Obama’s Vision for a Spartan America - Jonah Goldberg

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/289402/obama-s-vision-spartan-america-...

> [Obama quote:] “This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.”
>> No. Wrong. It is not so with America. This nation isn’t great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.

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Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

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Buffett’s Burlington Northern Among Pipeline Winners - Bloomberg

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-23/buffett-s-burlington-northern-among-winners-in-obama-rejection-of-pipeline.html

Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.

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Familiar Rhetoric, Failed Record

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Head Start A 50 Year Flop

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/01/12/head-start-a-50-year-flop-say-it-aint-so-joe/

But a long-suppressed government report finally released by the Obama administration report is shaking the foundations of Head Start, and the news isn’t coming from right wing conservatives but from Joe Klein at Time magazine. As Klein reports,

We spend more than $7 billion providing Head Start to nearly 1 million children each year. And finally there is indisputable evidence about the program’s effectiveness, provided by the Department of Health and Human Services: Head Start simply does not work.

These days, defenders of Head Start say less about what it does for kids (essentially nothing) but about the jobs it creates in poor neighborhoods.  This is blue liberal thinking at its most self-parodic: we can’t develop social programs that will accomplish something worthwhile, but we can at least use the illusion that such programs work to create jobs for people who will then vote for the politicians who give them make work jobs.

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Confirmation Bias: A Shameless Flip-Flop on Recess Appointments | The Weekly Standard

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/confirmation-bias-shameless-flip-flop-recess-appointments_616561.html

But in the course of his analysis, Tribe neglects to mention an important point: in 2004, he co-wrote a legal brief on behalf of Senator Ted Kennedy, in opposition to President Bush's recess appointments—a strongly-worded brief that contradicted (indeed, belittled) the very position he now stakes out in favor of President Obama's power grab.

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Robert Barro: An Exit Strategy From the Euro - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203462304577134722056867022.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Germany could create a parallel currency—a new D-Mark, pegged at 1.0 to the euro. The German government would guarantee that holders of German government bonds could convert euro securities to new-D-mark instruments on a one-to-one basis up to some designated date, perhaps two years in the future. Private German contracts expressed in euros would switch to new-D-mark claims over the same period. The transition would likely feature a period in which the euro and new D-mark circulate as parallel currencies.

Other countries could follow a path toward reintroduction of their own currencies over a two-year period. For example, Italy could have a new lira at 1.0 to the euro. If all the euro-zone countries followed this course, the vanishing of the euro currency in 2014 would come to resemble the disappearance of the 11 separate European moneys in 2001.

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Cordray’s Tribe - By John Yoo

John Yoo responds to Lawrence Tribe's article defending Obama's sham-recess appointments.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/287439/cordrays-tribe-john-yoo

> First, on the history: All of the precedents cited by Tribe occurred when the Senate was adjourned. The question was when does an adjournment of the Senate become long enough to qualify as a “recess” under Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution. As far as I know, and Tribe cannot claim to the contrary, no president has ever made a recess appointment when the Senate was formally in session. This is not a question of when does an adjournment become a recess — here, there has been no adjournment.

Tribe's original article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/06/opinion/games-and-gimmicks-in-the-senate.ht...

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A Tyrannical Abuse of Power: Obama Attempts to Appoint Cordray to CFPB

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/04/a-tyrannical-abuse-of-power-obama-attempts-to-appoint-cordray-to-cfpb/

The Constitution, in Article I, section 5, plainly states that neither house of Congress can recess for more than three days without the consent of the other house. The House of Representatives did not consent to a Senate recess of more than three days at the end of last year, and so the Senate—consistent with the requirements of the Constitution—is having pro forma sessions every few days. In short, Congress is still in session, and no one in Congress is saying (or can reasonably say) otherwise. It does not matter a wit that most Members of Congress are not in town voting on legislation, because ending a session of Congress requires the passage of a formal resolution, which never occurred.

Under Article II, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution, the President has the power to fill vacancies that may happen during Senate recesses. That power has been interpreted by scores of attorneys general and their designees in the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) for over 100 years to require an official, legal Senate recess of at least 10–25 days of duration. (There are a few outlier opinions, never sanctioned by the courts, that suggest a recess of six to seven days might be enough—but never less than that.)

The President’s purported recess appointment of Cordray would render the Senate’s advice and consent role to normal appointments almost meaningless. 

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Recess Appointment for Cordray: Unconstitutional?

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48541
> Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell Wednesday condemned President Obama’s decision to make a recess appointment of Richard Cordray as the first director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, even as the Senate is not in recess.
>> “This recess appointment represents a sharp departure from a long-standing precedent that has limited the President to recess appointments only when the Senate is in a recess of 10 days or longer,” said Sen. McConnell, who in a speech on the Senate floor December 17 pleaded with the White House for cooperation on the stalled confirmation of presidential appointments.
>>
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jan/4/obama-unprecedented-recess-app...

