I guess it’s easy to justify wildly expanding the power of the executive branch when you consider the constitution an outdated document of “negative liberties”.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

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.

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.

It is taboo to ask our failing youth a simple question, “What exactly have you done the last month to ensure your birthright to the world’s most sophisticated lifestyle propped up by advanced math, science, social stability, and political tranquility?”

It other words, our elite is becoming more elite and refined, while our non-elite is becoming more rough around the edges. But they share a disturbing commonality: both expect something that they are not willing to invest in.

Unsurprisingly, the political class — which talks mostly to itself — thinks that it is far more popular, and legitimate, in the eyes of the country than is in fact the case. In this, as in so many things, America’s political class is out of touch with reality.

But forget the views of America — where, it seems likely, more people believe in alien abductions than in the legitimacy of our rulers — and look just at the more cheerful view of the political class.

Even among the rulers, only 63 percent — triple the fraction of the general populace but still less than two-thirds of the political class — regard the federal government as legitimate by the standards of America’s founding document. The remainder, presumably, are comfortable being tyrants.

Via the Washington Examiner.

You would think that at this particular moment in history, even Al Gore would be trying to stay away from Al Gore.  He is the poster boy for global warming, a concept that recently has been shattering to pieces like the frozen tears of an endangered baby polar bear.

The University of Tennessee, however, will not be deterred from awarding Gore with an honorary doctoral degree.  It has been speculated that they are angling for the recently created “Nobel Prize in Unwarranted Award Giving”.  The Nobel committee has naturally awarded that prize to itself for the past two years since its inception, but for the first time there may be some serious competition.

The University chancellor had this to say:

Vice President Gore’s career has been marked by visionary leadership, and his work has quite literally changed our planet for the better.  He is among the most accomplished and respected Tennesseans in history, and it is fitting that he should be honored by the flagship education institution of his home state.”

Although currently hiding in his ice fortress somewhere in the arctic circle and thus unavailable for comment, a ghostwritten editorial in the New York Times bearing Gore’s name asserted:

Come on, guys…climate change is super serious!  There’s so many earthquakes! 

 

Bow before the high priest of Climate Change, ignorant polluters