LOLZ!

I’m dying, here.

Iowahawk somehow got his hands on the Journolist archives: I’ll Take a Cashier’s Check, Mr. Breitbart.

Welcome to the Journolist Top Secret Progressive He-Man Wingnut Haters Club and L33t H4xoR Chat Room. Disclaimer: this is a private discussion forum intended solely for the benefit of JournoList members. Reproduction, transmission, redistribution, or description, in whole or in part, of any content (including, but not limited to, private insults, insider innuendo, political manifestos, hair styling tips and/or gossip) without the expressed written consent of the commissioner is strictly prohibited. Please read and agree to the User Consent Form. And, as always, remember the first rule of JournoList: there is no JournoList.

EZRA KLEIN has entered the room.
MATTHEW YGLESIAS has entered the room.
ERIC BOEHLERT has entered the room.
JOSH MARSHALL has entered the room.

EZRA KLEIN: wassup

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: my dick

JOSH MARSHALL: lolz!!! 😀

EZRA KLEIN: hahahahahaha

MATTHEW YGLESIAS: whos got assignmt for 1st period talking points for tomorrow

JOSH MARSHALL: boehlert was supposed to get them from Mr Soros

JOSH MARSHALL: boehlert???

EZRA KLEIN: yo eric where r u

Read the whole thing. An instant classic.

Hat tip: Hot Air Headlines

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Hypocrisy Alert: In 2008 Obama Mocked McCain For Proposing A Commission, By 2010 He Had Established 4 Commissions, Himself

Ask any ex-lib what did it for them…what was the last straw that led him away from the left and toward the right, and he will tell you it was the “assploding hypocrisy”.. Not every person who is drawn to feel-good liberalism is an Alinskyite, so stories like this one must make them recoil:

Mr. Obama established the commission in February, saying debt and deficits can “hobble our economy” and “saddle every child in America with an intolerable burden.”

Yet the president’s decision to establish a commission to address a problem he described as potentially catastrophic seems odd in light of his earlier criticism of commissions in general. As Ari Shapiro noted on National Public Radio today, the president mocked the notion of commissions to address problems back when he was a candidate.

Here’s Mr. Obama on September 18, 2008, not long after the economic collapse: “Senator McCain’s first answer to this economic crisis was – get ready for it – a commission. That’s Washington-speak for ‘we’ll get back to you later.’”

“Folks, we don’t need a commission to spend a few years and a lot of taxpayer money to tell us what’s going on in our economy,” he continued. “We don’t need a commission to tell us gas prices are high or that you can’t pay your bills. We don’t need a commission to tell us you’re losing your jobs. We don’t need a commission to study this crisis, we need a President who will solve it – and that’s the kind of President I intend to be.

If Obama has any core beliefs at all, it is that power is to be attained by any means available. Period. The “truth” is whatever he needs it to be on any given day.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

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Video: Fox News Interviews Mosab Hassan Yousef (UPDATE: Victory! Judge Grants Yousef Asylum)

His deportation trial starts today…

Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard notes:

Idiotically, the Department of Homeland Security seeks to stymie his effort to gain political asylum here in the United States. In short, DHS’s case boils down to this: He has ties to terror. Yousef’s case: Sure, he was closely associated with Hamas (in a certain sense), but this was in the form of an informant, not as a terrorist himself.

His immigration trial is today, held in a court in Southern California. But, according to Yousef, whom I met with last week, DHS has promised to continue its efforts regardless of the outcome of today’s trial. Likewise, Yousef will appeal the decision, if he is not granted political asylum here. So, regardless, this promises to be a years (decades?) long legal battle.

I wanted to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt on this one, but this is starting to look like malice to me.

UPDATE:

Weasel Zippers: Victory!! Judge Grants Asylum to Ex-Israeli Spy and Christian Convert Mosab Hassan Yousef…

No explanation was given for the government’s change of heart.

Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Previously:

Republican Congressman Leading Effort To Save “Son of Hamas”

Please Fight to Save Mosab Yousef

Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!

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Reports Reveal Elena Kagan Used Deception, Distortion And Flat-Out Lies To Win Cases (With Updates)

Kagan’s uncovered college thesis revealed her to be a stone cold Socialist – and her methods which are now finally being examined, are showing her to be an Alinskyite radical.

What would Saul Alinsky do if the facts in a case favored the other side? Facts can manipulated and  distorted, and they often are with Alinsky radicals…ends always  justify the means with these people. Being a  little loose with the facts to get the outcome desired (for the good of humanity, mind you), is considered virtuous.

