Life's a Beach

My daughter and son-in-law thought it would be a great idea for our two families to spend some time at the beach together.  I agreed, but it was going to be a challenge, because we were limited time-wise to a long weekend, which made it next to impossible to rent a decent beach house that could comfortably accommodate four adults, a teenager and two toddlers.

We settled on two efficiencies for three nights at the Quality Inn Beachfront in Ocean City, MD.  It was going to be a tight fit, but, who knows?  Perhaps it would be a great time to make some memories with the grandchildren.  The husbands and wives planned on taking turns looking after the kids so the former could have a guys’ night out and the latter could spend an afternoon talking and watching chick-flicks.  And of course, we would make plenty of memories at the beach.  If nothing else, I was looking forward to getting away.  Work had been stressful, and life at home was no picnic either.  Life always has its challenges with an autistic daughter (Angela), but it has been even more difficult lately due to my wife Susan’s foot injury and two surgeries which have severely limited her mobility, thus causing me to carry a significantly heavier load as well.  I was more than ready for some R and R.

Texas: A Textbook Case for the Tenth Amendment

I have written about this before, but I was freshly reminded of the genius of the founding fathers by a recent interview of Texas Governor Rick Perry.  After giving a brief summation of Perry’s impressive career, Uncommon Knowledge host Peter Robinson started the interview with an interesting statistical anecdote:

Robinson:  U-Haul rates.  This is painful for me.  This is very painful for me.  I went on line and checked how much it would cost to rent a 26 foot U-Haul truck to drive from Palo Alto where I live, to Austin, Texas, where you live.And to go from California to Texas today would cost $1855.  To go from Austin to Palo Alto, $723
Perry:  We need to get those U-Haul trailers back to California.
Robinson:  That’s what makes it so hard.

Why?  The obvious answer is that more people want to move from California to Texas than vice-versa.  And why is that?  Texas is where the jobs are, the Texas economy is humming, and it is a much more pleasant place to live, despite the sweltering heat of a Texas summer.

Roberts' Russian Roulette

I sat in stunned yet stoic silence Thursday morning as my coworker told me the news that the Supreme Court had upheld Obamacare.  I was determined not to get worked up about it.  That determination was severely tested when details started to come in.  The culprit was not Justice Anthony Kennedy, as would be expected of the notorious swing vote of the SCOTUS.  Kennedy not only sided with the conservative minority about the unconstitutionality of the law’s infamous individual mandate, he joined them in wanting to throw out the whole law.  The culprit, of course, was Chief Justice John Roberts, who is supposed to be a conservative jurist, a strict constructionist wanting to uphold the original intent of the Constitution and the rule of law.

And indeed, Roberts argued strongly in his opinion that Obamacare and the individual mandate would be a gross violation and abuse of the commerce clause, but guess what?  Despite what the President and Obamacare's  proponents and the law itself clearly say to the contrary, Roberts inexplicably declared that the law’s penalty for not buying insurance is not a penalty at all, but rather a tax.  Because taxation is one of Congress’ enumerated powers--voilà—the law is constitutional!