SEIU Members = Raider Fans?

Well, at least several of those who show up at "protests" like the one in this video. I dunno, maybe some of these people get all violent because they realize nobody is going to give their hyperbolic rhetoric any credibility. Or maybe they're just fanatics. h/t Gateway Pundit

Trump Hits Back

Donald Trump doesn't hold anything back in his response to New York Times columnist Gail Collins, who criticized Trump over his possible campaign run for President and recent focus on Obama's seeming lack of a U.S. birth certificate:

Even before Gail Collins was with the New York Times, she has written nasty and derogatory articles about me. Actually, I have great respect for Ms. Collins in that she has survived so long with so little talent. Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level. More importantly, her facts are wrong!

As far as her comments on the so-called “birther” issue, I don't need Ms. Collins's advice. There is a very large segment of our society who believe that Barack Obama, indeed, was not born in the United States. His grandmother from Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth. His family in Honolulu is fighting over which hospital in Hawaii he was born in-they just don't know.

I'm not entirely certain Trump has the temperament to be an effective President, but he might make an entertaining Press Secretary. If the incorrigibly left-wing Helen Thomas was still in the press pool, I can only imagine what sort of exchange Trunp would have with her.

It Depends On How You Define "Services"

So the latest argument against those, like myself, who oppose taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood is that abortion only makes up 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's offered services. As you might be able to see in the table graphic I've embedded (click it for a larger view) of all the services offered by Planned Parenthood, 70 percent are allegedly directed toward providing contraception and screening for sexually transmitted diseases. These figures are from 2009 and were generated by Planned Parenthood.

In taking a closer look at the table, however, one notices a couple of curious and questionable things. Unlike the other listed categories like "Contraception" and "STI/STD Testing and Treatment," the abortion category contains only one activity. Also, I'm willing to bet the activity of abortion does not include the distribution of abortifacients, like RU-486.

It's also unclear what exactly Planned Parenthood means by "Reversible Contraception Clients." Does it mean the number of visits by individuals seeking contraception, or just the individuals? If a woman goes to Planned Parenthood and obtains birth control pills and condoms during the same visit, is she counted as just a female Reversible Contraception Client?

So even if it's true that only 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's activities involves abortion services, the claim is, at best, misleading. The claim ignores the fact that in 2009, Planned Parenthood performed over 330,000 abortions nationwide, a disproportionate number of which probably involved American Blacks, and that abortion services alone were responsible for approximately 40 percent of Planned Parenthood's income revenue. For an activity that's allegedly just 3 percent of Planned Parenthood's offered "services," that's pretty significant. Indeed, one would be justified in concluding that abortion is Planned Parenthood's proverbial bread and butter.

Supreme Conflict of Interest?

As the various lawsuits against Obamacare, particularly those filed by over half the States, make their way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, questions abound as to whether Justice Elena Kagan ought to recuse herself from any proceeding in the matter. The principal reason for these questions come from the fact that prior to ascending to the Supreme Court, Kagan was Obama's Solicitor General when Obamacare was being formulated and debated.

The Bench Memos blog hosted by National Review Online has just started a series of posts analyzing the extent to which Kagan may have a conflict of interest:

The timeline of [Kagan's] nomination meant that she was already aware she was being considered for an anticipated Supreme Court vacancy by March 5 -- before the House voted on the Obamacare legislation on March 21 and the major lawsuits against the law were filed on May 23. Neal Katyal, her chief deputy, has stated that she was walled off “since Day One” on that lawsuit.

But what we have recently learned (and many suspected beforehand) is that the administration’s defense of Obamacare was under way even before the bill became law and any lawsuit was filed. On January 8, Tom Perrelli was already organizing a meeting of DOJ bigwigs to “get thinking about how to defend against inevitable challenges to the health care proposals that are pending.” Katyal agreed that the SG’s office should be involved, adding candidly, “Let’s crush them.” He then consulted with then-SG Kagan and reported that “Elena would definitely like OSG to be involved in this set of issues.” While Katyal was to be point for the office on the issue, he added that “we will bring in Elena as needed.”

Given the significant negative ramifications Obamacare has on the economy and our individual liberties (we can be penalized by the government for merely making a mental decision not to purchase health insurance), this conflict of interest issue with Kagan is important to follow.

