Thursday, May 5, 2011

Political Digest for May 5, 2011

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree (or disagree) with every—or any—opinion in the posted article. Help your friends and relatives stay informed by passing the digest on.

Resources
For those who want further information about the topics covered in this blog, I recommend the following sites. I will add to this as I find additional good sources.

Great New Drink
The Osama bin Laden: Two shots and a splash.

Gallup: 89% of Americans Credit Military for Finding, Killing Bin Laden--35% Credit Obama
Excerpt: For those surveyed, 89 percent gave a “great deal” of credit for finding and killing Osama bin Laden to the U.S. military, and 62 percent gave a great deal of credit to the CIA. Only 35 percent of Americans gave a great deal of credit to President Obama while 22 percent said former President George W. Bush merited a great deal of credit.

Obama, Osama, and What’s Next In Pakistan
Excerpt: In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, I am reminded of that great Navy SEAL commercial where there’s no words or music — just footprints on a beach being washed away by the waves. It recalls George Orwell’s observation that we sleep peaceably in our beds at night “because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf.” U.S. Special Forces are the best in the business, and the bin Laden operation shows the persistent lethality and reach of the U.S. military.

The Left and the Liberals’ Hypocrisy over the Death of Osama Bin Laden
Excerpt: President Obama, of course, deserves the credit for planning the mission to take down Osama Bin Laden, and for giving the go ahead to the secret Navy SEAL team. As the report explains, “he had to approve the final plan to send operatives into the compound where the administration believed that Bin Laden was hiding.” I do not intend to take that accomplishment away from the president. But my point is simple: were it not for the prior work of the Bush/Cheney administration, President Obama would not be in the position to have put the operation into effect. Moreover, it is also clear that much of the information that led to the courier’s identity came from the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the very mechanism that regularly led to charges of torture, abuse of power, illegal U.S. spying techniques, waterboarding, rendition, and questioning in secret facilities abroad where those interrogating the detainees did not have to abide by methods forbidden to be used within the United States. (Some of the more “convinced” lefties are already making “this was bad/illegal” noises. Ron P.)

The Muslim World After Bin Laden
Excerpt: A budding Arab democracy that wants the world to take it seriously should have little time for Hamas, much less the world's leading terror sponsor in Tehran. Hamas showed its true, if predictable, colors yesterday in its leader Ismail Haniyeh's response to bin Laden's killing: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior." The Muslim Brotherhood, the best organized political group in Egypt, also condemned the bin Laden killing. The deal creating a unity government for the Palestinian Authority, due to be signed in Cairo tomorrow, empowers a terrorist group and its Islamist ideology.

Very Funny: Don’t Worry: Osama Was Shot in Accordance with Islamic Tradition
Excerpt: Still, I know some of you are concerned about when the Navy SEALs raided Osama’s compound, whether he was then shot in the face in accordance with Islamic tradition. Well, don’t worry; he absolutely was. The very last thing anyone wanted was for Osama to think while he was being killed, “They’re doing this to me because I’m Muslim!” Because, again, that would definitely not be true. So great care was taken, and he was shot in the face in a religiously respectful way. For instance, none of the Navy SEALs in the raid were eating a pork sandwich as they did it. And none of them had on them any depictions of Muhammad (PBUH). Also, the raid was done between prayer times — not during! And when Osama was shot in the face, he was facing westward. I’m not sure that’s actually religiously important, but if it is, then, yes, he was doing that. And when he was shot, the traditional Muslim expression of “Allahu Akbar!” was shouted — except it was an English translation, so it was something like, “Thank you, Jesus!”

Good reading: Next time, use FedEx
Excerpt: The most-wanted terrorist in the world was living in a moldy, million-dollar mansion in a gated community just outside of Islamabad. It took the CIA five years to figure out the four-digit code to get in. One important missed clue was that Osama was living at
72 Virgins Way
. He might still be alive today if only he hadn't borrowed his neighbor's shoulder-mounted rocket launcher and never returned it. Our mighty Navy SEALs not only put a bullet through Osama's head, but carried off his computers, disks and hard drives. So far, all they've revealed is that Osama had multiple Netflix rentals of "Rendition," "In the Valley of Elah," "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Love Actually." Can you imagine what's on Osama's hard drives? I mean besides the goat pornography. Pants are wetting throughout Pakistan's military establishment.

U.S. presses Pakistan for information on Osama bin Laden compound
Excerpt: Obama administration officials here and in Islamabad demanded Tuesday that Pakistan quickly provide answers to specific questions about Osama bin Laden and his years-long residence in a bustling Pakistani city surrounded by military installations. In addition to detailed information about the bin Laden compound — who owned and built the structure and its security system — Pakistani officials were asked in meetings with U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic interlocutors to provide names of witnesses who can testify about visitors to the compound. U.S. lawmakers have said it defied logic that bin Laden was able to hide in plain sight without some level of official Pakistani knowledge or complicity. Some have suggested that $3 billion in annual U.S. military and economic assistance be reconsidered, while others joined with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who said Tuesday that “this is no time to back away from Pakistan.” (Pakistan is an unreliable, untrustworthy, troublesome and expensive "ally." That still may be better then making them an open an enemy like Iran, but armed with over 100 nukes, more than Britain has. Of course, if the Jihadists get full control, that can happen regardless of what we do. Very difficult situation, and part of the Jihad we will be dealing long after my life is over. ~Bob.)

