A Tale of Two Courts

With news of federal appeals court decision out of Washington, DC, in the morning on July 22nd, I thought, "this is the best of times."  By the time the day had ended, and word came of another appeals court's decision on the same issue out of Richmond, Virginia, I thought "this is the worst of times." 

As it turns out, the two decisions are a quite potent tutor on the importance of the kinds of people that are put, by our votes, in Congress, and in the White House.  As you will see if you read on, the political identity of Presidents that appoint judges provides a nearly perfect predictor of judicial philosophy. Allow me to explain:

Two federal appeals courts issued decisions regarding a contentious issue arising from the Obama administration's interpretation and application of an aspect of the Obamacare statute.   In one decision, from the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, two out of three judges concluded that the IRS overstepped legal bounds when it adopted a rule permitting a insurance premium tax credit be allowed in instances where the consumer purchased health insurance through the federal health insurance exchange.  In the other decision, from the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, three judges concluded that the exact same IRS rule was a reasonable interpretation of the text of the Affordable Care Act.

Briefly, Congress set up a two tiered system to accomplish its goal.  A charitable construction of Congress' goal would be to obtain the widest possible inclusion of Americans within health insurance coverages.  Until Obamacare became the law, health insurance was, virtually entirely, a question of state law and state regulation.  When the Democratic Party controlled Congress adopted the Obamacare laws, at least a thin skin of pretense required Congress and the President to pretend to respect the traditional, constitutionally affirmed, role of States in such matters.  To do that, Obamacare provides for State health insurance exchanges to be set up in States willing to do so.

Moreover, to encourage widest possible participation in those State exchanges, Congress included a provision that has the effect of subsidizing the cost of health insurance premiums by granting a tax credit for payments on such premiums.  Congress also created a federal health insurance exchange because, with more than a majority of State legislative bodies in Republican Party control, there was a reasonably predictable possibility that many States would not create such exchanges.

The Congress that enacted Obamacare, we must presume, knew how to draft legislative language creating a health insurance exchange.  After all, they employed such language twice:  in creating the State exchange program, and in creating the federal exchange program.  The Congress that enacted Obamacare, we must ALSO presume, knew how to draft legislative language providing that a health insurance premium tax credit would be available to certain taxpayers (based on income).  After all, Congress employed such language once:  in authorizing the allowance of a health insurance premium tax credit for eligible subscribers who purchased their health insurance through the State-created health care exchanges.

And therein, as they say, lies the rub.  Because the Congress that knew how to create exchanges, the Congress that knew how to authorize the IRS to allow for health insurance premium tax credits for certain income-based subscribers, that very same Congress, legislating through that very same exact bill, DID NOT authorize the IRS to allow for health insurance premium tax credits for certain income based subscribers who purchased their insurance through the federal exchange in their State because the State had chosen not to set up such an exchange.  (As it turned out, Congress was not entirely myopic.  More than half the States declined the invitation in Obamacare to set up a State exchange.)

Despite the absence of Congressional authorization to do so, the IRS announced, took comments on, and made final a rule allowing for a health insurance premium tax credit for income-qualified purchasers whose health insurance was bought through the federal exchange in those States without a State health care exchange.  That rule has the effect of spending federal tax monies.  But neither the Affordable Care Act, nor subsequent authorizations legislation, nor subsequent appropriations, have authorized those expenditures of federal funds by the IRS.

Remember that in the progressive/Democrat mindset, money in the hands of another as a result of a tax credit is an expenditure of federal funds.  That very reasoning is why, in every discussion regarding taxes and spending, Democrats insist that tax credits funded by such enactments must be funded through other taxes.  In other words, they argue, if you are going to give a tax credit that has the effect of reducing the total federal tax haul by, say, 1 billion dollars, then that "purchase" must be offset by other tax increases to cover the billion dollar loss.

But, setting aside the highly political nature of the seemingly intractable dispute over Obamacare, judges and lawyers ARE REQUIRED to accord a kind of respect to a legislative body's language choices.  For example, if a statute stated,  "No Motor Vehicle Operator Permit or License is to be issued to a person unless, first, the Department of Motor Vehicles obtains a copy of a birth document certified by the Department of Vital Statistics to be a true and correct copy of the original," then courts and judges, following hundreds of years of legal history and development, would know that the DMV could not accept a hand drawn, with crayon, reasonable facsimile of a birth certificate unless it bore a certification that it was a true and correct copy of an original birth certificate.  Neither courts, nor lawyers, nor governors, nor legislators, NOR EVEN PRESIDENTS, have any legal justification for pretending that a statute includes language it omits, nor omits language it includes.  Certainty in the law requires that this be so.

