President Obama’s health care plan requires that no one can be denied insurance coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Yet, the insured may be denied procedures for a variety of reasons determined by a government board. So, one may be excluded from “coverage” based on post-existing conditions?

Consequently, in order to determine the efficacy of the president’s universal coverage, one cannot compare the present lack of universal coverage with his plan’s proposal. Rather, one must compare the efficacy and accessibility of treatment and procedures in the present with the efficacy of accessibility of treatment and procedures under “universal coverage.” In other words, the scope of who is covered by insurance–whether it includes everyone, most, or some–must be measured by who gets what at the end, not whether someone is “insured” at the beginning.

I just got back from my sister’s where she had the long-form of the census sitting on her countertop. It included, I think, well-over twenty pages. The questions covered everything from who lived in her house to examinations on income, education, etc. So, I broke out my constitution and read the Census clause:

“[An] Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct.”

It seems to me that the only thing the constitution expressly authorizes Congress to legislate on is an “enumeration” that is a head count of people. No questions about income. Or education. Or pets in the house. Nothing. Just “how many people live at this address” and whatever information is reasonably necessary to prevent double counting (like the names of those people, sex and DOB). When I asked my sister what she thought of this she said, “well, how would the departments of commerce, labor, health and human services and all those other places be able to do their job without all this information?” Exactly.

Here’s a right of privacy I can get behind: the government can’t find out anything more about me in its census precisely because it doesn’t have the power to do so. Nothing in that clause gives it the power. The “in such a manner as they shall by law” refers to Congress deciding how and in what manner to undertake the “enumeration” and an “enumeration” most plainly and simply (and narrowly construed) means “1, 2, 3….350 million…”. That’s it. Why the left (from a Civil Liberties perspective) and the right (from a limited government/starve the leviathan goal) don’t both get behind this, I don’t understand…

…oh wait, yes I do: It’s all about the Benjamin’s Baby. Money for Congress to dole out and the Executive branch to play with…

He writes at NRO’s the Corner:

When we do know for a fact that Mutallab tried to blow up a plane, we get a presidential “allegedly” (“a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire”), and yet when we don’t know all the facts, as in the Professor Gates mess, we get instantaneous certainty (“the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”)

The perils of political correctness are especially pernicious when the emperor has no clues.

I’m sure…I know there have been “worse” political decades than the 2000s (the 1870s with Grant come to mind…although reconstruction did end…the 1930s were pretty politically monotonous as well…the 1970s…Nixon, Ford, Carter…). But at least it’s fun to remember the soundbites from the 2000s:

There is nothing more distasteful, I find, than a sobriety checkpoint. The police have zero probable cause for creating a long-line on the road and detaining me for an hour or more just to ask if I have been drinking. The argument is basically this. You are driving. It is late. People like to drink late at night. Those who like to drink late at night sometimes also like to drive after they drink. Ergo, it is possible that you because you are out late at night and are driving,  you may be drinking and driving. The logic is faulty on a number of levels, not the least of which that drinking and driving are of course not legally wrong, but only drinking too much according to the standard set by the law (and even then, one might be legally drunk but perfectly capable of driving a car neither recklessly nor negligently). But say you are just out. What gives the police the right to stop you to ask if you’ve been drinking and driving? Under normal circumstances, the police need some sort of suspicious behavior or infraction (even if your taillight is out, that is enough). But here it is only because you belong to a potential class of people. Thus, based on a theory that everyone out that night is potentially a member of that class, you can be stopped. BUT FOR my driving, I wouldn’t be out that night. Is that really enough?

Well, thanks to Google Scholar, the following case is free and very readily accessible online: Michigan v. Sitz, 1990, US Supreme Court. In it, Rehnquist says it is a reasonable interest of the state to conduct such a search, notwithstanding the 4th Amendment, because drunk driving is a real problem. The dissents aren’t very helpful because the dissenters get into “effectiveness” of the stop rather than the logic that just by-passes the 4th amendments requirements for probable cause.

