Monday Morning Catch-up: Benghazi, IRS Scandals Heating Up, ObamaCare Failing – Obama Fund-Raising

Weasel Zippers: CBS News Report: Top IRS Officials Knew They Were Targeting Conservative Groups Two Years Before They Told Congress “There’s Absolutely No Targeting”…

According to a timeline obtained by CBS News, the IRS began singling out tea party groups in the spring of 2010. Though the agency insisted Friday no high-level employees were aware of the targeting, a draft which surfaced over the weekend of an inspector general’s report due to be released this week revealed that Lois Lerner — an IRS official in charge of oversight of tax-exempt groups — knew about it as early as June 2011.

Lerner allegedly became aware of the targeting during a meeting two summers ago — 10 months before penning an April 2012 letter to House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., assuring him the rigorous scrutiny some conservative groups had complained about was “in the ordinary course of the application process” for nonprofit groups seeking tax exemption.

Weasel Zippers: Even MSNBC Is Outraged Over IRS Targeting Conservatives: “This Is Outrageous, No Matter What Political Party You Are”…

Via Washington Times:

It’s little surprise to see Republicans bashing the Obama administration over reports that the Internal Revenue Service targeted conservative groups during the 2012 election season.

But even the president’s most vocal supporters — the talking heads of liberal cable news channel MSNBC — are unloading on the White House and the Democratic Party as a whole.

“Look at the reaction of the entire Democratic Party. Of course the Republican Party is jumping on this … beating up the IRS is always good politics. But why aren’t more Democrats jumping on this?” asked MSNBC host and White House correspondent Chuck Todd. “This is outrageous, no matter what political party you are.”

Twitchy: Well, they were ‘flourishing’: David Plouffe excuses IRS targeting of conservative groups:

No, really. Former Obama adviser David Plouffe took to Twitter to spin the IRS’ targeting of conservative groups. And boy, did he step in it.

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Important to note that they totally asked for it. By being successful fundraisers.

Then came the immediate backpedaling attempt. Call him out for his ludicrous tweet? You are a conspiracy theorist, natch.

Weasel Zippers: White House Dismisses IRS Targeting Conservatives As Only “A Small Number Of IRS Employees,” Says Obama “Concerned”…

WRONG! This went all the way to the top of the agency who knew for at least two years this was going on and denied it was happening to Congress.

Via TPM:

White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement Monday that President Barack Obama is “concerned” that a “small number of Internal Revenue Service employees may have” inappropriately singled out conservative groups for further review during the 2012 election and that he expects “appropriate steps” will be taken should an independent review find that rules were broken. [...]

Townhall: A Reminder of How the Obama Government Has Repeatedly Targeted Conservatives:

We learned late last week that the IRS specifically targeted conservative groups for political purposes starting in 2011, but they aren’t the only federal agency that has abused its power to do so. As a reminder, here’s a compilation of just some of the ways conservatives, “tea party groups,” and “patriots” have been targeted.

Doug Ross: THE IRS SCANDAL AND OBAMACARE: Yes, Your Private Health Information Will Be Used Against You:

So what could possibly go wrong with the IRS administering all of your health care data? 

When Obamacare’s individual mandate takes effect in 2014, all Americans who file income tax returns must complete an additional IRS tax form… The new form will require disclosure of a taxpayer’s personal identifying health information in order to determine compliance with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate.

As confirmed by IRS testimony to the tax-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment”.

…Simply put, there is no way for the IRS to enforce Obamacare’s individual mandate without such an invasive reporting scheme… As a service to the public, Americans for Tax Reform has released a projected version of this tax form to help families and tax specialists prepare for this additional filing requirement. Taxpayers may view the projected IRS form at http://www.ObamacareTaxForm.com. On the form, lines 3-4 show where taxpayers will disclose their personal health ID information.

Big Government:59 Congress Members Demand Hagel Explain Meeting with Anti-Christian Extremist:

Monday morning, Congressmen Steve Scalise and John Fleming—both Republicans representing districts in Louisiana—sent a letter signed by 59 Members of the U.S. House of Representatives to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon, demanding answers regarding Pentagon officials meeting with an anti-Christian extremist.

This story began two weeks ago when Breitbart News reported on at least one such meeting. Since that time it has become a growing controversy, as Breitbart News reported additional disturbing details. Now Congress is weighing in.

The Scalise-Fleming letter begins:

It has come to our attention that as recently as April 23, 2013, Pentagon officials met with Mr. Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, Founder and President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), to discuss religious freedom in the military. As we have great concern regarding numerous inflammatory statements from Mr. Weinstein in recent weeks, we are seeking further clarification on the meeting that took place late last month.

Ramirez cartoon via Townhall.

Big Government: Dems: GOP Leading Benghazi ‘Witch Hunt’ Against Hillary:

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) went out of her way to try to protect Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, calling Rand Paul’s attacks on Clinton’s malfeasance “nonsense” and blaming Republicans for a loss of American credibility for attacking the Obama administration. But even she admitted that criticism of the administration was warranted. “I think the talking points were wrong,” Feinstein said.

Meanwhile, Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) said on local NBC, “I think there are some unanswered questions about how they came to say what they did.”

With all this going on, what do you think the president is doing, this week?

Michelle Malkin: Dead and circuses: Clown-in-chief Obama calls Benghazi talking points a “sideshow;” Flashback to Obama’s U.N. and Letterman sideshows:

Oh, yes he just did. At a joint press conference with British PM David Cameron in Washington today, President Obama lied and evaded and obfuscated some more on his Benghazi crime and cover-up.

Obama called the swelling uproar over the Etch-a-Sketch YouTube video talking points shilled by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and himself a “sideshow.”

Read all about it at Twitchy.

Re-watch the “sideshow” yourselves of Obama plying the YouTube falsehood two weeks after the attack. (Click link for video.)

Breitbart: Don’t Blow It on Benghazi: The Focus Must Be Obama, NOT Clinton:

As the rubble in Benghazi was still smoldering, the President declared, on September 12, 2012, “We will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.” And then he was aboard Air Force One, off to Las Vegas, for a rally and fundraiser.

The immediate question, of course, is what Obama left behind in Washington D.C. that day.  Increasingly, it appears that he left his underlings in Washington to work out the new and dishonest Benghazi narrative–the cover-up.  The goal was to insulate the President from all this bad news–he had nothing to do with it.  Isn’t it interesting, for example, that no photos were ever released of the President working on the Benghazi crisis on the night of the attacks?  Nope, with the November election just six weeks away, the White House strategy was clear: The President was to kept far, far away from anything that might make the votes wonder if they had the right commander-in-chief.

Thus we come to the more important question–the ultimate question: What did the President know?

John Bolton, Trib-Live: FOREIGN POLICY: another example of President Obama’s failed leadership – says one thing and does another.

In recent weeks, President Obama has worked assiduously to redefine and thereby back away from his earlier statements that Syria’s Assad regime would face grave consequences if it used chemical weapons. The president’s emphatic pronouncements, starting last August, that any such actions would cross a “red line” and be a “game changer” had turned from news-getting one-liners into a major public-relations problem for his administration.

Then, on May 5, The New York Times’ lead article reported the spectacle of unnamed administration officials leaking that the president’s comments were “unscripted.” One anonymous source said “the idea was to put a chill into the Assad regime without actually trapping the president into any predetermined action.”

These White House comments to its favorite media outlet possibly reflected a strategy to downplay the “red line” comment, seemingly even at the president’s short-term expense, in order to minimize longer-term political damage. Or, much worse, the anonymous sources could have been leaking against their own boss, a dangerous sign of instability and dissension within the administration.

NRO: Grassley: Baucus Retiring Because He’s ‘Fed Up’ With Obamacare:

Democratic senator Max Baucus is retiring because he is “fed up” with the Affordable Care Act, according to his Republican colleague Chuck Grassley. Speaking at Friday night’s Lincoln Day dinner in Iowa, Grassley told the audience the Montana senator is leaving office ”because he’s so fed up with the possibility of the implementation of Obamacare being a train wreck.”

Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, played a key role in writing the 2010 law.

Grassley said that dissatisfaction with the health-care bill exists across party lines, describing a “bipartisan coalition in Washington” that considers the implementation of the law a disaster. “It’s a shame that a trainwreck even left the station a couple years ago,” he added, referring to Baucus’s now-infamous statement of frustration.

The Weekly Standard: Obama to Attend 3 Democratic Fundraisers:

President Barack Obama will start the week by attending 3 Democratic fundraisers in New York City, according to the White House.

“In the afternoon, the President will travel to New York City. The departure from the South Lawn and the arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport will be open press,” the president’s schedule reads.

“While in New York City, the President will deliver remarks at two DNC events at private residences and a joint DCCC/DSCC event at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The DNC events are print pool for remarks only and the DCCC/DSCC event is pooled press.

“In the evening, the President will depart New York City en route Washington, DC. The departure from John F. Kennedy International Airport and the arrival on the South Lawn will be open press.

The Examiner: Immigration enforcement run by La Raza, claims ICE union leader:

The head of the union representing members of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the Homeland Security Department on Thursday stated that immigration enforcement is being run by leaders of a racist group known as La Raza (“The Race”).

According to Chris Crane, the current president of the union for ICE agents, the National ICE Council, President Barack Obama, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, and ICE Director John Morton have all but abdicated their leadership in the enforcement of immigration laws and the protection of U.S. borders and citizens.

In a letter to Congress on May 9, Crane and a number of law enforcement executives complained that while business groups, activists, and other special interests were closely involved in the drafting of the proposed Schumer-Rubio immigration reform bill (S. 744), law enforcement personnel were excluded from those sessions.

“Immigration officers and state and local law enforcement working directly within the nation’s broken immigration system were prohibited from providing input,” the letter from law enforcement stated.

Resisting The New World Order: Desensitization Training: Police Practice Fighting With & Shooting At “Angry Parents”:

The idea was to test the response of police and firefighters to a situation that was right out of the news headlines.

What news headlines?

I read a lot of news every day and these “angry parents” taking over a school at gunpoint, requiring SWAT intervention, somehow completely escaped my notice!

Well, it must be true, because the police officer in charge said, “We’ve been dealing with this across the country for years.”

Where? When?

It’s very obvious what this actually is. It is desensitization training.

de·sen·si·tize

verb \dē-ˈsen(t)-sə-ˌtīz\

to make emotionally insensitive or callous; specifically: to extinguish an emotional response (as of fear, anxiety, or guilt) to stimuli that formerly induced it.

Kurt Schlichter,Townhall: Dems Shoot Themselves in the Foot Again On Guns:

We need to understand that the motivation behind the gun grabbing campaign has always been more than just naked political calculation. Certainly, liberals think it will help motivate their base and maybe shore up the squishy suburban mom demographic for 2014, but this is really a campaign fueled by emotion.

That emotion is hate.

This isn’t about dead children. If saving kids was their real motivation, liberals would have long ago allowed the police to end the daily slaughter in Democrat-owned war zones like Chicago, Detroit and Washington, D.C. No, this campaign is driven by elitist hatred for regular Americans who refuse to bend to their will, who defiantly live life on their own terms, and who stubbornly resist accepting the moral supremacy of the urban liberals who would rule them.

They want to show us who is boss, to put us in our place, to take away the proud symbols of – and the tools that protect – our independence for one reason and one reason only. They want to show that they can. They want to demonstrate that what rights we have come not from our maker but from them, to be granted or withdrawn as they please.

They want us disarmed, demoralized and defeated. They are furious that we refuse to allow it, but anger is a poor foundation for building strategy.

Their anger clouds their thinking – they simply do not understand their opponents and seem to feel that considering their opponents’ motivations, even if only to come up with a way to defeat them, are somehow beneath their dignity. Sun Tzu knew what happens when a general does not understand his enemy. He loses.

Hot Air: Actual NYT headline: “IRS Focus on Conservatives Gives GOP an Issue to Seize On”:

Ed flagged this earlier in an update but I want to make sure people see it. You know this routine by now: If it’s a scandal involving Republicans, the story is the scandal. If it’s a scandal involving Democrats, the story — or at least a significant part of it — is whether and how Republicans will “politicize” the scandal for their advantage. (Aren’t Democrats interested in “seizing on” this malfeasance to root out IRS corruption too?) That LA Times headline that I screencapped last week is a textbook example of the genre: “Partisan politics dominates House Benghazi hearing,” as if the big takeaway from Greg Hicks’s testimony was nothing-to-see-here politics-as-usual squabbling between Republicans and Democrats. What makes the NYT’s angle this morning noteworthy is that they’ve been downplaying tea partiers’ accusations against the IRS since the beginning, starting with this now-infamous editorial last year and continuing right on through this weekend.

Life News: Kermit Gosnell Jury Hung on Two Counts, Doesn’t Say Which Ones:

Reports this morning indicate the jury in the murder trial of abortion practitioner Kermit Gosnell is hung on two counts, but reports do not indicate which ones.

The jury has indicated that it has reached verdicts on 261 other counts. Judge Minehart took less than five minutes to instruct the jury to go back and reconsider the two hung charges and attempt to come to a consensus without violating anyone’s conscience. He told them that their disagreement is a sign that they are taking the case seriously, according to reporters inside the courtroom.

If verdicts cannot be reached, the judge may accept any possible guilty verdicts and declare a mistrial on the two hung counts.

Monday Catch-Up: The Truth Is Coming Out About Benghazi

Breitbart’s The Conversation: Benghazi Eye Witness: Requests for Help Refused:

Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News reports that an eyewitness on the ground at Benghazi was refused repeated requests for help.

“We relied on Washington for dispassionate assessment,” one eyewitness told CBS News. “Instead, they [Washington officials] were asking us what help we needed. We answered: ‘Send reinforcements!’ “

But they were told immediate help wasn’t available.

The Conversation: Benghazi Witness: ‘You Should Have Seen What (Clinton) Tried to Do to Us That Night’:

Mark I. Thompson  will make the allegation that Hillary Clinton “tried to cut the department’s own counter-terrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making” as they responded to the Benghazi attacks.

Thompson is a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counter terrorism bureau. He will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attacks.

The Conversation: Benghazi Witness: Special Forces Told to Not to Provide Backup in Benghazi:

CBS News is reporting that Benghazi witness Greg Hicks told congressional investigators that  ”a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.”

Hicks also reported that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were prepared to board a C130 from Tripoli before the attack on the Benghazi annex. Gibson received a call saying “you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

Ace of Spades HQ: Then-Acting Ambassador to Libya: “My Jaw Hit the Floor” When I Saw the Government Blaming the Attack on a YouTube Video:

Whistleblowing.

Hicks, who did not appear on the show but whose reactions were featured based on transcripts of interviews with Issa’s committee, said he was stunned by what UN Ambassador Susan Rice claimed on five different news shows on Sep. 16. When she appeared on Face the Nation, she followed an interview with the President of Libya who claimed he had “no doubt” it was a terror attack. Moments later, Amb. Rice contradicted him and claimed a spontaneous protest was more likely.Acting Ambassador Hicks watched the Sunday shows and said he found this contradiction shocking. “The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he accused. Hicks added, “My jaw hit the floor as I watched this…I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day.”

Hicks believes the stunning failure of diplomacy on the Sunday news shows explains why it took the FBI three weeks to gain access to the Benghazi site. The U.S. had effectively humiliated the Libyan President on national TV. That decision, he believed, probably compromised our ability to investigate and track down those responsible.

Joel Pollak: DEMOCRATS’ AGENDA FOR BENGHAZI HEARING: PROTECT HILLARY AT ALL COSTS:

Since the day after the attacks, Democrats and the media have treated Benghazi as an unfair political attack by Republicans, rather than a legitimate national security crisis in its own right.

Media coverage in the fall focused on Republican Mitt Romney’s response to the attacks, rather than Obama’s actions as commander-in-chief. When questions were raised about whether Obama had lied to the public about the attacks, the media covered Obama’s tracks, with CNN’s Candy Crowley intervening in the second presidential debate to defend the president, and CBS News suppressing damning footage of the president until shortly before the election.

With Obama safely re-elected, the goal is now to protect Hillary Clinton. Last week, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) called upon Speaker of the House John Boehner not only to retract, but to apologize publicly for, an inter-committee report that suggested Clinton had ignored requests for additional security in Libya.

On MSNBC, a channel that serves as the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, Rev. Al Sharpton–who also serves as an informal White House adviser–described the Benghazi investigation as the “new vast right-wing conspiracy,” a reference to Clinton’s claim, as First Lady, that Republicans were merely out to target her husband and that he had not committed any wrongdoing in the Monica Lewinsky affair that led to his impeachment.

Though there are undoubtedly some political motives present, Democrats’ claims are largely a projection of their own political agenda in Benghazi, which has remained consistent from the start: to shield the party and its leaders from responsibility for a major terrorist attack on American sovereign territory.

And right on cue, the WH does it’s best to discredit the whistleblowers:

Via WFB, this is so lame. Especially the un-freaking-believably stale talking points he throws in at the end. Good God almighty, enough already.

Reason: Salon: It’s Conservatives’ Fault if Benghazi Scandal Doesn’t Have Legs. Er … What?

Well, here’s an interesting way to respond to the Benghazi scandal, back in the spotlight again this week as whistle-blowers prepare to testify before Congress that the government always knew the assault on the consulate in Libya was a planned terror attack and not a spontaneous protest in response to an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube. Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon is pre-blaming conservativesshould the scandal fail to take off:

The charges seem potentially damaging and the accusers credible, but those trying to fan flames of scandal have so embarrassed and discredited themselves by pushing bogus story lines on Benghazi that it may be hard for the media and American people to take any new allegations seriously. For instance, the last time we saw a “Benghazi whistle-blower,” it was an anonymous Fox News source, but he seemed to know so little about basic special operations that military analysts called him a clown and an embarrassment.

Okay, that’s one. Any others? It appears not.

Washington Free Beacon: Redacting the Truth: WaPo factcheck ignores State Department Benghazi stonewall:

The U.S. Department of State is withholding information from congressional committees about who saw an April 2012 cable denying additional security at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to the House Oversight Committee.

The compound was later overrun in a terrorist attack on Sept. 11 that claimed the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that the State Department denied an official request from a U.S. official in Libya for more security at the compound, citing her signature on a cable denying the request.

“The cable itself states ‘signature’ next to Clinton’s name and some of the names of those who participated in the process of clearing and approving the cable viewed by Congressional investigators were inexplicably redacted by the State Department. On multiple occasions, Congressional investigators objected to these redactions and requested un-redacted documents, including this cable. State Department has still not complied with these requests,” wrote Issa spokesman Frederick Hill in an email.

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler ignored the State Department’s stonewalling in an article that appeared in Monday’s print edition titled, “Issa claim about Clinton’s name on Benghazi cable is absurd.”

Nice try, but Hillary’s 2016 prospects grow dimmer by the minute.

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Newsbusters: Carville: ‘Ted Cruz Is the Most Talented and Fearless Republican Politician I’ve Seen in 30 Years’

JAMES CARVILLE: I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s going to run for president and he is going to create something. I’m not sitting here saying he’s going to win, and I think Senator DeMint is right. I’ve listened to excerpts of his speech in South Carolina. He touches every button, and this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. And he is going to be something to watch.

And a lot of Republicans feel this way, George, and you hear this a lot: “If we only got someone who was articulate and was for what we were for, we would win elections. And we get these John McCains and these Mitt Romneys and these squishy guys that can’t do anything.” Well, there’s one thing this guy is not – he ain’t squishy, not in the least.

As the conversation continued and others on the panel said that other conservatives such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will likely also run in 2016, Carville added:

CARVILLE: Ted Cruz is going to eat their lunch. That guy, I’m telling you, he will out debate. I am just saying, he is a talent. I’m not rooting. I’m really sincere here. We watch him, he does things, I mean when he started talking about William Travis in South Carolina and the Alamo, this is a guy, and you go, “This guy is something.” Now I don’t agree with him. I think he’s out there. But I’m telling you, he’s more talented than all of these other guys.

Legendary Republican operative Chip Gerdes died of a heart attack, this morning. He was 43 years old – the same age Andrew Breitbart was when he died, a little over a year ago. I’d only met him a few times, but what a character!  I had the good fortune to have lunch with him and a few others at CPAC, a couple months ago. He was a  ”behind the scenes” Republican operative who was very effective at what he did and his absence will be deeply felt in Republican circles…

Left to right: Chip Gerdes, Dana Loesch, Andrew Breitbart

The Other McCain: Chip Gerdes, Remembered:

The first rule of Chip Gerdes was, nobody talked about Chip Gerdes. In a world of political fame-junkies, nobody was so deliberately anonymous as the man whose Twitter handle was @TookieW.

That handle was, of course, an inside joke about Tookie Williams, one of the Left’s cop-killer heroes, and Chip Gerdes was in a sense a sort of inside joke: A shadowy behind-the-scenes operative who was well-known to all the people who really knew what was going on, but who made a point of being completely unknown to the larger world.

Today Chip is being fondly remembered by his friends who would never have dared to write his name in public while he was alive, lest they accidentally let slip the closely-guarded secret of his existence.

Chip was a “black ops” guy, a disciple of the legendary Republican operative Roger Stone. He was adept at research and organizing, but his specialty was the kind of no-fingerprints political trickery that some people have termed “ratf*cking.” Knowing how Chip worked, you never trusted that any “coincidence” in politics was actually coincidental, because you realized that whatever mischief Chip did on the GOP side, there were professional ratf*ckers doing the same kind of thing (and probably worse) on the Democrat side.

When the WeinerGate scandal broke, one of the first phone calls I made was to Chip Gerdes: “Did you do this?”

“No, swear to God, man — this is legit,” Chip said. “I mean, yeah, we all knew Anthony had this problem weeks ago, but it’s the real deal. Dude hit the wrong button trying to DM a meat-Tweet to this girl. I’d love to tell you it was us, but it wasn’t.”

Senator Ted Cruz:  Why I Oppose the Internet Tax Bill:

Basic tenets of economics dictate that when you tax something, you get less of it. That’s why it’s incomprehensible that the U.S. Senate is moving to raise taxes on one of the brightest sectors of our struggling economy.

The Internet is a thriving ecosystem of entrepreneurial freedom that should be protected and nourished. It has allowed new businesses to compete in the national marketplace in ways that would have been impossible 15 years ago, and it empowers consumer choice. But tax-hungry politicians view the Internet as yet another source of revenue to bail out their big-spending governments.

The misleadingly titled Marketplace Fairness Act is a job-killing tax hike, plain and simple. It is, in effect, a national Internet sales tax, which would hammer the little guy and benefit giant corporations.

Senators who vote for it are voting to impose audits, compliance costs, lost wages, and inefficiency on small businesses in every state. And they are potentially crippling an engine of new job creation at a time of economic struggle. This bill will not create jobs; it will not create new opportunities; and it will not create the economic growth our country needs and our people deserve.

The Other McCain: Like Many Other Liberal Activists, @Political_Bill Doesn’t Like Police:

Of course, if you had gotten busted for possession of drugs and child pornography, maybe you’d hate cops, too:

William “Bill” Talley aka @Political_Bill on Twitter … is a convicted sex offender who has managed to delay going to prison through evidentiary appeals. During that time, he has emerged as a progressive voice on Twitterand even briefly enjoyed board status in a prominent netroots startup. …
Talley was arrested for possession of drugs and hundreds of sexual images of children in August 2005. …
Questioned directly, Talley has denied the charges are true, even though he actually pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. …

So, @Political_Billdenies being a pedophile dopehead, kind of the wayBrett Kimberlindenies being a terrorist bomber — and really, why would anyone mention that little girl whose grandmother got shot to death? — in an effort to evade responsibility and reputation damage.

Also, like Kimberlin’s associate Neal Rauhauser, William “Bill” Talley reportedly has used multiple online identities:

@Political_Bill
@Strategic_Bill
@Healthcare_Bill
@Sleeping_Bill
@Politaire
@7serf7

Sooper Mexican: Patriotic Porn Star Exposes Boston Bomber Advocate’s Phone Number on Twitter:

Adult film actress Grace Evangeline was angered by online advocates of accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar, so she used her womanly wiles to get the founder’s phone number and posted it on the internet.

There are always those degenerate elements of society that swarm to commiserate and sympathize with the worst criminals out of some perverse sense of self-importance animated by a savior complex. But it takes a special kind of moron to come to the defense of Dzhokhar Tzarnaev, the suspected terrorist bomber who killed 2 Americans and maimed dozens in Boston.

That special moron has a name, and it’s Troy Crossley.

Gateway Pundit: Senator Inhofe: DHS Ammo Grab Is Obama’s Attempt to “Dry Up” Supply:

Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) weighed in on the DHS ammo controversy this weekend.
Inhofe told Aaron Klein that he believes the Obama administration is attempting to “dry up” the ammo market from gun-owning citizens.
World Net Daily reported:

U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., says he believes open purchase orders from the Department of Homeland Security to buy over 1 billion rounds of ammunition are part of an “intentional” effort by the Obama administration to “dry up the market” for gun-owning citizens.