Presumptively, Kagan would vote to uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare along with Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor. Since one would expect Justices Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito to strike Obamacare down, the fate of the legislation comes squarely down on Justice Kennedy who, despite having been nominated to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan, is a wild card. Removing Kagan from the equation effectively nullifies Kennedy's unpredictability.

Is It Torture To Tickle?

It can be, sure. But obviously, it isn't always. Anyone who stubbornly believes otherwise shouldn't be taken seriously. Right?

Leland Yee Demands Rush Limbaugh Apologize for Not Knowing Chinese - UPDATED

California State Senator Leland Yee, who in addition to having his beady little eyes on the mayorship of San Francisco, has his panties all up in a wad over Rush Limbaugh's recent on-air mimicking of the Chinese language. Limbaugh did the act in relation to a complaint he had about nobody at the White House translating the speech that the president of China, Hu Jintao, had given. Not knowing or understanding Chinese, Mandarin specifically, Limbaugh proceeded to make a bunch of meaningless noises of what Hu's speech sounded like to him.

Obviously not one to pass up an opportunity to mindlessly play the race card, Yee suggested he was deeply hurt by Limbaugh's "comments" because they hearkened him "back to when [Yee] was a little boy growing up in San Francisco and those were hard days, rather insensitive days." Yee, accordingly, demanded Limbaugh apologize, which Rush has rightly refused by omission to do. Again, all Limbaugh did was express what someone who is speaking Chinese sounds like to him when there's no one around to translate.

Instead of letting it go, however, Yee has doubled down on his tenuous position by making the outrageous suggestion that Limbaugh has caused him to receive racist messages and threats. Personally, I tend to doubt Yee is telling the truth about getting these messages, but even if he is, he can't prove Limbaugh caused them to be sent. For Yee to make this suggestion without direct proof is a testament to his total lack of character and integrity. Which is to say Leland Yee is a perfect match for most of the voters of San Francisco.

This is just speculation on my part, but I think if Hu Jintao had given his speech in, say, German and Limbaugh had done the same mimicking of it that he did with the Chinese language, there would not have been any sort of uproar by Leland Yee and his fellow travelers on the Asian-American liberal left. Indeed, I don't think there would have been an uproar if Limbaugh had been politically liberal like, oh, most of the writers and cast of Saturday Night Live.



Update: I wrote this blog post after seeing the story posted by a "friend" in my Facebook news feed. A commenter there, who has expressed his abject hatred for Rush, attempted to dismiss my point about the hypocritical lack of uproar among liberals to the above SNL skit by saying that unlike Rush's radio show, which is serious news commentary, SNL is a comedy. In other words, comedy is an apparent exception to the otherwise unsubstantiated presumption that it is racist for a white person to mimic a Chinese speaking person of East Asian descent. Yeah, it's stupid logic, but seeing as how there was probably nothing I could say to change this Facebook commenter's hostility to Rush, I didn't bother posting a response there. Better, I thought, to expose this self-admitted Rush hater's lunacy here.

Borrowing From Dan Aykroyd on Classic SNL: Andrea, You Ignorant Slut!

So NBC's Andrea Mitchell thinks Sarah Palin is ignorant for using the term "blood libel" to characterize the charges that she caused Jared Loughner to commit murder. Mitchell, it seems, is of the belief the term is only ever used to describe the historical claim that the Jews had once engaged in the ritual killing of children so that their blood could be consumed. Oh, how incredibly ignorant Ms. Mitchell, and anyone else who has parroted her belief, is:

Andrew Cohen of CBS News, May 7, 2008: “So-called “judicial activism” occurs, in other words, when it’s your side that lost the case and it is nothing short of a blood libel against judges to accuse them of operating by fiat.”

(...)

AP, July 28, 2008: “Just before Obama spoke, Newsday editor Les Payne had called “blood libel” the argument that African-American journalists could not objectively cover Obama’s candidacy.”

(...)

Frank Rich, New York Times columnist, October 15, 2006: “The moment Mr. Foley’s e-mails became known, we saw that brand of fearmongering and bigotry at full tilt: Bush administration allies exploited the former Congressman’s predatory history to spread the grotesque canard that homosexuality is a direct path to pedophilia. It’s the kind of blood libel that in another era was spread about Jews.”

On the chance that you may argue that Mitchell might say the above noted uses of "blood libel" are also steeped in ignorance, bear in mind that Alan Dershowitz (no ideological conservative is he) has come to the defense of Palin by confirming that the definitional scope of "blood libel" has become much broader than its historical context.

