Search Results for: adventures in ad law

Adventures in Ad Law, cont’d

Featured image Whatever happened to baby pain? I mean, has the the Obama administration’s ludicrous “accommodation” of the Church’s opposition to the compelled provision of free contraception, sterilization and abortifacients resolved the serious constitutional affront involved? Or has it thrown one more into the mix? Somehow the Democrat Media Axis has transformed the discussion into something else entirely. I’ve been looking for a copy of the regulation enacting the “accommodation” and requiring »

Adventures in Ad Law, cont’d

Featured image Attorney Mark Leach writes from Louisville in response to “Adventures in Ad Law, cont’d”: While the focus on the HHS mandate under Obamacare has focused on “free” birth control, that same regulation also requires insurance companies to provide as of August 1, 2012, no-cost prenatal testing for genetic and developmental conditiosn. As I’ve written in the column linked below, and further at the link to Hugh’s blog and the Washington »

Adventures in Ad Law, cont’d

Featured image The whole idea of “administrative law” — regulations with the force of law promulgated by executive agencies pursuant to powers delegated by Congress — squares uneasily at best with the Constitution and its scheme of separated powers. Obamacare presents us with a case study that amounts to a reductio ad absurdum. The agencies promulgating Obamacare regulations will produce a code that rivals the United States Code in length and complexity. »

Adventures in Ad Law

Featured image The whole idea of “administrative law” — regulations with the force of law promulgated by executive agencies pursuant to powers delegated by Congress — squares uneasily at best with the Constitution and its scheme of separated powers. Obamacare presents us with a case study that amounts to a reductio ad absurdum. The agencies promulgating Obamacare regulations will produce a code that rivals the United States Code in length and complexity. »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image I wrote about the problem of the administrative state in “A new old regime,” my review of Philip Hamburger’s audaciously great book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (Plot spoiler: the answer is yes.) Even with a lot of help from my friends at the Claremont Institute, it took me a long time to understand the problem. Professor Hamburger expedited the process. The problem is the unconstitutionality, unwisdom, unaccountability, and lawlessness inherent »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image Observers commenting on the administration’s latest improvisations in Obamacare have generally relied on the cheat sheet issued by the Department of Health and Human Services this past Thursday. The cheat sheet summarizes regulations promulgated by the Department. In his Forbes column “Government takeover,” Avik Roy posts a link to the regulations (interim final rule) here. The regulations are an unusual exercise in rule by decree. Cloaked in an air of »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image The Wall Street Journal devotes an editorial to the latest decree promulgated by Queen Seeb and the powers-that-be in the Obama administration: Late Thursday, the Health and Human Services Department suddenly released a new regulation that explains “there have been unforeseen barriers to enrollment on the exchanges.” The passive voice is necessary because the barriers are all the result of politically driven delays, the botched website and the exchanges that »

Adventures in administrative law, cont’d

Featured image FNC’s Wendell Goler asked Obama administration flack Jay Carney about the Obama administration’s suspension of the Obamacare employer mandate for one year. The Obamacare statute expressly provides a commencement date of January 1, 2014. Whence the legal authority on the part of the president to postpone it? The video of Goler’s exchange with Carney is below. Goler asks a good question, one directly raised by Michael McConnell’s Wall Street Journal »

Adventures in administrative law

Featured image Obama presents himself as detached from the events giving rise to the controversies that now beset his administration. He’s just the president. Obama has found this a useful pose in the face of the exposure of the IRS as the handmaiden of his efforts to help friends and harm enemies. He has touted the IRS as an independent agency. How can he be responsible for the shenanigans of agents that »

Get Off Our Lawn!

Featured image I spent the end of last week in Washington DC with a hectic schedule of meetings and mischief, including, most importantly, doing a number of one-on-one interviews with great people for the Power Line podcast. Stay tuned for details as these roll out over the next two weeks. And one of these podcast adventures was a return visit to Jonah Goldberg’s Remnant podcast, in which I joined with Jonah and »

Adventures in Obamacare

Featured image Yesterday’s adventures brought us the appearance of the contractors for the Obamacare Web site that, according to supporters of the law (or “law” or, until recently, sacred “law of the land”) has been plagued by a dire combination of glitches and kinks. The contractor witnesses appeared before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The Wall Street Journal’s account of the witnesses’ testimony is secured snugly behind the Journal’s jealously guarded »

Adventures in Obamacare

Featured image The next best thing to clamming up about the serious technical issues that have plagued Healthcare.gov is being interviewed by CNN’s Sanjay Gupta about them. Inviting him in for an interview yesterday, Kathleen Sebelius recited the party line on the beauties of Obamacare while testifying that the issues were kept from Obama prior to October 1. It’s a good thing she wasn’t under oath at the time. CNN reports on »

Adventures in Obamacare

Featured image Last week James Taranto declared (facetiously): “There’s only one thing that can save ObamaCare now. AN OBAMA SPEECH.” It seems that Taranto was on to something. The Washington Post reports (not facetiously): President Obama is expected to address the site’s technical problems — “troubles that he and his team find unacceptable” — at a White House event Monday to highlight the law, according to an administration official who spoke on »

Adventures in Obamacare

Featured image In this series I’ve been trying to follow news and columns and editorials that report the unfolding Obamacare disaster. The disaster is just beginning, and the federal Obamacare exchange is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Today’s Wall Street Journal carries a reported editorial documenting the omertà operative inside the Obama administration with respect to the technical issues bedeviling Healthcare.gov. Kathleen Seblelius and others have clammed up. President Obama »

Adventures in Obamacare

Featured image With a background in designing and building networks for financial clients and in technology consulting for small firms, among other ventures, Megan McArdle has had an eye on the technical issues raised by the rollout of Obamacare since they first came to view. Her Bloomberg View column is the column of the day on the technical issues that are in the news. She writes: Insurers began warning in 2012 that »

Some call it law

Featured image President Obama and his minions have taken to instructing us that Obamacare is the law of the land. But it’s a funny kind of law — a law for the Age of Obama. Like words in the mouth of Humpty Dumpty, Obamacare is a law that means just what Obama chooses it to mean — neither more nor less. A law that is equal to the will of the ruler. »

A Midlife Reading List

Featured image A couple weeks ago I linked to my list of the top 12 environmental books over at my EnvironmentalTrends.org site, but then yesterday I noticed that our pal Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing over at the Corner, wondered what list of books a young conservative should read, and linked to Jonah Goldberg’s top ten book list from several years ago. It’s been a while since anyone asked me for my top »