Returning to the appeals courts decisions and the impact of political identity of presidents making such appointments, there remains this to be said.  Six different judges participated in the making of the two appeals court decisions yesterday.  Four of those judges were appointed by Presidents who are Democrats; two of those judges were appointed by Presidents who are Republicans.  All three judges in the Fourth Circuit majority, and one judge, the dissenting judge in the DC Circuit decision, were appointed by Democrats.  Two judges, the majority in the DC Circuit decision, were appointed by Republicans.

As they say, elections have consequences.

It is not every day, however, that one consequence of elections is that potentially criminal conduct by the President or his administration will be given a wink and a nod from the bench.  But yesterday was one of those days in Richmond, Virginia, and in Washington, DC, where the dissenting judge was willing to give the wink and the nod, but failed to garner a majority.

And while some will say that raising the specter of criminality is hyperbolic,  I disagree for a well-founded reason.  For more than a century, a federal law known as the AntiDeficiency Act expressly bars federal agents and agencies from spending unappropriated funds.  That statute is direct and clear:  "An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government may not ... make or authorize an expenditure or obligation exceeding an amount available in an appropriation or fund for the expenditure or obligation[.]"  Violation of that statute is, itself, a crime:  "An officer or employee of the United States Government or of the District of Columbia government knowingly and willfully violating [that] section [] shall be fined not more than $5,000, imprisoned for not more than 2 years, or both."

Thus, not only is the IRS rule unauthorized by the Affordable Care Act, it puts the Commissioner of the IRS and IRS employees in the position of violating the Antideficiency Act.  Unlike other federal executive adventures outside the law, such as the alleged violations by the Reagan administration of the Boland Amendment, violations of the Antideficiency Act are, expressly, criminal acts subject to prosecution, and conviction carries the risk of fines and imprisonment.  The decisions of the DC Circuit and the Fourth Circuit directly conflict with each other, invite uncertainty as to the meaning and application of the Affordable Care Act, and raise the twin specters of judicial disregard for statutory language and IRS administrative disregard for Congressionally authorized appropriations.

Ultimately, these cases, one or both, will come to the Supreme Court of the United States.  The "losers" in either case can, of course, apply to the same appeals court for reconsideration.  In fact, because of the OTHER COURT'S DECISION, there are better than normal prospects in both cases that the decisions by panels of the DC Circuit and the Fourth Circuit will be reconsidered by the entire court of appeals in each case.  After all, conflicts between courts of appeals on a question of federal law are a justifiable reason for such en banc review by the whole court of a panel decision.  But there is little doubt that the Supreme Court will have the opportunity, and may have the need, to review these cases.

The opportunity will arise if any party below is dissatisfied by the outcome they got at the appeals court in their case; that outcome is assured.  The need will arise in either of two possible circumstances.  First, if, at the end of the day, the decisions of these two courts remain in conflict as to the meaning and application of the Affordable Care Act, then Supreme Court review is always helpful in insuring that a single rule of law governs throughout the United States.  Second, if, at the end of the day, the Supreme Court, in evaluating requests for hearings, concludes that one of the courts, or both, have incorrectly construed and applied the language of the Act.  For now, the uncertainty created by the Obama Administration's lawless extension of the State Exchange health insurance premium tax credit to federally operated health exchanges is compounded by the uncertainty of the conflicting decisions yesterday.

Legal observers are often invited to make predictions of future actions by courts.  And this takes me back to the topic of this post.  Since taking office, Obama has now appointed enough appeals court judges so that Democrat-appointed judges constitute majorities of the active judges in both the DC Circuit and Fourth Circuit.  Given that party of appointment is, at present glance, a direct predictor of judicial outcome, I will make this prediction:  if either appeals court grants rehearing by the whole court, then it is likely that the whole court will uphold the IRS renegade rule.  And that is a certainty that benefits no one.

Bob Goodlatte vs. Alexander Hamilton: Why Obama Can Be Impeached

So the thinking is, among some Republicans, including Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, that Obama has not committed acts that warrant impeachment, that his record is free of the kinds of crimes warranting impeachment.