License and registration please!

Over a nice Christmas lunch, a scientifically minded friend of mine hypothesized (in a half-joking manner) on why this latest would-be terrorist, like the so-called shoe bomber , failed. She thinks it is because of the cheapness of the airlines. See, to save a buck they lower the ratio of oxygen in the cabin and it doesn’t return to normal atmospheric levels until the door opens on the ground. So, there is not enough oxygen to really keep a spark or fire going strong on an airplane. I don’t know if this is true or possible, but hey, why not throw it out there.

Via DrewM. over at Ace of Spades, we are provided with another gleaming example of David Frum’s genius. David Frum is the self-styled intellectual leader of the conservative movement who regularly insults conservatives and conservative ideas.

In a recent article Mr. Frum attempts to correct the misguided idea among many on the right that Obamacare might be constitutionally defective. However, Mr. Frum’s period of instruction might have been more convincing had he actually read the Constitution first. Check out this example of keen constitutional analysis:

DeMint’s and Ensign’s argument against the constitutionality of the Obama-Reid health reform rests upon the ancient theory of enumerated powers. Under this theory, Congress may do only what the Constitution specifically authorizes Congress to do. Since (for example) the Constitution speaks only of a Supreme Court, Congress has no power to create lower federal courts. Since the Constitution does not mention a national bank, Congress may not charter banks.

Wow! According to Section 1, Article III of my Constitution Congress DOES have the enumerated power to create lower courts.

At any rate, the rest of the article mistakenly conflates Medicare and Social Security with Obamacare’s requirement that individual’s buy a product (insurance) from a private company.

I did find Frum’s equation of small government conservatives with the jurisprudence of Roger Taney more humorous than insulting. Taney was the author of the Dred Scott decision, a decision in which an arm of the federal government (the Supreme Court) stripped individual states of the power to define what was property within their borders or who could be a citizen. According to Taney, the citizens of Illinois, or any other state, lacked the authority to decide that a black man was more than just an article of private property. It is impossible to imagine a decision more antithetical to small government conservatism than Dred Scott. However, you would have to know something about both the constitution and conservatism to understand that point, something Mr. Frum apparently lacks.

If you want to read an intelligent constitutional take down of Obamacare then you should read this article from Richard Epstein.

Merry Christmas!

Remembering the important things, as these men did, seems longer ago and even farther away with each passing year, and to some, even more silly. But Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to all those here gathered anyway, and may we smile today, give thanks, and be inspired in the coming year to perpetuate their silliness…

It was on Christmas Eve 1968 that the astronauts of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders, became the first of mankind to see an earthrise from the orbit of the moon, and looking back on us, they spoke these words:

Anders: “We are now approaching lunar sunrise. And, for all the people back on earth, the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you…

“In the beginning, God created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light; and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.”

Lovell: “And God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.”

Borman: “And God said, Let the waters under the Heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas: and God saw that it was good.”

And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good earth.”

It is good. God bless us, every one.

My sister-in-law, Tami Huggins, a school teacher in Las Vegas, Nevada, has a letter coming out in the Las Vegas Sun in which she provides to Washington Post columnist, E. J. Dionne, a lesson on the purpose of the U. S. Senate. Several days ago, Dionne, who is also a professor of government at Georgetown University, published an op-ed piece in which he writes, among other things, the following:

Of course what has happened on the health care bill is enraging. It’s quite clear that substantial majorities in both houses of Congress favored either a public option or a Medicare buy-in.

In a normal democracy, such majorities would work their will, a law would pass, and champagne corks would pop. But everyone must get it through their heads that thanks to the now bizarre habits of the Senate, we are no longer a normal democracy.

Here is Tami’s response to Professor Dionne’s op-ed piece:
(more…)

Over at NRO’s Critical Condition, Jeffrey Anderson of the Benjamin Rush Society has a piece on the true costs of Obamacare.