The WaPo's Big Fail

It's bad enough that Al Sharpton would actually have the chutzpah to write a column suggesting that he is a supporter of "being passionate toward what we believe in without also being poisonous." This from the guy who lost a defamation lawsuit for accusing a New York Assistant D.A. of raping a black female teen (Tawana Brawley) and incited a race riot in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn ("If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin their yarmulkes back and come over to my house.").

No, what's worse is that a major "mainstream" paper like The Washington Post would give Sharpton a highly visible forum for his laughably disingenuous pontification. Borrowing from a blogger named Just Karl, I suppose we should next expect The WaPo to run a column on healing and reconciliation by Fred Phelps.

h/t

Obama's Commitment to Political Hackery on the Bench

After being returned to the White House last year with no action by Congress, President Obama has renominated 42 candidates to fill vacancies in the Federal judiciary. Among the list of renominated candidates is the Associate Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), Goodwin Liu.

As I previously asserted and posted here, here and here, Goodwin Liu is nothing short of a radical leftist ideologue who condones judicial activism. For those reasons alone, Liu's nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals should be opposed. In terms of objective qualifications like years of practice as an attorney, Liu isn't even eligible to serve as a temporary (i.e., fill-in) judge in California small claims court. Kind of tells you something about Obama's underlying motives in nominating and renominating Liu, doesn't it?

Arnold Shores Up His Disastrous Legacy as Governor

Last year in June, the 21 year old son of former California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez was sentenced to 16 years in prison for the role he played in the killing of a college student in San Diego. In one of his last acts as California governor, Arnold commuted the sentence:

Schwarzenegger announced the move in a batch of eleventh-hour press releases e-mailed to reporters...

...Fabian Nuñez, a Democrat, grew close to the governor while speaker. The two worked together to pass the state’s landmark global warming law, which was a signature achievement of Schwarzenegger’s time in office. Fabian Nuñez is a business partner of the governor’s chief political advisor at the consulting firm Mercury Public Affairs.

I'd like to say I'm surprised by this, but I'm really not. The list of outrageous and idiotic things Arnold has done as governor is lengthy and extends back to the early days of his term. In 2004, for example, Arnold not only tried to give driver licences to illegal aliens, he signed a bill which basically protects pedophiles. More recently, of course, Arnold enacted the above mentioned global warming law, which is a job killer and based on junk science, and refused to defend the clear lawless striking down of Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment which limits legally recognized marriages in the state as between one man and one woman.

All in all, Arnold's abuse of his authority for a political crony like Nunez is par for the course, which I guess is good if you're a left-wing political ideologue. For everyone else, it just confirms how much of a disaster Schwarzenegger's tenure as governor of California has been and will be remembered.

h/t

Being Smart Doesn't Immunize From Stupidity

In addition to being a long time judge on the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, Richard Posner is a prolific author of several high-minded books on the law and economics. Education-wise, Posner has a Bachelor's degree in English from Yale and he finished first in his class at Harvard Law School. Posner has also taught law at Stanford and the University of Chicago.

Outside of his impressive background in the law, Posner does not appear to have any formal education in theology, religion or religious history. I can't even find any information as to whether Posner is an adherent of a particular religious faith. With all this in mind, it wouldn't seem that Posner would be dumb enough to attempt to provide any public insights about the specific doctrines of Catholicism without at least doing some cursory research. Yet, Posner did exactly this with the comments he posted a couple of weeks ago on his blog. (See John Breen's excellent take down of Posner's attempt at being a theologian here.)

As much of an intellectual as Judge Posner obviously is, why would he do something so stupid as to discuss a topic that is clearly outside of his scope of knowledge? It's hard to be certain, but hubris and a condescending attitude toward the Church are probably significant factors. I haven't always agreed with Posner's conclusions on various issues about the law, but I at least respected him as a serious academic. The ignorant laden comments Posner has made about Catholicism has caused me to lose a great deal of that respect.

h/t

Ninth Circuit Panel to Hear Prop. 8 Appeal Announced

There are probably only a couple of living judges I can think of off the top of my head who could have written a worse legal justification than the one Judge Vaughn Walker wrote in striking down Proposition 8, the California constitutional amendment which limits legally recognized marriages as being between one man and one woman. Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is one such judge. I say this on the basis of a previous decision Judge Reinhardt once wrote where he proclaimed a constitutional right to physician assisted suicide, as well as his joining an opinion that basically found the Pledge of Allegiance to be unconstitutional.

