and opponents won’t be able to focus anti-LDS sentiments on a single candidate. Moreover, Romney’s previous run depended on conservative Christians in his expected competition with moderates Giuliani and McCain, but Mike Huckabee’s surprising rise appealed directly to religious voters wary of his rival’s Mormonism. This time, former Utah Governor Huntsman will bid for centrist support against more conservative candidates, going after voters less likely to worry over social issues or LDS theology. He’ll face problems with his service as China Ambassador under Obama, and with some of his moderate positions, but his Mormon faith will prove a less formidable obstacle to his campaign.

Hollywood insiders expressed surprise at the strong debut of the wedding comedy, JUMPING THE BROOM. In its opening weekend, this touching, low budget project scored $15 million at the box-office, guaranteeing profitability for a well-acted story  of two prosperous African-American professionals bringing together their very different families for a lavish celebration.

 

The secret ingredient involved the film’s unapolgetically Christian values—with major characters turning regularly to prayer, and bride and groom waiting for their wedding night to complete their relationship. Bishop T.D. Jakes makes an appearance and helped produce the film, proving an eager black audience will embrace inspiring stories that turn away from ugly stereotypes of thugs and drugs. Tyler Perry has successfully appealed to the same audience in his many movies, but JUMPING THE BROOM does so with greater skill and subtlety, for more uplifting results.

Walmart, a corporation that employs thousands of workers at high wage rates, is being told it "sucks" by ex-ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis during church in New York City.




Walmart executives are trying to build a new store in New York City and would bring much needed jobs to the area as unemployment sits at 8.5 percent.

In just three short months, the Post Office has lost a whopping $2.2 billion dollars, setting the pace for the government entity failure to post a $8.8 billion loss by the end of the year. In 2010, the operation posted a $8.5 billion loss. I see a pattern here....

Meanwhile, taxpayers are still stuck with paying for postal worker pension plans and benefits.

If there is a light at the end of the tunnel for USPS, it’s an oncoming train, as it projects that by September it will run out of cash and default on a payment owed to the U.S. Treasury for retiree benefits.

USPS lacks the ability to make the changes that are needed. It is, for instance, prohibited by law from closing individual post offices simply because they are losing money. Congress is also keeping USPS from dropping Saturday delivery, although that step would save close to $2 billion a year.

So, the question is: Do we really need the Post Office? 

Stephen Moore wrote this piece in the Wall Street Journal which contrast Obama's government/public sector and private sector employment stats in the clip.

Here are some of his Moore's statistics, "Today in America there are nearly twice as many people working for the government (22.5 million) than in all of manufacturing (11.5 million)....More Americans work for the government than work in construction, farming, fishing, forestry, manufacturing, mining and utilities combined.....Nearly half of the $2.2 trillion cost of state and local governments is the $1 trillion-a-year tab for pay and benefits of state and local employees.....Surveys of college graduates are finding that more and more of our top minds want to work for the government."

Obama needs to continue repeating these core beliefs so all Americans know what he really believes in.

Mitt Romney's delicate 'no to Obamacare, yes to Romneycare' dance isn't the only major political address with 2012 implications on today's agenda.  Cheri Daniels, the wife of Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, will deliver a speech to the Indiana Republican Party in Indianapolis later tonight.  The context is the story:

Cheri Daniels has made no secret of her distaste for politics. She did not campaign for her husband, Mitch Daniels, during two races for governor. She did not fully move into the governor’s mansion after his election. She has never delivered a political speech.  But as leading Republicans step up their efforts to urge Mr. Daniels to run for president, the attention has suddenly turned to Mrs. Daniels, who makes her debut here on Thursday when she delivers a keynote address at the spring dinner of the Indiana Republican Party.

Her willingness to take on a public role has increased the speculation about his intentions. But it has also come at the price of increased scrutiny on the couple’s private life, something Mr. Daniels had seemed to have on his mind for months as he made it clear that family considerations would weigh heavily on his decision.

