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World
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Young Turn on Obama
Mounting opposition to ObamaCare among young adults is creating a new crisis for the White House.
While the federal enrollment website HealthCare.gov appears to be
improving by the day, polls show the “young invincibles” key to making
the law work are becoming less likely to enroll.
Younger people were skeptical of the healthcare reform law even before
its troubled rollout, despite their support for President Obama.
But polling indicates the problems facing HealthCare.gov — a site the
administration initially touted as a hip, tech-friendly experience —
have reinforced their doubts about the need to have health insurance at
all.
Obama's "Become The Very Danger The Constitution Was Designed To Avoid"
REP. BOB GOODLATTE (R-VA): Professor Turley, the constitution, the
system of separated powers is not simply about stopping one branch of
government from usurping another. It's about protecting the liberty of
Americans from the dangers of concentrated government power. How does
the president's unilateral modification of act of Congress affect both
the balance of power between the political branches and the liberty
interests of the American people?
JONATHAN TURLEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The danger is quite severe.
The problem with what the president is doing is that he's not simply
posing a danger to the constitutional system. He's becoming the very
danger the Constitution was designed to avoid. That is the concentration
of power in every single branch.
Global-warming 'proof' is evaporating
The 2013 hurricane season just ended as one of the five quietest years
since 1960. But don’t expect anyone who pointed to last year’s
hurricanes as “proof” of the need to act against global warming to
apologize; the warmists don’t work that way.
Warmist claims of a severe increase in hurricane activity go back to
2005 and Hurricane Katrina. The cover of Al Gore’s 2009 book, “Our
Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” even features a satellite
image of the globe with four major hurricanes superimposed.
Yet the evidence to the contrary was there all along.
Former LAPD Chief William Bratton returns to NYPD commissioner post
New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio named William J. Bratton to
return as the city’s police commissioner Thursday, selecting the former
LAPD police chief to head a department praised for overseeing a drop in
crime but criticized for its use of racially charged stop-and-frisk
tactics.
Bratton had been expected to get the job, which has been held since 2002
by Raymond Kelly. De Blasio, who will take office in January at the end
of Michael Bloomberg’s third and final term, was a harsh critic of
Kelly and vowed to replace him if elected.
In a statement issued prior to a news conference announcing the
appointment Thursday, De Blasio called Bratton a "proven crime-fighter."
Tech Experts: HealthCare.gov 'Should' Cost Less Than $10 Million
The price for building the Obamacare website HealthCare.gov should have
topped out at less than $10 million, tech experts have claimed.
"I would say to build a site like this with the infrastructure, the
architecture around it, you are looking at maybe $5 million to $10
million at a very maximum rate," David Kennedy, President and CEO of
TrustedSec also known as the "White Hat Hacker" told Sean Hannity on Fox
News Wednesday.
"It isn't rocket science," Kennedy said. "Web application development is a proven science. Companies do it all the time."
White House Created Problems by Fast-Tracking Obamcare Rules
The White House fast-tracked many proposed Obamacare regulations, with
rules clearing a key bureaucratic hurdle three-to-five times faster than
normal, and failed to review several significant measures, according to
a new report by the American Action Forum.
"Just as the speed of the procurement process for Healthcare.gov has
produced unintended consequences and repeated failures, the speed of the
regulatory review has created problems that have necessitated changes
and delays of provisions of the law," said Sam Batkins, the report's
author.
NSA tracking cellphone locations worldwide
The
National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on
the whereabouts of cellphones around the world, according to top-secret
documents and interviews with U.S. intelligence officials, enabling the
agency to track the movements of individuals — and map their
relationships — in ways that would have been previously unimaginable.
The records
feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at
least hundreds of millions of devices, according to the officials and
the documents, which were provided by former NSA contractor Edward
Snowden. New projects created to analyze that data have provided the
intelligence community with what amounts to a mass surveillance tool.
House on Collision Course With White House Over Iran
As the House of
Representatives re-convened this week following its Thanksgiving break,
it is clear that members of both parties are headed for a major
showdown with the White House over the recent agreement between Iran
and the leading world powers.
The White House
left no doubt that the new agreement with the P5+1 group — the five
permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany —
that permits Iran to enrich uranium should be implemented without
further sanctions.
Obama Fantasizes About a Responsible China
China's
muscle-flexing is just one more reason why the United States cannot
afford to move ahead with massive military-budget cuts, former
U.S. ambassador John Bolton says.
"We need superior Pacific Ocean air and naval power to counter Chinese aggressiveness." he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
Beijing's Nov.
23 announcement declaring the area over the Japanese-held Senkaku
Islands in the East China Sea an air-defense identification zone is
part of a pattern of obdurate behavior that for too long American
policymakers have sought to downplay, Bolton alleges.
Democratic infighting erupts over 'we can have it all' fantasy on entitlements
The Democratic
rift over entitlements deepened this week as a top party contender for
governor in Pennsylvania came under fire from liberals after a think
tank of which she is co-chairwoman criticized economic-populism
messages of Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and New York
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.
Liberals
demanded that gubernatorial candidate Allyson Y. Schwartz cut her ties
with Third Way after two of its top officials wrote an op-ed
criticizing Ms. Warren and Mr. de Blasio by name, saying they are
pushing a “‘we can have it all’ fantasy.”