Beg pardon, but the Constitution is where Congressman Bob Goodlatte should start a search for the scope, meaning, and application of the Constitution’s provisions regarding impeachment. There, in plain language, impeachment is allowed for treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors. And if Goodlatte demurs that he cannot find a meaning of "high crimes and misdemeanors," then I would direct him to a source undoubted in its standing as the First Word, if not the last one, on the meaning of the Constitution. That source, of course, is the Federalist Papers.

In The Federalist No. 65, Alexander Hamilton, writing as Publius, turns to a question of the decision by the Constitutional Convention to assign to the Senate the power to serve as the "Court for the Trial of Impeachments." He wants it to be understood why the Senate, not the House, not the Courts, not some other body was to be preferred for trials of persons impeached by the House. To move to that question, he first takes note of what manner of questions and conduct would bring an officer of the United States, even the Chief Executive, before such a court.

And it is answering the answering of that question that Publius clarifies the matter for Goodlatte:

"those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust. They are of a nature which may with peculiar propriety be denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."

If you don't have your own copy of the Federalist Papers, but want to scope out Hamilton's argument in full, it is available online in many locations, including at Yale University's online Archive, The Avalon Project. You can view The Federalist No. 65 here.

For now, though, I thought it sufficient to begin re-thinking the error of Goodlatte's assertion with Publius/Hamilton's own careful construction of the offenses that fall within the scope of impeachment. Publius explained, again, that impeachable offenses are ones that "proceed from the misconduct of public men ... from the abuse or violation of some public trust[, t]hey are of a nature which may be ... denominated POLITICAL, as they relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to the society itself."

While Goodlatte seems focused on the absence of some video of Obama taking a multi-billion dollar bribe from George Soros or the like, or of using an electrical prod on a helpless child as a means of feeding some twisted sense of sexual delight, or perhaps even of swiping candy from a baby, THAT IS DECIDEDLY NOT with what the impeachment power is principally concerned.

Instead, in the view of Publius/Hamilton, the nature of the wrongs to be accounted for in impeachment are those that:

1. proceed from misconduct
2. of public men
3. by the abuse of some political trust or
4. the violation of some public trust, acts that can and will be, in the main,
5. denominated POLITICAL in nature and which
6. relate chiefly to injuries done immediately to our society itself.

Now, if Goodlatte thinks that Obama's actions do not qualify for impeachment, then, to be honest, the voters of Virginia can do nothing better to improve the common lot of us all than to vote for someone other than Goodlatte in the fall.

So what injuries, denominated as political, has Obama inflicted on our society?

Begin with the retooling of the Internal Revenue Service as a tool for the suppression of disagreement with the President, as a tool for the prevention of education about the Constitution, its meaning and its application to our times and troubles.

Continue with the likely actual crime of the destruction, not of one or two IRS computer hard drives, but of SEVEN; the naked cover up of criminality by the Chief Law Enforcement officers of the United States is a grave injury to society itself.

Continue from there.

What about Obamacare, the so-called Affordable Care Act. Even if all that it represents is the bumbling and abysmal stupidity of putting in charge of the start up of a national program for the federal insurance exchange a Canadian company that lost contracts in their home country for the same reasons of unpreparedness, indolence, and failure, it is too much.  Having as our Chief Executive one who hires buffoons and incompetents suffices to state the ground of injury to society itself.

Do not stop with the terribly incompetent roll-out of Obamacare. Because there is more to the problem than that sign-ups for Obamacare were frustrated by the fifth-rate incompetence of the website designers. We were, as a Nation, sold this bill of goods on the claim of its essentiality to our national economic health. We were told of the importance of this NATIONAL MANDATE, of the harms that having such uncertainty govern the affairs of an economic enterprise that constitutes one sixth of our entire national economy. As it turned out, however, the Chief Executive immediately began doling out exceptions and exclusions from mandates in the act, and delaying implementation of provisions of it.

Exclusions and exceptions went to industries and unions whose cooperation are/were essential to the success of the Administration's ongoing enterprises. A simple matter of quid-pro-quo lifting of requirements based on claims of need. Delays, as we know, were imposed in order to give the Democratic Party what it really needed: a time machine. They needed then, and need now, NOT TO HAVE a bruised and broken electorate going to the polls on November 4, 2014, remembering who it was, which party it was, that single-handedly delivered our health insurance, our health care, into the maws of the great leviathan, the federal government. So delay, delay, delay.

