Archives for December 2013

A federal judge on Monday declared the National Security Agency’s metadata gathering program “indiscriminate” and “arbitrary” and will likely be ruled unconstitutional.

Judge Richard Leon minced few words in denouncing the NSA’s strategy of gathering as much phone, internet and other data in case it’s ever needed as part of a criminal investigation.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” said Judge Leon in his ruling on Klayman v. Obama. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment.”

Leon further stated the NSA appeared to be engaging in a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment’s guarantee against unreasonable search and seizure, that the plaintiff would likely win on the merits and they had proven “irreparable damage”.

The ruling will not take effect anytime soon, however, since Leon is staying his own decision in anticipation of a Justice Department appeal to a higher court.

Nonetheless, Leon’s ruling has civil liberty champions very upbeat.

“I think it’s very significant because it’s very clear under the Fourth Amendment.  The Fourth Amendment says that the government can’t do surveillance and a policeman can’t touch us unless they have actual evidence we’re doing something illegal,” said John Whitehead, president of the Rutherford Institute and author of “A Government of Wolves:  The Emerging American Police State.”

Whitehead believes Judge Leon was too kind to the NSA in allowing the program to continue while the case is decided in higher courts, although he understands why Leon acted the way he did.  Whitehead says it is vital for governments to have probable cause before gathering personal data on any American.

“If not, we’re back to the days of the general warrants, and that’s why we have a Fourth Amendment.  The British would execute a general warrant and they would search everybody’s home to see if they could find something that someone was doing illegally,” said Whitehead, who noted Leon rejected the government’s argument that the metadata program clearly helped to foil many terrorist attacks.

“I think if the judge sticks to his guns and makes the NSA show some actual facts.  If they’re alleging something, they should have to show the facts.  If not, I think it is absolutely a clear violation of our rights,” said Whitehead.

“I think we need to slow this train down.  I think the government knows if they have facts, they should be able to listen in and check out and see if there’s some kind of evidence showing a terrorist attack.  But doing my phone messages and my text messages or yours, that’s clearly unconstitutional,” said Whitehead.

Whitehead is very confident that an examination of the NSA’s activity through the lens of the Fourth Amendment will yield a victory against the government, but he says that’s not necessarily how this case will ultimately be decided.

“It definitely depends on the judge you’re before.  We’ve had cases with the TSA for example.  We challenged some TSA policies over the body scanners and all the searches they were doing.  The judge actually said he ruled in favor of the TSA because there was a secret order.  No one ever saw the secret order,” said Whitehead.

“That’s the kind of instances we get into, but if we live in a secret police state, my feeling is that if the wrong person gets into power, people are going to get into a lot of trouble and historical regimes show that.  I do hope that the right kind of judge hears this case and we stay very consistent with our constitutional freedoms,” he said.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Betsy Woodruff of National Review discuss Bob Woodward’s contention that President Obama is toxic to congressional deals and Congress does much better without him.  They also react to the government admitting that 15,000 people who paid their Obamacare premiums are nowhere to be found in the records of insurance companies.  And they groan as Donald Trump creates another stir over a possible run for office – this time for governor of New York.

Both Republicans and Democrats are publicly holding their noses as they support the Ryan-Murray budget plan, but Heritage Foundation economist Romina Boccia.

“I think this is largely a smokescreen that nobody likes it.  What both parties like about this deal is that it increases spending, and it does so immediately by a fairly large amount, $63 billion over the next two years.  Any deficit reduction wouldn’t happen until nine years later.  It wouldn’t start until 2022,” said Boccia, who believes those cuts are unlikely to happen.

“Even those savings may never materialize because the nature of them are Medicare provider cuts and there are more than 700 billion of those in the Affordable Care Act.  The actuaries have already said these are unsustainable.  Nursing facilities would have to operate at a loss and many Medicare patients might lose access to care.  So already down the road, there’s a high risk of overturning those savings,” said Boccia.

“So what do taxpayers end up with?  More spending now and promises of savings in the future that may never materialize,” she said.

The conventional political wisdom suggests Republicans are going along with the Ryan plan because it’s the best deal the Senate can agree to and the GOP fears more public blame and backlash if the government were to be shut down again in January.

“This is likely the largest motivator in addition to that lawmakers obviously love to spend more,” said Boccia, who doesn’t buy the argument that the GOP would necessarily bear the brunt of the blame.

