Photonic computers, that use light rather than electrical signals to do the work, may actually be on the horizon.  This will be huge.  While it’s still a few years down the road, the number of years is in the single digits at this point.

Let’s be more like Europe!  "The UK’s tax collection agency is putting forth a proposal that all employers send employee paychecks to the government, after which the government would deduct what it deems as the appropriate tax and pay the employees by bank transfer."  Even a little socialism can be a dangerous thing.  Exhibit A.

Obama supporters are "exhausted of defending" him.  If this turns into an exhaustion of voting for Democrats, House and Senate seats polling close now may yet be a big win for Republicans.  Obama only has himself to blame; supporters are not exhausted of defending "the mess" he inherited, they’re tired of defending his "accomplishments".  If you’ve lost Jon Stewart, you’ve lost a lot of folks who think he’s a news anchor.  (Which is, unfortunately, quite a lot of people.)

No, ACORN isn’t really dead, it’s just changed its name.  And it’s still breaking the law, so says federal investigators who are urging that the funding moratorium be made permanent.

Obama says the stimulus kept the recession from falling into a depression.  But economists are now saying that, technically, we came out of the recession in June, 2009.  That’s before the stimulus really kicked in.  We spent $800 billion on measures to save the economy from something it had recovered from on its own.  Under that guise, we got record- and precedent-setting debt. 

Which is why the Tea Party influence in the Republican party is so needed now, even if the GOP goes kicking and screaming.  (Click for a larger image.)

I’ve come out in favor of the Electoral College before (see here).  Among other things, the EC ensures that Presidents get broad support as opposed to simply the most support, it gives minorities a bigger voice, and it makes vote fraud much more difficult.  See here for an FEC paper on the origins of the EC, and it makes for very informative reading, especially on the reason that the Founders decided not to go with a direct popular vote for the President.  (The paper was last updated in 1992, but the history is what’s important.)

In Wednesday’s "Best of the Web Today" column, James Taranto takes on the National Popular Vote Interstate Coalition.  What they’re trying to do is get enough states, accounting for at least the 270 electoral votes needed to win, to agree to direct their electors to vote for whoever wins the national popular vote, regardless of how the vote in their particular state went. 

Taranto notes that the states currently supporting it, or who’s legislatures have at least passed a bill on to their governor, all voted Democratic in at least the last 5 elections, usually by double-digit margins.  Taranto surmises (though, not really having to make a big logical leap):

It’s no mystery why this idea appeals to Democrats. They are still bitter over the disputed 2000 presidential election, in which Al Gore "won" the popular vote but George W. Bush won the actual election. Changing the rules wouldn’t necessarily benefit Democrats, but you can see why trying to do so might make them feel good.

After all, it was after the 2000 election that the NPVIC got it’s start.  Again, not much of a leap.

But there are problems with this, not even related to the question of popular vote vs electoral vote.  While the measure would be indeed constitutional, Taranto contends it would be unenforceable.

Think about that old Philosophy 101 question: If God is omnipotent, can he make a rock so big that he can’t lift it? It seems like a puzzle, but the answer is clearly no. The premise that God is omnipotent leads to the conclusion that he can both make and lift a rock of any size. "A rock so big that he can’t lift it" is a logically incoherent construct, not a limitation on God’s power.

The NPVIC is based on the similarly illogical premise that lawmakers with plenary powers can enact a law so strong that they can’t repeal it. In truth, because a state legislature’s power in this matter is plenary, it would be an entirely legitimate exercise of its authority to drop out of the compact anytime before the deadline for selecting electors–be it July 21 of an election year or Nov. 9.

Call it the problem of faithless lawmakers–somewhat akin to the question of faithless electors. Legal scholars differ on whether state laws requiring electors to vote for the candidate to whom they are pledged are constitutional. But because the power of legislatures to choose the method of selecting electors is plenary, there is no question that the Constitution would permit faithless lawmakers to exit the NPVIC.

If one or more states did so, and it affected the outcome of the election, the result would be a political crisis that would make 2000 look tame. Unlike in that case, the Supreme Court would be unable to review the matter because it would be an exercise in plenary lawmaking authority. Challenges in Congress to the electoral vote count would be almost inevitable. Whatever the outcome, it would result from an assertion of raw political power that the losing side would have good reason to see as illegitimate.

The problem here is that we’d be giving the election of our President over to what amounts to a gentleman’s agreement; an agreement that not even the Supreme Court would be able to work out, since they wouldn’t have jurisdiction. 

I’m still entirely behind the Electoral College system, and please read the link for the details (and especially the FEC paper; history is important).  But Taranto winds up with something to think about, should this gentleman’s agreement get put in place.

