Tabloid update: "What Laura's Hiding!"

Have you been to the supermarket this week? The Globe tabloid is almost vibrating in its news racks, that's how excited it is to have the scoop on former first lady Laura Bush's long-awaited memoir.

Now we'll find out, the cover teases, about "Bush suicide fears," and "His 'other' woman" and their "Bitter divorce deal."

Ever since 2007, when the Globe reported that Laura Bush was keeping a "secret divorce diary" for a tell-all memoir that would "expose the painful truth" about her husband's drinking and cheating, the tabloid has been waiting for the day when the whole sordid story would finally come out.

Sorry to disappoint you, but the day has not yet come.

"Former First Lady Laura Bush was paid a whopping $2 million to pen a memoir of her White House years," the Globe complains, "but the biggest shockers are the sizzling secrets she WON'T be revealing in the new book."

Laura Bush: Spoken from the Heart is due out on May 4, and "insiders say" it will be "a whitewash," the Globe reports. Mrs. Bush gave in to her husband's begging and pleading and agreed "not to include any hint that their marriage collapsed while they were in the White House."

The Globe says Mr. Bush bought his wife a $2 million home in suburban Dallas and she lives in it alone, while he spends most of his time at the Crawford ranch.

The tabloid first reported in October of 2008 that the Bushes had reached a "super-secret pact" to end their marriage. A big house in Dallas was part of the deal.

But there's nothing in the former first lady's book about that, the Globe's sources say. There's nothing about the time she "stormed out of the White House and spent the night in Washington's Mayflower Hotel after a nasty confrontation."

Nothing about the "out-of-control boozing."

Nothing about "George's passionate fixation with his Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice."

Nothing about the time Mrs. Bush moved out of the White House for several weeks because of her husband's drinking and "refusal to address the troubles in their marriage."

And nothing about "the tragic incident that still haunts Laura to this day when she killed her high school sweetheart in a car wreck."

Come on, you have to cut somewhere.

There are a couple of details in the Globe's story that we haven't heard before.

"Over the years, Laura's mistrust of George and bitterness toward Condi mushroomed," the tabloid reports, quoting an insider. "To this day, Laura hates Condi for not putting the rumors to rest one way or the other."

The Globe says Mrs. Bush confronted Secretary Rice several times and "never got a good answer from her."

Yes, "We thought Saddam had weapons of mass destruction" is what she tells everybody.

Today the Bushes' marriage is over in all but name, the Globe says. They're staying together "just for show," and on those occasions when they do sleep under the same roof, "sources say they sleep in separate bedrooms and go days without speaking."

But Mrs. Bush finally decided not to write about "the fights and jealousies and suspicions," much to the relief of her husband. Friends told the Globe they feared the former president was suicidal at the thought of his wife revealing their secrets, and when she promised not to embarrass him, "he appeared to calm down."

Of course, he's not out of the woods yet.

Condoleezza Rice signed with the William Morris Agency and has a three-book deal.

The George W. Bush Library could be the second presidential library with an "Adults Only" section.


Copyright 2010

Editor's note: Catch up on your tabloid reading with "Laura Gets $15M Divorce Payoff" (2008),"Laura's Secret Divorce Diary" (2007), "Bush Marital Turmoil" (2007), "Laura Claws Boozing Bush" (2008), and "All right, let's dish." (2006).

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Money bomb update: Just for fun

Today, Republican candidate for Congress John Dennis is holding a money bomb event, trying to raise an attention-getting amount of money for his campaign to defeat Nancy Pelosi in California's 8th Congressional district.

Are you climbing the walls with anger over the health care bill? Are you typing "How to fight socialism" into the Google search box? Are you sick of the sanctimonious, preening politicians who insist that working Americans have a responsibility to pay the living expenses of, well, everybody else?

Is that what's troubling you, Bunky?

Maybe you'll feel better when you find out that the Internal Revenue Service will get $10 billion of your tax dollars to pay for enforcement of health care reform. The new law puts the IRS in charge of penalizing people who can afford health insurance but don't buy it, as well as subsidizing people who need it but can't afford it.

Good thing no one would ever lie on their tax returns just to avoid a huge fine or get free money.

While you still have an extra dollar lying around, you might want to use it to let Speaker Pelosi know how you feel:

www.johndennis2010.com

Even if you just send five dollars, or one dollar, you'll be helping by adding your name to the list of Americans who are serious about their opposition to higher taxes, bigger government, more debt, and collectivist policies that trample individual rights.

Donor lists like this can be rented to other candidates around the country, helping to rally support and turn out the vote this November.

Not everyone has the whole day free to ring doorbells and make phone calls. Not everyone is a college student or a government employee.

But people who work for a living can organize, too.

