In Englishhhh...

Atta is believed to have been the ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers who piloted American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center. Claims about how early Atta first tripped the radar of the Department of Defense date back to 2005, but those claims never made it into the Inspector General's report. The report was completed in 2006 and, until now, has been available only in a version with the names of virtually all of the witnesses blacked out.

Fox News, as part of an ongoing investigation, exclusively obtained a clean copy of the report and spoke to several principal witnesses, including an intelligence and data collector who asked that she not be named.

The witness told Fox News she was interviewed twice by a Defense Department investigator. She said she told the investigator that it was highly likely a department database included the picture of Atta, whom she knew under an alias, Mohammed el-Sayed.

"When it came to the picture, (the investigator) he was fairly hostile," the witness told Fox News. She said it seemed the investigator just didn't want to hear it. "Meaning that he'd ask the same question over and over again, and, you know, you get to the point you go, well, you know... it's the same question, it's the same answer."

The IG report didn't accurately reflect her statements to investigators, she said, adding that she doesn't think the investigator simply misunderstood her.

Lt. Col Tony Shaffer, an operative involved with Able Danger, said he was interviewed three times by Defense investigators. He claims it was an effort to wear down the witnesses and intimidate them. Two other witnesses, one a military contractor and the other a retired military officer, said they had the same experience. The two witnesses spoke to Fox News on the condition of anonymity because they said they feared retaliation. A fifth witness told Fox that statements to investigators were ignored.

"My last interview was very, very hostile," Shaffer told Fox News last month before he was ordered by the department not to discuss portions of his book, "Operation Dark Heart," which included a chapter on the Able Danger data mining project.

When asked why the IG's report was so aggressive in its denials of his claims and those of other witnesses -- that the data mining project had identified Atta as a threat to the U.S. before 9/11 -- Shaffer said Defense Department was worried about taking some of the blame for 9/11.

However, It still isn't clear how -- or whether -- the information on Atta could have been used to the disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The big picture was not Atta, not so much the chart," Shaffer said. "The fact is this: That we had a pre-9/11 Department of Defense operation focused on taking action against Al Qaeda globally."

Specifically, the Defense Intelligence Agency or DIA wanted the removal of references to a meeting between Shaffer and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, removed. Shaffer alleges that in that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, the commission was told about Able Danger and the identification of Atta before the attacks. Shaffer, who was undercover at the time, said there was "stunned silence" at the meeting.

No mention of this was made in the final 9/11 Commission report.

"Dr. Philip Zelikow approached me in the corner of the room. 'What you said today is very important. I need you to get in touch with me as soon as you return from your deployment here in Afghanistan,'" Shaffer said.

Once back in the U.S., Shaffer says he contacted the commission, but without explanation, the commission was no longer interested.

Last month, the Defense Department took the highly unusual step of buying and destroying 9,500 copies of Shaffer's book "Operation Dark Heart" at a cost of $47,000 to U.S. taxpayers.

Click here to see Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, letter objecting to parts of the book.

When asked whether Defense Department stood behind the IG report's findings, Col. Dave Lapan, the acting deputy assistant Secretary of Defense said in a statement to Fox News dated Oct. 6, "The investigation found that prior to September 11, 2001, Able Danger team members did not identify Mohammed Atta or any other 9/11 hijacker. While four witnesses claimed to have seen a chart depicting Mohammed Atta and possibly other hijackers or "cells" involved in 9/11, the investigation determined that their recollections were not accurate."

As for retaliation against Shaffer who said he lost his security clearance as a result of speaking out about Able Danger, Lapan said "The investigation found that DIA officials did not reprise against LTC Shaffer, in either his civilian or military capacity, for making disclosures regarding Able Danger or, in a separate matter, for his earlier disclosure to the DIA IG regarding alleged misconduct by DIA officials that was unrelated to Able Danger."

Separately, Fox News has obtained a letter that challenges the Defense Department's claim. In October 2006, then Rep. Christopher Shays, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, wrote to Shaffer's supervisor, Maj. Gen. Elbert Perkins, about the revocation of his clearance..

"Based on investigation of security clearance retaliation, it appears the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) used the security clearance system in an improper manner against LTC Shaffer and did not follow DOD security clearance guidelines," Shays, R-Conn., wrote.

