Obamacare Defenders: Your Very Existence Is a Commercial Activity

InsiderOnline  "The Constitutional question that’s been presented in about 20 lawsuits is whether the Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate behavior that is not in any way commercial at all. People who have chosen not to buy health insurance would not seem to be engaged in commerce, and thus would seem to be beyond the reach of Congress’s power to regulate commerce. Emphasis added.

ObamaCare's Incentive to Drop Insurance   The Democrats are getting just what they wanted with Obamacare. It's happening as we speak.

It’s the Mandates, Stupid  "Hewitt Associates recently projected that health insurance premiums will rise 8.8 percent in 2011. That follows a 6.9 percent in increase in 2010. One reason Obamacare may be failing to make health insurance more affordable is that the law does nothing to address one of the major drivers of rising health care costs: government itself."

Will America Accept Bureaucratic Rationing of Healthcare? "The numbers are as startling as tragic. According to the Daily Mail, “Up to 20,000 people have died needlessly early after being denied cancer drugs on the NHS, it was revealed yesterday. The rationing body NICE has failed to keep a promise to make more life-extending drugs available.”
"British cancer patients are routinely denied access to critical life-extending drugs because of their costs. "

Charles Krauthammer: "Obama Underappreciation Syndrome"

WaPo "Faced with this truly puzzling conundrum, Dr. Obama diagnoses a heretofore undiscovered psychological derangement: anxiety-induced Obama Underappreciation Syndrome, wherein an entire population is so addled by its economic anxieties as to be neurologically incapable of appreciating the "facts and science" undergirding Obamacare and the other blessings their president has bestowed upon them from on high."

YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK: Woman seeks 'Christian roommate,' state cites her for discrimination

WorldNetDaily  "A single, 31-year-old woman in Michigan who posted a note on her church bulletin board seeking a "Christian roommate" to share her residence has been cited by the state for violating the Fair Housing Act by discriminating against those of other faiths."

NPR and Juan Williams, Day Two (Updated)

http://www.worldmag.com/editorialcartoons/

Now we know what will get you fired at NPR. Just what won't get you fired?  "What's this about wishing Jesse Helms would "get AIDS from a transfusion, or one of his grandchildren will get it." Can you believe that? Expressing a wish that the grandchild of a U.S. Senator get AIDS? Totenberg is still working for NPR as the legal affairs correspondent. Wow. "  Neal Boortz


Megyn Kelly

Megyn Kelly Exposes CAIR's Agenda With Juan Williams' Firing [Video]  "It took 36 hours for NPR to make a move, but they ended up firing Williams, apparently out of the blue according to Juan.  There's no explanation for the timing other than they were pressured by an outside group - CAIR."

In wake of NPR controversy, Fox News gives Juan Williams an expanded role   "The cable news network signs the analyst to a new three-year contract for nearly $2 million. Meanwhile, conservative figures blast the public radio network for its response to Williams' comments about Muslims."

Should NPR's CEO Fire Herself in the Juan Williams Debacle?  "National Public Radio CEO Vivian Schiller has now apologized for a "thoughtless" remark about Juan Williams, whom she fired as an analyst for admitting that he gets "worried" when he's flying and sees people in "Muslim garb" on the plane. Schiller had told an Atlanta crowd that Williams should take his feelings up with "his psychiatrist or his publicist.""  The word snarky has appeared in articles about Vivian Schiller lately.

Juan Williams: Fair and Balanced  Unlike NPR   by Fred Barnes 
"I have no doubt that Juan’s comments about Muslims were merely a pretext. There had been prior run-ins between NPR and Juan over his appearances on Fox. But fire him over remarks that most Americans would identify with? I didn’t think the loathing of Fox would cause NPR to do something so ideologically driven, unprofessional, and bigoted."

National Politically-correct Radio by William Kristol  "No inconvenient truths here, please."  Then this:  "Muslims who wear Western clothing and speak English with Marxist-Islamist vocabulary are vastly more likely to be suicide bombers in the West than a devout Muslim in an abaya or thobe or Pakistani shalwar qameez. But while his manner may have been clumsy, Williams was right to suggest that there is a troubling nexus between the modern Islamic identity and the embrace of terrorism as a holy act."

