Obamacare Upheld. Saddleburr Gives First Donation to Romney

It’s official. The federal leviathan can do anything it wants to its citizens and Chief Justice John Roberts agrees.

Get ready for higher taxes, dictates about lifestyle choices, loss of healthcare choices, rationing and death panels.

Romney is our absolute last chance to stop this. As flawed as he is, he’s our last hope to prevent us from going to a post-Constitutional tyranny.

Aditionally, we’ve got to flip the Senate as well or it’s a futile exercise.

You’d better get busy.

 

NBC Today. The Obamarometer.

Want to know how poorly Obama’s lawyer did at the Supreme Court yesterday? Just watch the Today Show.

They talked about the crazy Jet Blue pilot, Trayvon Martin…again, House Speaker John Boehner’s personal relationship with Barack Obama and Christie Brinkley’s catfight with her ex-husband.

The most consequential Supreme Court case in decades is being argued, with the very constitutionality of Obama’s signature piece of legislation in question and not a peep from NBC.

OK. Not entirely true. The brief reading of the headlines mentioned that a part of the law may be in trouble.

Yeah. The part that funds all of Obamacare. Without it, the law is toast.

Nice job, peacock. Nice job.

 

Craziness in the Nation’s Capitol

It was an historic, crazy and entertaining day at the Supreme Court.  I was clicking pics on my iPhone and emailing them to Bryan Preston over at PJ Media throughout the Americans for Prosperity rally and those can be seen here.

I’m going to tease you a bit with more pics from the AFP rally, but I’ve got lots of video to sort through from being amongst the Obamaggots at the Supreme Court itself, which was a few blocks away from the AFP rally. 

It will take some time to mash up all the video I took and I hope to provide something tonight, or at least get it mostly done tonight and it’ll show up tomorrow.  (I’m one guy here.  Gimme a break.)

Let’s just say that early today, when we were at the Supreme Court most of the participants appeared to be college age kids looking for a party and when pressed they weren’t very informed.  But they certainly dance and chant as instructed by their ‘minders’.  Lots of energy, too.

But there numbers were smallish, even though they were provided signage and breakfast by NOW, SEIU, Planned Parenthood and others.  McMartin may have a great scoop about payments being made to participants, but he had to go to his daughter’s birthday party tonight, so stay tuned for that.

We outnumbered the ObamACORNs decisively today.  At least 5 to 1.

Enjoy these pics whilst I have some dinner and then get to work. 

Let’s just say there’s a very, very special UTERUS waiting for you people once I get done.

And Breitbart was there….

 . 

 

Stay tuned for more.

 

Ted Nugent: There’s a Monster in the White House

Ted Nugent doesn’t mince words.  He’s very direct and extremely funny, too boot..  If only our Republican contenders took his advice and went to the Army surplus store to buy a box of scrotums.  OK.  That’s probably not how I would phrase it.

Listen to this excerpt of the Nuge field dressing Obama, his administration, and the Republican field.

Update:  I had another thought on the rotten apples portion of the video and have replaced it with even more rotten fruit.  It’s called artistic license.

Go here to listen to the entire interview with Phoenix, AZ talker Mike Broomhead from KFYI.   The interview covers a range of topics including his love of hunting, his personal brand of ammunition soon to come to market, his upcoming tour and more.

 

Now, even the left is calling on Kagan to recuse herself from hearing Health care case.

Now that the Supreme Court has officially decided to hear the challenge to the constitutionality of the PPACA (Obamacare), the calls for Justice Elena Kagan to recuse herself from the case are flooding in. The issue is whether or not the Justice and former Obama administration Solicitor General through her previous duties, involvement, and expressed opinions, would be able to maintain the appearance of impartiality as required by federal statute. Predictably, these calls have come from pundits and politicians on the right. As noted in a previous post on DTN, Obama Attorney General Eric Holder does not see any reason for Kagan to recuse herself. I was unable to find any direct commentary on this from the president but his spokesman Jay Carney stated that this issue was examined and settled during the nomination process and any further calls to revisit the issue “sure sounds like a political thing”. Of course, Carney’s explanation makes no sense whatsoever, the senate confirmation process is an effort to determine whether or not that body should consent to the appointment of that individual to the court, not to excuse them from recusing themselves from any future case that court may hear. Also, as Fred Lucas of CNS news noted, we now have new evidence in the form of DOJ internal emails that strengthen the case for recusal.

Now a prominent and self-professed liberal and loyal Democrat constitutional professor of law is making the same argument. Eric Segall of Georgia State University College of Law recently made a non-political, fact based case for recusal. First, Segall explains the law as it pertains to judicial recusal;

A federal statute requires that any “justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” Federal law also requires that a judge recuse herself if the judge previously served in governmental employment “and in that capacity participated as a … counsel, adviser, or material witness concerning the proceeding or has expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.”

He then goes on to make a brilliant matter of fact case for recusal.

