So says Florida Judge Roger Vinson of the US District Court in Pensacola. Link as soon as I get one.
Oh, baby.
The judge ruled the individual mandate that requires all Americans to purchase health insurance invalid and, according to the decision, “because the individual mandate is unconstitutional and not severable, the entire Act must be declared void.”
“I must reluctantly conclude that Congress exceeded the bounds of its authority in passing the Act with the individual mandate. ..”
There’s gonna be some kicking and screaming about “activist judges”, doncha think?
*Bingley Update: This is worth the price of admission:
In ruling against President Obama‘s health care law, federal Judge Roger Vinson used Mr. Obama‘s own position from the 2008 campaign against him, arguing that there are other ways to tackle health care short of requiring every American to purchase insurance.
“I note that in 2008, then-Senator Obama supported a health care reform proposal that did not include an individual mandate because he was at that time strongly opposed to the idea, stating that ‘if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house,’” Judge Vinson wrote in a footnote toward the end of the 78-page ruling Monday.
…About 8:45 p.m., three teenage males knocked on the door of a home in the 3300 block of Raines Street, Pensacola Police Department officials said.
When resident Jack Crawford, 72, answered the door, one of the teens hit him in the head with an aluminum bat and tried to force his way into the home.
“I opened it up, and he hit me right off. … Wham! Split my head open,” Crawford said.
“So I shot him and another guy,” Crawford said, chuckling as he told the story to a News Journal reporter Sunday evening.
“I could have shot the third one, but I would have had to shoot him in the back as he ran away.”
I forgot to add, “but have your pistol with you and don’t fall over when they hit you in the head with a bat, esPECIALLY if you’re, like, SEVENTY TWO YEARS OLD”.
Now that he’s got staples in his gourd, I think a peephole in the door’s the way to go forward, wouldn’t you say?
(Reuters) – Australia’s flood-stricken state of Queensland closed major coal ports, evacuated tourists from vulnerable resorts and warned of heavy rain on Monday ahead of a massive cyclone due to slam into its coast this week.
Forecasters said Cyclone Yasi could be generating gales of more than 250 kph when it hits the coast on Wednesday or Thursday, which would put it on a par with Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005.
*warning! Reuters hyperbole warning!* Katrina was “only” a Cat 3 storm with winds of around 125 mph when she came ashore; Yasi is forecast to hit the Australian coast with winds in excess of 155 mph. Of course, by mentioning Katrina Reuters helpfully reminds us that all destructive storms are, of course, Chimpy McHitlerstein’s fault.
Mind you, I think the true cause of these storms is Gaia’s disappointment with the world’s newest Electric Fanboy; he had such epic carbon consumption promise. Now it wouldn’t surprise me if he spread some biotic tofu on organic heritage grain bread for lunch over the weekend.
If you would like to know what the White House really thinks of Obamacare, there’s an easy way. Look past its press releases. Ignore its promises. Forget its talking points. Instead, simply witness for yourself the outrageous way the White House protects its best friends from Obamacare.
Last year, we learned that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had granted 111 waivers to protect a lucky few from the onerous regulations of the new national health care overhaul. That number quickly and quietly climbed to 222, and last week we learned that the number of Obamacare privileged escapes has skyrocketed to 733.
Among the fortunate is a who’s who list of unions, businesses and even several cities and four states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee) but none of the friends of Barack feature as prominently as the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
Read the whole thing, and tell me again why this entire mess should not be tossed on the dung heap.
…One man pleaded with people outside the museum’s gates on Tahrir Square not to loot the building, shouting at the crowd:
“We are not like Baghdad.”
Would that they listen to that voice from the crowd.
Adoration of the Disk
Thy dawn, O Ra, opens the new horizon,
And every realm that you hast made to live
Is conquered by thy love, as joyous Day
Follows thy footsteps in delightful peace.
And when thou settest, all the world is bleak;
Houses are tombs where blind men lie in death;
Only the lion and the serpent move
Through the black oven of the sightless night…
From The Book of the Dead, circa 2000 BCE
Bleak, indeed.
UPDATE: The NBC Weekend News tonight reported the mummies at the museum had been beheaded.
Beheaded.
I am sick at heart.
Diptera’s “Fucking savages” doesn’t begin to cover it, but it’s a really good start.
Looters destroy mummies in Egyptian Museum: official
Looters broke into the Egyptian Museum during anti-government protests late Friday and destroyed two Pharaonic mummies, Egypt’s top archaeologist told state television.
…”Egyptian citizens tried to prevent them and were joined by the tourism police, but some (looters) managed to enter from above and they destroyed two of the mummies,” he said.
You knew it was only a matter of time. Besides, this is just the mob and not a concentrated religious purge. Yet.
