Read Full Article

Federal income taxes are about to go up sharply, but you wouldn't know it listening to the majority in Congress.

Read Full Article

With the coming expiration of the Bush tax cuts, tax rates on income will rise. And with the alternative minimum tax poised to hit tens of millions of Americans with the expiration of the latest "patch," the Treasury will collect even more tax revenue.

All of this will happen automatically, without action by Congress or the president.

DC court: Let’s release terrorists into the US

A federal judge has ordered the release of 17 Chinese Uighers detained at Guantanamo Bay, and specifically into the US.  Judge Ricardo Urbina demanded that the federal government produce them in his courtroom by Friday, and refused to stay his order for an appeal.  He also warned immigration officials not to do their jobs by detaining these suspected terrorists:

A federal judge today ordered that 17 Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay military prison be released into the United States by Friday, agreeing with the detainees’ attorneys that the Constitution bars holding the men indefinitely without cause. …

Justice Department lawyer John O’Quinn asked Urbina to stay the order for a week, giving the government time to evaluate its options and file an appeal. Urbina rejected that request and ordered the Uighurs to appear in his courtroom for a hearing on Friday. He said he would then release them into the custody of 17 Uighur families living in the Washington area.

O’Quinn said the legal ramifications from the order are complex and that he wants time to consult with officials from the Department of Homeland Security. Under existing U.S. law, immigration authorities may be forced to take the Uighurs into custody shortly after they arrive in the United States, O’Quinn said. The Justice Department alleges they have ties to a group that has been designated a terrorist organization by the government.

Urbina chastised O’Quinn for suggesting that the government might take the Uighurs into custody for a second time.

The seventeen men were captured in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan during the 2001-2 campaign to topple the Taliban and fight al-Qaeda.  The judge said that the government had unreliable evidence to show them as a threat to the United States.  If living in terrorist camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan doesn’t provide prima facie evidence of just that kind of threat, it’s difficult to know what Urbina needs.

Now, unless the 4th District overrules Urbina in the next 72 hours, we will knowingly transport 17 Uighers who lived in terrorist training camps to our nation’s capital, and release them on their own recognizance.  Why?  Because we can’t send them to China, who might mistreat them.  Every other country in the world has more sense than to agree to take these Uigher separatists, who like many of their compatriots, have allied themselves with al-Qaeda.  Every other country, that is, except the US, or at least one of its judges.

This is what we can expect when the judiciary decides to usurp the role of the executive branch in waging war.  Urbina ruled that the detention of the Uighers violates the Constitution with their indefinite detention, but that doesn’t apply to unlawful combatants of any war, and never has.  We would be within our rights to hold prisoners of war until an end to hostilities, and Urbina has now given these terrorists a better deal than POWs get.

This campaign is about what kind of country we're going to be in the future, folks. It's serious business, which is why it's so intense.

"What do Barack Obama and Osama bin Laden have in common? They both have friends who bombed the Pentagon."

"This Ayers situation is another example of Barack Obama's morality-optional approach to government. To promote his political career, he was willing to look past Bill Ayers' domestic terrorism. There's no right and wrong for Obama, only things that are advantageous or disadvantageous to him and his career."

Pundits say the economy is all people care about. They say McCain shouldn't focus on Obama's alliances with the terrorist Ayers, Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, and fraud dealer Tony Rezko. Wrong. It's all tied to the economy.

People shun OJ Simpson. They think he's a murderer. They walk out of rooms when he walks in. They won't golf with him. That's how Obama should've shunned Bill Ayers.

Dr. Thomas Sowell: The Real Obama. Basic Facts

NB: NBC Scrubs "SNL" Anti-Democrat Bailout Skit From Website

Planting Seeds of Disaster: ACORN, Barack Obama, the Democratic Party

Obama spokesman: Yes, he continued to work with Ayers after he found out about his past

Jim Cramer: Hey, you know who’s really to blame for the mortgage mess?

Hard truths delivered from an unlikely soapbox. Enjoy it while I run to the ATM. You’ll see why.

Buzz up!

CNN: Obama’s lying about William Ayers

You’ll want to double-check the logo at the bottom left corner during this report.  It really is CNN and Anderson Cooper fact-checking Barack Obama’s claims to have barely known William Ayers — and calling it dishonest.  Stanley Kurtz even gets to make an appearance on a network other than Fox for this report (via Dirty Harry’s Place):

Drew Griffin runs down most of the salient points raised by people like Kurtz, David Freddoso, Jerome Corsi, and others. Obama’s admission in a debate that he briefly served on “a board” with Ayers with little contact gets shot down. CNN followed up on Kurtz’ work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and debunks that notion. They also — amazingly — report on the nature of the grants made by the CAC while Obama ran it to Ayers’ favored schools with radical agendas.

Griffin also tells a somewhat nonplussed Cooper that Obama has lied about his “coming out party” at the home of William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn in 1995. Obama has said that Alice Palmer arranged the fundraiser and the venue, but Griffin spoke to two people who attended the event, who claim Obama lied. Palmer had nothing to do with that event outside of being invited to it. Obama and Ayers planned the event themselves.

Democrats refuse to talk about Fannie, Freddie in Oversight hearing

Christopher Shays ripped the Oversight Committee for its refusal to investigate Congress itself:

“The reason we haven’t scheduled hearings on these two institutions and haven’t requested documents from either is because their demise isn’t someone else’s fault — it’s ours, and we don’t want to own up to it.”

Shays then destroys the notion that Congress got caught unaware by the collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He requests the records of many hearings held over the last six years on this very topic, including a Bush administration effort to overhaul GSE regulation in 2003. The list of hearings demonstrates Congressional culpability in the Fannie and Freddie collapse, and as Shays notes, provides the reason why Waxman has kept the actual proximate cause of the financial crisis out of the hearings that are supposed to investigate the reasons why American taxpayers have to bail out Wall Street.

Note that Waxman wants to save “taxpayer money” by keeping those records out of the committee hearing, instead providing links to the records for those who want to pursue the trail of bread crumbs highlighted by Shays. Too bad Congressional Democrats didn’t have more concern for our money when they blocked tougher rules for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and accused OFHEO regulators of being racists for doing their jobs. That was their excuse the last time Congress got pressed to take some responsibility for overseeing the GSEs, and to no one’s great surprise, that’s their reaction this time as well.

Buzz up!

The Mythical "Wall of Separation": How a Misused Metaphor Changed Church–State Law, Policy, and Discourse

No metaphor in American letters has had a more profound influence on law and policy than Thomas Jefferson's "wall of separation between church and state." Today, this figure of speech is accepted by many Americans as a pithy description of the constitutionally prescribed church?state arrangement, and it has become the sacred icon of a strict separationist dogma that champions a secular polity in which religious influences are systematically and coercively stripped from public life.

How to Read the Constitution: Self-Government and the Jurisprudence of Originalism

The argument that original meaning should guide constitutional interpretation is nearly as old as the Constitution itself. Before there were strict constructionists, before there were judicial activists, there were originalists. In those early days, few seriously objected to the notion that the Constitution should be read in accord with its original meaning, though there were plenty of debates over how best to ascertain that original meaning and what exactly was required to be faithful to the Constitution of the founding.