Today's money bomb: www.JohnDennis2010.com

Tell a friend.



Editor's note: You might be interested in the previous post, "Money bombing for freedom."

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Money bombing for freedom

Do you remember buying your first computer? Maybe you went to a store, probably a store that's out of business now, and asked the salesperson which computer you should buy.

"It depends," they would typically answer. "Do you want to play games, edit video, do word processing? What do you want to do with it?"

Here's what we what want to do with it.

We want to bury the politicians who are taking our freedom, bit by bit, forcing us to check with Washington before we take any action: Does the government want me to do this? Will the government let me do this? Will the government subsidize me if I do this? Will the government fine me, or tax me, or denounce me if I do this?

Not to mention: What does the SEIU think? Is it good for the auto workers?

Even if you bought your computer for porn and online poker, you can use it today to fight for your freedom.

In the past, political fundraising was a daunting task for candidates who believe in freedom. All the money went to candidates who promised to give away free stuff.

It was a perfectly rational calculation on everybody's part.

Today we live in the world that was created by that bargain: government workers' unions with benefits and pensions and job security that far exceed anything that can be matched by comparable jobs in the private sector; businesses cutting jobs in the face of ruinous costs ordered by the government officials who were elected with the donations of government workers' unions.

The only way out is to lift the burden on the American people and allow economic activity to go unpunished.

The government gravy train must be derailed or we're all going to die shoveling coal into it.

Today America Wants To Know introduces a new feature: The Money Bomb Update.

Between now and November, we will be posting links to the campaigns of politicians who vow to restore freedom in America. If you send a small amount to each of them, even if it's just one dollar, you will be assisting their campaigns by helping them build a mailing list they can rent to other campaigns in the future. You'll be helping to demonstrate that there are millions and millions of American voters who are serious about protecting freedom from the well-intentioned butchers who are carving it up and giving it away with both hands.

Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul is trying to raise $300,000 today. He's fighting against a Republican establishment candidate who's less ideological and more willing to meet the Democrats halfway when they ignore the Constitution and usurp power to accomplish their desired policies.

"Let there be no change by usurpation," George Washington warned in his farewell address, "for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."

Today's money bomb: www.RandPaul2010.com

Tell a friend.


3-24-10: Update - From Rand Paul's website: "Rand Paul raised $261,880 on Tuesday in his "Give Me Liberty" Money Bomb. He has now raised $550,000 for the quarter and more than $2.3 million over the course of his stunningly successful campaign."

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Willie Wonka and the Health Care Bill

Do you like fantasy stories?

Here's one for you.

The Democrats told the Congressional Budget Office that employers are going to raise everybody's wages after health care reform passes. Why? Because employers are going to save so much money on the lower health insurance premiums that result from the wonderful, amazing, marvelous, giant health care reform bill.

Have you heard? It spits golden coins into everybody's pockets. It's magical!

Last week, President Obama told an audience in Ohio that employers would see enormous reductions in the health care premiums they pay for their employees.

"Your employer, it's estimated, would see premiums fall by as much as 3,000 percent," the president said, "which means they could give you a raise."

Later the White House said the president misspoke. He meant to say premiums would fall by as much as 3,000 dollars, not 3,000 percent.

But the president and all the Democrats continue to tell the story that employers will take the money they save on premiums and hand it out in wage increases.

Everybody loves a good fairy tale.

Do you think the Democrats might be indulging in a wild flight of fantasy and wishful thinking?

Lucky for them, the Congressional Budget Office isn't allowed to say so.

Officially, the CBO has to take the lawmakers at their word. If they assert that someday they're going to cut Medicare and put a 40 percent tax on union health benefits, the Congressional Budget Office has to score the bill as if they'll really do it.

And if the lawmakers say employers will raise wages, and payroll tax revenue will increase, then the Congressional Budget Office has to score the bill on the assumption that employers will raise wages and payroll tax revenue will increase.

"According to reports from the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, part of the deficit savings over the next 10 years stems from increased Social Security revenues generated by the Cadillac tax," Politico reported Thursday.

It makes Alice in Wonderland look like a documentary.

Are you wondering how the Cadillac tax, which is the nickname for a tax on high-cost health insurance plans, increases Social Security revenues?

Social Security revenues come from a tax on wages.

So the only way the Cadillac tax can increase Social Security revenues is if it results in more jobs or higher wages.

Even the Democrats don't claim that taxing health insurance plans will create jobs, but they stand by their story that taxing health insurance plans will raise wages.

They're asserting -- even bragging -- that union members and others who currently have excellent health plans will lose them thanks to the new tax that's intended to make them unaffordable, but that's okay because employers will buy cheaper insurance plans for their employees and give them the difference in wage increases.

And this will increase the take from Social Security payroll taxes!