Click here to se Shays' letter to Perkins.

In this case, the letter stated that the allegations used by the DIA to justify pulling Shaffer's security clearance included "the alleged misuse of a government cell phone in the amount of $67.00 and the alleged misfiling of a travel voucher for $180.00...these were not uniformed code of military justice (UCMJ) issues -- that there was no basis for punitive action and should be dealt with administratively...This decision cleared the way for LTC Shaffer's promotion, and his current 'good' standing in the Army Reserve.."

This investigation is part of an ongoing series, "Fox News Reporting.” Earlier this year, the series special "The American Terrorist" uncovered new details about the American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is linked to the attempted Christmas Day bombing, and about efforts by the FBI to track and recruit him for intelligence purposes after 9/11.

In documents released Wednesday, the national oil spill commission's staff reveals that in late April or early May the White House budget office denied a request from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to make public the worst-case discharge from the blown-out well.

The Unified Command -- the government team in charge of the spill response -- also was discussing the possibility of making the numbers public, the report says, citing interviews with government officials.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

But Jerry Miller, head of the White House science office's ocean subcommittee, told The Associated Press in an interview at a St. Petersburg, Fla., conference on the oil's flow that he didn't think the budget office censored NOAA.

"I would very much doubt that anyone would put restrictions on NOAA's ability to articulate factual information," Miller said. *

The April 20 blowout and explosion in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers, spewed 206 million gallons of oil from the damaged oil well, and sunk the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.

BP's drilling permit for the Macondo well originally estimated the worst scenario to be a leak of 6.8 million gallons per day. In late April, the Coast Guard and NOAA received an updated estimate of 2.7 million to 4.6 million gallons per day.

While those figures were used as the basis for the government's response to the spill -- they appeared on an internal Coast Guard Situation report and on a dry-erase board in NOAA's Seattle war room -- the public was never told.

In the meantime, government officials were telling the public that the well was releasing 210,000 gallons per day -- a figure that would be later adjusted to be much closer to the worst-case estimates.

"Despite the fact that the Unified Command had this information, relied on it for operations, and publicly states that it was operating under a worst-case scenario, the government never disclosed what its...scenario was," the report says.

University of South Florida oceanographer David Hollander, who was also at the St. Petersburg meeting of 150 scientists studying the oil flow on Wednesday, said he was surprised to find that the White House budget office gagged NOAA. He said public disclosure would have helped scientists to figure out what was going on.

"It would have been much better to know from a scientific point of view the reality," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

* Le nez dedans, ils continuent a nous assurer que ca n'en est pas. C'est formidable tout-de-meme!

Yet this same poll found that 65 percent view Obama favorably "as a person." The current Democratic crisis is not about the man -- his alleged lack of empathy, ability to emote, etc., requiring remediation with backyard, shirt-sleeved shoulder rubbing with the folks -- but about the policies.
(For more opinions on the midterm elections, check out David S. Broder's "John Boehner's useful thoughts on fixing Congress," E.J. Dionne Jr.'s "Virginia's 5th District race may say a lot about the electoral landscape" and Katrina vanden Heuvel's "Ignore the pollsters and champion the progressives.")

And the problem with the policies is twofold: ideology and effectiveness. First, Obama, abetted by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, tried to take a center-right country to the left. They grossly misread the 2008 election. It was a mandate to fix the economy and restore American confidence. Obama read it as a mandate to change the American social contract, giving it a more European social-democratic stamp, by fundamentally extending the reach and power of government in health care, energy, education, finance and industrial policy.

Obama succeeded with health care. Unfortunately for the Democrats, that and Obama's other signature achievement -- the stimulus -- were not exactly what the folks were clamoring for. What they wanted was economic recovery.

Here the Democrats failed the simple test of effectiveness. The economy is extraordinarily weak, unemployment is unacceptably high, and the only sure consequence of the stimulus is nearly $1 trillion added to the national debt in a single stroke.

And yet, to these albatrosses of ideological overreach and economic ineffectiveness, the Democrats have managed in the past few weeks to add a third indictment: incompetence.
(To learn what outside experts are thinking about the midterm elections, check out "Topic A: Will the Tea Party help or hurt Obama?" )

For the first time since modern budgeting was introduced with the Budget Act of 1974, the House failed to even write a budget. This in a year of extraordinary deficits, rising uncertainty and jittery financial markets. Gold is going through the roof. Confidence in the dollar and the American economy is falling -- largely because of massive overhanging debt. Yet no budget emerged from Congress to give guidance, let alone reassurance, about future U.S. revenues and spending.

