During the year long ObamaCare debate, there was a spirited debate of the proposition that ObamaCare would cause rationing by the federal government of services and drugs.  Government rationed health care services and drugs have evolved from rhetoric to reality. 

On July 28th, Senator David Vitter (R-Louisiana) raised drug rationing concerns, because of a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pending decision to take the cancer drug Avastin off the list of approved drugs for breast cancer.   This example of rationing by the FDA of a drug to aid those with cancer is exactly what we should expect under an ObamaCare drug rationing regime.  

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Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) has done it again.  Earlier this week we learned that Lisa Murkowski opposes the repeal of ObamaCare.  RS Insider has been informed that there is a strong push by Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) to pass S. 1011, the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization Act, also known as the “Akaka Bill,” this year with the active support of Senator Murkowski.  The bill, sponsored by Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), sets up an unconstitutional race based separate government entity for Native Hawaiians  The lone Republican co-sponsor is none other than Senator Lisa Murkowski.  This is the same Lisa Murkowski who was elected Vice Chairwoman of the whole Republican Conference in June of last year and is supposed to lead against terrible liberal ideas — not for them.   

Over the past week the left has slandered the Tea Party movement with charges of racism.  News has broken that the New Black Panther Movement has been given preferential treatment by lawyers at the Justice Department.  The Akaka Bill will further inflame racial separatism and divide the nation. 

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In the event that this story is true, it would appear that President Obama’s classless low blow at the Supreme Court in this year’s State of the Union address may end up being significant for more than Alito’s silently mouthed rebuttal, after all:

Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years – through the end of Obama’s first term, sources said.

That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court’s conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice.

…

Without naming Kennedy, Obama was unusually critical of his majority opinion in the Citizens United case, handed down last January. That 5-4 decision struck down limits on contributions to political campaigns as an abridgement of free speech.

Obama called the ruling “a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests that marshal their power … in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans.”

He was so angry that he took the unusual step of blasting the decision in his Jan. 27 State of the Union address, with Kennedy and five other justices looking on.

In retrospect, it would appear that Obama’s decision to blast the Supreme Court in their presence may yet well constitute, in the words of Happy Gilmore, one of “your all-time backfires.” Under normal circumstances, it would be preposterous to suggest that a Supreme Court Justice would either change their vote or their decision about when to retire based on an insult (perceived or real) delivered by the man who would name their successor. In fact, the very suggestion is insulting to both the intelligence and integrity of the Justice in question, almost all of whom take a great deal of pride in being immune from allowing their personal prejudices and feelings to influence their decisions on the bench.

However, in Kennedy’s case, the suggestion is more than plausible; it is totally believable.

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Robert VerBruggen of National Review Online reports that Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee to be on the U.S. Supreme Court may have compared the NRA to the KKK.  If true this is a shocking development in what has been a low key nominations battle.  From NROnline:

National Reviewhas learned that in 1996, Kagan apparently tied the NRA to the KKK — yes, the KKK — while debating the Clinton administration’s position on a bill.  The bill in question was the Volunteer Protection Act, which, when it was passed and signed the following year, protected some non-profits’ volunteer workers from tort liability in certain cases. The administration worried that it would apply to volunteers from unlikable non-profits.

If true, this is further evidence that Elena Kagan has little to no respect for American’s right to “keep and bear Arms.”  Kagan needs to be asked if this is true in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for June 28th.  Kagan has a well documented hostility to gun rights and this new allegation may be a game changer for President Obama’s nominee to be Justice on the highest court in the land. 

More from NROnline:

Two documents discovered at the William J. Clinton Presidential Library and obtained by National Reviewsuggest that Kagan was involved in these discussions. One does not contain her name, but the handwriting appears to be hers. (You can see an example of Kagan’s handwriting here.) It has the name of administration colleague Fran Allegra at the top, and lists two “Bad guy orgs” that might be covered — the NRA and the KKK.

