This is what Senator Barack Obama said of the Bush State Secrets doctrine while running for President in 2008 [and defending his own vote for telecom immunity]: I wouldn't have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush's abuse of executive power. It grants retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that may have violated the law by cooperating with the Bush administration's program of warrantless wiretapping. This potentially weakens the deterrent effect of the law and removes an important tool for the American people to demand accountability for past abuses. Here, Glenn Greenwald explains, is the stunning reversal in recent Obama Administration DOJ filings on the issue: The Obama administration has, yet again, asserted the broadest and most radical version of the "state secrets" privilege -- which previously caused so much controversy and turmoil among loyal Democrats (when used by B...

From Alphecca : After scores of deaths, the U.S. government government is taking a closer look at off-road recreational vehicles, known as ROVs. The Consumer Product Safety Commission voted Wednesday to write mandatory rules to regulate the four-wheel vehicles, after more than 100 deaths since 2003. Riders have suffered dozens of injuries, too — some leading to amputations. The actual stats are : Since 2003, CPSC says 116 people have died, including young children, and more than 150 have been injured. Injuries have involved crushing fractures to legs, feet and arms and some riders have lost limbs. The CPSC says it cannot wait on voluntary standards and market forces: "This is an instance where the industry has not been responding quickly and effectively enough to the well-documented hazards caused by these products," said Rachel Weintraub, director of product safety and senior counsel for the Consumer Federation of America. Ms. Weintraub, however, is--wait for it, technical t...

From Coyote blog : Cameron Scott meant this sentence as a withering critique of everything that is wrong with the government, from his point of view: Transit riders shouldered four times the share of the MTA [Metropolitan Transit Authority] 2008 budget disaster [than] drivers did, but officials promised to seek more revenue from parking. Holy cr*p! You mean that transit users shouldered four times more of the transit budget than transit non-users? Gasp! The Bay Area where he lives is experiencing light rail disease. This is the phenomenon where middle class voters along heavy white collar commuting routes push for horrendously expensive light rail lines. The capital costs of these systems drain transit budgets into the distant future, forcing service cuts, particularly in bus systems that serve the poor. The result is that the city ends up with bigger transit bills, but less actual transit, and progressives like Scott scratch their head and try to figure out what went wrong. It m...

From the Obama Department of Justice arguments in the telecom immunity case : “The communications between the agencies and telecommunications companies regarding the immunity provisions of the proposed legislation have been regarded as intra-agency because the government and the companies have a common interest in the defense of the pending litigation and the communications regarding the immunity provisions concerned that common interest.” By this logic, Blackwater and Haliburton could easily be conceived of as part of the government and protected under the doctrine of sovereign immunity. Fortunately for all of us concerned that the current administration has little interest in Constitutional protections of basic civil rights, the judge disagreed: “Here, the telecommunications companies communicated with the government to ensure that Congress would pass legislation to grant them immunity from legal liability for their participation in the surveillance,” White wrote. “Those documents a...

This is what WaPo says, in the lead paragraphs of a new story, that the CBO scoring of the Baucus health insurance reform plan would do: A health-care reform bill drafted by the Senate Finance Committee would expand health coverage to nearly 30 million Americans who currently lack insurance and would meet President Obama's goal of reducing the federal budget deficit by 2019, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The bill would cost $829 billion over the next decade, but would more than offset that cost by slicing hundreds of billions from government health programs such as Medicare and by imposing a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost insurance policies starting in 2013. All told, the package would slice $81 billion from projected budget deficits over the next 10 years, the CBO said, and continue to reduce deficits well into the future. It would also expand coverage to 94 percent of Americans by 2019, the CBO said, up from the current 83 percent. This is what ...

I thought it would be at least amusing to use the Delawareliberal comments as sub-headings regarding each category of what is wrong with the proposed tax on sodas and juice drinks. But there are so many different little strands of each comment that it would be impossible to pull them all out. So, instead, I'm going to let you read them in more or less the order they appeared, and note the assumptions. pandora: I’m perfectly okay with taxing sodas and juice drinks. Mainly because they’re total crap, and one of the main reasons our country’s children are overweight. They are also dirt cheap. Assumptions here: (1) Because "I" am perfectly okay with a new tax it should be imposed on everybody; (2) it is the government's responsibility to keep children from being obese; (3) the cheapness of the product to be taxed justifies charging people more for it. John Manifold: Soda fattens your kids [and you and your husband], shortens their lives, costs more than water [a...

... even if I have nothing to say about the President's speech, because by now it's been done to death. But here's how I know--not as a Libertarian but as an American--that the Federal government doesn't actually give a rat's butt about whether I--or Smitty, for that matter--goes broke due to health care bills, and that the so-called reform is all about creating new customers for health insurance companies. Looking back through the documents assembled for last years' taxes the other day, I recalled exactly why we were glad to see 2008 end. With my wife's back surgery and my son's chronic fatigure and my younger daughter's braces we had over $13,500 in direct out-of-pocket health care expenses. And we couldn't deduct a penny of it from our taxes. Given our income [which is information you don't really need] we would have to have spent several thousand dollars more before we could deduct anything, and then we would only be able to deduct whate...