...

Even while acknowledging that her appearance at the party gathering on Thursday would lead to speculation about his political intentions, [Daniels] sought to play down its significance.

“Cheri hasn’t even attended one of these, let alone appeared at one of them,” he said in a recent interview. He added, “Tea leaves started getting read — and I get it.”  Mr. Daniels has declined to say what his wife thinks about the idea of him running for president.

I just spoke with a plugged-in conservative who recently met with Gov. Daniels, and he told me he got the impression Daniels is planning to run.  The fact that Daniels' "anti-political" wife is now willing to try her hand at public speaking could, in fact, be a telling "tea leaf," as he puts it in the Times piece. 

Back to Romney's speech for a moment.  A blistering editorial in today's Wall Street Journal demonstrates just how steep a hill the former Massachusetts Governor has to climb in order to overcome his Romneycare problem.  When you see its title, you won't be surprised that the ensuing indictment is absolutely brutal:

Like Mr. Obama's reform, RomneyCare was predicated on the illusion that insurance would be less expensive if everyone were covered. Even if this theory were plausible, it is not true in Massachusetts today. So as costs continue to climb, Mr. Romney's Democratic successor now wants to create a central board of political appointees to decide how much doctors and hospitals should be paid for thousands of services.

The Romney camp blames all this on a failure of execution, not of design. But by this cause-and-effect standard, Mr. Romney could push someone out of an airplane and blame the ground for killing him. Once government takes on the direct or implicit liability of paying for health care for everyone, the only way to afford it is through raw political control of all medical decisions.

Mr. Romney's refusal to appreciate this, then and now, reveals a troubling failure of political understanding and principle. The raucous national debate over health care isn't about this or that technocratic detail, but about basic differences over the role of government. In the current debate over Medicare, Paul Ryan wants to reduce costs by encouraging private competition while Mr. Obama wants the cost-cutting done by a body of unelected experts like the one emerging in Massachusetts. 

The Journal's unforgiving conclusion:
 

For a potential President whose core argument is that he knows how to revive free market economic growth, this amounts to a fatal flaw. Presidents lead by offering a vision for the country rooted in certain principles, not by promising a technocracy that runs on "data." Mr. Romney's highest principle seems to be faith in his own expertise.

More immediately for his Republican candidacy, the debate over ObamaCare and the larger entitlement state may be the central question of the 2012 election. On that question, Mr. Romney is compromised and not credible. If he does not change his message, he might as well try to knock off Joe Biden and get on the Obama ticket.

Ouch.  Romney previewed his healthcare approach in an Op/Ed in yesterday's USA Today.

The revolution in Egypt has led to the burning of churches and persecution of Christians as the Muslim Brotherhood takes over power in the country.




Tolerance and "reform" indeed....

President Obama, the man who has never run a business or really worked in the private sector, is asking businesses to "step up" and hire more people in order to do their part to help the economy.

"It is time for companies to step up," Obama said. "American taxpayers contributed to that process of stabilizing the economy. Companies have benefited from that, and they're making a lot of money, and now's the time for them to start betting on American workers and American products."

Here are some reasons it is difficult for businesses to simply "step-up":

Energy prices are way up, businesses depend on energy to operate and have less money to hire because employers have to spend on higher energy costs

Employers don't know how expensive ObamaCare will really be and so far have already seen premium costs for employer provided healthcare increase, therefore have less money to pay new hires

Employers not only have to pay a wages to a new hire, they also have to match and pay the same amount of payroll taxes the employee pays to the government

Overall economic uncertainty.

When businesses are capable of hiring, they will hire. There is this little thing called a profit that must be made in order to grow a business. Employers can't "step-up" and hire without it, but with Obama's reckless economic policies and endless regulation proposals, stepping up isn't going to happen anytime soon and his lack of business understanding isn't helping either.