Obamacare would require Americans to buy government-approved health insurance. It would make it illegal to offer choices in insurance plans beyond the handful of very similar ones that the government would allow. It would become illegal to offer new and innovative plans. Under any of the government-approved plans, it would become illegal to pay your doctor directly for more than a certain percentage of your care. Higher deductible, consumer-driven plans would be severely altered or eliminated. By law, a greater percentage of money would have to be paid in insurance premiums, rather than directly for care. Competition and choice would diminish tremendously. One-size-fits-all conformity would rule the day.

At its core, what Obamacare really means is a loss of freedom.

Obamacare would significantly diminish Americans’ freedom to control the fruits of their own labors and to spend them as they choose and as they think best. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports that American taxpayers would be on the hook for approximately $2.5 trillion for Obamacare in its real first ten years in operation (2014 to 2023) — about triple the false number of $871 billion that the Democrats are spreading. As the CBO conveys, $871 billion only covers the cost of insurance coverage expansions, which is only a portion of the bill. Furthermore, less than 2 percent of the costs for what the Democrats are calling the bill’s “first-ten-year costs” would hit prior to the fifth year of that period.  So the Democrats are really giving the six-year costs — for insurance coverage expansions alone — and calling them the ten-year costs for the whole bill. Either the Democrats know this and are being deliberately deceitful, or else they don’t understand their own bill and are in over their heads even more than it appears.

With the Senate poised to ram through a horrendous, arguably unconstitutional piece of legislation that will do irrevocable harm to our country if eventually signed into law, it might seem a bit odd to muse on the success of Framers’ constitutional design.  But when you take a step back, you realize that the intent of the Framers to slow down the machinery of government continues to thrive today.

A year ago Barack Obama was elected president.  He has complete control of the Executive branch of government.  Democrats widened their majority in the House, and obtained a super majority in the Senate, ending up with a filibuster proof majority by the middle of this year.  Meanwhile, the federal judiciary remains somewhat divided as our Supreme Court is essentially a 4-4 split with the Nation’s legal balance at the mercy of Anthony Kennedy’s mood.

So the Democrats have complete control of two of the three branches of the federal government, along with control of a majority of state governments.  Yet this year they have accomplished little in the way of meaningful long-term legislation.  They rammed through a stimulus package that costs taxpayers near a trillion dollars and expanded our federal debt without doing much in the way of actual stimulus.  But this was a one-time only piece of legislation that does not create a new federal entitlement program.  Meanwhile, cap-and-trade legislation passed the House of Representatives, but it is stalled in the Senate, and it is fairly unlikely that any substantial bill will ultimately get passed (though the EPA could act).  And despite huge legislative majorities and a seemingly favorable political mood for reform, at least at the beginning of the year, Democrats have only managed to get some kind of reform near passage through heavy compromise, cajoling, and outright bribery, and it’s still only a 50/50 proposition that President Obama will ever get any legislation to sign.

So despite this considerable numerical advantage, Democrats have not been able to enact the sort of radical “reforms” their supporters believed were imminently on the horizon.  There are numerous factors – the economy made environmental reform less palatable, significant public support for health care reform never materialized, Blue Dog Democrats remained reluctant to sign on to change – but, ultimately, we can thank the constitutional design of the Framers for making radical innovation difficult to achieve.  The Framers did not intend to make change impossible – that would have been manifestly wrong – but they did seek to create a system that limited the power of the government to act swiftly thanks to mechanisms such as checks and balances and the separation of powers. The country has changed in myriad ways, and the constitutional system has been altered considerably especially over the past 80 years.  But the Constitution still has a strong heartbeat, one that is stronger than even the more pessimistic among us realize.

NPR did a great a cappella session with Ralph Stanley on his book tour for Man of Constant Sorrow. You can download this mini-concert along with a few others from NPR Music.