What is missed for many though is the meaning for the whole enterprise of Obamacare to be drawn from delays, exceptions and exclusions. An enterprise that is so swiss-cheesed on the basis of partisan interests of industries, unions and politicians may be many things, but it is hard to argue that it is an essential one.

No sense stopping at Obamacare, given this Administration's decisions to run guns. Fast and Furious, of course, run by Attorney General Holder, put guns into the hands of Mexican cartel drug lords. Some of those guns came back to the United States and were even used to kill American federal employees. Just as evil, others of those guns stayed in Mexico; in one of the most heart-rending instances, the guns were used to slaughter 12-, 13- and 14-year old girls attending a birthday party. 

But Obama's gun running extends beyond Fast and Furious. The Benghazi story, when it is fully told, will detail the movement of arms from us, to Libyan based affiliates of al Qaeda, and across the northern coast of African to al Qaeda affiliates in Syria responsible for killing other Muslims, Christians and Christian clerics, occasional beheadings, the bizarre scene of man taking a bite out of another man's heart, and the rest.

There is more. Frankly, there is too much more. That Goodlatte believes that the basis for impeaching Obama does not exist leaves me with a dread sense that the one truly representative body of our federal government is captained by the ignorant or the damned.

He's George Takei and It's Okay ... For Him to Be Wrong

Ensign Sulu, I won't tell you how the Enterprise slipped into a worm hole, and you don't tell me  how the Free Exercise Clause and Religious Freedom Restoration Act work.

George Takei, who entertains me daily with his Ohhhh Myyyyy reactions to internet memes and stories, is "mad as hell and he's not going to" leave you unaware of it.  He posted a short piece on his blog site sharply criticizing Hobby Lobby and the decision of the Supreme Court.  You can read his blog post here.

I'm sharing this article, not to approve of its reasoning, but to get to a point that it brushes against.

In the late 1980's the Supreme Court decided Employment Division vs. Smith.  It was a case involving a claim for unemployment benefits.  The claim was denied by the State after the claimants were terminated (from their jobs as drug counselors) after testing positive for the use of peyote (a sacramental in Native American religions).  The Supreme Court, then for some  thirty years, had upheld religious freedom claims in certain unemployment cases (Jehovah's Witnesses that refused work on Saturdays, for example, and then lost their jobs as a result.

In Smith, however, the Court hewed a new line, one that caused great consternation in the small community of religious liberties attorneys and commentators.  It was, it seemed, as though the Court had torn the Free Exercise Clause out of the First Amendment.

You see, before Smith, the Court applied a test in such cases that fairly doomed state actions that substantially burdened the exercise of religion and conduct compelled by religious belief.  Where a claimant -- for unemployment as an example -- was engaging in conduct as a product of adherence to religious belief, the government could only impose substantial burdens on that conduct if it did so (a) in service of a truly compelling government interest and (b) by the least restrictive means available to serve the government's asserted interest.

With Smith, in the vast majority of cases, the Court's instruction was that when the government's actions burdened religiously animated conduct, not because such conduct was targeted for its religious connection, but by means of a law that was neutral as to religion and that was generally applicable, the Court's prior line of decisional law no longer applied, and religious claimants would not fare well on their claims.

So now we have George Takei making pronouncements in response to the Hobby Lobby decision of the Supreme Court from June 30.  Unlike many celebrities, he actually employs the language of courts, of judges, and of constitutional litigators, directly quoting the language of the standard articulated by Justice Scalia in the Smith case.

Truth is, George gets the standard exactly right.  As a former Adjunct Professor that actually taught the Law of Religious Liberties and also Constitutional Litigation, I would be dishonest to grade his ability to quote a relevant Supreme Court lower than an "A."

But neither the Supreme Court, nor lower courts, simply announce a relevant standard or test and then immediately announce the winners and the losers.

In between the Court's announcement of the governing test and the Court's announcement of its judgment comes that other, sometimes tedious, stuff:  the Court's reasoning, statement of issues, and analysis.  Unfortunately, it is at this step that George goes off the rails, and simply expects us to enjoy the fall into his chasm of misunderstanding.

Here's George's terse application of the standard he considers governing:

""Once the law starts permitting exceptions based on 'sincerely held religious beliefs' there's no end to the mischief and discrimination that will ensue.""