The second does have Kagan’s name on it; it is a memo from Allegra to Kagan. Allegra reports that he checked the IRS’s “Cumulative List of Organizations Described in Section 170(c)” — the list of tax-exempt organizations, which, he says, are the only organizations the bill would cover — and that neither the NRA nor the KKK was on it. “If you have other names you want me to run down in the Cumulative List, I would be glad to checkthem out,” he adds, suggesting that Kagan requested the initial check of the NRA and the KKK.

Is Kagan so hostile to gun rights that she would compare the top gun-rights organization in the United States with a viciously racist hate group? It sure looks that way. We look forward to her explanation.

Wow.

The National Rifle Association just sold out your First Amendment right to participate in the democratic process.  Sources on the Hill tell RedState that House Republican members are “furious” at the National Rifle Association (NRA) for negotiating a special provision exempting the NRA from a new campaign finance reform measure racing through Congress. 

Roll Call describes the campaign finance reform measure as follows:

The bill, officially the DISCLOSE Act, comes in response to the high court’s 5-4 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission in January that struck down many restrictions on political communications and the groups that fund them.  The proposal would bulk up disclosure, political coordination and disclaimer requirements, and impose new limits on political involvement by government contractors and foreign governments.

Evidently, the NRA has inserted a provision in the bill that would exempt organizations under 501(c)(4) of the IRS code that qualify under certain conditions.  The conditions apply to the NRA and were clearly crafted by the NRA.  This special interest carve out for the NRA has sent Republicans in the House into a rage.  Expect House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to unload all they have against the Democrat and NRA enabled attempt to restrict First Amendment rights of all Americans to participate in the electoral process.

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On February 4, 2010, President Obama nominated Judge Robert N. Chatigny to be elevated to the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit.  From the President’s press release on the subject: 

Judge Robert Neil Chatigny has served as a U.S. District Judge for the District of Connecticut since 1994.  He was Chief Judge of the Court from 2003 to 2009.  Judge Chatigny is being nominated to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

The Senate Judiciary Committee discharged the nomination of Judge Chatigny last week on a 11-7 vote, with Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) abstaining, sending the nomination to the full Senate.  Below is a video taken from Chantigny’s hearing and interviews done with Chatigny while incarcerated. 

WARNING:  This video documenting Judge Chatigny’s actions in presiding over a murder trial and during subsequent appeals for Michael Ross, the “Roadside Strangler,” is disturbing, yet important to watch in full to understand the case being made against the President’s nominee.  Please be aware that during the interview with Ross, some very disturbing elements of his crime and his fantasies about his serial killings are discussed in graphic detail.

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Remember when President Obama said on April 18, 2009 “in the coming weeks, I will be announcing the elimination of dozens of government programs shown to be wasteful or ineffective. In this effort, there will be no sacred cows, and no pet projects. All across America, families are making hard choices, and it’s time their government did the same.” We are still waiting for this promise to be completed Mr. President. As the federal debt is exploding to the tune of $13 trillion+, it is time to make some “hard choices” to eliminate waste, fraud abuse” and “pet projects” from the federal budget.

President Obama was dead on when he announced his intention to “streamline processes, cut costs, and find the best practices throughout the government.” Sources on the Hill complain to Red State that “this effort seems to be moving almost as quickly as the Gulf oil spill clean-up.”

The Red State Truth-O-Meter, based very loosely on the PolitiFact.com Truth-O-Meter has declared President Obama to be in breach of his promise to the American people to cut spending. He does not seem committed to cutting spending and has delegated that task to his “Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.” This Commission is expected to propose massive new tax increased coupled with promised spending cuts. Red State declares Obama’s spending cut promise as “Pants On Fire,” because this seems to be yet another empty promise from our Wordsmith-In-Chief.

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With all the attention on President Obama’s bungling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the news of Congressional calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate of an alleged job offer by the Obama Administration to get Congressman Joe Sestak (D-PA) out of the Pennsylvania Senate race has been pushed down the news pages. This is a serious matter and something that will not be brushed aside. Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA), former Bush Administration official Karl Rove and Senate Judiciary Republicans have raised the issue that somebody in the Obama Administration may have committed a felony.

