• Obamacare Premiums To Skyrocket, Some To Triple In Cost
  
• Obama Pivots To Women's Issues
  
• Rand Paul Gets Standing Ovation At Berkeley
  
• Democrats Have Lost Two US House Candidates This Week
  
• The Hangover
  
• Not Your Father's Cold War
  
• Virginia: The 'Third Way' On Medicaid Expansion Is Still A Disaster
  
• Russia Annexes Crimea, Obama Makes His Final Four Picks
  
• EPA Goes All In For The Dems
  
• To The Obama Administration, Everybody Is A Child
  
• This Is How The Tea Party Ends
  
• Apparently Staring In Degrading Porn Is Feminism
  
• Fox News Babe Passes Out Flying With Blue Angels
  
• Six States That Can't Decide On Medicaide Expansion
  
• Harry Reid Superpac Makes Anti-Cotton Ad
  

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Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:00 AM | Comments (596)
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Actually, they even went further than the headline suggests.

Previously, they had completely banned guns in public housing. But this was challenged by lawsuit in 2010, and the housing commission rewrote its complete ban, making it instead a ban on carrying a gun in hallways, laundry rooms, and other common areas.

But the Delaware Supreme Court has now struck that as unconstitutional, given the new (old) understanding of the Second Amendment post-McDonald. So you can now carry your weapon to the laundry room. Which, frankly, seems like a good idea, because attacks outside your actual apartment are likely to occur in such isolated areas.

And they did so unanimously.

Actually, they merely mentioned the McDonald decision, while chiefly justifying the decision on... Delaware's own constitution, which guarantees the right to keep and bear arms.

Check out Cooke's post for more and links.

Cooke has another important gun story: A review has found the Navy Yard shooting was indeed preventable. But not by gun control.

The report notes that the shooter had been observed acting erratically, but that no one reported this to anyone in a position of authority. Had people been more alert to Lunatic Control, the shooter's permissions would have been revoked, and he couldn't have gotten into the Naval Yards.

This suggests something to me -- I keep seeing the gun-liberals (gun liberalizers, I mean; I use the term for its shock value) saying things that turn out to be right, and the gun-reactionaries keep saying things that turn out to be wrong.

One begins to notice.

I myself have the subconscious coding of a gun reactionary. If you've detected I'm quick to buy into various tropes promoted by the gun reactionaries, you're right. I don't come from a gun-liberal culture, but more from a gun-reactionary one (or, gun-neutral, leaning gun-reactionary). So my instincts do indeed lead, at first, to the gun-reactionary side.

It's actually reason that pushes me over to the gun-liberal side, while fear and primitive programming and tribal mores make me a bit of a gun-reactionary.

When I first read about the Delaware case, my gun-reactionary instinct flared up, and I worried that the liberalization of gun rules within public housing would lead to more crime. You know, the "Wild West" scenario that the gun-reactionaries are always nattering about, but which never seems to actually manifest.

But my gun-reactionary instinct has subsided a bit now, and my learned gun-liberal response is now urging a wait-and-see attitude. After all, anyone who wants a gun for criminal purposes -- anyone whose economic survival relies upon carrying an illegal gun -- already has one. It's just the non-criminals who are disarmed in this circumstances.

And they are forced by circumstance to live in close proximity to those illegally armed.

As I said, while my gut is gun-reactionary, my head has been persuaded by evidence that the gun-liberals are usually right. So I'll just watch on this one, and see if that pattern continues to hold.

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (533)
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There's another way to say this, of course: that members of a particular religion, Christianity, should be affirmatively disfavored and discriminated against.

Does this run afoul of the Constitution? Of course.

Gabe Malor gave Ed Morrissey his legal opinion at the link.

We seem to be having an outbreak of MLBS (Meatball-Like Behavior Syndrome) at this site.

Posted by: Ace at 09:31 AM | Comments (332)
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Via @DraftRyan2016 we have another "Christie confronts voter at town hall" video that made him so famous in his first term.

The wrinkle in this one is that while he's debating a lefty he defends himself not by making the conservative case against government healthcare but praising how much he's expanded it already.