Well, actually, George you missed my class, so I won't fault you terribly for how you got confused.  Under Smith, the requirement is that a law must be (a) neutral as to religion and (b) generally applicable.  Let's concede for now that the Affordable Care Act is, on its express terms, neutral as to religion.  In other words, and it's hard to argue otherwise, that the text of the law does not contain such language as, "shall provide coverage for contraception except where objected to for political reasons, for public health reasons, or for moral, but not religious reasons."  Obamacare lays a thick and heavy blanket on all, and from 30,000 feet it looks like a 1500 thread count affair not cheese-clothed with holes.

The law, under the standard to which George adverts, also requires that the law be generally applicable.  This is a historical derivation from the Court's cases.

In the granddaddy of unemployment compensation--Free Exercise cases, Sherbert v. Verner, South Carolina denied unemployment compensation to a Jehovah's Witness terminated from employment after declining to work on the Sabbath.  Had the facts in the case ended there, perhaps the Supreme Court would have ruled differently.  South Carolina, however, had the cheese-cloth problem.  The State imposed so called Blue Laws requiring Business Closings on Sundays.  The State, however, authorized the relevant state official to declare an emergency during which Sunday closures of factories would be lifted.  The statute went further:  even when the Blue laws were suspended in their operation, the law barred the State Unemployment Compensation Commission from denying unemployment to those that refused to work on Sundays.  Now that punctured was a big old bunch of holes in the State's "generally applicable" law.

South Carolina is part of the Bible Belt, and home to one of the most widely known conservative and religiously affiliated colleges:  Bob Jones University.  Folk there observed Sundays, attended church, and would not lightly surrender to employers' demands for Sunday labor.  Refusing to work on Sundays was a low risk venture for such people, because the State demanded that they not be denied unemployment compensation if they were fired for refusing to report to work.

Just how significant could the State's interests be in its schemes of Sunday Blue Laws and restricted access to unemployment compensation if the State wrote an exception likely to cover better than a bare majority of its citizens, and deliberately leaving unprotected those claimants whose day of religious observation and worship fell on Saturday or some other day?

So Sherbert taught South Carolina the importance of what might otherwise be called a foolish consistency.

And, as they say, therein lies the rub:  Takei is "okay" on the statement of the test, but misses entirely that this administration has cheese-clothed the Affordable Care Act with exceptions.  If the purposes of the legislation were so very compelling, why the delays?  If the purposes of the legislation were so very compelling, why grant the exceptions to its mandates?  Friendly corporations, large unions, unfavorable deadlines risking political suicide for Democrats that voted in the new statutory regime ... all these commanded exceptions, and left the Affordable Care Act leaking like the dikes of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.

So even under the Smith case, the United States should have lost.

But wait, as the late night hawkers say, there's more.

Hobby Lobby and the claimants in its companion case were not principally relying on the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment (the constitutional provision Scalia interpreted in Smith).  They claimed that the contraception mandate of Obamacare violated their rights under a federal statute:  the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA").  And RFRA, you see, was the law passed by Congress in its reactive displeasure to the Smith decision.  In it, Congress created a cause of action against the federal government for actions that substantially burdened religiously motivated actions unless those burdens ... wait for it ... were the embodiment of compelling government interests and served by the least restrictive means.

So, for a second time, I must drop George by a letter grade or three, because he flippantly stated a legal standard that applies to Free Exercise of Religion claims arising under the First Amendment, ignoring all along that these cases arose under RFRA.  I sympathize with George.  I suspect he understands that Hobby Lobby will have effect, ultimately, beyond the area of health care insurance.

In fact, it may impact a small set of cases that could arise under federal law involving discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, queer and questioning folk.  After all, if you can refuse to provide certain contraception insurance coverage as a result of RFRA, then perhaps you could take other actions, plainly discriminatory, against individuals because of their sexual orientation or self-identification, and have the umbrella like protections of the Court's reasoning in Hobby Lobby.

I say a small category of cases because, frankly most of the sexual orientation discrimination matters today arise under state and local law, which is unaffected by the Court's decision interpreting and applying RFRA.  That statute, when passed by Congress, included a section applying its restrictions to the actions of States and local governments.  That section, however, was struck down in the late 1990s in the City of Boerne v. Flores case.

At the end of the day, Hobby Lobby is good news to a religious liberties attorney like me for one reason.  Out of the dozens and dozens of cases, perhaps hundreds, filed under RFRA since the statute's enactments, this one is the first to reach the Supreme Court.  This case is the first to actually analyze RFRA.  This case is the first to provide relief to claimants at the Supreme Court under RFRA.  And it happened all because Congress rejected the very standard adopted by the Court in Smith, and quoted in objection by George today.