No, I'm not kidding : WASHINGTON — If you're planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you'd best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products. The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that's been recalled by its manufacturer. "Those who resell recalled children's products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children's lives at risk," said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The crackdown affects sellers ranging from major thrift-store operators such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to everyday Americans cleaning out their attics for yard sales, church bazaars or — increasingly — digital hawking on eBay, Craigslist and other Web site...

Tyler recently posted on the Federal government's intent to withhold highway funds from States unless they pass legislation making driving while texting illegal. This is, of course, the same mechanism that the Feds used to force States to lower speed limits in the 1970s and to make failure to wear a seat belt a primary offense over the past decade. Progressives, with Dana Garrett standing in as our exemplar today, think this is exactly what government should be doing : I read that texting while driving is just as dangerous as driving while intoxicated. If the Feds said to states who had no laws against drunk driving "No bucks until you pass such laws," then I'd say Amen because those states are acting against the public interest. Therefore, if texting is just as dangerous as drving drunk, then I think the Feds making this condition is a great idea. This is my response: Let's unpack the consequences of your position, Dana. Federal highway funds pay for multiple sa...

Dana Garrett is currently trumpeting the supposed 23% return the US government received on its bail-out investment in Goldmann Sachs: Boo hoo for you conservative Republicans and Libertarians. Instead of the dire consequences you predicted, the bailout is already starting to work for both the companies it helped and the taxpayers. Goldman Sachs is ALREADY giving us a 23% return on our tax dollars. We are ALREADY making a good return on the bailout--just like what happened in Sweden. This is GREAT NEWS! Because, you see, it means we now have a funding mechanism for Health Care reform: we just keep sending bail-out money to America's mega-banks. It will work like this. First (h/t ABC ) we spend $23.7 Trillion on the Troubled Asset Relief Program: "The total potential federal government support could reach up to $23.7 trillion," says Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, in a new report obtained Monday by ABC News on the gover...

... at least before we rush to pass health care reform. From Investor's Business Daily : Congress: It didn't take long to run into an "uh-oh" moment when reading the House's "health care for all Americans" bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal. When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee. It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of "Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage," the "Limitation On New Enrollment" section of the bill clearly states: "Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after ...

While a lot of folks are looking at the increased investment in Amtrak and potential investments in light rail systems as leading toward a brighter future, I thought it would be a good idea to examine how massive government interventions in, say, transportation, have very large, unintended consequences. So here's the narrative from the Federal DOT's history pages on the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, with my own comments intersperced. After you you read this, you should actually visit the page, because there is a really neat progressive map set showing how the Interstate has affected population density on a decade-by-decade basis. As he looked back on his two terms in office, former President Dwight D. Eisenhower said of the Interstate System that, "More than any single action by the government since the end of the war, this one would change the face of America." The impacts of the Interstate System remain controversial, but it did, as President Eisenhower...

First--to our liberal friends --the good news, via CBS : (AP) President Barack Obama challenged the nation's vested interests to a legislative duel Saturday, saying he will fight to change health care, energy and education in dramatic ways that will upset the status quo. "The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long," Mr. Obama said in his weekly radio and video address. "But I don't. I work for the American people." He said his ambitious budget plan, unveiled Thursday, will help millions of Americans, but only if Congress overcomes resistance from deep-pocket lobbies. "I know these steps won't sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they're gearing up for a fight," Mr. Obama said, using tough-guy language reminiscent of his predecessor, George W. Bush. "My message to them is this: So am ...

Here's what I wrote a few days ago about President Obama's edict that CEOs of corporations receiving Federal bail-out money will have their pay capped at $500k: This is only intended as a first step. Because virtually every corporation receives some sort of government funding (research grants, tax breaks, etc.), pretty much just like every university does, this precedent will ultimately allow the government the power to cap the pay of anybody in the corporate world, not just those whose businesses are in trouble. And here's the link Bowly sent me last night, from the Financial Week : Congress will consider legislation to extend some of the curbs on executive pay that now apply only to those banks receiving federal assistance, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank said. “There’s deeply rooted anger on the part of the average American,” the Massachusetts Democrat said at a Washington news conference today. He said the compensation restrictions would apply...

Something to think about.... After September 11, 2001, the Federal government used a major disaster to argue for the creation of the largest bureaucracy in American history, to implement a massively interventionist foreign policy, to cut taxes while spending us into debt.... ... and we were told there was an emergency, and only an expanded government could handle it. So we allowed the shredding of Constitutional rights and the creation of a virtual police/surveillance state because for several years the American people accepted the idea that to question those policies was to be less than patriotic, to side with the terrorists.... After the Great Meltdown began during the fall of 2008--and since the inauguration of the new administration--the Federal government is again using a major disaster to argue for the largest, most expensive expansion of government power and spending in the history of the world , to continue an interventionist foreign policy, and (even) to cut taxes while spen...