Now comes word that Judge Reinhardt has been selected to be on the three judge panel that will hear the appeal of Judge Walker's asinine Prop. 8 ruling. This, despite the fact that Reinhardt once opined in another case that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Think his fly might be just a little bit open here? Don't expect Reinhardt to exercise some integrity and recuse himself, though. When you're a liberal hack jurist, political ideology is king and it is indistinguishable from the law.

h/t

Update: As reported by Ed Whelan, Reinhardt's wife, Ramona Ripston, was not only a campaign contributor to the No on Prop. 8 campaign, she directly consulted with the plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit to challenge Prop. 8. Solid grounds for Reinhardt to self-disqualify, but again, don't expect it to happen.

Don't let that discourage you, though, from writing the court to let it know just how wrong it is that Reinhardt is on the panel to hear the Prop. 8 appeal.

Whoopi Poop

Rank hypocrisy by politically liberal celebrities is nothing new, as is their penchant for making mindless and unsubstantiated charges against people they think they disagree with. But I wanted to share Whoopi Goldberg's recent rant against bloggers (presumptively conservative ones, but maybe also liberals), because of the underlying homage it makes to one of the greatest fictional comics (in my slightly warped mind, at least) to grace this Earth - Triumph the Insult Dog.

They don't have to find out if they are even current in their information. They don't have to do any of that. And then that is picked up and made into some other story on another station, and it becomes the truth. See, I think fact outweighs assumption. So if you have facts in your hands, then you can talk, then you can have a conversation and say I hated what you did, blah, blah, blah. And I want to know who’s saying it so I can say, well, I think you're wrong here, you missed this. But you can't do that. People just, they poop on you and they walk away.

On a side note, I've seen an episode of Conan O'Brien's new show on TBS, and it seems really lacking.

Power Line's Unbecoming Self Righteousness

Shortly after TEA Party favorite Christine O'Donnell won the Delaware Republican Party nomination for U.S. Senate back in September, several prominent center-right blogs like Power Line persistently complained that O'Donnell was a bad choice and Delaware Republicans/TEA partiers were giving up an almost certain pick up of Joe Biden's old Senate seat with the "moderate" (i.e., liberal) Mike Castle.

Now that O'Donnell has since lost the election to self-described "bearded Marxist" Chris Coons, Paul Mirengoff at Power Line just can't refrain from basically wagging his finger at and telling O'Donnell supporters, "I told you so." Although the tone of self-righteousness is a bit subtle, it's nevertheless noticeable. But lost among the veiled condescension by Mirengoff is his failure to recognize the impact that he and his Power Line cohorts might have had in O'Donnell's predicted loss in the general election. It didn't help, for instance, that they lent legitimacy to the idiotic troll that O'Donnell had once dabbled in witchcraft - while she was in high school. Power Line also conveniently fails to mention the fact that Mike Castle acted like a complete sore loser and refused to back O'Donnell after she won the primary. Had Castle done so, I don't think it would have been unreasonable to believe that O'Donnell's chances of winning would have increased significantly.

Mirengoff concludes his blog post by expressing hope that conservatives don't repeat the "blunder" of nominating another Republican candidate like Christine O'Donnell. I just about wanted to punch through my computer screen when I read that.

2010 California General Election Recommendations

As I've previously blogged, this is the very first general election that I will not be voting as a registered Republican. Without any sense of obligation to support a a candidate just because he or she won the Republican primary, I can vote for whomever I want. And believe me, there are a few elected government positions where the Republican candidate is less than desirable from a conservative standpoint.

So, without further adieu, here are my recommendations for selected state-wide offices and ballot initiatives (I might add to or change the list if more information becomes available):

Governor - Meg Whitman Although Whitman is not really all that conservative, e.g., she is pro abortion rights and against Arizona's illegal immigration bill, she at least is pro-business and is the only viable alternative to Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown, who as far as I know, never held a private sector job in his life. I'm personally looking at my vote as not for Whitman, but against Moonbeam.

U.S. Senator - Carly Fiorina Almost a clone of Meg Whitman with a dash of the questionably conservative John McCain, a political mentor to Fiorina. A lot of state GOP establishment types, including Fiorina herself, have disingenuously claimed Fiorina is "pro-life." Fact of the matter is that all Fiorina has ever said is that she is personally against abortion. Fiorina has never said she is against abortion rights, and in fact has suggested she supports them as long as the voters of California do so. A cop out to be sure, but since the only alternative is Barbara "Please Don't Call Me Ma'am" Boxer, this is a another "hold your nose" ballot cast.