Since the NPVIC would be legally unenforceable, only political pressure could be brought to bear to ensure that state legislatures stand by their commitments to it. Would this be enough? Let’s put the question in starkly partisan terms: If you’re a Republican, do you trust Massachusetts lawmakers to keep their word, and to defy the will of the voters who elected them, if by doing so they would make Sarah Palin president?

Consider this.

I may start doing this more often.  I collect links during the week, some I comment on here, and some just languish in Google Bookmarks.  Normally I’m going to save it all until the end of the week, but this installment will be a bit longer than others since I’ve got some aging links here that really want to see the light of day.  So here they are, usually, but not always, in reverse chronological order:

Coattails?  What coattails?  "Some Democrats on the campaign trail have hit upon a winning campaign tactic: Run against President Obama and his agenda — especially the health care overhaul."

Seeking asylum in the US for … homeschooling persecution?  "A German Christian family received asylum in Tennessee after being severely penalized for illegally homeschooling their children in Germany."  I’ve covered this particular situation before; here, here, here, here, here and here.

California, parts of which are boycotting Arizona for it’s new immigration law, which just enforce existing federal law, should take a look at it’s own lawbooks first.  They might find something familiar.

The economic meltdown in Greece should be a wake-up call to politicians of both parties in the US.  Otherwise, it may turn out to be, rather, a coming attraction.

ObamaCare(tm) is predicted to increase the crowding in our hospitals’ emergency rooms.  "Some Democrats agree with this assessment. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) suspects the fallout that occurred in Massachusetts’ emergency rooms could happen nationwide after health reform kicks in."  But he still voted for this snake oil anyway.

"Economic Woes Threaten Chavez’s Socialist Vision"  Only on NPR would this be news.  For the rest of this, it’s a redundancy.

Comedy Central stands on the bedrock of free speech and will mock anyone, just as long as there’s no chance of getting beheaded for it.  "The show in development, "JC," is a half-hour about Christ wanting to escape the shadow of his "powerful but apathetic father" and live a regular life in New York."

Green energy falling by the wayside in Europe.  Seems the massive subsidies for this alleged cost-saving energy are too much for governments going through financial troubles.  Should we (will we) take note?

From Chuck Asay (click for a larger version):

A bit of selective outrage.

Arlen Specter joins 3 other high-profile politicians who, having been campaigned for by President Barack Obama, lost their race.  Erick Erickson has a summary of yesterday’s primary results in which Rand Paul, who associated himself with the Tea Party, handily beat Trey Grayson. 

Jay Cost at RealClearPolitics notes, however, that as much as the current administration would like to classify it as such, this is not as simple as a general anti-incumbent movement.

But how many Republican incumbents are in severe jeopardy of losing their seat in Congress to a Democratic challenger?

I count one: Joseph Cao of New Orleans.

Meanwhile, I count more than 20 Democrats in the House and Senate who are in severe jeopardy. Lower the threshold from "severe" to "serious" jeopardy, and I count maybe four Republicans and more than 50 Democrats.

The White House is absolutely, positively correct that there is a divide between America and Washington – but what they fail to appreciate (or, more likely, they appreciate it but want to fake-out the press) is that Washington, D.C. now belongs to Barack Obama.

Cost is zeroing in on ousting an incumbent from one party with a challenger of the other.  He’s not considering situations like Bob Bennett’s, where he lost his primary bid earlier this month (a distant third) to another Tea Partier.  But even this plays into Cost’s contention.  Bennett wasn’t ousted simply because he was an incumbent.  The Tea Party is an ideological movement, and Republicans in Utah spoke loudly that they want their representatives to demonstrate conservative principles.  Reaching across the aisle, as good as that can be, should not trump principles.  The Republican Party has lost touch with its base, trying to show how much they can be just like Democrats, too.  (See the spending habits of George W. Bush and the Republican Congress for examples.) 

The election of Scott Brown and these primaries were the warm-up acts, I believe, of a rejection of Barack Obama’s policies.  The November elections will be the main event.  It’s still 6 months until then, but it appears that the ideas of the Tea Party are resonating with Americans, and they’re not showing any sign of going away.

When Barack Obama was campaigning for President, I wondered if the views of a candidate’s pastor were fair game for scrutiny as part of looking at the complete candidate.  A commenter told me, "Absolutely."  Then candidate Obama distanced himself from that same pastor, and later cut ties with him.  (That same commenter then told me that, since the pastor wasn’t running, his views were a "distraction".  Convenient.)

Today, that same pastor is whining about how he got thrown under the bus, allegedly "literally".

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s controversial former pastor, said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press that he is "toxic" to the Obama administration and that the president "threw me under the bus."

In his strongest language to date about the administration’s 2-year-old rift with the Chicago pastor, Wright told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.

"No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am ‘toxic’ in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.

"I am ‘radioactive,’ Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote. "Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!"

