90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

With the papal encyclical on climate change scheduled for a June 18 release, the liberal media can be expected to portray the Vatican document as a major step forward for the United Nations agenda of controlling and taxing the use of natural resources by governments and people. But a group of retired NASA scientists is taking on the pope directly, armed with the expertise that has come through decades of planning U.S. space missions and dealing with the most complex and difficult issues of climate science.

Their verdict: the pope is risking his moral status and his credibility.

In fact, this group is directly warning Pope Francis that if he embraces the climate agenda of the United Nations, he will be violating both scientific principles and the religious values he embodies that are supposed to be reflected in direct aid for the poor people of the earth.

But the pope is apparently counting on his status as “the most popular person on the Earth,” in the words of Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant organization, to make the “moral” case that we live on “an abundant yet finite planet,” and that global limits to industrial growth have to be imposed on a worldwide basis.

The battle, now taking shape, will likely help determine whether U.S. sovereignty will be sacrificed in order to...

Every day there seems to be another article focused on how many individuals might lose their subsidies if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs in the King v. Burwell case.

Yet, an even bigger group of individuals harmed by Obamacare has an equally good claim for relief that hasn’t gotten as much attention—the people who, thanks to Obamacare, must pay more for health insurance but who never got subsidies.
The Obamacare subsidies were intended, in part, to hide the law’s unpopular effects. At their root, Obamacare’s costly regulations, dictating what insurers can sell and what individuals and employer can buy, have resulted in premium costs going up, not down. In the 34 states potentially affected by the Court’s ruling, those regulations have driven up costs not only for...

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Morning Mistress

Girls With Guns

A couple of steaks shoplifted at a Gardendale Walmart three months ago led to the biggest food stamp fraud investigation in Jefferson County's history, and launched 11 simultaneous raids this morning at convenience stores countywide.

Led by the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, teams of law enforcement officers met at 5 a.m. for a briefing and then fanned out across the county beginning at 6:50 a.m. The officers and agents were armed with 242 arrest warrants and plans to arrest 17 suspects.

All 17 suspects were in custody by mid-morning, and investigators already today have filed for forfeiture and condemnation of those 11 stores, which totals more than $1 million in assets.

"This is huge for us,'' said Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls.

The massive probe, dubbed Operation T-bone, targeted those they say have been cheating the food stamp system to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars and sending at least some of the profits via wire transfer to Yemen.

District Attorney Brandon Falls announces that 257 arrest warrants have been issued for 20 people accused of fraud and theft of property in Birmingham, Ala., Wednesday, June 3, 2015.
The District Attorney's Office, the FBI, the ...

Dennis Hastert has not been indicted on a charge of sexual abuse, nor has he been indicted on a charge of paying money he was not legally allowed to pay. The indictment of Mr. Hastert, a former House speaker, released last week, lays out two counts: taking money out of the bank the wrong way, and then lying to the F.B.I. about what he did with the money.

Does that make sense? Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic, for example, is worried that the indictment constitutes government overreach, punishing Mr. Hastert for concealing payments whose disclosure he may have thought would be damaging to his reputation, but which were not illegal.

Federal prosecutors allege Mr. Hastert was paying hush money in exchange for wrongdoing that happened long ago. But Mr. Hastert is charged with structuring: making repeated four-figure cash withdrawals from his bank in order to avoid the generation of cash transaction reports, which banks are required to send the government about every transaction over $10,000. These reports have been required since 1970, with the intention of helping the federal government identify organized criminals and tax evaders.

To be clear: It’s not illegal simply to take $8,000 out of the bank repeatedly.

“The criminal provisions there do have strong mens rea (criminal intent) requirements: The government has the burden to prove that...