Lieutenant Governor - Karen England You're going to have to write England in, as she only recently got her campaign going for this almost useless office. The Republican nominated candidate, Abel Maldonado, is pretty much a Democrat in Republican clothing.

Secretary of State - Damon Dunn I think Dunn is a former NFL player. Anyway, a couple of friends are big supporters of his, so that's why I'm making this recommendation.

Treasurer - Mimi Walters Walters is a former Assemblywoman from Orange County who was very effective, and Bill Lockyer is a career political liberal hack from, if I remember correctly, the East Bay.

Attorney General - John Eastman Like England, you'll have to write Eastman in. He doesn't have an active campaign going, having lost in the primary to the Republican nominee Steve Cooley, but I'm writing Eastman in anyway because Cooley is liberal and Democrat Kamala Harris is even more of a liberal hack.

Superintendent of Public Instruction - Diane Lenning Another write-in candidate. Just do it.

California Supreme Court - Vote 'No' on Everyone (Cantil-Sakauye, Chin and Moreno) Cantil-Sakauye is untrustworthy in light of the report that she presided over a same-sex marriage during the period of time before Prop. 8 was approved by voters. Chin voted to strike down the law requiring parental notification when a minor seeks an abortion. Moreno is a flat out liberal political hack in a black robe.

Prop. 19 (Marijuana Legalization) - No I've actually kind of struggled with this recommendation, but because the initiative would be in direct conflict with operative Federal law, I can't support it.

Prop. 20 (Congressional District Drawing) - Yes If this passes, the drawing of district lines is taken out of the hands of the politicians whose main objective, of course, is to make sure they always have voters to keep them, and their party, in office.

Prop. 21 (Vehicle License Surcharge) - No Sounds like a tax hike.

Prop. 23 (Suspends Implementation of Air Pollution Control Law) - Yes The law this initiative would suspend is based on global warming junk science.

Prop. 25 (Simple Majority to Pass State Budget) - No This initiative states that the two-thirds vote requirement to impose and raise taxes would remain in place. However, not all taxes are called "taxes." Many are called "fees" for the specific purpose of avoiding the two-thirds vote requirement for taxes. You can bet there will be "fees" stuck in a state budget that requires only a simply majority to pass.

Prop. 26 (Fees Approved by Two-Thirds Vote) - Yes See above on Prop. 25.

Prop. 27 (Eliminates Commission on Redistricting) - No This is basically the exact opposite of Prop. 20. Not having a Redistricting Commission would perpetuate the existence and entrenchment of career politicians. That has obviously not worked well for California.

Anti-Prop 8 Attorneys Have Jumped the Shark

If you're a fan of pop culture, you'll recognize that "jumping the shark" is a term that basically means doing something that is over the top and absurd.

Lawyers representing the parties who are challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 (the California constitutional amendment which legally defines marriage as being between one man and one woman) have seemingly "jumped the shark" with the arguments they recently submitted to the Ninth Circuit of Court of Appeals. As pointed out by Ed Whelan, an example of the over the top rhetorical tactics employed by anti-Prop. 8 lawyers Ted Olsen and David Boies is found in their conclusion which opens as follows:

Last month, in a widely publicized tragedy, a young Rutgers student jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge after being outed on the Internet as gay. A few days later, across the Hudson River in the Bronx, two 17-year-old young men were beaten and tortured to the brink of death by a gang of nine because they were suspected of being gay. Incidents such as these are all too familiar to our society. And it is too plain for argument that discrimination written into our constitutional charters inexorably leads to shame, humiliation, ostracism, fear, and hostility. The consequences are all too often very, very tragic.

Within the general context that the above appears, it's pretty obvious that Olsen and Boies are saying there's a causal connection between not legally recognizing same-sex "marriages" and gay teen suicide (as well as apparent anti-gay induced violence*). Now, I'm pretty certain this clear suggestion isn't supported by any hard data. Indeed, as the linked to posting by Ed Whelan discloses, there is actually available hard data to refute such a connection (in regard to gay teen suicide*).