Juan Williams, Welcome to Imusville   "Williams carries the scars of battle -- those many rapier-like "now wait a minute Juan" moments he had to tolerate from Hume -- just before having his blather dissected and discarded by the senior Fox anchor for all to see. Williams faithfully carried the liberal torch in an environment that would have destroyed the Matthewses and Barnicles and Meachams of the world. (Can you imagine Olbermann trying to debate Hume?)"

Let NPR Pay Its Own Way "Liberals tend to prefer Thomas Jefferson’s vision of religious liberty to the one actually enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, so here’s one for them, from his bill for religious freedom in Virginia: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.” "  Emphasis added.

Citizens should not be forced to fund NPR’s progressive propaganda.  "Not one more red cent of public money should go to NPR, PBS, and CPB. Let the speech-squelching progressives and jihadi-whitewashing apologists pay for their own propaganda. Free the taxpayers!"  Michelle Malkin

The Closing of NPR’s Mind "In its unwillingness to tolerate Juan Williams, NPR has shown how little regard it has for even the slightest dissent from approved orthodoxies, especially if broadcast on the hated Fox News network. Just because you speak in dulcet tones, it doesn’t make you any less close-minded." Rich Lowry

Proposal: The Juan Williams Law "Meanwhile, according to most predictions, a very different Congress will be taking their seats in the Capitol this January. The big question is what they will do with their new-found power. I have a humble suggestion for a piece of legislation that I think the public would appreciate seeing enacted as quickly as possible." ... Roger L Simon, Pajamas Media

WikiLeaks plans 'major' announcement in Europe

myway  "The task force has informed the U.S. Central Command of some of the names of Iraqis and allies and of other information they believe might be released that could present a danger, officials have said, noting that - unlike the WikiLeaks previous disclosure of some 77,000 documents from Afghanistan - in this case they had advance notice that names may be exposed."

What If Christine O'Donnell Were Right About The First Amendment?

Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion "At the same time, however, the Court has recognized that"

total separation is not possible in an absolute sense. Some relationship between government and religious organizations is inevitable.
Ibid. In every Establishment Clause case, we must reconcile the inescapable tension between the objective of preventing unnecessary intrusion of either the church or the state upon the other, and the reality that, as the Court has so often noted, total separation of the two is not possible. [p673]

And On O'Donnell's Flub: After 24 Hours, It Appears It Was No Flub At All. Washington Post Reporter Ben Evans Simply Lied. "In other words, she makes it perfectly clear what she's questioning. "Not that the Establishment Clause says what it says, but whether the phrase "separation of church and state" appears in the clause.
"And of course, on that point, she's 100% right.
Don't believe me? Well believe the Washington Post, which now reports the exchange as concluding thus:"...
Strong language advisory in this article, regrettably.

Don't Vote if You Didn't Do Your Homework

Selwyn Duke, American Thinker  "I understand why Democrats are enamored of get-out-the-dopes drives such as Rock the Vote. Having every drug addict, goth, Wiccan, vampirist, criminal, cross-dresser, sideshow geek, and The Hills Have Eyes mutant do the walkie-pully-poll thing between drunken slumber and a night's partying may not make America stronger, but it sure makes the Democrat Party stronger. Hey, they know their constituencies, which together, to borrow a Pat Buchanan line, look like the bar scene in Star Wars." As Rush would say, "Right on, right on, right on!"

The Democrats Will Steal the Election if We Let Them "This is certainly a valid point in this age, when Stuart Smalley has found his way from the tube to the Senate and the Black Panthers have been resurrected from their status as footnote to the '60s to serve as enforcers for humane, progressive liberalism. It will serve us well to take a close look at the Democrat record in this matter, consider what they may be up to regarding this election, and, the most serious question of all, ask why the GOP lets them get away with it."

Related: EXCLUSIVE: Illinois Elections Officials Caught Lying About Military Ballots "This is a national disgrace. The Illinois State Board of Elections has been lying about the status of military absentee ballots and a lazy Department of Justice has allowed itself to be duped.
"In an e-mail exchange between the Illinois State Board of Elections and the Department of Justice’s Voting Section shows the State has been misleading DOJ for almost a month."

Mike Ramirez, Townhall

Next target: NPR's Mara Liasson Takes Heat Over Fox News Appearances

Daily Finance.com  "The liberal media watchdog group, Media Matters for America , argued on its blog that NPR needs to address the "thorny issue" of Liasson's work for Fox in light of the Williams controversy. "

Glenn Foden, Townhall

What's happening in the Afghan-Taliban talks?