Obama's bad foreign policy: War on Terror has not made us freer or safer
There has been
predictable bluster about President Obama signing a deal with five
other nations to begin the process of lifting sanctions on Iran in
exchange for commitments by Iran not to develop nuclear weapons.
Neoconservatives have howled that it abandons U.S. ally Israel and
endangers the entire planet.
Regardless, it
is a harbinger of things to come. Economic reality is forcing the
United States to change its interventionist foreign policy. Normalizing
relations with Iran is just one part of that puzzle. Without a
realistic political solution to crushing entitlement liabilities, the
only place to make meaningful cuts is in military spending.
Obama's Red-Line Presidency
The next president will have to restore the tradition of durable U.S. foreign commitments.
What would you
rather be: an American lost inside an ObamaCare exchange or a Syrian
rebel? No matter who gets touched by the helping hand of Barack Obama,
the problem is not merely the broken promise but the chaos that follows
the break.
Start with
ObamaCare. When Mr. Obama addressed the nonperformance of
HealthCare.gov, here's one of the things he said: "What we're also
discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy."
Come again?
You're discovering this? It sounds as if ObamaCare was sprung over
beer-and-pretzels by a bunch of guys watching hoops at the White House.
The War of the Wages
Obama moves left on the economy to change the subject from ObamaCare.
For all of
their mutual public admiration, Presidents Clinton and Obama react
differently to political trouble. Bill moved to the middle, while
Barack always moves left. So it's no surprise that Mr. Obama is
responding to his ObamaCare rollout slump by doing his best Elizabeth
Warren imitation.
Mr. Obama
returned to his favorite theme of rising income inequality on
Wednesday, which he called "the defining challenge of our time." He
ought to know since few Presidents have done more to increase
inequality than he has. Median household income has fallen since the
economic recovery began, while the rich who own capital assets have
done very well thanks to the Federal Reserve's focus on reflating stock
and home prices. Mr. Obama is the Chief Economist of Nottingham posing
as Robin Hood.
Medal of
Honor
The
Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action
against an
enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving
in the
Armed Services of the United States.
GeneTrerally presented
to its recipient by the President of the
United States of America in the name of Congress.
The
first award of the Medal of Honor was made March 25, 1863 to
Private
JACOB PARROTT.The last award of the Medal of Honor was made
September 15, 2011
to Sergeant DAKOTA MEYER.
Since
then there have been: •
3458 recipients of the Medal of Honor.
•
Today there are 85 Living Recipients of the
Medal of Honor.
CSM Jon R. Caviani
UNITED STATES ARMY
CAVAIANI, JON R.
Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Vietnam
Training
Advisory Group, Republic of Vietnam. Place and date: Republic of
Vietnam, 4 and 5 June 1971. Entered service at: Fresno, Calif.
Born: 2
August 1943, Royston, England. Citation: S/Sergeant.
Cavaiani distinguished himself by conspicuous gallantry and
intrepidity
at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty in action
in the
Republic of Vietnam on 4 and 5 June 1971 while serving as a
platoon
leader to a security platoon providing security for an isolated
radio
relay site located within enemy-held territory. On the morning
of 4
June 1971, the entire camp came under an intense barrage of
enemy small
arms, automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenade and mortar
fire from
a superior size enemy force. S/Sergeant. Cavaiani acted with
complete
disregard for his personal safety as he repeatedly exposed
himself to
heavy enemy fire in order to move about the camp's perimeter
directing
the platoon's fire and rallying the platoon in a desperate fight
for
survival. S/Sergeant. Cavaiani also returned heavy suppressive
fire
upon the assaulting enemy force during this period with a
variety of
weapons. When the entire platoon was to be evacuated,
S/Sergeant.
Cavaiani unhesitatingly volunteered to remain on the ground and
direct
the helicopters into the landing zone. S/Sergeant. Cavaiani was
able to
direct the first 3 helicopters in evacuating a major portion of
the
platoon. Due to intense increase in enemy fire, S/Sergeant.
Cavaiani
was forced to remain at the camp overnight where he calmly
directed the
remaining platoon members in strengthening their defenses. On
the
morning of S June, a heavy ground fog restricted visibility. The
superior size enemy force launched a major ground attack in an
attempt
to completely annihilate the remaining small force. The enemy
force
advanced in 2 ranks, first firing a heavy volume of small arms
automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade fire while the
second
rank continuously threw a steady barrage of hand grenades at the
beleaguered force. S/Sergeant. Cavaiani returned a heavy barrage
of
small arms and hand grenade fire on the assaulting enemy force
but was
unable to slow them down. He ordered the remaining platoon
members to
attempt to escape while he provided them with cover fire. With 1
last
courageous exertion, S/Sergeant. Cavaiani recovered a machine
gun,
stood up, completely exposing himself to the heavy enemy fire
directed
at him, and began firing the machine gun in a sweeping motion
along the
2 ranks of advancing enemy soldiers. Through S/Sergeant.
Cavaiani's
valiant efforts with complete disregard for his safety, the
majority of
the remaining platoon members were able to escape. While
inflicting
severe losses on the advancing enemy force, S/Sergeant. Cavaiani
was
wounded numerous times. S/Sergeant. Cavaiani's conspicuous
gallantry,
extraordinary heroism and intrepidity at the risk of his life,
above
and beyond the call of duty, were in keeping with the highest
traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon
himself and the U.S. Army.
