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“All Animals Are Created Equal” Week at College Insurrection
on December 07, 2013
6 Comments
So who wants to sponsor an Octopus college scholarship? Yale to hold Non-Human Rights Conference U. Georgia Genetics Prof. Says Humans the Result of Chimpanzees Mating with Pigs And you thought I was joking when I said "Everyone Gets A Trophy": Most Common Grade at Harvard is “A” of...
“834 Errors” still dog Healthcare.gov
on December 07, 2013
15 Comments
One of the issues regarding the technical troubles with the healthcare.gov website that has received some attention in recent weeks, and even more so over the last few days, has been that of errors in 834 files.
These are the files transferred to insurance carriers that contain pertinent data on the enrollees. (For a better understanding of what the 834 form is, the Washington Post has this good backgrounder).
Some of the files have reportedly contained data that was incorrect – for instance, the names of children appearing as spouses – while others have contained duplicate data, or there was no file at all. Without an accurate 834 form for an enrollee, an insurance carrier essentially cannot complete their enrollment.
While the numbers regarding the issue have reportedly improved, reporters have recently tried to obtain more specific information about the problem.
From BenefitsPro:
Obama administration officials have been getting angry questions from reporters by refusing to even try to estimate how many enrollment forms are going out, or how many of them are right. HealthCare.gov and the enrollment sites for state-based public exchanges are supposed to send out “834 Initial Enrollment Notification” transaction notices when consumers enroll.
X marks the spot
on December 06, 2013
29 Comments
At which Democrats should start freaking out.
The polling just keeps getting worse and worse. A couple of months ago the generic congressional election polling was having Democrats and Establishment Republicans (yes, there is such a thing) ready to wrap the death of the Republican Party around the necks of Ted Cruz and Mike Lee.
Good times, good times, for Democrats.
It was a false prognosis, because Cruz and Lee were trying to stop the disaster known as Obamacare. The legacy will be Democrats going to the mat to protect and preserve Obamacare. If Democrats owned Obamacare before, as a result of the efforts of Cruz, Lee and others, Democrats swallowed Obamacare whole in September.
Now everything has changed because Obamacare and Democrats are one and the same.
Via Hot Air, this chart which caused Charlie Cook to declare Holy Sh-t! (my paraphrase), should make Democrats want to regurgitate their Obamacare feast:
While many Democrats are desperate for relief from Obamacare, those who are to tied to the law's passage, like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana Purchase fame, are choosing to double down:
The Democratic numbers from the generic-ballot test dropped from 45 percent to 37 percent, and Republicans moved up to 40 percent. This 10-point net shift from a Democratic advantage of 7 points to a GOP edge of 3 points in just over a month is breathtaking, perhaps an unprecedented swing in such a short period. Occurring around Election Day, such a shift would probably amount to the difference between Democrats picking up at least 10 House seats, possibly even the 17 needed for a majority, and instead losing a half-dozen or so seats.
While many Democrats are desperate for relief from Obamacare, those who are to tied to the law's passage, like Mary Landrieu of Louisiana Purchase fame, are choosing to double down:
Book Review: “Dumbing Down the Courts,” By Dr. John Lott, Jr.
on December 06, 2013
9 Comments
“Dumbing Down the Courts: How Politics Keeps the Smartest Judges Off the Bench” (2013) is the most recent of Dr. John Lott Jr.’s excellent books applying economics to better understand the societal dynamics around controversial issues. Gun owners will be most familiar with his past work on the defensive uses of force by lawfully armed citizens (“More Guns, Less Crime”).
In “Dumbing Down the Courts” Dr. Lott examines how political forces are increasingly driving the federal courts to be staffed by judges (and justices) who are less intellectually capable than their predecessors.
In short, his hypothesis — supported by data on more than 1,500 federal court nominees — is that the smarter, more respected (by their legal peers), and more academically talented a candidate for a federal court, the longer the confirmation process and the less likely confirmation will be successful.
