You probably remember that a federal court ruled that Obama's fake-recess appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional and hence that the NRLB was unconstitutionally constituted. Its rulings and actions should therefore be a nullity until this situation is corrected.

But the NLRB is, of course, ignoring this ruling, and behaving in an ObamaMursi-like fashion, continuing to issue edicts despite having no constitutional authority to do so.

Cablevision has motioned for an emergency stay from the Supreme Court to restrain the NRLB.

Posted by: Ace at 08:53 AM | Comments (153)
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Also "socialist," which left-leaning Pew declares to be a "neutral" term.

These are words offered by interviewees themselves, free form, with no prompts. Important caveat from Pew: Even the most-frequently appearing words actually only appeared 1% of the time, so this means... Ah, I don't know what it means. I think it means sort of nothing. But Pew says it adds "texture" to the basic poll numbers.

Posted by: Ace at 08:31 AM | Comments (214)
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Several folks were asking for this. I have no idea what's going on there today. Something about Skype, if Twitter is to be believed.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 07:31 AM | Comments (429)
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I'm seeing a lot of questions about the Obama Administration's decision to delay enforcement of the employer mandate. Ace has already covered the awful precedent, the questionable politics, and the all-around failure of Obama's signature legislation. This is meant more to answer some of the legal-ish questions that keep popping up.

First, a lot of folks aren't totally clear on what the employer mandate is. What we call "the employer mandate" is actually a monthly IRS reporting requirement for certain employers (generally, those with more than 50 full-time employees) created by ACA sec. 1513. Covered employers who fail to report or do not meet the requirements for affordable care must pay a penalty to IRS (or, if you like, a tax).

Second, there is no independent provision requiring the covered employers to provide health insurance to their employees. There is only the IRS reporting mandate and its corresponding penalty. (The reason for this type of construction is that it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to force employers to provide insurance. The federal government can only incentivize it using the tax code.)

Third, ACA sec. 1513 does a couple things. But for our purposes, the one we care about is that it amends the tax code (which is really a statute) to include the provisions I've described above. Remember: these tax code changes create a monthly reporting requirement. And, ACA sec. 1513(d) provides explicitly when that monthly reporting requirement shall apply. “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013." Contrary to several media reports, there is no discretion in the law about that December 31, 2013 date. The monthly reporting requirements apply "to months beginning after December 31, 2013," which includes all months in the year 2014.

Fourth, folks are asking about lawsuits. As you probably know, general "taxpayer lawsuits" are not entertained by the federal courts; taxpayers lack standing to challenge government action that affects everyone equally. Some folks are suggesting that employees who lack employer coverage in 2014 could sue. First, they'd be suing their employers, presumably, not the federal government. And second, such suits would be doomed to failure; as I discussed above, there is no indepenent requirement that employers provide their employees with health insurance coverage. There is only the reporting mandate and penalty, which Treasury has said it will not enforce in 2014.

One possibility for a lawsuit where someone might actually have standing is if a member of Congress who voted for the law sues. A Supreme Court case from back during the struggle over the line item veto, Raines v. Byrd, also leaves open the possibility that any member of Congress might sue, but that's a longer shot. As we just saw in the Perry decision, the Chief Justice and Justice Scalia aren't all that keen on expanding the doctrine of standing.

What happens next? I really don't know.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:49 AM | Comments (205)
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• Today's The 150th Anniversary Of Pickett's Charge
  
• Lois Lerner Demands Immunity In Return For Her Testimony
  
• Obama Seeks To Delay His Obamacare Train Wreck For Political Convenience
  
• Is This Column Legitimate
  
• AKP Official On Video With Anti-Semitic Drivel
  
• As Zimmerman Prosecution Implodes A Media Invested In His Guilt Grows More Shrill
  
• Asia's Great Game Of Ports
  
• Obamacare's Success Depends On The Young Being Stupid
  
• Former NYU Professor Stalked Citigroup Exec
  
• Deadline Approaches In Egypt
  
• Boys Punished For Being Boys
  
• Obamacare Employer Mandate Delayed Until 2015
  
• Wave Of The Eighth Century
  
• What Polls Don't Consistently Show About Abortion
  
• Cantor: Best Delay For Obamacare Is A Permanent One
  
• FBI Still Hasn't Contacted IRS Targeted Tea Party Groups About Investigation
  
• Katie Couric Wants You To Know She's A Serious Journalist
  
• Young Girl Who Got Adult Lungs Needs More Surgery As Transplant Lungs Fail
  
• Drug Overdose Deaths Spike Among Middle Aged Women
  
• NBC In Full Water Carrier Mode For Obamacare Delay
  

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:29 AM | Comments (369)
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Happy Wednesday.

Yes, the pro-abortion crowd in Texas actually chanted "Hail Satan." There is video. Of course, this is the problem when you hire your protestors off of Craigslist. It turns out the type of people willing to be hired to support abortion aren't quality people. Go figure.

This NYTimes piece is more properly headlined: "Prosecution Witnesses in Zimmerman Trial Put The Prosecution On Defensive."

Erick Erickson is advising Republicans to "not get cute." He says it's "stupid" to push for repeal of the individual mandate.