That's not all. Congress has not passed a single appropriations bill. To keep the government going, Congress passed a so-called continuing resolution (CR) before adjourning to campaign. The problem with continuing to spend at the current level is that the last two years have seen a huge 28 percent jump in non-defense discretionary spending. The CR continues this profligacy, aggravating an already serious debt problem.

As if this were not enough, Congress adjourned without even a vote -- nay, without even a Democratic bill -- on the expiring Bush tax cuts. This is the ultimate in incompetence. After 20 months of control of the White House and Congress -- during which they passed an elaborate, 1,000-page micromanagement of every detail of American health care -- the Democrats adjourned without being able to tell the country what its tax rates will be on Jan. 1.

It's not just income taxes. It's capital gains and dividends, too. And the estate tax, which will careen insanely from 0 to 55 percent when the ball drops on Times Square on New Year's Eve.
Nor is this harmless incompetence. To do this at a time when $2 trillion of capital is sitting on the sidelines because of rising uncertainty -- and there is no greater uncertainty than next year's tax rates -- is staggeringly irresponsible.

As if this display of unseriousness -- no budget, no appropriations bills, no tax bill -- were not enough, some genius on a House Judiciary subcommittee invites parodist Stephen Colbert to testify as an expert witness on immigration. He then pulls off a nervy mockery of the whole proceedings -- my favorite was his request to have his colonoscopy inserted in the Congressional Record -- while the chairwoman sits there clueless.

A fitting end for the 111th Congress. But not quite. Colbert will return to the scene of the crime on Oct. 30 as the leader of one of two mock rallies on the Mall. Comedian Jon Stewart leads the other. At a time of near-10 percent unemployment, a difficult and draining war abroad, and widespread disgust with government overreach and incompetence, they will light up the TV screens as the hip face of the new liberalism -- just three days before the election.
I suspect the electorate will declare itself not amused.

" Plouffe is, not surprisingly, spinning a bit -- essentially saying that unless Republicans win every competitive office this fall, it will be impossible for them to declare victory on Nov. 3. But, his comments got us to thinking about the flipside of the equation: How can Democrats claim victory in 22 days time? The party has struggled for the better part of the last year with voters -- particularly independents -- who have grown increasingly unhappy with the direction of the country. Every expectation from every political analyst of every political stripe is that Democrats are headed for major losses at every level this fall. Losses are assured but defeat -- symbolically and politically -- may not be. "It is very important for Obama to have some data points out there that suggest this is not a pro-Republican electorate but an anti-incumbent electorate," said one Democratic strategist intimately involved in the 2010 campaign.

Here's our chamber by chamber breakdown of how Democrats can declare victory -- with a straight face -- on Nov. 3. HOUSE The House equation for Democrats is simple: If they hold the majority -- even by a single seat -- following the election, they will say they won. Republican strategists have spent the better part of the last two years trying to convince their supporters -- particularly donors and activists -- that the House is within reach. They have succeeded in that endeavor as most neutral House handicappers are predicting that the Democratic majority is either gone (Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato) or close to it (Stu Rothenberg).

What that means, however, is that if Democrats hold the majority on Nov. 2, it will be virtually impossible for House Republicans to celebrate since they set the stakes at retaking control. SENATE While some Democratic strategists like to say that anything short of a Republican Senate majority amounts to a victory for their side, that's probably a little too rosy a scenario. Unlike in the House where Republicans have argued for months that the majority is at stake, Senate GOP strategists -- including National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn (Texas) -- have done everything in their power to downplay the idea that Senate control is in the balance on Nov. 2. So, how then do Senate Democrats claim a win? It's going to be tough since it now appears that almost the entirety of the playing field is on their turf. The party's two best/only chances to win Republican seats -- and gain some traction in the "we won" argument -- are in Missouri and Kentucky. At the moment, the Bluegrass State seems to be the better option for a surprise Democratic pickup as ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R) has been unable to pull away from state Attorney General Jack Conway (D). In Missouri, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee disputed a report last week that they were cutting back their ad buys but the race between Rep. Roy Blunt (R) and Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) does look like something of an uphill climb. If Democrats can't win either of those seats, their best hope for a Senate "victory" is to narrow the losses within their own ranks with Colorado, Nevada and Illinois all regarded as toss up races heading into the final three weeks of the campaign. Holding all three -- coupled with an expected victory in Vice President Biden's old Delaware seat -- would keep Democratic losses in the mid-single digits and likely allow the party to credibly make the case that they dodged the doomsday Senate scenario.

