Implementing the various command-and-control features of ObamaCare is proving to be as damaging to the rule of law as was its passage.  In a fine piece of journalism, the Daily Caller shows that 38 of the 204 new ObamaCare waivers issued by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in April 2011 went to swanky San Francisco nightclubs…

This was a wonderful week for individual freedom in America.  For the second time in two months, a federal judge has ruled ObamaCare unconstitutional.  Specifically, Judge Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida ruled that ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which would force…

Last week, House Republicans kept a promise made in the recent election by voting to repeal the costly new health care law. Now it is time to keep another one – and put in place fiscally responsible, patient-centered reforms that seriously address the problems in our nation’s health care system. Since the health care bill became law…

Now that a Republican House of Representatives has passed repeal of ObamaCare, a momentous fight for the future of American liberty has been joined. Even amongst the most ardent supporters of repeal, however, the reality that it might require a sympathetic president to pull the final plugs on the program is becoming conventional wisdom. …

In the opening days of the 2011 legislative session, Texas State Representative Bryan Hughes (R-Mineola) is serving notice that ObamaCare and its mandates most definitely mess with Texas.  From time to time, Texas’ commitment to limited government turns freedom into a straightjacket.  Because the state tries to cap the amount of damage…

The Congress shall have Power … To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes… ~The Constitution of the United States of America, Article I, Section 8  How symbolically fitting is this?   During the very week in which we celebrate the original Tea Party hosted by…

In selling ObamaCare to a renitent nation just six months ago, proponents swore that it would restrain health spending and insurance costs.  To lubricate public acceptance, they even frontloaded the bill’s benefits so that the gain would arrive before the pain, making Republican efforts to repeal less popular.  For example, the bill…

“Once you explain what’s in the bill, the American people of course like it.” ~Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D – Nevada) “It’s going to be very, very exciting.  But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”  ~Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D – …

Back in February – when liberals were in fever pitch over the prospect that a filibuster might derail their ambitions to make healthcare a federal utility – America’s columnist laureate, George Will, remarked of the Democratic Party’s fainting spells, “Filibusters are devices for registering intensity rather than mere…

“My body, my choice” worked for abortion advocates, but that does not seem to apply to the American diet.  Federal and local governments for years have told us what we should and should not put into our bodies.  Whether it's alcohol or cigarettes, saturated or trans fat, sugar or salt, legislators and regulators pick things off…

With elements of ObamaCare going into effect before the November mid-terms, voters in at least 31 congressional districts will have the opportunity to send someone to Congress who can offer an expert’s critique: a local doctor.  After years of fighting reduced Medicare payments with an annually passed bill known as the “doc fix,&rdquo…

The legislative victory among Washington's political class comes at a high cost for all Americans forced to swallow this bitter pill. This massive health care overhaul - a remake of one-sixth of our economy - will exacerbate the very problems this reform effort sought to address. It will dramatically alter our deteriorating economic and…

If George W. Bush was country music personified and Bill Clinton was smooth jazz, Barack Obama is Wagnerian opera. There’s something about our 44th president that pines for drama – whether in the shape of a make-or-break speech or an against-all-odds campaign.  Read either of Obama’s best-selling books and you’ll see this…

Unless President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can bribe, blackmail or waterboard their way to the 216 House votes currently required to pass ObamaCare (assuming no one falls suspiciously ill or suffers an equally suspicious accident), it is over, done, finished, kaput...for now. For reasons explained below, it is imperative for opponents of…

Sometimes a writer captures, with relatively few words, an understanding that humbles those of us who merely try. Such is the case with Michael Gerson, writing of ObamaCare in The Washington Post:  “Whatever the legislative fate of health reform – now in the hands of a few besieged House Democrats – the reformers have failed…

My wife and I go to an island doctor.  We don’t live on the island, but we drive to the island doctor because he is one of the best diagnosticians in an area heavily populated by the aging and heavily serviced by docs with degrees from prestigious medical schools.  Our doctor is a sole practitioner, with a nurse and a receptionist.&…

The veil placed before the door of liberalism’s holy of holies was torn on Tuesday night in Massachusetts.  With a decisive victory in the Bay State’s special election for the U.S. Senate, Republican Scott Brown is headed to Washington to assume a seat that was held by Ted Kennedy for nearly 50 years.   Republicans will paint…

The health care claims peddled by White House pitchmen over the past several months might just as well have been snake oil.  The most laughable claim is that their 2,000-page, $2 trillion monstrosity of a bill will actually reduce health care spending in the U.S.  According to the Administration’s own Centers for Medicare & Medicaid…

Most of us know someone who, as is said, will lie about what he or she had for breakfast.  For those who don’t know such a stranger to veracity, meet the current President of the United States.  Now you know one. The late, lamented columnist and language explorer, William Safire, made the term “congenital liar” famous this…

“We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the Stars and Stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.”                – Senator Barack Obama at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. “The men and women who serve in our battlefields…

Oh goodness gracious, granny. By now, we thought we’d be singing “over the river and through the woods, to...” But you didn’t finish your job, did you?  Perhaps you believed that nice young man, President Obama, who told you ObamaCare would have no effect on your Medicare services, rather than those of us who bluntly…

What do you get when you mix political expediency, prevarication, “moderate” rhetoric and a desire to avoid the wrath of Nancy Pelosi?  A “Blue Dog” Democrat. During last Saturday’s midnight vote in the House of Representatives on ObamaCare, nowhere was the scent of political fear stronger than on the tails of self…

Since Barack Obama charged into the spotlight with his 2004 keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention, we have received constant instruction from our high cultural arbiters about Obama’s supposed intellectual prowess.    Never mind that when speaking without his teleprompter, Obama typically appears ineloquent and befuddled…

Marie Antoinette had nothing on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, except perhaps Marie’s ignominious end, no longer practiced in civilized countries. Tuesday’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey, once all the noise is removed, produced one inescapable conclusion.  It did not take those elections to produce that conclusion…

Lie:  1.  A false statement purposely put forward as truth:  falsehood.  2.  Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.  Core meaning:  an untrue declaration.  Double-Talk:  1.  Meaningless speech consisting of nonsense syllables mixed with unintelligible words:  gibberish. …

The Inconvenient Truths Behind Health Care Reform The five most dangerous words that can be a spoken by a member of the United States Congress are “we have to do something!” It’s a credo only a politician could love.  Doing something, it should be noted, is not the same as doing it well.  But in the parallel moral universe…

President Ronald Reagan famously quipped, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I'm from the government and I'm here to help.’”  So it goes with health care reform. This week, the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 to pass the so-called Baucus Bill, the latest iteration of ObamaCare in what is…

Americans are rejoicing in the streets this week.  Oh, they aren’t?  In Washington, then.  No?  Well surely the Democrats on Capitol Hill and at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue are. The reason for this jubilation?  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) have come down Calculator…

When the book is written on the first decade of the 21st century, it will read that it was a time when grave challenges were met by unserious men.     For the past 10 years, Americans have increasingly come to feel that theirs is a government populated either by the incompetent or the dishonest. At the turn of the millennium, the…

Specifically, do you know your governor’s position on the various proposals for national “health care reform?” This is important, because if they are representing the interests of their states, all 50 should be opposed,  to the point of focused, vocal opposition – and more. Trying to count the losers, not to mention quantify…