June 2012 – Page 2

Meet the Seventeen… Erm. “Not-Traitors”… to Eric Holder.

“Treason doth never prosper*…?“

And what a fascinating rogues’ gallery they are, too. Via @GeorgiaTipsheet, meet the seventeen Democrats who voted to hold Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for his ongoing coverup of the Fast & Furious gunrunning schedule:

Candidate	District	Opponent
Mike Ross	AR-04	Tom Cotton
John Barrow	GA-12	TBD
Leonard Boswell	IA-03	Tom Latham
Joe Donnelly	IN-SEN	Richard Mourdock
Ben Chandler	KY-06	Andy Barr
Tim Walz	MN-01	TBD
Collin Peterson	MN-07	TBD
Mike McIntryre	NC-07	David Rouzer
Larry Kissell	NC-08	TBD
BIll Owens	NY-21	Matt Doheny
Kathy Hochul	NY-27	Chris Collins
Dan Boren	Retiring	TBD
Mark Critz	PA-12	Keith Rothus
Jason Altmire	Retiring	–
Jim Matheson	UT-04	Mia Love
Ron Kind	WI-03	TBD
Nick Rahall	WV-03	Rick Snuffer

Continue reading Meet the Seventeen… Erm. “Not-Traitors”… to Eric Holder.

They never learn. It’s beautiful.

Quick check here, folks: I do make it clear that I consider hate mail to be positive feedback, yes? Or, in this particular case, passive-aggressive tweets:

Continue reading They never learn. It’s beautiful.

RNC: People v. Obamacare. [UPDATED]

Commendably fast of the RNC:

Also, Mitt Romney just finished his press conference. He understands the basics: this is a 500 billion dollar tax hike* on the American people, it will not stand, and so if elected President Mitt Romney will KILL IT WITH FIRE on day one. And that’s pretty much how it has to go. If you want Obama’s health tax gone, well, you won’t get that scenario from the Democratic party. They’re just too invested in Obamacare to stand up to the President.

[UPDATE: Here’s the video of Romney’s presser. Text after the fold.]

Continue reading RNC: People v. Obamacare. [UPDATED]

#rsrh The Health Tax, Reconciliation, and the Nightmare Scenario.

Well, that was exciting, no?

Short version, from what I can tell: the court decided that Obamacare’s individual mandate is not permitted under the Commerce Clause, but is permitted in terms of being a tax. Which means three things:

The President is a poor Constitutional Scholar, given that he claimed that the health tax was permitted under the Commerce Clause;
The President is a liar, as he promised not to raise taxes on the middle class.
Vote Republican in November. As a tax, we can get rid of this monstrosity with a simple majority vote in the Senate (HI, RECONCILIATION!).

That’s it.

#rsrh Time for the pre-game preparations for the Obamacare decision!

Goes like this:

Watch this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHp7sMqPL0g&feature=related

Take a deep breath.
Relax.
If you can’t relax, take another deep breath.

That’s it, folks.

#rsrh Government getting in the way of its own neo-Keynesian policies?

Via Instapundit, Walter Russell Mead looks at a New York bridge project, and… and I don’t really need to give you the background, do I? It’s a bridge, it should have been built by now, and it’s not being built for precisely the reasons that you’ve already guessed:

Many environmentalists oppose the plan due to the environmental damage from the massive dredging operation that is necessary to build a new bridge. Other environmentalists support the bridge, but claim that a wider bridge without room for public transit would increase sprawl and lead to a higher carbon output. Local politicians and planning associations, meanwhile, have added their own lists of concerns to the pile.

These kinds of complaints are unfortunately all too typical of construction projects today. There are so many controversies, so many lawsuits, and so many competing interests that negotiations take an enormous amount of time and money. The time between planning a project and actually carrying it out stretches into decades. To those who bemoan the lack of “shovel-ready” infrastructure projects in America: this is why.

Continue reading #rsrh Government getting in the way of its own neo-Keynesian policies?

Tech Level 9 Watch: Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you… the ELECTROLASER.

Uses a low-powered laser beam to ionize a path for heavy electrical charges – the article rather enthusiastically calls them ‘lightning bolts’ – that travel along the beam until the charges find something to ground themselves on, with fairly predictable (and hopefully spectacular) results. Admittedly, this version does not particularly sound like it is designed to be an ultra-tech stun gun (which is how the GURPS role-playing game* envisioned the technology being used), but that’s a mere detail.

A very pyrotechnic detail.

Via @The RickWilson.

*Source of the “Tech Level” thing. For those following at home: Tech Level is short for Technology Level, and it represents the general… level of technology available to player-characters. TL0 is Primitive Ancestors. TL3 is Middle Ages. TL6 is pre-WWII. We’re in TL8 right now. TL9 is the next step of human technological development.

Month: June 2012