(Via HotAir)
allahpundit Allah Pundit
If you’re interested in Egypt coverage, Al Jazeera English
has a livestream
As Geraghty pointed out immediately afterward:
jimgeraghty jimgeraghty
RT @BreakingNews: State security enters building where Al Jazeera’s Cairo bureau is housed | But remember, Mubarak’s not a dictator!
The pictures are excellent and streaming without interruption…so far. They’ve lit an APC carrier on fire and are rocking, trying to dump it in the Nile.
Man. I wish I felt like someone in Washington had a handle on anything, on any aspect of what’s happening. We’re so screwed with this bunch of amateurs.
They’re saying Mubarak is due to speak soon on Egyptian television.
UPDATE: The ruling party building is ablaze, and it’s explosions and gunfire on the street outside Aljazeera. From Dan Reihl’s Twitter feed, I guess other people are getting twitchy…
DanRiehl DanRiehl
by VodkaPundit
RT @HotlineReid: Now Syria shutting down their internet connections — http://huff.to/hGuA74
47 minutes ago Favorite Undo Retweet Reply
UPDATE: From work, watching Cavuto and filed under, “oh, great”: a prediction of $200 a barrel oil post haste from his industry expert, if this doesn’t settle out immediately.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? Egypt next to the Suez Canal, Suez Canal borders Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.
And wise President GreenPeace let our deepwater wells drift off, never to return?
Kate Walsh Urges Students to Boycott Bristol Palin Abstinence Speech
Bristol Palin, the Teen Abstinence Ambassador for the Candie’s Foundation fighting teen pregnancy, has been invited to join a panel of speakers at Washington University in St. Louis next month as part of the school’s Sexual Responsibility Week.
…”Private Practice” star Kate Walsh, a member of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, entered the fray on Wednesday by urging her Twitter followers to join in and protest Palin’s possible appearance.
“Welcome to the Idiocracy! RT @elliekirsh: @katewalsh please join students at Wash.U. to boycott Bristol Palin’s speech on abstinence. What does she know about college or abstaining?” Walsh tweeted.
…just reminded me why I’m so thankful we’ve only ever ogled one chunk o’ beefcake here at the Swilling…and that I hadn’t ladled out a gander in quite a while! GAH_RRROOOWWWWLLLLLLLLLL!!!!
HOW can you EVER forGIVE ME?!?!?!? Please try. PWWEEZZZZ????
It’s cold and snowy…up there where Bingley and Kcruella and DonnaD be. It got me remembering our first New Jersey winter. We’d moved up from MIAMI in 1960 and were treated to a cumulative winter snowfall of ~ I called the Grinch to double check my figures ~ 157 inches.
You guys are a third of the way there already. Bundle up!
As for rats’ asses, here’s some “settled” hockey stick in your eye (links shamelessly stolen from the comments at WattsUpWithThat):
In a mere ten years of prognostications, the Gorebal Alarmists have gone through more CONTRADICTORY warning flags then a Maytag Washer’s spin cycle. We’re past the point where they’re saving anything, but their belching, magical grant justification fabrication machine. It’s raining? “POOF!” Global warming! KA-CHING$ Oh, my goodness ~ now you’re cold? Wave that thing, Ka-CHING $$!! Hot and dry, you say? No problem! “POOF!”
Global warming! KA-CHING$$$
And what’s it cost us? Only our jobs, real lightbulbs, jobs, gas mileage, jobs, more affordable food, jobs, reasonable energy costs, jobs…on and on.
But all the onerous regulations keep the little people in line and help control the allocation of the resources (which suits certain “allocative” agendas very nicely, but pisses your average plumber type person off).
I’m sure someone will add a “but it’s for the children” to the end of that sentence…
So am I a H8R if I no longer give a rat’s ass about that either?
So, who still thinks it’s a great idea to give the President an internet kill switch?
Cairo, Egypt (CNN) — Hours ahead of what are expected to be massive displays of anti-government ferment across the world’s most populous Arab nation, the internet went dark in parts of Egypt early Friday, and text messaging appeared to be blocked.
…According to multiple web services that check whether servers used by specific sites are active, the servers of Egypt’s main internet provider were down early Friday.
The servers for the Egyptian government’s sites and for the U.S. Embassy in Cairo also appeared to be down.
ths UPDATE: Via jake Tapper’s Twitter feed, the White House weighs in on Egypt, just as Syria starts shutting down its internet:
jaketapper Jake Tapper
RT @PressSec: V concerned about violence in Egypt – govt must respect the rights of Egyptian people & turn on social networking and internet
MIDDLETOWN — New Jersey cannot succeed unless it follows fiscal discipline and enacts education, health-care and pension reform, said Gov. Chris Christie to over 200 people who weathered Wednesday’s snowstorm to attend a “town hall-style” meeting in the township.