And that will lower the deficit!

And there's a unicorn in Michelle Obama's garden, and it's eating the lettuce!

Not to spoil a good story, but a few things stand in the way of these happy hikes. Employers are looking at higher taxes starting in 2011 when the Bush tax cuts expire. They're looking at new and higher taxes on capital gains and other investment income. They may be looking at higher energy costs due to the Democrats' proposed regulations on carbon dioxide emissions and there's always the chance that health insurance premiums won't go down at all and may even go up.

And you know what that means.

It's a conspiracy by the Birthers to bring down the president!

Isn't story time fun?

Incidentally, the vaunted deficit-reduction of the health care reform package was discredited by the Congressional Budget Office on Friday. Turns out the "doc fix," which was taken out of the bill and put into a separate bill, costs $208 billion over ten years and wipes out the professed deficit savings, leaving the health care bill $59 billion underwater.

That's why the Democrats took it out of the bill. Nobody likes the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to mess up a good story.

If you're not familiar with the "doc fix," it's an annual remedy for an earlier law that drastically cuts reimbursements to doctors who treat Medicare patients. The lower reimbursement rate makes the budget deficit look smaller on paper, but if Congress ever tried to put those lower reimbursements into effect, doctors would stop accepting new Medicare patients and might even stop seeing current patients.

Try as it might, the government can't force doctors to lose money, and it can't force insurance companies to lose money, and it can't force individuals to spend any of their own money buying health insurance policies.

All the government can do is whine and threaten and call everybody 'selfish' for refusing to shoulder their 'fair share' of other people's expenses.

Meanwhile, the government's costs for the new health care entitlement will go up, and up, and up.

And the deficit will go up, and up, and up.

And the taxes on people who hire people will go up, and up, and up.

And unemployment will go up, and up, and up.

This is a story without a happy ending.

Especially if you're a Democrat running for re-election.

Then, just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, President Obama said he backs a "framework" for immigration reform that would require all Americans to have biometric national ID cards in order to work in this country, while providing a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the country illegally.

By sheer coincidence, the House will be voting on the health care bill Sunday just as tens of thousands of people march on Washington for immigrants' rights. Someday soon, taxpayer-subsidized health insurance could be one of those rights.

The end.

Of the story, and likely of the Democratic majorities, and probably of President Obama's hopes for a second term or any 'achievements' in what's left of the first one. The end of the malignant daydream of utopian America, where everyone has a 'right' to be supported by other people, where the government decides who deserves to be subsidized and who deserves to pay the bill.

And we all lived happily ever after.


Copyright 2010

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Barack Obama's Rockettes problem

When the world famous Radio City Music Hall Rockettes go into their signature high-kick routine, it appears to the audience that the dancers have their arms around each other's waists. But they don't.



"Rockettes don't actually hold on to each other," Rockette Kristin Jantzie explained in an interview, "We just gently touch the velvet of the costume."

That's so they don't all come crashing down if one of them falls.

Like the Rockettes, Members of Congress stand for election every two years in their own districts, each on their own two feet, not quite connected to the other members of their party, whatever it may look like from the audience.

President Obama called Democratic lawmakers to the White House on Thursday and reportedly instructed them that voting against health care reform would hurt their chances of re-election this fall.

Good luck with that.

If they didn't know how to get elected in their districts, they wouldn't be there in the first place.

While they're in Washington, Members of Congress have every reason to play along with the party leadership. That's how they get good committee assignments and that's how they get provisions added to legislation that will help them get re-elected.

Then they go home and campaign.

Sometimes they don't even include their party affiliation in their ads.

They know what they're doing. This is their area of expertise. This is what they do.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It's representative government in action. If the health care bill doesn't have enough votes in Washington, it's because it doesn't have enough support in the country.

So President Obama shouldn't be calling lawmakers in to instruct them.

He should be calling them in to listen to them.

Last November, President Obama pressured reluctant House Democrats to cast a difficult vote for the health care reform bill, telling the lawmakers that their 'yes' vote was necessary to keep the process moving forward.

This week the White House told those same Democrats that they can't 'flip-flop' now and vote no.

Sure they can.

Just watch them.

They're not going to fall like dominoes if they can help it.




Copyright 2010

Editor's note: You might be interested in the earlier America Wants To Know post, "Dead you know."

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The Second Amendment and the big surprise

The U.S. Supreme Court is about to decide the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which is expected to settle the question of whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is one of the rights that is "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore binding on the state governments the same way it's binding on the federal government.

There was a dust-up in the oral arguments between Justice Antonin Scalia and attorney Alan Gura (who successfully argued the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case) over whether the incorporation could be accomplished through the Fourteenth Amendment's "privileges and immunities" clause instead of the "due process" clause that has been used to incorporate other rights in the past.