“We have in this country the Second Amendment that preserves the right to keep and bear arms,” Inhofe told radio host Aaron Klein, “and the president doesn’t believe in that.”

Weasel Zippers: Hollywood Lib Robert Redford’s Sympathetic Movie On Left-Wing Terrorist Group Weather Underground Bombs At The Box Office…

Via Hot Air:

You have to feel a little sorry for Robert Redford, don’t you?  He just released a feature film asking audiences to reconsider their harsh feelings about the Weather Underground, which set off bombs, killed police officers, and robbed banks for more than a decade of domestic terrorism, but who were just misunderstood people acting on their deeply-held beliefs about justice. Unfortunately for Redford, a couple of misunderstood kids did the same thing at the Boston Marathon ten days after the film opened.  So far, Redford’s paean to leftist terrorists and murders has grossed only $3.5 million since its limited April 5th opening, and in the last two weeks, its wide distribution has only made  $1.9 million:

All American Blogger: What Liberal Media: Gay Jason Collins Story Gets 1,970% More Coverage Than Kermit Gosnell Horror Trial:

The media, whether the grunts behind the on-the-scene camera know it or not, have an agenda.

It’s left of center and it’s stopped being subtle.

Case in point:

In the eight days since NBA player Jason Collins announced he was gay, the news media have covered the story in 2,381 places. But in the first eight days of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his “House of Horrors” abortion business, the media covered the story in 115 places, meaning that Collins’ “gay” news received more than 1,970.4% more news coverage.

That’s not a coincidence. That’s a clear choice not to cover a story.

Monday Catch-Up: “Dr. Kermit Gosnell is not an aberration”

Human Events: UNDERCOVER VIDEO EXPOSES MORE LATE-TERM ABORTION HORRORS:

“Dr. Kermit Gosnell is not an aberration,” said Lila Rose, the president of Live Action, a group of pro-life undercover filmmakers.  She was introducing a new undercover video that shows the horrors described in Gosnell’s trial “are business as usual for the abortion industry in America.  Nationwide, it’s just another day at the office.”

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In the first “Inhuman” video, taken undercover at a clinic in the Bronx – where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks – an abortion clinic staffer makes it very clear that she knows she’s talking about the abortion of a fully -formed 6-month baby.  Then she talks about drowning a born-alive infant in a jar of solution to make it stop “twitching.”  She makes it clear the clinic won’t trouble its prospective customer with sonograms, or any discussion of the procedure’s target as a “child” or “baby.”  And if the baby is born alive at home before the late-term abortion procedure can be completed, the staffer cheerfully advises the expectant mother to flush it down the toilet.

“I don’t know why you want to talk about all this,” the clinic staffer says.  ”Just do it!”

Another staffer at the same clinic takes the possibility of an infant being born alive, and thus acquiring defensible human rights, much more seriously – but her description of the very fine line between an acceptable clinical “termination” within the mother’s body, and the killing of an infant born alive just a few inches outside the womb, highlights the inherently dehumanizing nature of late-term abortion.  She’s very insistent upon use of the word “terminate” instead of “kill” to describe what happens to the target of a legal late-term abortion.

Twitchy: Soulless Slate’s Saletan: Worse than infanticide? Exposing it, snitches:

To the vile and soulless Saletan, the videos exposing those horrifying acts are worse than the acts themselves.

Drowning living babies in toilets? Snipping the spinal cords of children born alive and struggling to take their first, and last, breaths? Whatever! Just don’t be a tattle-tale about it.

Those with a moral compass give Saletan the business.

Doug Powers at Michelle Malkin: CNN legal analyst: Gosnell media blackout a ‘business decision’ and not evidence of bias:

Talk to a lot of mainstream reporters and they’ll often lament how the corporate “bottom line” too often dictates what they are and aren’t able to report. However, as CNN’s legal analyst demonstrated, the “business decisions” excuse can provide the media convenient, albeit laughably weak, cover…

Atlas Shrugs: A GRUESOME WAKE-UP CALL:

This was our worst nightmare. Despite our best efforts to raise awareness about the jihad threat, the mainstream media and government denial about its reality has borne terrible fruit: a monstrous Islamic attack took place on the streets of Boston, targeting mothers and children, families and freedom-loving people. The bombs were designed not to blow up buildings but to maim, mutilate and tear through flesh and bone.

Now everyone is suddenly all over the jihad threat. Last week, Bill Maher dared to go off the liberal reservation and note that Islam incited more violence than Christianity – whereupon his politically correct guest needled him with “I have a girl for you, Pam [sic] Geller.” But Maher stood his ground and ultimately said to his guest, “I should introduce you to Pam Geller” – thus implying that I am right to be concerned about Islamic jihad and Islamic supremacism.

And last week Fox News featured its house liberal, Bob Beckel, warning about the dangers of jihad terrorism and even saying that Muslim students should be barred from entering the country (which, incidentally, is something I have never advocated).

The irony was thick. In 2010 I had a sharp exchange with Beckel on Fox when he decried my work sounding the alarm about jihad terror and Islamic supremacism in the U.S. The Boston jihad bombings have been a gruesome, horrible wake-up call, revealing how the American people have been betrayed by the Obama administration, the media and the Homeland Security apparatus which, instead of dealing realistically with jihad terror, have been fixated upon nonexistent “right-wing terrorists” – like me.

The issue here is larger than me or my work. For years now, leftist enablers of jihad and Islamic supremacism have labeled their opponents “hateful,” “extreme” and “right wing” – as if defense of the freedom of speech and the equality of rights for all people before the law were “right wing.”

The defenders of freedom have put up with an appalling level of defamation to educate and warn the American people about the gravest national security threat this great country faces.

Our work is dedicated to human rights – the freedom of speech, the freedom of conscience and individual rights. It is a noble cause, a righteous cause. But the defamation of those who work for this cause is a key weapon of leftists and Islamic supremacists. Just recently leftist and Islamic supremacists mounted a smear campaign to intimidate a synagogue in Great Neck, Long Island into dropping my speaking appearance there. Fortunately, two other rabbis with spine stood up to them and had me speak at their synagogues instead. But the pattern was clear: the cancellation by the Great Neck Synagogue sent the message that if leftists and Muslims defame those they hate loudly enough and for a long enough time, they will succeed in getting them silenced.

 The Right Scoop: REPORT: State Dept. blocking lawyers from representing Benghazi whistleblowers:

WMAL interviewed former US Attorney Joe DiGenova this morning and he revealed that the State Department is actively blocking lawyers from representing the Benghazi whistleblowers by denying them access to classified information, something they must have at a minimum to be able to discuss the case with their clients. He specifically cited Victoria Toensing as one of the lawyers being denied access to classified information, despite the fact that she has top-secret clearance.

Retired Navy Seal Billy Allmon was a guest on the Carl Gallops radio show: What REALLY happened to Seal Team Six and Benghazi:

Patterico: Congressman Mike Rogers Is SWATted — And a Curious Coincidence Involving Neal Rauhauser:

Congressman Mike Rogers was SWATted Saturday night:

Police surrounded the Michigan home of Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) Saturday night after a prank 911 phone call, Rogers’ office confirmed to TPM Sunday.

“Last night police investigated a threat to our home in Howell,” Rogers said in a statement emailed to TPM Sunday. “I appreciate the quick and professional response of the Howell Police Department and the Livingston County Sheriff. While this turned out to be an unfortunate prank, it is a reminder of the the real threats faced by our law enforcement community every day.”

The prank, according to a Rogers spokesperson, was a fake 911 call in which someone claimed to be the congressman.

Rogers is a co-sponsor of CISPA, a bill that has angered many people in Anonymous.

But there is another interesting fact about Rogers that is less well known: he was targeted by Neal Rauhauser. Rauhauser, speaking to Barrett Brown in an Internet Relay Chat as “Carlito2000,” said the following to Brown:

[14:11] Stranahan is a dopey former liberal porn guy scam artist who also worked on the movie
[14:12] jesus
[14:12] Keep in mind Grimm (former FBI) is going down in NY-11, Mike Rogers (former FBI) called for Manning’s execution and he’s from MI-08
[14:12] and Coleen Rowley in MN-02 is former FBI turned whistleblower
[14:12] so, what’s the specific evidence of Darby being involved in Swating, and we’re talking about PAtrick Frey SWAT correct?
[14:12] we want Grimm, Rogers out /w Anon boot print on their asses, and we push Rowley in 

More on Rauhauser at Patterico: “Breitbart f*cked with me, he f*cked with Brett [Kimberlin], and now his ass is dead.”

Why isn’t this a$$-wipe in jail, yet?

Yid With Lid: CLIMATE IDIOCY! Congressional Dems Says Climate Change Driving Women Into Prostitution:

It’s been a while but it is finally time to add to the official “Stupid Things Blamed on Global Warming/Climate Change” list.  An this one is a real doozy!   According to some Congressional Democrats, the non-existent man made climate change may be driving poor women into “transactional sex” for survival.

The resolution, from Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and a dozen other Democrats, says the results of climate change include drought and reduced agricultural output. It says these changes can be particularly harmful for women.

“[F]ood insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health,” it says.

The Conversation: The DOJ Should Stop Endorsing the SPLC:

Corkins found his targets at the Southern Poverty Law Center website, where they were labeled “hate groups” for being “anti-gay”.

 ”the SPLC put the FRC on its list of ‘anti-gay’ organizations in 2010, and the SPLC’s ‘Hate Map’ page, whose banner displays men in Nazi-style helmets giving Sieg Heil salutes, lists the FRC among 14 hate groups headquartered in the District of Columbia.” That said, SPLC can no more be held responsible for Corkins’ crimes than Sarah Palin can for Jared Loughner’s murder of six people and wounding of Rep. Gabby Giffords in Arizona.

I’d like to take issue with one minor point, there. While I agree that the responsibility for Corkins crimes fall entirely on Corkins’ own shoulders, I don’t like the comparison of this situation to the Sarah Palin/Jared Loughner situation, which was completely manufactured by the left. There never was a Sarah Palin/Jared Loughner linkage.  Loughner was motivated by the voices in his head and his obsession with government grammar and mind control – not Sarah Palin’s campaign map.

The SPLC, on the other hand,  is directly tied to a left-wing terrorist attack on the Family Research Council because they targeted them on a map and labeled them a “hate group” due to their traditional views on marriage and family.

That said, I agree 100% with the Washington Examiner’s call for the DOJ to investigate the SPLC for consumer fraud, rather than promote them at various events throughout the country.

Gateway Pundit: Pelosi: Next “Pillar” For Government Is “Preschool For All”:

Pelosi the Destroyer told a crowd in Cleveland that the next “pillar” for American government is “preschool for all.”
This woman is such a committed socialist, it’s sickening.
CNS News reported:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told a gathering in Cleveland that childcare for all should be the next “pillar” of American government and “the president comes close in his budget when he says ‘preschool for all’ because we have a situation of children learning, parents earning.”

The Conversation: The Pentagon Has A Plan To Deal With Those Gangs of Fundamentalist Monsters:

“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”

Oh, you thought I meant Islamic fundamentalist monsters? Oh no. Nope.

Who do you think said that? I’ll give you 3 guesses.

1. Dan Savage

2. Louis Farrakhan

3. Mikey Weinstein, Obama’s new consultant to the Pentagon, tapped to develop new policies on religious tolerance.

If you picked #3 ding-ding-ding! You are correct!

Even most hardened Islamists don’t take such a dim view of Christianity – “fundamentalist” or otherwise. Likewise, most hardened leftists don’t take such a dim view of Islamic fundamentalists.

Ken Klukowski has the story at Big Government.

Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.

Weinstein decries what he calls the “virulent religious oppression” perpetrated by conservative Christians, whom he refers to as “monstrosities” and “pitiable unconstitutional carpetbaggers,” comparing them to “bigots” in the Deep South during the civil rights era.

He cites Dr. James Dobson—the famous Christian founder of Focus on the Family—as “illustrating the extremist, militant nature of these virulently homophobic organizations’ rhetorically-charged propaganda.” Regarding those who teach orthodox Christian beliefs from the Bible, Weinstein concludes, “Let’s call these ignoble actions what they are: the senseless and cowardly squallings of human monsters.”

It all makes sense now —

Keep reading at the link.

Red State: Taking Dead Aim at Joe Manchin’s Pathetic Voting Record:

 

Do you want to know the definition of pathetic?  It’s someone who aggressively brandishes his pro-gun credentials in a campaign commercial, and then proceeds to invest his time into expanding gun control laws.  In other words, Joe Manchin is pathetic.

Just how unpopular is Obama with the voters of West Virginia?  He lost all 55 counties last year in the general election, and 41% of Democrat primary voters to a man sitting in jail.  That’s why Joe Manchin lacks the moxie to air a commercial saying, “I’m Joe Manchin, and I approve this message because West Virginia needs a senator who will stand with Barack.”

Instead of manning up and letting his constituents know he is a gun-grabbing, Obamacare-supporting leftist, Joe Manchin ran a TV ad depicting himself shooting a rifle – taking “dead aim” – at a cap and trade bill.  Now he is working indefatigably to pass gun control, even after his bill was defeated.  During the gun debate, he also voted against an amendment that would have required a judicial ruling to determine if a veteran is dangerous before he is banned from buying guns.  I’m sure the many veterans in West Virginia would appreciate that.

The Blaze: ‘I’M GOING TO GRAB YOUR BABY, AND DON’T RESIST’: COPS BARGE INTO CALI. PARENTS’ HOME, TAKE THEIR BABY AFTER THEY SEEK 2ND MEDICAL OPINION — AND IT’S ON VIDEO:

A California couple had their five-month-old baby “snatched” by police after they took the infant to get a second opinion on a medical procedure, they claim.

Anna and Alex Nikolayev are described as loving parents who took their baby, who has a heart murmur, to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when he started exhibiting flu-like symptoms.  The family has undergone plenty of doctor visits in the last five months for the their son’s heart, and were unsettled by the treatment he was receiving.

At one point, Anna says, a nurse came in and started giving the baby, named Sammy, medicine.  When she asked what it was the nurse allegedly replied, “I don’t know.”

“I’m like, you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby…?” Annasaid in an interview with ABC’s local affiliate, News10/KXTV.

They later found out that medicine was antibiotics, which Anna claims the doctor told her Sammy shouldn’t have received.

After doctors started discussing heart surgery, the Nikolayevs decided they wanted a second opinion.  They weren’t categorically opposed to the procedure, but they wanted a different doctor.

“If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna explained.

The doctors at Sutter Memorial allegedly argued against consulting other health experts, pressuring her to stay put. Anna remained firm.  She took her baby from the hospital without a proper discharge, and went straight to Kaiser Permanente Hospital.

Doctors there said the baby was safe to go home with his parents, one writing in the paperwork: “I do not have concern for the safety of the child at home with his parents.”

But while they were at the hospital, police showed up.

“They told us that Sutter was telling them so much bad stuff that they thought that this baby is dying on our arms,” Anna recalled.  But when police saw the doctor’s evaluation, Anna says they said, “Okay guys, you have a good day,” and left.

But the family wasn’t at peace for long.

Keep reading. It’s shocking.

Friday Free-For-All: Breitbart Vindicated – NY Times Confirms Massive Fraud in Pigford

Joel Pollak, Big Government: NYTIMES CONFIRMS: MASSIVE FRAUD AT USDA IN PIGFORD; BREITBART VINDICATED:

So very convenient that this comes out five months after the election, and over a year after Andrew Breitbart’s death.

The New York Times reported Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has likely enabled massive fraud in the Pigford series of legal settlements, in which black, Hispanic, female and Native American farmers have claimed to be victims of past discrimination.

The cost of the settlements, which could exceed $4.4 billion, is the result of a process that “became a runaway train, driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress and law firms that stand to gain more than $130 million in fees,” the Times notes.

Among those influential members of Congress was then-Senator Barack Obama, who made Pigford payouts a priority in exchange for political support for his 2008 presidential campaign among a coveted group of black voters in the rural South, the Times reports.

As president, Obama continued to support payouts for new groups of claimants while abandoning a review process that had been used to fight fraud. The aim was “buying the support” of minorities, according to the Times, while middlemen created a “cottage industry” in defrauding the government.

The Times investigation, led by reporter Sharon LaFraniere, vindicates the late Andrew Breitbart, for whom Pigford became a crucial issue in demonstrating the cynical use of racial politics by the institutional left to hurt the very people they claimed to be helping. Breitbart directed investigations of the Pigford fraud and championed the cause of the original black farmers in the lawsuit, arguing that many of them had been left behind while opportunistic lawyers and fraudulent claimants looted the federal treasury in exchange for votes and support.

Andrew talked about the Shirley Sherrod/Pigford saga in the CPAC bloggers lounge in Feb, 2011. This is well worth revisiting.

Everything he said there was confirmed by the NY Times investigation.

***

Weasel Zippers: FBI Informant Claims Taliban Operatives Are Living In America, “They Can Commit Jihad At Any Time, They Hate America”…

Via CBS Miami:

“I am an informant and all I can tell you is that Talibans are walking freely right here in the soil of America right now, right now.”

That’s the haunting worry of South Floridian David Mahmood Siddiqui. He was the confidential FBI informant who has a rare view of of trying to infiltrate a largely secreted world of what the U.S. government considers terrorist sympathizers.

He met with CBS’4 Chief Investigator Michele Gillen saying he wants to tell his story to share what he’s uncovered and explain why he has concerns for the safety of the United States. Because of concerns for his safety, his face is concealed during the interview.

Asked by Gillen what he thinks the risk of having Taliban living in America is, he responded; “They can commit a jihad at any time, they hate America, you have an enemy living here in American soil, do not know when they will take action to kill innocent Americans.”

***

Doug Ross: AT LAST, SOME IN CONGRESS ASK: Why does the DHS need 1,000 more rounds of ammo per person than the U.S. Army?

Kudos to Representative Jason Chaffetz for calling out a Department of Homeland Security that appears to resemble President Obama’s “Civilian National Security Force” more and more each day.
Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz said Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security is using roughly 1,000 rounds of ammunition more per person than the U.S. Army, as he and other lawmakers sharply questioned DHS officials on their “massive” bullet buys.

“It is entirely … inexplicable why the Department of Homeland Security needs so much ammunition,” Chaffetz, R-Utah, said at a hearing.

The hearing itself was unusual, as questions about the department’s ammunition purchases until recently had bubbled largely under the radar — on blogs and in the occasional news article. But as the Department of Homeland Security found itself publicly defending the purchases, lawmakers gradually showed more interest in the issue.

Here’s a video from the hearing, yesterday:

***

Fox News: ’Climate of Fear’? Obama’s ATF pick facing probe over retaliation claim:

An independent government watchdog agency is investigating allegations that President Obama’s nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives retaliated against employees for whistle-blowing, FoxNews.com has learned.

The allegations against B. Todd Jones, a Minnesota federal prosecutor who also is serving as acting director of the ATF while his nomination is pending, include claims that he mismanaged the prosecutor’s office and presided over a “climate of fear.” Specifically, he was accused of retaliating against whistle-blowing with “a suspension and a lowered performance appraisal.”

In a letter dated July 20, 2012 to the Office of Special Counsel, employees at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota first claimed that they were being mistreated and that the office had turned into a “hostile work environment.”

The letter, obtained by FoxNews.com, said Jones “instituted a climate of fear, has pushed employees out of the office, dismissed employees wrongly, violated the hiring practices of the EEOC and put in place an Orwellian style of management that continues to polarize the office.”

The letter also asked the OSC to “come to this office and investigate the actions of not only B. Todd Jones, but those who he has put in positions that further his dictator style and created this atmosphere of fear among us.”

A story that set off alarm bells on Jones, last year: ATF Director’s Warning To Whistleblowers: “If you don’t find the appropriate way to raise your concerns… there will be consequences”

And a related story on the Milwaukee F-ups via JS Online: Before flawed gun-buying sting, ATF mishandled another Milwaukee case:

More than a year before federal agents botched a gun-buying sting in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, they rented a warehouse amid the taquerias and taverns that line S. 13th St.

Instead of going after gun and drug arrests, ATF agents used the south side sting – also dubbed Fearless Distributing – to target cigarette sellers trying to cheat the government out of taxes.

They snared several criminals, but made a careless mistake, one they would repeat six months later: They left behind valuable merchandise and got ripped off.

When ATF agents shut down the south side warehouse and returned the keys to the landlord in April 2012, they left behind cases of cigarettes with a Wisconsin retail value of about $82,000.

The landlord repeatedly called the agents and told them to pick up the cigarettes because new tenants were moving in. By the time the agents finally showed up, two cases were gone, according to interviews and a police report obtained by the Journal Sentinel.

Although the theft was captured on video, the cigarettes – with a retail value of nearly $10,000 – have not been recovered and no one has been criminally charged.

There’s only one thing to do as far as the  Regime is concerned –  gotta give the guy in charge of that a promotion. 

***

Another story simmering under the surface…

Gateway Pundit: VOTER FRAUD: Obama FAILED To Qualify For INDIANA BALLOT? Was This an Isolated Incident?

It may not seem like news to discover voter fraud contributed to Obama’s election win.

Playing with ballot signatures is nothing new to Obama. CNN once did a surprisingly honest report on Obama’s Dirty Politics (Part 1 and Part 2), in which Obama challenged the signatures of his competition, thus knocking everyone off the ballot to guaranteed Obama would be the only choice Illinois voters would have as a senator. No follow-up reporting has been done on Obama’s role in voter fraud by the mainstream media until now. Fox News reported that Obama used voter fraud to provide enough signatures to be on the Indiana ballot. The signatures are obviously forged. Which begs the question: Are there other states where Obama applied illegal means to qualify?

FoxNews reports the following:

“The trial is underway for a former Democratic official and a Board of Elections worker who are accused of being part of a plot that has raised questions over whether President Obama’s campaign — when he was a candidate in 2008 — submitted enough legitimate signatures to have legally qualified for the presidential primary ballot.

The trial is underway for a former Democratic official and a Board of Elections worker who are accused of being part of a plot that has raised questions over whether President Obama’s campaign — when he was a candidate in 2008 — submitted enough legitimate signatures to have legally qualified for the presidential primary ballot.”

***

The NY Times: Senators Quietly Seek a New Path on Gun Control:

Give it a rest!

Talks to revive gun control legislation are quietly under way on Capitol Hill as a bipartisan group of senators seeks a way to bridge the differences that led to last week’s collapse of the most serious effort to overhaul the country’s gun laws in 20 years.

Drawing on the lessons from battles in the 1980s and ’90s over the Brady Bill, which failed in Congress several times before ultimately passing, gun control supporters believe they can prevail by working on a two-pronged strategy. First, they are identifying senators who might be willing to change their votes and support a background check system with fewer loopholes.

Second, they are looking to build a national campaign that would better harness overwhelming public support for universal background checks – which many national polls put at near 90 percent approval – to pressure lawmakers.

Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, have been talking in recent days about how they could persuade more senators to support their bill to expand background checks for gun buyers, which drew backing from only four Republicans last week.

“We’re going to work it hard,” Mr. Manchin said Thursday, adding that he was looking at tweaking the language of his bill in a way that he believed would satisfy senators who, for example, felt that background checks on person-to-person gun sales would be too onerous for people who live in rural areas far from a sporting goods store.

***

 HOUSTON, TX — U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) issued the following statement on today’s Internet Sales Tax cloture vote:

“Today, it was an honor to attend the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum, as well as a memorial ceremony remembering those lost in the tragic explosion in West, Texas.

“Unfortunately, the Senate Majority Leader scheduled the vote on the Internet sales tax bill while I was in Texas. Had I been present for the vote, I would have emphatically voted ‘no.’

“Restoring economic growth should be every elected official’s top priority. Our economy is stagnant–it’s grown just 0.8% a year for the last four years–and small businesses are gasping for breath.

“At a time when so many people are hurting, this bill would impose billions of dollars of new taxes on small businesses across America. That makes no sense.

“The Internet has been a haven for entrepreneurial growth. We should protect and cherish the freedom of the Internet, and Congress should not pass a massive new Internet sales tax.

“The Democratic leadership should not be doing the bidding of major corporate lobbyists, at the expense of mom-and-pop retailers across America. Forcing small Internet retailers to comply with the taxing authority of over 9,600 jurisdictions nationwide would kill jobs and stifle economic growth. There’s no reason for the Senate to pass this flawed bill–skipping the committee process and rushing the bill forward to stifle debate.”

Michelle Malkin: A National Security History Lesson for Marco Rubio:

Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio seems well meaning enough. As second-generation conservative Americans, I know we both share a common passion for this great land of opportunity. But when it comes to comprehending the real agenda of the open-borders zealots he’s allied himself with, Rubio doesn’t have a clue.

And his abject ignorance threatens all of us who cherish American sovereignty and exceptionalism.

On Fox News’ “The Sean Hannity Show” Tuesday night, Rubio defended his Gang of Eight “immigration reform” bill and insisted that we could and should have a system in place that vets foreign tourists and short-term visa holders based on their “national security” profiles.

“In essence, we should be able to analyze (whether) these are individuals coming from a part of the world that keeps feeding into the terrorist network,” Rubio earnestly explained. “(W)e should be very careful about who we allow in and take into account every single measure or every single factor that we think could lead to somebody being more likely possibly a member of a terrorist organization or involved in terror.”

Great idea, Rubio! Newsflash: The concept of a national security entry-exit screening database is at least 10 years old. It’s an idea that was sabotaged by the progressive soft-on-security ideologues with whom Rubio has recklessly partnered.

***

Ace had the best take on this next story, which I ignored because I was to enraged to write coherently about it:  NY State Middle School Forces Girls to Ask Each Other for a Kiss as Part of Anti-Gay-Bullying “Workshop”

It’s unconscionable.

It’s truly horrifying.

Parents say their daughters were told to ask one another for a kiss and they say two girls were told to stand in front of the class and pretend they were lesbians on a date.“She told me, ‘Mom we all get teased and picked on enough. Now I’m going to be called a lesbian because I had to ask another girl if I could kiss her,’” parent, Mandy Coon, told reporters.

Coon says parents were given no warning about the presentation and there was no opportunity to opt-out. Both the school principal and the district superintendent are defending the workshops and advising they will schedule more.

“The school is overstepping its bounds in not notifying parents first and giving us the choice,” another parent said. “I thought it was very inappropriate. That kind of instruction is best left up to the parents.”

“I was absolutely furious — really furious,” a parent who asked to remain anonymous told reporter Todd Starnes, “These are just kids. I’m dumbfounded that they found this class was appropriate.”

There is a very real suspicion, held for good reason, that anything that is not illegal in a socialist state will be mandatory. That is, there are only two categories of actions: the illegal and criminal, and the mandatory and coerced. Only What the State Forbids and What the State Compels.

If the Gay Rights people are insisting that children must kiss same-sex children in order to make their lives more convenient, then I am going fully Anti-Gay-Rights.

Keep reading at the link.

***

I’ve been dividing my time between this blog, and Breitbart’s The Conversation. Some of my best stuff has been posted there, lately.

Obama’s Pick For Labor Sec Threatened Alabama Police And Sheriffs Over Immigration Law:

On the Senate floor, Thursday morning, Senator Jeff Sessions expressed amazement that “law enforcement officers in America are being directed not to follow plain law”.

On Wednesday, a federal judge ruled that the Sec of Homeland Security “doesn’t have the ability to direct agents not to do what Congress has explicitly required them to do” as Sessions put it.

The very same dysfunctional dynamic has been at work in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice,  led by Thomas Perez, the radical ideologue Obama nominated to be Labor Secretary.

AL.com reported:

Thomas Perez threatened to revoke federal funding for Alabama police and sheriffs if they enforced provisions of the state’s controversial immigration law.

Perez, 51, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, made the warning in meetings with Alabama sheriffs and police chiefs in June and July 2011, soon after the law was passed.

Perez repeated it in letters sent to local law enforcement officials in December 2011, saying the department was watching how they enforced a provision of the law that required them to check the immigration status of people they stopped for questioning.

He told the sheriffs that the U.S. Attorney General’s office would cut their funding and file civil lawsuits against them if it determined that they were depriving people of their rights.

Keep reading…

‘Stop the NRA’ March Fizzles - You gotta check out the picture.

Obama’s Terrorist Pal Comes Clean About Their Friendship:

Oh, don’t get me started on that whole thing. The Obama camp’s ridiculous lies and the trusting media’s total lack of curiosity on the matter still makes me blind with rage.

The Daily Beast had quite a scoop, today. Contrary to what the Obama campaign’s “Fight the Smears” website alleged back in 2008, Obama was once friendly with formerWeather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers and didhold a political fundraiser in his living room back in 1995.

So good of the left-wing media to finally look into this….now that he’s been reelected and the ugly truth doesn’t really matter, anymore.

Via News Ninja, (H/T Ace):

THE DAILY BEAST: There was a big hullabaloo during the 2008 presidential election over your relationship to Obama. What is or was your relationship to him?

AYERS: “I brief him every Monday in the White House, and he never listens!  (that was an attempt at a joke – Ed.) No. The truth is exactly what he said and what the campaign said in 2008. David Axelrod said we were friendly, that was true; we served on a couple of boards together, that was true; he held a fundraiser in our living room, that was true; Michelle [Obama] and Bernardine were at the law firm together, that was true. Hyde Park in Chicago is a tiny neighborhood, so when he said I was “a guy around the neighborhood,” that was true. Today, I wish I knew him better and he was listening to me. Obama’s not a radical. I wish he were, but he’s not.”

Gotta love the history revisionism, there. 2008 was so long ago, how is anyone supposed to remember exactly what David Axelrod said about the Obama/Ayers friendship on the campaign trail.

Minimizing the significance of that alliance, Axelrod said: “Bill Ayers lives in his [Obama's] neighborhood. Their kids attend the same school. They’re certainly friendly, they know each other, as anyone whose kids go to school together.”

I guess Ayers forgot to mention the part about their kids going to school together. Maybe because at the time,  Ayers’ three children were in their late twenties and early thirties, and Obama’s two daughters, Sasha and Malia, were aged six and nine, respectively, which means Axelrod was – you know - lying.

Ayers also forgot to mention his backyard 4th of July BBQ with the Obamas. And I’m sure oh, so much more….

But here’s what the Obama Campaign’s now defunct ”Fight the Smears” website had to say about the dastardly “smears”  Bill Ayers just admitted were true.

Smear groups and now a desperate McCain campaign are trying to connect Barack to William Ayers using age-old guilt by association techniques. Here’s the truth: the smear associating Barack to Ayers is “phony,” “tenuous,” – even “exaggerated at best if not outright false.”

(Fight the Smears linked to friendly news outlets as “proof” and a WaPo factcheck that was inconclusive because not enough was known about the relationship (and they sure as hell weren’t putting anyone on it.)

William Ayers is a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, with whom Barack served on the board of an education-reform organization in the mid-1990’s. According to the Associated Press, they are not close: “No evidence shows they were “pals” or even close when they worked on community boards years ago …”

Did anyone ask Bill Ayers?

Keep reading.

See also, in case you missed it:

Federal Judge to Big Sis: You Don’t Have Federal Discretion To Refuse To Deport Illegals

Video: Jeff Sessions and Big Sis Tangle During Immigration Hearing Over ICE Employee Morale

Video: Cruz Not Satisfied With Napolitano’s Answers On Border Security

Obama’s Regal Moment of Silence Photo-Op

News Alert: Boston Marathon Bombing Suspects Motivated by Religion not Ben Affleck Movies

Wrapping Jane in Love: Irish Dance Community Rallies Around 7 Yr-Old Irish Dancer Injured in Boston Bombing Blast

The Irish dance community is rallying in support for Jane Richard, the Dorchester 7-year-old who lost a leg in last week’s Boston Marathon bombings that claimed the life of her 8-year-old brother, Martin.

A Facebook page, Wrapping Jane in Our Love is collecting  t-shirts from Irish dance schools all over the world to make them into a quilt for the tiny dancer.

The Boston Herald reported:

News that the girl was a student at Clifden Academy of Irish Dance in Milton set in motion a series of events to bolster Jane and her family. “It’s amazing. Across the country and the world, they are holding fundraisers,” said Eileen Dinn, owner of Clifden Academy.

Dinn described Jane, who has been dancing since she was 3, as having “a knack for the music.”

“Some of the kids just run around,” she said. “She could just point her toe and knew when to go.”

That spirit motivated dancers Joe Harrison and Catherine Ternes to organize Dance Out For Jane, a benefit to be held Friday, April 26.

Irish dance academies all across the US have started fund-raising to provide financial assistance to the Richard family. Irish Central reports another fundraising event – an evening of Irish music and dance will take place  in Boston, at 7 p.m, this Saturday, April 27.

The event will also feature New England solo and ceili world championship performances.

Tickets are priced at $26.20, with a limited number of VIP tickets $100. Tickets can be purchased by visiting BiddingforGood.com  They must be purchased in advance.

Every penny raised will go towards the Richard Family Fund, which has raised well over $200,000 to date. Sponsors of the event include Irish Dances Teacher of New England Inc., Rutherford Shoes, Irish Dance Magazine, and John Hancock Hall at the Back Bay Event Center.

In New York, the Kerry Hall at 305 McLean Avenue in Yonkers will host a Dance Out for Jane event from 1-6 p.m. All musicians, singers and dancers are invited to show their support for the Richards, with 90 percent of proceeds raised going towards the family fund, and 10 percent donated to the Leukemia Foundation.

Dance schools have flooded Facebook and other sites with messages of support, both emotional and financial, for Jane and her family. Red Sox for Jane is one Facebook page created by a family asking for donations of Irish dance socks which they will die red and distribute for a donation.

In Kansas City, the Irish dance community is putting on a Dance Out for Jane Fundraiser for the Richard Family.

This event will take place at the Irish Center in Union Station, Friday night. There will be a $10 admission charge ($25 for families) at the door,  and snacks and beverages will be available for purchase. The night will feature dancing by all of KC’s dance groups as well as music from some of KC’s favorite Irish bands!  100% of the money raised will go to the family.

If your town has an Irish dance academy, you should check out their website to see if they have any events planned to help the Richard family. Irish dance fans have an opportunity to help out with a great cause this weekend.

Monday Morning Catch-Up: The Regime Dropped The Ball

Breitbart TV: SEN GRAHAM: ‘THE BALL WAS DROPPED’ ON BOSTON BOMBER:

CNN: Sen. Graham on the FBI’s handling of suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, now dead, in a discussion with Sen. Schumer on last week’s bombing. The two also weighed the possibility of the death penalty for the other suspect, Dzhokhar.

Mediaite: Sen. Feinstein, Rep. King Clash Over Suspect’s Enemy Combatant Status: ‘The Battlefield Is Now In’ The U.S.

Seeing a pattern,    King said that there have been about five preventable attacks that have taken place in the past few years.

King countered that he wasn’t concerned with the conviction, because he knows the suspect will indeed be convicted, but rather he wants to be able to obtain additional intelligence from Tsarnaev. That can only be done “effectively” if he’s treated as an enemy combatant. Asked about Tsarnaev not being on an FBI watch list following his trip to Russia, King wondered what was “deficient,” “what went wrong.” Lauding the FBI for their work resolving the case, the congressman said, in terms of taking action beforehand, this was just the latest in a series of such mishaps.

“The threat is coming from within the Muslim community in the these cases,” King doubled down, asked about his recent remarks about “increased surveillance” of that community. Ninety-nine percent of Muslims are “outstanding Americans,” he added, but still, that is where the threat originates.

Feinstein didn’t find that discussion to be very “helpful,” emphasizing instead the need to look at the facts. It’s worth looking into, she added, but there’s no need to create “hatred” and “disdain” on television about it.

You know – the question isn’t what a left-wing politician, wallowing in suicidal PC BS considers “helpful”. It’s what the potential victims of the next terror attack finds “helpful”. Do they think labeling Evangelicals, Catholics and Mormons ” religious extremists”  is helpful? Or would they consider upping our counter-intelligence game a bit by focusing on real threats from Islamic fundamentalists perhaps a little more helpful. How would the Tsarnaev brothers’ surviving victims in Boston answer that question?

Guess where PMSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry and her panel come down on that question.

Rick Moran, PJ Media: MSNBC’s Harris-Perry ‘Leans Forward’ and Steps in it:

Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC weekend host who doesn’t believe your children belong to you, also doesn’t believe that the religious faith of the Tsarnaev brothers matters to the investigation of the Boston bombings.

Harris-Perry must have been visiting her home planet the last few days, so perhaps we can excuse her for being a little behind the breaking news curve. Still, wherever she calls home, don’t they get the New York Times orWashington Post?

I apologize in advance if you’re watching this on a full stomach:

Sooper Mexican: 2011 FLASHBACK: DHS Secretary Napolitano Says No “Logic” In Profiling Muslim Men Under The Age Of 35:

From Real Clear Politics:

“You’re not using good logic there. You’ve got to use actual intelligence that you received. And, so, you might — all you’ve given me is a kind of status. You have not given me a technique for tactic or behavior. Something that would suggest somebody is not Muslim, but Islamic, that has actually moved into the category of violent extremists,” Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said at a forum on U.S. security and preventing terrorist attacks.

The Weekly Standard: Don’t Rule Out Anything:

In an exceptionally well-reported story in the Daily Beast Friday, we read this:

“One U.S. intelligence official who was regularly briefed on the investigation told Newsweek that he and his colleagues all but ruled out al Qaeda central or one of its affiliates giving direct and specific instructions for the attack.”

***

This is not, of course, the first time we’ve seen an apparent eagerness from the Obama administration to minimize or dismiss the possibility of broader ties to international terrorism after attacks or attempted attacks on U.S. interests. Three days after the attempted bombing of an airplane on Christmas Day 2009, President Obama suggested that the attempted attack was the work of “an isolated extremist.” He made the claim despite the fact that the bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told interrogators in interviews shortly after his capture that he’d worked with al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Five months later, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the attempted bombing of Times Square by Faisal Shahzad a “one off” attack. Other administration officials downplayed the likelihood of ties to foreign jihadists. But several days later, Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that the Pakistani Taliban “helped facilitate” the attack. “We know that they probably helped finance it and that he was working at their direction.”

Perhaps most famously, the Obama administration downplayed involvement of al Qaeda affiliated terrorists in the attacks in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. Despite ample evidence of their involvement – including real-time reporting from U.S. officials on the ground in Benghazi, a memo September 12 from the CIA station chief in Tripoli with details of the attacks and who conducted them, and communications intercepts from those involved in the assault – administration officials for days (even weeks) suggested that the attacks came spontaneously in response to an anti-Islam video.

These initial assessments fit nicely with the administration’s broader narrative about the end of the War on Terror and the imminent demise of al Qaeda. They were also wrong.

Why, then, would U.S. intelligence officials be ruling out ties to jihadist groups – or ruling out anything,for that matter – so early?

It’s an especially important question given what we know about Tamerlan Tsarnaev. CBS News reported Friday that the FBI had previously interviewed the elder Tsarnaev on a suspicion of ties to extremist groups. According to the CBS affiliate in Boston, the FBI initially denied ever contacting Tsarnaev. But later, after Tsarnaev’s mother spoke of the FBI contacts in an interview with Russian media, the FBI acknowledged that the older Tsarnaev had been under scrutiny.

The FBI now:

Jihad Watch:  “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone:” FBI hunting 12-member jihad terror sleeper cell linked to Boston jihad murders:

More than 1,000 FBI operatives are working on this. They need 10,000 of these politically correct, defanged Keystone Kops, and even then they probably won’t find this cell. They are forbidden to examine the motives and goals of the type of people they’re looking for – to do so would be “Islamophobic,” according to the Obama Administration. So they’re fumbling along in the dark, pretending that there is no such thing as an Islamic terrorist while hunting for Islamic terrorists.

Weasel Zippers: Flashback: FBI Purges Training Material of “Anti-Islam” Documents, Will Ensure Future Material Isn’t Critical Of Islam…

Shockingly, sticking your head in the sand doesn’t make a threat go away.

February 15, 2012:

An internal FBI investigation into its counterterrorism training has purged hundreds of bureau documents of instructional material about Muslims, some of which characterized them as prone to violence or terrorism.

The bureau disclosed initial findings from its months-long review during a meeting at FBI headquarters on Wednesday with several Arab and Muslim advocacy groups, attended by Director Robert Mueller. So far, the inquiry has uncovered and purged over 700 pages of documentation from approximately 300 presentations given to agents since 9/11 — some of which were similar to briefings published by Danger Room last year describing “mainstream” Muslims as “violent.” And more discoveries may be forthcoming, as the FBI continues its inquiry and responds to Freedom of Information Act requests for the documents themselves.

Andrew McCarthy, NRO: Jihad Will Not Be Wished Away:

Willful blindness remains the order of the day, as it has since the World Trade Center was bombed in 1993. It is freely conceded that, when the identities and thus the motivation of the Marathon terrorists were not known, it would have been irresponsible to dismiss any radical ideology as, potentially, the instigator. But in our politically correct, up-is-down culture, to suggest “Outlook: Islam” was unthinkable. So the most likely scenario — namely, that jihadists who have been at war with us for two decades had, yet again, attacked innocent civilians — became the least likely scenario in the minds of media pundits. Instead, they brazenly prayed (to Gaia, I’m sure) for white conservative culprits with Tea Party hats and Rush 24/7 subscriptions. As our Kevin D. Williamson quipped, the “literal Caucasians” they got were not quite what they had in mind.

To listen to the commentary was to assume that the jihad’s nimble post-9/11 shift from heavy bombs and airliner missiles to IEDs had never happened. Prior to 2009, much agitprop was made over the thousands of American troops killed and maimed by IEDs in Iraq — they signified, the Left told us, that George Bush had brought al-Qaeda to previously jihad-free Baghdad. So did IEDs at the Marathon mean the same jihad had now come to Boston? Perish the thought. Surely the Marathon bombing was the work of either the right-wing extremists Janet Napolitano has been warning us about since 2009, or those notoriously violent Catholics and Evangelicals that today’s Army equates with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Legal Insurrection: Politically correct epistemic closure counterattacks Boston Marathon bombing reality:

Beginning Monday there had been a non-stop attempt to pin the blame for the Boston Marathon bombing on the “right wing” and Tea Party.

It wasn’t so much an argument based on facts as a hope based on politics, most clearly by David Sirota at Salon.com, but he was far from alone, Add Boston Marathon Bombing to pile of Failed Eliminationist Narratives.

Reality smashed those hopes in the face.

As it became indisputable that the perpetrators were Chechen Muslims who expressed support for Jihad and al-Qaeda (although the full extent of their connections is not known), the narrative shifted.

Now the emerging narrative is that these killers were not part of a vast foreign conspiracy but isolated “lone wolves” who became disenchanted with American society, who were not fully integrated into society, who were unhappy with their lives here and thus became radicalized.

Roger L. Simon, PJ Media: Boston and America … Where the Fish Rots from the Top:

The Obama administration and most of those working for it have taken Islamic terrorism about as seriously as I am taking the Memphis Grizzlies/L.A. Clippers game  currently on my TV — in other words, at best mildly interested. Not being a fan of either team, I could watch — I could switch to something else.

And when Islamic terrorism does rear its head, as in Benghazi, the administration evinces something worse than disinterest — dishonesty, lies, coverup and prevarication (sometimes aided by Tapper’s CNN cohort Candy Crowley).

And they don’t stop. They haven’t offered anything yet even remotely resembling a transparent account of the Libyan events or of their motivation. The secretary of State has told us it’s not even important. (How does that look in the light of Boston?)

So why would we expect the nation’s police department — the Federal Bureau of Investigation — to take these matters with the requisite seriousness?  The message they are getting from the top is …meh.  Until something happens, Islamic terrorism is way down this administration’s list of priorities.  And when it happens, the “t-word” is only mentioned under the most extreme duress (or possible political fallout). And the word “Islam” is abjured even when someone yells “Allahu Akbar!” while shooting everyone in the room.

The Daily Mirror: Boston bombers: FBI hunting 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev:

The FBI was last night hunting a 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to the Boston marathon bomb brothers.

Police believe Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were specially trained to carry out the devastating attack.

More than 1,000 FBI operatives were last night working to track down the cell and arrested a man and two women 60 miles from Boston in the hours before Dzhokhar’s dramatic capture after a bloody shootout on Friday.

A source close to the investigation said: “We have no doubt the brothers were not acting alone. The devices used to detonate the two bombs were highly sophisticated and not the kind of thing people learn from Google.

“They were too advanced. Someone gave the brothers the skills and it is now our job to find out just who they were. Agents think the sleeper cell has up to a dozen members and has been waiting several years for their day to come.”

Doug Ross: TERRORISM AND THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Willful Ignorance or … ?

The President asserts that officials don’t know the bombers’ motives and that he’ll get to the bottom of it.Here’s a tip that should save him some time: Jihad.As Andrew McCarthy adroitly notes, no matter how many times the Obama administration tries, “Jihad will not be wished away.”And, as an aside, we still have no earthly idea what Barack Obama did before, during and after the attacks in Benghazi that killed four Americans including an Ambassador.

The Conversation: The Terrorists Didn’t Fail:

Will Obama’s Homeland Security take a much needed break from targeting pro-lifers, 2nd Amendment supporters and traditional marriage proponents and focus on real threats to America?

And by that, I don’t mean putting in place more policies that infringe upon our freedoms as we see at our nation’s airports.

Oh, there’s a reason why Americans have been subjected to humiliating pat downs and “naked scanners” at airport screenings since the Fall of 2009.

It’s because the counter-terrorism policies of this administration, under Obama, Holder and Brennan, have failed to keep us safe.

Here’s the tally of terror attacks on US soil that have taken place since Obama took office.

May 2009, Binghamton NY: N.Y. Shooting Massacre
June 2009, Little Rock, AR: Military Recruiting Center Shooting
November 2009, Fort Hood, TX:Fort Hood Gunman Who Killed 12, Wounded 30 Survived Gun Battle
December 2009, Detroit, MI: Panty-bomber, Northwest Airlines Flight 253
May 2010, NYC: Faisal Shahzad, Times Square Attack
September 2012: Benghazi terror attack on US Consulate in Libya
April 2013: The Boston Marathon bombing

This represents quite an uptick since Bush left office. What changed?

As blogger AJ Strata noted in April of 2010, the Obama Administration Confused national defense and criminal defense.

When President Obama was candidate Obama, his national security team was clear that they were going to roll back the Bush hair-trigger defenses and do things very differently. They were adamant to prove we were not really at war, and that we could fight the bloody-mad Jihadists using courtrooms and prosecutors. Their naivete knew no bounds.

The Obama administration decided early on that  they knew enough about the threat to adjust Bush’s early warning network to be much less intrusive on suspects. Strata noted that “they were arrogantly wrong. Their changes introduced openings that al Qaeda and its allies exploited with surreal success.”

Other than enacting more intrusive policies on everyday Americans, it doesn’t look like the administration has changed it’s national security posture at all,  since then.

Weasel Zippers: Tom Brokaw: America Partly To Blame For “Islamic Rage” Behind Boston Terror Attack…

Brokaw, only the latest shameful member of Team Deflection.

“There are a couple of things to remember here, David, I think for all of us,” Brokaw intoned. “With the death of Osama bin Laden, Islamic rage did not go away. In fact, in some ways it’s more dangerous. This is a perfect example.”

He said Americans need to take a hard look at “the roots” of why so many Muslims, including Americanized terrorists like the Tsarnaev brothers in Boston, want to kill them.

“There’s a lot that we still need to know about what motivated them, obviously,” Brokaw said, noting the Muslim faith of both bombers. “And the fact is that that Islamic rage is still out there.”

Atlas Shrugs: FBI DETAINS TWO ASSOCIATES OF BOSTON JIHADI IN NEW BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS:

Are they part of the jihad sleeper cell?

Previously at Atlas: Boston Bombing Jihad Attack: 3 More Arrested

FBI detains two men at Hidden Brook apartment complex South Coast Today, April 20, 2013 (hat tip armaros)

NEW BEDFORD — Agents wearing FBI and Department of Homeland Security jackets detained two men at the Hidden Brook apartment complex just hours after releasing three people believed to be associated with Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

A neighbor who declined to identify herself said the same two men were among the three people taken into custody by the FBI Friday afternoon.

An FBI spokeswoman could not provide any information on the two men, both of whom were led away in handcuffs around 3:50 p.m. Saturday, or anything related to the apartment, citing the “ongoing” nature of the investigation.

The neighbor would not provide further details when pressed by reporters.

Doug Ross:  LIBERALS SHOCKED, CONFUSED: Heavily-Armed Boston Bombers Didn’t Have Gun Permits:

Or explosives permits, for that matter. A perplexed Associated Depress reluctantly reports:

Massachusetts police official say the brothers suspected of bombing the Boston Marathon before having shootouts with authorities didn’t have gun permits.Cambridge Police Commissioner Robert Haas tells The Associated Press in an interview Sunday that neither Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NEYE’-ehv) nor his brother Dzhokhar had permission to carry firearms.

According to his Twitter page, Troy Crossley is a 20-year old rapper who resides in Chelsea, Mass. He is emerging as one of Twitter’s most vociferous supporters of the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Crossley, who exchanged tweets with Dzhokhar Tsarnaev prior to Monday’s bombing (see, e.g., here, here, and here), has accumulated nearly 10,000 Twitter followers.

It would take all day to document all of his pro-Tsarnaev tweets.

CBC News:  Alleged terror plot thwarted by arrests in Ontario, Quebec:

Canadian police and intelligence agencies will announce later today they have thwarted a plot to carry out a major terrorist attack, arresting two suspects in Montreal and Toronto, CBC News has learned.

Highly placed sources tell CBC News the alleged plotters have been under surveillance for more than a year in Quebec and southern Ontario.

The two men are expected to appear in court tomorrow.

Police have made a number of arrests in southern Ontario and Quebec following a joint operation between Canadian and U.S. authorities.(CBC)

The investigation was part of a cross-border operation involving Canadian law enforcement agencies, the FBI and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Weasel Zippers;  Tweets In March Show Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Was “Poppen Fireworks” And Planning To “Do More Damage” With Friends:

Troy Crossley, a friend of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has taken to Twitter trying to cast doubt on whether his friend is guilty of the Boston bombings.  He has turned into Alex Jones and is now trying to raise money, allegedly for his friend’s defense.

This would all be a bit crazy and worthy of snark.

Except for the fact that he and one of Dzhokhar’s other friends, @xxjungaxx, another Twitter defender, exchanged tweets with Dzhokhar about fireworks, doing more damage and getting to “fuk shit up”.

Twitter expressions of twenty-somethings sometimes use “fuk shit up” without meaning much. What makes the tweets interesting is the clear reference to fireworks and damage.

Eight days before the above discussion which referenced use of  prior “fireworks”,  there were unexplained explosions in nearby Hanover, about half an hour away. Hanover is a town on the way from UMass Dartmouth, where Dzhokhar went to school, and Cambridge, where he lived.

Keep reading.

Tweetfest Friday Free-For-All: Who Is Kermit Gosnell?

LifeSite News:  Pro-lifers organizing ‘Tweetfest’ on Friday to break media blackout on Gosnell trial:

Pro-life leaders are issuing a clarion call to grassroots activists around the country to help break the media blackout surrounding the trial of abortionist Kermit Gosnell by joining in a “Tweetfest” tomorrow (Friday).

(Click here to join a Facebook event page with more info about the Tweetfest.)

In addition to asking pro-lifers to send out Tweets about the trial using the hashtag #Gosnell, organizers of the event are also asking them to contact their local media outlets to ask them why they’re not covering the trial.

Despite a continuous stream of dramatic, and often gruesome testimony coming out of the Pennsylvania courtroom where Gosnell is currently facing eight charges of murder, none of the major broadcast networks have covered the trial.

“If this was puppies that Gosnell was killing the media would be all over it,” Andy Moore, the director of AbortionWiki, one of the organizers of the “Tweetfest,” told LifeSiteNews.com in a telephone interview.

Weasel Zippers: Number Of CNN Stories On Kermit Gosnell’s Trial: Zero…

CNN hasn’t reported on Kermit Gosnell since March 4th.

Patterico: What Is Behind the Kermit Gosnell News Blackout?

The attempt by leftists to black out the story is so complete, they’re even considering deleting the Wikipedia article about Gosnell.

All this got me thinking about why the Gosnell story is being ignored. I do believe that if a random masked man were walking into numerous delivery rooms and snipping the spinal cords of babies the mothers were trying to have, it would be perhaps the biggest story in the nation. I think there are two things that, in the mind of the media, separate this story from such a situation.

First, unlike babies in a delivery room, the babies are not wanted by their mothers. Quite simply, the media is putting a lower value on the lives of babies that mothers don’t want — even after they are born. I think this is a fundamental difference between people outraged by abortion and people who support late-term abortions. The former consider all life precious, while the latter group, which often falsifies the facts about why people obtain such abortions (about which more in a second), simply does not care as much about lives that are not wanted by their mothers.

This was made clear to me when I saw an Erick Erickson tweet saying that this would be a huge story if Gosnell had killed puppies. I immediately thought: but dog pounds do kill puppies, all the time, if they are not wanted. With dogs, we look at an overpopulation and decide that we will attempt to place the creatures in homes, but only up to a point. With humans, it is different — at least for now. We put unwanted children in foster homes, and no matter how long they remain unwanted, we do not simply put them down.

But a society that takes no note of a Kermit Gosnell is a society that is on a slippery slope towards putting foster children to sleep. And if you want to mock me for saying that, tell me what national newspapers have been reporting on the Gosnell trial. I’ll wait right here.

You would think that a profession (journalism) that prides itself on “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” would recognize this slippery slope and highlight it, but not so much.

LifeNews: Four Reasons Why the Media Isn’t Covering the Gosnell Murder Trial: (Warning: Disturbing images at link.)

Although Gosnell was charged with eight counts of murder, witnesses have testified he murdered over 100 babies over three decades. If true, this would rank Gosnell as one of the top five known serial killers worldwide of the 20th and 21st Centuries by victim count.

But if you only tune in to broadcast t.v. news, you will have never even heard the name “Gosnell.” According to an April 4 open letter demanding coverage of the Gosnell trial from 20 conservative leaders:

Since the Gosnell trial began three weeks ago, ABC, CBS, and NBC have given the story ZERO seconds of coverage on either their morning or evening news shows. They have not covered Gosnell once since his arrest in January 2011, and even then, onlyCBS did so.

Foden cartoon via Townhall

Twitchy: Binder babes and FLOTUS’ bangs: News that got #MoreMediaCoverageThanGosnell:

On Friday, Twitter users launched a TweetFest to expose the appalling media blackout on accused mass murderer Kermit Gosnell and his abortion house of horrors. Why is it necessary?

President Barack “Limp and Dead” Obama? Silent.

The national media? Chirp. Chirp. Chirp.

Wikipedia may even delete the “Kermit Gosnell” entry because his trial is just “a local multiple-murder story … nothing more.”

The media’s silence speaks volumes about their allegiance to the political Left. A story that should horrify any human being with an ounce of decency is conveniently swept under the “local crime” story rug. So what pressing national stories have captured the attention of “real reporters” in a way an infanticide trial didn’t?

Elizabeth Scalia: Gosnell Headlines? Gone, Baby, Gone! by Elizabeth Scalia:

The mainstream media, confronted with a house of horrors that was gestated and born of a single-minded mania for “protecting choice for women” had no choice but to report on Gosnell being charged for the murder of one woman who died while under his dubious “care” (another woman’s death had been “settled” for a financial consideration), and they mush-mouthed their way through his killing of at least seven living, viable babies, but they did not like this story.

They did not want to discuss that authorities had repeatedly received reports of Gosnell’s mayhem and had chosen to look the other way. They did not want to have to mention that Gosnell’s disgusting, “third-world” abortion mill—a place where women were abused, manhandled, disrespected, over-sedated, punctured, infected, sterilized, interiorly ripped, and otherwise treated like pieces of meat—would still be running, unimpeded, were it not for an investigation into illegal drug trafficking.

The Gosnell story—a story that by any measure deserved in-depth coverage, some serious discussion about regulation and responsibility, and a few features forcing the nation to consider just when a “late-term” abortion slips into the category of “infanticide” or what our leadership and politicians really think of all of this—proved too big and too messy for the mainstream media.

Townhall: Powers: The Media’s Failure to Report on the Gosnell Trial is “a Disgrace”:

The mainstream media’s lack of coverage and lack of interest in the trial of “Doctor” Kermit Gosnell is not surprising. But kudos to columnist Kirsten Powers for shedding light on their stunning negligence:

A Lexis-Nexis search shows none of the news shows on the three major national television networks has mentioned the Gosnell trial in the last three months. The exception is when Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan hijacked a segment on Meet the Press meant to foment outrage over an anti-abortion rights law in some backward red state.

The Washington Post has not published original reporting on this during the trial and The New York Times saw fit to run one original story on A-17 on the trial’s first day. They’ve been silent ever since, despite headline-worthy testimony.

Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News’ Brian Williams intoned, ”A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,” as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed — a major human rights story if there ever was one — doesn’t make the cut.

You don’t have to oppose abortion rights to find late-term abortion abhorrent or to find the Gosnell trial eminently newsworthy. This is not about being “pro-choice” or “pro-life.” It’s about basic human rights.

The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace.

Image via The Looking Spoon.

Weasel Zippers: House Republicans Slam Media For News Blackout Of Philly Abortion Doctor….

Absolutely disgraceful how the media is ignoring this trial.

Via Washington Times:

Reflecting mounting frustration over the lack of press coverage of inner-city Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell’s murder trial, a group of pro-life House members took to the floor to denounce what they call a “national media cover-up” of the sensational case.

“Again, I ask my colleagues and I ask the news media, ‘Why the blackout?’” said Rep. Christopher H. Smith, New Jersey Republican. “Will America ever be told of the brutality of abortion?”

LifeNews: Congressman: If Gosnell Killed Babies With a Gun It’d Be National News:

Murdering newborns in the abortion clinic, it seems to me, is indistinguishable from any other child predator wielding a knife or a gun. Why isn’t that that child seen as a patient in need of medical care, warmth, nutrition and dare I say—love?

Now another national media cover up! In this case, even when a Jeffrey Dahmer-like murder trial of an abortionist named Kermit Gosnell, who ran the benign-sounding Women’s Medical Society, unfolds in a Philadelphia Courtroom replete with shocking testimony of beheadings, unfathomable abuse, death, and body parts in jars. To this day, the national news media remains uninterested, indifferent—AWOL. Why the censorship? Gosnell’s “house of horrors” trial fails to attract any serious and meaningful national news reporting.

Dr. Kermit Gosnell is on trial for eight counts of murder. One count is for the death of a woman who died during an abortion at his clinic. Seven counts are for babies who survived their abortion and were born alive but then killed by severing their spinal cords with a pair of scissors.

In the words of the Grand Jury report: “Gosnell had a simple solution for unwanted babies: he killed them. He didn’t call it that. He called it ‘ensuring fetal demise.’ The way he ensured fetal demise was by sticking scissors in the back of the baby’s neck and cutting the spinal cord. He called that ‘snipping.’ Over the years there were hundreds of ‘snippings’.

Pundit and Pundette: The brief, painful lives of Baby Boy A, Baby C, and Baby X:

Please read the biographies of three babies who lived and died at the Women’s Medical Society of Philadelphia. It won’t take long.

Baby Boy A:

After an ultrasound was performed on Sue, Gosnell told the aunt that the girl’s pregnancy was further along than she had originally told him, and that, therefore, the procedure would cost more than the $1,500 that had been agreed upon; it would now cost $2,500. (Gosnell normally charged $1,625 for 23-24 week abortions.) The aunt paid Gosnell in cash at the Delaware clinic. He inserted laminaria, gave Sue pills to begin labor, and instructed her to be at the Women’s Medical Center in Philadelphia at 9:00 the next morning.

Sue arrived with her aunt at 9:00 a.m. and did not leave the clinic until almost 11:00 that night. An ultrasound conducted by Kareema Cross recorded a gestational age of 29.4 weeks. Cross testified that the girl appeared to be seven or eight months pregnant. Cross said that, during 13-plus hours, the girl was given a large amount of Cytotec to induce labor and delivery. Sue complained of pain and was heavily sedated. According to Cross, the girl was left to labor for hours and hours. Eventually, she gave birth to a large baby boy. Cross estimated that the baby was 18 to 19 inches long. She said he was nearly the size of her own six pound, six ounce, newborn daughter.

After the baby was expelled, Cross noticed that he was breathing, though not for long. After about 10 to 20 seconds, while the mother was asleep, “the doctor just slit the neck,” said Cross. Gosnell put the boy’s body in a shoebox. Cross described the baby as so big that his feet and arms hung out over the sides of the container. Cross said that she saw the baby move after his neck was cut, and after the doctor placed it in the shoebox. Gosnell told her, “it’s the baby’s reflexes. It’s not really moving.”

Twitchy: Obama ignores Gosnell horrors with media’s aid: Pesky babies didn’t ‘just come out limp and dead’:

Hey, Obama you know what might save one life? Maybe you even just discussing the Kermit Gosnell situation. Not worth it, though, huh?

— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) April 11, 2013

Good question. As Twitchy has extensively reported, there seems to be a media black-out of the news coming out at the trial of monster Kermit Gosnell and his abortion mill house of horrors. The silence from President Obama has also been deafening. Citizens are rightly outraged and they are demanding answers. Why is the trial of a “man” accused of slaughtering innocent babies being ignored?

Someone on Twitter asked, “what do Kenneth Gosnell and Barack Obama have in common?”

John Nolte, Big Journalism: PHOTO: EMPTY ‘RESERVED MEDIA SEATING’ AT ABORTION DOC GOSNELL’S MURDER TRIAL:

Via the Get Religion blog at Patheos:

The picture above, for what it’s worth, is of the reserved media seats at the Gosnell trial. It was taken by JD Mullane, a news writer and columnist for the Bucks County Courier Times, The Intel and the Burlington County (NJ) Times.

John Sexton, The Conversation: Terry Moran: Gosnell Probably Most Successful Serial Killer in History:

Non-coverage of the Gosnell case has been an extreme and frustrating example of media bias for more than two years. The turnaround that has occurred in the last 24 hours is simply astounding. But this did not happen by accident. It’s the result of the extra efforts taken by social conservatives and online, conservative mediawhich kept a pilot light burning on this story. Special credit goes to Kirsten Powers who broke the logjam with a blockbuster column yesterday. And finally to Mollie Hemingway whose question to a Post reporter on Twitter really made the invisible wall of silence visible last night.

Looking Spoon: The Next Time Liberals Get High And Mighty “For The Children” These Screenshots Should Shut Them Up:

If people didn’t think the MSM was biased toward Barack Obama then they’re probably too brain dead to see the bias here…but this is a particularly egregious example of how depraved and evil  they have become (or, at a minimum, they have an unconscionable tolerance of evil).

LifeNews: Teen Worker at Gosnell Abortion Clinic: “They Looked Like Babies”:

The one is so sick…what kind of mother brings her daughter to a place like this — to work???

Ashley Baldwin, a 15-year-old sophomore at University City High School, found herself employed at Gosnell’s abortion clinic and, despite no medical license or training, working alongside him performing gruesome late-term abortions.

From an AP report on the testimony:

Baldwin landed the job because her mother already worked there.

She was paid, and in no time went from answering phones to doing ultrasounds, administering intravenous medicine, and, ultimately, assisting in abortions performed by her mentor, Kermit Gosnell.

Now 22 and the mother of a 2-year-old son, Baldwin on Thursday told a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court jury hearing Gosnell’s murder trial of her unusual hands-on medical apprenticeship.

Baldwin also told the jury about seeing at least five aborted babies moving, breathing, and, in one case, “screeching” after late-term procedures at the clinic.

In Pennsylvania, abortions are legal up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. After that, medical experts say, a fetus is capable of living outside the womb.

“They looked just like regular babies,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin said one baby was so big that Gosnell joked that “this baby is going to walk me home.”

She said the joke bothered her and she talked to her mother about it. Baldwin’s mother, however, was also a Gosnell employee. Tina Baldwin had worked there since 2001.

In other news….

John Hawkins, RWN: 14 Of The Obamas’ Most Decadent Vacations On Your Dime:

Judging by the schedule Barack Obama keeps, being President doesn’t seem like all that tough of a job. You play golf, you shoot hoops, you go on posh vacation after posh vacation and then you give speeches complaining about all the fatcats that are soaking the American people. Of course, living that kind of lifestyle seems a little hypocritical for a man who’s cutting off White House tours for the “little people” while he warns Americans about all those evil rich people who are supposedly looting them blind by keeping their own money. Of course, if anyone knows about looting other people’s money, it would have to be Barack Obama, who is enjoying a lifestyle that even Donald Trump would have trouble affording.

AIM: Soviet Agent Award for Mother Jones Reporter:

How fitting…

David Corn, the liberal writer and MSNBC analyst who based a storyabout Republican Senator Mitch McConnell on a secret and possibly illegal tape recording, is scheduled to accept an award named for Soviet agent of influence I.F. Stone.

The identification of Stone as a Soviet agent is not in serious dispute, except among his most loyal and sycophantic followers.

Equally scandalous, Corn is being presented the award by Jeff Cohen, who has started a petition through his radical organization,RootsAction, to give accused traitor Bradley Manning the Nobel Peace Prize. The RootsAction group is considered by some to be far to the left of Obama and the Democratic Party. Its honoring of Bradley Manning is an example of its extremist approach.

MRC TV: MRCTV Raw Footage: ‘Rally for Citizenship’:

At a Capitol Hill “Rally for Citizenship,” MRCTV’s Dan Joseph talked to protesters holding signs with messages to Marco Rubio who didn’t even know who Rubio is, couldn’t speak English, and said their kids’ school made and provided the protest signs.

Israel Matzov: ‘I will destroy America’:

***

It’s been a tough week for the slimey Clinton era hack, Terry McAuliffe and his business wheelings and dealings.  First the news that his electric car firm GreenTech – the one he promised would create jobs and cars in Virginia – was hit with a tax penalty for lack of production…in Mississippi. Then the news that Virginia officials suspected from the start that GreenTech was a front for a visa-for-sale scam.

Now, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel calls GreenTech “McAuliffe’s Solyndra,” and describes a “creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts.”

Turn over any green-energy rock, and wiggling underneath will be the usual creepy mix of political favoritism and taxpayer-funded handouts. Add to this the Clintons, Mississippi and a murky visa program, and you’ve got a particularly ripe political embarrassment for Terry McAuliffe.

Everyone remember The Macker? Best Friend of Bill. Chairman of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign. Famed money-tree shaker. Former Democratic Party chief. Failed 2009 contender for the Virginia governorship but now back as the party’s nominee for that position in this fall’s election. Oh—and in Mr. McAuliffe’s words—”a Virginia businessman” intent on “creating jobs.”

Or at least that was the image Mr. McAuliffe sought to portray in 2009, when he became chairman of a car company called GreenTech Automotive, with plans to produce golf-cart sized electric vehicles. The former DNC chief is no stranger to moneymaking, having once used a friendly union pension fund to spin a $100 investment in a Florida land deal into $2.45 million. GreenTech, however, was designed to shed the moneyman image and to reposition Mr. McAuliffe as a (clean) job creator the way Mark Warner and Bob McDonnell used their pro-business credentials to win office in Virginia.

In an act of desperation, McAuliffe is now sueing Watchdog.org for reporting on the “cash-for-visas” scandal.

WatchDog.org: McAuliffe car company sues Watchdog in libel claim:

A fledgling electric car company founded by Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe has suedWatchdog.orgfollowing an investigation highlighting the automaker’s use of a controversial government “cash-for-visas” immigration program.

GreenTech Automotive Inc. blames Watchdog for an alleged $85-million loss after publication of two articles detailing the woes of the government immigration program, called EB-5. In one article, a financial expert criticized the EB-5 program as “a fraud.” EB-5 has repeatedly come under fire for lax oversight. An Illinois program was recently the subject of a Securities and Exchange Commission probe.

The EB-5 program was created in 1990, and offers green cards to foreign nationals who invest at least $500,000 in U.S. companies to create 10 or more jobs.

Matt Vespa, PJ Media: Sen. Cruz: Gun Control Will Cost Democrats The Senate:

I asked back in January if Obama’s gun control push gave us the 2014 midterms.  In four months, support for stricter gun laws has dropped from 57% in December to 47% today.  We’ve returned to normalcy on this issue.  We have a bill that wouldn’t have stopped Newtown, and adds more needless regulations on law-abiding citizens that are trying to protect themselves, their families, and their private property. Yet, with the Republican filibuster roundly beaten in yesterday’s vote, the media attention is off Republicans – but will the spotlight be directed towards red state Democrats?  Sen. Cruz told the Hill on April 10 that:

[I]n fact, in my view, as a result of their onslaught on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, I think there’s going to be a very significant consequence in 2014…I think as a result of this fight that President Obama is picking, I think the stage is set for Republicans to take control of the United States Senate because of this fight right now, because of coming after the right to keep and bear arms of peaceful law-abiding Americans. I think a number of red state Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 are going to lose their seats and I think they should.”

Ben Howe, Buzzfeed: The Online Right Is Freaking Awesome:

Last week, Ben Howe was pilloried by some in the conservative blogosphere for writing for BuzzFeed. Now he offers a tribute to the right’s vibrant online community.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve been attacked by some conservative bloggers as a traitor to my ideology, an enemy of the conservative movement, and a sell-out.

And all of it has let me to this completely earnest conclusion: The online right is freaking awesome.

Here’s the backstory. Last week I published an opinion piece at BuzzFeed about a conservative video that I believed was too campy and lacking of substance to be taken seriously. I laid out my criticisms and closed with my concerns that productions of this caliber would stigmatize conservative artists, thus making it more difficult for their work to get produced.

I expected some negative response, especially from the Tea Party Patriots who produced the video, and I knew some conservatives would take issue with my decision to write the piece for BuzzFeed, which is not exactly a card-carrying citizen of the conservative blogosphere.

What I did not expect was to be taken to the woodshed and told that what I’d done was tantamount to ideological treason. Yet that’s exactly what happened when the article first hit Twitter.

Fox News: Colorado sheriffs plan lawsuit challenging state gun control laws:

More than half of Colorado’s elected sheriffs are planning to mount a legal challenge to the state’s sweeping new gun restrictions.

The Denver Post reports that 37 of the state’s 62 sheriffs will sue to overturn laws passed in March that set limits on ammunition magazines and expand background checks for firearms.

Weld County Sheriff John Cooke told the paper that the proposed lawsuit would argue the laws violate Second Amendment rights. He said the lawsuit would likely be filed within the next few weeks.

The group County Sheriffs of Colorado has opposed a ban on high-capacity magazines, and about a dozen Colorado sheriffs spoke against the new laws during President Obama’s visit this week. The laws take effect July 1.

The Conversation: Assassination Attempt: Bomb Package Heading For Sheriff Joe Arpaio Intercepted In Flagstaff:

Fox News reports that a suspicious package en route to Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Phoenix headquarters was intercepted by authorities in Flagstaff Thursday.

Authorities in Flagstaff, a city in Northern Arizona, x-rayed the box and determined it contained an explosive device. A bomb squad was deployed and neutralized it.
Flagstaff Police, the FBI and U.S. Postal inspectors are working the case and authorities there say they already have investigative leads.

This follows a string of attacks on law enforcement that started a little over two months ago.

Benny Johnson, Buzzfeed: Here’s The Democrats’ Plan To Get Gun Control Through The Senate: 

As the new debate over gun control heats up, senior Senate aides on both sides of the issue laid out advocates’ plan to get their bill through the Senate.

The strategy advocated by gun control supporters in the Senate was described to BuzzFeed by two senior Republican Senate aides working to oppose the effort, and confirmed by a Democratic Senate leadership aide working to get it passed.

Francis R. Porretto: Slow And Steady Wins The Race: A Manifesto:

I was minded to write about abortion today, specifically why the right to do as you please with your body doesinclude poisoning yourself with drugs but doesn’t extend to murdering an infant developing in your womb. However,this post at Cold Fury has reoriented me for the nonce.

Mike Hendrix has long been one of the clearest and most stalwart defenders of freedom in the DextroSphere. Indeed, he’s many cuts above quite a large fraction of the salaried commentators of the Right, for two overriding reasons:

• He sees clearly;
• He’s consistent over time.

This morning, he cites the value of those virtues…to the other side:

The Left, as always, is playing a long game, while we sit back and tell ourselves it couldn’t possibly be happening, and then are shocked–SHOCKED!–when each new piece of the puzzle slips softly but firmly into place.Update! Prime example, via Glenn:

As annoying at Toomey is, we should remember that this is like 2% of what the libs sought. They’re grabbing crumbs and calling them a cake.

Uh huh. Why, we’re WINNING!, gang! And the Left continues hacking merrily away at our rights, while we deceive ourselves so as to avoid facing the facts and fighting back against them. And thus the frog eventually boils. Sorry, Kurt, losing a little more slowly is NOT winning. A slave who is granted one day a week of partial freedom to remove his chains and do more or less as he wishes before stepping back into harness for the other six is still a slave.

The Foundry: Morning Bell: Obama’s Fake Budget Marketing Exposed:

President Obama is marketing his new budget by saying it has “more than $2 in spending cuts for every $1 of new revenue.” Is this true?

In a word, no.

In fact, his spending increases and advertised spending cuts cancel each other out—leaving only a massive tax increase.

The President cancels sequestration’s spending cuts—therefore raising spending—by the same amount that he reduces spending. When that’s done, all that’s left is a $1.1 trillion tax hike.

 

Monday Morning Catch-Up: 700 Retired Special Ops Tell Congress It’s Time For a Select Committee On Benghazi

Big Government: 700 RETIRED MILITARY SPECIAL OPS TELL CONGRESS TO FORM SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI:

Seven hundred retired Military Special Operations professionals from the organization “Special Operations Speaks” sent a letter to the House of Representatives urging members to support H.Res 36, which will create a House Select Committee to investigate last September’s deadly terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya.

“It appears that many of the facts and details surrounding the terrorist attack which resulted in four American deaths and an undetermined number of American casualties have not yet been ascertained by previous hearings and inquiries,” the letter states. It continues further, ”Additional information is now slowly surfacing in the media, which makes a comprehensive bipartisan inquiry an imperative. Many questions have not been answered thus far.” The letter puts forth over twenty unanswered questions the select committee should address.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman on the House Appropriations Committee, issued a resolution for a House Select Committee to investigate issues surrounding the Benghazi Attack last November in the 112th Congress. He re-issued his resolution for the select committee when the 113th Congress began. The resolution currently has over 60 co–sponsors.

Only Speaker John Boehner (R–OH) can appoint a Select Committee and Boehner appears to mainly rely on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to investigate the Benghazi attack. However, any information that may be garnered from that committee will, as always, remain classified.

The Right Scoop: Obama admin refuses to pay traveling expenses for mother of slain Benghazi officer to see him receive honorary award:

 Pat Smith, mother of slain Benghazi officer Sean Smith, was on Hannity’s radio show on Friday to basically say that she still hasn’t been told what really happened on the night that her son was murdered in Benghazi. And she knows that there are things they can’t tell her, yet even generally speaking she’s not heard a word from them.

Not only that but her son will be honored with the Thomas Jefferson Star of Foreign Service award in May and they are only paying the way of the wife and two children, but not the mother. How insulting. So Hannity offered on the radio to pay for everything to get her there and back home, and you could hear her begin to cry. She of course accepted.

She also suggested that someone was trying to shut her up, but didn’t want to say who it was. She did say it wasn’t a government worker though but wouldn’t go any further. Not sure exactly what to make of that.

Warner Todd Huston, Big Journalism: ROLL CALL: OBAMA HAS ‘GIVEN UP’ ON THOSE DARN REPUBLICANS:

Roll Call reports that Obama has now “given up” on Republicans as partners for helping him get some “governing done” in Washington DC. Of course, the Capitol Hill newspaper fails to show when it was that Obama ever consider the GOP to be his governing partner in the first place.

Roll Call writer Steven T. Dennis claims that, “Obama already seems resigned to the reality” that he won’t be able to successfully initiate his massive re-tooling of America to reflect his left-wing agenda because the GOP isn’t interested in “bipartisan action.”

Dennis reports Obama’s recent lamentation that he can’t get anything done without California’s Democrat Representative Nancy Pelosi back in the House Speaker’s chair and notes his complaining that Boehner and the Republicans won’t just bend to his will so he can do what he wants to do.

But, Dennis reports from Obama’s side of the argument, refusing to point out that President Obama has never considered the Republicans and the millions of voters they represent as important partners in running Washington DC in the first place.

The Hill: Pfeiffer won’t say if Obama would sign border-security ‘trigger’:

Senior White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday sidestepped questions about whether President Obama would sign an immigration bill which included a “trigger” requiring border security improvements before other reforms.

Pfeiffer said only that the administration supported the Senate’s efforts to craft comprehensive immigration reform as “100 percent consistent with what the president is doing” in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

Washington Post: Immigration proposal could be delayed:

A bipartisan Senate group on immigration legislation is attempting to craft an agreement so secure that the eight members will oppose amendments to its core provisions, an arrangement that could delay the introduction of a bill, people familiar with the negotiations said.

The senators had said they hoped to present their proposals this week, but Republican members expressed skepticism about that timetable Sunday. The group continues to negotiate issues related to new visa programs for agricultural and high-tech workers and has not reached agreement on a guest-worker program for low-skilled foreign laborers, said the individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he hopes a deal can be reached “in the next couple of weeks.” A GOP Senate aide involved in the negotiations said a deal is unlikely this week because writing the bill, which is expected to be up to 1,500 pages, is going slowly.

Yid With Lid: The Truth About Pamela Geller: 

Here is the truth about Pamela Geller. There are people in the world who see a wrong, give a quick “oh that’s so sad” and get on with their lives. Then there are others who see a wrong and go all out to right it. That’s Pamela– someone who goes out of her way to do what we call in Hebrew, Tikun Olam, repair the world.

Let me explain what I mean with a story the Progressives would never repeat.

On the morning of December 10, 2007 Aqsa Parvez huddled in a Missis­sauga, Candad bus shelter with another Grade 11 student, a girl she had been staying with for the past couple of days. They had plenty of time to make it to their first class at Apple­wood Heights Secondary School. As they waited, Aqsa’s 26-year-old brother Waqas, a tow-truck driver, showed up at the bus stop. He said that she should come home and get a fresh change of clothes if she was going to be staying elsewhere. Aqsa hesitated, and then got into his car.

Less than an hour later, Muhammad Parvez phoned 911 and told the dispatcher that he had killed his daughter. Within minutes, police and paramedics arrived at 5363 Longhorn Trail, a winding suburban street near Eglinton and Hurontario, and found Aqsa unconscious in her bedroom. The 16-year-old wasn’t breathing. The para­medics started CPR, found a faint pulse, and rushed her to Credit Valley Hospital, 10 minutes west. She died just after 10 that evening. The official cause was “neck compression”—strangulation. 

Aqsa Parvez was buried in an unmarked grave. Her family refused to acknowledge her life, because she “dishonored” them. In defiance of her devout father she began taking off her hijab, the traditional Islamic headscarf, when she went to school, and would put it back on when she returned home. Her dad would go to her school during school hours and walk around trying to find her, trying to catch her not wearing Islamic garb, talking to boys or hanging out with “non-Muslims”.

Pamela grabbed that wrong by the neck and did what she could to eradicate the evil. She raised money (and threw in her own) for a tombstone for Aqua’s grave.  When the family refused to allow the memorial stone, she did not give up:

“.. we inquired as to purchasing a plot near Aqsa’s body, we could not. Not a tree. Not a rock. Not a bench. All the plots were owned by the Islamic Society of North America. I tried to contact the family at that time, but they would not take my calls — I spoke to the them once, but they pretended not to speak English. And they were adamant: the family refused to allow the headstone to be put on Aqsa’s grave, and according to the cemetery, could remove it if it were placed there by others.”

Feeling that this Muslim girl’s memory shouldn’t be tossed out like the trash, Pamela found a way to honor her memory— Aqsa Parvez grove and plaque in the American Independence Park in Nes Harim, Israel.

This is only one of many examples of the hard work of Pamela Geller to protect and honor Muslims, how she has provided safe-houses for Muslim girls threatened with honor killings, how she has fought against those who would destroy Israel.

Doug Powers, Michelle Malkin: Taxpayer-backed Fisker lays off 75 percent of workforce; poor sales attributed to global shortage of people named Leonardo DiCaprio:

Fisker Automotive, as you might recall, received hundreds of millions of dollars in US taxpayer backed loans on the promise of manufacturing cars at a Delaware plant, and then promptly — assembled the first line of Gore-Mobiles at a factory in Finland.

Cue the inevitable layoffs:

Fisker Automotive, the struggling, government-backed hybrid sports car maker, terminated most of its rank-and-file employees on Friday, in a last-ditch effort to conserve cash and stave off a potential bankruptcy filing, sources said.

In a statement, Fisker confirmed that it let go about 75 percent of its workforce. The automaker said it was “a necessary strategic step in our efforts to maximize the value of Fisker’s core assets.”

People working two and three jobs to make ends meet must be so happy that their tax dollars were used to subsidize cars for “green” glitterati withguilty consciences while lining the pockets of eco-scammers.

Mark Stein, The Corner: Don’t Fire Until You Until You See The Whites Of Their Cassocks:

This is one for the “too stupid to survive” files: U.S. Army Labeled Evangelicals, Catholics as Examples of Religious Extremism.

When I first saw the headline, I assumed it must all be a little less obviously bone-crushingly stupid or at any rate more nuanced once you got into the story. But I invite you to look at the accompanying poster for the Equal Opportunity training brief issued by the Army Reserve in Pennsylvania. It lists “extremist” groups, starting with “Evangelical Christianity” at Number One, “Al Quaeda” (misspelled under any Roman rendering of Arabic) at Number Five, “Hamas” at Six, and “Catholicism” rounding out the Top Ten.

Think of the number of people involved in the creation, printing and distribution of this graphic — and along the way not one of them stopped to say, “Hey, this is totally dumb.

John Sexton, the Conversation:  North Korean Propaganda Update: Dogs of War Edition:

On the Sexton Scale of Communist Propaganda Humor Value–where 1 is ‘eye-rolling amusement’ and 5 is ‘hilarious fascist self-parody’ I give this one a 3. The paper faces taped to dummies is always a winner. Nothing says “bad ass” like dogs tearing into a image of your enemies printed on an HP inkjet.

Over the weekend North Korea released several other new propaganda clips, some featuring Kim Jong Un himself. In this one the dear leader watches a group of soldiers practicing martial arts set to what sounds like 1970s elevator music. I give this one a 4 for the music and for the shots of soldiers throwing themselves on the ground as part of their training.

There’s another clip in which Kim watches two hovercraft make an assault on a beach. It’s a 3 for the voice of the narrator alone but I’m upgrading it to a 4 based on two moments. First, at 1:30, there’s a soldier who executes a perfect James T. Kirk shoulder roll onto the beach. Second, at 3:25, a female soldier who has just met the dear leader bursts into sobs as he leaves.

Not everything in these clips can be taken lightly. Consider the disturbing image.

Crazy stuff!

Friday Free-For-All: Burying the News

Glenn McCoy cartoon via Townhall

 

Freddie Freddoso, Washington Examiner: Guns and babies: A tale of two massacres:

You might not know it, but there’s a mass murder trial going on in Philadelphia. There has been plenty of courtroom drama, and the death penalty remains a possibility.

The media are seldom shy about such sensational affairs, but they have been with one. Perhaps it’s because the accused mass murderer is an abortion doctor, who along with his medically untrained staff is accused of killing a female patient and several babies who had already been born, alive and breathing.

Doctor Kermit Gosnell’s preferred method of killing these latter, according to witnesses, was to sever their spinal cords. Upon his arrest in January 2011, his urine-scented and blood-soaked clinic was deemed a “house of horrors.” (I will spare readers further details, which are far worse.)

This trial’s gruesome revelations are emerging at almost the same time as new details about the loathsome and cowardly murderer who killed his own mother and then 26 others at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., late last year.

Michelle Malkin: Smiley-Face Lies and Homicide Hogwash in Dem Hellholes:

President Obama’s hometown of Chicago still goes by the old nickname “Windy City.” But after three miserable decades of strict gun control and permanent Democratic rule, Chicago has cemented its reputation as America’s Bloody City.

No amount of statistical whitewashing can cover up the stains of the left’s ideological failures there. But as Obama continues to wage war on law-abiding gun owners, his home team is trying its hardest to spread smiley-face lies upon damned lies to downplay Chicago homicide statistics.

On Monday, April Fools’ Day, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy held a press conference to tout a “dramatic” drop in the city’s homicide rate. The headlines read: “March homicides drop dramatically in Chicago” (USA Today); “Murders fall 42 percent in America’s deadliest city: Chicago” (NBC News); and “March homicides drop 69 percent in Chicago” (Las Vegas Sun).”

Emanuel trumpeted the drop as a “good sign.”

AoSHQ: MSNBC, Kindergarden for Bored, Angry Unemployed People:

The MSNBC Messaging Machine finds new ways to be stupid just about every day.

MSNBC is a televised blog. I keep saying this because it’s true: part of blogs’ charm, at least initially, was that they gleefully ignored any standards of professionalism. The honesty about the slapdash nature of them was bracing. And the honesty about agenda — to wit, we have one — was liberating.

But that upside of blogs also comes with a downside. Blogs speak relentlessly to one side of the aisle (are there any actual centrist blogs out there? It’s a business model I don’t think can actually work). We look for new ways to provoke — because it’s fun and profitable. And I don’t mean that in the cliched joke way; I mean, it’s literally both fun and profitable (at least in the sense of hit-whoring) to find exciting new manners of juvenile tweaking of one’s political enemies.

The medium tends towards two things: emotional hotness and intellectual dumbness. Those aren’t cast-iron rules, of course. (Present company excepted!)

MSNBC has fully embraced the blogger ethos of hit-whoring provocation first, second, last, and always. As well as exploring all the new and inventive ways to call people you don’t like Nazis.

There simply is no professionalism at MSNBC, no aspiration to any kind of standards at all. It’s Dumb By Design (TM), because Dumb is Easy and Easy is Holy.

Gateway Pundit: ALL EMBASSIES TOLD TO EVACUATE PYONGYANG NOW:

All embassies in Pyongyang were told today to evacuate by April 10 after dictator Kim Jung Un warned he could not guarantee the safety of foreigners.
The regime moved missile launchers to the east coast of the country today.

Weasel Zippers: Disability Trust Fund Runs In Record Deficits Every Year Since Obama Elected, Prior 15 Years In Surplus:

Is this any surprise since the requirements to get disability have been eviscerated, and the numbers getting it have skyrocketed?

(CNSNews.com) – The federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, which takes in money via a federal payroll tax and pays it out in disability benefits, ran a record $31.2 billion deficit in calendar year 2012, according to the Social Security Administration.

That means the trust fund has run a deficit in each of the first four years of the Obama presidency.

Ace, The Conversation: Jake Tapper: Gun Control Advocates Should Have Basic Familiarity with That Which They Seek to Ban:

Where is the embarrassment? Where is the shaming? Where are people to humiliate these fools who seek to reduce liberty by banning a thing they don’t even comprehend?

I keep saying this, but we are duty-bound to force them to live up to their egotistical, wildly-overpraising conceptions of themselves.

Via Gateway Pundit:  Krauthammer: Obama Has Lost on Gun Control – He Just Wants the Cash:   

The state of Kansas is safe for gun owners…

NRA ILA:  Kansas: State Legislature Advances Several Pro-Gun Bills:

Several pro-gun bills are on the move in Topeka this week.  Today, the Kansas Senate voted 35 to 5 in favor of a comprehensive pro-gun package, House Bill 2052.  HB 2052, as originally drafted, would have exempted the lawful discharge of firearms—whether for hunting or self-defense—from criminal prosecution.  However, the state Senate altered the bill’s language and added several more pro-gun improvements.  HB 2052 will now go before a conference committee and then on for final approval by both legislative chambers.

House Bill 2052 was amended to include the following pro-gun reforms:

• Would require that government and public buildings that prohibit the carrying of concealed firearms for self-defense to screen all visitors for weapons.  This would ensure that ALL individuals who enter the buildings are disarmed, not just the law-abiding citizens who choose to follow the law.  If a building lacks the adequate security measures necessary to screen all visitors, then residents with a concealed carry license would be allowed to carry a firearm to protect themselves while visiting that particular building.
• Would make the personal information of concealed carry license applicants confidential and exempt from Freedom of Information Act requests.
• Would exempt law enforcement officers from the training requirements necessary to obtain a concealed carry license.
• Would authorize school officials to allow staffers and visitors to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense.

Thank you to the 35 Senators who voted for HB 2052 and to NRA members who contacted their statelegislators in support of this critical pro-gun reform.

Newsbusters:  Gun Owners of America Chief to Chris Matthews: ‘We Don’t Trust People Like You’:

  MSNBC’s Chris Matthews had quite a heated debate Thursday with Larry Pratt, the executive director of Gun Owners of America.

At the end of a highly-contentious Hardball segment, Pratt told his host that he’s against all background checks “because we don’t trust people like you” (video follows with transcript):

Charles Krauthammer: The Trigger and the Poison Pill:

Democrats control the Senate and the White House, and they will only agree to a weaker trigger. Which is? Legalization first — i.e., living here openly without fear of deportation but nothing more until the border is controlled. Until then, no one even starts on the path to citizenship — no green card, no naturalization.

So why is Obama undermining even that compromise, asserting that “this earned pathway to citizenship” must not be “put off further and further,” that it must be “certain” — not contingent on verifiable benchmarks of border closure?

Are he and Napolitano signaling to their hard-core open-border constituency that they will try to sabotage passage of any law that has a serious enforcement trigger, or that they will try to sabotage enforcement if a strict law is nonetheless enacted?

Why? Isn’t border control an elementary principle of sovereignty? What country deliberately forfeits the right to decide who gets to join its communal life?

Remember: We’re not talking about the 11 million already here who will be legalized as a matter of both practicality and compassion. We’re talking about the next 11 million. Without border enforcement, they will be here. If you don’t build it — the fence, the visa-tracker, E-Verify — they will come.

Why deliberately create the next immigration crisis? Is it because you coldly calculate that this wave and the next are destined to be partisans of your political party? Talk about placing party over country.

Or perhaps Obama intends this to be a poison pill: (1) Demonstrate unmistakable bad faith on enforcement. (2) Undermine the Gang of Eight’s already weak border-control “trigger.” (3) And thus force Republicans to defeat this “immigration reform” — as newly defined and newly defanged of enforcement.

Obama seems to want an issue, not a solution — a potent political issue for Democrats to demagogue in 2014 and 2016 and forever. If so, given the Democrats’ incessant and lachrymose expressions of compassion for those living in the shadows, this would be the ultimate in cynicism.

 

The Blaze:  Rep. Jason Chaffetz Makes More Startling Border Discoveries: ‘Worst Thing I’ve Seen’: 

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) continued his tour of the U.S.-Mexico border, posting a new round of tweets on Wednesday that further display the need for enhanced border security.

The “worst thing” he reported seeing was 60 unaccompanied elementary age children leaving school and crossing the border to go home to Mexico. A supervisor reportedly told Chaffetz that this happens daily.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p>Worst thing I’ve seen. 60 elementary age kids leave this school in Naco, AZ <a href=”http://t.co/qGhQZHdDDN&#8221; title=”http://twitter.com/jasoninthehouse/status/319563553688387584/photo/1″>twitter.com/jasoninthehous…</a></p>&mdash; Jason Chaffetz (@jasoninthehouse) <a href=”https://twitter.com/jasoninthehouse/status/319563553688387584″>April 3, 2013</a></blockquote>
<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Lee Stranahan, Big Journalism: PAT CADDELL TAKES GABRIEL SHERMAN BACK TO THE WOODSHED:

In his Fox News piece, Caddell took criticism of Sherman to a whole new level, accusing the writer of “incompetence,” “arrogance,” and of being “willfully ignorant.” To further drive the point home, Caddell included a verbatim e-mail from Sherman.

Evidently, Sherman believes that any publicity is good, so long as his name is spelled right. So, amazingly, Sherman tweeted out Caddell’s column as part of his response to Caddell. Sherman should have thought further about his communications strategy.

Caddell had decked him, but Sherman felt the need to keep the story going. Later that same Friday he tweeted, “Among the odd things in Pat Caddell’s Fox News column, he left out that he called me back moments after I called him.”

But why was that? Why did Caddell call back?

Keep reading…

Diana West: Warning: You Are About to Read a “Forbidden” Column:

Get ready for the last straw.

First, though, I’d like to suggest that anyone reading this column in a local newspaper or news site pat the editor on the back for publishing what in our neo-medieval world of fear amounts to a “forbidden” column.

Yup, I am about to say something about the Great Barack Obama Identity/Eligibility Scandal again. I know that this is one rich and urgent topic that doesn’t see the light of day in certain so-called news outlets – and I say that from the experience of watching my own syndicated columns fail to appear when covering news of the White House press conference where the president’s long-form birth certificate was unveiled, news of courtroom proceedings in various states on Obama’s ballot eligibility and news of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s investigators presenting evidence that the online Obama birth certificate is a forgery (andmuchmore).

So be it. This was, as noted, the last straw.

Linked by Theo Spark, thanks!

Monday Morning Catch-up: Violent Chicago Teen Mob, Google Celebrates Easter, Obamas Go To Church….Rubio Under Investigation?

Wow, there sure was a lot of news this Easter weekend. You would think people would be taking it easy and spending time with family – and just being good. But no.

Chicago had a warm weekend – soooo: Weasel Zippers: Hundreds Of Teens Harass People On Chicago’s Michigan Avenue:

(CBS) — The warmest day of the year so far brings hundreds of mischievous teens to Michigan Avenue.

Police are calling it ‘mob action’.

CBS 2 is learning about multiple incidents in at least four different locations along the Magnificent Mile and in the Gold Coast, yielding a slew of arrests.

Things got pretty bad, very quickly with many innocent shoppers and tourists caught in the middle of a very chaotic situation.

“Mischievous”, you say?  Watch the video at Weasel Zippers and see what one of the mischievous scamps did to the guy in the stretcher.

Rebel Pundit, Big Government: 28 Arrested in Violent Chicago Teen Mob:

Chicago saw a wave of violent mob attacks against its residents last year, most often led by youth from the city’s poorer neighborhoods, and conducted in the city’s wealthier neighborhoods as the spring temperatures rose. Saturday, the warmest day of 2013, indicates the city may be heading in the same direction as 2012.

***

Oh. The Obama’s went to church, Sunday, which is always so touching. The president is a very devout Christian, as you know. What did the pastor choose to speak about on Easter Sunday? God’s unfathomable love for all of us? The healing power of forgiveness and redemption?

Gateway Pundit: AWFUL… Obama’s Church Pastor Pounds Conservatives With Racist Attacks on Easter:

“It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.”

Who are these captains on the religious right calling for these calamities? Name names. Or STFU, buddy. Yeah, I’m calling Rev. Dr. Luis Leon out. He’s got nothing but rotten to the core liberation theology Marxist race-baiting demagoguery.

I can name a person who told his political “enemies” to literally get in the back seat of the car. His name is Barack Obama.

… he said, “we can’t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don’t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.”

It drives me crazy that the “captains of the religious left” are such hypocritical a$$holes.

Jerome Hudson, The Conversation: Obama’s Easter Sermon Replaces Faith With Filth:

In his Easter sermon today, Rev. Luis Leon said, “It drives me crazy when the captains of the religious right are always calling us back … for blacks to be back in the back of the bus … for women to be back in the kitchen … for immigrants to be back on their side of the border.” Rev. Leon spewed this revisionist history in front of President Obama and his family.

But if by the “right” Rev. Leon means Republicans, he needs to learn his history. The people who sent my grandparents to the back of the bus were Democrats, not Republicans.

Democrats passed discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow Laws. It was the Democrats who, just a few years ago elected former Klansmen, Sen. Robert Byrd president of the Senate. It was Alabama’s Democratic Governor, George Wallace who stood in front of the doors of the University of Alabama, blocking blacks from entering the school. And now it’s Democrats in Alabama who are, ironically, fighting to keep poor black kids in failing schools. Even the Democrat’s own party website is devoid of specific examples of the “advances” they claim to have made for “civil rights.” The Democratic Party of slavery and segregation can’t hold a candle to the Republican’s history on civil rights.

***

Then there’s Google. Good ol’ Google – celebrating Easter with Easter lilies? cross? eggs? bunnies?…….how about.. Happy Easter: Google Celebrates Cesar Chavez’s Birth with an Update: Google Sticks with Chavez Logo All Easter Day.

This can only be seen as a deliberate slight.

March 31 marks the birthday of National Farm Workers Association (later United Farm Workers) co-founder Cesar Chavez. Chavez, who was trained by Saul Alinsky in the tactics of community organizing, has become a cult figure in California due to his organization of agricultural workers. March 31 also happens to be another important date this year: Easter. So, naturally, Google’s current logo features a graphic of Chavez’s face, rather than anything having to do with Easter.

Some pertinent facts about Senior Chavez:

The late United Farm Workers leader Cesar Chavez was trained by the famous Chicago agitator Saul Alinsky.

He worked closely with Communist Party USA members like Bert Corona and was closely affiliated to the US’ largest Marxist organization, Democratic Socialists of America.

Chavez marched under the famous slogan “Si se puede!” – later translated into English to become Obama’s 2008 campaign slogan “Yes we can!”

Okay, enough! You can read the rest. here. Can Google explain why I should be celebrating Chavez’s birthday – especially in light of their studiously avoided mention of Easter? New low, Google. New. low.

***

But of course, this was done for a state approved reason: Obama Delivers 117 Word Statement for Easter – 664 Word Statement for Cesar Chavez Day:

The president can invent holidays by proclamation, now?

MICKEY KAUS: Psst! Cesar Chavez Opposed Illegal Immigrants:

Google should google it: Cesar Chavez’s legacy on illegal immigration may not be what Google thinks it is. Here’s a Ruben Navarrette column on the subject.  As a labor leader, Chavez realized that uncontrolled immigration undercut his workers’ bargaining position–as late as 1979 he inveighed against “illegal alien strikebreakers” before Congress..

He would later change his position, “under pressure from Chicano yaktivists.”

***

I think most of us heard about this guy, over the weekend: Democratic Nevada Lawmaker Chased By Police And Tased, After Being The First Expelled From Legislature:

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Police chased a former lawmaker on a freeway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles and arrested him at gunpoint following a struggle, hours after he became the first person ever expelled from the Nevada Legislature.