So why would Olsen and Boies suggest this outrageous and easily refutable link between same sex marriage and gay teen suicide? This is only speculation, but I think it's principally because they know who their audience is and they have no qualms of trying to exploit it in their favor. Unfortunately, given the earned reputation of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals as a liberal and lawless court, this objectively ridiculous tactic by Olsen and Boies is more than likely going to work. Heaven help us all.

*I have subsequently added this text.

Let's Rock

A Federal District Court judge in Florida today gave the green light to 20 states that are challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. Obama's Dept. of Justice tried to dismiss the lawsuit primarily on grounds that Congress acted under its constitutional authority to impose and collect taxes. The exercise of said authority, of course, was disingenuously denied by Obama during the health care debate.

News that the lawsuit by 20 states can go forward is very encouraging, especially in light of the recent setback caused in a similar legal challenge by the Thomas More Law Center. Hopefully, the the judge in the 20 states lawsuit won't be the ideological hack that the judge in the Thomas More Law Center case obviously was.

On a side note, it seems that several Volokh Conspiracy blog contributors think Obamacare could be found constitutional under a Necessary and Proper Clause analysis. It's interesting from an academic standpoint, but in the end I think it requires a great deal of tortured logic for anyone to argue that the government may constitutionally force an American citizen to purchase and/or effectively pay for someone else's health insurance.

More Liberal Hackery From the Bench

Following up on her ruling last month that the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy is unconstitutional, Federal District Court Judge Virgina Phillips imposed a "world-wide" injunction that basically lets all the happy people in the military come out of the closet, or footlockers, and flaunt their sexual disorders.

That Judge Phillips has egregiously abused her authority with this ideologically based ruling and injunction is without question. The woman is clearly trying to make a name for herself a-la fellow judicial lame brain Vaughn Walker. I'm hoping someone or people in Congress will oblige Judge Phillips by introducing articles of impeachment against her.

When Liberal Activist Judges Go Wild

David Kopel at The Daily Caller has a nice layman's analysis of the recent Federal court decision in Thomas More Law Center vs. Obama, a case which challenges the constitutionality of Obamacare; specifically, the law's mandate that almost everyone carry health insurance. Failure to comply with the mandate results in a hefty fine.

As noted by Kopel, the District Court in Michigan upheld Obamacare on the basis that Congress acted within its scope of power under the Constitution's Commerce Clause. The underlying premise for this basis couldn't be any more ridiculous and without legal grounding:

The choice not to buy a federally-designed insurance product is not an activity at all. It is inactivity. Judge Steeh, however, said that not buying insurance is an “economic decision.” Which is true, since all inactivity, including not purchasing products, is in a sense an economic decision. If you’re sleeping, you’ve made the “economic decision” not to spend your time working to make money.

So according to Judge Steeh, Congress can use the interstate commerce power to force you to make the “economic decision” to buy a bureaucratically-designed insurance policy that you don’t want.

However, the Supreme Court has never held that Congress can regulate any “economic decision.” Such a ruling would convert our Constitution of limited, enumerated powers into a grant of unlimited central power. The American people of 1787 never would have ratified unlimited central power, nor do Americans support such power today.

That Judge Steeh had to invent the “economic decision” theory demonstrates that a conscientious judge who wants to uphold the health control law can’t find a plausible way to do so within existing Supreme Court doctrine.

This, of course, isn't the only legal challenge being made to Obamacare, and it's more than likely that Judge Steeh's decision will be appealed. It is, nevertheless, distressing to see the blatantly injudicious lengths that some of these judges will go to, e.g., making legal doctrines up out of whole cloth, in order to sustain an obviously unconstitutional law they find ideologically appealing.

It's Like Having a Funeral for Your Dead Goldfish

Divorce ceremonies are apparently a growing phenomena in Japan:

One in four marriages in Japan now ends in divorce, yet it's still considered a cultural taboo. Increasingly popular ceremonies help some Japanese cope with the country's changing social norms, according to divorce ceremony planner Hiroki Terai.

Michiko's soon-to-be ex-husband, Taka, says the idea was surprising to him. He had never heard of a divorce ceremony when Michiko brought it up.

But when he looked at the brochures on-line -- which explained that the divorce ceremony was like a wedding ceremony, with a different outcome -- he decided some sort of formal closure to their marriage might provide him with emotional closure as well.

Illustrative of a culture that is increasingly becoming self-absorbed on the individual level? Seems like it.

With a fifty percent divorce rate, I fully expect divorce ceremonies to be the next big thing here in the U.S. very soon.