GOVERNORS Governors races draw the least attention in official Washington but clearly represent Democrats' best chance to score genuine wins on Nov. 2. "No one else is going to be able to flip things," said a Democratic strategist deeply involved in gubernatorial races. "We are going to flip things. There are nine states where we have a good chance of flipping things." Those nine states -- Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Minnesota, California and Hawaii -- are all currently held by Republican governors. And, in each, there is a reasonable case to be made for why the Democratic nominee may well win. While Democrats will almost certainly trumpet any Republican turnovers they make at the gubernatorial level, not all of those pickups are created equal. The simple truth is that Florida, Texas and California are the major prizes -- given the size of each state's population and their importance in the coming 2011 redistricting process. Wins in two of those three races would almost certainly make the election cycle for Democrats. A sweep of all three would elate party strategists. Viewed broadly, Democrats are headed for major setbacks at the ballot box in three weeks time. The issue is whether they will be able to find silver linings in those dark clouds as the party -- and the country -- quickly pivot to the 2012 presidential race. 2010 10 11 13 22 By Chris Cillizza | October 11, 2010; 1:22 PM ET

The share of Americans who believe the government is doing "too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses" has returned to historic levels, as Gallup reported this morning. Nearly six in 10 Americans are now on the small (or smaller) government side of this perennial American debate.
These are 1990s levels. And that was a decade consumed by debates over the role of government, eventually culminating with welfare reform. As Gallup's astute analyst Lydia Saad has noted, the share of Americans who say Republicans represent their "attitude about the role of government" (52 percent) precisely matches sentiment on the eve of Republicans 1994 landslide.
We saw a glimpse of this peak in antigovernment fervor at the close of summer 2009, as healthcare swallowed Washington. The majority of independents no longer approved of this president. And by summer's end, town hall upheaval knocked the wind out of Democrats. The blue party has been black and blue ever since.
But here we are. Election Day is weeks off. The pushback against Uncle Sam's priorities and scope has been visible all year. Soon it will sculpt Washington's new reality.
Another Democratic president is seen as another big government Democrat. This is not simply because Barack Obama tried to do big things with government. It's also, critically, because the big things he tried (stimulus, healthcare) were not largely, or entirely, focused on the big issue of these times (historic joblessness, our financial crisis). As President Obama told New York Times' reporter Peter Baker, in a story published this morning, he let himself become "the same old tax-and-spend liberal Democrat."
It was a revelatory admission. In part, because it comes in the eleventh hour. So long after Democrats lost the public. So many warning signs unheeded. The admission captures the "professional left" mindset after Obama's election, and certainly this White House. They never reconciled themselves with how the September 15 crash made Obama's majority. They thought the gravity of post-war American politics no longer applied. But Election Day evidence illustrated otherwise.
By September 2009, after the president's healthcare address, the real story was that Obama Confronts Deeper Debate on government. But it was too little too late. By late 2009, the liberal moment had already passed because the same old liberal mistakes on government had come to pass. By early this year, Democrats were indeed Haunted by Revived Stereotypes. Americans, in the big picture, were losing love for the mommy party.
Return to Obama's early days, when it was clear the Public Stands Between Reagan and Obama on the role of government. It now stands with Reagan, or nearer to his side. How did liberalism lose this case? Democrats proceeded as if they already won the case. No solid argument was made. More importantly, Democrats were on the wrong case (healthcare over a big jobs bill).
Many persuadable voters came to ask the same old question: what's all this big government for, if not for them? Soon the conversation shifts from benefits to cost. And that conversation has long cost Democrats.
Thus here Democrats are, full circle. Gallup reported Monday that for the second straight week, using its traditional model, 56 percent of likely voters back a Republican in their district. It reports today that 58 percent believe government is too big. There is no strict correlation. But it's indeed no statistical quirk. The two pieces of data occupy similar majorities. And this explains why, at least in part, Republicans might soon regain the House majority.


