Dialogue With Terrorists? 

On Christmas Day the Egyptian government issued a decree declaring the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization. The Obama Administration, which had thrown its support behind the former government of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, protested the designation. 

"We think it is essential for Egypt to have an inclusive political process," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. "There needs to be dialogue and political participation across the political spectrum."

The immediate cause of the decree was a car bombing on Christmas eve that killed 11 police officers and four others. But there was more.

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Watan reports that Egyptian intelligence had been monitoring communications between Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas operatives. The Egyptian authorities discovered and thwarted a plot by the groups to bomb Christian churches in Egypt on Christmas Day. 

Jihadist violence against Christians in the Middle East is nothing new. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist supporters routinely target Egypt's Coptic Christian population. Dozens of Christians were murdered on Christmas Day in Baghdad, Iraq. Thankfully, the Egyptian government was able to prevent a similar slaughter from taking place in Egypt, and it took action against the murderous Muslim Brotherhood in response.

Rather than encouraging dialogue with the terrorists, we should be applauding the Egyptian government. 

The Obamacare Disaster Continues 

Liberal elites who hoped the new year would bring better news about Obamacare had better think again. The latest headlines suggest that the implementation of Obamacare is going about as well as its disaster-plagued rollout. For example: 
 

• Here in the Washington suburbs, frustrated Obamacare enrollees are walking out of local hospitals claiming they were denied care. Why? Because they don't have any proof of insurance. 

  Maria Galvez, who left a hospital in Springfield, Virginia, told reporters, "They had no idea if my insurance was active or not! The people in there told me that since I didn't have an insurance card, I would be billed for the whole cost of the x-ray ($500)." Galvez added, "It's not fair -- you know, I signed up last week like I was supposed to." As it turns out, the Obamacare policy she signed up for has a $5,500 deductible. 
   

• Doctor's offices and hospitals are having major trouble too. One surgeon's office waited on hold for two hours trying to find out if a patient needed prior authorization. A Texas hospital can't meet payroll because the federal government's Medicare contractor isn't processing claims fast enough. 
   
• Expecting a baby? Don't expect any help from Obamacare. Fox News reports that healthcare.gov can't make changes to your policy once your data is entered. 
   
• Rate shock continues to stun liberals as this self-described "cheerleader" discovers she can't afford Obamacare. 
   
• Yesterday we reported that thousands of Iowans who thought they were covered under Obamacare's massive expansion of Medicaid were told to start the process all over again because of bad data from the federal government's healthcare.gov site. West Virginia officials are now reporting that a similar problem has ensnared 18,000 people in the Mountain State. 
   
• Speaking of Medicaid, one of the justifications for Obamacare was that providing coverage to more people would keep them out of the costly emergency room. But that may not be the case. 

  Oregon expanded its Medicaid program several years ago, and a new study found that "Those who gained coverage made 40 percent more visits to the emergency room…"

Admittedly this is all anecdotal evidence. But so far, Obamacare is turning out to be as bad as we feared. 

Inconvenient Irony 

Speaking of anecdotal evidence, did you hear about the ship of French researchers and tourists trapped in the Antarctic ice? After a tense week, they were finally rescued yesterday by a Chinese ice breaker, which transported the scientists and tourists (via helicopter) to an Australian ship. But now the Australian vessel has been ordered to stay put because the Chinese ice breaker may be stuck in the ice!

Now here's the funny part: 98% of news stories have failed to mention that the folks on the rescued ship were global warming enthusiasts on a mission to document the impact of global warming on Antarctica. As one pundit said today, they found themselves frozen in 15 feet of irony! 

I'm writing today's report from globally warm Washington, D.C., where wind chill temperatures are near zero. Global warming science is a thin gruel indeed. We should continue to question the demands of leftist governments and politicians who constantly seek more power and more of your hard-earned tax dollars to enforce their gloom and doom prophecies.