Seventeen Has Turned Thirty-Five

Start at 3:35.

How in the hell could I just blow past eighteen years of my life that quickly?

I tell you what — I better hurry my ass up and accomplish something really important before I blink my eyes again, and suddenly 35 turns into 55.

Happy birthday to me, nonetheless.

Don’t Count Your Congressmen Before They Hatch

Newsmax:

WSJ: Obama Expands His Executive Power

Despite campaign promises to refrain from using executive powers to bypass Congress, President Barack Obama is increasingly doing just that, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

From helping rebels in the Libyan revolution to granting states waivers from the No Child Left Behind education act, Obama is finding it easier to push his agenda without asking for approval from elected senators and representatives, the paper said.

And that is not sitting well with either Republicans or Democrats who are keen to defend their own turf against what they see as an overreaching executive.

“When he ran for president, Barack Obama promised to roll back President George W. Bush’s use of executive power, a defining point of the Bush presidency,” Laura Meckler wrote in the Journal piece. “The pledge was part of a broader pitch about Mr. Obama’s governing style, which he said would focus on solving problems in a pragmatic, cooperative way.

This is why I get paid the big bucks, to translate this kind of political bullshit into English for you.

It was easy for Obama to promise on the campaign trail in 2008 that he would never overuse his executive authority, because he assumed that the Democrats would hold Congress for quite a long time. He just presumed he wouldn’t need to issue executive orders for this or that, because he would always have a Congress that would poodle along with whatever he wanted.

Then there was November 2010.

Friday Wrap-Up

Don’t look for much blogging from me this weekend.

I am officially legal as of tomorrow.  Legal, to be President of the United States, that is.  I’ve got the age, now all I need is money and credibility.  Those are much harder to come by.  Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be 34 again.

LOCAL AND REGIONAL

*  I mentioned this edifice a few days ago, in that I ate there after I took the SATs at SLU.  There were plans to tear it down, but Starbucks and Shitpotle to the rescue.

*  Fulton, Missouri is known for its college commencement speakers.  Winston Churchill’s famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westiminster College begat many other famous world leaders speaking there.  As if they were feeling the heat, William Woods University, also in Fulton, has nabbed Val Kilmer to address the Class of 2012.

*  And you wonder why we want photo ID to vote.

NATIONAL

*  NICS background check data.  Make of it what you will, I don’t have much commentary, but to say that there hasn’t been a month with under 966,000 checks since Obama was elected.

*  Isn’t it nice to have friends in high places?

All snark aside, the Massachusetts court system probably isn’t being any more lenient with him than they would any other illegal alien in a similar situation.

*  It’s obvious what this is, a feeble attempt to get Maryland’s blacks to vote for him instead of Ben Cardin in the Democrat Primary because the Senate has no blacks.  But does Mr. Muse not realize the fire with which he’s playing by singling out the Jews?

*  The Chicago Way:  $7b to create 30k jobs.  That comes to $233k per job.  I doubt each of these jobs will pay anywhere close to $233k/yr, though.

INTERNATIONAL

*  Merah:  A stool pidgeon for French intel?

*  IRONY ALERT:  The sixth richest country in the world is leading a group of countries complaining about rich countries.

*  An Australian study pours cold water all over the notion that younger students need homework.

I’m dubious about the study’s methodology, because I don’t think they controlled for the most important factor in determining academic achievement:  Race.

*  ALP wiped out in Queensland, but I don’t write anything into it.  Why?  Queensland is Australia’s most conservative state.  Its existing ALP ruling majority was an aberration.

*  The first paragraph is money.  What have I been saying here since the very early days of this blog?  Words are cheaper than dirt, actions have consequences.

MISC STUFF

*  “None fell so pure of crime.”

*  What if it wants to stick its head in the sand?  Then you’re going nowhere.

*  Yeah, I’ll buy.  I’ll buy it, a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea, just to confuse the clerk.

*  Unless you’re a ho, then it would be the job.

*  Where?

*  Remember, the opposite of derive is integrate.  You know I’m not a big fan of integration.  I’m trying to come up with the idea double entendre play on words for a great punchline.

*  She got a hippopotamus for Christmas.

Fun With Friday Headlines

CBS Detroit:  Does Malik Shabazz Still Think Detroit Residents Should ‘Burn The City Down?’

The New Black Panthers will burn down what the old Black Panthers didn’t.

Slashdot:  16-Year-Old Creates Scientific/Graphing Calculator In Minecraft

Because the world needed yet another calculator.

