Mark Levin plans to sue if ObamaCare becomes law

Mark Levin, the popular conservative radio host and constitutional lawyer, announced on his radio show yesterday that he would immediately file a lawsuit if Democrats passed ObamaCare using the Slaughter Solution.

Levin's legal complaint quotes Article I, Section 7, clause 2 of the Constitution, which necessitates that, "But in all such cases the votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and nays, and the names of the persons voting for and against the bill shall be entered on the journal of each House respectively.” Levin plans to argue that because the House will vote for the reconciliation sidecar rather than the actual Senate bill under the Slaughter Solution, health care reform will have been passed unconstitutionally. The lawsuit, which will be filed by Levin's Landmark Legal Foundation, directly names Barack Obama, Timothy Geithner, Eric Holder, and Kathleen Sebelius.

Levin won't be alone. C.L. "Butch" Otter, the governor of Idaho, signed a bill today mandating the state's attorney general to sue the federal government if ObamaCare becomes law. Otter is specifically targeting the individual mandate, the unconstitutional provision that would force every citizen to buy health insurance or face a punitive fine. As we reported yesterday, other states are actually considering nullifying health care reform if it becomes law.

Justice Department covers up the identity of its own lawyers

The Obama administration is more than willing to release classified records showing enhanced interrogation techniques used against terrorists. But the identities of taxpayer-funded lawyers at the Justice Department are strictly confidential.

Earlier this week, a conservative group headed by Liz Cheney unveiled a video asking the Justice Department to release the names of seven lawyers who had previously defended terrorist detainees. The Justice Department has only named two and refuses to go any further. This is a slap in the face to taxpayers and also a little scary. Conflicts of interest aren't kosher at the Justice Department, and that's when they just involve lobbyists. Any of these five anonymous attorneys could have defended and conferred with detainees who were members of al Qaeda or the Taliban. We're at war with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The two names that have been released are Jennifer Daskal and and Neal Katyal. Katyal was a lawyer in the famous Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case. Daskal represented detainees collectively for the liberal group Human Rights Watch. If Eric Holder was willing to release those names, why not the other five? How much worse could they possibly be? What is the DOJ hiding?

Here's the video from Liz Cheney's group Keep America Safe:

Rahm the only thing standing between Obama and total lunacy

Last week, ObamaWatchNews reported on some drama surrounding Rahm Emanuel. After Leslie Gelb wrote a piece calling for Rahm's resignation, a column appeared later in the Washington Post defending Emanuel. Gelb said he believed the report had been written thanks to a leak from Rahm, who wanted to defend himself.

Today the Post ran another pro-Rahm puff piece headlined "Hotheaded Emanuel may be White House voice of reason." The piece confirmed many of our worst fears: Rahm Emanuel is the only levelheaded person at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sourced by many of Rahm's closest henchmen, the article describes a pragmatic Emanuel surrounded by crazed ideologues. Early on in the administration, for example, Rahm warned the president that trying Khalid Sheik Mohammed in a civilian court would be a disaster. The president instead listened to his attorney general, Eric Holder, who was clamoring for a show trial in New York City. Emanuel also grew discouraged with the president's obsession with health care, wishing that he would shift focus to actually helping create jobs for people.

This is the situation in which America now finds itself: Rahm Emanuel, who once sent a dead fish to a political enemy, is the most sane person in the executive branch of government. What will become of Rahm? He's under attack by leftists to the point that he feels the need to stage newspaper articles defending himself. If he resigns, God only knows what will happen.

The top lies in Barack Obama's State of the Union. And the winners are...

Of course the entire speech was a deceptive charade but here are the worst of the whoppers.

LIE: "But we know that our schools don’t just need more resources. They need more reform. ... We’ll invest in innovative programs that are already helping schools meet high standards and close achievement gaps. And we will expand our commitment to charter schools."

FACTS: Obama doesn't give a damn about education beyond what the teachers unions want. One of his first acts as president was to destroy the Washington, DC school voucher program. Hundreds of students given the opportunity to succeed on a voucher were thrown back into DC's failing public school system.

LIE: "Because of the steps we took [meaning the stimulus], there are about two million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed."

FACTS: Last month, the administration reported that government stimulus had created 650,000 jobs. That number apparently jumped by 1,350,000 in the month of January alone. The truth is no one has any idea how many jobs, if any, have been created by Obama's alleged stimulus. The stimulus' error-filled website, Recovery.org, showed jobs created in congressional districts that didn't exist. At one point it claimed that the purchase of a single lawn mower had created 50 jobs.

LIE: "With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections."

FACTS: This lie caused Justice Sam Alito to shake his head in disbelief. The Supreme Court ruling involved whether or not corporations could advertise on TV promoting or attacking a candidate. It had nothing to do with the early 20th-century law, which stopped corporations from donating directly to candidates. That floodgate is still shut, and Obama knows it.

LIE: "That's why -- for the first time in history -- my administration posts our White House visitors online. And that's why we've excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions."

FACTS: It's true that Obama signed an executive limiting -- not banning -- the role of lobbyists in his administration. But he keeps waiving it over and over again for people he likes. Lobbyists or former lobbyists in the Obama administration include Eric Holder, Tom Vilsack, Patrick Gaspard, William Lynn, William Corr, David Hayes, Mark Patterson, Ron Klain, Mona Sutphen, Melody Barnes, Cecilia Munoz, and Michael Strautmanis.

LIE: At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door.

