Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Americans who love the IRS are giddy with excitement over the pending Sunday House vote on ObamaCare, because enforcement of its mandates will be delegated to the agency. 

Don’t have government-approved health insurance?  The IRS will help you get some.  Now. 

Not paying your fine for not having government-approved health insurance?  The IRS will take it.  Don’t have it?  Hey, the IRS knows how to seize assets and sell them.  What do you mean you “need your car to get to work?”

Not paying the additional taxes on capital gains imposed by the bill?  Who do you think you are,  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner?

Can’t understand why you must pay the additional taxes now and only get those awesome promised benefits some years down the road?  Take it up with the President.  Maybe he’ll read your letter on TV.  The IRS is just the new national health care police force.  It just does what it’s told to do, not make policy.  You better do the same.

Think the IRS is not going to have the manpower and money to find you and fine you?  Think again, meathead.  Ten billion dollars in new funding and almost 17,000 in new enforcers will take care of that.

Think you can plead illness and hide out in the hospital?  Well, maybe yours will be one of the very few that can afford to take new patients.

Think it’ll help to take your meds before your visit with the IRS?  Might ought to get your prescription soon, because your doctor is leaving to practice in Indonesia.

In a public relations effort to build even greater support for its new duties, the IRS is considering a national public school contest to help design the imposing new uniforms it will need to make sure its authority is understood.  To simplify the contest, the uniform color has already been chosen:  brown.

Although no final decision has yet been made for the new IRS slogan, we are hearing that “resistance is futile” is the most popular choice at the moment.

San Francisco’s ktvu.com reports that all three Republican challengers to three-term California Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer are now within striking distance of defeating her, based on results of a new Field Poll.

Former Congressman Tom Campbell – the most moderate of the three Republicans – has a one point lead over Boxer.  Former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, a bit more conservative, trails Boxer by a single point.  The most conservative Republican – Assemblyman Chuck Devore – trails Boxer by only four points, about the poll’s margin of error.”

Only months ago, Boxer – one of the most liberal members of the Senate – had double-digit leads over the three.  Mark DiCamillo of the Field Poll told ktvu, “there has been a sea change in perceptions,” and attributed Boxer’s precipitous decline to the economy, people fed up with incumbents and the health care debate.

DiCamillo added, “The atmospherics surrounding health care is really – I think – a detriment to Democrats right now.”

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

For all who are contemplating not answering, or alternatively providing “creative” answers, to Census questions, former Justice Department lawyer Hans A. von Spakovsky provides a words-to-the-wise basic primer on the legal ramifications of those actions.

Read his brief National Review Online analysis here.

One thing about Lyndon Johnson – as Senate Majority Leader and as President.  If he made a deal, he was more than likely to honor it.

Not this new crowd.  President Obama wasn’t in the Senate long enough to make any deals, and Harry Reid has made some of the worst, most odorous in recorded history.

Now, it seems, in his desperation to pass ObamaCare (which only passed the Senate based on the deals Reid made the first time through), President Obama wants to get rid of some of the smelliest, according to politico.com.

Imagine that you are Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson or Florida Senator Bill Nelson. 

Old Ben cut the “Cornhuster Kickback” for his “yes” vote, only to pretty much guarantee the loss of his political future with Nebraska voters, who don’t like the bill and don’t like things done that way.  Will he switch to “no” in an effort to at least salvage his dignity?

Old Bill cut “Gator-aid,” which would protect some Florida seniors from having their Medicare Advantage ripped away.  That one never got the attention it should have, because it was wrapped in some complicated, deceptive language meant to hide the fact that it was only going to really apply in three heavily Democratic Florida counties that are the mainstay of Old Bill’s votes and fund raising.  What’s he going to do when those voters find that he can’t keep the deal?

Strangely, the mother of all the deals, Mary Landrieu’s upwards-of-$300 million “Lousiana Purchase” still seems safe, under the rubric that “it would apply to any state in which all the counties have been declared a disaster zone.”  Even the genius of Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour is unlikely to pry any loose change out of that bayou babe.

So what does Landrieu have that no one else does?

Someone should ask the President.  Someone should also ask him what new deals he’s going to cut to get through the next round of votes, because he doesn’t have the votes without them, and, as they say on the Hill, “the candy store is open.”

Somewhere up there, Lyndon is laughing at the amateurs.

While most Americans are distracted by the major statist initiatives of the Obama administration, there seem to be a school of more insidious ones swimming dangerously close to your bass bait.

Ever hear of “marine spatial planning?”  Well, we hadn’t either, until ESPNOutdoors.com brought the concept to our attention.  It seems there is this thing called the “Ocean Policy Task Force.”  That esteemed body wants to “zone” fishing waters.  Fears that this will lead to fishing bans may be premature, but the anti-fishing activism of environmental groups, and their influence, coupled with a  shutdown of public input on the issue have recreational anglers groups on edge.

Here’s Chris Horton, national conservation director for BASS:  “With what’s being created, the same principles could apply inland as apply to the oceans.  Under the guise of ‘marine spatial planning’ entire watersheds could be shut down, even 2,000 miles up a river drainage from the ocean.  Every angler needs to be aware because if it’s not happening in your backyard today or tomorrow, it will be eventually.”

Read the entire ESPN article here.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

As desperation to pass ObamaCare grows, so do the number of peripheral schemes.

Today’s, according to the AP, is an Obama plan to hire bounty hunters, “in this case…private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims.  The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover.  The White House said a Medicare pilot program recouped $900 million for taxpayers from 2005-2008.”

Well, we have questions:  Wasn’t 2005-2008 during the Bush administration?  Where’s Obama’s union scam for this one?  Can you picture “Dog” wearing a green eye shade running his “sophisticated computer program?”

Steven F. Hayward’s Weekly Standard Cover Story, “In Denial, the meltdown of the climate campaign,” is a must read for all who have been dismissed as flat earthers (or worse) for skepticism over global warming alarmism.

The accompanying Al Gore caricature is, as they say, “priceless.”

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

Today’s Health Care Summit was conveniently set up to be a clash of Democratic versus Republican ideas, plans, proposals, largely positioning the Republicans as obstructionists.

But the animal in the room was not an elephant, but a skunk.

The fact, now seemingly long since forgotten, is that the U.S. Senate has passed its version of health care reform.  If the House of Representatives simply passes the Senate bill as is, and the President, who crafted his most recent plan largely on the Senate bill, signs it, then the game is over, and the Democrats’ Senate bill becomes law.

But just as Senate Republicans did not have the votes (at the time) to stop the Senate bill, House Republicans do not have the votes to stop the House from enacting the Senate bill.

The obstruction is now and has been House Democrats, who will not accept the Senate bill.

People should just remember that as the attacks on “obstruction” continue.

In an op-ed publish today by The Daily Caller, CFIF’s Jeffrey Mazzella and Timothy Lee warn that proposed “Net Neutrality” rules being considered by President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission threaten to stifle Internet innovation and cut off tens of billions of dollars in private investment  in the deployment of high-speed broadband networks. 

Thanks to private investments of $60 billion or more annually by Internet service providers, the World Wide Web has blossomed over the past decade into a tool that most Americans use daily to access news, information and entertainment. We also use it to communicate with family and friends, to share photos with loved ones, and for education and civic participation purposes. The Internet drives increased commerce and promises efficiencies in the healthcare and energy sectors. It motivates new innovation and jobs on a pace that continues to surpass our collective imagination.

All this has been made possible primarily because the Internet has remained largely unregulated. Its growth and development have been gated not by federal bureaucrats, but rather by users’ individual wants, needs and dreams.

But all of that could change if net neutrality regulations are put in place. …

Read the full piece here.

Join the fight to stop the government takeover of the Internet here.

Not so many if the White House is involved.

The White House has named Rashad Hussain, a White House lawyer, to be envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference (which requires no Senate confirmation).

But Hussain said in 2004 that Sami al-Arian, the notorious Florida college professor, was the victim of “politically motivated persecutions,” even though al-Arian subsequently pleaded guilty to conspiracy to aid a terrorist group.

The White House claimed the comments weren’t made by Hussain, but by al-Arian’s daughter, as did the publication that had originally reported the comments as Hussain’s but later strangely edited them out.

Finally, Hussain himself admitted the comments, which he described as “ill conceived or not well formulated,” (sometimes referred to as the “I was mistaken when I said Hitler wasn’t all bad” defense).

Okay, teeny tiny cover-up aborted as it was heating up.  But here’s the real question:  President Obama was editor of Harvard’s law review and Hussain an editor of Yale’s.  Were both too busy at those prestigious positions to take their respective law schools’ ethics courses?

Ben Smith of politico.com reported yesterday that “the embattled liberal group ACORN is in the process of dissolving its national structure, with state and local chapters splitting off from the underfunded, controversial national group, an official close to the group confirmed….

“‘Consistent with what the internal recommendations have been, each of the states are developing plans for reconstitution independence and self-sufficiency,’ said the official, citing ACORN’s ‘diminished resources, damage to the brand, unprecedented attacks.’”

To this unsurprising development, we can only add that, to corrupt an old adage, manure by any other name smells the same.  Weren’t those local offices that James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles exposed in their undercover videos?

In the President’s shiny new once-over-lightly-with-a-higher-price-tag health care proposal (too vaguely written, it seems, for the CBO to score the economic impact), parts of it are implemented all the way to 2018, when the excise tax on expensive health care plans kicks in (and kicks anyone who has one in the groin). 

Many people who believe they don’t have one of those “Cadillac” plans now are likely to find that they do have one by 2018.

Also in the proposal, the fines for those incorrigible scoff-laws who stubbornly refuse to yield to the so-called “individual mandate” start small and progressively increase by year.

Call that slo-mo government, which has the distinct and not-to-be-overlooked advantage that all who impose it will likely have gone on to greater or lesser rewards by the time the populace actually catches on.

As David Brooks points out in his column this morning, “The odds are high that the excise tax will never actually happen.”  But that excise tax (along with other tricks in the bill) is what allows the whole house of cards to be nominally (and nominally only if you are deceiver or deceived) “deficit neutral.”  We thus face punitive taxation or fiscal disaster.

In a different slo-mo government development, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has informed some unruly coal-state Senators (all Democrats) that they shouldn’t get all worried about that EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gases.  It will now be “phased in” beginning in 2011, so as not to upset the fragile economy. 

Hit the buzz saw with your overreaching, did you, lady?  By 2011, the science on which the EPA determinations are being made will be so discredited that the EPA will have to cop an insanity defense.

There are good and rational reasons for phased-in government projects (such as you don’t build the bridge until you’ve got the road to it, even if it’s going nowhere), but the two aforementioned are not among those.  They are examples of government folly, the former predicted, the latter now being acknowledged.

In the meantime, where are the fast forward projects to get us out of our economic mess?  You know, some stuff the people actually want the government to do.