KCBS-2 LA:  Medical Marijuana Deliveryman Robbed By Baton-Wielding Ninjas In West Covina

“Baton-wielding ninja,” i.e. he was probably high.

C-Trib:  Dennis Rodman ‘broke,’ ‘extremely sick,’ his attorney says

So the news is that Rodman is broke.

ESPN:  Owner, GM support Vinny Del Negro

With the Sir Skittles affair raging, they had no choice but to support a negro.

KSL Salt Lake City:  Tacocopter would deliver tacos via unmanned drone

Date stamp March 28.  They’re four days too early.

My Fox DC:  TSA Manager Arrested for Running Prostitution Ring

TSA man busted for T&A.

Today’s Sir Skittles Stack

What’s that?  Your age, or your IQ?

*  Daily Caller has found a second Twitter feed for Sir Skittles.

*  I normally think of 4chan as the Sillyville of the internet, but some of their regulars cracked into his social media presences.

*  John Hawkins picks out some of Sir Skittles’s more interesting tweets.  What do they all mean?  He was a foot soldier in the (real) war on women.

*  Nobody remembers anything.  Don’t they know what happened to Dan Rather after the fake document scandal?  ABC doctored a video of Zimmerman to try to “prove” he had no injuries, and on top of that, they outed a 13-year old Zimmerman-corroborating witness.  What does all this mean?  What else?  Begging for riots!

I Don’t Want ‘Em, You Can Have ‘Em

Music before story.  Then again, the music pretty much gives you the story.

Fox News Latino:

House Democrats and Attorneys General File Challenge to Arizona Immigration Law

Eleven attorneys general and 68 Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives joined in opposing Arizona’s controversial immigration law on Tuesday, as the U.S. Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in the case.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman [Al Sharpton lover — Blogmeister] filed an amicus brief supporting the Justice Department’s lawsuit against Arizona, saying the southwestern state’s immigration law conflicts with federal policy by enlisting state authorities to police immigration offenses and by undermining the deportation priorities set by the Executive branch.

The attorneys general from 10 other states, including California, Hawaii and Massachusetts, signed on to the amicus brief.

The filing also says Arizona’s disproportionate crackdown on illegal immigration will affect other states.

“Because Arizona cannot compel the federal government to remove undocumented residents, SB 1070’s provisions have the primary effect of redirecting undocumented immigrants to other States,” the brief says.

Sixty-seven Democratic members of Congress, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, simultaneously announced their opposition to Arizona’s SB 2010, filing a similar amicus brief.

“We wouldn’t permit Arizona to have its own foreign policy and we can’t allow Arizona to have its own immigration laws,” Rep. Zoe Lofregren, who sits on the House Subcommittee on Immigration, said in a press conference posted to YouTube.

U.S. District Judge [****] put an injunction on several parts of the Arizona law in July 2010 – including the provision requiring police to check the immigration status of the people they stop – arguing that the law usurped federal immigration enforcement authority. [*****] decision was upheld by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 into law, hopes the Supreme Court will overturn the lower court’s ruling. Brewer, a Republican, and other supporters of SB 1070 argue that federal inaction leaves Arizona with no choice but to take immigration enforcement into its own hands.

The Supreme Court will hear Arizona v. The United States on April 25.

Remember, these are still the procedural hearings, not the Constitutional hearings.

What does all this mean?

Other states don’t want the illegal aliens that are being run out of Arizona on account of SB 1070.

Funny they wouldn’t want all that enriching diversity.

Talking Severability

Why did ObamaCare not include a severability provision?

Various theories include House Dems daring SCOTUS to nullify the entire bill, (a la the ganged-up prisoner who sags his pants daring other jailbirds to rape him), or that they just plain forgot in a rush to get anything passed and onto Obama’s desk.

My theory?  Far more practical and less Machiavellian.  I’ve stated her name before in this space — Karen Ignagni.  I think the real reason the bill that passed didn’t have a severability clause is because the health insurance industry didn’t want it.  That’s because they could not have tolerated the individual mandate being declared unconstitutional and everything else being allowed to stand, because everything else mostly hurts the industry.

And, as Rush said relaying what his “judge friend” told him, even if there was a severability clause, it wouldn’t have done any good, because the individual mandate is so intertwined with everything else, and everything else is so intertwined with everything else in OsamaCare, a la a group orgy, that declaring one part unconstitutional takes the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle down with it.

The last time I talked about severability in this space was with Arizona SB 1070.  It does have a severability clause, but it does not need one, because SB 1070 is basically a grab bag of discrete immigration-related laws that aren’t legally dependent on each other and have their own independent utility.