Justice Scalia said he doesn't like "substantive due process" but he has come to accept it, and he complained that Mr. Gura was trying to go against "140 years of our jurisprudence" to remake constitutional law. Justice Scalia accused the attorney of "bucking for a place on some law school faculty."

The snide comments only serve to call attention to the fact that the Incorporation Doctrine appears nowhere in the U.S. Constitution and is the creation of imaginative judges, totally disconnected from the principle of government by consent of the governed.

Confused? Don't be. Here are the ten things you need to know about the Incorporation Doctrine in order to make sense of this debate:

1. When the Bill of Rights was written and ratified, it was intended and understood to apply only to the federal government. The powers of the states were limited only by their own state constitutions.

2. After the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment was written and ratified to put some limits on the powers of the states, but nobody at the time thought the Amendment made the Bill of Rights apply to the states.

3. From 1868 until 1925, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled over and over again that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. Not once did anyone in Congress or the state legislatures stand up and say, "Hey! That's wrong! We meant for it to apply to the states!"

4. After everybody who debated and ratified the Fourteenth Amendment was safely dead, the U.S. Supreme Court quietly began to suggest that maybe the Fourteenth Amendment actually was intended to pick up certain parts of the Bill of Rights and make them apply to the states.

5. Over the course of the 20th century, the justices of the Supreme Court gradually added more and more rights to the list of rights that were "fundamental" enough to be "incorporated" into the Fourteenth Amendment. However, they left some wiggle room, permitting state laws that infringed those rights if the states could show "a compelling reason."

6. Nobody knows exactly what constitutes a "fundamental" right or a "compelling" reason. They have been different things at different times to different justices.

7. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, states and cities can be sued in federal court over virtually any police procedure, school policy, local ordinance, state law, or state constitutional amendment.

8. Because of the Incorporation Doctrine, local and state voters have lost the power -- guaranteed to them by the always-ignored Tenth Amendment -- to have the laws they want on all kinds of controversial issues, including but not limited to: prayer in the schools, Ten Commandments displays, abortion, panhandling, pornography, flag-burning, drug searches, police interrogations, admissibility of evidence, jury trials, and the death penalty.

9. At no time did any voter, elected official, or state government formally consent to this arrangement, nor were they asked.

10. Under the Incorporation Doctrine, the U.S. Supreme Court has invented various balancing tests to decide which fundamental-right-infringing laws will be allowed and which ones will be struck down. Each new decision is instantly binding on every jurisdiction in the country.

That brings us to the Second Amendment and the big surprise that awaits gun-rights supporters if the Supreme Court grants their wish: a ruling that the Second Amendment is "incorporated" and binding on the states.

It's actually worse for gun rights if the Second Amendment is incorporated than if it isn't.

For every Chicago gun ban that is struck down in one of these cases, there will be dozens or hundreds of jurisdictions that end up adopting gun restrictions they never had before. That's because the U.S. Supreme Court will eventually spell out certain kinds of gun regulations that are allowable, using one of its fundamental-rights-vs.-compelling-interests balancing tests.

That's when gun-control advocates will besiege every city council and state legislature and demand those regulations.

City and state lawmakers who previously would have rebuffed those demands with a firm Second Amendment argument will be stuck, forced to acknowledge that the Second Amendment allows whichever restrictions made the cut in the latest Supreme Court ruling on the subject.

The justices could use McDonald v. Chicago or another case like it to give the green light to gun registration, or mandatory trigger locks, or a ban on "assault weapons," or a safety-training requirement, or a ban on gun ownership by anyone who's ever been clinically depressed.

Can you imagine a politician standing up to the pressure for gun-control laws like these after the Supreme Court specifically rules that the Second Amendment allows them?

The Incorporation Doctrine simply transfers power from state and local governments to the federal courts. Just as local governments have to consult the U.S. Supreme Court's rulings before they can close down a topless bar next to a high school, they will have to study the Supreme Court's rulings on gun restrictions whenever gun-control advocates show up with a list of demands.

It's just a matter of time before somebody gets shot and a city is sued for not having gun-control laws.

The better way to protect gun rights is to fight for state constitutional amendments in all fifty states to guarantee the right to keep and bear arms. The amendments may not succeed everywhere, but in the states where they do, gun rights will be safe from the constant threat of infringement by a 5-4 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court.



Copyright 2010

Editor's note: For a history of the Incorporation Doctrine complete with detailed source notes and a bibliography, read "How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing." It's published as an appendix to the novel, The 37th Amendment, and can be read online at http://www.ExtremeInk.com/appendix.htm.

You might also be interested in the 2006 America Wants To Know post, "The cat, the bag, and Justice Scalia."

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