Can States Expand Medicaid Temporarily?

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  March 20th at 12:00 PM  | 

Governor John Kasich has insisted Ohio can adopt the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) Medicaid expansion temporarily and back out in the future by including a “circuit breaker” provision that would revoke new Medicaid eligibility if Washington changes the rules. Ohio’s newspapers, which enthusiastically support Medicaid expansion, have reported Kasich’s claims without skepticism. With the federal government more than $16.7 trillion in debt but promising | Read More »

Illegal Immigration and the Pesky GOP Base

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  March 20th at 08:06 AM  | 

When Lucy kept tricking Charlie Brown with the football, at least she pretended to place the football on the ground each time he kicked it.  Obama has never even pretended to start enforcing our immigration laws, yet one Republican after another is committing to amnesty – I mean pathway to citizenship – I mean – never mind.  In fact, as Republicans are committing to legalization | Read More »

Led by Sen. Mike Enzi, Republicans Will Vote to Raise Taxes & Tax iTunes Downloads

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 20th at 03:30 AM  | 

Congressional Republicans led by Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming and Democratic Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, are about to raise Americans’ taxes and set in place the foundation for states to be able to tax downloads from the internet, including from places like iTunes. Senators Durbin and Enzi are inserting an internet tax as an amendment to the Senate budget bill. The tax sounds innocuous | Read More »

The Associated Press Reads More Into Rand Paul’s Speech Than is There

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 19th at 09:29 AM  | 

Erica Werner of the Associated Press gives us a textbook example of why talking about immigration in the United States is so hard. She reads into statements things that are not there. The headline of her article is “Rand Paul endorses immigrant path to citizenship.” Giving her the benefit of the doubt that someone else wrote the headline, her first paragraph reads thusly: Republican Sen. | Read More »

The Republican Autopsy

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 19th at 08:30 AM  | 

The Republican National Committee has released its 100 page autopsy of 2012, with 97 pages of fun filled reading. Reince Preibus, chairman of the RNC, ordered up the autopsy to try to find a way forward for the GOP without repeating many of the mistakes made in Campaign 2012. It’s authors were Henry Barbour, Ari Fleischer, Sally Bradshow, Zori Fonalledas, and Glenn McCall. What the | Read More »

GOP Autopsy: Change the Politicians Not the Policies

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  March 19th at 06:42 AM  | 

Amidst the soul-searching being conducted by party leaders in pursuit of the solution to the GOP’s electoral problems, everyone is missing the obvious culprit.  Whenever a private entity goes through a period of lethargic growth and management failures, it seeks new leadership.  Yet, immediately following the election, Republicans reelected Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to be the face of the GOP in Washington.  Talk about | Read More »

250 clergymen can be wrong

By: Joe Cunningham (Diary)  |  March 18th at 04:34 PM  | 

In the latest effort to make Jindal feel really bad about his tax swap proposal, 250 clergymen sent a letter to his office. A handful of ministers delivered the letter to the governor’s office at the State Capitol Monday morning. Jindal wants to eliminate the state’s personal income and corporate taxes in favor of increasing the state sales tax by 47 percent and taxing services such | Read More »

BREAKING: Sen. David Vitter to Block Obama’s Labor Department Replacement

By: LaborUnionReport (Diary)  |  March 18th at 03:15 PM  | 

In Friday’s edition of Union Briefs, you were provided with a compilation of the problems surrounding Barack Obama’s then-purported pick to replace Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor. Since Friday, as expected, the White House has announced that Barack Obama would indeed nominate Thomas Perez to replace Solis. However, as more light is shed on Thomas Perez and his questionable qualifications for Secretary of Labor, | Read More »

In Response to RedState, Mitch McConnell Doubles Down on Surrender

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 18th at 01:08 PM  | 

“Mitch McConnell is playing three card monty with the Republican base and thinks we are foolish enough to believe his distractions.” Mitch McConnell wants to clear the air based on my earlier RedState post. In the post, quoting Yahoo! News, I noted McConnell said, “When it came to Obamacare, we gave it everything we have, everything we have, and we just lost.” In response to | Read More »

Medicaid Expansion Poll Confirms Primary Risk for Ohio Republicans

By: Jason Hart (Diary)  |  March 18th at 01:00 PM  | 

A Hill Research Consultants poll conducted March 3-4 found that 65 percent of Republican primary voters oppose Governor John Kasich’s decision to expand Medicaid as called for in President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Commissioned by Opportunity Ohio and The Liberty Foundation, the poll surveyed 803 active Ohio voters by telephone, with a 4 percent margin of error. Overall, respondents were evenly | Read More »

Mitch McConnell Declares Surrender on Obamacare

By: Erick Erickson (Diary)  |  March 18th at 03:30 AM  | 

Joining Eric Cantor, John Boehner, Kevin McCarthy, and Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell is declaring surrender on Obamacare. He will no longer fight it. You’d never know that if you paid attention to his preferred words about Obamacare at CPAC. McConnell told the crowd that “Obamacare should be repealed root and branch.” He also told the crowd that those who think he’s given up the fight | Read More »

Energy Week in Review

By: Steve Maley (Diary)  |  March 16th at 11:47 AM  | 

Headlines and commentary for the week ending March 15, 2013.

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Tech at Night: Google Reader popularity again proves nobody cares about privacy. Catch my latest on Aaron Swartz.

By: Neil Stevens (Diary)  |  March 16th at 12:00 AM  | 

More proof people don’t care about privacy: Google announces a service is ending, and the competitor I use to prepare Tech at Night becomes flooded to the point of unusability Wednesday night. People just don’t care what Google is doing.

The Street View WiSpy scandal didn’t scare people off, even as Texas hits Google for those offenses. Glass excites them. The shift toward human biases doesn’t raise questions. People love Google’s services, and privacy doesn’t enter into the equation. So keep regulation out.

Make sure you catch my recent RedState post on Aaron Swartz, and how the blame casting against his prosecutor is not only unfair, it’s wrong.

Read More »

Senator Portman, Homosexual Marriage, and the Death of Principle

By: kipling (Diary)  |  March 15th at 11:35 AM  | 

Perhaps the biggest headline this morning was Senator Rob Portman’s reversal of his position on homosexual marriage. In an editorial in The Columbus Dispatch – “Gay couples also deserve chance to get married” – the senator set forth his new found conviction. I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other | Read More »

I’m Evolving on the Color of the Sky

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  March 15th at 10:19 AM  | 

I have come to believe that if three people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married. One day, my son came home from playgroup and told my wife and I that he desires to marry both of his friends – a boy | Read More »