Shannen Coffin, writing for NRO,  was a deputy attorney general during the Bush administration. He  was charged with defending the federal partial-birth abortion act in court. He has discovered that  Kagan, while a deputy assistant to President Clinton for domestic policy, used shocking and despicable slight of hand to help the Clinton administration overturn Nebraska’s ban on partial birth abortions.

There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.

***

The task force’s initial draft statement did not include the statement that the controversial abortion procedure “might be” the best method “in a particular circumstance.” Instead, it said that the select ACOG panel “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”

Of course, most of us already knew that thanks to our innate common sense. The liberal Supremes needed a scientific sounding excuse to allow the unsavory procedure, and like a good Alinsky soldier, she supplied it for them:

Kagan set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG’s position. On a document [PDF] captioned “Suggested Options” — which she apparently faxed to the legislative director at ACOG — Kagan proposed that ACOG include the following language: “An intact D&X [the medical term for the procedure], however, may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Kagan’s language was copied verbatim by the ACOG executive board into its final statement, where it then became one of the greatest evidentiary hurdles faced by Justice Department lawyers (of whom I was one) in defending the federal ban. (Kagan’s role was never disclosed to the courts.)

Powerline has the image of Kagan’s notes in her handwriting. John Hinderaker concludes:

Ms. Kagan has a great deal of explaining to do. Unless she can come up with an innocent explanation for these documents, she should not be confirmed.

Alec Rawls of Error Theory, has another stunning example of Kagan’s duplicity, this time while she was Solicitor General for Obama:

Kagan lied to Supreme Court in 9/11 case, should be disbarred

As Obama’s solicitor general, Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan urged the Court to dismiss the suit that our 9/11 families have been pressing against the Saudi government and several Saudi princes for their extensive funding of al Qaeda. The families sued under the domestic tort exception to sovereign immunity, which according to Kagan’s Supreme Court brief (at p. 14):

requires not merely that the foreign state’s extraterritorial conduct have some causal connection to tortious injury in the United States, but that “the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee” be committed within the United States. 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(5).

The “tortious act or omission” is the wrongful act (the tort) that leads to the injury. Thus she is claiming that for Saudi funding of al Qaeda to be actionable, the funding itself has to have been transacted within the United States. Compare this with the actual wording of 28 U.S.C. 1605(a)(5)

(a) A foreign state shall not be immune from the jurisdiction of courts of the United States or of the States in any case – … (5) … in which money damages are sought against a foreign state for personal injury or death, or damage to or loss of property, occurring in the United States and caused by the tortious act or omission of that foreign state or of any official or employee of that foreign state while acting within the scope of his office or employment…”

Contrary to Kagan’s assertion, the law only specifies that the injury has to have occurred within the United States. Not a word about the wrongful act that leads to domestic injury also having to have taken place within the United. Kagan flat lied about the clear wording of a law that goes to the very heart of our ability to use the courts to combat Islamic terrorism, and thanks to the Court’s failure to review this crucial case, the simple wording and intent of Congress—that foreign states whose actions do injury in the United States can be sued for those injuries—has now been undone, as if the law had never been passed.
Oops!… I did it again”

Kagan proves that her lie was self conscious by also lying about the relevant Supreme Court precedent, claiming (again at p. 14):

In Amerada Hess the Court considered and rejected the argument that domestic effects of a foreign state’s conduct abroad satisfy the exception. 488 U.S. at 441.

In fact, the Court in Amerada never considered “the domestic effects of a foreign state’s conduct abroad” at all, for the simple reason that there were no domestic injuries in that case. The injuries occurred outside of U.S. territory, which is why the domestic tort exception was held not to apply. Here are the simple facts, as recounted in Justice Rehnquist’s majority opinion (joined by Brennan, White, Stevens, O’Connor, Scalia and Kennedy):

… the injury to respondents’ ship occurred on the high seas some 5,000 miles off the nearest shores of the United States. Despite these telling facts, respondents nonetheless claim that the tortious attack on the Hercules occurred “in the United States.” [At p. 440.]

The Amerada Company ship was attacked at sea. Since the tortious act and the damages from it both occurred “5,000 miles off the nearest shores,” the Court did not bother to distinguish between the wrongful act and the injuries from it. Kagan uses this to claim that the Court found Amerada’s domestic injuries to be unrecoverable, when in fact the Supremes agreed with the district court that there were no domestic injuries (p. 439-441).

Has any solicitor general ever flat lied to the Supreme Court before? Isn’t any lawyer who unambiguously lies to the Court about the simple facts of a cited holding subject to disbarment for unethical behavior? And she did it for an unethical purpose: to help the financiers of 9/11 escape justice. Any moral person would either resign in the face of such a job assignment, or would limit himself to making what honest arguments could be mustered. This moral pervert chose to lie and ought to be busted out of the profession for it, not promoted to the highest court in the land.

Radicals consider themselves to be moral people, too. They just have a vastly different idea of morality than we do.

UPDATE:

Pundette transcribes  Hatch’s questioning of Kagan on the ACOG partial birth abortion issue: Kagan answering questions about ACOG draft now

Kagan: “With respect, I don’t think that’s what happened here.”

Kagan says “the document is certainly in my hand-writing. I don’t know if the document is the product of a conversation I had with them . . .”

That would be key, wouldn’t it?

Kagan goes on. Hatch asks again “did you write ‘this would be a disaster’?” Kagan says yes, the disaster would be that ACOG didn’t express both parts of what it believed.

Riiiiight.

Hatch says he’s “troubled”. Let’s hope that’s Hatch-speak for “game-over, lady”.

See also:

The Blog Professor: With Smoking Gun: Elena Kagan Fudged Study to Justify Partial Birth Abortion in Court

Not surprising that the most viciously pro-abort zealot to ever sit in the Oval Office would nominate such a person.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air: Kagan on ACOG memo: Did I do that?

Americans United For Life:

…Kagan was so opposed to the passage of a ban on partial-birth abortion, she hoped that ACOG and the AMA would suppress or modify their views and aggressively worked to make that happen.

Senators need to ask Kagan why she thought it was appropriate to interfere in the positions of medical organizations.  Further, does the lack of any evidence of harm to a woman’s health because of the unavailability of partial-birth abortion for the past three years affect her perspective on the issue?  Does Kagan still believe that partial-birth abortion is necessary to protect a woman’s health?  If so, what is her factual basis to support this?

Related:

New Zeal: Obama File 105 “A Pattern of Socialist Associations” – Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee, Elena Kagan (the Early Years)


Hat tip: Weasel Zippers

Linked by Michelle Malkin, Doug Ross , Adrienne’s Corner, thanks.

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The Pool Beckons…

People keep emailing me great stuff, though, so here’s a quick blog round-up:

Check out this awesome new video by Duane Lester: 11 Reasons To (not) Vote Democrat, This November

It’s a start. I could have come up with a few more, but why should Pelosi get all the attention?

Have you voted for your 10 Buck Friday candidate *cough* Jacob Turk *cough*, yet?

America is an Obamanation brings teh photoshop funny: What if Obama were a Simpsons character? Doh!

JP Attitude: Obama the athlete:

Barack Obama is almost entirely a creature of myth, and one of those myths is that he’s athletic. This shouldn’t matter, but for some reason it irritates the crap out of me.

One more comment from lovestruck journalists about his jump shot or his golf game and I’m gonna pop a vein.

It says something about Team Obama that they go to incredible lengths to support this fiction. Remember that film clip of a young Obama playing high school basketball? It’s gone. Removed from the Internet and public eyes. I clearly remember watching the video on YouTube and thinking to myself, “Good God, the man is not a player at all. And he’s certainly not an athlete.”

Read it all.

The Blog Professor: Al Gore’s accuser’s friends: “suck it up; otherwise, the world’s going to be destroyed from GLOBAL WARMING!”

Liberalism=mental disorder…but we already knew that.

Uncoverage.net Joe Biden Wins Sham Wow Auditions

Recovery Summer? Are you kidding me? They’ve got some kick-ass signs though.

John Hawkins interviews Zev Chavets about Rush Limbaugh’s personal life….and Rush’s blind spot.

John Boehner: Obama Admin. Continues ‘Stimulus’ Push Despite G-20 Rebuke (Who’s the bitter clinger, now????)

GOP.gov: Wall Street Bailouts + Higher Taxes + Bloated Government = Zero Jobs

Marc Thiessen, WaPo: President Obama’s detrimental deadlines and New levels of presidential disrespect?

Have we ever before witnessed so many cases of amnesia in the MSM?

Error Theory: Kagan lied to Supreme Court in 9/11 case, should be disbarred

Help The American Concervative Union track ACORN.

iOWNTHEWORLD: Boehner – Obama’s Lies

Ace posts a brutal video by RightChange.com on Obama’s (non)response to the oil spill.

Dick Morris column at The Hill: Obama’s big oil spill bungle

Something to consider:

PrestoPundit (12/2008): WHO IS BARACK OBAMA? LET ME TELL YOU:

3.  A constant refrain in Obama’s life
is his skill at being a chameleon, putting up a false front and telling
made up stories, to ingratiate himself with others.

4. Obama’s relatives on his mother’s side come out of a natural resource extraction business, the oil business in Kansas.  And when Obama came of consciousness his step-father also worked in an extraction business.  Oil again.  Early in his life Obama, growing in Third World Indonesia with something of a Third World Indonesian’s world view, Obama seems to have equated capitalism and the inequality of capitalism with the wealth disparity created by unequal control of the wealth from oil. We know that Obama’s mother was hostile toward Americans in the business of oil, and both his grandmother and grandfather seemed hostile to or alienated from the values of oil patch Kansas.  If oil = capitalism, we get a better sense of Obama’s life long commitment to socialism and sharing the wealth.

Irish Central: Barack Obama is anti-British says grandmother

Granny Sarah explains why Barry hates the Brits.

The Foundry has been on the ObamaCare beat:

White House Misses Deadline for Creating High-Risk Pools

Repeal ObamaCare: Yes We Can

Sen. Hatch Calls for Repeal of Obamacare Mandates

Price Transparency in Health Care: Will it Bend the Cost Curve?

Welcome to the Real World: Grim Prospects for Young Adults under Obamacare


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Dr. Rubinstein: Obama “Is a Menace…To Israel And To Western Europe”

Dr. Richard L. Rubinstein, an esteemed educator and writer, has Obama’s number, calling him “a menace”, and “the most radical President America has ever had”.  He has no doubt that Obama would be happy to see the destruction of Israel.

That reminded me of what  Cardinal James Francis Stafford, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary of the Holy See, had to say shortly after Obama was elected President:

Criticizing Obama as “aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic,” he went on to speak about a decline in respect for human life and the need for Catholics to return to the values of marriage and human dignity.

Commenting on the results of the recent presidential election, Cardinal Stafford said on Election Day “America suffered a cultural earthquake.” The cardinal argued that President-elect Obama had campaigned on an “extremist anti-life platform” and predicted that the near future would be a time of trial.

He’s everything we feared he would be, and then some.

Hat tip: iOWNTHEWORLD

Related reading:

Eileen F. Toplansky at The American Thinker: Obama’s Wonderland Is No Fairy Tale

Surely, “it would be so nice if something made sense for a change,” said Alice, but in Obamaworld, if one wants to deliberately undermine this country, everything he does leans in that direction. As the Duchess exclaimed, “the moral of that is — the more there is of mine, the less there is of yours.” The next generation of Americans is already burdened with the financial debacle of a $15-trillion debt with no end in sight as the federal government becomes as bloated as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Obama’s economic plan has not improved the country, but when “four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen,” math takes on a wholly new and original meaning as this president confiscates money without “due process of law.”

Jennifer Rubin, Commentary, Obama’s Human Rights Problem:

Because the U.S. is so flawed, so guilty of serial misdeeds, we are in Obama’s eyes (and the left-wing academic mindset from which he derives his views) disqualified from pronouncing on others’ behavior and obligated to let them pronounce on ours and our allies. Hence, we bear witness to (and do not challenge) the Human Right Council thugocracies as they condemn countries with infinitely better human rights records (especially Israel). But we temper our words and offer our hand in conciliation (and in some cases open our wallets) to the human rights oppressors. We allow Iran to join the UN Commission on the Status of Women to opine on others’ gender discrimination but avert our eyes from the brutality endured by Muslim women and girls.

There is, of course, a practical, albeit misguided, reason for Obama’s human rights record. He imagines he will incur the goodwill of the world’s despots by soft-peddling criticism of their treatment of their own people. But it is no longer possible to ignore the more fundamental problem: Obama believes his mission is to atone for America’s sins, not set the example for the world as the leader of that “shining city on the hill.” If one doubts the essential goodness of America and is unwilling to hold others to a standard of conduct that reflects our own values, you will wind up with a human rights policy that looks like Obama’s.

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