(Hat tip: Bruce McQuain at Q&O)

I await the video showing that our President literally threw anyone under a bus before I believe the Reverend’s words in that regard.  In the meantime, his rantings serve to remind us that Obama will throw anyone, figuratively, under the bus, even after a close association of 20 years, if it will serve his purposes.  That’s the kind of guy we have as President.

No, I’m not referring to the Arizona immigration law (that does not impose any new documentation requirements).  I’m talking about a national, biometric ID card.  Liberals are shocked — SHOCKED — that this is being proposed by Democrats.

But this conservative is not surprised at all.  In Georgia, they digitize your fingerprint and print it on your driver’s license.  This was passed, on a party line vote, when Democrats controlled the state.  Having committed no crime, your fingerprint is in the database.  And now Democrats on the national level are essentially doing the same thing.

This is a freedom thing, and it meshes with the idea of the state taking all control over your life, from what health care you buy to obtaining your fingerprint without charges.  More government control.  That’s the direction Democrats want to take us.

No, not that D.A.R.E. I’m talking about Democrats Against Renewable Energy.  The Obama administration has prevailed.

BOSTON, Mass – Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today approved the Cape Wind renewable energy project on federal submerged lands in Nantucket Sound, but will require the developer of the $1 billion wind farm to agree to additional binding measures to minimize the potential adverse impacts of construction and operation of the facility.

“After careful consideration of all the concerns expressed during the lengthy review and consultation process and thorough analyses of the many factors involved, I find that the public benefits weigh in favor of approving the Cape Wind project at the Horseshoe Shoal location,” Salazar said in an announcement at the State House in Boston. “With this decision we are beginning a new direction in our Nation’s energy future, ushering in America’s first offshore wind energy facility and opening a new chapter in the history of this region.”

The Cape Wind project would be the first wind farm on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf, generating enough power to meet 75 percent of the electricity demand for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Island combined. The project would create several hundred construction jobs and be one of the largest greenhouse gas reduction initiatives in the nation, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from conventional power plants by 700,000 tons annually. That is equivalent to removing 175,000 cars from the road for a year.

This project has been held up for at least 7 years, with liberal luminaries like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Walter Cronkite opposing it.  It’s all well and good for us plebeians, but not where it might spoil the view for the well-heeled. 

It’s good of the Obama administration to get this project unstuck, but he has to get his own party on-board with renewable energy in their own backyards, and ensure that delays like this don’t happen again, if he wants to be taken seriously with this whole "green energy" thing.

From James Taranto’s column in the Wall St. Journal Online:

Ho Hum, a White Supremacist Rally
"A rally of about 40 white supremacists Saturday on the lawn of Los Angeles City Hall drew hundreds of counter-protesters, sparked brawls in which two people were severely beaten and ended with crowds of demonstrators hurling rocks and bottles at police and departing supremacists," the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. The violence came from those who had come to counter the hate:

A bare-chested middle-aged man with Nazi insignias tattooed on his chest and back walked into a crowd of hundreds of counter-protesters gathered near 1st and Spring streets.

Surrounded, the man mockingly bobbed his head to the rhythm of demonstrators chanting "Nazi scum." About a dozen protesters suddenly began pelting the man with punches and kicks. He fell and was struck on the back with the wooden handle of a protester’s sign, which snapped in two. Police eventually reached the man and pulled him from the melee, as blood poured from the back of his neck.

Another man was rushed by a mob on Spring Street. He was punched in the face and kicked for about 20 seconds before police made it to the scene. After that beating was broken up, the man began running south on Spring Street, only to be chased down by a protester and slugged in the face. He collapsed and his face slammed to the curb as protesters began pummeling him again.

The bloodied man was then escorted away by police. Both victims were treated and released, police said.

His sign, unclear in its intended meaning, read "Christianity=Paganism=Heathen$" with an arrow pointing at a swastika.

"Gosh, I think he just didn’t have a clear message. I don’t even think he was a Nazi," said one man, looking at the broken pieces of the sign left behind.

The Left insists that these sorts of folks come from the Right, and thus it would be safe to assume, then, that those counter-protesters were mostly from the Left.  For those who say that all this sort of physical violence comes solely from the Right (I’m looking at you, Dan) may need to rethink your premise.  I think violence from both sides, fringe (relative to both sides) though it may be, is a reality.  Many suggest that Limbaugh and Beck are to blame for violence.  How about Olberman and Schultz now?

Anyone?  Hello?  Crickets?

Taranto goes on to make a very salient point about this actual racism vs. the accused racism of Tea Partiers.

If you haven’t heard about this until now, you’re not alone. Blogger William Jacobson points out that the media hardly noticed:

Outside of the local media and a handful of blogs, the event received scarce attention. None of the usual suspects bothered to cover or comment on it. Firedoglake and Huffington Post covered it, but we saw none of the hyperventilated commentary and lecturing that is directed at Tea Parties.