In my last post decrying the shameless legislative prostitution of congressional call girls legislators Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson I was taken to task by one of our liberal readers for my naivete regarding run of the mill legislative “log rolling.” Apparently, only a uninformed boob would object to legislators who, having previously carved out a position based on a highly publicized moral position, cave on that self same position once they are offered enough money. Wow, I thought all this “log rolling” was to be a thing of the past in the new transparent age of Obama who, after lowering sea levels and global temperatures, would bring a new tone to Washington.

While our associates on the left may have made their peace with corruption I have not. I remain disgusted at the performance of our legislature regarding healthcare reform. If this issue is as important as they say then why the artificial deadline of getting this thing done before Christmas? Why not take the necessary time to get this thing done right? Why do we have to rush this thing through?

Reelection. Thats it. These high priced whores in D.C couldn’t care less about the welfare of the nation. Its all about them and the retention of political power. Their shameless self promotion at the cost of the fiscal health of the public purse disgusts me to no end. Apparently, certain liberal readers believe such thinking is hopelessly naive. For them I offer the following clip:

Absolutely right. “When statesmen abandon their own private conscience for the sake of their public duties they lead their country by a short route to chaos.”

I think Oliver Cromwell’s rebuke of the House of Commons is particularly applicable to our legislature today.

“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place, which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money. Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?

AMEN!!!!!!

From Politico:

POLITICO has learned that Rep. Parker Griffith, a freshman Democrat from Alabama, will announce today that he’s switching parties to become a Republican.

According to two senior GOP aides familiar with the decision, the announcement will take place this afternoon in Griffith’s district in northern Alabama.

Griffith’s party switch comes on the eve of a pivotal congressional health care vote and will send a jolt through a Democratic House Caucus that has already been unnerved by the recent retirements of a handful of members who, like Griffith, hail from districts that offer prime pickup opportunities for the GOP in 2010.

Here’s a little Ann Coulter to help you fight off those health reform disaster holiday blues.  She begins with horror stories from Oregon cited by liberal columnists, reminding us that Oregon already has universal health care:

How can this be happening? Oregon already has “universal health care”! (Probably just a coincidence, but isn’t Oregon also the only state with physician-assisted suicide?)

Once again forgetting about the existence of the Internet, the Times neglects to mention its own erstwhile enthusiasm for Oregon’s universal health care plan, introduced back in 1990.

Back then, the Times published an editorial titled “Oregon’s Brave Medical Experiment,” hailing this technocratic monstrosity as an example of “hardheaded compassion” designed to make “health coverage available to many more families.”

In the wake of the massive failures of the experiments in Oregon and Massachusetts (thanks, Mitt), what’s a politician to do?  Extend the disaster nationwide:

Only Democrats could propose fixing one Bernie Madoff-style scam with an even bigger Bernie Madoff-style scam…. Eighty-five percent of Americans are happy with their health care, but Democrats have a plan to make it worse for more money. As a bonus, national health care will add trillions of dollars to the national debt, and your insurance rates will skyrocket.

ReasonTV editor Nick Gillespie (and his groovin sideburns) addresses the inevitabile mission creep with health care ‘reform.”  HT The Corner

The Senate passed its health care bill last night and in doing so did not exactly cover itself in glory. The numerous high-profile payoffs and shameless sellouts used to secure the bill’s passage were enough to make one lose all faith in representative government. Rep. Cantor hit the nail on the head when he stated, “They’re allocating taxpayer dollars as if those dollars belonged to the senators. It borders on immoral. Just look at the way Senator Landrieu put her vote up for sale. Senator Nelson did the same.”

Michelle Malkin breaks down who got what in “Cash for Cloture.”

As my fellow Alabamian pointed out below:

“But when  you express moral opposition to a bill and that moral opposition suddenly evaporates when your state gets enough money – that is a whole different matter.  In Alabama, we have a word for a person who sells his self for money – a whore.”

Sen. Nelson, Sen. Landrieu, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world, but for extra Medicare funding?

Amy Sullivan, in her Time story “Going to Church on Christmas: A Vanishing Tradition,” demonstrates a striking ignorance of Catholicism.  Her thesis is that while people still flock to Christmas Eve services, the churches are empty on Christmas Day due to the secularization of the holiday.

Millions congregate on Christmas Eve, she writes:

And they stay home the next day. Or they drive to Grandma’s, or go to the movies. But however they spend Christmas Day — “the feast of Christmas” on the Christian liturgical calendar — one way most Americans don’t celebrate it is by going to church. While demand for Christmas Eve celebrations is so high that some churches hold as many as five or six different services on the 24th of December, most Protestant churches are closed on the actual religious holiday. For most Christians, Christmas is a day for family, not faith.

She doesn’t seem to know that a vigil Mass counts as attending Mass the next day.  To make matters worse, she uses the Catholic celebration of Easter to make her point:

When did Christmas Eve displace Christmas Day as the time for Christians to observe one of the two holiest days in the church year? Some traditions, including Catholics and Anglicans, hold midnight masses on the Saturday before Easter to usher in that holiday. But everyone still shows up the next morning for the traditional Easter celebration, just as Christmas Day remains a holy day of obligation for Roman Catholics, who are likely to be found in church the day after attending a Midnight Mass.

By contrast, the Christmas service everyone thinks of as “traditional” is the Service of Lessons and Carols that many Protestant congregations use on Christmas Eve.

No, Ms. Sullivan, we don’t show up the day after attending Midnight Mass, because we don’t have to.  It’s astounding that someone with a degree from Harvard Divinity School who writes about religious matters for a major publication wouldn’t have more of a clue about Catholicism 101 than this.

Then again, perhaps it’s not.

This, BTW, is the same woman who writes so scathingly of the USCCB here and elsewhere.

Well, Garrison Keillor must have been  a bit deep in the eggnog when he penned his latest column.  Evidently, he had been traumatized by a visit to a Unitarian church in Cambridge where they do Silent Night neo-pagan style:  ”I discovered that “Silent Night” has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God.”

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite “Silent Night.” If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough.

So far, so good.  However, I can’t imagine hearing something like this on Prairie Home Companion except as a smug shot a the Christian right (though he certainly has gentler parodies of the Unitarians here and there).

He then goes on to extend his tirade to the cabal of Jewish songwriters who provide the soundtrack for our holiday shopping.  Here he well and truly loses it:

And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah“? No, we didn’t.

Considering that he begins his column by lambasting Larry Summers (Harvard’s first Jewish president and a current economic advisor to the White House), I think we’re seeing a little of the anti-semitism that permeates the ever-so-nuanced NPR Left.

Sorry, Garrison, I don’t think I can do without White Christmas and, at this time when we celebrate the coming of the Messiah, I certainly can’t do without the Jews.

HT Powerline.  You can read their take on their fellow Minnesotan here.

Senator Nelson has agreed to vote for the revised version of the “Health care” bill.  What it does as described by a Congressional aide:

The Manager’s Amendment does NOT contain language similar to the Stupak amendment approved by the House.  Instead the section on abortion (starting on page 38) adds a provision allowing states to opt out of providing abortion coverage through the exchange and adds further layers of accounting requirements.  The result remains the same, contrary to longstanding policy, the federal government will subsidize private health insurance plans that cover abortion, and Americans will facilitate abortion by making it more easily available.  The result will be more lives lost to abortion and more wounded mothers.

Why the sudden change? According to National Review:

The deal for Ben Nelson includes additional Medicaid funding for Nebraska and carve outs for physician owned hospitals in Nebraska — and Nebraska only. Uncle Sam will take the hit for 100% of the Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, forever. Nebraska is the only state to get this deal.

If the bill is good for America, then vote for it.  If not, then don’t.  Selling your vote in order to get special treatment for your state may be legal but it is morally bankrupt.  I have no problem with Congressmen trying to getting money for their state and even stating he will oppose the bill unless there is more for his state.  But when  you express moral opposition to a bill and that moral opposition suddenly evaporates when your state gets enough money – that is a whole different matter.  In Alabama, we have a word for a person who sells his self for money – a whore.

Over at The Corner Robert VerBruggen and John Miller address this question.

My answer, ABSOLUTELY!

More to the point, they also play it. See Avenged Sevenfold, Megadeth, AC/DC.

or,  The First Amendment Ain’t Always Pretty

This video cannot be embedded but is definitely worth following the link to watch. A man in California has put up a Christmas display of a shotgun-wielding Jesus standing over a recently dispatched Santa. Behind Jesus is a truck with a run-over Rudolph  on the hood.

The best line from the piece comes from the “creator” of the display: “Christmas is not about Santa, its about Jesus, not the Jesus as the killer with the shotgun.”

Just put this display on public property and you have a law school exam fact pattern for the ages.

h/t the law hammer

The Archdiocese of New York has a really well done video on the ordination of five new priests.  It has more the feel of The Right Stuff than the 70s era vocational materials some dioceses are still putting out there.  The fact that the inspiring voiceover is from the Archbishop’s charge makes it all the better.

“Terminator Smurfs…” —Glenn Reynolds

Instapundit shoots and scores, and I hope that’s how James Cameron’s half-zillion-dollar Avatar will come to be remembered.

The world doesn’t need yet another morality tale of amoral corporate greed, moral and noble savages, and the morality of ecological moral purity.

[Well actually, some of the world believes it does, and they're gathered in Copenhagen presently...]

King Kong was king because it was a morality tale of man’s inhumanity to man, even if it was to a near-human beast. Its theme was similar, but there were no villains—only men doing what men do out of folly or thoughtlessness, and the unfortunate consequences ensue.

That’s tragedy; and poor Kong, regardless of his animal purity, had to be brought down off the Empire State Building, if only to save the exquisite Fay Wray. You just can’t have gorillas stealing your women and taking over your biggest building. You just can’t, even if it’s ultimately your fault and not his.

Sorry, Kong. But that’s tragedy.

Today, cardboard corporate villains have become the modern Hollywood substitute for the guy twirling his mustache.

Snidely Whiplash, c. 1960

That’s melodrama. Kong was not melodrama; Avatar clearly is, and there you have it.

As for computer-generated ick [CGI], frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn. The Na’vi are not people, they are Smurfs. As Reynolds puts it, they’re action figures put into computer motion, as “unrealistic as a kid’s diorama.”

No, I won’t be seeing Avatar, at least until it comes on cable, if ever. I got Al Gore and President Obama and Prince Charles and the whole Copenhagen crowd in my face back here in the real world, saying all the same stuff.

Now, the Avatar the video game looks interesting—you can choose to play an “invading human” and plunk Na’vi to your heart’s content.

If only Al Gore were among the targets. Cameron says it’s boring to shoot zombies, but Copenhagen is a gathering of them like flies on offal, and I’d so much more enjoy a virtual zombie-shoot there than on Cameron’s Planet Pandora. Or Shooting Smurfs.

Now that sounds like fun, unlike Avatar. I might even give my mustache a twirl. Hahaha…

Best to all,
TVD

It’s stories like this that really bring back the memories of Southern Christmases past.

Tennessee investigators say a 4-year-old boy was found roaming his neighborhood in the night, drinking beer and wearing a little girl’s dress taken from under a neighbor’s Christmas tree.

The child’s mother, 21-year-old April Wright, tells WTVC-TV the boy “wants to go to jail because that’s where his daddy is.”

Who doesn’t love an energy efficient light bulb? Yes. I know. I know. Some of them have dangerous toxins in them, but seriously, how backwards can you be to use a high energy bulb when there is a low energy bulb. What’s that you say? High-energy bulbs give off more heat? Well! Duh! More heat is produced when more energy is used. You’re not going to heat your house with a light-bulb now are you, nim-wit? Of course not! So let’s get rid of all high-energy light bulbs starting with traffic lights:

Cities around the country that have installed energy-efficient traffic lights are discovering a hazardous downside: The bulbs don’t burn hot enough to melt snow and can become crusted over in a storm — a problem blamed for dozens of accidents and at least one death.

“I’ve never had to put up with this in the past,” said Duane Kassens, a driver from West Bend who got into a fender-bender recently because he couldn’t see the lights. “The police officer told me the new lights weren’t melting the snow. How is that safe?”

D’oh!!!!

Ever since I can remember remembering I have been fascinated with Vikings. I think it began when I read a condensed version of Beowulf in a Childcraft encyclopedia. The story was exciting and the pictures of huge warriors wearing horned or winged helmets wielding massive swords captured my imagination. Shortly thereafter I discovered Norse mythology and my interest in al things Viking skyrocketed.

However, the more I learned about the Vikings the more I understood that they were not, to put it mildly, friendly to Christendom. As the product of a devout Southern Baptist upbringing this was always somewhat troubling for me. Imagine my excitement when I discovered Lars Walker’s books about Erling Skjalgsson, Norway’s first Christian lord. The first book, The Year of the Warrior, is a rousing page turner that I simply could not put down. Simply put, it is an exciting mix of historical fiction and fantasy. Mr. Walker has continued Erling’s saga with his most recent book, West Oversea. In this book, Erling and his companions journey to the new world. As with the first book, West Oversea not only delivers an action packed story but also some penetrating spiritual insights. However, it does this without getting “preachy” or sacrificing good story telling. If you are strapped for gift ideas then look no further, just remember to get a copy for yourself.

Our beloved Mr. Mule rightly notes that The Great Equivocator, President Obama, commits a Freudian admission:

“We just had a very productive session about the final stages of health care reform in the Senate. And from the discussions we had, it’s clear that we are on the precipice of an achievement that’s eluded Congresses and presidents for generations, a achievement that will touch the lives of nearly every American.”

Oy. Precipices are cliffs and stuff; not good things, used metaphorically.

n., The brink of a dangerous or disastrous situation

Dangerous, indeed, this health insurance thing. Not a “reform,” because reform is improving what you’ve already got. This is something else altogether.

Barack Obama campaigned on “change,” and to his credit, he’s keeping his promise—change is a brand-new thing, transformative, not reform.

Reform is getting socks and underwear for Christmas, necessary renewal, but no fun. Tort reform, whatever. But Barack Obama is fun.

It’s an addiction with those on the left these days, it seems, that all solutions needn’t make hard choices between this-or-that—man’s cleverness is such fun, and can always devise a “win-win” cure to any conundrum.

Obama-Pelosi-Reidcare [the President likes to share the credit, and especially the accountability] is a win-win-win-win thing:

Better AND cheaper AND fairer AND more comprehensive AND more universal AND revenue-neutral AND will help the economy AND we’ll abort a few of the unneeded and reduce global warming.

[Well, I dunno about that last one; they tell us we'd be better off with fewer people breathing and expelling carbon dioxide, a known pollutant, and government-financed abortion will help with that, but extending lives with better health care increases mankind's carbon liability, so the math doesn't quite add up.]

Still, this is a helluva lot of free lunches: so really, what’s not to like?

An old Spanish proverb says: “Take What You Want and Pay For It, Says God.”

I don’t want to drag God into this, although USA Today did. I’m all for Christian charity, although I don’t think the Bible says anyone has a right to it. [That would sort of defeat the whole purpose of charity.]

Anyway, it just seems that Barack Obama, as the cutest and most appealing child, was given control of the family business, and wants all our assets to go into his invention of a perpetual motion machine.

Win-win-win-win-win, ad infinitum.

According to the polls, most of the family, who have a stake in the family business too, afterall, are going, whaaaaaaaaaa?

All I hope is that Pelosi and Reid drive President Obama’s perpetual motion machine off the bridge before it makes it to the other side. I don’t want to be there when it gives out, not to mention the rest of our family.