Indeed, this reality has become so widely accepted on an anecdotal level that many of the most promising candidates for federal judgeships simply decline to accept even consideration for such an appointment. Dr. Lott uses rigorously analyzed data to move this discussion beyond mere anecdote.
Growing Stakes, Increased Left-Wing Radicalization
Being nominated and confirmed to a federal judicial appointment was not always the arduous process it is today, nor was it always geared towards rejection of the most talented candidates.LEGAL INSURRECTION QUICK TAKES
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More sad trombones for Obamacare from Millennials
on December 06, 2013
15 Comments
Obama is losing the youth at many levels, as we have reported this week: Obama approval cliff dives among poor Hispanics and Non-Whites Harvard Survey: Obama and Obamacare push Millennials support off cliff Now comes another survey from National Journal, Young Americans Expect Obamacare to Be Repealed: The...
Elizabeth Warren launches war on critical think tanks
on December 06, 2013
30 Comments
As you read the rest of this post, please keep in mind that Elizabeth Warren never has authorized release of her hiring files at Harvard Law School or other employers to see whether her phony Native American and Cherokee status was known at the time...
John Kerry: Getting to “No” with the Palestinians
on December 06, 2013
10 Comments
A few months ago, Secretary of State John Kerry allowed as to how he was worried about Israel's future if it did not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel's Prime Minister has played along sending his emissaries to negotiate with Palestinian partners who don't want to make a deal.
So this week, out of his deep seated concern for the Jewish State, the New York Times reported Wednesday that U.S., Stepping Up Role, Will Present West Bank Security Proposal to Israel:
The presentation is to be made to Mr. Netanyahu on Thursday by John R. Allen, the former American commander in Afghanistan and a retired Marine general who serves as an adviser to Secretary of State John Kerry on the Middle East peace talks. ... “It will include many details and specifics,” said a State Department official who asked not to be identified under diplomatic protocol established by the agency. “He will be presenting a piece of what will be a larger whole.” ... State Department officials described the security briefing as an “ongoing process” and not a finished product on which the United States was demanding a yes-or-no vote from the Israeli side.The Optimistic Conservative reacts skeptically to this last quote:
Crying Uncle
on December 06, 2013
23 Comments
I admit to not having followed the Obama illegal alien uncle saga very carefully.
He previously said he knew nothing about his then illegal alien uncle.
Now he says he knows something after the uncle gave up the goods at a recent immigration hearing.
The Boston Globe reports (video at bottom of post):
President Obama acknowledged on Thursday that he lived with his Kenyan uncle for a brief period in the 1980s while preparing to attend Harvard Law School, contradicting a statement more than a year ago that the White House had no record of the two ever meeting. Their relationship came into question on Tuesday at the deportation hearing of his uncle, Onyango Obama, in Boston immigration court. His uncle had lived in the United States illegally since the 1970s and revealed in testimony for the first time that his famous nephew had stayed at his Cambridge apartment for about three weeks. At the time, Onyango Obama was here illegally and fighting deportation.Roger Simon at PJ Media (via Instapundit) asks, What if It’s All True? (emphasis mine):
So 2008: Ain’t about the Cha-Ching Cha-Ching and Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
on December 05, 2013
24 Comments
The supporters of Obamacare are oblivious to their own self-parody.
This isn't 2008, kids.
It is about the Cha-Ching Cha-Ching and Ba-Bling Ba-Bling.
