Random Thoughts, Part I

     One of the most astonishing and ignored developments of the new health reform laws, an expansion of government that is intrusive, exorbitantly expensive, and can’t possibly fulfill its promises without bankrupting the government or its citizens through confiscatory taxation, is the extension of parents’ insurance coverage to  their children under the age of 26. It sounds great. It also reflects one of society’s great vices – the flight from personal responsibility. Shouldn’t a 26-year-old be able to stand on his two feet, and not look to mommy and daddy for his health care ? And since the age of responsibility has been dutifully lowered, should we then raise the drinking and voting age also to 26 ? If the children are not old enough or responsible enough to get their own health insurance, are they old enough to drink or vote ? Big government infantilizes the population, of all ages. This is just the most blatant example.

Notice also how it applies only to unmarried children under the age of 26, which is an obvious disincentive to young people to marry. Couples living together without the benefit of marriage now benefit from this clause, and those who marry young – like our children – are thereby penalized. This is an obvious burden on marriage. This inhibits and even punishes morality – another “unintended consequence” of this legislative overreach. I have always refused to officiate at a wedding when the couple declined to acquire a civil marriage license, but this “marriage penalty” might cause me, and other Rabbis, to re-consider. Dina d’malchuta dina must be morally based, and reflect a law that applies equally to all citizens. This “encouragement” of non-marriage flies in the face of traditional American public policy that always endorsed marriage as the bedrock of stable society.

Good decision by PM Netanyahu in deciding to stay away from next week’s DC summit on nuclear security. Israel has little to gain and much to lose if forced to shift away from its longstanding policy of nuclear ambiguity. With a hostile US President, it suits Israeli leaders to keep as far from DC for as long as possible.

Is the new Israeli spy scandal really that shocking ? An aspiring reporter (in Israel, that generally means a far-leftist), doing her army service in the Central Command transferred thousands of classified documents to a reporter for Haaretz, who has since fled the country. The most sensitive information apparently led to certain operations being abandoned, but what most electrified the left were documents that showed that the “policy” of avoiding killing terrorists in the field was not being dutifully followed. So the media elites have rallied around these traitors as if they are Daniel Ellsberg uncovering the Pentagon Papers, because they really believe that peace is just one election away, and Israel is an unjust, criminal occupying entity with no right to exist. Add to this travesty Haaretz’ associate editor castigating the family of slain IDF Major Eliraz Peretz hy”d as “jihadist fascists” – because they live in Eli – and it is not hard to see why they would support spies, or anything else that weakens the IDF or Israel’s standing in the world. Hmmm… Israel actually wants to kill terrorists ! The horror, the inhumanity of it all !

Michigan  Congressman Bart Stupak is now retiring from Congress, weeks after disappointing longtime pro-life supporters and his Catholic heritage by endorsing Obamacare under the fig leaf of an Executive Order “prohibiting” federal funding for abortions. (An Executive Order can easily be reversed, or even overruled by the courts.) Did the Democrats offer a quid pro quo to all those congressmen who walked the plank with them ? If so, look for Stupak, a year or so from now, to be nominated as US Ambassador to some former Eastern Bloc country, as payoff. And he won’t be the only one so “rewarded.”

I’m off to Israel this week…