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Legalizing Millions Of Unskilled Immigrants Is No Recipe For Growth

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:12:00 GMT

The Heritage Foundation recently issued a comprehensive report showing that Sen. Marco Rubio's plan to instantly legalize 11.5 million illegal immigrants would add $6.3 trillion to budget deficits over the next 50 years. Heritage assumed there are 11.5 million illegals, but other estimates put the number at 33 million, which would mean adding an additional $18 trillion to the deficit. To put that in perspective, the largest U.S. budget deficit in

ObamaCare, Tea Party Targeter Run By Same IRS Exec

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Government Overreach: The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of tax-exempt organizations when the unit targeted Tea Party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for enforcing ObamaCare. As bad as the IRS scandal was, with the taxing body of government using its unequaled authority to intimidate and harass the president's political opposition to aid his re-election, it got worse with the news that the IRS official, Sarah Hall Ingram,

Pope Francis Ignores Power Of Free Market To End Poverty

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Statism: Pope Francis seemed to have an economic blind spot, to say the least, when he urged more "state control" to cut global poverty Thursday. On the contrary -- the biggest poverty-killer in history is free

Europeans Still See Spending Cuts As The Right Cure

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Economy: If "austerity" is such a disaster in Europe, why do most Europeans still back spending cuts? Maybe common sense isn't dead there, although the GDP is flat-lining. If you don't look too closely, stats from the past week seem to make a tidy case for bigger government. Japan has chosen stimulus, and its economy is growing. The eurozone has chosen spending cuts labeled "austerity," and it's stuck in a long slump. So the moral is clear, right?

Gosnell Case Is Shifting Public Opinion On Abortion

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

IBD/TIPP Poll: What many thought to be impossible might be beginning to happen because of public awareness of abortionist Kermit Gosnell's crimes: a sizeable shift in opinion away from support of abortion. The latest IBD/TIPP Poll shows that 42% of respondents who read or saw news stories on the trial resulting in a murder conviction for Philadelphia abortion "doctor" Kermit Gosnell say that as a result of the trial they now lean more toward

The Trifecta Of Obama Scandals Offers Little In Payout

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

Folks, deep breath time. This is not the end of the Obama presidency. It's a bad stretch with an unfortunate confluence of unfortunate events. None of which will make the first paragraph -- not even the first page -- of the account of the Obama administration in the history books. Let's tick through the trifecta of scandals and what they tell us -- about the foibles of this administration, about the hidden operations of bureaucracies, about the

Startup Business Are America's Best Job Creators

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

'Small business" is the recipient of much official love (as well as heavy regulatory intrusion), but it receives its loudest applause as the supposed source of most employment growth. Alas, that conventional wisdom is incorrect: The modern scholarly literature finds that it is new (not small) businesses -- startups -- that contribute disproportionately to job creation. Job creation obviously is important, but ultimately it is

Looks Like IRS Tried To Keep Tea Party From Winning

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:20:00 GMT

When you get right down to it, the political targeting and stalling of tax-exempt applications by the IRS was an effort to defund the Tea Party. Rick Santelli, a Tea Party founder and my colleague, made this point first. I've taken it a step further: The IRS took the Tea Party out of play for the 2012 election to avoid a repeat of 2010 and another Tea Party landslide. There are a lot of numbers out there. Some say Tea Party applications for

Obama's Big Government: It Sees And Regulates Everything

Fri, 17 May 2013 22:00:00 GMT

Speaking at Ohio State University earlier this month, Barack Obama urged students to pay no attention to those paranoid types who "incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity." Oddly enough, in recent days the most compelling testimony for this view of government has come from the president himself, who insists with a straight face that he had no idea that the Internal Revenue Service had spent two years

Obama Media Lapdogs Turn, But For How Long Is Unknown

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Media Bias: The MSNBC talking head who was most "head over thighs" over Barack Obama is one of many news fixtures now coming down to earth. That thrill going up Chris Matthews' leg is gone. 'I felt this thrill going up my leg," Matthews infamously declared on Election Night 2008, as he "covered" Obama's presidential victory. Nearly two years later, he was bestowed with the Media Research Center's far-from-coveted Quote of the Year award for

IRS Attack Against Tea Party Assaulted Civility

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Democracy: The IRS targeting of Tea Party groups is mind-boggling not only for its abuse of government power. It's also disturbing for what it intended to do: destroy civil society, opening a door for tyranny. The formation in 2009 of hundreds of Tea Party groups at the rallying cry of CNBC news editor Rick Santelli, from places as diverse as Lowell, Mass., Pleasanton, Calif., Asheville, N.C., Yuma, Ariz., and Lincoln, Neb., among hundreds of

White House Lied About Editing Benghazi Talking Points

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:28:00 GMT

Scandal In Libya: A new email dump shows that the White House, contrary to public statements, was heavily involved in editing the Benghazi talking points to remove all references to it being a terrorist attack. The limited, heavily redacted package of emails released by the administration Wednesday is noteworthy for what the emails don't say and reflect a concerted effort by the White House and State Department not to get at the truth but to put

IRS Lies About Tax Scandal Continue To Mount

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:24:00 GMT

Like everything else the IRS has said about the tax scandal, its explanation for why it ended up targeting conservative groups turns out to be completely false. Which raises the question: Why are IRS officials trying so desperately to hide what really went on? Ever since the tax scandal broke, top IRS officials have insisted that the reason it started singling out conservative groups for extra review was because the agency was getting a flood of

What Did John Brennan Know?

Thu, 16 May 2013 23:02:00 GMT

National Security: If a thorough investigation is conducted into the origins of the al-Qaida attacks on Benghazi, Republicans will regret not blocking John Brennan's confirmation as CIA director. Not only did Brennan, as White House counterterrorism czar, take his eye off al-Qaida in Libya, but Wednesday night's White House email dump in response to congressional subpoena reveals he played a role in the Benghazi cover-up. This is something we've

Republicans Shouldn't Overhype The Benghazi Scandal

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:37:00 GMT

Note to GOP re Benghazi: Stop calling it Watergate, Iran-contra, bigger than both, etc. First, it might well be, but we don't know. History will judge. Second, overhyping will only diminish the importance of the scandal if it doesn't meet presidency-breaking standards. Third, focusing on the political effects simply plays into the hands of Democrats desperately claiming this is nothing but partisan politics. Let the facts speak for themselves.

Hypocrites Voice Response To Espionage Enforcement

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

The false god of 'narrative' 'What if the government starts enforcing the espionage statute whenever there's a leak?" Steve Roberts, a former New York Times journalist who teaches at George Washington University, observed to the Baltimore Sun. "It's going to have a tremendously chilling effect on this interplay between sources and reporters." But Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, insisted that stopping leaks should be a very high

Limiting Foreign Access To Your Bank Accounts

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Earlier this week, I introduced a bill that would reform the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (Fatca). Originally tacked on as the "pay-for" to a 2010 bill to incentivize hiring, Fatca was intended to crack down on overseas tax evasion. That's not been the reality, however. Instead, the Treasury Department has chosen to manipulate Fatca to establish an international financial snooping scheme that violates the Constitution, disregards the mutual

Unions' JPMorgan Power Play Is About Labor Organizing, Not Performance

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Union Groups Finger Trading Losses in Targeting JPMorgan (top) Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, when serving as President Obama's chief of staff, verbalized his view of the 2008 financial meltdown with the quip, "You never let a serious crisis go to waste." Labor union pension funds have taken the mantra to heart this proxy season with respect to the nation's largest financial institution, JPMorgan Chase. Tapping into angst and anger over the bank's

Obama's Scandal-Denial Is Driven By Progressive Desire To Expand Government

Thu, 16 May 2013 22:14:00 GMT

Leaving aside the seriousness of lawlessness, and the corruption of our civic culture by the professionally pious, this week has been amusing. There was the spectacle of advocates of an ever-larger regulatory government expressing shock about such government's large capacity for misbehavior. And, entertainingly, the answer to the question "Will Barack Obama's scandals derail his second-term agenda?" was a question: What agenda? The scandals are

Did The IRS Try To Swing Election To Obama?

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:54:00 GMT

Corruption: The inspector general's report on the IRS targeting of conservatives makes it seem like a case of bureaucratic bumbling. But the more we learn, the more it looks like a concerted effort to hobble Obama's political foes. 'Inappropriate criteria," "insufficient oversight" and "lack of managerial review." That's what led the IRS to target hundreds of conservative groups for intrusive, costly and lengthy scrutiny during their application

IRS Targeting Pushed By Democrats Aided Obama Campaign

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:54:00 GMT

Scandal: Senate Democrats, including supporters of the Disclose Act, provided the names of groups they wanted targeted in a taxpayer-funded witch hunt overseen by an IRS employee and Obama campaign donor. Using the Citizens United case as a pretext, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on July 27, 2012, wrote IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate 12 conservative groups he accused of violating their tax-exempt status and engaging in

Obama Can't Be Both A Mastermind And Out Of The Loop

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:54:00 GMT

Presidency: The president who claimed extraordinary powers to change Washington is now, we are to believe, unable to keep tabs on a "vast" federal government. He can't be both a mastermind and out to lunch. Which is it? President Obama's alibis are legion. He's not responsible for the IRS targeting nearly 500 conservative groups, and getting private information into the hands of their enemies, because it's an independent agency with a commissioner

A Pattern Of Power Abuse

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:49:00 GMT

Tyranny: Perhaps the most sinister aspect of the president's parade of scandals is that just days before they broke, he mocked as paranoid those concerned about government excesses. On May 5, while giving the commencement address at Ohio State University, President Obama advised graduates to put all their trust in government and reject those shrill "voices" that say it's the source of our problems. Ignore these limited-government types, he told

Sebelius Spends Your Taxes On Community Organizations

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:25:00 GMT

Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was criticized last week for soliciting private contributions to Enroll America, a non-governmental organization run by former Obama campaign operatives. The real monkey business is what the secretary is doing with taxpayers' money -- pouring it into community organizations. The pretext is that community organizations will do a better job than government employees in enrolling the uninsured

Fed, ObamaCare Have Put Damper On Once-Vibrant Economy

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:19:00 GMT

Per capita personal disposable income, adjusted for inflation, remains over $1,000 below its prior peak. There are 2.5 million fewer people employed now than in early 2008 while at the same time the U.S. population has grown by 12 million. What happened to economic growth? Typically when an economy comes out of a recession (the last one ended in June 2009) it will have several years of above-average growth, a snapback as it returns to longer run

President Passerby: Obama Falls Asleep At The Wheel

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:19:00 GMT

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency. Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters. And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative

Regulation Is Also Cause Of Economy's Slow Snap Back From Recession

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:19:00 GMT

Economic prospects for the nation remain dismal for the foreseeable future, especially in the context of historical trends. Following recessions, the economy usually comes roaring back -- and the longer and deeper the recession, the more robust economic growth tends to be as productivity and job-growth surge. But the recovery from the recession of the last decade has been anemic at best, and is expected to remain comparatively weak at least through

Bachmann: Reform Begins With Repeal Of ObamaCare

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:19:00 GMT

Today, the House of Representatives will continue its fight to stop President Obama's destructive health care law by voting on my legislation to repeal ObamaCare. Three developments in recent weeks shed light on how ObamaCare is beginning to collapse under its own weight, even before it is fully implemented. First, the outrageous news that the IRS targeted pro-growth, conservative and Tea Party groups due to their political beliefs is only one

The President's Broken ObamaCare Promises: Time To Repeal

Wed, 15 May 2013 22:19:00 GMT

On Thursday, the House will vote to fully repeal ObamaCare. We are voting to repeal it because the law was unaffordable and unpopular when the Democrats rammed it through Congress without a single Republican vote more than three years ago, and each day that passes the list of devastating consequences on premiums, taxes, and job creation continues to grow. We are voting to repeal ObamaCare because the president promised, on the day he signed the

Eight Months Too Late, The Media See The Real Obama

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:05:00 GMT

Accountability: Suddenly, President Obama is mired in multiple scandals. If his friends in the media had been doing their jobs, they would have realized who he was well before last year's election. The Washington Post's "Fact Checker" hands out cute little "Pinocchios" to politicians who stretch the truth. But a lot of the time that long nose obstructs the little wooden boy's vision. On Tuesday, for example, the Post gave Obama "Four Pinocchios" --

Obama's Scandals Stem from His Lawless Presidency

Tue, 14 May 2013 23:05:00 GMT

Last Friday, after the Associated Press learned about the Justice Department's sweeping seizure of its phone records, AP CEO Gary Pruitt said "there can be no possible justification" for the action. No doubt that's true. But there also seems to be no possible justification for the many other scandals now swamping the Obama administration -- from Benghazi, to the IRS scandal to the White House's attempt to shake down health companies for ObamaCare

Obama White House Wants To Govern By Permanent Crisis

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:46:00 GMT

Leadership: Bill Clinton governed by the permanent campaign. Barack Obama wants to govern by the permanent crisis. What most see as disasters Obama sees as opportunities to ram through his progressive agenda. With scandals and corruption breaking all around him, the president attended a $34,000-a-plate Democratic Party fundraiser in New York City Monday night and while there revealed that he wants an America in constant crisis. Why? Because he

New Farm Bill Is Just More Welfare For Rich Farmers

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:46:00 GMT

Welfare Farming: As noisy scandals whirl about the Obama administration, Congress is quietly putting finishing touches on a $1 trillion farm bill that's yet another major expansion of big government in the U.S. economy. Given the magnitude of President Obama's spending, maybe $1 trillion over 10 years doesn't seem like much. But it is. And it's how the money is spent that really matters. As much as ever today, our farm policies remain tied to the

Big Labor Was Bigtime Wrong On Trade With Colombia

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:46:00 GMT

Commerce: Big Labor worked hard to halt the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, claiming it threatened our economy and our workers. But a year since its passage, the pact has surpassed all expectations. Where's the mea culpa? If there was ever a reason to declare Big Labor's credibility at zero on matters economic, the best example would be in its long, pathetic tocsins over free trade with Colombia. Today, exactly a year since the pact went into

2013 Shows Eery Parallels To 1913, The Year 20th Century Began To Unravel

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:25:00 GMT

A hundred years ago, anyone who might have predicted in 1913 the monumental, man-made catastrophes that would occur in the rest of the 20th century would have been considered warped, if not completely mentally deranged. Who would have believed that the continent of Europe, which had not had a major war in nearly 100 years since Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo, would set off two World Wars that were incomparably worse than any wars before,

Venture Capital In Medical Innovation Declines

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:25:00 GMT

Venture capital investment in American life-sciences innovation is suffering an alarming decline. The number of new biotechnology and medical device companies receiving start-up financing has now fallen to the lowest levels in 18 years, according to PriceWaterhouseCoopers. In recent decades, the cost of developing a single new medicine has grown more than 10-fold, to $1.5 billion. On average, each new drug spends 15 years in development. And only

IRS Is Too Lax On Political Groups, Not Too Tough

Tue, 14 May 2013 22:25:00 GMT

Sputtering adjectives -- outrageous, appalling, intolerable -- can scarcely do justice to the fiasco involving the Internal Revenue Service's reported targeting of conservative groups. But the current scandal obscures -- and, ironically, threatens to prevent action on -- another, equally corrosive failure on the part of the IRS when it comes to scrutinizing political groups. This less-noticed scandal is the mirror image of the one dominating the

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron Should Trumpet Britain's Corporate Tax Cut Success

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Tax Policy: Speaking with President Obama Monday, U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron talked up tax enforcement, no doubt to please his host. Left unsaid was that the real example Britain offers for feeble economies is tax cuts. Fact is, Britain has slashed its corporate tax rate to the lowest level in the Group of 20, cutting its level to a mere 21%. And it has plans to take it to 20% by 2015. The result has been spectacular: According to Ernst &

Obama's Green Jobs Promise Carries A High Cost

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Energy: Wasn't Barack Obama supposed to be our first green president? After all, it was candidate Obama who promised his administration would create 5 million alternative energy jobs. Maybe he meant in-the-red jobs. During his acceptance speech in 2008, Obama said he would "invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy -- wind power, and solar power, and the next generation of biofuels -- an investment that will

Will The IRS Abuse Its ObamaCare Enforcement Powers Too?

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Tax Abuse: As nonconservative groups complain of politically motivated targeting by the IRS, we're reminded it's the IRS that's going to be enforcing one of the greatest expansions of government power in our history. In recent days we've come to know what is meant by the adage that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Our country was born in revolt against taxation used by a tyrant to control and

Obama Sinks To 'Political Circus' Tag For Libya Probe

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Benghazi: President Obama has chosen the high-risk strategy that when you lie, lie big and stick to it. Just how many new facts will it take to crack his poker face? In his Monday press conference, President Obama's damage control strategy became ... "perfectly clear." Asked if the intelligence community's Benghazi talking points "were not purposely changed to downplay" terrorism at the height of his re-election campaign, after newly revealed

Collapse Of Bee Colonies Is Latest Target For Anti-Pesticide Groups

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:51:00 GMT

Beekeeping is big business, and everyone loves honey and foods made possible by pollination. But "colony collapse disorder" threatens bees and crop pollination in many areas. CCD and other bee die-offs are nothing new. What we now call colony collapse was first reported in 1869, and many outbreaks since then have sent scientists scurrying for explanations and solutions. Fungi, varroa mites and other possible suspects have been implicated, but no

Republicans Suffer From Mental Illness Called Benghazi Syndrome

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:36:00 GMT

The American Psychiatric Association's latest handbook -- the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) -- is about to be published. It is the handbook of mental health, and if you're not in it you are among the fortunate few. Even though the hour is late, I beseech the DSM's publishers to consider one additional entry, the seriousness of which will be apparent to anyone who watches Fox News: Benghazi Syndrome. Benghazi Syndrome

Sorry Media Performance Of Late Is Largely Due To Left-Wing Bias

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:36:00 GMT

As a colonel I used to work with in the Pentagon was fond of saying: "Well, there's another blinding flash of the obvious never acknowledged or always denied." The recent admission from the IRS that they did in fact target conservative groups -- no surprise to most conservatives and many liberals -- underscoring his point. I have often said that many people tend to embrace the truth right up until the moment it reflects poorly upon them or their

IRS Scandal Shows Why Divided Government Is Vital

Mon, 13 May 2013 21:36:00 GMT

"He has, acting personally and through his subordinates and agents, endeavored to ... cause, in violation of the constitutional rights of citizens, income tax audits or other income tax investigations to be initiated or conducted in a discriminatory manner." House Judiciary Committee's Articles of Impeachment, July 29, 1974