This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski was published May 28, 2013 on Breitbart.com.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take a case where a federal appeals court struck down an Indiana law denying Medicaid funds to abortion provider Planned Parenthood.

Medicaid is a federal-state partnership where government pays for healthcare for low-income Americans. It has become increasingly one-sided to the point where now the federal government dictates most details to the states; it’s a partnership in name only. In 2011, Indiana enacted a statute denying future Medicaid funds to Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the […]

This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski was published May 26, 2013 on Breitbart.com.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday unanimously confirmed Sri Srinivasan to be a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by a vote of 97-0, and he should already be considered someone on President Obama’s short list for the Supreme Court.

Srinivasan has a spectacular legal resume that looks much like John Roberts a decade ago. In 2003, Roberts was a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law, clerked for a top federal appeals judge and then a Supreme Court justice (William Rehnquist), later served […]

This column by ACRU Senior Fellow Robert Knight was published May 27, 2013 on The Washington Times website.

It’s pretty clear that the Internal Revenue Service acted illegally in its abuse of Tea Party and other conservative groups and individuals since 2009.

Why else would Lois G. Lerner, director of the IRS’ division of exempt organizations, take the Fifth Amendment before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee?

She invoked it last Wednesday after reading a statement in which she claimed, “I have not done anything wrong.” My lying eyes conclude that the lady has something to hide, but hates […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Welfare Reform (CCWR) Peter Ferrara was published May 22, 2013 on The American Spectator website.

The IRS scandal provides Republicans and conservatives with the opportunity to repeal and replace Obamacare now. The House Republican majority should refuse to fund the expansion of the IRS necessary to manage Obamacare. Without that funding, and hiring thousands of additional agents, the IRS cannot even begin to manage Obamacare.

President Obama may throw a fit. He may refuse to sign funding bills to keep the federal government open. No matter. Let him close his government […]

This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Welfare Reform (CCWR) Peter Ferrara was published May 15, 2013 on The American Spectator website.

Health policy economists are puzzled by a persistent slowdown in the growth of health care spending that seems to have started in mid-2005, and accelerated since then. The Wall Street Journal summarized it on Monday, saying, “The health [spending] growth rate has flattened out at about 3.9% over the last three years–a record low since the 1960s and down from the old normal of 6.2% to 9.7% in the 2000s.”

Economists thought at first that the […]

This column by ACRU Senior Fellow Robert Knight was published March 11, 2013 on The Washington Times website.

In 1919, back when the United States was a constitutional republic, Congress passed a child-labor law imposing a 10 percent excise tax on companies that violated it.

A North Carolina furniture maker challenged the law and won. In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled in Bailey v. Drexel Furniture that although child-labor laws have a noble purpose, the means — Congress using taxing power as a penalty — was unconstitutional.

This was before Franklin Roosevelt’s court-packing threat in 1937 ended the Supreme Court’s […]