The Obama administration’s determined effort to reduce America’s missile defense capabilities initially seemed to be just standard Leftist fare — of a piece with the Democratic base’s visceral hostility to the idea of protecting us against ballistic missile threats. A just-unveiled symbolic action suggests, however, that something even more nefarious is afoot.

The former would be bad enough, starting with Candidate Obama’s pledge to block “unproven missile defenses.” Once in office, he cut over a billion dollars from the Missile Defense Agency’s budget.  He cancelled the deployment of interceptors and radars in Eastern Europe designed to defend this country, as well as our allies over there.

Among other reprehensible actions, Team Obama terminated the nation’s only program capable of providing a near-term ability to intercept ballistic missiles early in their flight (i.e., the boost-phase).  This Airborne Laser Program nonetheless was successfully tested earlier this month — destroying not one but two missiles similar to those arrayed against us and our friends today and making the case that such systems should be operationalized and deployed as a matter of the utmost urgency.

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I lose things all the time.  Last month I lost my wallet.  Once a week I lose my car keys.  Every day I lose the TV remote.

Thankfully, I’ve never lost a computer.

The Department of Homeland Sercurity (DHS), on the other hand, cannot say the same.

New documents show that component agencies of DHS, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) combined to lose no less than 985 computers in fiscal year 2008.  Along with other component agencies in DHS, well over 1,000 computers were lost.

But the inventories of lost stolen and damaged equipment don’t stop with just computers.  They include radiation detectors, night vision scopes (hundreds of them), night vision goggles, lost vehicles, lost blackberries, computer servers, expensive radios and radio repeaters.

CBP maintains that the computer losses were within acceptable standards for asset management, saying the losses only represented about .5% of their total computer inventory.

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The Democrat Blair House Project is nothing more than political theater in a desperate attempt to legitimize a failed government-run health care agenda. The American people aren’t buying the Democrats’ sales pitch of this new-found effort to include Republicans. After years of shutting Republicans out of the legislative process, one photo-op will not erase the American people’s memory of Nancy Pelosi’s closed-door Congress.

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Boy, ACORN is good.  They’re so good the White House should give them a call and seek some political tips. Er…given the recently-unearthed video of the president yearning for ACORN’s endorsement, something tells me that’s not necessary.

The evolution of ACORN, summarized by Matthew Vadum, is not surprising but is impressive.  Even Al Capone wasn’t this successful at morphing his organization into a new beast.

But interestingly, that’s not exactly what’s happening.  ACORN is simply adding to and remodeling what it has already created.  The gang is splitting up to do the same work, likely with the same funders – radical foundations and individuals…oh, and the American taxpayers.

But rest assured, no lessons have been learned, nothing will really change.  The same people are involved. So no one expects there to be much difference.  New box, same crappy product.  The radical left is simply painting a little lipstick on the pig and hoping American will fall in love with it all over again.

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According to Pew, “Favorable views of labor unions have plummeted since 2007, amid growing public skepticism about unions’ purpose and power.”

(click here for more polls on union officials)

One hates to surmise, but it seems probable such a shift comes from such little things as crippling the Big 3, pushing card check on working Americans, cutting disgusting deals to exempt their members from a new tax on healthcare plans, pimping ACORN, and just being all-around-un-swell guys.

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If the goal of the President’s proposal was to drive doctors into hospital based practices or community health centers, or if it was to break the spirit of providers and bend them to the will of the government that holds the threat of criminal prosecution over their heads if they are found to be Medicare cheats, or if the goal was to dumb down the practice of medicine by ramping up the power of the HHS secretary and the evidence-based medicine posse, then the President’s proposal for health care reform was successful.

However, we as physicians are individuals. There are approximately 890,000 doctors currently practicing in the US. Those of us who want the autonomy to practice medicine the way we were trained, those of us who run a private practice who are entrepreneurs at heart, those who are tired of being pitted against our patients and other physicians (the specialist vs. primary care physician meme), and those who are just sick and tired are NOT going to take this. Those of us who can will retire or leave medicine all together. Those within the system will simply opt out.

The President’s summit on Thursday amounts to nothing more than six hours of theater. Not one physician in Congress has been invited to attend. The physicians for single payer have also not been invited. It is his chance to hear from the people on the front line, and it is obvious this bill is NOT about the health of our people. It is about raising revenue, controlling the medical industrial complex completely. How else can you explain the proposal for the government to a) take over control of the cost of insurance premiums; b) limit provider medical decisions based on cost, and c) control what is medically covered for the patient. Under the proposed health care reformed, the government will control how much an insurance company can charge, decide what is covered medically, and sanction the provider for deviating from the norm.

These are some of the proposal highlights that concerned me the most:

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Over the past couple of years, the medical marijuana industry in Los Angeles has exploded. Estimates vary, but there may be as many as 800 dispensaries currently open for business in the city of angels. An ordinance recently passed by the LA city council, however, is about to change all that.

The new ordinance will force hundreds of dispensaries to close and all but a few to relocate. The goal was to bring clarity to the medical marijuana industry, but the only thing that’s clear is that the transition process will be difficult.

Especially now that the DEA has begun raiding dispensaries again, despite the promises made by the Obama administration to respect state laws legalizing medical marijuana.

While federal, state and local governments struggle to make sense of medical marijuana laws, an increasing number of Californians support a completely different approach: marijuana legalization. Nothing more than a pipe dream? Maybe. But consider this: 56 percent of Californians currently support pot legalization, the same proportion of Californians who voted for the Compassionate Use Act, which legalized medical marijuana, back in 1996.

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The ACORN crime syndicate is not going away anytime soon, but it’s going to look different.

ACORN will probably run out of money and fold by year’s end but a dozen ACORN state chapters reincorporated to seem like new, independent organizations will spring up in the next week to carry on ACORN’s business, a leaked email from ACORN’s online director suggests.

“The truth is that it is hard for us to forsee [sic] any scenario where ACORN continues beyond the end of 2010 and some of us think it might not last that long,” writes Nathan Henderson-James, director of ACORN’s online campaigns, in an apparently authentic Feb. 22 email.

“Last one to leave turn out the lights and wipe the server,” he writes at the end of the message.

In the email Henderson-James explains the subterfuge ACORN will use to lead Americans to believe ACORN is breaking apart.

“It is definitely true that over the next week or so we should see a dozen or more organizations launched on the state level by staff who used to work for ACORN and leaders who developed their skills as ACORN members. These are not just simple name changes, but reimaginings of how best to organize low and moderate income constitiuencies [sic] without any of the legal problems and funding issues dogging ACORN, not to mention the brand damage.”

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Today, in 2008, Fidel Castro resigned as President of Cuba, after holding complete power for almost 50 years. Never in the history of the world has any man been so thankful for a U.S. trade embargo. Here’s hoping the U.S. trade embargo doesn’t extend to the afterlife, because Castro really needs to get what’s coming to him.

The Education Action Group Foundation will support Central Falls, Rhode Island school Superintendent Frances Gallo with a billboard dedicated to this public school patriot, smack dab in the middle of downtown Central Falls.

Gallo’s recent decision to push past teachers union obstruction and do what’s best for the district’s struggling high school students is a prime example of the bold actions needed to turn around the nation’s failing schools.

Gallo recommended firing all 74 Central Falls High School teachers after the local teachers union refused to sign off on long overdue reforms needed to save the chronically failing school, which has been on the state’s list of underperforming schools for seven years. Less than half of Central Falls High School’s students graduate and only seven percent are proficient in math, state data shows.

Gallo offered to pay teachers $30 an hour for some of the additional duties, and expected them to kick in a bit of their own time to improve instruction.

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Yesterday came the news that ACORN was ‘dissolving’ its national structure, allowing many of its local chapters to go ‘independent’. ACORN’s destruction of its brand had threatened the existence of every ACORN office in the country. Shedding the ACORN brand will give them a chance restart the flow of public money and leftist donors.

Make no mistake, however, that while their names may change, the personnel groomed by ACORN and the tactics they employ will remain the same. To paraphrase a famous verse, “A Rose by any other name…has just as many thorns.”

