In Tuesday's State of the Union Address, President Obama proposed raising the federally mandated minimum wage to $9 per hour, a 24% increase over the current mandate. In a subsequent conversation, my friend David Guenther of the Texas Public Policy Foundation made a good point about the effects of this if it were to come to pass:

On Wednesday, The Hill reported that the Obama administration had begun to implement the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare. Noting its unpopularity, rules have been written by the IRS and Department of Health and Human Services that "downplay the scope" of the mandate and emphasize the exemptions. As a curious blogger, I wanted to see for myself the fact sheet that was disseminated.

In a previous post, I've discussed the horrifying effects on patients in Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) when government bureaucrats make medical decisions based on a formula that measures the expected quality of life if a patient is allowed to survive.

Remember Lisa Jackson and her secret email name? It appears that Richard Windsor wasn't alone. I know, you're as shocked as I am that others may have used fake email addresses to avoid FOIA requests.

The repeated refrain from the likes of Paul Krugman and Jay Carney is that we MUST increase the debt limit so that we don't default on the full faith and credit of the United States, and that we continue to pay our bills. Indeed, on Monday, President Obama chastised Congressional Republicans for making spending cuts mandatory in any debt ceiling negotiation:

Jack Lew, President Obama's choice to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, has been in Washington DC a long time. Anyone in public service that long will have quite a record of public statements that will paint an accurate picture for Senators who are considering his nomination.

It has been widely reported this week that President Obama will nominate Jack Lew today for Secretary of the Treasury, replacing Timothy Geithner, expected to step down next month. It takes a special kind of crazy only found in Washington DC for someone who has failed so spectacularly to be nominated to head up our nation's treasury (see also: Geithner, Timothy).

In a New York Times Op-Ed, Louis Michael Seidman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown, states that it may be time to give up our "obsession with the Constitution":

Last week, while the Fiscal Cliff blamefest was dominating the headlines, another January 1, 2013 crisis was revealed - the so-called Milk Cliff. As explained at Breitbart.com,

Here in Portland, Oregon, we've been something of a test lab for mass transit. Our city council, long ago (starting under then Mayor Neil Goldschmidt), threw itself wide open to federal planning experts who wished to use Portland as the template for solutions to the energy crisis of the 70s. That crisis, of course, morphed into the global warming crisis, but the goals were the same - to convince ordinary Americans that their future, and the future of all mankind, came via a trip by bus or train, not in their own car.