 Reuters  "The Taliban themselves dismiss talks as propaganda, and there have been often conflicting media reports about the level of contact with insurgents and who exactly is involved.
"Here are some details on what has been reported, what has been said in public and who the key players are:"   Via Heritage.


Why fight when we have so much in common with each other?

Obama: You know who’s a pretty good president? Me

Hot Air   "“For all the problems we’re going through right now, we still have the best workers on earth, the finest universities on earth, we’ve got the best entrepreneurs on earth, we’ve got the freest, most vibrant economy on earth,” he said.
"One female supporter then yelled out “the best president on earth” and Obama replied, “Well, I won’t say that, but we got a pretty good president.”"

Eric Allie, Townhall

Three Wars, Little News

Victor Davis Hanson  "Does President Obama plan to win, or is he willing to concede the war with the Taliban? Does the media fear that depressing coverage of Afghanistan will damage this administration in the way daily headlines of violence from Iraq nearly destroyed the prior one?"

No Time for Defeatism in Afghanistan  "Kristof’s prescriptions would make sense only if we had already fought and lost in Afghanistan. But with the last of the surge forces having arrived only last month, our outstanding troops have barely begun to fight. And as Carlotta Gall’s report makes clear, in areas where we are applying substantial combat power, we are making progress on the ground. This is no time for defeatism."

Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region "Some of the gains seem to have come from a new mobile rocket that has pinpoint accuracy — like a small cruise missile — and has been used against the hideouts of insurgent commanders around Kandahar. That has forced many of them to retreat across the border into Pakistan. Disruption of their supply lines has made it harder for them to stage retaliatory strikes or suicide bombings, at least for the moment, officials and residents said."

JAWA Report

Firing offense: NPR axes Juan Williams for opinions on Muslims & post-9/11 travel (Updated)

Jihad Watch photo

Michelle Malkin  "That’s right. Government-funded NPR has apparently caved into left-wing attack dogs on the Internet.
"Also in the lynch mob: CAIR, of course."....
"As I’ve said many times before: Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror.
"Condolences to Juan Williams, whom I’ve debated –vigorously, but always with respect and cordiality — many times over the years.
"Hope this accelerates his journey on the ideological learning curve. And I hope he doesn’t back down."

NPR Has a Cokie Roberts Exception to the Rule about Comparing People to Terrorists

"What’s the connection? Well, Cokie Roberts is a senior news analyst at NPR.So, apparently, it’s outrageous and a firing offense to compare Muslims on an airplane to terrorists, but it’s just fine to compare Glenn Beck to terrorists. No double standard here at all.

"Sarah Palin is right. It’s time for National Private Radio."

NPR report on Williams' firing   "His remarks on The O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR," the statement read.
"Williams' presence on the largely conservative and often contentious prime-time talk shows of Fox News has long been a sore point with NPR News executives."

What did Juan Williams say to get him fired from NPR?  "But the statement he made on O'Reilly's show that got him canned from NPR is so innocuous and beyond that, so true of most Americans, that you have to figure that either the liberal Public Radio network was looking for an excuse to get rid of Williams, or they are so drenched in political correctness that every other factor takes a back seat to their slavish devotion to that ideology."  Rick Moran, American Thinker

Fox News gives background on the interview   "The conversation with O'Reilly stemmed from a well-publicized argument the previous week between O'Reilly and "The View" hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg, who walked off their own set when O'Reilly said, "Muslims killed us on 9/11."

"The comment had been an explanation by O'Reilly why the majority of Americans don't want a mosque housed in an Islamic cultural center built near Ground Zero."  Mike Ramirez cartoon

More on NPR:  "...As he clutched his chest in desperation and pain, would you call 911? Would you try to save him from dying? Of course you would."

But if that man was Rush Limbaugh, and you were Sarah Spitz, a producer for National Public Radio, that isn't what you'd do at all

This, however, is NOT a firing offense at NPR.

Update:  TOO MUCH FEEDBACK- NPR Can’t Take the Heat; Contact Page Shut Down 
"Can a taxpayer funded organization discriminate or fire an employee based upon the content of his or her non employment speech? Isn’t that a violation of the First Amendment? Interesting questions."

Update: Juan Williams: NPR Fired Me Over The Phone Without Even Talking To Me About My Comments  "So, according to Juan Williams, NPR called him up on the phone. Called his remarks bigoted. Then fired him on the spot without letting him defend himself.
"Wow."