Indeed, and not forsooth.

[A]t last weekÂ’s news conference [Obama] offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.

Explaining his decision to unilaterally rewrite the Affordable Care Act (ACA), he said: “I didn’t simply choose to” ignore the statutory requirement for beginning in 2014 the employer mandate to provide employees with health care. No, “this was in consultation with businesses.”

He continued: “In a normal political environment, it would have been easier for me to simply call up the speaker and say, you know what, this is a tweak that doesnÂ’t go to the essence of the law. . . . It looks like there may be some better ways to do this, letÂ’s make a technical change to the law. That would be the normal thing that I would prefer to do. But weÂ’re not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to Obamacare. We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.”

...

In a 1977 interview with Richard Nixon, David Frost asked: “Would you say that there are certain situations . . . where the president can decide that itÂ’s in the best interests of the nation . . . and do something illegal?”

Nixon: “Well, when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Frost: “By definition.”

Nixon: “Exactly, exactly.”

Nixon’s claim, although constitutionally grotesque, was less so than the claim implicit in Obama’s actions regarding the ACA. Nixon’s claim was confined to matters of national security or (he said to Frost) “a threat to internal peace and order of significant magnitude.” Obama’s audacity is more spacious; it encompasses a right to disregard any portion of any law pertaining to any subject at any time when the political “environment” is difficult.

Obama should be embarrassed that, by ignoring the legal requirement concerning the employer mandate, he has validated critics who say the ACA cannot be implemented as written. What does not embarrass him is his complicity in effectively rewriting the ACA for the financial advantage of self-dealing members of Congress and their staffs.

...

If the president does it, it’s legal? “Exactly, exactly.”

I can't quote the whole thing so just Read the Whole Thing. The part about Congressional staffs -- Obama has now, by executive lawmaking power hitherto unknown -- undone the provision that Congressmen and their staffs would be subject to the law just as any citizen. That was a major concession required to get this thing passed (barely) -- and here is now undoing it, by resort to his purported ability to "tweak" the law so long as he does not change its "essence."

I will say again: Obama by his own actions has declared that this law may be changed in part or in whole by unilateral executive action. We will remember.

The media continues to not be interested at all in this major unilateral change to the Constitution.

Instapundit has more, including this column by Donald Sensing. Sensing thinks the law is now essentially a nullity.

Obama decides what the law is, and when, and if.

Obama can do this not because the Constitution or law authorize it. Most definitely they actually prohibit it. He is getting away with it because there is no one who can stop him and almost no one who wants to stop him. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, in the Democrat party is in the slightest interested in reining in Obama's expansion of executive diktat because they know what few of the rest of us are awakening to: the Democrats are never going to lose that executive authority again. Let me be clear, with a promise to elucidate another day: there is never going to be another Republican president. Ever.

Well that's chilling.

But then, not to keep sounding like a communist, but every corrupt system contains the seeds of its own destruction.

So we've got that going for us.

D'Oh! Austin in Texas writes:

Reading the comments on the Washington Post site is hilarious.

"How dare you compare Nixon and Obama?! Obama never bugged his opponents!"

It's like they're actively avoiding reality instead of ignoring it.

They've been trained to their whole lives. They've been taught that doing so constitutes virtue and intelligence.

They now deny reality as part of their involuntary reflex system -- the same way you can't help but read words placed in front of you. You don't choose to read anymore; the brain is conditioned to make words out of squiggles automatically, in background.

Posted by: Ace at 10:11 AM | Comments (212)
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No, it's not the Super-Nova of Death we are long awaiting (over that so-last-year tease SMOD), but a surprisingly bright nova caught by an amateur astronomer using just a 7" telescope yesterday. Over the course of the night it brightened from an already spectacular 6.8 mag to possibly 5.5 based on the latest amateur observations, Correction: now visual reports peg it at magnitude 5 putting it well within range of the naked eye from a dark sky site and binoculars for everyone else with a clear sky. Novae don't typically remain bright for long, so if you have a pair of binoculars, here's the what it is and how to see it, with bonus live video from Slooh. more...

Posted by: CAC at 02:33 PM | Comments (52)
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Via Nice Deb, try this:

1. Open any YouTube video.

2. Pause it. After pausing, click a blank area on the side of the webpage.

3. Type 1980. This is tricky: Don't type it in the URL bar or the YouTube search bar. Just type into your keyboard. The letters won't actually show up onscreen.

