States’ AGs Split on Constitutional Right to Gay Marriage

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When the Supreme Court hears arguments this week on same-sex marriage, it will confront an issue that has divided the public across the country and exposed fissures among the states.

One divided group could weigh heavily on the justices as they consider what could be a historic, once-in-a-generation constitutional decision: the briefs of states’ attorneys general.

More than half the states’ top lawyers have weighed in on the same-sex marriage issue before the court, underscoring the degree to which state officials and those they represent see their interests at work in the case. Depending how the justices rule, their decision could upend established laws in nearly every state.

As lawsuits over same-sex marriage have wound through the courts, the tangled web of state laws dealing with domestic partnerships, civil unions and same-sex marriage has become mired in the broader debate.

States’ rights and federalism could factor strongly in any decision the justices hand down as they consider two key questions: First, whether California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage is constitutional. And second, whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act barring the federal government from recognizing legal same-sex unions is either unconstitutionally discriminatory or an infringement on states’ right to define marriage as they see fit.

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Gun Store Rescinds Mark Kelly’s Rifle Purchase, Questions His ‘Intent’

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A Tucson gun store owner has decided to rescind the sale of a military-style rifle to Mark Kelly, the husband of former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, after Kelly said he had intended the purchase to make a political point about how easy it is to obtain the kind of firearms he’s lobbying Congress to ban.

Kelly’s March 5 purchase of an AR-15-style rifle and a 45.-caliber handgun at Diamondback Police Supply sparked a frenzy of reaction from both sides of the debate after he posted to Facebook a photo of himself shopping.

A background check took only a matter of minutes to complete, Kelly said in the Facebook post, adding that it’s scary to think people can buy similar guns without background checks at gun shows or on the Internet.

But Kelly couldn’t immediately take possession of the rifle because the shop had bought it from a customer. As a result, the store is required by a Tucson ordinance to hold the gun for 20 days to give the city enough time to make sure the weapon wasn’t used in a crime.

Store owner Doug MacKinlay said Monday in a Facebook post of his own that he “determined that was in my company’s best interest to terminate this transaction prior to his returning to my store.”

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Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Is ‘Rat’s Nest Of Unacceptable And Unprofessional Actions’

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Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) on Monday called for an outside independent panel to investigate the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Wolf, in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, said a recent inspector general report raised numerous troubling instances of internal mismanagement that he said indicate the division “has become a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions.”

“One cannot read the report without concluding that the division has suffered systemic mismanagement,” said Wolf in his letter sent Monday. “It has become a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement.”

The DOJ’s inspector general found numerous examples of harassment in the department’s voting rights division, but determined it did not prioritize cases in a partisan manner under President Obama or former President George W. Bush.

The lengthy report found that the often divisive nature of the voting rights section’s work — including reviews of redistricting cases, voter ID laws and voter registration issues — resulted in instances of harassment within DOJ. Wolf acknowledged that the division’s problems were not isolated to Holder’s tenure as the department’s head, but said it was up to him to solve them.

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Mortality Studies Suggest Obamacare’s Death Panels May Be Moving Forward

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Researchers are busy creating computer models and testing hypotheses to see if they can predict mortality accurately–as a way, I suspect, of justifying health care rationing.

My concern was heightened by a study just published as a letter in the March 6 Journal of the American Medical Association, in which the authors claim that they were able to predict likely mortality 10-years out. From “Predicting 10-Year Mortality for Older Adults”:

Extending the index from 4 to 10 years did not diminish the model discrimination (validation cohort,C statistics 0.817 vs 0.834; P= .35), suggesting that the risk factors important for 4-year mortality prediction are also important for 10-year mortality prediction. The model compares favorably with other mortality indexes that predict mortality beyond 7 years…Patients identified by this index as having a high risk of 10-year mortality may be more likely to be harmed by preventive interventions with long lag times to benefit, whereas patients identified as having a low risk of 10-year mortality may be good candidates for such interventions.

Thus, (say) if a colonoscopy is identified as not having a positive cost benefit for seven or more years (as the article indicates), such screening for those whom the computers predict are likely to die within ten years might not be covered.

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Rush Limbaugh: Amnesty A “Death Sentence” For GOP

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On his March 19th show Rush Limbaugh declared that amnesty for illegal aliens would be “a death sentence for the Republicans.”

That’s because amnesty includes the ability to legally vote, Limbaugh reasoned. Citing poll data, Limbaugh said that 70 percent of Hispanics “say that they believe that government should be the primary source of prosperity.” Therefore, Rush says, “Let’s say you have ten million illegals, seven million of them are automatically gonna vote Democrat. Republican Party’s finished.”

“It’s a mathematics conclusion. It’s not any more complicated than that. And there’s nothing that the Republicans can do,” Rush continued.

Rush went on to point out a blatant contradiction in the arguments of those in the Republican Party who push for full amnesty:

“If you listen to the Republican proponents for immigration reform, amnesty, what have you, whatever you’re gonna call it, they always say that Hispanics are Republicans-in-waiting. That these are big family value, churchgoing, largely Catholic, I mean, they are Republicans-in-waiting, okay? Accept that.

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Sequester Knocks the Navy’s Blue Angels Out of the Air

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Photo Credit: NY Times

A screaming comes across the sky. Again and again, all day long. Here at the 36th annual TiCo Warbird Airshow, fighter jets and vintage planes roar and rumble by as viewers ooh, aah, and then walk over to the line of food stands to buy funnel cakes and gyros, corn dogs and root beer floats.