Bin Laden killing poses narrative challenge for the White House: Just what did happen?
Excerpt: The challenge now is in the telling. The White House struggled to craft its account of the audacious raid that killed Osama bin Laden to both a jubilant American public and a skeptical Muslim world, correcting parts of its narrative, withholding others and hesitating to release photos that could be considered too provocative.

Pelosi thanks President Bush for his role in bin Laden's destruction
More class than Obama. ~Bob. Excerpt: House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said she called former President George W. Bush on Tuesday to congratulate him on the capture and killing of Osama bin Laden. Following a classified briefing on the operation to take down bin Laden, Pelosi told reporters that she called the former president earlier in the day to "congratulate him and thank him for the leadership role he had played in this quest over the years."

CIA director Panetta: US feared alerting Pakistan could 'jeopardize' mission
Excerpt: The Obama administration on Tuesday gave its clearest signal yet that it did not trust its ally Pakistan with information on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. CIA Director Leon Panetta told senators Tuesday at a briefing on the bin Laden mission that the administration decided against informing Pakistan because of fears that the details would leak and the mission could be compromised, according to one lawmaker present.

Liberals Sickened by ‘USA! USA!’ Chants
Round up of stories. The difference is, the Islamists celebrate the murder of children. We celebrate the death of a murderer. It's the difference between a Michael Vick who kills dogs for entertainment, and a person who kills a poisonous snake is his home to protect his family. ~Bob.

Is that a real picture of Osama Bin Laden dead? *Warning: Disturbing Photos
The supposed photo of a dead bin Laden I linked to previously is apparently a Photoshop job. Damn. And I already ordered an 8X10 for the dining room. I didn't find it disturbing, except for the fake part. ~Bob

Obama Standing on Bush’s Shoulders
Excerpt: Many forget the gruesome scenes witnessed that day – when some Americans made an unimagined choice as to how they would die that morning. Some chose skull-splitting skyscraper-to-sidewalk jumps, while others chose to stay in the towers only to be charred alive in a steel-melting inferno. Some chose to sit and silently pray while others chose to say “Let’s roll” and fight the Islamic extremists on a plane destined to crash and burn. While the stench and smoke rose from the human infirmaries, the skies were painted a charcoal gray as a black cloud of grief settled within most American’s hearts. Our enemy celebrated.

Excerpt: we must pity the dilemma of the anti-war Left in facing the enormously popular and inarguably successful takedown of bin Laden. To the mere Democratic partisan, there is no real conflict: as long as people like the results achieved under President Obama, his party wins. But the anti-war Left spent most of the Bush years shrieking to high heaven about Bush shredding the Constitution, staining the integrity of the nation, yadda yadda yadda. Everything he did in pursuing the War on Terror had to be the WORST THING EVER, and every effort made to argue that you were beyond the pale of civilization if you approved of the Iraq War, the detention of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay or various secret CIA facilities, the use of “enhanced” coercive interrogation techniques (or for that matter any interrogation outside the Geneva Convention’s name-rank-serial number questioning of traditional POWs), or the “assassination” of terrorists. This is the politics of outrage, the idea that you win arguments by being the angriest man in the room, that rather than argue that policies are not worth the costs and tradeoffs that come with every successful policy, they were inarguably wrong in every particular. Consider the waterboarding debate. As it turns out, the CIA only waterboarded three men (Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri), leading to the question of why the Left made such a colossal stink about it in the first place. Certainly, given those facts, nobody on the Right has argued that waterboarding or any other form of coercive interrogation should be the only or even the first recourse in interrogation (or even that they be used at all with criminal defendants or legitimate prisoners of war) - the argument is simply that these are sometimes-useful tools in an interrogator’s toolkit and that, in some extreme hard cases, it can be justifiable to use those tools against the very worst hard-core senior terrorist leaders. But critics of waterboarding have mostly long since painted themselves into the corner of insisting that the tradeoffs involved don’t need to be debated, because coercive interrogation never yields any information of any use in any situation. This is poor ground to make a stand on. Initial reports on the extensive detective work that led to cornering bin Laden have indicated a couple of things that are terribly inconvenient for these arguments.

White House to delay release of "gruesome" bin Laden death photos due to Muslim "sensitivities"
But bin Laden, Obama said Sunday night, was "not a Muslim leader"! He was a "mass murderer of Muslims"! So why should Muslim "sensitivities" be in play in this at all? And even if Osama had not been a Muslim leader, would the White House hold back on anything else because of the "sensitivities" of some group or other? If Osama bin Laden had been "not a Methodist leader," but a "mass murderer of Methodists," would the White House hold back on releasing his death photo out of deference to Methodist "sensitivities"? (Did they hold back the video of the beheading of Daniel Pearl or people jumping from the twin towers due to sensitivities? ~Bob.)

