national politics & policies

Senator Lamar Alexander compares the latest Obama administration scandal to Iran-Contra . . . he says it’s “even bigger.”

One hates to continually harp on the president and his scandals, but he and his big government keep producing them. So here we go again!

Obamacare was supposed to save money. It hasn’t. And it should be no shock to learn that the plan has already overshot its budget. Its implementation budget. And Congress balked at throwing more money at the “Affordable Care Act,” perhaps on the grounds that  we can’t afford it.

So Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius passed around the hat to the major players in the managed medical insurance industry — the folks previously demonized by Democrats as the greedy bloodsuckers who singlehandedly caused industry price inflation — to push the plan through on a “shoestring budget.”

Trouble is, it’s not obvious that this is legal. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch called Sebelius’s private fundraising effort “absurd,” and promised to inquire about conflicts of interest.

It’s easy to see why the Republicans in the House and Senate are suspicious. Such a move rubs up against the grain of what a republic is. But I’m sure Democrats are shrugging. It is just another business-government partnership, after all.

Well, it’s not “just another.” It might end up being the biggest ever. And you have to draw the line somewhere. Ancient Romans drew the line to protect their republic at the Rubicon — which Caesar crossed, ushering in empire.

It’s not just armies that cross important boundaries.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Most of the media is finally examining the lies that the Obama administration told ─ is still telling ─ regarding last September’s terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.

A matter worth investigating, as are wider questions regarding U.S. involvement in Libya.

But as the deceptions unravel, too few ponder the fate of one Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, ostensibly jailed for parole violations. The terms of his parole had prohibited him from using computers or the Internet without his parole officer’s approval. Obviously, Nakoula did use that technology to produce and distribute his anti-Islamic video, widely condemned for being cheesy, among other sins.

It was this video that Clinton and others blamed for inciting the attack in Benghazi.

Okay. The man violated parole. But many were eager to see Nakoula punished not because of that violation but because he exercised his freedom of speech in a way that offended people. We have also learned that soon after the attack, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Charles Woods, father of one of the slain, that the U.S. would make sure that “the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

At the least, Clinton was boneheaded to thus imply that the right to freedom of speech was or should be no safer in the U.S. than in Egypt. And considering all the circumstances here, it’s also fair to ask whether Nakoula would have ended up back in a jail cell sans Benghazi cover-up.

Could it possibly be that he is a political prisoner?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Here we go again. One of the less-debated provisions lurking in the Immigration Modernization Act would revive an old statist dream: a national ID card.

More precisely, it would create a federal database of info on everybody. An increasingly intrusive national identification regime would follow.

An article in Wired alerts us that the 800-page bill provides for an “innocuously-named ‘photo tool,’ a massive federal database . . . containing names, ages, Social Security numbers and photographs of everyone in the country with a driver’s license and other state-issued ID.” Employers would have to check the database before hiring.

That’s intrusive enough. But this database would also lay the basis for all manner of further surveillance and authorization protocols.

A push for a national ID card as a way to combat terrorism has been ongoing especially since 9/11. Worries about illegal immigration have been another major rationale for planning an expansive surveillance regime.

Whether from fear of immigrants, fear of terrorists, fear of drugs, fear of cash or fear of unmonitored actions of any kind (what do people do when they draw the blinds?), the huddled masses are invited to eagerly submit to ever-more-invasive oversight. And, hey, unless we have “something to hide,” why wouldn’t we have boundless faith in the motives and powers of Big Brother?

Who should object to the database? Civil libertarians, libertarians, conservatives, liberals, or, really, anybody who gets a creepy-crawly feeling at the prospect of the surveillance state’s monitoring and approving our every move.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

The business of business is to profit by helping others. The business of government is to make sure that businesses don’t profit by cheating others.

Unfortunately, sometimes it’s the governments that cheat.

Take the airline industry. Though substantially deregulated by the early 1980s, government has not treated it in an exactly laissez faire manner since. First there are the taxes, quite heavy. And recently the Department of Transportation decided that it must regulate the way in which airlines may advertise their prices . . . and the taxes. That is, the DOT insists that the “total price” — by which it means the price-plus-tax — must be shown prominently, with the tax portion “presented in significantly smaller type than the listing of the total price.”

Talk about regulatory micromanagement!

Now, this rule isn’t something Congress cooked up. It’s the result of a bureaucracy gone wild.

And the rule has one obvious effect: It shields government from consumer criticism, showing bureaucrats at their most self-serving. About one fifth of every airline ticket goes to the government, and folks in government don’t want you to know that.

This being the case, you might think — as George Will does — that the First Amendment would apply, especially since the First Amendment is now routinely held as protecting political speech more strictly than commercial speech. But, so far, courts have ruled for the taxing and regulating bureaucrats, not the competitive airlines. Or consumers.

Frequent fliers (I’m one) should hope the Supreme Court justices take up the case, which shows why economic and political freedom go best together.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

As the federal government lurches further out of control, wildly grasping to increase control over our lives, an old and controversial method of reining in our central government gains popularity: State nullification of federal law.

A recent Rasmussen survey asked whether “states have the right to block any federal laws they disagree with on legal grounds,” and 38 percent of likely voters surveyed said “Yes.”

Cutting to the quick of the Commerce Clause, a new Kansas law — Senate Bill 102, the Second Amendment Protection Act, signed by Governor Sam Brownback last month — states that firearms manufactured and owned in Kansas that do not cross state lines are not subject to federal law.

Of course, the Supreme Court thinks otherwise. In Wickard v. Filburn, the Court allowed the federal government to regulate darn near anything on the grounds that any conceivable act of consumption affects demand, and thus “commerce.” Goofy ruling? Yes. But by tradition it’s the Supreme Court justices who get the final word.

Yet even that has been denied by many constitutional theorists, including Thomas Jefferson and James Madison — “Mr. Constitution” himself — both of whom supported nullification, as recently explained by historian Tom Woods. No compact joined into by multiple parties may only be interpreted by one of the parties alone, unless specified to that effect. The Constitution doesn’t even mention judicial review, so the tradition of the Supreme Court’s final word is itself a matter of dispute.

Standing up for the status quo, Attorney General Eric Holder has written to Brownback against the new Kansas law, citing the Supremacy Clause. Problematic? Yes. But not easily dismissed.

Brownback has volleyed back.

At least we can expect the old issues of constitutional law to gain a new and lively hearing.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.