4. Enjoy.

It seems to work worst in FireFox (and may not work at all) and easiest in Chrome.

Thanks to weft-cut loop for specifying "put your arrow on a blank area outside of the video box."

Posted by: Ace at 09:11 AM | Comments (411)
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Even Rand Paul is acknowledging that delaying ObamaCare for a year might be the fallback position if repeal fails. This comes as a number of Republicans and conservatives, including conservative healthcare writer Avik Roy and The Weekly Standard pushing this line.

I have a couple of problems with this switch in goals.

If you argue that using the CR or debt ceiling hike to force a repeal of ObamaCare is a fool's errand that Obama won't agree to, what makes anyone think he'll simply agree to delaying the whole thing?

If he does agree to the delay it's because he recognizes that implementing it on the current schedule will be a disaster and put the whole program in jeopardy. Why should the GOP agree to give him time to get his act together and improve the chances of it working in the future?

What happens in a year? Will Republicans and conservatives who don't think this is a hill worth fighting on agree to fight on it next year? Considering their whole history is one of, "Just let us surrender one or two more times and then victory. Well, maybe four or five more times", I don't see why we should accept a promise not to pull the football out again in a year's time.

Pushing ObamaCare back a year beyond the midterms creates new problems.

It could push action into a lame duck Congress. Letting lame duck Congresses handle big issues generally doesn't work out to well for people trying to fight government expansions.

Imagine if the decision point is pushed beyond January 2015 and the GOP wins the Senate and the House. Then it will fall to the GOP to "fix" ObamaCare. This is what I think health care policy types on the right are hoping. They won't fight to repeal ObamaCare then, they will get to push their pet big government insurance programs. We'll either wind up with the GOP having co-ownership of ObamaCare or some bastardized version that is a fusion of ObamaCare and conservative ideas. That rickety structure will no doubt require greater and greater tinkering and fiddling, all the while the decision makers in DC will be handing out goodies to their friends to get votes and money.

The most ridiculous part of this whole idea is how terrible the negotiating plan is. Why in the world if you wanted to delay it a year wouldn't you embrace repeal at all costs as your opening bid? Right now the "delay" crowd is opening with their supposed desired end state. If you wind to wind up some place in a negotiation you don't start with that offer. You start further away so you can compromise to your preferred end.

As Ace has said many times, the GOP needs to stop reading the stage directions as if they are in the script.

I'm sure Obama and the Senate Democrats are having fun watching the GOP negotiate against itself before negotiating with them. Can't anyone play this game?

The GOP has been moving away from repealing ObamaCare almost from Day 1. Until someone makes the case that kicking the can down the road makes repeal more likely I'm going to consider "delay" just another attempt to make that surrender seem palatable while protecting GOP office holders from a backlash by the base.

If you want to get rid of ObamaCare, the only way to do that is...to get rid of ObamaCare. Everything else is excuse making.

But I guess there no possible way the GOP could ever stand up to the Obama juggernaut. You know, the one currently underwater on almost every issue in the latest Gallup poll.

If the GOP is going to constantly be afraid of its own shadow, what good are they?

Added: Yes, I know people will say "but you opposed the shutdown route last time! You're a hypocrite!". Let me just note that there was a little thing called an election between then and now. I thought a shutdown of the government would hurt the GOP's chances in 2012. Turns out they managed to do that all by themselves.

A shutdown was always a last ditch, long shot effort. Well, that's where we are now. We weren't there in 2011.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:29 AM | Comments (250)
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Above The Post Update:

Obama says he deplores the violence, blah, blah, blah.

Real action is cancelling an upcoming joint US-Egyptian miltary exercises.

The rest is pretty much boilerplate. Nothing about suspending or reducing aid.

Original Post:

It was supposed to be 10:15 eastern but...not so much.

The theme will no doubt be "stopping the violence" and "all sides must come together". A lovely thought when hundreds died yesterday but is it in our interest?

The Muslim Brotherhood spent 50 plus years plotting to take power in Egypt. They finally got it and the Army tossed them out after a year. They aren't even going to pretend to be interested in elections ever again and they aren't going to go away.