Below is an invite to New York ACORN’s first ‘re-branding shindig.’ This Thursday, long-time political allies of ACORN and its Working Families Party will host a high-dollar fundraiser for “New York Communities for Change,” the presumptive heir to ACORN NY.

ACORN Relaunch -

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I’m sure Ms. Monica Potts, is a delightful person and in polite company never wets on the carpet as some of us are want to do.   And history teaches when a lady speaks ill of me, I surely have earned it.

So I find myself  a bit out of sorts after pouring over her latest screed, at the American Prospect, because no matter how I turn this around in my little mind I reach the conclusion: Monica owes me (gasp) an apology.

Here are a few minor gaffes Monica makes:

• I called for 20% cuts in federal, state, and local employees salaries.  She misread and uses only federal numbers to impugn either my math skills or Google’s Calculator.

• I said we should cut public employee compensation by 20% and future increases should be tied to private wage growth.  Again, Monica appears to have misread.  I didn’t say each worker should receive 20% less, precisely because there is so much obvious inequity in the salary, pension, and overtime public employees receive.  She makes my point by explaining a government cashier earns sixteen thousand dollars more per year than a cashier in the private sector.  NJ’s governor just pointed to a 49 year old pensioner who is to receive $3.3 Milion on a $124,000 contribution.  Please know this Monica:  I don’t want to use a hatchet, I want to use a scalpel to remove 20% from public employee compensation. This doesn’t mean job reductions (that’s for another post), but if for instance a cashier quits in a huff, his eager replacement will still earn less.   And this doesn’t mean furloughs, workers will be expected to earn less and (horrors!) show up for work.

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Okay, I will admit that I am obsessed with this one particular truth:  The stimulus bill and all the stops that the federal government pulled to save the economy and create jobs didn’t not help the private sector employees. On the other hand, it did show support for its own employees.

Encouraged by Reason Magazine’s founder Manny Klausner, I made this chart this morning based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data that shows the change in employment in the private and the public sectors during the last two years.

Warning: the number of public employees is on the right hand-side of the chart and the private employees are on the left.

Warning 2: This chart is not claiming that public employment was ever higher than private employment.

However, it is showing without a doubt that during the last two year the number of public employees has increased from 22.3 million in January 2008 to 22.4 million in January 2010, after peaking at 22.6 million in July 2009.  Not that impressive you will say. Well, excuse me but it certainly beats being a private employee during that same period of time. The number of private jobs decreased from 115.5 million in January 2008 to 107 million. That’s a lose of 8.7 million jobs in the private sector while the public sector gained almost 100,000 jobs.

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Last week Big Government reported that a “meeting of former Clintonistas and senior Democrat political operatives” headed by James Carville took place “to coordinate a push-back to the burgeoning tea party movement.”

For those who recall former President Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it is hardly surprising that the Clintonistas who saved the Clintons in 1998, when the Monica Lewinsky scandal became a threat to the Clinton’s political survival, are now plotting to ostensibly save the Democrat party.

Reportedly as part of their ‘push/pull” strategy, 7-8 national figures active in the tea party movement will be identified, targeted and smeared.

The question is–will the tea party movement learn from the Clinton’s history of the politics of personal destruction?

First, I should declare my involvement. In late 1999, I was approached by Linda Tripp’s representatives to write her story. Tripp was targeted, vilified, and smeared during the events that led to President Bill Clinton’s impeachment. As a result, I saw how the Clinton machine worked to destroy their “political enemies.”

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The University of Basel’s Institute of Governance recently published a map showing the nations most linked to dirty money. What made the map interesting is that only one of the 28 nations listed was a so-called tax haven, thus exposing the left-wing lie that low-tax jurisdictions are somehow hotbeds of dirty money.

A more fundamental question is whether anti-money laundering laws are an effective way of fighting crime.  The evidence is not encouraging. The system costs billions of dollars each year. Banks are forced to set up expensive monitoring systems to snoop on their customers. They are then required to send reports to the government for all large or unusual transactions. Theoretically, these reports are supposed to alert law enforcement to patterns of criminal activity, but since banks are compelled to send millions of reports every year, it is impossible to sift through haystacks of data to find needles of criminal activity. This is why conservatives, such as a former Reagan Justice Department official John Yoder, think the laws do more harm than good. This six-minute video from the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains why the time has come for politicians to reconsider the current approach.