The Left has been pushing the tired, baseless meme of dangerous tea party violence for years now, yet actual evidence of said violence has proven elusive.  Until now.  A Tea Party* Congressional candidate lashed out at a tracker yesterday, and the senseless brutality was caught on tape:

See, these wingnuts really are prone to violent outbursts!  I mean, did you see how Mr. Tea Party* muttered something about "punching out" the (really annoying) tracker before hitting him?  National Republican leaders must immediately apologize for, and condemn, this behavior -- and take full responsibility for the heated right-wing rhetoric that is poisoning our civil discourse.  New tone, etc.  

So who is this agitated far-right crank, you ask?  Why, it's partisan Democrat and *fake 'Tea Party' candidate Jack Davis, of course!  (The man sure has a temper).

What a duplicitous double-dip of political subterfuge by Democrats:  They can decry the Tea Party rage they've always imagined, while resting assured in the knowledge that the culprit is actually one of their own, who's dutifully sabotaging the real conservative candidate in a close election.

Those with ears to hear and eyes to see will get a better understanding of this crime than what is verbalized by NBC in this "report."

Our politically correct media refuse to connect the dots between the stealing of ours and our children's Social Security numbers and the illegal immigrants who perpetrate these federal offenses.

Although you will not hear NBC refer in any way to illegals, it will be more than clear who the perp is.

BTW: Dontcha just love how the courageous media are calling-out the government for not busting these thugs, but they cower and shirk when it comes to calling out politically incorrect realities.

1984 is here. Schools in San Antonio, Texas are installing cameras to photograph what children select to eat, and to track how much food is left at the end of the lunch period. This $2 million dollar project is coming to schools thanks to a Department of Agriculture grant:

A new $2 million project in San Antonio, Texas will see high-tech cameras installed in school cafeterias that will take photographs of the food children put on their lunch trays, and what they don’t finish eating. The lunch trays each also have a unique bar code attached to them to track eating activity.

Funded by a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, the project will use digital imaging technology to analyse the before and after lunch photographs, identifying what food children ate, calculating a child’s calorie intake and the nutrients in their meal.

The one redeeming detail is that parents can decide whether their kids will participate. At least this isn't mandatory. At the same time, it is a clumsy response to a problem. For one thing, cafeteria food is less healthy than fast food at Burger King. If parents are (rightly) concerned about keeping their kids healthy, they are probably better off making them lunch at home (provided that schools continue to allow it).

Also, don't schools have better things to do? Given the notably poor performance of many public schools, it seems that it would make more sense to focus energy and tax dollars on improving classroom achievements than cameras and bar codes in the lunch room.

I agree with the intention-wanting to help parents help kids be healthy is great. But this might be the clumsiest, most Brave New World-esque way to do it.

The world is upside down. Our children are wearing butt and leg-toning shoes, padded push-up bikini tops, children's anti-aging makeup, and now botox.

No doubt these kids are well versed in global warming talking points and how to properly place a condom on a banana.

George Washington is what?

It looks like things are about to heat up in Arizona and I'm not talking about the weather.

From the Goldwater Institute:

Overhauling Arizona’s rules for disciplining state workers who are incompetent, ineffective, or behave badly remains a top priority for Governor Jan Brewer and lawmakers who say they will likely advance the issue in a special legislative session.

If they do, they can expect a backlash that could erupt into protests akin to those that occurred in Wisconsin earlier this year when legislators there were mulling a bill to curb the collective bargaining rights of public employees, the head of an Arizona labor union for government workers said.

A roughly 300-page proposal from Brewer would phase out existing civil service protections for state workers, moving them into an “at-will” system similar to what is typical in the private sector. Brewer has not released the bill or even a summary of the legislation. However, she did ask lawmakers in the waning days of the just-concluded legislative session to take up the issue before adjourning. But the governor’s request came too late, as lawmakers were anxious to wrap up a tough session, top legislators say.