FACTS: There he goes with the Bush bashing again. That $3 trillion didn't just appear out of nowhere because of "the recession." It was caused by Obama's reckless bills like the spending omnibus and the stimulus. (The stimulus alone cost close to $1 trillion.) When will Obama man up and accept responsibility? This is his recession and his deficit.

LIE: "To close that credibility gap we have to take action on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue -- to end the outsized influence of lobbyists; to do our work openly; to give our people the government they deserve."

FACTS: That credibility gap is owned by Obama, who meets in closed-door meetings with union bosses, invites health care lobbyists into the White House, makes back room deals with senators so they'll support ObamaCare, and refuses to allow C-SPAN cameras into the final health care negotiations.

LIE: "Now, the true engine of job creation in this country will always be America's businesses. But government can create the conditions necessary for businesses to expand and hire more workers."

FACTS: If that were true then businesses would have responded well to the omnibus spending bill, or the stimulus bill, or credit card reforms, or something Obama has done. But Barack Obama's government can't help businesses. It can only get in the way.

More hypocrisy at the Justice Department

So the Black Panthers are free as a bird but small towns in Texas are on notice?

Barack Obama's Justice Department announced today that it will send observers to monitor a special municipal election in Hondo, Texas. Municipal elections are done entirely at the town level, but Eric Holder wants to send G-Men to stand guard. Why? He's worried that voters who want to vote in Spanish won't be able to do so.

Hondo does have a substantial Mexican population. But after Holder sat on his hands for a year and refused to prosecute the Black Panthers who violently bullied voters in Philadelphia, he now thinks it's necessary to mobilize the Justice Department to protect Hispanic voters in a small town of 8,000 people in Texas? It's further evidence of the radicalism and hypocrisy that have completely permeated Barack Obama's Justice Department.

Eric Holder's illegal immigration hypocrisy

Barack Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder, gave a speech at the National Sheriffs' Association 2010 Winter Conference today. In the midst of his speech, Holder made an outrageously hypocritical statement.

"Some of you work along our southwest border. You know, as surely as I do, that we simply cannot afford to ignore the problem of illegal immigration. Several of you have reached out to us and to our colleagues across the Administration. You’ve warned that tension is building."

There's one sheriff in the southwest who has been extremely effective: Joe Arpaio. Fed up with illegal immigration in Maricopa County, Arpaio began jailing illegal immigrants in tent cities surrounding by barbed wire. He also forced them to wear chains and bright pink jumpsuits. His techniques worked well. But Arpaio has been under attack since the Obama administration since literally day one: last year, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano actually stripped him of his authority. Holder cannot be serious about battling illegal immigration in the southwest as long as he keeps going after Joe Arpaio.

Obama Administration sets in stone a massive power grab

Today Barack Obama's budget director Peter Orszag made official an unprecedented White House power grab.

From the White House blog:

"There have been other advancements, from providing online access to White House staff financial reports and salaries, adopting a tough new state secrets policy, reversing an executive order that previously limited access to presidential records, and web-casting White House meetings and conferences."

Obama's state secrets policy, established by Attorney General Eric Holder in the midst of a lawsuit over Bush's warrantless wiretapping program back in June, has nothing to do with transparency. The policy dictates that nobody can sue Obama's government over sensitive issues related to national security. Of course, what constitutes a sensitive issue related to national security is also left up to Obama's government. It's a breathtaking power grab that goes well beyond anything George W. Bush ever wanted, and Holder came under fire from both the right and the left at the time. Now this is apparently official policy, despite Obama's pledge to run "the most open and transparent administration in American history." File it in the stuffed "Broken Promises" folder.

New White House counsel: Criticizing ACORN is illegal

After ordering former White House counsel Greg Craig to take legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay and then firing him for taking legal actions to close Guantanamo Bay, the Obama Administration named Robert Bauer his replacement. Obama's new lawyer is known as a power player and a defender of ACORN. Bauer sent a letter to the Justice Department during the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain began criticizing ACORN. The letter demanded an investigation into whether the McCain campaign had broken the law by attacking ACORN. The Bush administration Justice Department never took any action on it.

“I request Special Prosecutor Dannehy’s inquiry include a review of any involvement by Justice Department and White House officials in supporting the McCain-Palin campaign and the Republican National Committee’s systematic development and dissemination of unsupported, spurious allegations of vote fraud,” Bauer's letter said.

“It is highly likely that the very sort of politically motivated conduct identified in the department’s investigation to date, necessitating the appointment of a special prosecutor, is repeating itself, and for the same reason: unwarranted and politically motivated intervention in the upcoming election,” it went on.

Obama paid ACORN

Meanwhile, ACORN was under investigation for voter fraud in 14 states by the FBI. Dozens of employees had been caught filling out ballots with fake names and addresses. In Philadelphia alone, 8,000 questionable ballots were submitted. Interestingly, the "nonpartisan" group received $800,000 from Barack Obama's presidential campaign through one of its subsidiaries, Citizens Services Inc., to register voters.

Bauer is married to former White House communications director Anita Dunn who launched the administration's war on Fox News and called Mao Tse-Tung one of her "favorite political philosophers.

Thanks to Obama, we now have a pro-ACORN attorney general in Eric Holder, who has refused to investigate the group, and a pro-ACORN White House counsel in Robert Bauer. The White House seems ready to defend ACORN against congressional Republicans.

As an ACORN apologist, Bauer joins Barack Obama, who legally represented the group during a 1995 lawsuit in Illinois.