“If there had been a government shutdown because Republicans stuck to current law and said we want a clean (continuing resolution), it would have clearly been on the Democrats to cause this government shutdown,” she said.

Boccia also has little tolerance for House Speaker John Boehner lashing out at conservative groups including the Heritage Foundation for what he says was condemnation of the bill before it was ever introduced and for opposing legislation that he says reduces the deficit.

“I’m not surprised.  This is Boehner and Ryan’s deal.  They want it to pass.  For Heritage and Heritage Action to come out and explain just what’s in this deal and what a bad deal this is for the American taxpayer.  They don’t like to hear it so they will come out this way,” she said.

On Thursday, the House easily approved the budget, with an overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats backing the deal.  Many Democrats loudly complained about the lack of long-term unemployment benefits being left out of the agreement.  So is that a major win for Ryan?  Boccia says it’s just common sense not to string along the unemployed but instead create better opportunities for job creation.

“You can extend the long-term unemployment benefits longer, but in the end they will have to become part of the other safety net if they can’t get back in the job market, so what we need is an economy that works better for the American people that creates the kind of jobs so we don’t have this long-term unemployment problem,” said Boccia.

“Some of it also has to do with education and where people live.  If you think about towns like Detroit.  Things aren’t looking up there so if you live there and you’re having a hard time finding a job, some of these people might look to moving to other cities where there are actually jobs.  There is a moving pain associated with this but we have a dynamic economy and not all states are doing as well as others,” said Boccia.

With news that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un executed his uncle over charges of treason, the Capitol Steps are here to remind us that the apple didn’t fall very far from the tree.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see PolitiFact award President Obama the “Lie of the Year”.  They also react to several more sudden changes in the new health care law.  And they discuss news that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un had his own uncle executed as a traitor.

Iowa Rep. Steve King considers 2013 a win for opponents of legalizing illegal immigrants in the United States, but he fears a bruising fight in the new year against congressional Democrats and likely his own leadership.

In the wake of President Obama’s 2012 re-election and Democrats retaining the U.S. Senate, comprehensive immigration reform was considered by many to be as good as done.  In May, Senate overwhelmingly approved the so-called “Gang of Eight” plan, which conservative critics immediately labeled as amnesty.

For King and other opponents of this approach to immigration reform, their plan was pretty simple.

“We formed a group in my office back in February to do battle with what was emerging from the Senate and what was starting to emerge from the House, against their amnesty legislation that was coming.  Our goal was to get through the first month, then the second month and could we get to Memorial Day and then the Fourth of July, then Labor Day?  Now could we get all the way to Christmas and we essentially have,” said King.

“I would count that a success looking back, but looking forward we’ve got some real challenges,” said King, who says he cannot see what good the GOP leadership’s piece by piece approach to the legislation would accomplish.

“Explain to me how any of this legislation in the House can pass the House, pass the Senate, get to the president’s desk for his signature that looks anything like something we would support over here.  Right now, no one’s been able to answer that question,” said King.

King says the Judiciary Committee, of which he is a member, has passed a good domestic enforcement bill, which he says has no chance of passage in the Senate.  The panel has also approved a guest worker program for agricultural workers that King says is tantamount to amnesty for half a million people in the U.S. illegally.

While he takes House Speaker John Boehner at his word that the House GOP will never go to conference on the Senate’s immigration bill, King says the danger of the House being forced to vote on anything negotiated with the Senate leaves him with no choice but to oppose every piece of immigration legislation.

“I strongly believe that only bad can come from passing anything out of the House that has to do with immigration.  It can only be a vehicle to get components of the Gang of Eight attached to it,” he said, while offering procedural option to move on some smaller items.

“The Speaker can give Harry Reid a call and say, ‘Why don’t you start a bill over there that is a companion to a House bill that actually doesn’t give amnesty?  Send it over to us and we can send it to the president’s desk.  That way we don’t have to wonder about whether they will keep their word or not,” said King, who says allowing a bill to go to conference has no silver lining for him.

“It splits the Republican Party and it changes the subject from Obamacare.  The president and Democrats win.  Americans lose,” he said.

Although King applauds Boehner for wanting nothing to do with the Senate immigration bill, he is more skeptical about Boehner’s overall approach to Obamacare.  In addition to hiring Arizona Sen. John McCain’s former chief of staff, Rebecca Tallent, to shepherd the immigration debate, other reports suggest the Speaker is holding off on any immigration votes until after many state filing deadlines pass and incumbent GOP members won’t have to worry about a primary challenge if they vote for the legislation.

“Both of those issues are valid and of significant concern to me,” said King, who notes that the recent Texas filing deadline is a big deal given the number of Republicans in that state.

He sees the Tallent hire as an even bigger sign that his coalition is in for some rough waters.

“If you were to reach outside the halls of Congress and hire someone from anyone in America so send a strong signal that you were committed to advancing some form of comprehensive immigration reform, Becky Tallent would likely be the number one person that you would hire,” said King.

In addition to serving in Sen. McCain’s office and essentially authoring three previous Senate immigration bills, Tallent also worked for former Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe, whom King describes as an “open borders” advocate.

Is Boehner’s hiring of Tallent anything more than a clear-cut sign that he intends to embrace the type of immigration reform that McCain has championed in the past?

“I think it says exactly that.  Why would you hire someone whose whole track record was one thing and think they’re going to be able to run a different direction,” said King, who likened the hire to choosing a relief pitcher with the bases loaded and the game on the line.

“I think that she’s a high value relief pitcher for the other team,” said King.

The congressman is quick to point out that he is in favor of legal immigration but that there is world of difference between legal immigration and what many in Washington want to do.

“I just spoke at a naturalization ceremony last Friday in Sioux City, Iowa.  I had to pause a couple of times because it emotionally means so much to me that people that respected our laws then become Americans by choice.  But they need to respect our laws, and that’s the fight that’s ahead of us.  If we allow for rewards for lawbreakers, we get more lawbreakers and in the process, the rule of law is chiseled away and you can never restore it again in our lifetime at least with regard to immigration if these things pass into law,” said King.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are relieved the U.S. didn’t intervene in Syria since the man touted as a moderate future leader was chased out by radicals.  They also react to the Ryan-Murray budget plan and scold John Boehner for declaring any opposition to the bill ‘ridiculous’.  And they discuss revelations that the Mandela memorial service interpreter is a sometimes violent schizophrenic who claims he was hallucinating during the service.

The Obama administration is still aggressively pushing a climate change agenda that centers on developed nations paying the costs of keeping greenhouse gases out of developing countries but several important partners are abandoning the effort over lack of money and increasing doubts over the wisdom of the plan.

The divide was stunningly evident last month at the international climate conference in Warsaw, Poland, where the Obama administration again tried to rally the industrialized world to its cause.

“The Obama administration has historically signed on to the entire man-made climate change disaster narrative.  Todd Stern, who was the chief U.S. negotiator at the conference in Warsaw did ultimately agree to what is called the International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (IMLD), which is a formula through which the industrialized world transfers money to the developing world,” said Marita Noon, executive director at Energy Makes America Great and the Citizen’s Alliance for Responsible Energy.

But while the IMLD agreement sounds like a win for the administration, the plan contains no concrete funding mechanism because of the increasing reluctance of nations to spend billions without any promise of tangible results.

The skepticism was on full display in Warsaw.  Australia’s new conservative prime minister, Tony Abbott, refused to commit another dollar to the climate change agenda and called the program “socialism masquerading as environmentalism.”

Japan also announced it was essentially abandoning it’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, noting that the problems with it’s nuclear energy program left it no other course.  Great Britain is also looking to scrap its involvement in the climate change movement, with the Guardian newspaper reporting Prime Minister David Cameron told his ministers, “We’ve got to get rid of all this green crap.”

“We are really seeing a large falling apart of this entire process.  In fact, Susan Smith with the World Wildlife Fund has called the entire conference a farce because they didn’t accomplish what they had hoped to accomplish.  They went into this thinking there was going to be so-called ‘money on the table’.  As she reported, what they found when they got there was exactly the opposite,” said Noon, who says only the United States and European Union seem committed to the climate change agenda at this point.

So are other nations getting out of the climate change movement because they cannot afford it or because they are growing increasingly doubtful of the science behind it all?  Noon says it’s both of those concerns and more.

“The developed countries are all in economic trouble themselves and they just don’t have the billions to pour into this.  The world is supposed to be sending one billion dollars a year to the developing countries by 2020 and that’s just not going to happen,” she said, while noting that the latest scientific data are also sparking increased skepticism.

