News You Missed 10.13.13

The pursuit of Constitutionally grounded governance, freedom and individual liberty

"There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily." --George Washington                                       

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The Obama-Reid Gamble

The dance we are watching this weekend is a very important moment in modern American history with big implications for how the executive and the legislative branches interact in the future. The House Republicans have staked out a position that they can use their constitutional power of the purse to force the President to negotiate over key issues.  President Obama and Senate Democratic Leader Reid believe they can break the House Republicans and force them to reopen the government and pass a debt ceiling hike with no negotiations and no conditions.

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Mr. President, You Can End the Government Shutdown

President Obama has made it clear he “will not negotiate” when it comes to ending the government shutdown. At last check, the nation’s capital wasn’t run by one branch of government, or even one political party. But President Obama is so intent on protecting his unpopular, unworkable, and unfair health care law that he’d prefer to keep the government closed.
Mr. President, here’s a five-point plan to end the government shutdown—using some of your favorite phrases.

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Does Physics Drive Evolution?

Some recent evolutionary papers appear to make physical laws not just constraints on natural selection, but guiding hands that build optimal designs.

Hydrodynamics and the perfect transporter:  In cell membranes, aquaporins are hourglass-shaped channels that allow water molecules through but block other molecules.  Their “remarkable  selectivity,” coupled with “optimal permeability,” is admired by biophysicists – so much so that authors of a paper in PNAS about aquaporins [AQPs] remarked, “in a biomimetic perspective, these results provide guidelines to design artificial nanopores with optimal performances.” 

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Ben Carson: Obamacare Worst Thing Since Slavery

Retired pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson unleashed his strongest attack yet on Obamacare on Friday, saying that President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy achievement was "the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery."

"It is slavery, in a way, because it is making all of us subservient to the government," Carson, who retired in May from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, said at a speech at the conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington. "It was never about healthcare. It was about control.

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The Devious Manipulation of the Budget Debate

Obama's national debt rate on track to double ... President Obama likes to say that raising the nation's borrowing limit "won't add a dime" to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office. When Mr. Obama became president in January 2009, the total federal debt stood at $10.6 trillion. This week, it hit $16.7 trillion — an increase of 57 percent. In the same time frame under President George W. Bush, total federal debt rose 38 percent. Under President Clinton, it rose 32 percent. – Washington Times  The budget debate is a huge watershed in US history. The fate of a nation is being decided.

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Lesson Learned: The Constrained Conservative Agenda

If we examine this week's main events, we observe some powerful dominant social themes in action. Perhaps the biggest continuing news was the US government shutdown. The memes were predictable enough, having to do with the efficacy of government and the necessity of its operation. None were very persuasive, in our humble opinion, and in some cases they didn't stand up to minimal scrutiny. A further word on that at the bottom of this article ... In this past week's article, "The Devious Manipulation of the Budget Debate," we pointed out that most of the government was not shut down and that the idea that the Tea Party was going to be irretrievably damaged by the event was part of a larger promotion.

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