. Mark Levin says Barack Obama can’t be trusted:

Here’s my question to you, folks: How many times do you go back to the same used car salesman when he sells you a car that doesn’t work? How many times do you go back to the snake oil salesman who sells you supposed remedies that never work? How many times do you go back to this well?

Obama cannot be trusted. His policies are a failure. The country is facing financial collapse. Spending is completely out of control. Massive increases in domestic spending across the board. Massive efforts to take money from you and giving it to somebody else. Now, he says this trickle-down doesn’t work. In other words, capitalism doesn’t work. Well, trick-down welfareism doesn’t work, does it folks? Trickle-down food stamps. Trickle-down unemployment. Trickle-down the whole damn welfare state. And trickle-down is about to become an avalanche of debt that smothers your children and your grandchildren.

. Barack Obama granting “stealth amnesty” to illegal immigrants (aka Democratic voters) in another end run around Congress. Judicial Watch reports DHS’s Big Sis is granting illegal immigrants “Unlawful Presence Waivers”:

In its quest to implement stealth amnesty, the Obama Administration is working behind the scenes to halt the deportation of certain illegal immigrants by granting them “unlawful presence waivers.”

The new measure would apply to illegal aliens who are relatives of American citizens. Here is how it would work, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcement posted in today’s Federal Register, the daily journal of the U.S. government; the agency will grant “unlawful presence waivers” to illegal aliens who can prove they have a relative that’s a U.S. citizen. . . .

The administration also claims that relaxing the rule will also “create efficiencies for both the U.S. government and most applicants.” How exactly is not listed in the Federal Register announcement, which gives the public 60 days to comment. That’s only a formality since the DHS has indicated that the change is pretty much a done deal.

This appears to be part of the Obama Administration’s bigger plan to blow off Congress by using its executive powers to grant illegal immigrants backdoor amnesty. The plan has been in the works for years and in 2010 Texas’s largest newspaper published an exposé about a then-secret DHS initiative that systematically cancelled pending deportations. The remarkable program stunned the legal profession and baffled immigration attorneys who said the government bounced their clients’ deportation even when expulsion was virtually guaranteed.

In late 2011 a mainstream newspaper obtained internal Homeland Security documents outlining “sweeping changes” in immigration enforcement that halt the deportation of illegal aliens with no criminal records. This also includes a nationwide “training program” to assure that enforcement agents and prosecuting attorneys don’t remove illegal immigrants who haven’t been convicted of crimes.

. Obamacare is doomed! Unsustainable! (or that’s what Rasmussen Reports says):

Media coverage now implies that the U.S. Supreme Court will determine the fate of President Obama’s health care law. But nothing the court decides will keep the law alive for more than a brief period of time.

There are three ways the health care law could meet its end. The first, obviously, is the Supreme Court could declare some or all of it unconstitutional in June.

If it gets past that hurdle, the law also could be ended by Election 2012. If a Republican president is elected, the GOP will almost certainly also win control of the Senate and retain control of the House. While the details might take time, a Republican sweep in November would ultimately end the Obama experiment.

But even if the law survives the Supreme Court and the next election, the clock will be ticking. Recent estimates suggest that the law would cause 11 million people to lose their employer-provided insurance and be forced onto a government-backed insurance plan. That’s a problem because 77 percent of those who now have insurance rate their current coverage as good or excellent. Only 3 percent rate their coverage as poor. For most of the 11 million forced to change their insurance coverage then, it will be received as bad news and create a pool of vocally unhappy voters.

Additionally, the cost estimates for funding the program are likely to keep going up. Eighty-one percent of voters expect it to cost more than projected, and recent Congressional Budget Office estimates indicate voters are probably right. But it’s not the narrow specifics and cost estimates that guarantee the ultimate demise of the president’s health care plan. It’s the fact that the law runs contrary to basic American values and perceptions.

This, then, is the third hurdle the law faces: Individual Americans recognize that they have more power as consumers than they do as voters. Their choices in a free market give them more control over the economic world than choosing one politician or another.

. Obamacare was always teetering on the edge of the abyss. Rick Richman at Pajamas Media reminds us why the whole Obamacare mandate scheme was doomed to fail in the first place:

The reason “Medicare for Everyone” was rejected was not simply that it was considered “too much government.” It was because everyone knew Medicare itself is financially unstable, and expanding it to cover not only people 65 or older, but everyone in the country for their first 64 years as well, would have involved astronomical tax increases and/or astronomical new borrowing. Even with complete control of Congress, Democrats did not dare go with such an approach. Pitching ObamaCare as “Medicare for Everyone” was a political non-starter — as was a “public option” the public knew would turn into the same thing.

Obama’s alternative was not “individual responsibility,” but a government mandate compelling purchases of policies from insurance companies unable to decline risks or limit benefits, with health care to be micro-managed by an unelected board in Washington, deciding everything from end-of-life care to contraceptives for students. The program was styled as a regulation of commerce, but it was really the creation of a new governmental program with every person in the country required to participate.

. Obama throws down the gauntlet, challenges SCOTUS. Fay Voshell writes at American Thinker:

Monday, by declaring that the “unelected” Supreme Court had better rule in favor of the 2,700-page health care act of 2010, the president of our country revealed not only his hypocrisy, but the extent he will go to in order to preserve the key accomplishment of his administration. He seems fully to intend to intimidate the Court into rubber-stamping the Affordable Care Act of 2010 as constitutional. . . .

[Obama had] the unmitigated gall to target the Supreme Court as an “unelected” body, the members of which were forewarned about any intransigence they might display against the executive branch during his State of the Union speech of 2010. It was at that time President Obama publicly dressed down the sitting judges in front of the entire legislative body, and indeed, the nation, for a ruling he disagreed with.