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David Paul Kuhn is the Chief Political Correspondent for RealClearPolitics and the author of The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma. He can be reached at [email=%20david@realclearpolitics.com]david@realclearpolitics.com[/email] and his writing followed via RSS.

Within a month of the inauguration, the Democratic majorities in Congress had passed Mr. Obama's stimulus plan with very few changes. Today, unemployment is 9.6%. And the Ohio voters that preferred Mr. Obama to John McCain by a margin of 51%-47% are not happy. A recent CBS poll of Ohio voters found that 38% approve of Mr. Obama's handling of the economy, with 55% disapproving. Thirty-two percent say Mr. Obama has made progress in improving the economy, but 61% say he has not.

In Ohio these numbers will likely translate into GOP victories in next month's election. In this supposedly "anti-Washington" year, voters there are poised to elect two former Republican congressmen, with nearly 40 years in the nation's capital between them, to statewide office. Former Rep. Rob Portman, who also served as U.S. Trade Representative and budget director in the Bush administration, is leading Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher by some 15 points in the race for the state's open Senate seat. John Kasich, who served in the House leadership for many of his 18 years in Congress, has maintained a small lead over incumbent Gov. Ted Strickland. Three congressional seats currently held by Democrats are expected to flip to Republicans, and two others are toss-ups.

In many ways, the debate in Ohio echoes the national political discussion. Mr. Fisher has attempted to portray Mr. Portman as a tool of big business and a career politician with close ties to George W. Bush. (The latter charge lost steam when Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, found in August that Ohio voters would rather have George W. Bush in the White House than President Obama, by a margin of 50-42.)

Mr. Portman counters that Mr. Fisher has been a politician since 1980. He repeatedly points out that Ohio has lost 400,000 jobs under the Strickland/Fisher administration, a charge that seems to stick because Mr. Fisher, as director of Ohio's Department of Development, had economic growth as a major part of his portfolio. In 2008, exit polls showed that Mr. Obama won self-identified independents in Ohio 52-44. A Fox/Pulse Opinion Research poll this week shows Mr. Portman leading Mr. Fisher among independents 57-21.

The race for governor in Ohio is tighter. The White House has made Gov. Strickland's re-election a top priority, while the Republican Governor's Association has been running ads accusing Gov. Strickland of misusing the state's stimulus money. Yet even if the GOP candidate doesn't win the governor's race, Republican candidates will do well across the state.

It's not just Ohio. If the vote counts on Election Day look anything like the polls today, the region will be solid red on the color-coded maps in newspapers on Nov. 3.

In Iowa former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad, up by more than 15 points in most polls, seems almost certain to defeat incumbent Gov. Chet Culver. In Wisconsin, polls show GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker with a lead in the high single digits over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and political neophyte Ron Johnson is ahead by a similar margin against three-term Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold.

In Michigan, GOP gubernatorial candidate Rick Snyder is crushing Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero by some 20 points. Republicans are even competitive in Mr. Obama's home state, with Republican Bill Brady holding a narrow lead over incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn, and Republican Rep. Mark Kirk in a dead heat with banker Alexi Giannoulias in the race for Mr. Obama's old seat in the Senate.

This is a stunning change. In 2004, Mr. Obama swept the region—painting the electoral map deep blue over a seven-state belt stretching from Iowa to Ohio. He won Iowa (+9), Minnesota (+10), Wisconsin (+14), Michigan (+17), Indiana (+1), Ohio (+4) and his home state of Illinois (+25).

The failure of Mr. Obama's signature economic policy is a major reason his party faces these potentially historic losses. But it's not the only one.

The values that have long been associated with the Midwest are almost anachronistic in the Obama era. Thrift, hard work, common sense—the messages and policies coming out of Washington seem to disregard these once-revered virtues. As voters in the Midwest and across the country found themselves increasingly worried about the economy and government spending, Democrats in Washington, led by the White House, changed the subject to health care.

Wisconsin's Mr. Walker, who cut spending and balanced the budget as Milwaukee County executive, says voters don't want to be insulted. "Voters in this state and in the Midwest are by and large blue collar, working class, no-nonsense kind of people. They don't mind helping their neighbors," he says. "But they hate it when someone is taking advantage of them."