This Administration has held themselves out to be more ethical than administrations of the past. President Obama’s declared in his inaugural address on January 21, 2009 that:

What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition on the part of every American that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world; duties that we do not grudgingly accept, but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This “new era of responsibility” should include an open discussion by the President about whether they did offer Congressman Sestak a job to get out of the primary race for the Democrat nomination to be the next Senator from the state of Pennsylvania.

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Not too shabby.

In his seven weeks as one of CNN’s newest contributors, Erick Erickson has made scarcely more than a dozen appearances on the network.

But his every utterance – every Twitter message, blog post and radio rant – has been parsed with the rigor usually reserved for a Supreme Court nominee.

Nice. As if you don’t already, follow Erick on Twitter here. Parse away rigorously. Read the whole article here. Consider this an open thread.

You know what’s cool?  When organizations and people engaged in political and public policy debates shamelessly exploit tragedies in order to promote their political agendas.

The Left is very good at this.  But so, it turns out, is the ethanol industry.

Essentially a government creation, these guys are currently seeking a whole bunch of policy changes that would further prop up their industry, using both taxpayer dollars and government sticking its thumb on the scales.  They want more ethanol to be blended into our fuel.  They want car companies to be forced to make more flex fuel vehicles (you know, the ones that run on fuel that is 85% ethanol).  Of course, they want subsidies.  Yes: They WANT, and it doesn’t much matter if you or I think our tax money could be better spent on other things, or that government doesn’t exist to prop up pet industries, or that ethanol production and use isn’t actually good for the environment, or that it’s routinely tied to people going hungry in poor countries.

I repeat: They WANT.

So why should we be surprised that the ethanol industry is happily exploiting the tragedy that is the oil spill off the coast of Louisiana to attempt to further its own agenda?  I guess we shouldn’t be.

Here’s a sampling of what ethanol industry groups and promoters have been tweeting on this subject:

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… And many Wall Street “fat cats“ want this bill passed ASAP.

The Senate is in the process of debating and considering amendments to S.3217, Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010.  As the debate proceeds, it is important to note that the populist rage exhibited toward “fat cats” on Wall Street is merely theater.  Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street firm accused of fraud and the subject of a high profile Senate hearing last week, supports this bill because it may benefit some of Wall Streets biggest firms.

President Obama on April 22nd went to Wall Street and pitched his plan:

In the end, our system only works — our markets are only free — when there are basic safeguards that prevent abuse, that check excesses, that ensure that it is more profitable to play by the rules than to game the system.  And that is what the reforms we’ve been proposing are designed to achieve — no more, no less.  And because that is how we will ensure that our economy works for consumers, that it works for investors, and that it works for financial institutions — in other words, that it works for all of us — that’s why we’re working so hard to get this stuff passed.

It should be of concern to taxpayers that this bill, in it’s current form, may provide permanent bailout authority for Wall Street, may set up a regulatory process that benefits those with the best lobbying shop and provides a competitive advantage to those who are “too big to fail.”  Eyebrows should be raised by the fact that Goldman Sachs supports the legislation.  Lloyd Blankfein, the billionaire head of the investment firm Goldman Sachs was quoted by The Hill as saying:

The biggest beneficiary of reform is Wall Street itself.  The biggest risk is risk financial institutions have with each other.

Free market capitalism is risky.  Competition is risky.  Managed crony capitalism is not risky if the risk is born by the taxpayers with the profits going to Wall Street.  If risk of losing ones shirt is removed from Wall Street, many would argue that this will provide and incentive for Wall Street to engage in more risky behavior and for the “too big to fail” institutions to get even bigger.  One needs to look no further than the so called Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) for an example of how bailouts make big banks and Wall Street firms bigger.

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Generally round about Labor Day if not before, the NRCC comes knocking on all our doors saying “you haven’t paid your dues.” Our “dues” are funds Members pay into the NRCC’s coffers that they then turn around and use to elect more Republican congressmen.

This is October 25, 2009, more than a year before Election Day. But the NRCC is beating on all our doors already saying we need to cough up cash. More than one Member has been pushed to pay up. Why now? Probably because our leadership has decided to put a millstone around our necks named Dede.

