I guess it’s easy to justify wildly expanding the power of the executive branch when you consider the constitution an outdated document of “negative liberties”.

In the last State of the Union address President Obama accused the Supreme Court of opening “the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts commented recently on the environment of the State of the Union address:

The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling…To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there.

Loss of decorum is of course the least of our worries.  The administration quickly responded via meat puppet Robert Gibbs:

The president has long been committed to reducing the undue influence of special interests and their lobbyists over government.  That is why he spoke out to condemn the decision and is working with Congress on a legislative response.  (emphasis all mine - although the macabre absurdity of this statement should be apparent without bold and italics)

How is it that anyone lets the administration get away with saying that kind of thing for even one second?  Two minutes on YouTube exposes this to be an empty, rotten lie.  Aren’t there any journalists out there who have two minutes to spend on a story that proves a presidential administration is baldly lying to America’s face?  And it’s not this particular lie so much as the pattern of responding to any conflict or controversy with lies and misdirection.

And on, and on, and on.  And of course, the most frequent visitor to the White House:  Andy Stern, head of SEIU.  I guess unions agressively pushing political agendas don’t count as the “undue influence of special interests.”

Definition of undue:  “unwarranted, excessive, inappropriate, unjustifiable, improper”

I agree, Robert Gibbs.  Let’s work on eliminating undue influences from the White House.  We should probably start by getting rid of all the “community organizers”.

From Shlok Vaidya, via Unreligious Right.

NEW YORK — Bank of America customers will soon be unable to spend more than they have in the accounts linked to their debit cards. It’s a step that may become a common move ahead of new regulations limiting overdraft fees.

Rules set by the Federal Reserve that will ban banks from charging such fees, without first getting permission from the customer, are set to take effect July 1.

But Bank of America is going a step further than the regulations require. It will simply no longer allow debit card purchases to go through if there isn’t enough money in the account.

Illinois Republicans finally have a gubernatorial candidate, and for now at least he holds a 10-point lead over incumbent Democratic Governor Pat Quinn.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds State Senator Bill Brady leading Quinn 47% to 37%. Six percent (6%) prefer some other candidate, and nine percent (9%) are undecided.

Via Rasmussen Reports.

In Australia, the Labor government, eager to flaunt its green credentials, instituted a nationwide environmentally-friendly roof-insulation program, using energy-efficient foil insulation. It certainly reduces the carbon footprint of many Aussies’ homes: At the time of writing, 172 of them have burned down. It reduces your personal carbon footprint, too: Four installers of the foil have been fatally electrocuted. As the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair noted, the foil-insulation program has a higher fatality rate than Oz forces in Afghanistan. And, if the electrician survives long enough to get the installation completed, the good news is that, unlike the electric Zamboni, the electric attic always has plenty of juice: Colin Brierley had the foil insulation put into his Gold Coast home and was electrocuted a week later. The environmentally friendly electric shock entered through his knees, exited from his head, and led to a nice stay in hospital in an induced coma.
…
At Copenhagen, Europe attempted to do to the developed world’s entire economy what Peter Garrett’s foil insulation did to poor old Colin Brierley of Windaroo in the Gold Coast. They were prevented from doing so only by Brazil, China and India, three countries with more conventional (ie, non-suicidal) concepts of national interest.

(2010-03-05) — In the wake of a House panel’s 23-22 vote to condemn the Ottoman Turk empire for its alleged genocide against ethnic Armenians, the United Nations announced today it would send a multinational peacekeeping force to 1915 to monitor the situation.

Hey Sean, show us where you dream up all your amazing theories!

Sean Penn appeared on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday and he was in peak form, blathering unintelligibly about the paragon of democratic virtue that is Hugo Chavez (and, implicitly, Fidel Castro):

The collaborative opportunity in Haiti, when you talk about Hugo Chavez, and some of the other people who are demonized, and you know, when some of these countries accuse us of an occupation — where I believe this was strictly a humanitarian action by the United States military, and an incredible one – I’m a little sympathetic. Because every day, this elected leader is called a dictator here, and we just accept it! And accept it. And this is mainstream media, who should – truly, there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kinds of lies.

Yes, throw them in jail. Just like George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Dick Cheney and George Tenet (in another clip from Real Time):

Perhaps his eagerness to toss people he disagrees with in jail is borne of envy for his totalitarian friends in Cuba and Venezuela– who have little trouble doing just that.

Yet there is a sense of desperation in the Administration, a sense that nothing can be as efficacious at the moment as a sticking plaster. Edward B Montgomery, deputy labour secretary in the Clinton administration, now spends his time on day trips to decaying towns that used to have a car industry, not so much advising them on how to do something else as facilitating those communities’ access to federal funds. For a land without a welfare state, America starts to do an effective impersonation of a country with one.