In perhaps the biggest blow to Obamacare, a Reagan-appointed Federal District Judge in Florida ruled that the individual mandate in Obamacare is unconstitutional. Judge Roger Vinson not only ruled that the portion of the law that mandates everyone must buy health insurance was unlawful but because there was no severability clause in the law, which would have allowed that portion to be removed exclusively, the entire law was ruled null and void.
Not only that but Vinson used Obama's own words against him in the 78 page ruling by pointing to what the president said on the 2008 campaign trail (video below). In that video, Obama drew a line of distinction between his health care plan and Hillary's. Hers had an individual mandate and his did not.
Uh, Obamacare was just ruled entirely unconstitutional because of the individual mandate and the judge busted Obama in another lie. Via the Washington Times:
“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 his 78-page ruling Monday.
You Lie!
Obama heard cursing Reagan through the door of the Oval office.
Rachel Lipkin is a native Egyptian, who has worked for years as a television / radio monitor for Israel. She knows the language and translates Egyptian Arabic into Hebrew and then to English. Her latest find comes courtesy of Egyptian television, which has reported that demonstrators in Egypt have broken into the Army's clothing depot and stole soldier uniforms. Presumably, this will allow them to mingle among the protesters as impostors to foment even more chaos.
An imam (disingenuously) begged and pleaded on Egyptian TV that the Egyptian Army not open up fire on the demonstrators in Tahrir Square. He said, “Even if there are people within the crowd that fire on the soldiers, they should not respond.”
So why on earth would he make such a statement? Avi and Rachael say that according to Egyptian TV, the Egyptian Army clothing depot was broken into and uniforms taken out so that the demonstrators will mingle with the crowds as imposters, posing as real soldiers, and firing upon the real soldiers, to give the false impression that soldiers were firing against soldiers to pretend there is an internal uprising within the Egyptian Army.
The Egyptian Army has told its soldiers to change into different color uniforms so as not to be confused with those imposters wearing stolen uniforms.
There are many pro-Mubarak Egyptians, more than those in Tahrir Square who wish to demonstrate in favor of Mubarak and the Egyptian administration. They have been warned by the fanatic Moslem anti-Mubarak demonstrators that the pro-government demonstrators would be killed by the anti-government demonstrators in the city of Ismailia.
Only one day earlier, Lipkin uncovered Al Jazeera propaganda that was intended to demonize Israel, implicating it as a player in the exacerbation of chaos in Egypt.
“Al-Jazeera, banned from Egypt two days ago because of its incitement of the Egyptian people against the Mubarak regime came up with two interesting stories:
1. Israeli military air transports were flying into Egypt more tear gas and other poisons to kill the Egyptian people.
2. Omar Suleiman, the newly sworn-in Vice President of Egypt concluded an agreement with Israel that Israel would provide Egypt with more bullets and bombs with which to kill Egyptian people.”
The world will realize soon enough that as bad as Mubarak was, the Muslim Brotherhood will be exponentially worse for western interests. The Obama administration is supporting Islamic thugs in the region.
Go figure. Obama is backing thugs who thrive on chaos. Who knew?
Last year, it was learned that a computer worm with the moniker 'Stuxnet' had penetrated Iran's nuclear control system computers. At the time, it was dubbed a stroke of genius because it appeared Israel had found a way to delay Iran's nuclear program, putting it back a few months. As time has passed, it looks like Stuxnet may have been far more strategically brilliant than initially thought. It may have the capability of inflicting a Chernobyl-like disaster inside Iran before Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs decide to launch their first salvo.
The virus, known as Stuxnet, has the ability to send centrifuges spinning out of control and temporarily crippled Iran’s uranium enrichment program. Some computer experts believe Stuxnet was work of Israel or the United States, two nations convinced that Iran wants to turn nuclear fuel into weapons-grade uranium.
Iran has acknowledged that the malware — malicious software designed to infiltrate computer systems — hit the laptops of technicians working at Bushehr, but has denied that the plant was affected or that Stuxnet was responsible for delays in the startup of the Russian-built reactor.
