Mike LaChance has been covering higher education and politics for Legal Insurrection since 2012. He has also written for American Lookout, Townhall, and Twitchy.
Since 2008 he has contributed work to the Daily Caller, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, the Center for Security Policy, the Washington Free Beacon, and Ricochet.
Mike is a Generation X, New England lifer who describes his political views as conservative and libertarian.
You can find him on Twitter @MikeLaChance33
"There’s nobody to back us up if we strip our military and neuter it as we do now."...
Obama: It’s Lonely Doing All The Work “You know it is lonely, me just doing stuff. I’d love it if the Republicans did stuff too,” he said during his speech in Austin, Texas. “Sometimes I feel like saying to these guys: ‘I’m the guy doing my job. You must be the other guy’,” Obama remarked, quoting Mark Wahlberg’s character in “a great movie called ‘The Departed.’They say James Brown was the hardest working man in show business. I'm not so sure. Obama loves to claim that he'll listen to people's ideas and work together. What he always fails to mention is that Republicans offer bills and ideas all the time. He just doesn't like them. Has Obama really given up on his job as some have suggested or is he just trolling his critics at this point?
Your weekly report from the world of higher education....
Presidential Power and the Rise of American Monarchy: Q&A with Author Frank Buckley "America is dropping like a stone in rankings of freedom. As power accumulates in one person, expect that to continue," says Frank Buckley, George Mason University law professor and author of the new book, The Once and Future King: The Rise of Crown Government in America. Buckley sat down with Reason TV's Tracy Oppenheimer to discuss how the U.S. presidency has evolved into what he calls "something like an elective monarch." He says that this is not what the framers of the Constitution had intended, nor did they conceive of the modern version of the separation of powers. "A parliamentary regime was more or less what the framers wanted...as far as the separation of powers is concerned," says Buckley "instead of a device to constrain a president, it's one which immunizes him from criticism by Congress."Here's the video: With all that in mind, John Daniel Davidson of The Federalist has a recommendation for you and your family this holiday weekend.
Just as Hillary Clinton supporters were unable to name a single accomplishment of the former Secretary of State, Wendy Davis’ supporters are in the same boat. A new video by Texans for Greg Abbott features an interviewer asking supporters of Davis at the 2014 Texas Democratic Convention what her greatest legislative achievements were.Here's the video: Liberals are already preparing themselves for Wendy Davis to lose.
The Supreme Court reins in government bulliesTwo 5 to 4 decisions this week, on the final decision day of the Supreme Court’s term, dealt with issues that illustrate the legal consequences of political tactics by today’s progressives. One case demonstrated how progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, manufactures social strife and can do so in ways politically useful to progressives. The other case arose from government coercion used to conscript unwilling citizens into funding the progressives’ party.
Under the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), any government action that substantially burdens religious practices will be subject to strict judicial scrutiny to determine if it, rather than some less intrusive measure, is necessary to achieve a compelling government interest. The Affordable Care Act, as supplemented by regulations, requires for-profit employers to provide health-care coverage that includes all 20 Food and Drug Administration-approved birth control methods.
These include four that prevent a fertilized egg from being implanted in the uterus. Some persons consider this tantamount to abortion and oppose these abortifacients for religious reasons. Why did Congress, having enacted RFRA, write this clearly incompatible birth control mandate? Congress didn’t.
Read the entire column here.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is scrambling to find a way to work around the Hobby Lobby ruling.
Holiday Document Dump: 1,300 Pages Of Obamacare Regs On July 4th Eve The Department of Health and Human Services released nearly 1,300 pages of new regulations related to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) at 4:15 Thursday, just as the nation was beginning their Independence Day holiday weekend. The regulations deal with payment rates to doctors and hospitals. How doctors get paid by HHS through the new, overreaching Obamacare guidelines has been an item of concern for the American Medical Association, a key supporter of the health care law.Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner also noted the timing:
Let's rename Washington, DC "Obamadelphia."...
The universities are still out the money, and many students still are dead broke....
Another dispatch from the wacky world of higher education....
Gazette opinion: Obama earned the low ratings Sometimes, you have to admit you're wrong. And, we were wrong. We said that things couldn't get much worse after the sub par presidency of George W. Bush. But, President Barack Obama's administration has us yearning for the good ol' days when we were at least winning battles in Iraq. The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal polls show that Americans are giving Obama lower marks than in 2006 when Iraq was going poorly for Bush and a tepid response to Hurricane Katrina sunk Bush's ratings. It's not that popularity polling should be the final or even best measure of a president. There is that old saw that points out there's a difference between doing what is right and what is popular. For us, though, it's the number of bungled or blown policies in the Obama administration which lead us to believe Obama has earned every bit of an abysmal approval rating.John Nolte of Breitbart summarizes the rest of the piece:
"She knew under the Federal Records Act that she had an obligation for these documents to be preserved."...
President Barack Obama’s June 27 effort to boost the flagging morale of his supporters quickly devolved into a demoralizing pity party. Republicans “don’t do anything except block me and call me names,” he told supporters, only a few days after it was revealed that his economy shrank 2.9 percent in the first three months of 2014. “If we make some basic changes, we can create more jobs and lift more incomes and strengthen the middle class… I know it drives you nuts that Washington isn’t doing it,” he said. “It drives me nuts.”The president also went back to dismissing the many scandals engulfing his presidency as phony. Susan Jones of CNS News:
President Obama warned people in Minnesota Friday not to believe what they hear on television: "They're fabricated issues, they're phony scandals that are generated. It's all geared towards the next election or ginning up a base. It's not on the level," the president insisted.Here's the video: CNS News provided the full transcript of Obama's remarks:
And hits Walker on jobs despite low unemployment in the state....
"We know those emails are out there, we know they can be found."...
It was another crazy week of news and politics in higher education....
Phoenix VA officials knew of false data for 2 years Department of Veterans Affairs administrators knew two years ago that employees throughout the Southwest were manipulating data on doctor appointments and failed to stop the practice despite a national directive, according to records obtained by The Arizona Republic through a Freedom of Information Act request. A 2012 audit by the VA's Southwest Health Care Network found that facilities in Arizona, New Mexico and western Texas chronically violated department policy and created inaccurate data on patient wait times via a host of tactics. The practice allowed VA employees to reap bonus pay that was based in part on inaccurate data showing goals had been met to reduce delays in patient care, according to the VA Office of Inspector General. At the Phoenix medical center alone, reward checks totaled $10 million over the past three years.Clearly, there are problems in the VA system which need to be addressed but is more spending the best solution? Congress seems to think so. Chris Edwards writes at the CATO Institute:
Host Megyn Kelly began by discussing the IRS investigation into the lost emails of ex-IRS official Lois Lerner. Initially, Kelly stated, Democrats and Republicans were both equally outraged. But as time has gone by, Democrats have lost their outrage, reinforced by President Obama, who insists not one smidgen of corruption is involved. Kelly said it was like IRS employees were saying, "Whoops! We're sorry, we lost basically all of the evidence you need to prove your case against me."Shapiro explained the role the media plays in the parade of Obama scandals:
