If you like your Dems, you can keep them! That seems to be the motivation behind the ObamaCare delay du jour, which would help the President’s party dodge some of the health care backlash at the ballot box. Like the last 29 ObamaCare deferrals, insiders say the new announcement is designed to give liberals cover heading into the midterm elections.

Rumors were flying faster than Mardi Gras beads on Capitol Hill yesterday about the decision to push the deadline for noncompliant plans past December 31. Of course, nothing in the legislation gives the White House the power to bypass parts of the law for political reasons – but unfortunately, that’s never stopped the administration before. Not surprisingly, this latest disruption is tied to the President’s infamous promise that Americans could keep the plans they liked. To ease the pain of that betrayal, the White House offered to let insurers keep offering the policies that didn’t meet ObamaCare’s standards. “The President has called those plans ‘bad apples,’” Bryan Preston writes, “but for political reasons, they’re good enough now.”

Initially, the administration punted until year-end, giving plan holders an extra year to adjust to the news that they’d need to find another policy or be dropped altogether. There’s just one snag with the strategy. While the deadline doesn’t expire until December, insurance companies are required to give consumers 90-days notice before their plan is dropped. In other words, the wave of cancellation letters would start hitting mailboxes on October 1, barely a month before voters head to the polls. With the insurance ax already falling on 6.2 million Americans, a flood of cancellations in October may as well double as GOP campaign ads. Although the timetable for the delay is unclear, experts wonder if the administration will punt on the minimum standards requirement through 2016, so that it wouldn’t be used against the Democratic presidential candidate.

For all the people waiting for transparency from this administration, this is certainly transparent! America should be able to see right through these motives (though I don’t suppose we can take anything for granted in a country that reelected the man responsible for this $3 trillion debacle). For all the effort and expense that went into passing the health care law, it is stunning how little of it the President wants to implement.

Meanwhile, the implications of his lawlessness on future presidencies couldn’t be more devastating. In five short years, President Obama has taken a quantum leap in pushing the balance of power. If people from both sides stepped back and looked dispassionately at what’s happening to our system of government under this administration, they might wake up in time to pull America back from the brink. Because, as it currently stands, the precedent of operating outside the boundaries of the White House’s authority is a bad precedent – no matter who’s in authority.

Obama Drags Military into New Era

In the Obama military, you can’t have a Bible on your desk – but you can have heels in your footlocker. The troops at Kadena Air Base in Okinawa found that out firsthand when their fellow servicemen and women got approval to host a drag show fundraiser. The event, which sponsors agreed to call a “variety show,” was sponsored by the pro-homosexual group OutServe and held with the blessing of the 18th Wing on official base property. Six gay, lesbian, and straight airmen “donned heavy makeup to dance and lip sync songs… for a raucous capacity crowd,” Stars and Stripes reports.

“Everything is just accepted,” one Sergeant explained in a nod to the post-“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” era. Just a few years ago, the paper notes, “gay and lesbian drag performances on a military base would have been unthinkable.” But in the brave world of social experimentation, outrageous is the new norm.

And unfortunately, that norm comes at a steep price. Last week, the Army announced that it dismissed 588 soldiers as sexual assault counselors because of their role in everything from committing assault themselves to child abuse. Sexual assaults have exploded in the Obama military with 26,000 reported cases with male-on-male attacks accounting for the majority of incidents. But what should we expect from an administration creating a sexually-charged environment, while systematically removing the moral foundation of the military since the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”

Of course, the irony is that while the Air Force has been defending drag queen acts on military installations as early as last June, Christians in the service still aren’t extended the same tolerance. When the first cross-dressing show came under fire, Brigadier General Tammy Smith, the first openly gay general, said, “I would ask you to also give space to people to be authentically who they are.” Shouldn’t the same apply to Christians? Unfortunately in the Obama military, anyone can live proudly and openly – unless they’re believers.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.