The Islamic Republic is reluctant to acknowledge setbacks to its nuclear activities, which it says are aimed at generating energy but are under U.N. sanctions because of concerns they could be channeled toward making weapons. Only after outside revelations that its enrichment program was temporarily disrupted late last year by the mysterious virus did Iranian officials acknowledge the incident.
Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s chief representative to the IAEA, cut short attempts by AP to seek comment on possible damage by Stuxnet at Bushehr.
But Rogozin, the Russian envoy, described how engineers at Bushehr “saw on their screens that the systems were functioning normally, when in fact they were running out of control,” conjuring up a frightening dimension to the potential fallout from the virus.
“The virus which is very toxic, very dangerous, could have had very serious implications,” Rogozin told reporters, adding it “could have led to a new Chernobyl.”
The threat of Stuxnet is being downplayed by its victims and those with a stake in furthering Iran's nuclear program. They may be right but if Israel is responsible for the virus and has demonstrated that it can not only disrupt Iran's computer systems, who's to say there won't be a far more effective Stuxnet II in the near future?
Iran's public stance that Stuxnet was a nothing more than a minor inconvenient blip is akin to a football player who knows he needs to bounce up off the turf quickly after a vicious hit in order to save face. The truth likely lies somewhere in the middle but I think it's safe to say that this virus did significant damage and you can bet that whoever was responsible is taking a hard look at how to improve it.
They don't come much more liberal than David Corn of Mother Jones. In his latest missive, he expresses concern that Arizona is likely to pass a state law that will prevent Obama from appearing on the 2012 ballot without producing his long form birth certificate. He appears to want to diminish the significance of one state with ten electoral votes that Obama lost in 2008 anyway but then has to concede that this could become bigger than he'd like to see it.
The birthers have a plan to end Barack Obama's presidency—and in Arizona, they're making progress.
Last week, Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, a Republican, introduced a bill that would bar presidential candidates who do not prove they were born in the United States from appearing on the ballot in the Grand Canyon state. And state Rep. Chad Campbell, the top Democrat in the GOP-controlled Arizona House of Representatives, tells Mother Jones that the bill is likely to pass. It was introduced with 25 co-sponsors in the House and 16 co-sponsors in the state Senate; the measure needs 31 votes in the House and 16 in the Senate for approval. "Will it matter?" asks Campbell. "We've started a tradition here of passing legislation that is political grandstanding or that sets up litigation."
But the birthers—those ardent Obama foes who believe the president was not born in Hawaii and, thus, is not constitutionally qualified serve as president—see this measure as more than symbolic. For them, it's part of a well-orchestrated campaign to deny Obama reelection.
It's not that Obama necessarily requires Arizona's 10 electoral votes to win reelection in 2012. In 2008, he lost there to John McCain, Arizona's senior senator (though in 2012, Obama could make a play for the state). More important, Burges' bill—which would establish a strict standard for proving natural-born citizenship (which the birthers presume Obama could not meet)—is a model for other states, and similar efforts are under way in Pennsylvania, Missouri, Montana, Georgia, and Texas. (Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008 and lost Missouri by less than 4,000 votes.) Arizona may be where this birther ball gets rolling.
I have long dismissed the Birthers as being more interested in going down blind alleys than in pursuing more important stories found on other avenues but in this case, they may be winning the debate, especially in light of the recent antics of Hawaii's socialist governor. Back in December, Corn himself said, while appearing on MSNBC's Hardball, that Obama should go ahead and release the long form to end the conspiracy theories. While he did so mockingly, he nonetheless conceded that he wanted socialist governor Neil Abercrombie - who went on an indignant quest to prove Obama's citizenship and shut the birthers up - to end the conspiratorial controversy once and for all.
Small problem for Corn that he doesn't address in his article. Abercrombie struck out.
Said Corn of Abercrombie last month on Hardball: 'There's nothing he's going to do that's going to change any mind of anybody out there who already believes this.' Lost on Corn is the fact that Abercrombie didn't do anything; he produced NOTHING. Here's the increasingly infamous segment from Hardball where three hard core liberals - Corn, Matthews, and Clarence Page - advocated that Obama produce the long form.