Rather than nibble at smaller problems that will not solve New Jersey’s fiscal woes, Christie told the crowd at VFW Post 2179 that he believes it is important to find a solution to the high cost of benefits for public employees.
“Other politicians made you promises they couldn’t keep,” Christie said. “I’m the guy who has to be here when the party is over.”
The reality is ugly. What the politicians have saddled us with is criminally obscene.
And they get public works projects named in their honor.
Paid for by us, naturally.
Quote of the clip:
Policeman: “My salary went up 2%. And after the increase in my healthcare costs went in, do you know how much my check went up Sir? $4. How am I supposed to live on that?”
Gov. Christie: “Here’s the difference. You’re getting a paycheck. And there are 9% of the people in the state of NJ who are not.”
Facebook to let advertisers republish user posts
Associated Press | Posted: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 3:36 pm
Facebook users who check in to a store or click the “like” button for a brand may soon find those actions retransmitted on their friends’ pages as a “Sponsored Story” paid for by advertisers.
Currently there is no way for users to decline this feature.
Two of the central promises of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law are unlikely to be fulfilled, Medicare’s independent economic expert told Congress on Wednesday.
…Foster was asked by Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., for a simple true or false response on two of the main assertions made by supporters of the law: that it will bring down unsustainable medical costs and will let people keep their current health insurance if they like it.
On the costs issue, “I would say false, more so than true,” Foster responded.
As for people getting to keep their coverage, “not true in all cases.”
Foster was a thorn in the side to the administration throughout the health care debate…
…According to an earlier debkafile report, Egyptian and Arabic internet sites were reporting Wednesday that Hosni Mubarak’s son and chosen successor as Egyptian president secretly took himself and family out of the country Tuesday by way of the military airfield in West Cairo at the peak of anti-government riots in Egyptian cities.
Twitter also carried an unconfirmed report that Suzanne Mubarak, Egypt’s first lady, was identified by airport workers on arrival at Heathrow airport, London. No source was cited.
If confirmed, Gemal Mubarak’s defection would attest to deep cracks in the 82-year old president’s regime, the reverse of the prevailing view in the West and Israel that the regime is in no danger of being overthrown by the protest movement sweeping the country.
IF Mubarak skeedaddles safely out of Egypt (via Instapundit), who takes over for him? WHO ~ or, God forbid, WHAT ~ fills the void in the interim? Pagan cities of the dead, statues and monuments in the desert? (Untold treasures sitting in the museums in the middle of the city?)
Anything that doesn’t have a Koran in its pocket and a burqua in the dryer better have a boat of reeds at the ready for the exodus, my friends.
As for the “glories” of Egypt’s past, ask the Taliban how Muslim fundamentalists handle those heretical building blocks. What’s one more crater in the sand?
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio announced today that he is an original co-sponsor of legislation introduced by U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) to fully repeal the health care bill that President Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010. The legislation is identical to the repeal bill that recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Senator Rubio is one of 34 Republicans co-sponsoring the bill. This is the first bill Senator Rubio has co-sponsored.
The facts are clear: Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25 percent for domestic government agencies — an 84 percent increase when you include the failed stimulus.
All of this new government spending was sold as “investment.” Yet after two years, the unemployment rate remains above 9 percent and government has added over $3 trillion to our debt.
Then the President and his party made matters even worse, by creating a new open-ended health-care entitlement.
The Republicans have certainly shown that they are fans of Big Government as well. Now is the time to actually live by the principles they espouse. Spending must be cut.
I just got back from a public meeting with some fine folks: State Senator Jennifer Beck, Assemblywoman Caroline Casagrande and Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon. No bullshit. Plain, honest talk about the raw painful facts.
They met with us here in town, at the offices of the Bayshore Tea Party, to talk about spreading the word on the scary, almost unfathomable numbers we face here in NJ: the Public Pension system currently has an unfunded liability of $46 Billion dollars, and at its current pace that number will grow to $183 billion by 2041. Just for NJ. And that’s based on an assumed rate of return on the invested money they have now of 7.5% (I’m sure all of you, Dear Readers, via your savvy Mad Investment Skillz are doing far better than that, right?). The numbers are staggering, and obviously untenable.
Oh, and did I forget to mention that the unfunded Public Employee Healthcare Liability in NJ is currently $66.8 billion?
Silly me; in all this excitement it must have slipped my mind.
Folks, whatever state you live in, these numbers are serious, they deserve serious attention, and deep, serious cuts must be made or we are, well, totally screwed. There’s simply no way around it. Every election, every decision by your local town committee or school board, they all matter greatly.
You need to be there, demanding the numbers and honest appraisals of how these things are going to be dealt with. There’s no more time.
Nanny State, People, Politics | tree hugging sister | 
January 31, 2011 3:12 pm | 
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