1)  She served as the solicitor general of the United States during the time that the ACA was furiously debated in Congress, discussed in town halls across the country, and enacted;

2) The ACA is the most important, controversial, and partisan piece of legislation put forward by the Obama administration while Kagan worked as the president’s top lawyer to the Supreme Court. If he didn’t consult with her about it, he should have;

3) She was nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama shortly after the ACA was passed, and the president is closely and personally identified with the law;

4) She has to review the law just a few months before President Obama runs for re-election;

5) His re-election might well be affected by how the Supreme Court rules; and

6) We know she celebrated the passage of the law.

We know about her celebrating the passage from a recently released email from Kagan to Laurence Tribe, a liberal Harvard constitutional law professor who was also working for the administration at the time the law passed, in which she said, “I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing.” The email’s subject line was “fingers and toes crossed today!”

Now CNS is reporting that yet another email is indicating that Kagan was brought into the loop on Mark Levin’s Obamacare complaint. As evidence piles up and calls for recusal from both sides increase, it will be interesting to see if, as Eric Segall asks, Kagan views herself as a judge of law who is obligated to approach legal issues objectively and open-mindedly without regard to partisan political outcomes or if she is merely a left-wing ideologue with no regard for the integrity of the court.

 

Eric Holder’s testimony today reminds me of fishing for striped bass

One of the best ways to catch a big striper (OK, rock fish for you Chessie types) is with a big, juicy live eel.  Getting a big, juicy live eel on a fish hook can be a bit of a challenge and it takes a while to get the knack of it.

Eels are slimy and next to impossible to grasp with the bare hand.  Eels are fast.  Eels are cagey and do not much like having a sharp hook inserted under the jaw and plunged through that jaw and out through an eye.  They’ll fight you every step of the way, will wrap around your wrist and if given a chance, will ball up into your fishing line and within seconds turn the whole rig into a useless piece of junk.

Congressman Lamar Smith of Texas tried to rig up for striped bass fishing today and Eric Holder was in no mood to become bait.  Holder was as slippery as any eel I’ve ever tried to employ and he did his best to wrap himself into the fishing line.

Holder’s last congressional testimony asserted that Elena Kagan never played any role in the Obamacare defense strategy when she was Solicitor General.  This was a eely secretion of slime that was being deployed to prevent her from the hue and cry of people rightly insisting that for her to sit on the Supreme Court decision about the constitutionality of Obamacare would be a conflict of interest and that she should recuse herself. 

Smith tried to get the eel to qualify a timeline, asserting that it would have made no sense for her to not perform her primary job in working as the President’s lead counsel during the formation of the arguments for defending it.

But the eel twisted, slimed, squirmed and wrapped its tail around Smith’s wrist, refusing to get on the hook.

But Smith fought back nobly and inquired about the documentation and personal testimony he’d requested from Justice, insisting that Holder either declare some sort of legal privilege or surrender to his request.

Lamar Smith had the eel in his grasp.  He had the hook in the other hand.  He struggled against the mighty eel, but in the end he hooked the bastard.  Now he can drop in his line and catch the big fish.  

As a man who can not only hook up eels and catch big stripers, I can do it from a kayak. 

I think Lamar can do it from an inner tube.  Nice job, Mr. Smith.

 

Attorney General Eric Holder spins Elena Kagan’s role in Obamacare

When asked by Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) about Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s involvement in the framing of and defense of Obamacare while she served as Solicitor General, president Obama’s chief legal council throughout the process, Holder makes the statement that not only wasn’t she involved, but when the topic of Obamacare came up she was asked to leave the room.

Carrie Severino over at Judicial Crisis Network lays out the case that not only was Kagan heavily involved in every phase of Obamacare, but she was went to extraordinary measures by involving the office of the Solicitor General in the earliest defense strategy at the lowest levels of the court system.

Because it is so unusual for the Solicitor General’s Office to get involved at the District Court level, not to mention before a law is passed, Kagan’s approval, tacit or explicit, would have been required. The fact that she encouraged her Office’s involvement at such an early stage could only mean that she believed it was necessary to ensure that the strongest possible arguments in defense of the law would be raised at the outset to set the stage for all the appeals that would certainly follow. Her actions had the added effect of communicating to the President and the rest of his Administration that the Solicitor General herself was on top of the legal challenges from the beginning and would not be caught off guard.

Severino goes on to debunk the premise of Holder’s statement. 

During her confirmation hearings, Kagan stated that she was present at “at least one” meeting in which the challenges to PPACA were discussed. But JCN has obtained documents indicating that her involvement was much more substantial than merely attending a single meeting.

So here we go again.  Just like in ‘Fast and Furious’, Eric Holder is either woefully incompetent and ill informed or he is purposefully obfuscating and lying.

No matter.  Either way, it is quite evident that for Elena Kagan to sit in judgement on the Obamacare Supreme Court proceeding is an unacceptable violation of judicial ethics.  She’s been involved with Obamacare throughout the process and again, referring back to Carrie Severino’s excellent article, the answer is obvious.

It requires recusal where the judge “has served in governmental employment and in such capacity participated as counsel, adviser or material witness concerning the proceeding or expressed an opinion concerning the merits of the particular case in controversy.” 28 U.S.C. §455(b)(3).

If you prefer the uneditorialized raw video footage of the Lee/Holder exchange without the dulcet tones of Frank Black click below.  Most of it is on Fast and Furious.