Obama, Where’s the Bill?
The President this morning appeared at a campaign-style event designed to lay out his views on the sequester, across-the-board cuts to military and non-entitlement domestic spending scheduled to take effect on March 1. Continue reading
His scandalous resignation is often misrepresented and the Post fell into the trap of failing to fully research reliable info.
The February 12 edition of the Post included a piece by Max Fisher, which stated:
“Pope Benedict IX, in 1045: At age 33 and about 10 years into his tumultuous term, the Rome-born pope resigned so that he could get married – and to collect some cash from his godfather, also Roman, who paid Benedict IX to step down so that he might replace him, according to British historian Reginald L. Poole’s definitive and much-cited history of the 11th century.”
Not quite. The twisted and still obscure events of the 11th century are anything but clear, but this much is: Reginald Poole, writing nearly a century ago, did not credit the idea that Benedict IX abdicated the papacy in order to marry. Continue reading
The President’s Second Inaugural cheered his political allies and angered his foes. Those expecting a Lincoln-like second inaugural (“with malice toward none” ) continue to express their disappointment. They need to get over themselves. There is no requirement that winners be gracious in sports, politics or life. The Inauguration was the President’s endzone dance. He won and if he wants to celebrate his victory by taunting his opponents, that his prerogative.
Tone aside, there was something noticeably absent from the President’s remarks. Just a day before he privately took the oath of office, Algerian forces brought an end to a terrorist seizure of a gas field. The death toll so far is at 66, including 37 civilian workers, at least three of whom are Americans. Continue reading
Senate Democratic leaders yesterday called on the President to “take any lawful steps” to increase the government’s borrowing authority “without Congressional approval, if necessary.” The letter, signed by Senators Reid, Durbin, Schumer and Murray, does not spell out what those “lawful steps” might be, but instead simply asserts that the President needn’t obtain Congressional authorization to incur unlimited debt. He can act unilaterally.
That is, so far as I know, a novel assertion and one that is potentially quite dangerous. It also has scant constitutional backing. Continue reading