Sure he says he hates ObamaCare but he's pretty proud that he's taken the ObamaCare money to expand Medicaid (you know the system that is a total waste of money) and boasts that NJ's Medicaid system is the 2nd most generous in the country. So you know...Conservative! Maybe even severely.

Of course being so generous with Medicaid comes at a cost in taxes and the resulting flight from New Jersey to lower tax states (via NJ refugee @johnekdahl). Now, Chrisite has done some good on taxes in NJ but to brag that their welfare benefits are so generous and he's happily expanding them is a slap to the people who have to pay for them.

Republicans want to make some made up distinction between ObamaCare Medicaid expansion and the exchanges but conservatives shouldn't let them get away with it.

What I said in 2010 about Romney's inability to take on ObamaCare because of his entanglement with MittCare applies to Chrisite or any other GOP governor who has taken ObamaCare Medicaid money.

Even if Romney does say he opposes the individual mandate, he still has said he'd take credit for Obama's health care "accomplishment". Given his background with the issue and weird statements about the law since its passage, Romney is simply damaged goods when it comes to health care.

He might still be able to come up with a convincing narrative to explain the differences between MassCare and ObamaCare as well as his role in the former. But then the debate will be about Mitt and what he thought then vs. now and whether he can be reliable going forward. Meanwhile the focus will be off Obama and the damage done by this health care scheme.

Republicans need the issue to be a clean and clear choice...we have to nominate someone who was opposed to ObamaCare from the start. Only then will the focus stay on Obama and what he has wrought.

If ObamaCare is going to be a lead GOP issue in 2016 you can't have someone on the ticket who is compromised by it.

Posted by: DrewM at 08:39 AM | Comments (424)
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Everyone loves and respects Thomas Sowell so it's disappointing to see him join the "shut up and get in line" wing of the GOP.

In making the case that conservative sponsored primary fights are endangering the GOP chances to take the Senate he adopts plenty of pithy talking points but shuts his eyes to a whole lot of history.

Only Republican control of the Senate can rein in the lawless Obama administration, which can otherwise load up the federal courts with lawless judges, who will be dismantling the rule of law and destroying the rights of the people for decades after Barack Obama himself is long gone from the White House.

Once that happens, even a future Republican majority, led by people with the kind of ideological purity that the Republican dissidents want, cannot undo the damage.

What is this ideological purity Sowell and so many of his fellow establishment apologists speak of? Is it mere "purity" to desire a Republican party that works to shrink government or at the very least stops its growth? Is "ideological purity" a vice while "ideological flexibility" that leads Republicans to join with Democrats to peruse policies such as amnesty, bailouts and supporting nominees like Eric Holder and Sonya Sotomayor, is a virtue? Is the judgement of people who supported candidates like Trey Grayson, Robert Bennett, Charlie Crist and Arlen Specter over Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Marco Rubio and Pat Toomey beyond question and challenge?

This year’s elections and the 2016 presidential election may be among the most important elections in the history of this country and can determine what kind of country this will be for years — and even generations — to come.

Those Republicans who seem ready to jeopardize their own partyÂ’s chances of winning these two crucial elections by following a rule-or-ruin fight against fellow Republicans may claim to be following their ideals. But headstrong self-righteousness is not idealism, and it is seldom a way to advance any cause.

Yes, yes. Every election is THE MOST IMPORTANT IN HISTORY! This isn't a reason not to try and push the party in a direction amenable to the base but to simply a way to confer lifetime appointments to those who have won a single election at some point in the distant mists of time.

The argument used to be, if you want to change the party run in primaries. Now that people have taken up that challenge the argument seems to be, if you want to change the party wait until an unimportant time in American history. And spoiler: There never is an unimportant time.

Politics, like war, is a question of power. If you donÂ’t have power, you can make fiery speeches or even conduct attention-getting filibusters, but that does not fundamentally change anything. And it has accomplished nothing in this case.

This argument treats conservative insurgents as children who simply want attention from the adults. What it ignores is that the conservative insurgency was born as a reaction to what the GOP did with power the last time they had it.

We all know the story by now...there was a huge increase in domestic spending including one of the largest expansions of the welfare state (Medicare Part D) under George W. Bush and Republican controlled House and Senate. And no, it wasn't simply because of 9/11.

