From Eric Katz, at Government Executive, we learn:

As recently as February, just weeks before sequestration was set to go into effect, nearly every Cabinet-level department had issued warnings of the need to furlough employees in fiscal 2013 due to the across-the-board cuts.  

With the fiscal year more than halfway over, however, the number of agencies and department that will in fact require furloughs has dropped dramatically. While some departments, such as Labor and Treasury, have already begun or are moving forward with plans to furlough, the Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, Justice and Transportation departments have reversed course.

Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, warned his people to expect furloughs of "multiple days."  Now, it seems that he has found other ways to economize, including:

... a reduction in hiring. Forty-three percent of the vacancies at Education have gone unfilled in the last two years, according to the department. 

Duncan's department has also “reduced its contracts by eliminating or postponing certain tasks.”

And:

It has and continues to reduce travel and large conference spending, slashing 15 percent and 10 percent of their budgets, respectively.

In other words, the sorts of things businesses routinely do in tough times.  

Glenn Kessler awards Dan Pfeiffer, an adviser to President Barack Obama, three Pinocchios:

It has long been part of the Washington game for officials to discredit a news story by playing up errors in a relatively small part of it. Pfeiffer gives the impression that GOP operatives deliberately tried to “smear the president” with false, doctored e-mails.

But the reporters involved have indicated they were told by their sources that these were summaries, taken from notes of e-mails that could not be kept. The fact that slightly different versions of the e-mails were reported by different journalists suggests there were different note-takers as well.

Indeed, Republicans would have been foolish to seriously doctor e-mails that the White House at any moment could have released (and eventually did). Clearly, of course, Republicans would put their own spin on what the e-mails meant, as they did in the House report. Given that the e-mails were almost certain to leak once they were sent to Capitol Hill, it’s a wonder the White House did not proactively release them earlier.

The burden of proof lies with the accuser. Despite Pfeiffer’s claim of political skullduggery, we see little evidence that much was at play here besides imprecise wordsmithing or editing errors by journalists.

Whole thing here. 

The more the evidence emerges, the more one has to wonder: Could Obamacare have been designed any more poorly? Even those who don’t mind Obamacare’s striking consolidation of power and money in Washington at the expense of Americans’ liberty, or who don’t mind the medical overhaul’s $2 trillion price-tag over its real first decade (2014 to 2023), must be starting to wonder at the sheer ineptitude of those who spearheaded its passage and penned its provisions. 

Now comes a report from the Wall Street Journal, further confirming that President Obama’s signature legislation has essentially everything backward. We already knew that Obamacare’s fix for an American health care system that the federal government long ago broke, is to give the federal government far more power over American health care; that its solution to escalating health costs is to mandate greater health benefits (and, hence, higher costs); and that its solution to the pricey overreliance on pre-paid health plans — offered by insurance companies in lieu of real insurance — is to have the government require Americans to buy those pre-paid health plans under penalty of law.

Now, courtesy of the Journal, we learn that Obamacare’s mandated “essential benefits” (so “essential” that tens of millions of people freely forego them when the government doesn’t compel their purchase) really only apply to the small group and individual markets. In the realm of bigger businesses, the mandates won’t similarly apply.

The Journal writes:

 “Many employers and benefits experts have understood the [Obamacare] rules to require robust insurance, covering a list of ‘essential’ benefits such as mental-health services and a high percentage of workers’ overall costs….

 “But a close reading of the rules makes it clear that those mandates affect only plans sponsored by insurers that are sold to small businesses and individuals, federal officials confirm….Larger employers, generally with more than 50 workers, need cover only preventive services, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit.”

The Journal continues, “Administration officials confirmed in interviews that [these] skinny plans, in concept, would be sufficient to avoid” Obamacare’s penalties. Highlighting the Obama administration’s striking naïveté about government-imposed incentives, the Journal adds, “Several expressed surprise that employers would consider the approach.”