Steven Brooks was jailed in California’s San Bernardino County after being subdued with punches and a Taser. Police alleged he attacked a police dog with a wrench.

“It’s hard to know where he was going, what he thought he was doing and why he would be involved in a high-speed chase,” Brooks’ attorney, Mitchell Posin, told The Associated Press on Friday. “I think he feels the world is against him. But I’m just piecing together bits of information.”

Brooks’ arrest Thursday near the California city of Victorville was his third since January, and came just hours after colleagues in the Legislature deemed the Democrat from North Las Vegas too dangerous and unpredictable to serve his elected term. Lawmakers wept Thursday as they cited concerns about their own safety and evidence collected about an increasingly bizarre series of public incidents.

Keep reading…

***

Here’s a video of our hero from January:

Think he’ll be reelected? Probably.

***

Oh dear….Piers….

Twitchy: School is in session: Dana Loesch shreds ‘uneducated’ Musket Morgan on guns:

The amount of whining after a conversation is always directly proportionate to the amount of damage done to the progressive argument.

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 29, 2013

***

The Blaze: Wisconsin’s New Concealed Carry Law (and a Former Marine) Just Saved This Woman’s Life:

This happened two weeks ago, but in case you missed it:

A West Allis, Wisc., man stumbled upon a dangerous — and potentially deadly — situation while driving home at 4 a.m. on Tuesday. Charlie Blackmore, a Marine Corps veteran, saw a woman on the ground being repeatedly kicked in the head and stomach.

Blackmore quickly got out of his car and told the male assailant to stop attacking the woman. And that’s when the perpetrator, 44-year-old Kenneth Harris, started charging toward him. Little did Harris know, but Blackmore was carrying a gun.

“I said ‘stop’ and he starts coming towards me and that’s when I drew on him,” the brave vet told WITI-TV. “He started getting closer and I said ‘get down on the ground.”

LauraW, AoSHQ: A Parenting Question:

Which is the better way to cover the subject of guns with children?

1) Teach them that it is best to be utterly ignorant and terrified of firearms, to the point where merely chewing a poptart into a vague gun-shape seems like reasonable cause for punishment; or

2) This other method, called ‘actual education,’ right here.

Washington Times: CURL: The Obamas live the 1 percent life:

“I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal,” he said years later. “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them.”

That’s also why Mr. Bush did two other things, without fanfare or praise. First, he never headed home to his Texas ranch until after Christmas, instead going to Camp David for a few days. That way, the hundreds of people revolving around him at all times — White House staff, Secret Service agents, reporters, photographers, all the others — could spend the holiday with their families in and around Washington, D.C. No one ever reported that — until this column.

Second, he rarely attended sporting events, although he once owned a baseball team and was a self-confessed stats junkie. His thinking there was the same: If he went to a baseball game (right down the street from the White House), his mere presence would mean hours and hours of extra security for fans. He once stopped off at the Daytona 500 and the metal detectors through which every fan had to pass left thousands outside in line when the green flag fell; he didn’t attend many sporting events after that.

But something remarkable has happened with these occupants of the White House: Neither President Obama nor first lady Michelle appear to give a damn about perception. They won the White House and, by God, they’re going to enjoy their time there, no matter the cost. And who cares what you think, anyway?

How else to explain the nonstop vacations the pair keep taking during what Mr. Obama calls the “worst financial crisis since the Great Depression”? In 2013, the First Family has already enjoyed three vacations — that’s one a month. (Sorry, Joe America, you might have to forget your week at the beach again this year, but make sure you get those taxes in on time!)

A question no one in the MSM is asking: ‘All these trips cost millions for Secret Service protection; couldn’t they just skip a few vacations so taxpayers could visit “America’s House”?’

***

White House Dossier: Campaigning Again: Obama Starts Fundraising:

The 2012 election is barely over, but President Obama is already hitting the campaign trail again, heading out to four California fundraisers Wednesday and Thursday to begin raising money to help Democrats keep the Senate and seize the House.

The way-early fundraising blitz suggests Obama is far more focused than the White House is admitting on capturing the House for Democrats so he can railroad legislation through Congress after the 2014 elections.

He overexposed himself in 2010, too – and we all know how that worked out for them.

***

Maybe he’ll find time for this California Socialist Who Wants to Take Your Guns, Land and Liberty – All Part of “Agenda 21″ while he’s there:

All over America… communists, socialists and Marxists have been leading the charge for “gun control.”

A case in point occurred in Harlem on March 21st, where “more than 2,000 predominantly Black and Latino working people gathered on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd… in a militant protest against gun violence.”

California Legislator Nancy SkinnerThe organizer of that event was Leslie Cagan, a life-long pro-Cuban communist and leading “peace” activist.

Another Marxist leading the charge to destroy American liberty is a Democrat member of the California State Legislature, representing, the 14th Assembly District (which includes Berkeley), Nancy Skinner.

In January, Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner unveiled her bill to crack down on guns or ammunition.

Assembly Bill 48 would require sellers of ammunition to be licensed and for purchasers to show identification. All sales would be reported to the Department of Justice.

The Department of Justice would be required under AB 48 to notify local law enforcement of large-quantity purchases over a five-day period by an individual who is not a peace officer.

***

Weasel Zippers: Typical Dem Run Craphole Commie California’s Net Worth Down To A Negative 7.2 Billion:

Obviously, they need to keep doing what they’re doing – only more so.

Via SacBee:

Were California’s state government a business, it would be a candidate for insolvency with a negative net worth of $127.2 billion, according to an annual financial report issued by State Auditor Elaine Howle and the Bureau of State Audits.

The report, which covers the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, says that the state’s negative status — all of its assets minus all of its liabilities — increased that year, largely because it spent more than it received in revenue.

Big Journalism: Touré, 9/11 Truther:

And you thought race-baiting was bad…

It now appears that Touré, an MSNBC contributor, is a 9-11 conspiracy crank. Writing after Van Jones, the former White House green jobs czar, was fired in 2009, Touré took to Twitter to defend Jones’s outlandish statements with some of his own.

On September 7^th, 2009, Touré sent the following tweets about the incident.

“Van Jones was forced to resign partly bc questions the truth of 9/11 but that Pentagon attack is really fishy…”

“How could a plane crash into the Pentagon? And not appear on video cameras?? And leave little wreckage??? #Don’tbuyitfiremenow.”

“This fascinating video raises questions about the Pentagon attack: 757 or missle? http://bit.ly/12AOlN”

The tweets didn’t get Touré canned from his job as “idea writer” at Time or commentator at MSNBC. He remains the go-to-guy for both outlets when it comes to his favorite topic: race.

Twitchy: Twitter prays for Kevin Ware after leg injury; Update: #PrayForWare trends:

Louisville sophomore Kevin Ware was taken from the court on a stretcher after a serious leg injury this afternoon during the NCAA Midwest region basketball final.

Oh dears! The Shark Tank: Sen. Rubio Under Federal Inquiry:

U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, who many consider to be the future of the Republican Party, has been implicated in a pay-for-play scheme with the Miami Metro Zoo, over an allegation that he stands to benefit financial from a bill that he is  supposed to introduce.

The bill which calls for an initial funding of $5 million for the zoo’s ‘Save the Chimp’ program, which the zoo launched this past February, is slated to be introduced by Rubio sometime in the month of April.

According to several individuals who are cooperating with Federal officials, by introducing the bill, Rubio will be receiving a ‘kick back’  from the zoo in the form of a pack of chimpanzees that Rubio himself  hand picked  while touring the Amazon jungle in Colombia late last year.

Apparently, the zoo will be supplying him with bananas, too. Uh -huh….

Keep reading at the link, (and remember today’s date.)

Oh noes…. Cahnman’s Musings: BREAKING NEWS: Rick Perry Caves on Obamacare:

Sigh:

Austin, TX — Citing a need to ‘embrace political moderation’ and fear of ‘being called mean by Democrats,’ Texas Governor Rick Perry today reversed his position on expanding Medicaid under the 2010 Federal Health Care Law.

“In 2012, Mitt Romney decisively won independents and the results speak for themselves.  Texans should embrace political moderation to achieve similar results,” Perry said.  “As Governor, I fear being called mean by Democrats so much that I would rather expand a bankrupt Medicaid program.”

Medicaid expansion will split Texas Republicans.  Representative David Simpson and Senator Donna Campbell issued a joint statement calling the move ‘heartbreaking and inexplicable.’  Texas House Speaker Joe Straus, by contrast, hailed Perry’s decision as “the best news I’ve heard all session.”

Again. Consider today’s date.

***

Da TechGuy: How Stupid do you think we are? Mark Kelly & Guns edition:

The left and the media spoke about how it was SO popular, the country so behind it  yet democrats with an overwhelming majority had to be dragged screaming and kicking to vote for it and the ones who did in anything resembling a swing district went down in flames

If this was so popular the congress would have passed it and congressmen would be boasting about it on their web sites.

Instead we see donors threatening to withhold funds.

Instead we see the media playing full court press to move the public

Instead we see Mike Bloomberg spending millions to try to beat pro-gun pols

and finally we see Liberals so desperate to get the gun control they have wanted to have for so many years suddenly going from “money in politics & citizen’s united bad” to Yay Bloomberg.

That really tells the story

***

Seton Motley, PJ Tatler: VIDEO: What a Government-Run Internet Would Look Like:

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Watt’s Up With That: Introducing the anti-hockey stick – ‘The Scythe”:

Maggie’s Notebook: Al Gore Sued by 30,000 Scientists for Global Warming Fraud Video:

John Coleman – nowhere for dissenting scientists to be heard – except…maybe…in a court of law. No chance for a debate with those supporting global warming. There are 30,000 scientists including 9,000 PhDs who have signed up to debunk global warming. CNN won’t put these people on the air, MSNBC, CBS, NBC and ABC – no way. This group of dissenters are told there is no debate. A lawsuit against Gore for fraud is the next step. UPDATE  12:35 pm CDT: A reader has pointed out this video is from 2008 and he is correct. I have reported it before but failed to look at the date, and as it was Greg Gutfeld on the video, thought it was current. I found a link somewhere this morning, so perhaps a lawsuit is actually happening, but I don’t know, so my apologies if this is old, dead news. It is a reminder that many are disputing Gore’s claims and cannot get the information out.

Friday Free-For-All: Hillary’s Benghazi Lies Unraveling?

Cartoon by   by Bosch Fawstin

Aaron Klein, WND: Did Hillary commit perjury?:

A Clinton lied? No way!

Did former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commit perjury when she claimed in a Senate hearing that she did not know whether the U.S. mission in Libya was procuring or transferring weapons to Turkey and other Arab countries?

The goal of the alleged weapons shipments was to arm the rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Any training or arming of the Syrian rebels would be considered highly controversial. A major issue is the inclusion of jihadists, including al-Qaida, among the ranks of the Free Syrian Army and other Syrian opposition groups

During the recent hearings over the Obama administration’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Clinton was directly asked about alleged U.S. weapons shipments out of Libya.

Clinton claimed she did not know whether the U.S. was aiding Turkey and other Arab countries in procuring weapons.

The exchange took place with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Clinton’s claims seem to now be unraveling.

Confirming WND’s exclusive reporting for over a year, the New York Times earlier this week reported that since early 2012, the CIA has been aiding Arab governments and Turkey in obtaining and shipping weapons to the Syrian rebels.

Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND have said U.S.-aided weapons shipments go back more than a year, escalating before the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. facilities in Benghazi.

In fact, the Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND since last year describe the U.S. mission in Benghazi and nearby CIA annex attacked last September as an intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to the rebels in the Middle East, particularly those fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The aid, the sources stated, included weapons shipments and was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The specifics of the New York Times reporting, meanwhile, open major holes in Clinton’s sworn claims to be in the dark about the alleged weapons shipments.

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Weasel Zippers: Obama Quietly Using Executive Orders To Bypass Congress On Gun Control…

Hello Paul, Cruz and Lee?

Via The Hill:

President Obama is quietly moving forward on gun control.

The president has used his executive powers to bolster the national background check system, jumpstart government research on the causes of gun violence and create a million-dollar ad campaign aimed at safe gun ownership.

The executive steps will give federal law enforcement officials access to more data about guns and their owners, help keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill, and lay the groundwork for future legislative efforts.

RWN: Rand Paul Challenges Obama: “Call Me If Any of Your Reforms Would Have Saved Those Kids at Sandy Hook”

Well finally, someone in Congress is calling out Barack Obama for his sleazy exploitation of the Sandy Hook tragedy and the ineffectiveness of the gun control proposals he’s backing.

“I think it’s a mistake for either side to politicize this. The president uses them as a backdrop and drama for getting some kind of political will. But, my question to the president is, ‘Call me if any of your reforms would have saved those kids at Sandy Hook.’ If anything he’s proposing would have changed the outcome I’ll listen to him.”

Way to give ‘em hell, Rand!

Students For Life: Pro-Life Students Equated to White Supremacists, Denied Official Club Status at Johns Hopkins:

On March 12th, a pro-life group at Johns Hopkins University, Voice for Life (VFL), was denied the right to become an official student club by the Student Government Association (SGA) during a student Senate meeting, after having been recommended for approval by the SGA Appointments and Evaluations Committee.  At that same SGA meeting, though, another new group was approved called Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).  Although SJP has a history of anti-Semitism and disruption on other campuses, the SGA decided that the students from JHU creating the group were separate from other campus affiliations, and they couldn’t be punished for potential violations.  Somehow, these standards were not applied to Voice for Life.

This general body meeting was followed by an SGA Town Hall meeting the next day whereupon the decision was further expounded.  The SGA explained that they decided not to grant official club status to Voice for Life because:

1) The pro-life group’s intentions to peacefully engage in sidewalk counseling off campus at a Baltimore abortion facility “clearly violates the JHU Harassment and Code of Conduct policies.”

2) One of the 100 pro-life organization links on the Voice for Life website sent visitors to the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform’s website, which was judged to be “offensive.” CBR has brought their Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), which features images of aborted preborn babies, as well as Holocaust victims, and victims of lynching, to Baltimore near the JHU campus in the past.

On Tuesday, March 26th, JHU Voice for Life was rejected again by the Student Senate, and the case will now go to the SGA Judiciary Committee for review, which will be on Tuesday, April 9th at 5:00pm.

***

Young America Foundation: YAF Chapter Exposes School Using Taxpayer Funds to Attack Conservatives, Christians:

A Young Americans for Freedom chapter is demanding its school to pull funding from an upcoming LGBT conference, claiming a bias against conservatives and Christians.

Des Moines Community College student Jake Dagel, who chairs the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter, is opposing the 8th Annual Governor’s Conference on LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Questioning) Youth and is calling for the school to pull its $1,000 sponsorship during a press conference announcing his chapter’s position. Dagel claims that conservatives and Christians will be bullied at the event.

“Any conference or event that attacks individuals for their beliefs is not diversity,” Dagel told the Iowa Republican. “We, the DMACC Young Americans for Freedom…believe that he LGBT community has every right to host this conference due to their First Amendment rights. However, as long as the conference hosts workshops that attack individuals, we will demand that DMACC revoke its sponsorship of tuition and taxpayer money from this conference.”

Dagel’s concern stems from two different workshops during the conference. One entitled, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Right Wing,” which according to the Iowa Safe Schools website (which founded the conference) attendees will “Learn messages and methods to fight back against propaganda from the extreme right wing, from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh to Bob Vander Plaats and Jan Mickelson. Discover resources to get the most up-to-date information available and work toward a more progressive Iowa.” The other is a seminar that will have attendees watch the documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So,” a documentary that shows how conservatives have “warped” their interpretation of the Bible to stigmatize homosexuals.

***

Seton Motley, VIDEO: Let’s Keep the Internet Regulation Free:

Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio – and I – suggest that’s the way to go.

Versus Leftists who wish to regulate and tax the living daylight out of it.

 The World Wide Web is here in the U.S. arguably the least regulated sector – and almost inarguably the most successful.

They are so in our faces with this – suck it up, peons:

WHD: Biden to Take Third Vacation of the Year:

Vice President Biden today is enjoying his third vacation of the year, a five day sojourn on South Carolina’s luxurious Kiawah Island, where he will no doubt partake of his favorite pastime, golf.

Biden and his wife Jill arrived on the island – known as a golf mecca – Thursday night and are not scheduled to depart before Monday.

***

Biden should feel especially refreshed when he returns given that he just had a vacation last month in Snowmass, Colorado, where he spent several days over President’s Day weekend. Close by in a neighboring section of Colorado’s ski country was First Lady Michelle Obama, who was taking her second vacation of the year in Aspen.

Over the same President’s Day weekend, President Obama was roving the fairways at an exclusive golf resort in Florida where he got pointers both from Tiger Woods and Tiger’s famous former coach. He and Mrs. Obama had already spent part of late December and early January in Hawaii.

Biden’s first trip this year was a sun worshiping exercise in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he stayed with his family from Friday, January 4 until Tuesday, January 8.

South Carolina is also a crucial presidential primary state that Biden – believed to be strongly considering a run in 2016 – no doubt has his eye on. Biden reportedly will be back in the state in May when he headlines the annual Jefferson Jackson Dinner, a Democratic fundraising event in the state’s capital, Columbia.

***

Payne cartoon via Townhall

RS McCain: Bostic and Sanford Battle in Charleston:

“A compromised candidate is not what we need,” said Bostic, the Marine Corps veteran and former Charleston County councilman who emerged from a 16-candidate GOP primary field to face Sanford in the runoff.

“Trust is a crucial issue,” Bostic said, adding that the possibility of Sanford winning the Republican nomination has made Democrats “excited about the possibility of taking this seat back.” Citing polls that show Sanford vulnerable against Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, Bostic warned that if 1st District voters choose the scandal-stained Sanford, “We will lose this seat and lose it needlessly.”

Still, Sanford has formidable advantages in campaign cash and name recognition. He got 37 percent to Bostic’s 13 percent in the March 19 primary, and the brief two-week interval before the runoff doesn’t afford much time for the underdog to close the gap. And despite the 2009 scandal that wrecked Sanford’s marriage and ended talk of him as a potential presidential contender, the ex-governor still has many supporters — as evidenced by the applause for him in the debate at Porter-Gaud School — and he also still has indubitable political skills. Sanford displayed his jocular down-home charm repeatedly during the hour-long debate, and stressed the theme of fiscal conservatism throughout. In his closing remarks, he recited from memory a long quote by Barry Goldwater.

***

Big Hollywood: Atheist Ricky Gervais Taunts Christians as Easter Approaches:

The Easter season is a time for Christians to consider the resurrection of Christ anew. For atheist comedian Ricky Gervais, Easter is just another excuse to mock those of faith.

The British comic fired up his Twitter feed this week with a series of condescending jabs at Christians.

***

Big Government: Feds Award Million-Dollar Grant to Study Sex Habits of Mud Snails:

The National Science Foundation has given a grant that could wind up totaling almost a million dollars to a University of Iowa study researching which is better for New Zealand mud snails: reproducing sexually or asexually. The grant, awarded in 2011 to last until 2015, has already cost $502,357, and could wind up costing taxpayers $876,752 before all is said and done.

The abstract for the study explains why this research is so important:

Sexual reproduction is more costly than asexual reproduction, yet nearly all organisms reproduce sexually at least some of the time. Why is sexual reproduction so common despite its costs.  This project will use a different organism, Potamopyrgus antipodarum, a New Zealand snail, which has both sexual and independently-derived asexual lineages that make it ideally suited to address fundamental evolutionary questions of how genes and genomes evolve in the absence of sexual reproduction.

The implication is that if the study can prove that there is no benefit to sexual reproduction, then an organism should simply reproduce asexually without a mate. The press release from the University of Iowa tipped the hand of the study by asserting that the slower rate of reproduction by sexual reproduction was “the cost of males,” that female organisms could conceivably reproduce without the need for male involvement.

Check back later for more news.

Crystal Wright, Freedom’s Journal: RNC Growth & Opportunity Project: Dead on Arrival:

Evidently, it takes four months and 100 pages for the RNC to figure out why the party lost the 2012 presidential election and how to fix it. Most of conservatives could tell you in three paragraphs. Those 100-page Growth & Opportunity Project tome was billed by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus as a “bold, raw, real” autopsy of the state of the GOP. Bold in what? It’s length? Raw in it’s stupidity? Real in its predictability?

How bold or honest can a report be when the five co-chairs of the Growth and Opportunity Project, who signed their names to the report, are establishment, country club Republicans and 2/3rds are white.

They are: Ari Fleisher, former spokesperson for President George W. Bush; Sally Bradshaw, campaign consultant to Mitt Romney and chief advisor to Governor Jeb Bush for over a decade; Henry Barbour, nephew of Governor and former RNC Chairman Haley Barbour; RNC Committeeman Glenn McCall and Committeewoman Zori Fonalledas.

“We encourage every Republican to read the report and review our findings,” wrote the co-chairs. By the time anyone gets through reading how the Republican Party can win elections again, it will be 2016 and nothing will have changed.  Maybe that’s the whole point of this exercise. The RNC really doesn’t want anybody reading it so Priebus won’t be held accountable to the nonsense that it is.

The report boasts the RNC “spoke with more than 2,600 people, both outside Washington and inside the Beltway,” held 800 plus conference calls, 50 plus focus groups with voters in Iowa and Ohio, listening sessions with 3,000 people, 500 phone calls, and 250 meetings. More than 36,000 women participated in the online survey. I’m exhausted just writing this. Imagine how people will feel if they even bother reading the 98 other pages?

Tammy Bruce: Great Piece By Liz Cheney: “Those Who Counsel That the GOP Should Move Left Are Wrongheaded or Democrats, Or Both”

It is time to defend our values with vigor and courage. We are conservatives. We believe in limited government, low taxes, a strong national defense, individual freedoms, self-reliance, the importance of the family, and the miracle and authority of America’s founding documents. We know that government is best that governs least and governs closest to the people. We know that the private sector is the engine of economic growth. We know that America is the exceptional nation, the best that has ever existed. We know that the men and women who wear the uniform of the U.S. military are the greatest fighting force and the greatest force for good that the world has ever known.

We know that preventing this president from enacting devastating policies is not obstructionism. It is patriotism.

Common Sense Post: Welfare Stinks:

Pic needs to be seen to be believed.

No reason to stand on your feet waiting to get your check. Just put your flip-flops next in line and go back and sit on your butt and play games on your free iPhone.

IowaHawk at The Conversation: Tale of the Tape: Toure vs Ben Carson:

	Toure’	Ben Carson
Full name	Toure’ Neblett	Benjamin S. Carson, MD
Age	42	61
Birthplace	Boston, MA	Detroit, MI
Profession	saying stuff on fringe cable network	Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery,Johns Hopkins Hospital; Professor of Neurosurgery, Oncology, and Pediatrics,Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Education	Milton Academy Prep;  Emory (dropped out); one year, Columbia U creative writing program	Detroit Southwest High; Yale (honors); University of Michigan Medical School

Keep reading.

Linked by Doug Ross, and iOWNTHEWORLD, thanks!

Friday Free-For-All: What Do Democrats Have Against Balanced Budgets?

Glenn Foden cartoon via Townhall.

The Conversation: Video: Senate Democrats Vote In Lock Step Against GOP floor motion to Balance the Budget; Raise Taxes on The Middle Class:

What do Democrats have against balancing the budget?

Senator Jeff Sessions  offered a motion tonight to send Patty Murray’s Senate budget back to committee with instructions to re-do it in any way necessary to produce a balanced budget.

There were no caveats to how this should be done – Senators were simply voting to accept or reject the very principle of balancing the federal budget within 10 years. Text of the motion follows:

Mr. Sessions moves to commit S. Con. Res. 8 back to the Committee on the Budget with instructions to report back no later than March 22, 2013 with such changes as may be necessary to achieve unified budget balance by fiscal year 2023.

Every Democrat Senator except for Sen. Joe Manchin voted against this measure.

Townhall: Poll: 85 Percent of Americans Support Requiring a Balanced Federal Budget:

n case you were wondering why Senate Republicans pushed so hard for the Sessions amendment last night, knowing full well that it didn’t stand a chance in Harry Reid’s house, here’s your answer:

Both President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner recently said the country doesn’t have an immediate debt problem. Nearly 7 voters in 10 say they are wrong. Conversely, 27 percent agree the debt can be handled several years down the road. Voters are similarly at odds with Washington on the budget deficit. Almost all think the federal government should be required to balance its budget (85 percent) and believe reducing the budget deficit is a worthy goal “in and of itself” (85 percent). When asked about investment spending versus spending cuts, more voters say cutting spending to reduce the deficit should be a higher priority in Washington right now than increasing spending to create jobs (54-38 percent).

Twitchy: ‘You’re welcome, Joe’: Matt Drudge reacts to Biden’s $585,000 Paris hotel tab:

$585,000.50 would pay for repairs on a lot of shotgun-damaged doors!

Matt Drudge doesn’t tweet often, but when he does, it’s a winner. In a tweet from his personal account, Drudge wrote, “VP Biden’s One-Night Paris Hotel Tab: $585,000.50! You’re welcome, Joe. That’s amount of check I’m writing to IRS in few weeks!”

We’re guessing he won’t get a “thank you, Matt.”

Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News: Thousands of Libyan missiles from Qaddafi era missing in action:

The U.S. has been unable to secure thousands of potentially dangerous shoulder-fired missiles known as “MANPADS” that were leftover from the Qaddafi regime in Libya, CBS News has learned.

MANPADS stands for “Man-portable air-defense systems.” According to a well-placed source, hundreds of the missiles have been tracked as having gone to Al Qaeda Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), an Algeria-based Sunni Muslim terrorist group fighting for control in Mali.

“I would imagine they’re trying to get their hands on as many weapons such as MANPADS as they can,” says CBS News national security consultant Juan Zarate. “It’s a danger both to the military conflict underway in Mali and a real threat to civilian aircraft if, in fact, terrorists have their hands on these MANPADS.”

John Sexton, The Conversation: Do Gosnell’s Victims Matter, Mr. President?

President Obama has made a habit of offering words of comfort when tragedy occurs, especially tragedy that involves children. He traveled to Tucson and spoke movingly of the 9 year old girl who was killed by Jared Loughner. He had great compassion for the young victims of Adam Lanza and promised to work to change the laws that, he claimed, allowed those killings to take place.

So where is Obama on the 7 infants killed in Philly (really it’s many, many times that number)? Why are there no teachable moments this time? Why no national dialogue about the grim reality of late term abortion? No discussion of the razor thin line between constitutional rights and murder from the First Lawyer. No vow to prevent this happening again by banning scissors or, more to the point, working to eradicate illegal late-term abortions (which like gun crimes are already illegal but still happen). Don’t Gosnell’s victims deserve a vote?

The President will not offer nationally televised words of healing at any of the funerals (complete with souvenir t-shirt). He will not stare into the rafters, pause dramatically and stage whisper something about Kermit Gosnell failing to live up to our best ideals. In short, he will not capitalize on the deaths of these innocent children. And no one in the media seems to have noticed his unusual disinterest in doing so.

LA Times: New ‘Fast and Furious’ report finds DHS warning signs ignored:

Even as they lost scores of illegal firearms in their Fast and Furious operation, federal ATF agents asked their Border Patrol counterparts not to pursue criminal leads or track gun smuggling in southern Arizona so they could follow the firearms themselves, and senior Homeland Security agents “complied and the leads were not investigated,” according to a new Department of Homeland Security inspector general’s report.

The report, obtained Thursday by The Times, also said that a Homeland Security special agent on the border was collaborating with the ATF in Fast and Furious, but his “senior leaders” in Arizona never read his updates about fundamental flaws with the failed gun tracking operation. Had they done so, Homeland Security officials could have tried to close down the operation before one of their Border Patrol agents, Brian Terry, was killed not far from Tucson.

Hot Air: Obama to Israelis: Put yourselves in the Palestinians’ shoes:

To be scrupulously fair, the tone of the clip isn’t true to the tone of the entire speech. The Standard has the transcript. Most of what preceded this was as florid a valentine to Israel and Zionism as a U.S. president has ever delivered. It had to be in order to prepare his audience for the “put yourself in their shoes” passage, which of course was the real point of the speech. He couldn’t convince Netanyahu to restart the peace process with the Palestinians so now he’s going to try to convince his Israeli constituents to pressure him into doing so. (Now might be an opportune moment for this pitch.) And of course the media is breathless about it. His other landmark speech in the Middle East, in Cairo in 2009, totally changed the Middle East for the better, didn’t it? I’m sure this one will be just as significant.

Elliott Abrams responds by reminding O that there’s a long, long list of Middle Eastern nations that need tutoring on empathy and Israel’s not near the top:

In his remarks today he pictured an Arab world, and a Palestinian political system, yearning for peace with Israel through negotiated compromises. This ignores the vast ocean of anti-Semitism in the Arab world, and the inculcation of hatred of Jews and Israel in generation after generation of Arabs—including Palestinians. And it ignores the rising tide of Islamism in the region, which threatens to engulf all those political figures who would really like a compromise peace. The Arab world Obama described is a place far more desirous of, and far closer to, peace with Israel than the one Israelis actually see around them.

The Right Scoop:  Mark Levin: Obama quotes Saul Alinsky in the Middle East – what the hell is he doing there?

Mark Levin points out, as he says Aaron Klein also noted today, that in Obama’s speech in Jerusalem today he quoted Saul Alinsky to his Israeli college audience, encouraging them to create the change they want to see and basically do and end-run around their leadership to make peace.

But Mark Levin wonders, rhetorically of course, why Obama doesn’t quote James Madison in the Middle East, or Edmund Burke, or Moses or even Jesus? No, he choose to quotes Saul Alinsky. Mark Levin asks “what the hell is he doing there?”

John Sexton, The Conversation: Conor Friedersdorf’s Needless, Xenophobic Panic

Conor Friedersdorf devotes a column today to bashing Michelle Malkin for something she wrote back in 2002. Yes, that’s right, an 11 year old column was in desperate need of a rebuttal. Here’s the bit Friedersdorf is upset about:

How many of Saddam Hussein’s sleeper terrorists are waiting dormant in the United States to retaliate against us when the War on Iraq begins? The Bush administration has begun to monitor Iraqis inside our country to identify potential domestic terrorist threats posed by sympathizers of the Baghdad regime, according to The New York Times. But while the new intelligence program is tracking thousands of Iraqi citizens and Iraqi-Americans with dual citizenship who are attending our universities or working at private corporations, there is no indication of what federal authorities are doing to locate the untold numbers of illegal aliens from Iraq who have streamed across our open borders. More than 115,000 people from Iraq and other Middle Eastern countries are here illegally. Some 6,000 Middle Eastern men who have defied deportation orders remain on the loose. And an international crime ring, led by Iraqi native George Tajirian, demonstrates the scope of the alarming problem of potential terrorists pressing at our southern gate.

And here’s Friedersdorf’s decade-late rebuttal:

Columns like this are seldom revisited a decade later, given that they are totally devoid of value, but it’s clarifying to look back, because there’s no need to argue that her fearmongering was wrongheaded — it can be stated as a fact that no dormant sleeper cells retaliated after the war began; that dual citizens posed virtually no problem, if any; that Iraqi illegal immigrants did not menace the American people; and that their having slipped across the border made virtually no difference.

All of this “fearmongering” was much ado about nothing. Looking back, these “needless, xenophobic” ideas about terrorists crossing the border and posing a threat seem silly. Who would ever believe such nonsense? Well, Conor Friedersdorf for one.

Keep reading. What. an. ass.

Ace weighs in on his site: Sorry I’ve Been Having a Fight With Some Idiots:

t this point John Sexton, who knows how to work the google machine, put up a post noting that Conor Friedersdorf had expressed either the exact same points, or, according to Conor, similar but not exactly the same points as Malkin did — terrorists crossing the border, dual loyalties of recent Muslim immigrants — late as 2006.

So… doesn’t this mean Conor Friedersdorf is quite a silly goose? Apparently not, but let’s put that aside for the moment.

At this point I jumped in on Twitter to begin asking Conor when — given that he was now our self-appointed Minister of Online Hygiene — he would be similarly doing a What a Silly Goose piece about his former boss/mentor Andrew Sullivan, and write up a fulsome attack on Sullivan’s many conspiracy theories.

There is a part II to this stupid thing but Twitchy hasn’t collected it up yet so that’ll have to wait.

By the way, Conor did write about Sullivan’s Trig Trutherism.

By defending Sullivan. By claiming that Sarah Palin was courting such suspicions because they helped her politically.

He disagrees with Sullivan that Palin faked a pregnancy (gee thanks for that bold stance) but then claims that maybe Palin’s been advised to keep the proof of her birthing of Trig secret, in order to bait her critics into talking about her.

One explanation for the disparity in evidence: the persistence of questions about Trig helps Sarah Palin. All along, she has savvily used the notion that the media is treating her unfairly to enhance her popularity. An amoral political strategist would advise her to keep hard evidence of Trig’s maternity hidden at all costs in the hope that critics would continue questioning it — if Professor Bernstein and I, both of us huge Sarah Palin critics, doubt the merits of this line of inquiry, imagine how the average American reacts to it, and how the Sarah Palin base reacts. For better or worse, we live in a country where the politics of umbrage are very effective, and Ms. Palin is expert at them. Indeed I fear that speculation about Trig’s maternity increases the chance that she’ll win the 2012 GOP nomination. If a savvy political analyst can be found who disagrees with that assessment, I’d be surprised.

I’m savvy and I disagree. So I guess Conor is surprised.

Palin really rode Trig Trutherism to the nomination, huh? Like a stallion.

Michelle Malkin: Dumb and Dangerous: America’s Fast Pass for Saudi Arabia:

It’s business as usual in the post-9/11 world. Your federal government is back to pandering to wealthy travelers from Saudi Arabia. In the eyes of our massive homeland security apparatus, the comfort of Saudis is a higher priority than the safety of American citizens.

And thanks to reckless, feckless bureaucrats who fear being labeled “racists,” “xenophobes” and “Islamophobes,” political correctness remains the handmaiden of terror.

According to a new report released this week by the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), President Obama’s Department of Homeland Security plans to bestow “trusted traveler” status to travelers from Saudi Arabia. Yes, the home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers will soon enjoy the exclusive privilege of new entry shortcuts into the U.S.

Fox News points out: “Only an exclusive handful of countries enjoy inclusion in the Global Entry program: Canada, Mexico, South Korea and the Netherlands. According to the IPT, some officials are questioning why Saudi Arabia gets to reap the benefits of the program, when key U.S. allies like Germany and France are not enrolled.”

Saudi suck-up Janet Napolitano, head of the Department of Homeland Security, hailed “the bond between the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” and pledged to work with the government to facilitate “legitimate trade and travel.”

Gay Patriot: Update on SC Senate Race:

When the grassroots effort began which led to me strongly considering a challenge to Lindsey Graham for US Senate in 2014 — I promised that I would conduct my efforts in a transparent manner through social media.

I’ve been relatively quiet about my decision making process this week.

That was by design. After the enormous reception I received at CPAC, my team of advisors and I thought it best that we keep a lower profile this week.

The Blaze: College Student Says He’s Been Suspended After He Refused Prof’s Demand to Stomp on Jesus Sign:

Ryan Rotela, a junior at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), is waging a bizarre allegation against his professor, Dr. Deandre Poole.

The student is claiming that he’s been suspended from his intercultural communications class for refusing to write “JESUS” on a sheet of paper, throw it on the floor and then stomp on it — a request that the instructor apparently made.

If you’re already scratching your head, you’re not alone. The curious claim caught the attention of WPEC-TV, a South Florida CBS affiliate.

Rotela, a devout Mormon, says he refused to participate in the purported activity and told Poole that he found the request offensive.

Until the left learns to keep their noxious biases out of the classroom, I’d like to see more stories like this next one:

The Right Scoop: High school students asked to compare Lenin/Stalin transformation of Russia to Obama’s transformation of America:

FOX 19 – Several students and parents at Kell High School in Marietta are upset about an assignment handed out by a social studies teacher on Monday.

The assignment asked students to find evidence for a comparison of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin’s methods of changing Russia from a capitalist country to a command country to President Barack Obama’s methods of changing the United States from a capitalist country to a socialist country.

Jay Dillon, spokesman for the Cobb County School District, told CBS Atlanta News that the teacher who handed out the homework assignment was a fill-in teacher.

After the assignment was brought to the attention of Kell’s principal, the principal discussed the assignment with the teacher, and the assignment was withdrawn.

How do you like it lefties?

Yid With Lid: CPAC Follow-up–> How Many Black People Are Here?: Jolie’s Story:

As I walked out of the media center last Thursday at CPAC, I found a tall African-American fellow (Named Greg Thrasher) berating a young woman. At first I believed she was as CPAC Staffer, but having met her two days later I now know she is a twenty year old law student named Jolie Davis (and Judging by her intelligence I will probably be voting for her one day).

 HOW MANY BLACK PEOPLE ARE HERE, he was shouting. The poor young lady was backed into an alcove as he continued.  You say you are trying to do outreach to minority community–HOW MANY BLACK PEOPLE ARE HERE!

Mr. Thrasher and I have a difference of opinion, I believe he was bulling Ms Davis, he disagrees. Nevertheless, reacting more with anti-bully instincts than reporting ones I screamed back at Thrasher, who writes at a liberal blog called Plane Ideas.

While returning to the Media area a while later  I passed the berated young woman once again, which rekindled the anger I had over Mr. Thrasher’s bullying. I came up to a toned-down Mr. Thrasher was still pontificating-I confronted him again.  Javier Manjerres editor of The Shark Tank questioned Thrasher caught only the end of the second confrontation which has since become a “hit” on the Daily Kos as I became (in their minds)  the biggest hater since Mel Gibson.

When I met Ms. Davis I asked her to write down her thoughts about the incident and how it began.  She posted her experience on her blog and has given me permission to cross post her words.

Keep reading. This Thrasher guy is the living embodiment of everything that is wrong with the racialist left.

AIM: Shift in News Media? Koch Brothers to buy Liberal Newspapers?

WASHINGTON — If the rumors are correct, it seems that the conservative Koch brothers may be looking to buy out liberal newspapers. If so, this could be an interesting development on the news media and their historic liberal biases.

The Tribune company, which owns the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, is looking to sell their newspaper assets to shed costs. The newspaper industry, as Don Irvine has reported, is struggling across the U.S. Daily newspapers, but particularly the local city papers, have cut their services and personnel to cut costs.

Revealing Politics: CO Senator wants major legislation at the flip of a coin:

On Wednesday Colorado Senator Evie Hudak (D-Westminster) told Senator Owen Hill (R-Colorado Springs) that he could “flip a coin” on a major amendment to a $1 billion bill.

Patterico: EXCLUSIVE: Prop8 judge sought Ted Olson’s opinion on whether to attend SCOTUS gay marriage arguments:

Vaughn R. Walker, the judge who struck down Proposition 8, California’s gay marriage ban, sought Ted Olson’s opinion regarding whether Walker should attend next week’s Supreme Court arguments on the gay marriage cases. Olson was one of the lawyers who successfully persuaded Judge Walker to strike down Proposition 8 after a trial held in 2010.

In December 2012 emails obtained exclusively by Patterico.com, Judge Walker, who retired in February 2011, asked Olson’s law partner to “ask Ted if he thinks my attending the argument would be an unwanted distraction.”

When Olson’s law partner responded that Olson thought Walker’s attendance would be a “potential distraction,” Walker agreed not to go, saying he understood Olson’s reaction and was not surprised by it. Walker described himself as “only moderately disappointed not to see the argument,” and added: “Ted’s argument will be spectacular, I’m sure.”

Gateway Pundit: Two Teens Arrested for Shooting Baby in Stroller in Cold Blood (Video):

The victim said one of the African-American boys did not even look 10 years-old.
USA Today reported:

Georgia police Friday arrested two teenagers suspected of shooting a baby to death in his stroller and wounding his mother during a holdup.

Seventeen-year-old De’Marquis Elkins was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, along with a 14-year-old who was not identified because he is a juvenile, said Brunswick Police Chief Tobe Green. They were arrested early Friday morning.

WTLV reports the mother, Sherry West, and her 13-month-old son, Antonio Santiago, were on a morning walk Thursday when they were approached by two suspects and shot after demanding money.

Iowahawk, the Conversation: The Thought Leaders of Tomorrow:

Curse Iowahawk for bringing this mortifying video to our attention. Curse him!

 

Monday Catch-Up: Trusting Obama

After an action-packed four days in Washington DC for CPAC, I’m battling “the CPAC Crud” which plagues conservatives every year. Dang it. But there’s lot’s going on so the blog must go on:

Michelle Malkin filed this important story: Time To Opt Out of Creepy Fed Ed Data-Mining Racket:

Last week, I reported on the federal government’s massive new student-tracking database, which was created as part of the nationalized Common Core standards scheme. The bad news: GOP “leadership” continues to ignore or, worse, enable this Nanny State racket (hello, Jeb Bush).

The good news: An independent grassroots revolt outside the Beltway bubble is swelling. Families are taking their children’s academic and privacy matters out of the snoopercrats’ grip and into their own hands. You can now download a Common Core opt-out/disclosure form to submit to your school district, courtesy of the Truth In American Education group: CLICK HERE.

Parents caught off guard by the stealthy tracking racket are now mobilizing across the country. Echoing families across the city, Big Apple public advocate Bill de Blasio blasted the tracking database in a letter to government officials: “I don’t want my kids’ privacy bought and sold like this.” On Wednesday, prompted by parental objections, Oklahoma state representatives unanimously passed House Bill 1989 — the Student Data Accessibility, Transparency and Accountability Act — to prohibit the release of confidential student data without the written consent of a student’s parent or guardian.

Hot Air: Video: Hillary stops pretending that she’s against gay marriage; Update: 58% support gay marriage in new poll:

Alternate headline: “Wait, Hillary wasn’t already on record in favor of gay marriage?” Evidently not. Five years ago, top-tier Democratic candidates concluded that they couldn’t safely support SSM publicly; five years and a double-digit swing in public opinion later, they’ve concluded that they can’t safely oppose it. The GOP will wrestle with this issue for awhile but, as of now, I think supporting gay marriage has reached the same stature among Democrats as supporting abortion rights. Namely, while occasional disagreement from backbenchers will be grudgingly tolerated in the name of winning purple states, no party nominee will ever, ever again end up on the other side of this issue. If you want to win a national Democratic primary, you’re pro-gay marriage, period. Hillary’s just checking the box.

Did you hear that the History Channel’s “Satan” character is the spitting image of Obama, “After 15 More Years of Smoking?”

The producers of the show insist that it’s just a coincidence, and I believe them.

Liz Sheld, The Conversation: HISTORY Channel Releases Statement on Obama ‘Lookalike’ Satan Character:

The Bible’s executive producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey also released a statement:

“This is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor.  He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics– including Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our President.”

Executive Producer, Roma Downey added, “Both Mark and I have nothing but respect and love our President, who is a fellow Christian.  False statements such as these are just designed as a foolish distraction to try and discredit the beauty of the story of The Bible.”

Smitty of The Other McCain: In Missouri, ObamaCare Sucks Even Harder Than Military Service:

So, you can be a conscientious objector, and gaff off military service, but:

A federal judge has struck down a Missouri law exempting moral objectors from mandatory birth control coverage because it conflicts with an insurance requirement under President Barrack Obama’s health care law.

Townhall: Obama Appoints Radical Who Lied Under Oath About New Black Panther Party Case to Head Labor Department:

President Obama is expected to nominate Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez Monday for Labor Secretary.

Seeking to fill yet another second-term Cabinet vacancy, President Barack Obama is set to nominate Thomas Perez, an assistant attorney general, to be the next secretary of labor, the White House says.

If confirmed by the Senate, Perez, who has been head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for 3½ years, would take over the Labor Department as Obama undertakes several worker-oriented initiatives, including an overhaul of immigration laws and an increase in the minimum wage.

Before taking the job as assistant attorney general, Perez was secretary of Maryland’s Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, which enforces state consumer rights, workplace safety and wage and hour laws.

Perez’s nomination has been expected for weeks, and comes with vigorous support from labor unions and Latino groups.

When the New Black Panther Party voter intimidation case was dismissed by the Department of Justice, Perez said under oath that senior officials were not involved in the decision to do so and not prosecute Party members for wielding a night stick outside of a Philadelphia polling place in 2008. Last week, a report from the DOJ Inspector General contradicted this claim, proving Perez’s testimony was false. In addition, according to a ruling by a judge in a lawsuit about the case last week, Perez’s statement that DOJ senior officials weren’t involved in dismissing the case contradicts the evidence.

Ramirez cartoon via Townhall

Oh, look – The Stupid Party is at it again.

Big Government: Boehner: I ‘Absolutely’ Trust Obama:

On ABC’s This Week, hosted by Martha Raddatz, Speaker of the House John Boehner appeared to downplay the problem of national debt while loudly proclaiming his wonderful relationship with President Obama. “The president and I, as I have made very clear, have a very good relationship. We’re open with each other. We’re honest with each other,” said Boehner.

“Do you trust President Obama?” Raddatz asked.

“Absolutely,” Boehner replied.

“Absolutely?” Raddatz emphasized.

“Absolutely,” Boehner repeated.

I don’t even know what to say. The guy lies to our faces constantly, and appoints incompetents and known liars to positions of power. The Regime’s serial dishonesty, corruption, and lack of transparency is a scandal in and of itself. What is Boehner even thinking? Why are Republicans so afraid to say what they really think? We are going to LOSE in 2014 if we adopt the same weak, “Obama’s a nice guy” strategy, Mitt tried in 2012. Good grief.

Update: Check it – Mark Levin saying the same thing via The Right Scoop: Mark Levin slams Boehner, says if Republicans don’t get SERIOUS the Republican Party is gonna go down!

The Right Scoop: WATCH Pat Caddell’s famous CPAC Speech:

Pat Caddell’s famous CPAC speech, where he blasts the GOP for allowing consultants to run their campaigns has finally turned up thanks to Politi-Chicks who apparently recorded it.

RS McCain, The American Spectator: The Liberal Media Lie About CPAC:

Take, for example, the young comedian Steven Crowder. While serving as emcee on the Potomac Ballroom stage Saturday at CPAC, Crowder made a joke about actress (and, it is rumored, future Kentucky Senate candidate) Ashley Judd: “This just in, Ashley Judd just tweeted that purchasing Apple products is akin to rape — from her iPhone.” Which is pretty doggone funny if you know that, as Alex Pappas of the Daily Caller reported, Judd has claimed that the purchasers of the iPhone and other Apple products are “financing mass rape” by using minerals mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Judd has a penchant for throwing around “rape” in her far-left political rants. She has compared coal-mining in Kentucky to rape and, also, to genocide in Rwanda. Judd’s long history of such outrageous comments has Republicans laughing mirthfully at the prospect of the actress challenging Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in Kentucky next year. But according to liberal journalists — whose cheerleading for Democrats is now so unapologetically blatant that it is taken for granted — the real outrage is that any Republican would criticize Judd’s lunatic utterances.

This is apparently why the Huffington Post decided to lie about Crowder’s joke. “Steven Crowder, a Fox News contributor who hosted part of Saturday’s activities at the 2013 Conservative Political Action Conference, made a questionable remark about actress and possible Kentucky Senate candidate Ashley Judd,” a post at the site described it, omitting both the factual context and the first part of the joke, quoting only Crowder’s follow-on comment: “What is this obsession with Ashley Judd and rape? It’s pretty unnerving.”

John Nolte, Big Journalism: ’60 Minutes’ Uses Left’s ‘War on Women’ Playbook Against Vatican:

There are a number of glaring and  incredibly reckless lies of omission in the 14-minute “60 Minutes” report embedded above.

The first is that like the rest of the media, “60 Minutes” refuses to broadcast the Church’s basic reasoning behind Church doctrine (what Simon calls “conservative” policies) surrounding same-sex marriage, contraception, chastity, sexuality, and allowing only men to become priests.

How hard could it be to bring on an articulate Catholic to explain these policies? It is a sad fact, though, that the media are almost always reluctant to allow someone smart and articulate to argue against The Narrative.

Secondly, CBS only allows nuns unhappy with the Church any airtime. Nuns perfectly satisfied with the Church are memory-holed as though none exist. Heaven forbid a nun who disagrees with the LCWR is offered a chance to explain why. Can’t have that.

Gateway Pundit: What Sequester?… Obama Administration Continues Food Stamp Outreach to Illegal Immigrants:

Despite the sequester cuts, the Obama administration continues to pursue a “partnership” with the Mexican government to “raise awareness” about food stamps.
FOX News reported:

Salmonella outbreaks. E. coli outbreaks. Millions of dollars in economic losses.

These are among the scenarios the Obama administration warned about last month as it claimed the sequester would force the U.S. Department of Agriculture to furlough meat inspectors.

But while the administration prepares to take that step, it continues to pursue a “partnership” with the Mexican government to “raise awareness” about food stamps. When a top Senate Republican proposed cutting off funds for that program last week — in the form of an amendment to a budget resolution — Democrats on the Budget Committee shot it down.

The Conversation: Voters Prefer GOP Budget Proposal Over Dem Plan By 2-To-1 Margin, But Trust Dems More On Budgetary Issues…

The Hill blames the discrepancy on the GOP’s “image problem”. I blame the GOP’s “image problem” on an MSM that demonizes them every time they advocate for fiscal constraint.

Bottom line: the American people appear to be very confused…

Respondents in The Hill Poll were asked to choose which of two approaches they would prefer on the budget, but the question’s phrasing included no cues as to which party advocated for which option.

Presented in that way, 55 percent of likely voters opted for a plan that would slash $5 trillion in government spending, provide for no additional tax revenue and balance the budget within 10 years — in essence, the path recommended by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) last week.

This was almost twice as many voters as opted for a proposal that would include $1 trillion in added tax revenue as well as $100 billion in infrastructure spending, and which would reduce the deficit without eradicating it.

Harriet Baldwin, The Examiner: Glenn Beck: The New Media Must “Link Arms”:

Beck has put out a call to all journalists and bloggers to “Link Arms”- and to share information with one another -in order to get news and information out to wider and broader audiences- outside the mainstream media.

Much the same as Andrew Breitbart did, the movement will strive to have information sharing between writers such as myself and other Examiner writers, independent journalists and bloggers.

On this morning’s show, Beck pointed out that the currency and banking story in Cyprus broke on Twitter! And that the traditional news channels were mostly silent on this economic story.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that Facebook has been censoring Conservative journalists and in particular “Citizen Journalists” who post stories to that social media site. This topic has been covered extensively by our own Examiner writer, Joe Newby. Read his latest story on Facebook censorship HERE.

Censorship is a very dangerous thing in a “free” society. The control of the flow of information will threaten our civil society.

We will not stand for control of or taxation of The Internet.

The American People will not stand for a bureau of government controlled media. Or, as Rush Limbaugh calls it “State Controlled Media.”

If YOU are a Conservative Citizen Journalist, blogger or a concerned citizen who watches the news cycle- please heed the warning signs. Please take action. And YES- LINK ARMS- and share your news and information.

Tony Katz: Another Liberal Radio Station Folds Because Of Money:

According to Talkers.com, Reno, NV liberal talk station KJFK announced that it will go dark on March 18th. (A screen shot of the announcement is posted below.) The line-up is a who’s who of left leaning hosts, including Thom Hartmann, Leslie Marshall and now MSNBC weekend mascot Ed Schultz. The problem? The money: (emphasis mine)

Given the volume of rhetoric dispensed on-air from “the other side”, we felt it vital to remain on-the-air through the 2012 General Election, despite the fact that KJFK has operated at a loss of thousands of dollars a month. Since we launched the station with an appearance by Al Franken in 2005, when nearly 500 people joined us at the Atlantis for now Senator Franken’s appearance just days after we hit the air, we’ve known a passionate audience has been with us all along. Unfortunately, this station was never able to generate the revenue necessary to sustain, and we simply cannot absorb the financial loss any longer.

Weasel Zippers: Reporter To White House: Is Obama Planning To Cut Back On Lavish Vacations – White House: No.

Local reporter asks White House with unemployment rates still high and families having to cut back on budgets, how does President Obama justify his taxpayer-funded vacations and does he plan on cutting back his vacations? (March 18, 2013).

Monday Catch-Up: Exciting News for Conservatives

Some exciting news for conservative SC voters broke, today: conservative blogger, GayPatriot, aka Bruce Carroll is seriously mulling a run for Senator Graham’s Senate seat.

Ben Howe of Red State reported: South Carolina to have first openly gay Republican Senator?

…today comes news that conservative blogger and activist, Bruce Carroll, is exploring a run against Senator Graham and he’s not being cagey about it. Carroll told me, “I was inspired by Sen Rand Paul’s ardent defense of the Constitution last week. It made me conclude that Senator Graham is out of step with his state’s voters on a variety of issues.” He went on to say that, “Sen. Graham has lost touch with his state. That’s why I’m looking into how I can be a part of the effort to bring him home from Washington, DC.”

Carroll is also an openly gay conservative that sat on the board of directors for the group GOProud, currently best known for its long standing spat with CPAC over the ACU’s decision to deny GOProud sponsorship of the conference. Carroll says he is resigning his post with the organization in favor of pursuing this effort:

In the interest of transparency and honesty, I informed my fellow GOProud board members that I could not dedicate time to the organization while I seriously considered the effort it might take to challenge Senator Graham in the 2014 Primary.

Lisa De Pasquale, Board Chairman of GOProud, told me of Carroll’s potential run, “I am thrilled by our beloved GayPatriot’s annoucement about his future plans. GOProud’s loss could be South Carolina’s gain!”

At the Conversation, Lisa gushed, “let me be the first to say this is FABULOUS news.”

At The Campaign Spot, Jim Geraghty noted that Carroll faces an uphill battle should he decide to run:

However, the difficulty of beating Graham in a primary should not be underestimated, as Shawn Drury notes:

Last month, Winthrop University published a poll that showed Graham with an approval/disapproval rating of 71.6/17.4 among Republicans. Among all voters it was 58.4/41.6. Those poll numbers came out after the Club For Growth named Graham its top target in 2014.

. . . no South Carolina Senator who served a full term has lost a re-election campaign since Coleman Bease in 1930.

Being the incumbent is not a small advantage, chiefly when it comes to raising money, something that Graham is very good at. Before he’s even officially declared that he’ll seek re-election Graham has at least $4.4 million in his campaign coffers.

In other positive political news today, Javier Manjarres Launches HISPOLITICA: Join the Conversation:

The Shark Tank is proud to invite you to Hispolitica. Javier envisioned Hispolitica as a place where a legitimate conversation about Hispanics in America can happen…without the narrative filters imposed by mainstream or Hispanic media.

The Club For Growth: The Salmon Rule:

Rep. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) is laying down the gauntlet.  In an op-ed published this morning in the Washington Times, Salmon is pledging to vote against House leadership’s rules.

From this point forward, I will vote against the rule for bills that increase spending without offsetting spending cuts and encourage my other conservative colleagues to do the same. Similarly, if House leadership brings any more bills to the floor without first securing the support from the majority of the GOP conference, I will take the same action. If enough of my conservative colleagues in the House join me, we can unilaterally put an end to the growth of government that is moving us closer to Greece-like fiscal calamities.

This should be called “The Salmon Rule” from now on.  And let’s hope that his conservative colleagues join him in this pledge.  In fact, the timing of this op-ed couldn’t have been better.  Because in The Hill newspaper over the weekend, leadership is still willing to break the “Hastert Rule” – the idea that the House should only pass bills that have the support of a majority of House Republicans.

Excerpt:

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Sunday would not rule out passage of bills without the support of a majority of the chamber’s Republicans, saying only that Speaker Boehner (R-Ohio) was committed to finding GOP support for major legislation.

House GOP leadership has recently violated the “Hastert rule,” named after former Republican Speaker Dennis Hastert (Ill.), which requires bills coming to the floor to have support from the majority of GOP members.

If you support Salmon, tweet this with the hashtag, #TheSalmonRule.

WatchdogWire – Oregon: Ginny Burdick claims victimhood, intimidation while employing professional tracker:

Senator Ginny Burdick (D-Portland) has been in the news this week for claiming that a citizen journalist’s video shot near her home is creepy and intended to intimidate her. The irony in this claim is that her legislative chief of staff is the former paid director of opposition research for the Democratic Party of Oregon.

Jeff Fisher has been very open about his tracking and opposition research activities as a paid Democrat operative. His LinkedIn page publicly lists the following qualifications for future employers:

Joel Pollak at The Conversation has been doing some cipherin’: Michelle’s B-Day Bash = 3 years of White House Tours:

Following the example of the inestimable Charles Krauthammer, who calculated that President Barack Obama’s $1 million golf trip with Tiger Woods would pay for a full year of White House tours (at $18,000 per week), I decided to calculate the cost of First Lady Michelle Obama’s upcoming Beyoncé/Adele bash in White House Tour units (WHOTs).

Tom Blumer, PJ Media: Our Petty, Country-Be-Damned President:

Sometimes, the smallest things can be the most revealing.

On Tuesday, the nation — or at least the part that’s still paying attention — learned that President Barack Obama’s administration, in what can only be seen as an incredibly petty and virulently vindictive response to spending “cuts” imposed by sequestration (properly described in most cases as “reductions in projected spending increases”), decided to cancel all tours of the White House beginning March 9.

As a result, to name just one of what are surely many examples, sixth graders at an Iowa elementary school which had received approval to take a March 16 tour learned, barring what would seem to be a quixotic effort to change White House minds via Facebook, that it’s not going to happen. They’re reportedly going to make their trip to Washington anyway, because, according to the school’s principal, it’s an important opportunity for them to “find out more about how the government works.” They’ve clearly already learned quite a bit.

So have we.

The tours are run by volunteers. According to an estimate worked up by ABC News on Wednesday, the White House will save $18,000 per week by not utilizing 30 Secret Service agents during the tours. Even that savings figure is suspect, as original reports about the tours’ cancellation claimed that “Uniformed Division Officers assigned to the public tours will be reassigned to other security posts,” which “will reduce overtime costs as well as potential furloughs that could have been required.”

Even if the estimated $936,000 in annual savings ($18,000 times 52 weeks) really occurs, the cancelled tours of what Michelle Obama still calls the People’s House, but which should now be renamed Barack’s Barracks, could have been completely avoided if her husband, knowing that sequestration loomed, hadn’t spent over $1 million on a golf weekend with Tiger Woods in mid-February. A 10 percent less expensive outing would have enabled the tours to continue for another five or six weeks, which would have minimized the last-minute disappointment thousands of children and adults are now experiencing. But why would we expect Mrs. Obama to think of such things, when the tab for just three of her vacations also tops $1 million?

The only conceivable conclusion to draw from all of this is that Barack Obama and his administration don’t give a damn about any suffering their deliberately destructive and disruptive decisions will cause if they believe that they can exploit the related pain for political gain.

Kurt Schlichter, Townhall: Is Obama Down For the Count?

We always knew that Obama has a glass jaw, that he can’t take a punch. But it’s a little surprising that he’s started staggering around the ring so soon after November, his approval numbers bleeding away, desperately counting the seconds until the bell rings at election time in 2014 to save him from further pummeling.

It’s also hilarious.

On paper he’s a bruiser. This is a guy who won a knockout reelection bout even though the economy was in the toilet. He hit the GOP with an uppercut over the Fiscal Cliff. He’s got an awestruck media in his corner that is so enamored of him that after his speeches they need cigarettes and cuddling.

And his most powerful asset is the fact that his opponent is the GOP, an organization whose recent track record of success compares unfavorably with that of the French Army of 1941.

And yet now he’s losing. Big time.

We always knew that Obama has a glass jaw, that he can’t take a punch. But it’s a little surprising that he’s started staggering around the ring so soon after November.

Watt’s Up With That: A bridge in the climate debate – How to green the world’s deserts and reverse climate change:

To encapsulate the idea presented, I’ll borrow from a widely used TV commercial and say:

Beef, it’s what’s for climate

You can call me crazy for saying that after you watch this presentation. A BIG hattip to Mark Steward Young for bringing this to my attention.

 “Desertification is a fancy word for land that is turning to desert,” begins Allan Savory in this quietly powerful talk. And terrifyingly, it’s happening to about two-thirds of the world’s grasslands, accelerating climate change and causing traditional grazing societies to descend into social chaos. Savory has devoted his life to stopping it. He now believes — and his work so far shows — that a surprising factor can protect grasslands and even reclaim degraded land that was once desert.

Protein Wisdom: “Lawmakers eye new taxes on guns, ammo in latest wave of legislation”:

t some point, we need to just start recalling these people for violating their Constitutional oaths. And if that doesn’t work, we need en masse simply to refuse to comply with these illegitimate laws. It really is that simple. Fox News:

If you can’t ban ‘em, tax ‘em.Lawmakers looking to more tightly regulate firearms in the wake of the Newtown school shooting and other massacres are moving at the state and federal levels to introduce new taxes on firearms and ammunition.

The proposals range from the modest — a proposed 5 percent tax in New Jersey — to the steep — a proposed 50 percent ammo tax in Maryland. The bills follow efforts to ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and expand background checks, measures that have had mixed success at the state level.

The taxes — much like so-called “sin taxes,” like those on cigarettes — serve a dual purpose. They can deter buyers, while using the extra revenue for favored programs. In this case, the sponsors want to direct the money toward mental health services, police training and victims’ treatment.

But firearms groups say a “sin tax” on firearms wrongly punishes law-abiding gun owners.

“If anything, gun owners ought to be getting a tax rebate for helping reduce crime,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

He said the purpose of the taxes is to “frustrate and limit the exercise of the Second Amendment.” While noting some of the revenue from these taxes and fees would go to victims’ services, Keane said those paying the tax are mostly not those responsible for gun crime.

The Conversation: Organizing For Access: Obama To Speak at OFA’s Founding Summit, This Wednesday:

The Hill reported Obama will be speaking to the group at their “founder’s Summit” this Wednesday, and the price tag to attend the event is $50,000.

The president will address the advocacy group’s “founder’s summit,” a two-day event for donors and supporters at a Washington-area hotel.

According to The New York Times, donors will pay $50,000 to attend the event, and other speakers will include OFA Chairman and former Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, as well as Jon Carson, the group’s executive director and former director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.

At the event, the president and OFA officials are hoping to rally supporters for efforts on the president’s gun control, immigration and budget initiatives.

Michelle Malkin: Attention, parents: Common Core opt-out form now available:

Courtesy of Truth in American Education, you can now exercise your parental rights to protect your children from the nationalized Common Core racket. Download, print, Facebook, tweet, and share the opt-out form. The revolt is growing. Make your voice and your choice heard.

Twitchy: Boom! #AskFLOTUS hashtag hijack: Michelle Obama asks for questions; Happy warriors deliver:

Michelle Obama announced via her Twitter feed that she’d be taking questions this morning at 11:05 a.m. EST on her always-absurd “Let’s move” campaign.

Ask, and ye shall receive. Since they are givers, happy warriors got the questions rolling early. Let’s move? Let’s move toward truth and accountability.

And so it began, kicking off with questions about Benghazi. Yes, once again Twitter users are doing the job that most in the media won’t do.

Townhall: BREAKING: Judge Slaps Down Bloomberg Big Gulp Ban:

Nanny state- 0

Liberty – 1

Great news New Yorkers! You can still order that large soda with your pizza. New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling has struck down New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “big gulp” ban on large sugary drinks. According to Fox News, the judge called Bloomberg’s ban “arbitrary and capricious.” The arbitrary and capricious regulations were supposed to go into effect tomorrow.

Friday Free-For-All: Kimberlin Kabal Targets #BlogBash

‘Speedway Bomber’: Criminal terrorist Brett Kimberlin was convicted in 1981

The Other McCain: Brett Kimberlin Calls Blog Bash Venue, Vows to ‘Put You Guys Out of Business’

Wednesday, Brett Kimberlin associate Neal Rauhauser contacted the venue where the National Bloggers Club is hosting the fourth annual Blog Bash. Now I can report that Thursday morning, Kimberlin himself contacted the venue and, according to sources, was “raving like a lunatic” on the phone and angrily told the venue manager that he would “put you guys out of business” for hosting Blog Bash.

Lee Stranahan: Brett Kimberlin Begins Explicit Criminal Harassment Of #BlogBash:

After weeks of intimations about violence, Neal Rauhauser and Brett Kimberlin have made threatening phone calls to the location of the upcoming Blog Bash; not coincidentally an event where I am nominated for an award for Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin day and that is hosted by National Blogger Club, a frequent Kimberlin critic and target.

As Ali Akbar–another frequent Kimberlin target–writes…

My Blog Bash staff and I have been monitoring their online chatter for weeks now. They’ve harassed our sponsors, tried hacking into our personal Twitter and Facebook accounts, and now they’re trying to stop the National Bloggers Club from hosting our annual gathering of bloggers, Blog Bash.

The venue received a call from a man yesterday. Guess what his name is? “Neal.”

He called to gather information about Blog Bash, knowing that all of us will be in one room for the first time ever. He tried scaring them. This is harassment and nothing short of a threat.

Yid With Lid: Domestic Terrorist Brett Kimberlin is Back And Going After Blog Bash:

Remember international “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day,” last May? It was precipitated by the domestic terrorist’s campaign of intimidation against conserve bloggers such as  R.S. McCain, Aaron Worthing, Liberty Chick,Patterico,  and others. Eventually Kimberlin’s cronies went after Ali Akbar and even went after me

The guy even has a website dedicated to trashing Andrew Brietbart (he went after Andrew while he was alive also), Kimberlin has as site called Breitbart Unmasked which I will not grace with a link.

National Bloggers club President Ali Akbar posted this today about Kimberlin’s next target–Blog Bash:
Now Kimberlin and his cronies are trying to Occupy Blog Bash. They’ve threatened our venue and our partners.

I kid you not, but Brett Kimberlin is back and so is his hacker Neal Rauhauser. Kimberlin is a convicted perjurer and bomber. Did I mention that he plotted to kill the witnesses, prosecutor, and judge who were responsible for his imprisonment? Now, supporters of Kimberlin are after bloggers.

Jackie Wellfonder: BlogBash Threatened? Bring it, this is #WAR:

Several of my colleagues in the conservative blogosphere have posted today regarding the attempts by certain folks to ‘Occupy BlogBash‘. These are dangerous, shady people, no doubt. But also know this. We will not be silenced, we will not be intimidated, nor will our party be cancelled. This is #WAR, and we’re in it to win it. Donate to BlogBash today, and help support bloggers and get more of them to CPAC.

Twitchy: Are political terrorist Brett Kimberlin and friends targeting upcoming blogger gathering?

National Bloggers Club president Ali Akbar is no stranger to Kimberlin’s cyberbullying tactics. Last year, Kimberlin supporters went after Akbar and his family. Now, Akbar is alleging that Neal Rauhauser, an associate of Kimberlin’s, and other Occupiers and cyberbullies are setting their sights on the upcoming Blog Bash:

My Blog Bash staff and I have been monitoring their online chatter for weeks now. They’ve harassed our sponsors, tried hacking into our personal Twitter and Facebook accounts, and now they’re trying to stop the National Bloggers Club from hosting our annual gathering of bloggers, Blog Bash.

According to Akbar, the venue hosting Blog Bash received a call recently from a man named “Neal”:

He called to gather information about Blog Bash, knowing that all of us will be in one room for the first time ever. He tried scaring them. This is harassment and nothing short of a threat.

Today, Akbar is taking to Twitter to spread the word about the potential threat:

And to make clear that he and his fellow bloggers will not be intimidated:

If you’d like to contribute to the National Bloggers Club, you can do so here.

***

Warner Todd Huston, Liberty News: Obama’s $100,000 Per Year Labor Lawyers Paid With YOUR Taxes NOT to Work for You:

We’ve discussed the abuses of Obama’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) many times here, of course, but now we have yet another bit of news that should outrage you. Obama is wasting hundreds of thousands a year to pay union-supporting lawyers to work for the NLRB. Even as he’s claiming he’ll have to fire teachers and cut the pay of janitors, Obama is paying hundreds of thousands to union-favoring lawyers who are apparently not even expected to do any work the the American people who are paying their salaries with tax dollars.

These high-paid lawyers are paid with your tax dollars not to work for the US government, but to work on what is euphemistically called “official time.” This is the disgusting practice of paying people with tax dollars to work for unions, not for the taxpayers.

The wasteful spending was found by the good folks at NetRightDaily and Mark Tapscott at the Examiner. (NRD’s website was down at the posting of this)

***

Ace of Spades HQ: Shocker: Michelle Obama & John Kerry Set to Honor Rabid Ant-Semite Who Celebrates 9/11 Like It’s Christmas; The Anti-Semite & 9/11 Enthusiast Claims She was #Hacked, and Our Lying State Department Claims That’s True:

This would be a strange sort of #hacking — apparently the #hackers would occasional #hack her Twitter account to send out anti-semitic, pro-Hilter, and pro-9/11 tweets, then cede control back to her, and then re-#hack her account, all without her realizing it, until now.

Here are the Tweets. Enjoy.

On Twitter, Ibrahim is quite blunt regarding her views. On July 18 of last year, after five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver were killed a suicide bombing attack, Ibrahim jubilantly tweeted: “An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.”

Ibrahim frequently uses Twitter to air her anti-Semitic views. Last August 4, commenting on demonstrations in Saudi Arabia, she described the ruling Al Saud family as “dirtier than the Jews.” Seventeen days later she tweeted in reference to Adolf Hitler: “I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.”

Ibrahim holds other repellent views as well. As a mob was attacking the United States embassy in Cairo on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, pulling down the American flag and raising the flag of Al Qaeda, Ibrahim wrote on twitter: “Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning.” Possibly fearing the consequences of her tweet, she deleted it a couple of hours later, but not before a screen shot was saved by an Egyptian activist.

Ace: In Which Some #Hackers #Hack My Twitter Account As I Try To Clear Up This Ibrahim Mess With the State Department:

Well we already heard this Fine Woman telling us how much she loved watching America burn on 9/11. Not sure how she’ll top that, but I have every confidence she can.

And remember, your State Department — your employees — lied to you about it without batting an eye.

Ace: #Hacked Again: Ibramhim Announces She’s Not Apologizing To No Damn Jews:

Her newest #hacked tweet:

“I refuse to apologize to the Zionist lobby in America regarding my previous anti-Zionist statements under pressure from American government therefore they withdrew the award.”

And it’s still the case that your State Department immediately chose to lie to you when they were apprised of this.

There you have it. They would have puled it off if she hadn’t been quite so crazy.

***

Matt Purple of The American Spectator: Thoughts on Eric Holder Finally Saying No:

As Noah Rothman noted this morning, Paul gave the GOP a dose of romance, a cause worth fighting for. Consequently, McCain and Graham, who blasted Paul earlier today, sounded cantankerous and off-beat, the angry neighbors who tried to break up the block party. That Paul managed to be substantive, conservative, right, and, well, cool all at the same time is a testament to his brand of politics. Small wonder that so many today are standing with Rand.

***

Fox News: Venezuelan Citgo Flies Flags Half Mast in Texas Louisiana For Chavez:

Out of respect for President Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan-owned oil refinery Citgo flew its flags at half staff outside its Houston and Lake Charles, La., offices Wednesday, sparking outcry from drivers passing by.

In Houston, the flags at the refinery were lowered to half staff as late as this afternoon, and caused a number of people to look twice as they drove by. James Post, an assistant project manager at an engineering and construction firm in Harris County, told FoxNews.com the sight was “jarring” and “deeply disappointing.”

U.S. protocol allows for flags to be lowered for foreign dignitaries and Post recognized Citgo’s right to do so as a private company. However, he said upon seeing the American or Texas flag at half staff, he questioned the person being honored; and said his mind “immediately jumped to the last time we did this in the Houston-area and it was for Neil Armstrong, so, you wonder.”

David Webb, The Conversation: Eric Bolling makes Barack Obama an offer he can’t refuse:

Eric today on The Five offered  to cover the $74,000 cost it would take to keep the White House open for visitors.Well Mr. President, care to put down the golf club or basketball and step up to the plate?

Legal Insurrection: Oberlin pretty good at keeping secret the identities and motives of perps:

Local police are quoted as saying they have identified two students possibly connected to the rash of racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay writings on campus, but were uncertain as to their motives.

As detailed yesterday, the Oberlin administration is not willing to talk about it, to the point of being unwilling to confirm or deny that it was a hoax or whether racism was the motive.

And surprisingly, the names and motives have not leaked out yet (at least not that I have been able to find).

Jill Lawrence, National Journal: Why Lindsey Graham Isn’t Acting Like a Worried Man:

In 2010, Graham’s pal John McCain tacked hard right to fend off a tea-party challenger in Arizona. In 2012, Orrin Hatch did the same to survive in Utah. Graham could eventually back away from some of his bipartisan projects, and some skeptical Democrats expect he will. But for now he is gambling that changing times and his own political skills will keep him safe in 2014. And for now he is in a commanding position in his party. Among self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaning independents in a Winthrop University poll last month, he was at 71.6 percent approval.

Not surprisingly, no strong primary challenger to Graham has emerged. The antitax Club for Growth is keeping an eye on the race and will consider getting involved if a viable candidate surfaces, says spokesman Barney Keller. Graham scored 72 percent in the Club’s 2011 report card, close to what the group considers a “bottom-of-the-barrel” Republican. But he did better in 2012 and “obviously you can’t beat someone with no one,” Keller says. GOP consultants in the state predict Graham will have an opponent, but probably a weak one.

One of the most marked trends in South Carolina politics is the fade of the tea party. Only 5.5 percent of registered voters in the state said they considered themselves tea-party members in the Winthrop poll, down from 19.2 percent in October 2010. Back then, about half of registered voters said they agreed with tea-party principles. In last month’s poll, only 24.1 percent said they approved of the movement.

Even so, Graham is doing a careful balancing act. For every move toward compromise, he stakes out a position that appeals to his state’s most conservative voters. He touts his opposition to an assault-weapons ban and his thumbs-up rating as an “American Conservative Union conservative.”