The undisputed star, of course, is the Air Force Thunderbirds, whose six-plane precision flying team crisscrosses a perfect sky in ever-changing formations and gives an undiluted thrill to the crowd — at least those who brought earplugs.

But this is likely to be the last appearance by the Thunderbirds until the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30, if not longer. A performance this weekend by the Navy and Marine Corps’ Blue Angels near Key West, Fla., will also be their last for some time. The Army’s parachute demonstration team, the Golden Knights, is also suspending performances.

The failure of Congress to avoid the automatic spending cuts under what is known as sequestration is being felt in many ways, including the cancellation of White House tours and the loss of some 70,000 slots in Head Start early education programs. Along with less visible cuts, the Defense Department has suspended operation of the demonstration teams starting April 1.

(The Navy is hedging its bets, having simply announced its intent to cancel performances in April while waiting to see if financing problems are resolved, said Cmdr. Kevin Stephens, a Navy spokesman. “We want these cuts to be implemented at the last possible moment so they can be reversed where possible,” he said.)

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DC Continues Its Explosive Growth

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Photo Credit: 401(K) 2013

Adjusted for inflation, federal spending has gone up from an average of $882 billion every year in the 1980s to $1.48 trillion a year in the ’90s to $2.44 trillion a year in the first decade of the 21st century. It’s estimated that the government will have spent as much in the first four years of the new decade as it did in all of the 1990s.

Two crises — the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the so-called “great recession” — further propelled the growth of government in certain areas but without the commensurate cuts in other areas that earlier generations imposed in times of crisis.

“In the past when there were various crisis like World War II or the Korean War, non-defense spending was dramatically cut by 20 to 30 percent,” Schatz said. “That didn’t happen after 9/11, and it certainly didn’t happen after the financial crisis.”

Nothing typifies the expansion of government like the growing wealth of the Washington, D.C., area. The region has few natural resources and little manufacturing base to produce wealth, yet seven of the nation’s 10 richest counties surround Washington. The average government worker’s compensation now stands at over $126,000 a year. And the fact that Washington’s traffic congestion now ranks as the nation’s worst stands as more evidence of the region’s growth.

As the rest of the country suffered through the recession with layoffs and foreclosures, Washington’s work force and its home prices remained mostly stable.

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To Hell with the Sequester: Obama Designates Five New National Monuments

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President Obama defied congressional opposition and designated five new national monuments Monday, using his executive authority to put historic sites and wild landscapes in a half-dozen states off limits to development..

The designations affect three areas managed by the National Park Service, including one honoring abolitionist Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad in Maryland and a collection of sites commemorating Delaware as the nation’s first state. Obama also used his power under the 1906 Antiquities Act to protect two swaths of land under the Bureau of Land Management’s control: Washington’s San Juan Islands and New Mexico’s Rio Grande del Norte.

“These sites honor the pioneering heroes, spectacular landscapes and rich history that have shaped our extraordinary country,” the president said. “By designating these national monuments today, we will ensure they will continue to inspire and be enjoyed by generations of Americans to come.”

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), who has opposed the creation of new wilderness areas and national parks, questioned why the president would extend public lands protection at a time when the federal budget is under pressure.

“The Obama Administration not only sees the sequester as an opportunity to make automatic spending reductions as painful as possible on the American people,” Hastings said in a statement, “it’s also a good time for the President to dictate under a century-old law that the government spend money it doesn’t have on property it doesn’t even own.”

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Report Puts Obamacare’s Cost At $30.8B, 114 Million Paperwork Hours

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Obamacare has so far cost $30.8 billion and 111.4 million hours to complete paperwork to individuals, healthcare institutions, and small businesses, according to a new report.

The American Action Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group that has long opposed the health law, said 55,742 employees — working 2,000 hours per year — would be needed to process all the red tape associated with Obamacare.

The report cites several examples of excessive costs from each category. In most cases, neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Congressional Budget Office has provided cost estimates, the organization said.

In the healthcare market, for instance, the Obamacare rule on “preexisting condition exclusions” is costing institutions $4.9 million and 38,000 paperwork hours, the group said.

Regarding premiums, the organization surveyed healthcare costs in five cities — Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, Phoenix, and Milwaukee. “The results are sobering: young and healthier individuals, including small employers, can expect a 169 percent premium increase, averaged across the five cities,” the report concluded. “Consumers in Milwaukee could experience the greatest sticker shock, with a 190 percent increase in 2014.”

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Feds Prepping To End Colorado’s Marijuana Party?

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The pot industry in Colorado is undergoing a massive makeover as it prepares to begin selling marijuana for recreational use legally under state law. Businesses are ramping up production, and trade associations are cleaning up their image, anticipating what could be a billion-dollar industry.

But the entrepreneurs who are hoping to cash in on the “green rush” starting next year are struggling with the unique challenges of conducting a business that the federal government considers a crime.

The state’s pot producers and retailers are having trouble securing business financing because banks won’t give them loans — and most of the time, not even an account.

State lawmakers are about to shake up the marketplace in unpredictable ways with regulations covering everything from the shape of containers to the labeling required for pot-laced brownies and other “infused products.”

And business owners say they’re anxious about the intentions of the federal government, which could seize millions of dollars they have invested or even send them to prison. At a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that he would soon announce a response to the initiatives in Colorado and Washington last year legalizing pot for recreational use. The federal government, which deems marijuana a controlled substance, could upend the plans of Colorado entrepreneurs at any moment.

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