Terror at Twenty Thousand Dollars: Obama or O'Gremlin?

I know folks flying with him thought William Shatner was crazy, in that old episode of Twilight Zone, because only he could see the gremlin tearing up the wings of the passenger plane.  Is there anyone beside Gerry that looks out on the wings of American healthcare and misses the destruction being worked by that Gremlin at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Here's what prompts my question:

I called Congressman Gerry Connelly's office (my representative, after all), to instruct him to vote against funding enforcement of Obamacare.  As part of that conversation, explaining the damage that the misnomered "'Affordable' Care Act" is inflicting, I explained that my son, who has worked for Trader Joe's for several years, has recently learned that he, along with thousands others of TJ's non-management (part-time) crew would be cast adrift from TJ's insurance coverage.  That marooning of TJ's crew IS THE DIRECT IMPACT OF Obamacare on them.

Just days later I get a close typeset letter from Gerry, confirming his continued faith in Obamacare as the cure for what ails our health care system.

This morning, as I write this, twenty thousand part-time employees of Home Depot are waking up to discover that HD is eliminating health insurance coverage for them.  This IS THE DIRECT IMPACT of Obamacare.  And, to top it off, as I write this word comes that 160,000 Walgreens employees will be out on the insurance market looking for coverage because of the financial impact and costs to their employer of compliance with Obamacare.

Of course, Gerry is for government gerry-mandering of markets.  As the inept chair of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, he tried to impose the Affordable Garbage Service ordinance on us residents.  Then it was our incompetence to negotiate for garbage service with private companies.  Today it is our incompetence to negotiate with employers and insurance companies.

Gerry's instinct -- ALWAYS WRONG -- is that the government can do better for us what we have the right to do for ourselves.  He is welcome to insist on it, even though he is wrong.  What he is not entitled to do is claim as truth what the facts show to be false.  His FALSE CLAIMS are that Obamacare would "bring down premium costs for families and small businesses," "reduce the deficit," "protect [individuals'] choice of plan and doctor," and "improve access to care[.]"  (I excerpted these Connelly claims from his letter to me, dated September 13, 2013.)

It is a unhealthy mania, a mental illness, for him to insist that Obamacare is having the salutary effects of controlling costs and increasing availability, when costs are spiraling upward, companies are departing markets, and businesses are moving THOUSANDS OFF their prior company-based coverage.  Just as it was an unhealthy mania for the FLIGHT CREW and PASSENGERS on Bill Shatner's flight NOT TO SEE THE IMMINENT PERIL in which he knew them to be.

The O'Gremlin has scarred the Nation fairly badly.  His economic recovery has worse indicators than George W. Bush's recession.  More than 90 million Americans have departed the labor force -- improving employment numbers ARE NOT a reflection of a growing full time work force, but a shrinking pool of those seeking employment.  Record claimants for SNAP, the program formerly known as Food Stamps.  Debilitation of the military.  Increased racial tensions across the Nation.  These are all evidence of the O'Gremlin at work.  Gerry Connelly can whistle past the graveyard ... and I can remind folks of his mania come Election Day 2014.

Potentates Don't Obey Laws

Here's a puzzlement.
If the State in which you live requires that you register your car within 30 days of moving it into the State, and six months later you are stopped by a constable and ticketed for having out of state plates, will your plea of insufficient time be heard as a defense to the offense?

If you enter a local park that has posted hours, and warns that presence during closure constitutes trespass, will your plea that you had insufficient time to depart from the park be heard as a defense to the offense?

The truth is, and it is as true a truth as comes along the pike, the government DOES NOT CARE about your excuses. When it imposes timetables and deadlines on citizen behaviors, it holds citizens feet to the fire (and often toasts citizens toes with criminal prosecutions).

But whaddya care if the Government imposes deadlines BY FEDERAL LAW and then just blows through them like Elvis in a 67 Caddy blowing through a one-speed trap town near Tupelo?

Yet that is just what the Obama administration has done, blowing deadline after deadline in a law that was NOT drafted by Republicans out to set booby traps for an unwary president, but was drafted by boobies in Congress (Pelosi being the Chief Booby) laying meaningless traps for an out-of-control, egocentric president.

You can read about the deadlines in an UNPUBLISHED Congressional Research Service memorandum here. 

You can read a great summary, in Forbes, about how Obama's administration has blown past more than half the deadlines here.