This is a fight that has to happen and will happen. We might as well let the Army do what it has to do and try and shape the post conflict environment.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:28 AM | Comments (302)
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• The Coming Hillary Cult
  
• Obama's Unconstitutional Steps Worse Than Nixon's
  
• At Least 525 Dead In Egypt Street Fighting
  
• Obama's Approval On The Economy Drops To 35%
  
• VDH: Elite Ignorance
  
• The End Of Policy
  
• Bradley Manning Apologizes For Leaking Information
  
• Time For The Annual Outrage About The Yasukuni Shrine
  
• South Korea Joins Asia's Naval Arms Race
  
• India Unveils Its First Aircraft Carrier
  
• End The Civil Rights Movement
  
• Unions Hurt Detroit, But Crime Killed It
  
• Cisco To Lay Off 4,000 Workers
  
• How Government Helped Create Megabanks
  
• Request For Gun Permits Double In Newtown
  
• Ashton Kutcher Gives Good Speech At Teen Choice Awards
  
• Vanity Of Visionary?
  
• Reality TV Actor Dies From Suicide
  
• A-Rod Plans To Sue MLB If Ban Isn't Lifted
  
• China Zoo Under Fire For Disguising Dog As Lion
  

Follow me on Adult Friend Finder.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:35 AM | Comments (218)
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Sorry. Overslept.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 04:10 AM | Comments (349)
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Dickpics ain't the only thing one should refrain from. For example: openly soliciting random people to come and sell you drugs at work.

Awesome! Can we come too? MT @Sunith_DB8R Any dealers in Vaughan wanna make a 20sac chop? Come to Keele/Langstaff Mr. Lube, need a spliff.

— York Regional Police (@YRP) August 13, 2013

The rocket scientist who made the solicitation tweet has apparently been fired.

As a general rule of thumb, I'd recommend staying away from open uncoded Twitter solicitations for bribes, contract killers, arsonists, drug mules, and bomb makers.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 11:05 PM | Comments (145)
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Since I'm going to be in the air most of today that means that tonight will be a movie night.

And the feature presentation is the 1987 classic Schwarzenegger movie, The Running Man.

Re-watching it I was struck by how it's much less far-fetched it is today than it was 25 years ago. It was supposed to be an over-the-top extrapolation of supposed Reagan-era commercialism and authoritarianism to 2017 but today we're much closer to its reality and Reagan and the Right had little to do with that.

And I can't see an 80's-era Maria Conchita Alonso without thinking about Andrew Breitbart's comment about her on Adam Carolla's podcast.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:15 PM | Comments (528)
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Terrific piece by the Weekly Standard on the one actually politically-motivated shooting in recent memory -- but one unremarked upon by the media, because who cares if a conservative is shot?

Kathleen Parker asserted that Hillary Clinton would make a great president just because she is a woman. When asked why that should be the case -- isn't her selling point that she's as tough as a man, or something? -- Parker splutters. Poor gal hadn't thought about it quite enough.

Then Allah returns to much the same subject as "the conservative-leaning columnist" Parker continues to say how super-awesome it would be to have a woman president, just because, that's why.

Apart from issuing the standard bromides about Girl Power, Hillary...

...[has] a great resume. ThatÂ’s the case for Hillary, world savior, such as it is. What youÂ’re seeing in columns like this, and in the sort of messianism that greeted O in 2008, is identity not only as a substitute for major career achievements but as something actually superior to them. We donÂ’t need someone with a track record of significant civic, business, or military accomplishments; we need someone who, by virtue of the historic nature of their candidacy and their own iconic persona, will somehow save the world purely by attaining power. It was unconvincing five years ago. ItÂ’s less convincing now.

Indeed. Forsooth.

What does forsooth even mean? I don't know.

Oh okay it sort of does completely work there. Okay that's a useful word.

And speaking of black holes of failure, this New York Times piece on an intense debate about the nature of black holes is very interesting. Apparently a lot of people now think Einstein was wrong on a fundamental level about the nature of gravity. I can't say in what way, as I'm not done with it yet, but so far it seems really neat.

(Actually, now that I read more of it, it's one of those typical NYT science pieces which is long on Hype and Excitement! words, while providing little actual illumination; however, the subject itself seems adequately compelling to justify reading up on it elsewhere.

Like this paper -- but I have a feeling that is really for the Advanced Class. Update: It's for the Very Advanced Class. I should also retract my knocking of the Times piece for not providing much illumination: In fact, this seems pretty much beyond the ken of all but top-level physicists.

Any physicists here want to explain this to us non-Mathletes? Maybe in a post?)

Via @instapundit

Posted by: Ace at 04:55 PM | Comments (324)
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