Maybe the NRCC and the Gentleman from Texas 32 will realize a few Members are withholding “dues” until November 3rd so none of our donors’ dollars go to New York 23.

I’m writing you from the floor of the Califorina Republican Party’s (CRP) convention in Indian Wells, CA. For you non-Californians, the CRP holds two conventions every year — usually in February and September. The September convention before an election year is the de facto kickoff for the various campaigns. That’s why we’ve got here the various contenders for the CA GOP nomination out in force here: most notably Poizner, Whitman, and Campbell for Governor, and DeVore and Fiorina for U.S. Senate.

Carly Fiorina is the only major candidate who isn’t attending this convention. Her reason, as explained to Jon Fleischman in the Flash Report and Karen Tumulty at Time (yeah, I know), is that her cancer treatments preclude her from coming. Well, okay — but as RedState noted, she was certainly able to videoconference in with Elizabeth Edwards a few weeks back, and she’s planning on keynoting the Web 2.0 Summit in a couple of weeks. Oh, and she’s also jetting off to conferences in Milan and Sao Paolo shortly after that.

The Fiorina campaign is not pleased that a Rasmussen poll released on the convention’s first day shows Chuck DeVore as the stronger candidate against Barbara Boxer. Pretty tough when all that cash and name recognition buys you a solid second place.

But that’s not why I’m writing. I’m not even writing to tell you that they’ve plastered the convention hotel with “CARLYFORNIA DREAMIN’!!!” placards, complete with the three exclamation points. I’m not even writing to tell you that Carly’s staff are walking around blaming high-priced Hollywood-flack McCain-’08-veteran Fred Davis for their disastrous website. No.

I’m writing to tell you about the loose talk here about Carly and the NRSC, emanating from the friends of Larry Elder.

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Back in mid-August, Carly Fiorina announced the formation of her exploratory committee, Carly for California, as a prelude to announcing her formal candidacy for United States Senate. FEC rules require that if a candidate receives or spends $5000.00, the candidate must begin formal filings with the FEC as a candidate. Given Fiorina‘s hire of big-money consultants like Hollywood-based Fred Davis, you’d think Carly for California would have burned through that limit in about twenty minutes. Certainly it’s amazing she’s let nearly a month lapse without an announcement. Heck, she’s not even on the list for a single appearance, guest suite, or conversation at the forthcoming California Republican Party convention on September 25th through 27th.

What gives? Why the silence?

The probable answer is that Carly Fiorina is finding it impossible to put together a campaign team. Let me explain.

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Well, we all pretty much knew that this was coming:

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid said that both the Kennedy family and the Senate have “lost our patriarch” and vowed Congress would renew the push for the cause of Kennedy’s life, health care reform.

Out of respect for my RedState colleagues, I have delayed the posting of this post for several hours, but it is worth noting that MSNBC had already reported that Reid (always a classy guy) uttered these words before I made it in to work this morning.  In other words, before Kennedy’s corpse was even cold.  Now, a wise man once coined the maxim de mortuis, nil nisi bonum, and we here at RedState have always made an effort to let even the death of even the most contemptible of our political foes pass without a word of criticism. 

However, given that Reid, et al are apparently going to use this fundamental aspect of Republican decency in order to push a political legislative agenda (rather than, say, allowing the family to grieve privately and quietly, if that is their desire), it sadly becomes necessary to wonder aloud whether Kennedy as a man was worth emulating at all. 

Dan McLaughlin has already noted that Kennedy’s “personal life ranged from alcoholism to debauchery to sexual harrassment to (sadly, uncharged) second-degree murder[.]“  However, it is also worth noting that Kennedy was personally and politically a hypocrite, that he wilfully slandered men more honorable than he in the service of legalized abortion (and in so doing poisoned the judicial confirmation process in this country, probably forever), and that he built a political career out of provoking class warfare despite having been been born with a diamond spoon in his mouth and having everything he ever wanted handed to him on a silver platter.  Insofar as he was a man of any religious faith at all, he was nominally a Catholic, a faith he besmirched repeatedly with the grave sin of scandal: a cornerstone of Kennedy’s entire public career centered upon using his position of leadership and prominence to present abortion (categorically defined by the Catholic church as a mortal) sin as good and normal, to say nothing of Kennedy’s many other failings which those who looked to him for example might follow.  In the later stages of his career, Kennedy was not content to rest upon his laurels, but spent most of his time making the world safer for terrorists.  Although, to his credit, it might be fairly said that defending terrorists was a lifelong pursuit – Kennedy was supporting IRA terrorists long before any of us heard of Al Qaeda.