A bunch of countries have rushed to deny Ed Snowden's requests for asylum, including Russia, Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Brazil, Austria, Finland, Iceland, and Norway. Bolivian president Evo Morales' plane was diverted to Austria, as countries denied its passage through their airspace, a few hours after Morales said he would be willing to consider Snowden's asylum request.

Deadline looms in Egypt. Morsi isn't backing down.

HHS and employers have had four years to prepare for the Obamacare employer mandate. It's not that another year is going to enable them to sort out all their problems. It's the combination of two things: (1) the employer mandate is going to be bad, bad, bad for the economy; (2) Democrats are starting to worry about losing control of the Senate in 2014.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (471)
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Getting That Old 1979 Feeling Again

Between civil war in Syria, a prospective coup in Egypt that could lead to civil war, and serious unrest on Turkey (that could lead to civil war), we could wake up in three or six months to find the region in complete chaos or worse-maybe American hostages will complete the decay of the moment.  What a relief to know that Obama has telephoned Morsi in Egypt!  I am sure the problem is solved now.

Yep. I've been expecting events to start cascading towards a crisis since...well late 2008 or so. I figured it would take a few years for tensions to build up and inhibitions to sufficiently loosen but 5 years was definitely on the over side.

Now with just a little bad luck we could have chemical warfare troops fighting in Syria and hostages in Egypt. Bad times bad times.

And speaking of that year here's the 1979 Sears Catalog. I think I actually owned more than few toys from that edition and my bedroom décor was a slightly more tasteful version of this:

Also did anyone ever like Ziggy or was he just a giant scam by the cartoon-marketing industrial complex?

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:23 PM | Comments (689)
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Alternative title: Second-Tier Blogger ponders how many things are perfect metaphors for Obama and ObamaCare.

Russia's Proton-M rocket is now grounded due to multiple embarrassing failures.

An unmanned Proton-M crashed shortly after blasting off on Monday (July 1), destroying three navigation satellites worth a total of nearly $200 million. The incident marked the fifth major Proton launch failure since December 2010.

Thanks to rickl.

Below, the video. It's loud, but loud in a good way. Maybe watch it with good speakers if you have one those archaic desktop computers. There are no deaths or injuries I'm aware of.

Which makes this less of a perfect metaphor for ObamaCare. more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:47 PM | Comments (194)
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Is there a special provision in the Constitution that specially empowers liberal presidents with special powers available only to themselves?

No, there's not. If President Obama can do this, then President Walker can do this.

Avik Roy writes about the decision.

Does Obama have the legal authority to delay the mandate?

The Affordable Care Act is quite clear as to the effective date of the employer mandate. “The amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after December 31, 2013,” concludes Section 1513.

The executive branch is charged with enforcing the law, and it can of course choose not to enforce the law if it wants. But people can sue the federal government, and a judge could theoretically force the administration to enforce the mandate.

So the question is: Would anyone sue the Obama administration over this? Employers, of course, will be thrilled to be spared the mandate for one more year. Democratic politicians, similarly, will be glad to have this not hanging over their heads for the 2014 mid-term election.

The wild-card is left-wing activists. Most, youÂ’d think, would defer to the administration on questions of implementation. IÂ’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that all it would take is for one judge to issue an injunction, for an activist to require the administration to enforce the mandate.

I don't support the hidden assumption there, that only leftwing activists could sue because only they would suffer tangible harm from this. Though I'm afraid Chief Justice Tax-Not-a-Tax might agree.

Roy also believes that the move will have two effects -- it will delay the unemployment-raising effect of ObamaCare (to the Democrats' political advantage, naturally) and will drive more people to join the state health care exchanges, because they'll be forced to buy insurance (note the individual mandate is still in effect) while businesses aren't required to provide it for another year. Whether this outcome is desired or not, it will have the effect of pushing more people off employer insurance and into a government system, which many suspect, with good reason, is the Trojan Horse plan behind this all from the beginning of it.

Posted by: Ace at 03:14 PM | Comments (207)
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I suppose my question, a little bit later, would be "From where does he derive the right to unilaterally change his misbegotten law without Congressional action? Just because his law is so horribly screwed up he thinks he has the unilateral power to alter it?"

No. It requires Congressional action. And Congress should repeal it.

But for now, I suppose, let's just notice the headline news.

Businesses wonÂ’t be penalized next year if they donÂ’t provide workers health insurance after the Obama administration decided to delay a key requirement under its health-care law, two administration officials said.

The decision will come in regulatory guidance to be issued later this week. It addresses vehement complaints from employer groups about the administrative burden of reporting requirements, though it may also affect coverage provided to some workers.

The two officials, who asked not to be identified to discuss the move ahead of its announcement, said the administration decided to wait until 2015 before enforcing the employer mandate in order to simplify reporting requirements and give businesses more time to adapt their health-care coverage.

I also notice that this unilateral executive decision puts off the effects of this destructive legislation until after the 2014 elections.

Perhaps we shouldn't permit this.

Precedent: If Obama can change the law by whim according to his political needs by unilateral executive action, doesn't that mean that a conservative president can do so as well?

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (410)
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