In Ohio last spring, tens of thousands of voters switched their party registration to Republican in order to vote in the party primaries there. They did so even though the results of the statewide GOP contests were not in question, and the competitive primaries were taking place on the Democratic side. In Lucas County, home to Toledo, Republicans had a 10-to-1 advantage in party-switchers for the May 4 primary: 3,743 voters switched from Democrat to Republican and just 392 voters went the other way. Republicans also had a 3-to-1 advantage among Lucas County voters who switched their registration from "issues-only" to party-affiliated—699 chose the GOP and just 251 chose the Democrats. These numbers would be striking in a county that split its 2008 vote evenly between Obama and John McCain. But Obama won Lucas County 65-34. Registration reports from counties around the state tell a similar story.

A recent Fox News poll asked Wisconsin voters whether Obama administration policies have helped or hurt the state's economy. Twenty-seven percent of those surveyed said the policies have helped, but 45% said they had hurt. Voters in Ohio have similar views.

And no wonder. In his speech in Toledo two years ago, Mr. Obama said that it was time to change leadership in Washington because unemployment in Ohio "is the highest it's been in 16 years." It was 7.2%. Now it's 10.1%

That's change.

Mr. Hayes, a senior writer for The Weekly Standard, is the author of "Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President" (HarperCollins, 2007).

Yesterday, Roger Vinson, senior federal judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida, found it to be a very serious question indeed. Judge Vinson characterized the Obama Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the constitutional challenge to Obamacare brought by 16 state attorneys general, four governors, two private citizens and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) as “not even a close call.” Addressing the Obama administration’s claim that Congress had the authority to enact Obamacare pursuant to the Commerce Clause, Judge Vinson wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
The individual mandate applies across the board. People have no choice and there is no way to avoid it. Those who fall under the individual mandate either comply with it, or they are penalized. It is not based on an activity that they make the choice to undertake. Rather, it is based solely on citizenship and on being alive. As the nonpartisan CBO concluded sixteen years ago (when the individual mandate was considered, but not pursued during the 1994 national healthcare reform efforts): “A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States.”</BLOCKQUOTE>
The Commerce Clause was not the only issue that the Obama administration lost. Judge Vinson was even harsher when addressing claims that Obamacare could be justified by Congress’ broad power to tax:
<BLOCKQUOTE>
As noted at the outset of this order, and as anyone who paid attention to the healthcare reform debate already knew, the Act was very controversial at the time of passage. … Because by far the most publicized and controversial part of the Act was the individual mandate and penalty, it would no doubt have been even more difficult to pass the penalty as a tax. Not only are taxes always unpopular, but to do so at that time would have arguably violated pledges by politicians (including the President) to not raise taxes, which could have made it that much more difficult to secure the necessary votes for passage. … Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing, after which the defenders of that legislation take an “Alice-in-Wonderland” tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely, thereby circumventing the safeguard that exists to keep their broad power in check.</BLOCKQUOTE>

The American people are fed up with the arrogance of politicians like Speaker Pelosi and President Obama who casually dismiss the limits placed on their power by the U.S. Constitution. The 20 states and the NFIB will now have the opportunity to continue the fight against this Intolerable Act at a trial beginning December 16. But the courts are just one weapon the American people have at their disposal to keep Washington in check. Whether it is in the states, in Congress, in the courts or at the ballot box, the American people are fighting back. And they will win.

And that should come as no surprise to those who have been following the litigation because the new law is unprecedented — quite literally, without legal precedent — both in its regulatory scope and its expansion of federal authority. Never before have courts had to consider such a breathtaking assertion of raw federal power — not even during the height of the New Deal. “While the novel and unprecedented nature of the individual mandate does not automatically render it unconstitutional,” Judge Vinson observed, “there is perhaps a presumption that it is.”

This means at the very least that “the plaintiffs have most definitely stated a plausible claim with respect to this cause of action.”
Just so — and the deliberate consideration that these district courts are giving to these serious constitutional arguments (unlike the Michigan judge’s perfunctory treatment last week) indicates that the probability that the Supreme Court will ultimately strike down the individual mandate continues to increase.

Let's hope!