The thoughtful Carl Cannon has written a piece, "Richard Milhous Obama," concluding that our current president has more in common with our 37th than President Obama's partisans would like to acknowledge. The estimable Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in, defending against liberal dissents the proposition that "Nixon Is a Fair Comparison" with Obama.

I protest. Will no one stand up for Richard Nixon? Richard Nixon was a combat veteran, a staunch and brave anti-Communist, a man who took on the liberal establishment and at times his own party's as well, a leader who often thought for himself and had the courage of his convictions, a president who assembled a first-rate Cabinet and one who—while flawed both in character and in policy judgment—usually tried to confront the real problems and deal with challenges of his times. Richard Nixon led neither the country nor his own administration from behind.

I worked for Richard Nixon (well, I worked for two months in the Nixon White House in 1970 as a summer intern). I voted for Richard Nixon (in 1972, my first vote, against George McGovern—and one about which I have no regrets). I knew Richard Nixon (very slightly—I met him on a few occasions in groups in the late 1970s and the 1980s, and then a couple of times when I worked for Vice President Quayle). And so I feel obliged to rise to Richard Nixon's defense, and to say, with all due respect, to our current president: Barack Obama, you're no Richard Nixon.

The show will go on.  Sequestration may have cost Washington D.C. tourists a chance to tour the White House, but the Independence Day fireworks will go off as planned.  A contract was awarded yesterday to Garden State Fireworks of Millington, NJ for $221,819.77.  The listing for bids on the typically business-like fbo.gov website contained this somewhat colorful solicitation:

Provide supervision, labor, materials, supplies and equipment necessary to present an innovative, bounteous, dynamic and attractive fireworks display for Independence Day on the Grounds of the Washington Monument, Washington, D.C. on July 4, 2013.

The National Park Service that puts on the fireworks show each year offers several suggestions for enjoying the show, which is scheduled to begin at 9:10 on the evening of the 4th:

• Consider wearing hearing protection. These fireworks are BIG and LOUD.

• Consider wearing eye protection to protect yourself from falling debris.

• Consider not bringing pets.

Perhaps no other IRS official is more intimately associated with the tax agency's growing scandal than Lois Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations Division. Since admitting the IRS harassed hundreds of conservative and Tea Party groups for over two years, Lerner has been criticized for a number of untruths—including the revelation that she apparently lied about planting a question at an American Bar Association conference where she first publicly acknowledged IRS misconduct.

Still, Lerner has her defenders in the government and the media. Shortly after the scandal broke, The Daily Beast  published an article headlined "IRS Scandal’s Central Figure, Lois Lerner, Described as ‘Apolitical.’" Insisting Lerner, and the IRS more broadly, were not not politically motivated has been a central contention of those trying to minimize the impact of the scandal.

The trouble with this defense is that, prior to joining the IRS, Lerner's tenure as head of the Enforcement Office at the Federal Election Commission (FEC) was marked by what appears to be politically motivated harassment of conservative groups.

Lerner was appointed head of the FEC's enforcement division in 1986 and stayed in that position until 2001. In the late 1990s, the FEC launched an onerous investigation of the Christian Coalition, ultimately costing the organization hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless hours in lost work. The investigation was notable because the FEC alleged that the Christian Coalition was coordinating issue advocacy expenditures with a number of candidates for office. Aside from lacking proof this was happening, it was an open question whether the FEC had the authority to bring these charges. 

James Bopp Jr., who was lead counsel for the Christian Coalition at the time, tells THE WEEKLY STANDARD the Christian Coalition investigation was egregious and uncalled for. "We felt we were being singled out, because when you handle a case with 81 depositions you have a pretty good argument you're getting special treatment. Eighty-one depositions! Eighty-one! From Ralph Reed's former part-time secretary to George H.W. Bush. It was mind blowing," he said.

All told the FEC deposed 48 different people—and that doesn't begin to account for all the FEC's requests for information. Bopp further detailed the extent of the inquiry in testimony delivered before the congressional Committee on House Administration in 2003: