Blog Heap of Links for the day 9 July 2012

Q: Could somebody be imprisoned for not purchasing health insurance under the House health care bill?
A: Both House and Senate bills would levy a tax on persons who refuse to obtain coverage. Willfully evading that tax could result in jail time under the bill passed by the House – but not the bill approved by the Senate Finance Committee.

For the first time, federal officials also revealed that Terry and the elite squad of federal agents initially fired bean bags -- not bullets -- at the heavily armed drug cartel crew in the mountains south of Tucson in December 2010. During the exchange, Terry was shot and killed.

HUNTSVILLE, Utah — A parade entry portraying President Barack Obama and using the term “Obamanation” has made some angry, and others upset at the negative attention. It happened in the city’s annual Fourth of July parade. … Weber County Sheriff Chief Deputy Klint Anderson told Fox 13 News his department contacted the Secret Service after some residents expressed concern the float was a threat to the President. [video]

While most teens have a violent, angry outburst at some point during their adolescence, nearly 8 percent have regular violent outbursts that would fall into the category of a mental health disorder. [Many parents would say this is probably low.]

On Christmas Eve in 1965, a World War II-vintage "Gooney Bird" rattled and rolled to takeoff from the Da Nang airfield in Vietnam on a secret mission to a war in Laos that the U.S. officially denied was being fought. Nearly 47 years later, the Air Force crew of six aboard came home to the military's "Last Bivouac" in Arlington National Cemetery. Today they were lowered into the ground as a group in a single casket that was, in a sense, a time capsule from generations-ago conflicts whose politics and diplomacy were possibly even more muddled and maddening than those the nation has faced since 9/11.

Simply put, the conservatives' message inhibits their messaging. Liberals love to preach because preaching is all about control. And like munching on comfort food rather than nutritious high fiber, it is so much easier to listen to sweet nothings about fairness and equality from the left than to swallow the hard-edged but apologetic admonitions about individual responsibility from the right. Yes, it is slipping away. The final resting place for this most disagreeable journey will be the fate of all collectivist societies -- poverty and squalor.

Former Obama donor Ronald Perelman, the chairman of Revlon, is not supporting Barack Obama this year… And he just held a high dollar fundraiser for Mitt Romney in the Hamptons. Mondoweiss reported: The New York Times reports that Romney had a big fundraiser at Revlon chairman Ron Perelman’s house in the Hamptons over the weekend. But just four years ago, Perelman maxed out for Barack Obama. according to federal records. Why the change? Well, Perelman has also given a lot to Orthodox Jewish causes, and the Times says one of the people coming to Perelman’s house for the fundraiser had Israel on her mind