Indeed we find precious little to commend ourselves to the life of Ted Kennedy, the entirety of his success and notoriety owing to the circumstances of his birth into a pre-existing family of wealth and influence – circumstances which ordinary Americans (even Americans who work hard to earn more than $135,000 and thus become targets of Ted Kennedy’s class warfare demagoguery) cannot hope to duplicate.  It would be better for this country if the Democrats had not opened the salvo of using Ted Kennedy’s legacy as a political football; both because it would allow his family to grieve his passing appropriately, and also because it would not teach the youth of this country that such a man as Ted Kennedy can live the debaucherous life he lived and yet be hailed publicly by a prominent political party in this country.  However, the Democrats having begun the process, Republicans should not preemptively surrender the contest and allow his last legislative monstrosity to come to fruition.  Ted Kennedy’s legacy, such as it is, is already full enough.

Congressman Alan Grayson has some explaining to do. He is a Democrat Congressman in a district Charlie Cook lists as leaning slightly Republican. The district went strongly for Bush twice and barely for Obama in 2008.

Grayson has some serious judgment issues.

Congressman Alan Grayson has hired a blogger named Matt Stoller to be his “Senior Policy Advisor”

Stoller is a crazy blogger — he sees racism and conspiracies in every shadow. Grayson had to have known about Stoller and we can truly suspect that the man Grayson chose to be his Senior Policy Advisor is out of touch with Grayson’s congressional district. That must make us wonder if Grayson too is out of touch with his district.

In fact, some enterprising reporter might want to ask a few questions of Congressman Alan Grayson such as:

Congressman Grayson, do you believe, as your senior policy advisor Matthew Stoller does, that the Anti-Defamation League is “a crazy racist institution”?

Congressman Grayson, do you believe, as your senior policy advisor Matthew Stoller does, that Senator John McCain is “a crazy cancer-ridden dishonest madman”?

Congressman Grayson, do you believe, as your senior policy advisor Matthew Stoller does, that the U.S. military is a treasonous institution that will “undermine Obama unless he pursues neoconservative policies”?

If Grayson does not, then one must question his judgment in hiring a guy to advise him who believes the Anti-Defamation League is “a crazy racist institution” and the military is a treasonous organization that will “undermine Obama.”

If Grayson does, then one must wonder if his constituents are aware of that fact.

Oh, and his constituents probably want to know what exactly his ties are to ACORN. Below the fold, a video of one of his staffers bragging about how much Alan Grayson loves ACORN — masters of voter fraud.

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What do Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Joe Lieberman and Mark Pryor have in common?

They remain the last bastions of so-called moderate Democrats in the United States Senate.  

As Harry Reid, John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer and Patrick Leahy become more and more ascendant, it is obvious that the Age of Moderates within the Democratic Party are coming to an end.

And, the potential victory — ill-begotten as it may be — by Al Franken will spell the final end to the chapter of their moderate Democrats influence in the United States Senate.

While Franken will still only get Democrats to 59 votes — it is a critical 59th vote for the Harry Reid Agenda.  

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Jane Lubchenco, Obama’s NOAA Administrator, nominee has given $5500 to the Ocean Champions PAC. She had to submit her itemized political contributions to any individual, campaign organization, political party, etc to the Senate.

Donations: $500 (2008), $2000 (2007), $2000 (2005), $1000 (2004)

Here’s Ocean Champions’ top action item:

NO to Offshore Drilling

This come on the heels of Ken Salazar wanting to reverse course. Didn’t the Democrats sing from a different hymnal during the campaign? Liars.