Time for Thorns

Sen. Mike Lee explains the Supreme Court  procedure here.   He has not only argued before federal appellate courts, but also clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito,  which makes him uniquely qualified to comment.   If you do nothing else,  watch this.

Jim Antle  has a good post  on the Judicial Watch hearing which gives you some insight on the basis for the opponents’  cases.   Michael Tanner  looks at the matter on the  permissible extent  of government.   Jonah Goldberg reminds us  that the penalty  under ObamaCare is a tax only in court  –  surely that will come up.   Andrew McCarthy  thinks it won’t.   David Rivkin and Lee Casey weigh in on the  constitutional issues at  stake here.

George Will looks  at the problems  ObamaCare creates with contract law.   Dr. Milton Wolf  totes up the lies  and dissembling done in service of ObamaCare.   Remember that he is a cousin of His Oneness.

I seldom use Wikipedia,  but Jonah   Goldberg is correct  that youngsters do.  They apparently believe it’s an actual reference source to be relied upon.    If you use Google today,  you’ll see a black bar in honor of Wiki’s protest,  which has been  joined by other sites.

That said,  the SOPA legislation is awful and should have a stake driven through its big brother heart.   This will explain  why you need to be calling your Congress critters to add  your voice to  other protests.

UPDATE:  The Heritage Foundation has a full explanation  of the problems here.

Jonah Goldberg has  a charming column  on the subject here.  For those who don’t know,  Jonah is Jewish.   My late mother often observed that her Jewish friends sent the best Christmas cards.  I’ll bet Jonah does too.

Far less cheerful is the persecution Christians are suffering around the world,  particularly in places undergoing the “Arab Spring”.   The incomparable Mark Steyn  weighs in with  a quote from another wise Jew.  Of course,  the Clinton State Department is much too busy  promoting gay rights  to be bothered with even commenting on religious persecution.

Did the stimulus create jobs?   Could  it still be  doing so?   Or did it and other bad economic policies just  make our economy  worse?   House Democrats are pushing  for more of  the same.

Jonah Goldberg  doesn’t think   His Oneness can pull it off with his speech this Thursday.   Bill McGurn goes further to say the President has a  speech impediment.

Jonah Goldberg goes on a  well-deserved rant  about the media and civil tones and such.

That  ain’t the headline  His Oneness wants to see just as he’s about to have Sheriff Joe crank up  Recovery Summer Part II.   h/t to Jonah Goldberg for the notice.   Do read the blog he links to  — the comments are worth skimming over.   There is a huge difference psychologically between 8.9 and 9.1%.   You’ll see how much as the Obama Administration tries desperately to spin this news into something more palatable,  and by how MSM scrabbles to create silver linings and pink ponies.

Iain Murray calls  for deregulation  in the face of the failure of Obamanomics.   Is it any surprise  the labor market  has found itself  in the doldrums again?

Did Rep.  Anthony Weiner send a  “dirty photo”  to a college student?   That is the big question MSM won’t touch,  but  here is a  rundown.  What strikes me as very strange is why the belligerent congressman from New York has lawyered-up,  but still hasn’t reported to the police the crime he claims to be the victim of.

Jonah Goldberg at The Corner links to the Congressman’s interview,  here,   and notes that the hack has morphed  into a prank.

If I’m the head of the 2012 campaign of His Oneness,  I am not happy that the  parody video of Obama’s re-election announcement,  put out by the National Republican Senatorial Committee,  has more hits on YouTube than the original.   However,  I would have enlisted the DNC computer trolls to visit repeatedly to get my guy’s numbers up.  When I checked a while ago,  it was 911,720 vs. 310,707.

Ace of Spades takes a solid smack at Obama’s  announcement in context.   If you compare the two videos,  Obama doesn’t promote any of the things he claims to be so proud of,  while the NRSC video has actual facts.   I think Jonah Goldberg has it right — that Obama’s strategy for 2012 will  be to lay low. Michael Walsh adds some pearls of wisdom to the pile as well.

The first thing I hear on the news this morning is that NATO is delaying taking over the Libya operation,  less than 12 hours after His Oneness assured us NATO would assume control Wednesday.    Don’t you just love the smell of disaster in the morning?

As Robert Stacy McCain  puts it,  we know Libya is a really bad idea because Sen. John Kerry favors it.   Toby Harnden found the speech as  lacking in clarity as I did.    Praveen Swami worries that other despots will take from this adventure the fact that Gaddafi gave up his nuclear and chemical weaponry ambitions.  Even NBC’s Jim Maceda said Gaddafi must be  feeling better since His Oneness didn’t call for actual regime change.

AP  fact-checked the speech.   The score wasn’t pretty.  The Washington Times landed a solid punch with  its editorial.   Paul Kengor gives us an  intelligence nugget from the Reagan era which was new to me.  Today would certainly be different if Gaddafi had been assassinated then.  Steven Hayward  focused on the style of the speech,  and  the comments below point out other annoyances.

Marc Thiessen found it  fundamentally dishonest, while even The New Republic,  in the course of praising the emperor,  had some questions.  Many were  unimpressed.

Jonah Goldberg’s  basketball analogies for Obama’s actions on Libya holds up nicely after the speech.

A Pakistani governor  has been murdered by one of his own elite guards,  apparently because of his opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.   The Punjab governor was defending a Christian woman accused of violating those laws.  For this,  he was reportedly shot nine times.

Nina Shea and Paul Marshall have more,  here.   So-called  “moderate”  Muslim  scholars support the shooter.   Islamists are so tolerant,  aren’t they?

And while we’re in the neighborhood,  this is what the Afghanistan time-lines His Oneness proposed,  then waffled about,  have brought us.