> The Constitution gives the president the power to make appointments when the Senate is not in session and able to confirm them. Traditionally, that has been understood to mean when the Senate has adjourned for a recess longer than 10 days, and a Clinton administration legal opinion said a recess must be at least three days.
>> Mr. Obama’s own top constitutional lawyers affirmed that view in 2010 in another case involving recess appointments. Asked what the standard was for making recess appointments, then-Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal told the justices the administration agreed with the three-day rule.
>> “The recess appointment power can work in a recess. I think our office has opined the recess has to be longer than 3 days,” Mr. Katyal said.

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Seven Devastating Facts About 2012 - Big Government

http://biggovernment.com/whall/2011/12/27/its-the-math-stupid-seven-devastating-facts-about-2012/

Every day, the U.S. government takes in $6 billion and spends $10 billion.  This means that every day the federal government spends $4 billion more dollars than it has.

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George Will: Ringing in a conservative year

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ringing-in-a-conservative-year/2011/12/30/gIQAGWZNRP_story.html

In 2011, for the first time in 62 years, America was a net exporter of petroleum products. For the indefinite future, a specter is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance. Because progressivism exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.

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Mark Steyn: Puncture the cocoon of denial

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/trillion-333653-debt-government.html

At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke – broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur – and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece's. That's true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.

The total combined wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans is $1.5 trillion. So, if you confiscated the lot, it would barely cover one Obama debt-ceiling increase. Nevertheless, America's student princes' main demand was that someone else should pick up the six-figure tab for their leisurely half-decade varsity of Social Justice studies.

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The American Spectator : 2011: The Year the Wheels Fell Off

A funny review of the past year's top stories by Jed Babbin.

http://spectator.org/archives/2011/12/30/2011-the-year-the-wheels-fell

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Samoa to skip Friday, lose December 30th 2011 forever

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2011/1229/Samoa-to-skip-Friday-lose-December-30th-2011-forever

So Samoans, who currently live 20 miles east of the dateline, will go to sleep on Thursday night, skip Friday, and wake up on Saturday morning on the Asian side of the imaginary line. (American Samoa will stay where it is, timewise.)

 The 24 hour leap into the future will make trade withEast Asia “far, far easier,” Mr. Tuilaepa said.

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Anti-SOPA boycott of GoDaddy

StackOverflow.com will change their domain registrar:

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/116891/will-stack-overflow-boycott-go...

Paul Graham will not invite SOPA supporters to Y Combinator Demo Days.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/paul-graham-sopa-supporting-companies-no-lon...

> When asked if that boycott extended to investors in those companies, Graham responded, “Several of the companies on the SOPA list have venture arms. I encourage startups to boycott them. We’ll certainly encourage all the startups we’ve funded to.”
>> The rationale? “If these companies are so clueless about technology that they think SOPA is a good idea, how could they be good investors?”

How to transfer out of GoDaddy:

http://blog.jeffepstein.me/post/14629857835/a-step-by-step-guide-to-transfer-...

> Follow these step-by-step directions to transfer all of your domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap.
>> I’m Boycotting GoDaddy because they are pro-SOPA.

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John Taylor: Want Growth? Try Stable Tax Policy

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204791104577110152436029914.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

Rather than stimulate the economy, they hold the economy back by creating policy unpredictability and by distracting Washington from crucial long-term reforms that are key to restoring economic growth and creating jobs.

Indeed, this type of temporary tax change is making the entire tax system unpredictable. According to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the payroll tax cut is only one of 84 tax provisions expiring this year, about the same as in 2009 and in 2010. This is 10 times greater than the number of provisions that expired in 1999. As shown in a paper presented this October by economists Scott Baker and Nicholas Bloom of Stanford University and Steven Davis of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, this increase in policy uncertainty is one of the factors slowing economic growth.

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South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley endorses Romney for president

http://thehill.com/video/campaign/199879-gov-nikki-haley-endorses-mitt-romney

> South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) endorsed Mitt Romney for president on Friday.

Follow the link for video.

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Obama's Justice Department joins Britain's 'Climategate' leaker manhunt

Christopher C. Horner reports:

http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/2011/12/obamas-justice-department-joins-britains-climategate-leaker-manhunt/2006206

To review: The UK police and the US DOJ, Criminal Division, are pursuing a leaker of public records subject to one or more FOIA, records that were unlawfully withheld under those laws, which leaks indicate apparent civil violations (tortious interference by seeking dismissal of certain “skeptics”), and raising reasonable questions of fraud against taxpayers.

And they are pursuing the leaker.

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Secret Fed Loans Gave Banks $13 Billion Undisclosed to Congress

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-28/secret-fed-loans-undisclosed-to-congress-gave-banks-13-billion-in-income.html

The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.

The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.

A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.

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