How curious. Tea Party events which are not white supremacist events are met with derision and abuse, while a real white supremacist rally is met mostly with silence.

There is a lesson here. The attacks on the Tea Parties have nothing to do with stamping out white supremacy and everything to do with shaping the political dialogue to stamp out legitimate opposition to Obama administration policies.

[…]

But Saturday’s tumult is a timely reminder that in 2010, as in 1999 [the date of a Klan rally in LA]–and, for that matter, in 1977, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that neo-Nazis had a right to march in Skokie, Ill.–white supremacy is a fringe ideology that appeals only to a minuscule number of weirdos.

The people who claim to be alarmed by the "racism" of the tea-party movement know this as well as we do–which is why they respond to a display of actual racism as nonchalantly as we do. They desperately attack the tea-party movement for the same reason we cheer it: because it is made up of ordinary Americans anxious and unhappy about the ever-expanding power of government over their lives.

A mass movement of Americans concerned about preserving their freedom is a threat to the political agenda of the left. A gathering of a few dozen actual white supremacists is a threat only to whatever shred of dignity the supremacists may retain.

Sorry for the long quotes, but this is a point that Taranto has been making for some time (which is why I highly suggest getting the daily e-mail of his column), and this particular incident highlights precisely the the disingenuousness of it’s being used as a political football by the Left.  It’s the race card they play; a game to stifle dissent (such dissent formerly being the highest form of patriotism). 

We are post-racial only to the point that charges of racism aren’t used as some political ploy.  Actual racism is very much on the decline, as President Obama’s election highlighted brightly.  It shows that the Tea Party’s detractors have very little in their corner.  They’re reduced to name-calling. 

Yes, some folks weren’t paying attention and thought all this "free" health care was supposed to kick in the day after The Won(tm) signed it into law.  And now buyer’s remorse has hit.

Three weeks after Congress passed its new national health care plan, support for repeal of the measure has risen four points to 58%. That includes 50% of U.S. voters who strongly favor repeal.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters nationwide finds 38% still oppose repeal, including 32% who strongly oppose it.

But while those folks may just not have been fully informed, our Congress folk should certainly have been caught off guard.  That’s what we pay them for!  And yet…

It is often said that the new health care law will affect almost every American in some way. And, perhaps fittingly if unintentionally, no one may be more affected than members of Congress themselves.

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the “personal health insurance coverage” of senators, representatives and their staff members.

For example, it says, the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

To answer that question, we look to other news items.  A few weeks ago, Congress was shocked — SHOCKED — to find companies writing off millions and billions in losses over a federal prescription medicine that was going away.  Companies are, by law, required to honestly represent their revenues and liabilities, but Democrats will have none of that, if it reflects poorly on their pet project.  But now, a lot of other shoes are starting to drop.  At the SayAnything blog:

A starting revelation on the Scott Hennen Show today from Rod St. Aubyn, Director of Government Relations for Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota.  St. Aubyn notes that under Obamacare, all polices offered in North Dakota must be approved by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and that this approval process will force BCBS to reduce its insurance offerings from over fifty different policies…to four.

(Audio at the site.)  And if you do get insurance, ObamaCare may be doing nothing about its cost.

Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama’s healthcare overhaul across the finish line, but the new law does not give regulators the power to block similar increases in the future.

And now, with some major companies already moving to boost premiums and others poised to follow suit, millions of Americans may feel an unexpected jolt in the pocketbook.

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Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases.

And once you’ve paid for it, good luck finding a doctor.

Experts warn there won’t be enough doctors to treat the millions of people newly insured under the law. At current graduation and training rates, the nation could face a shortage of as many as 150,000 doctors in the next 15 years, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

That shortfall is predicted despite a push by teaching hospitals and medical schools to boost the number of U.S. doctors, which now totals about 954,000.

And if you do find a doctor, good luck finding a hospital.

The new health care overhaul law, which promised increased access and efficiency in health care, will prevent doctor-owned hospitals from adding more rooms and more beds, says a group that advocates physician involvement in every aspect of health care delivery.

Physician-owned hospitals are advertised as less bureaucratic and more focused on doctor-patient decision making. However, larger corporate hospitals say doctor-owned facilities discriminate in favor of high-income patients and refer business to themselves.

The new health care rules single out such hospitals, making new physician-owned projects ineligible to receive payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Existing doctor-owned hospitals will be grandfathered in to get government funds for patients but must seek permission from the Department of Health and Human Services to expand.

All this and more (including increased taxes on those making less than $200,000) is summarized in a very informative Wall St. Journal op-ed.  Yeah, you can try to paint the WSJ as some right-wing editorial board, but they quote the NY Times, the LA Times; hardly bastions of conservatism. 

And so we go back to the question asked by the NY Times, "did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?"  I think it’s pretty clear they didn’t.