When confronted by its spendthrift ways, the Bush administration argues that much of the increase in nondefense spending stems from higher homeland security spending. It's true that most homeland security spending is tallied under nondefense discretionary spending. Yet when homeland security spending is separated out, the increase in discretionary spending is still huge: 36 percent on Bush's watch.

I know it's become fashionable for some to ignore this history and HOPE that the GOP will CHANGE if given power again but when it comes to politicians, I'm not the trusting kind. I've written before that I think some of the primary targets are the wrong ones and that there's a danger in picking fights you can't win but that's an argument over tactics (as the GOP types like to remind everyone). What I don't agree with are the notions that somehow the real bad actors here are the ones who remember history and want to make the GOP more responsive to conservative concerns.

The most damning point against this whole argument is that it's simply not true. There aren't nearly as many challenges as the Shut Up! caucus want to pretend there are. Look who isn't getting any serious challenge from the dreaded "outside groups"...Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham.

If this minor level of challenge is unacceptable to the party then what they are saying is you may donate, volunteer and vote but you simply can no voice in actually selecting candidates.

Professor Sowell knows well the economic rule that if you want more of something you subsidize it and if you want less you tax it. Think of the primaries as a tax on the GOP history of big spending and support for big but not quite as big government as the Democrats want. But hey, if you're a fan of big spending so long as the GOP is doing it, have at it.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:50 AM | Comments (335)
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• USAToday Fact Check: Obama is "mixing and matching" his Obamacare stats, giving mistaken impression of costs.
  
• "Health industry officials say ObamaCare-related premiums will double in some parts of the country."
  
• Healthcare[.]gov was down for about 30 minutes yesterday due to "human error."
  
• Obamacare plans don't include coverage at many of the nation's top cancer centers.
  
• WSJ: tax experts predict mass confusion over Obamacare mandate penalties. (paywalled)
  
• Obama manufacturing hubs struggle to create jobs.
  
• DOJ IG: Officials, including AG Holder, touted false data on fighting mortgage fraud even after learning of error.
  
• Ethics group wants investigation into why the Democratic Pennsylvania Attorney General dropped charges against Democratic leaders recorded taking bribes.
  
• Delaware Sup. Ct. unanimously rules the ban on firearms in public housing unconstitutional.
  
• Here's a map and description of all the currently-pending marriage cases around the country.
  

Follow me on twitter, where I put up news tweets like these almost every weekday between 9 and 11 am.

Oh, and I plumbed the depths of the soul-sucking horror of the pro-abortion left:

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:08 AM | Comments (213)
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Happy Wednesday. How happy are folks? Yeah.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus had a good column at CNN's website yesterday describing the committee's new year-round ground game and the reasons for the changes to the 2016 primary schedule.

It's the story of our field staffers across the country -- state directors, data directors, and Hispanic, black, and Asian-American engagement staffers. The RNC has also hired staff dedicated to engaging better with women, youth, people of faith and conservative allies and groups. We have hundreds of staff fanned out, especially in critical midterm states, supporting our candidates and growing our party. Today, 91% of our political staff is in the field.

They support whole teams of precinct captains. We've recruited more than 12,000 captains nationwide. Those captains have teams of volunteers whose job it is to maintain lasting relationships with sets of people in their communities. They're listening to their concerns and making sure they hear about the issues they care about.

Reince announced that the convention will be either June 27 or July 18, shortening the time between the start of primary voting and the official selection of our nominee, compared to 2012. There's a couple reasons for that.

First, once the Republican candidate is officially nominated, he will have access to general election funds. He won't have to hold back enough primary funding (or, more likely, simply go without funding) to fill the gap between the time he accumulates enough primary votes to become the presumptive nominee, which is usually April or May, and the time he is officially nominated, usually August or September.

Second, the early convention gives more time before Election Day for the Republican candidate to focus on the general election campaign, which involves pushing wedge issues for Democrats to the fore. This is in contrast to the primary, which necessarily involves Republicans pushing wedge issues for Republicans. Having a late convention last time meant voters spent almost a year hearing Republicans tear each other down and only 60 days on the general election campaign. We won't do that again.

Reince also mentioned the new digital and data tools the RNC is providing. They were helpful for Rep. Jolly in his recent special election in Florida and the idea is that they'll be available for all Republican candidates and state committees this year.

When the RNC announced the new tech startup, the Democrats rushed out to claim that they too were building a digital and data platform, called Project Ivy. But it's much ado about nothing, built on top of the OFA platform designed to turn out Obama voters, which has drastically underperformed whenever Obama isn't on the ballot.

Additionally, the Democrats have only a fraction of the cash on hand that Republicans do and enormous amounts of debt. The RNC remains debt-free, and therefore has the funds and flexibility to field its data tools. That too is part of Reince's plan.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (326)
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This doesn't seem to lead to a definite answer.

Why isn't it as compelling as it seems? Because most of these landing strips seem to be unlikely endpoints.

The Berita Harian Malay language paper quoted unnamed sources close to the investigation as saying that the airport runways were Male International Airport in the Maldives, Diego Garcia and three runways in India and Sri Lanka.

I assume terrorists would not land at an international airport. Nor at Diego Garcia, where quite a few American servicemen might offer them a welcome warm as gunfire. There are of course terrorist groups operating in India but the country is held by an anti-terrorist government and, if I were trying to not be detected, I'd stay away from India altogether.

There are terrorist groups in Sri Lanka, of course, but I don't know anything else about Sri Lanka.

This is more interesting:

The unconfirmed report then goes on to say that all runways programmed into the simulator are 1000 meters long.

Why is that interesting?

Because a Boeing 777-300 has a listed minimum runway length of somewhere between 1,300 and 1,750 meters, depending on other conditions (such as landing weight, elevation of the airport, whether the runway is wet or dry). You'll want 1,500 meters at a minimum for wet runways, and you always have to consider the possibility of rain. (See correction below.)

So he's practicing emergency-style landings on a runway below the minimum runway length for the 777-300 located around the Indian Ocean. (See correction.)

Maybe this was prudence; maybe it was planning.

Note that other sources on the internet claim the minimum runway for a 777-300 is even longer than what that document says; some recommend 8,000 feet of runway. (See correction.)

Via Hot Air, Malaysian investigators are trying to recover recently-deleted files on the pilot's home flight simulator. (Note that it's possible the chronology here is muddled and the headline information -- about the five Indian Ocean runways -- is the result of these efforts.)

There's also a very simple explanation offered to explain all of this: There was a fire on the plane, the fire was electrical in nature, and the fire knocked out the transponder and ACARS. The pilots therefore turned west, towards the nearest possible runway for an emergency landing.

At some point, per this theory, they lost control of the plane and crashed.

If NBC's reporting that the new westerly waypoint was entered before the "All right, good night" signoff, that would seem to disprove this theory, as the pilots wouldn't divert for an emergency landing and then just say a polite goodnight as if nothing at all was wrong.

Of course, NBC's reporting could be wrong. There has been so many false reports, we don't know anything.

Correction: Andy says:

- The plane's a 777-200, not a 777-300

- Wikipedia says the runway at Diego Garcia is 3,659 meters long, which makes sense because we used to (and maybe still do) base B-52s there and those bad boys need a hell of a lot more than 1,000 meters.

I screwed up badly on the plane's type. A 777-200 does not require as long a runway for a landing -- but still over 1000 meters under best conditions (lowest weight, sea level airport, dry runway). It looks like you'd need a runway from around 1,150 meters to 1,700 meters, depending on conditions.

As for the runway at Diego Garcia: I'm asking Andy right now if Diego Garcia has only one runway. He confirms: It's just the one. So the news report I linked is flat-out wrong in at least one respect.

Sigh. Everything reported in this story is always wrong. Apologies for adding to the wrong reporting.

[Update - Andy:] The plane's a 777-200ER, to be precise. And there's one 3,659m runway at Diego Garcia.

Posted by: Ace at 06:50 AM | Comments (496)
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The Lifeboat Mutiny

When I was around 10 or 11 I inherited a book of science fiction short stories by Robert Sheckley from my youngest uncle when he was clearing out his garage. When I got home my father happened to see it and remarked that it was a good book and that his favorite story was 'The Lifeboat Mutiny'.

Now I was a bit surprised by his casual familiarity with the book since I had no idea that my father had even heard of the author much less read anything by him. Of course it was only later I found out that it had been his book originally before my uncle had gotten it from him - and that my father was as much of a voracious reader as I was to become.

Anyway here is the intro to the story. You can read the rest here - it's not long.

"Tell me the truth. Did you ever see sweeter engines?" Joe, the Interstellar Junkman asked. "And look at those servos!"

"Hmm," Gregor said judiciously.

"That hull," Joe said softly. "I bet it's five hundred years old, and not a spot of corrosion on it." He patted the burnished side of the boat affectionately. What luck, the pat seemed to say, that this paragon among vessels should be here just when AAA Ace needs a lifeboat.

"She certainly does seem rather nice," Arnold said, with the studied air of a man who has fallen in love and is trying hard not to show it. "What do you think, Dick?"

Richard Gregor didn't answer. The boat was handsome, and she looked perfect for ocean survey work on Trident. But you had to be careful about Joe's merchandise.

"They just don't build 'em this way any more," Joe sighed. "Look at the propulsion unit. Couldn't dent it with a trip-hammer. Note the capacity of the cooling system. Examine-"

"It looks good," Gregor said slowly. The AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service had dealt with Joe in the past, and had learned caution. Not that Joe was dishonest; far from it. The flotsam he collected from anywhere in the inhabited Universe worked. But the ancient machines often had their own ideas of how a job should be done. They tended to grow peevish when forced into another routine.

"I don't care if it's beautiful, fast, durable, or even comfortable," Gregor said defiantly. "I just want to be absolutely sure it's safe."

Joe nodded. "That's the important thing, of course. Step inside."

They entered the cabin of the boat. Joe stepped up to the instrument panel, smiled mysteriously, and pressed a button.

Immediately Gregor heard a voice which seemed to originate in his head, saying, "I am Lifeboat 324-A. My purpose-"

"Telepathy?" Gregor interrupted.

"Direct sense recording," Joe said, smiling proudly. "No language barriers that way. I told you, they just don't build 'em this way any more."

"I am Lifeboat 324-A," the boat esped again. "My primary purpose is to preserve those within me from peril, and to maintain them in good health. At present, I am only partially activated."

"Could anything be safer?" Joe cried. "This is no senseless hunk of metal. This boat will look after you. This boat cares!"

Gregor was impressed, even though the idea of an emotional boat was somehow distasteful. But then, paternalistic gadgets had always irritated him.

Arnold had no such feelings. "We'll take it!"

"You won't be sorry," Joe said, in the frank and open tones that had helped make him a millionaire several times over.

Gregor hoped not.

The next day, Lifeboat 324-A was loaded aboard their spaceship and they blasted off for Trident.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:13 PM | Comments (772)
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That's what NBCNew says. I think it's possible they're overerading this a little, but I'll get to that.

The missing Malaysia Airlines jet's abrupt U-turn was programmed into the on-board computer well before the co-pilot calmly signed off with air traffic controllers, sources tell NBC News.

The change in direction was made at least 12 minutes before co-pilot Fariq Abdul Hamid said "All right, good night," to controllers on the ground, the sources said.

Here's why I think they're overreading this a little. First, the timeline:

1:07 am: Last ACARS transmission

1:19 am: "All right, good night" signoff

1:37 am: Scheduled ACARS transmission that never came, because ACARS had been disabled

My problem is that they are saying the turn began at 1:07am. We've seen mistakes made before with timing, based on ACARS -- the Malaysians claimed that ACARS was turned off before the signoff, when they really meant it was turned off sometime after 1:07am. "After 1:07am" quickly became at 1:07 am.

I am guessing that the ACARS transmission itself contained the flightpath changed. And that would have come in at 1:07 am, right? 12 minutes before the 1:19 am signoff.

But just because the flightpath change is programmed into ACARS doesn't necessarily mean the jet began to execute the turn yet.

Megyn Kelly was trying to get people to be firm on this point on her show, and people seemed to be saying "probably" or "maybe" as to whether they knew the plane was already turning at 1:19 am, as opposed to programmed to turn.

Whether the jet had already begun to turn or not, it does seem very important that the instruction was already keyed into the Flight Management System before the copilot's signoff.

Posted by: Ace at 05:34 PM | Comments (212)
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