Yes, These Really Are the Winners of the Obamacare Video Contest
Back in August, a group called “Young Invincibles” teamed up with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to host an online video contest to promote Obamacare, which sounds about as terrible of an idea as the videos actually turned out. Actor Kal Penn announced the ‘Healthy Young America’ video contest winners in a Google hangout on Monday, naming three winners in the following categories: “You are Not invincible,” “Perform a song,” and “Make an animation.” Young Invincibles’ announcement touted a prize pool worth up to $30,000 for more than 100 prizes. According to the Washington Examiner, First Place took home $3,000, while the Second and Third Place winners received $2,500, and the Grand Prize winner earned $2,000. Without further ado, I present just some of the winning videos:
Authorities warn of further crackdown on protesters in Ukraine
on December 05, 2013
7 Comments
Authorities in Ukraine issued further warnings to protesters Thursday, coupled with sharp criticism from the prime minister, amidst continuing protests there that initially triggered a brutal crackdown and sparked broader anti-government sentiment.
From Reuters:
Ukrainian police on Thursday warned pro-Europe protesters they faced a "harsh" crackdown if they did not end their occupation of public offices in Kiev, while President Viktor Yanukovich's prime minister denounced them as "Nazis and criminals". The authorities issued the tough warnings as foreign ministers held a European security conference in a city seething with unrest over the Ukrainian government's U-turn away from Europe back towards Russia. [...] A court ordered the protesters on Thursday to quit the Kiev mayor's office, where they have set up an operational hub, and halt their four-day blockade of government buildings. In perhaps the strongest signal yet that the authorities are contemplating action to reclaim the streets, the head of the Kiev police, Valery Mazan, said: "We do not want to use force. But if the law is broken, we will act decisively, harshly. "We will not try to talk people round. We have the means and capability laid down by the law," he added.
Branco Cartoon – Young and the Restless
on December 05, 2013
4 Comments
Note: You may reprint this cartoon provided you link back to this source. To see more Legal Insurrection Branco cartoons, click here. Branco’s page is Cartoonist A.F.Branco ...
Obama approval cliff dives among poor Hispanics and Non-Whites
on December 05, 2013
34 Comments
Support holds steady among Conservative Republicans....
A Pinocchio should go to the participants in the Iran nuke deal
on December 05, 2013
16 Comments
The Washington Post's fact checker, Glenn Kessler asks, "Did the United Nations demand Iran suspend uranium enrichment as part of a final deal?"
At issue are statements made by Senators Robert Menendez and Bob Corker about Iran's right to enrich on the Sunday morning talks shows.
Kessler, for example, took exception to Corker's response here:
CBS NEWS’S JOHN DICKERSON: Senator Corker, is it a red line for you? You talked about the standards of any ultimate deal. Is enrichment of any kind by Iran, is that something everybody should stay focused on? That any deal that includes that is a non-starter for you, because, of course, the Iranians say that they expect to be able to keep enriching? SEN. BOB CORKER (R-Tenn.): Yes, so to me that’s a baseline that the U.N. Security Council has agreed to, I think, six times, certainly this administration negotiated that in 2010. So they negotiated that in 2010. So as long as they can enrich, it seems to me that we are violating the very standards that we set in place in the first place. – exchange on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Dec. 1, 2013Kessler didn't hand out any Pinnochios to the senators but still found fault with their responses:
With their comments, Menendez and Corker might have left viewers with the impression that the U.N. resolutions already require a suspension of enrichment in any final agreement. That’s not the case — though it can certainly be an ongoing demand. The administration, for its part, appears to have set that goal aside in an effort to keep the diplomacy moving. The lawmakers are certainly within their rights to call attention to this decision, but they should be more precise in their language about what the U.N. resolutions actually require. Given that they were speaking on live television and this is a complex issue, their comments, at this point, do not yet rise to the level of a Pinocchio.Perhaps the senators were a bit sloppy, but I think the question asked of them was misleading. The question shouldn't have been whether Iran would be allowed to enrich uranium as part of any final agreement, but whether Iran would prove that its nuclear program was strictly civilian. In introducing his analysis, Kessler wrote:
San Diego DA won’t file charges in Thanksgiving Day bomb hoax that shut down freeway
on December 05, 2013
7 Comments
It looks like the District Attorney’s office will not be filing any charges against the man who decided to play a Thanksgiving Day “joke” on his sister by telling her there was a bomb in her car, prompting the shutdown of a busy San Diego highway and stranding holiday drivers for hours.
From NBC San Diego:
The San Diego District Attorney’s office decided not to file charges Wednesday against a man who made a prank phone call to his sister saying there was a bomb in her car, resulting in a massive law enforcement response and the shutdown of Interstate 15 on Thanksgiving. Victor Diaz, 28, was taken into custody Thursday after pulling the bomb hoax on his younger sister, Deanna Diaz, 27. He spent the holiday weekend in jail awaiting punishment for the stunt. Originally, Victor faced felony charges for making a false bomb threat. He was supposed to be arraigned on Wednesday, but the case took another turn when the DA’s office ultimately chose not to file charges. The case will now be passed onto the San Diego City Attorney’s office for review. At this point, the prankster’s case can be reduced to misdemeanor charges for making a criminal threat. He may also still face hefty fines. Officials said Victor will likely be released from jail Wednesday night, and will receive a letter in the mail notifying him of the next steps in his case.Victor Diaz had called his sister Deanna from a number that she did not recognize (and apparently in a disguised voice), and told her there was a bomb in her car. His sister then pulled over and called 911, triggering a law enforcement response that included multiple agencies and bomb sniffing dogs, and shut down the highway and snarled traffic for several hours on Thanksgiving Day. That call was followed by another one, threatening to follow her home.
Expansion of Medicaid and the inevitable downgrading of doctors
on December 05, 2013
17 Comments
Perhaps the most important Obamacare lie among many will turn out to be the one that says that the Obamacare Medicaid expansion will lead to quality health care for the people newly covered by it.
Anyone who was even remotely familiar with the way Medicaid already worked was quite aware of this at the time Obamacare was passed. Medicaid recipients were already having great difficulty getting a doctor to see them due to the low reimbursement rates.
The Obamacare Medicaid expansion provides people with the trappings of care but is unlikely to be able to deliver all that much of it---unless, of course, more doctors come under the thumb of government and are forced to accept Medicaid levels of reimbursement.
Oh well, doctors. They earn too much money anyway, don't they?
Not in the Soviet Union they didn't. Not even in post-Soviet Russia. Here's why [emphasis mine]:
Soviet doctors never had anything like the status and money of Western doctors. The medicine they practice was considered to be below the levels of the West, the system always suffered from shortages, and the social status of a provincial general practitioner was akin to a schoolteacher's, respectable, but modest... But under Communism, doctors at least lived no worse than anybody else -- and maybe a bit better. That has changed. Caught between an impoverished government that cannot afford universal medical care and a deep-rooted Soviet scorn for medicine-for-profit, many of Russia's doctors, especially here in the provinces, seem worn thin, out of canteen water but still marching ahead. ''When everything else took the capitalist road of development, and medicine was left on the socialist road, we got an imbalance that is killing medicine,'' said Dr. Aleksei Golland, one of a handful of private doctors in Kostroma.
Maybe it’s time to reconsider the tax-exempt status of academic boycotters
on December 05, 2013
12 Comments
I don't use the word "evil" very often here, but it certainly would be justified as to the Boycott Divestment Sanction (BDS) movement against Israel and BDS supporters in academia.
See the BDS Tag for my prior writings on the BDS movement for background.
Now that the National Council of the American Studies Association has endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, the ASA has joined the Jihad against Israel.
The ASA National Council's justifications are flimsy and historically incorrect and biased.
They cite the separation "wall" (actually mostly a fence, only a wall in certain places) as a justification without noting that the "wall" was build only after a year of unrelenting Palestinian suicide bombings at cafes, reception halls, buses, and even at Hebrew University. Several hundred Israelis civilians died in these suicide bombings. The "wall" put an end to that.
So too did checkpoints, where even to this day sophisticated weapons for use against Israel are stopped.
