The Patriot Post Digest 5-27-2015

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The Patriot Post Digest 5-27-2015
From The Federalist Patriot
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Daily Digest

May 27, 2015

THE FOUNDATION

“Honesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a nation be just.” —George Washington, Circular letter to the States, 1783

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

Obama Amnesty Suffers Another Stinging Rebuke1

The Obama administration’s legal woes continued on Tuesday after government lawyers failed to convince a federal appeals court to overturn a temporary injunction against executive amnesty issued by U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen. In February, Hanen blocked2 the first phase of the Deferred Action for Parental Accountability program and reaffirmed his decision3 in April partly because government lawyers misled the court, granting work permits to 100,000 illegals before the executive action was temporarily blocked. Two of the three judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — Jerry Smith and Jennifer Walker Elrod — “found that the states had sufficient legal grounds to bring the lawsuit and that the administration had not shown that it would be harmed if the injunction remained in place and the programs were further delayed,” The New York Times reports. Tuesday’s ruling isn’t a final verdict — the case could eventually make it to the Supreme Court — but the administration is now 0-for-2, and it’s looking likelier it will strike out. Obama spokesman Brandi Hoffine responded to the decision by insisting they know the Constitution better than anyone, saying Judges Smith and Elrod “chose to misinterpret the facts and the law in denying the government’s request for a stay.” If that’s the case, how do Democrats expand this nugget from The Washington Post? “Obama’s second-term agenda, it seems, is in the hands of the courts. Same-sex marriage. Obamacare. Climate change. And now immigration. And in many cases, there is significant doubt about whether his signature initiatives will stand legal scrutiny.” Tell us again who “chose to misinterpret the facts and the law”?

IRS Data Breach Leaves Tax Info of 100K in Hackers' Hands 4

Using the service to request former tax returns and filings from the IRS, a group of hackers stole confidential information on over 100,000 taxpayers. Using the information, the hackers can file false tax returns, stealing directly from the American taxpayer. “Eighty percent of the identity theft we’re dealing with and refund fraud is related to organized crime here and around the world,” IRS Commissioner John Koskinen said. “These are extremely sophisticated criminals with access to a tremendous amount of data.” It’s easy to see that the agency is running damage control. It’s not saying if the hackers were foreign or domestic, and Koskinen said people filing fraudulent tax returns only netted $50 million this year. However, the IRS gave identity thieves $5.8 billion in 2013. As Hot Air’s Mary Katharine Ham5 notes, only 6% of Americans believe the U.S. government does a good job protecting their information. With this news, we guess the IRS will get a budget boost in the next few months — whether it needs it or not. More…6

Now’s a Good Time to Develop a Strategy Against ISIL7

With the fall of Ramadi, it may be a good time for the Obama administration to pause, take a step back and reconsider what it has tried and what that has done against ISIL. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter blamed the fall of the strategic city on the Iraqi army. “The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight,” Carter said on CNN. “They were not outnumbered. In fact they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site. … We can give them training, we can give them equipment. We obviously can’t give them the will to fight.” Meanwhile, it appears the U.S. has the equipment, but it too doesn’t have the will to fight. The New York Times8 reports that U.S. planes only fly 15 strikes a day against ISIL, compared to the 800 flown every day during the 2003 Iraq War. Furthermore, only during one out of four flights does the pilot fire munitions. Part of this is due to concern that any civilian deaths would translate into propaganda for ISIL. Part of the hesitation is because the pilots cannot rely on soldiers on the ground pointing out targets and delineating allies. There’s plenty for Carter and the rest of the Obama administration to consider. How about sending arms and training to the Kurds? Or sending more U.S. troops to spot U.S. airstrikes? More…9

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
GOP, Prepare for SCOTUS’s ObamaCare Ruling10

By Jim Harrington

If the Supreme Court rules against the “Affordable” Care Act in King v. Burwell sometime in late June, it could leave the act in deep water, or it could leave Republicans with the dilemma of fixing a problem they didn’t create. So says conventional wisdom.

SCOTUSblog.com writer Amy Howe discusses the case11: “There are three key parts to the ACA. The first is the ‘non-discrimination’ rule… The second is the individual mandate, which the Court upheld three years ago… Third, because everyone has to buy insurance, there are tax subsidies to make sure that lower- and middle-income Americans can afford to comply with the individual mandate by buying insurance.”

David King is the primary plaintiff in King v. Burwell. He and three other Virginians, for their own reasons, decided they did not want to buy insurance. Virginia, incidentally, joined the federal marketplace, and King has insurance that would cost him $648 per month, but with his subsidy, costs $275. His suit was tossed out of a lower court, but with the help of the American Enterprise Institute he got a writ of certiorari, and he and his fellow plaintiffs' case was picked up by the Supreme Court.

The fight is about four words — “established by the State12” — just a few found in the 2,700-page13 act.

Now pundits and party operatives are scrambling to figure out what will be the outcome if the plaintiffs win or lose. Popular opinion sides with Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, a health care reporter for the Associated Press, who thinks14 it’s “Republicans — not White House officials — who have been talking about damage control. A likely reason: Twenty-six of the 34 states … most affected by the ruling have Republican governors, and 22 of the 24 GOP Senate seats up in 2016 are in those states.”

He cites Sandy Praeger — a Republican — saying the fallout of SCOTUS striking down the law will be “ugly.” Praeger said, “People who are reasonably healthy would just drop coverage. Only the unhealthy would keep buying health care. It would really exacerbate the problem of the cost of health insurance.”

Alonso-Zaldivar also cites a crucial issue: This decision is “bad timing.” Governments' fiscal years are ending, and state legislatures are readying their summer recesses. Arranging a quick fix would be very difficult, and Obama will veto any Republican bill.

But New Yorker staff writer Jeffrey Toobin sees it differently. If the plaintiffs win, 13 million people in 34 states will be profoundly affected. “It’s likely that most of them will no longer be able to afford their insurance,” he says. Toobin then paraphrases Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn axiom. (Many of us know it as: You break it, you bought it.)

Toobin writes15, “Obama will have broken health care, so he owns it. To the vast mass of Americans who follow politics casually or not at all, Obamacare and the American system of health care have become virtually synonymous … The scope of the Affordable Care Act is so vast, and its effects so pervasive … if millions lose insurance, they will hold it against Obamacare, and against Obama.”