For those who do not know, Voshell explains:

But that is precisely what the high Court is supposed to do — namely, strike down unconstitutional legislation. That is one chief reason why the court is an “unelected” body. It was created to stand as an institution that subscribes to the rule of law and to the U.S. Constitution. The members have lifelong tenure in order that the august Court remain the one branch of government which leavens, withstands, and/or tempers the vicissitudes and overreaches of the legislative and executive branches of government. The high court acts as a salutary brake on the nostrums of any one particular administration by subjecting legislation and lower court decisions to tempered and, yes, judicious review of the Constitution.

. OUCH! The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals promptly called Obama out on his BS. “The Won” has until Thursday to pony up. Rick Moran writes at American Thinker:

CBS News: “In the escalating battle between the administration and the judiciary, a federal appeals court apparently is calling the president’s bluff — ordering the Justice Department to answer by Thursday whether the Obama Administration believes that the courts have the right to strike down a federal law, according to a lawyer who was in the courtroom.”

Moran: “This appears to be a little gamesmanship on the part of the Appeals Court, but it’s no less than what Obama deserves. He wants to call out the Supreme Court for political gain, he darn well better be able to back up his words with legal reasons.”

. Double OUCH! Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft comments:

This is what happens when our Constitutional lecturer president stands on the White House lawn and astoundingly challenges the authority and credibility of the Supreme Court; he gets issued a homework assignment on the fundamentals of our Constitution. . . . Obama’s radical statements . . . were so inconceivably stupid and dangerous he managed to completely offend and alarm the entire U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals Panel. . . . The three branches of government are co-equal to prevent this sort of tyrannical behavior. But, Obama thinks he’s the only branch of government and the other two just interfere.

. Triple OUCH! And Stephen F. Hayes at The Weekly Standard asks if Obama just picked a fight with Justice Anthony Kennedy:

[Obama's] tone was strident and his facts were wrong. It would be neither unprecedented nor extraordinary for the Supreme Court to find the individual mandate unconstitutional, and Obama’s health care plan passed with the barest of majorities and only after horse-trading that might be called extraordinary even by casual observers of the legislative process. Not surprisingly, the president’s short rant did not play well. . . .

Kennedy made clear [during the government's arguments] that it was the government who has the “heavy burden” to demonstrate that the law [is] constitutional. . . .

Obama’s comments Monday gave rise to speculation that the president was trying to intimidate the Court into upholding the law. The more likely explanation is that the White House was setting up its political argument in the event that the law is invalidated.

Whatever the explanation, Obama’s views of the burden are very different than Anthony Kennedy’s.

. Medical societies create “no no” list for MDs, tell them to just quit it with all the expensive (and most likely future health care “exchange” ineligible) testing. The AP reports:

Old checklist for doctors: order that test, write that prescription. New checklist for doctors: first ask yourself if the patient really needs it.

Nine medical societies representing nearly 375,000 physicians [listed] treatments their members should no longer automatically order.

The 45 items listed include most repeat colonoscopies within 10 years of a first such test, early imaging for most back pain, brain scans for patients who fainted but didn’t have seizures, and antibiotics for mild- to-moderate sinus distress.

Also on the list: heart imaging stress tests for patients without coronary symptoms. And a particularly sobering recommendation calls for cancer doctors to stop treating tumors in end-stage patients who have not responded to multiple therapies and are ineligible for experimental treatments.

Dr. Christine Cassel, president of the American Board of Internal Medicine, said the goal is to reduce wasteful spending without harming patients. She suggested some may benefit by avoiding known risks associated with medical tests, such as exposure to radiation.

“We all know there is overuse and waste in the system, so let’s have the doctors take responsibility for that and look at the things that are overused,” said Cassel. “We’re doing this because we think we don’t need to ration health care if we get rid of waste.” Her group sets standards and oversees board certification for many medical specialties.

The recommendations come at a time when American health care is undergoing far-reaching changes. No matter what the Supreme Court decides on President Barack Obama’s health overhaul, employers, lawmakers, insurers and many doctors are questioning how the United States spends far more on medical care than any other economically advanced country and still produces mediocre results overall.

Until now, the health care system has rewarded doctors for volume. Now the focus is shifting to paying for results and coordination. That explains the urgency for doctors themselves to identify areas of questionable spending.

It’s unclear how much money would be saved if doctors followed the 45 recommendations rigorously. Probably tens of billions of dollars, and maybe hundreds of billions over time. That would help, but come nowhere near solving, the problem of high health care costs.

And who is responsible for this burst of responsibility?

The recommendations will be circulated to consumers and doctors by a coalition calling itself Choosing Wisely, which includes employer groups, unions, AARP and Consumer Reports. Neither the insurance industry nor the federal government was involved in process.

AARP — which is a major Obamacare booster — is the beneficiary of Medicare bridge programs that have been, and will continue to be, a major expense for seniors.

The “unions”, according to Choosing Wisely‘s website, is one — SEIU — which represents health care worker locals. (Surprised that it’s about union jobs?)

Another “partner” is The Leapfrog Group — whose “initial focus” was “reducing preventable medical mistake.” The board of directors includes employees from Goodwill Industries, AARP, “Government Motors”, Blue Shield, and FedEx.

How about that “Neither the insurance industry nor the federal government was involved in process”?

Lying liars at work, per usual: Liaisons to The Leapfrog Group’s board of directors include representatives from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Office of Personnel Management, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Oh. And The Leapfrog Group even has its own propaganda arm: the Wikipedian in Residence, whose job is to “facilitate Wikipedia entries related to” The Leapfrog Group and its agenda.