“[Carbon dioxide] emissions have continued to rise but global temperatures have stalled.  In fact, German scientists are currently predicting that we are now heading into a new ice age for like the next hundred years,” said Noon.  “While [carbon dioxide] have risen, the economy has gone down and global warming has not continued to rise.  So people are seeing there’s really not a connection between the emissions and global temperatures.”

Noon says with just the U.S. and the European Union left on board the climate change movement, it makes it much harder for them to claim any efforts they undertake will make any difference when the rest of the world just goes about its business.

Nonetheless, Noon says Americans should be sobered by the fact President Obama has no intention of abandoning this fight and will try to enact as much of this agenda through the executive branch as possible.

“As we’ve seen with this president, he can go as far as he wants to.  Hopefully, we are beginning to see some pushback on questioning the constitutionality of all of these executive orders that are being used to go around Congress.  Certainly, Congress is not going to ratify any new climate change treaty that might come out of Paris in two years, which is the goal of the climate change alarmists,” said Noon.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy Mary Landrieu’s new ad suggesting she solved the Obamacare problem by getting President Obama to allow canceled plans to be extended another year.  They also discuss why many people are upset by Obama’s handshake with Cuban dictator Raul Castro.  And they have fun with the news that the sign language interpreter at the Nelson Mandela memorial service was a fraud.

A Kentucky physician is closing his practice at year’s end rather than pay tens of thousands of dollars to comply with the provisions in the new health care law.

Dr. Stephen Kiteck has practiced for many years in Somerset, Kentucky.  He recently attracted attention for his decision to end his practice after taking out an advertisement in the local newspaper.

“Due to the policies of Obamacare, Stephen Kiteck, MD will be closing his medical practice on December 31, 2013,” stated the ad, which encourages patients to stop by the office to pick up their medical records.

“Dr. Kiteck wishes to thank all his patients that have visited his office over the past 20 years, and apologizes for this inconvenience,” the ad concludes.

Kiteck says one provision in particular led to this difficult decision.

“I’m leaving because I can’t afford at this point the electronic medical records and electronic transcribing that’s being instituted to practices.  We’re required to do that.  If you don’t do it, you get penalized,” said Kiteck.

He says whether he complies with the electronic records mandate or pays the fines, the costs are simply prohibitive.

“It’s variable, but it can cost up to $20,000.  But it’s more than that.  You have to train your staff and train myself.  Plus, you have to scan all your medical records.  I have over 6,000 medical records.  These have to be scanned and copied and put onto the computer.  That takes thousands of man hours or woman hours, overtime and things like that,” said Kiteck.

“So the total costs together, as I say, maybe $20,000-$30,000.  It’s just too much of a financial burden to go into right now.  I’m approaching 65 years old.  Even though I’d like to practice into the sunset for 10 more years, but when this came along I felt this was the best decision to make for our medical practice,” he said.

The decision comes only after Kiteck attempted to find relief from the federal government but was flatly denied.

“I tried to get to a grandfather clause in that.  I tried to make an application and be grandfathered for an older doctor and not have to do it.  But they said no.  It’s a 100 percent rule and I was rejected immediately so that didn’t work either,” said Kiteck.

As expensive as compliance would be for Kiteck, he says the cost of noncompliance is also steep.

“The penalty may seem small.  It’s approximately one and a half this year.  Next year it’ll go up to two percent, two percent of each Medicare and Medicaid doctor’s visit.  That adds up.  Thousands of patients a year means thousands of dollars,” said Kiteck.

Most other doctors in town don’t face the same concerns but Kiteck’s explanation suggests others around the nation may be squeezed.

“Most doctors are putting out the finances to switch over to electronic medical records.  They’re younger.  Maybe they’ve got the finances to do it.  A lot of them are in a large group practice.  A lot of them are associated with the hospital.  So I think they’ve got some financial assistance from the hospital that’s helping them out.  I’m a sole practitioner.  I don’t do hospital practice.  I’m separate from it, just a little mom-and-pop type practice.  All the financial responsibility would be on my shoulders,” said Kiteck.

Kiteck says he and other doctors in town are concerned about the long-term issue of reimbursement for Medicaid and Medicare patients, but the medical records mandate is the pressing issue for him.  Kiteck says he will stay in the area and may look for some “sub-contract, part time work” but his no firm plans for what comes next.