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In July 2005, the United States Justice Department began investigating Missouri for non-compliance under the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA).  Justice was not investigating for failure to register voters; rather the problem was too many voters.  About 1/3 of Missouri’s counties had registered voters that exceeded the number of eligible voters.  One county’s ratio was upwards of 150%.  Justice found that the Missouri Secretary of State (SoS) failed to conduct a general program that made reasonable efforts to clean the voter rolls, and filed a lawsuit.

We would presume that Project Vote conducted a study, found that a nefarious plan to dilute the vote of low-income voters was taking place, and filed an amicus brief in support of the government’s lawsuit.  We would be wrong.  Government suits do not generate attorney’s fees under NVRA, but more importantly, SoS Robin Carnahan (D) has close ties to the legions of progressive groups.  And the government did not stand a chance with Judge Nanette Laughrey (appointed during the governorship of Robin’s father, Mel Carnahan, and a former Carnahan aide-de-camp), who, despite her left-leaning tendencies, managed to deliver a summary judgment that would make any strict constructionist proud.  Judge Laughrey writes that Carnahan had no responsibility to actually do anything, other than “coordinate,” which is left up to Carnahan.

Despite the amusement of a liberal judge mimicking a Scalia or Thomas, the district court ruling went too far; even for a panel of judges on the 8th Circuit, composed entirely of W appointees.  There are definitely flaws in the NVRA.  Former Ohio SoS J. Kenneth Blackwell pointed them out rather deftly, and Project Vote has utilized these flaws to further a progressive agenda with ACORN.  The problem with district court ruling is that it clearly was meant to provide cover for Secretary Carnahan.  Even after the 8th Circuit found that SoS Carnahan was still responsible for conducting “reasonable efforts” to comply with the various NVRA provisions, Judge Laughrey white-washed the efforts of Carnahan, belittled the government’s minimal expectations regarding compliance under NVRA, and established a target for Project Vote and ACORN that would be easy prey in later suits.

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The President’s health care proposal this morning includes an FAQ section for various audiences – seniors, small business owners, the uninsured, etc. Here is one of the questions and answers for individuals who currently purchase insurance directly on the individual market (click for source):

I fall into this category myself, and it is a pretty important question for a couple of reasons. One, because there are an increasing number of individuals and families (18+ million) who buy health insurance coverage on the open market as opposed to receiving it through an employer. Secondly, because everyone, including the millions currently uninsured, would be legally required to have some form of insurance based on the mandate included in the President’s proposal and both the House and Senate bills

Obviously it would not help the cause of Democrats trying to pass this bill if the millions of people who buy insurance directly, and the millions more who are forced to do so by the insurance mandate, end up paying even higher premiums than they would under current law.

But here’s the thing – many of them will. At least according to the CBO. And the White House is deliberately and irresponsibly misleading the public by claiming otherwise.

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A group made up of some of the biggest names in contemporary conservatism got together a few days ago and crafted what they are calling the “Mount Vernon Statement,” a manifesto of sorts meant to give direction to today’s conservative movement. Put succinctly, it fails to fill the bill.

Taken as a whole this statement is fine as a short history lesson. It explains pretty clearly what the founders had wrought when their basic work was done with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. But as a statement of principles that might guide today’s discussion, I do not think the letter works.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that this effort is harmful. In fact, I think every young person should read it for its explication of our historically conservative American principles. The problem is that this thing doesn’t seem to speak directly to what we are facing today like a statement that perhaps aims to become boilerplate should.

Some of those involved with the statement said that the 1960 “Sharon Statement” served as their inspiration. The Sharon Statement, intended to give some ideological umph to Goldwater conservatives, is an effort that works much better as a rallying cry to action. Sadly, the Mount Vernon Statement falls a little flat in this respect.

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Today, in 1778, Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben arrived at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania to begin formal training of the Continental Army. The Minutemen and state Militias were important in the early days of the Revolution, but we didn’t win Independence until we had a professional, disciplined regular Army. Something to keep in mind this year.