CBS: Obama says he won’t release bin Laden photos
Excerpt: President Obama has decided not to release photos of Osama bin Laden’s body, CBS News reported Wednesday. The network said Obama told “60 Minutes” reporter Steve Kroft of his decision in an interview scheduled to air Sunday.

Meanwhile in Libya and Syria
Excerpt: I once watched a series called BUDS on one of the 372 Discovery cable channels. It followed a group of recruits to the SEALS program -- they're called BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) while they're in training -- through the 26 or so weeks of the program. At one point late in the series when the ranks had been thinned by about two-thirds though resignation or injury, one of the instructors said: "We have to watch them very closely from here on out. The ones who have made it this far will die before they quit." (...) Gaddafi is probably down to his final days - maybe down to his final hours. It is not likely that another SEAL team is training to take out Gaddafi, but he doesn't know that for sure. If I were advising the Gaddafi family I would be urging them to learn to pronounce and spell V.E.N.E.Z.U.E.L.A. Meanwhile over in Syria, there were reports that the Assad regime was conducting house-to-house searches to arrest people unfriendly to the government. According to the Associated Press more than 1,000 people have been arrested which, the AP quotes a rights activist in Syria "have transformed Syria into a large prison."

Jerusalem imam: Obama will soon hang
Excerpt: An imam from the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem vowed to take revenge over "the western dogs" for killing Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan on Sunday. In a Youtube video uploaded by the imam he said: "The western dogs are rejoicing after killing one of our Islamic lions. From Al-Aqsa Mosque, where the future caliphate will originate with the help of God, we say to them – the dogs will not rejoice too much for killing the lions. The dogs will remain dogs and the lion, even if he is dead, will remain a lion." The imam then verbally attacked US President Barack Obama saying: "You personally instructed to kill Muslims. You should know that soon you'll hang together with Bush Junior."

White House: Bin Laden unarmed when shot
Ut-oh. In a few weeks, Obama will be vowing to try the SEALs in court for murder to appease Muslims, Michael Moore and his old pal Cindy Sheehan. ~Bob. Excerpt: As the Obama administration debates whether to release photographic evidence that Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces, new details of the raid on bin Laden's compound emerged Tuesday that suggest the operation was more of an execution than the White House had previously acknowledged. Bin Laden didn't use his wife as a human shield when Navy SEALs charged into a third-floor room of his home in Pakistan and shot him in the head, as John Brennan, President Obama's counterterrorism chief, reported Monday. Nor did bin Laden brandish a gun, a knife, or any other weapon, White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed.

Little to no bin Laden-Bump for Obama in early polls
Excerpt: A lot of people are pointing to today’s Washington Post/Pew poll as evidence that President Obama got at least a 9 point bounce out of Osama bin Laden’s death. Not so fast. Today’s WaPo/Pew poll (56% Obama approval rating) only had a 654 adult sample. It should not be compared to the regularly scheduled monthly WaPo/ABC News poll (47% Obama approval rating) which routinely has a sample of at least 1,000 adults.

Top Six Reasons We Got Osama bin Laden
Excerpt: Taking down Osama bin Laden was an achievement resulting from a culmination of a decade of national security policy. Soft power and diplomacy helped along the way, but it was hard power and military might that made it possible. President George W. Bush put the correct policies in place, including the PATRIOT Act, Gitmo and increased intelligence gathering. President Barack Obama was wise to continue executing many of the same strategies. Here are the main reasons we were able to take him out.

Homeland Security Hearing Casts Doubts on U.S. Relations with Pakistan
Despite concerns about Pakistani officials' knowledge of Osama bin Laden's long-term presence in the military city of Abbottabad, it would be rash and reckless to break off aid or relations with Pakistan, witnesses and members of a House subcommittee agreed Tuesday. Rather, the United States needs to find a way to get Pakistan to go back to being the important ally it was following 9/11, when it helped track down and arrest a series of al-Qaida leaders. "Pakistan has provided enormous assistance in the last decade in the fight against al-Qaida, including critical intelligence and military operations," Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee Chairman Patrick Meehan, R-Penn., said in his opening remarks Tuesday afternoon. "Their efforts should be commended and the United States must continue to foster the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. We must make the relationship work," he added.

Iraq: car bomb near cafe kills 16 in Baghdad
Excerpt: A car bomb tore through a cafe packed with young men watching a football match Tuesday in Baghdad, killing at least 16 people, officials said. It was the first major attack since U.S. commandos killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. Nobody claimed responsibility for the attack, which struck a Shiite enclave in a mainly Sunni neighborhood, but it bore the hallmarks of the terror network's chapter in Iraq. Al-Qaida operatives have vowed revenge for bin Laden's death on Monday. (Revenge by killing fellow Muslims? Funny kind of "Religion of Peace." ~Bob.)

Honor killing in Michigan: Muslim kills stepdaughter for leaving home, not following Islam
Excerpt: Here we go again. Generally whenever an honor killing takes place in North America or Europe, the mainstream media tells us that honor killing is a cultural practice that has nothing to do with Islam -- despite several facts indicating the contrary. It is no accident or coincidence that Muslims commit 91 percent of honor killings worldwide. A manual of Islamic law certified as a reliable guide to Sunni orthodoxy by Al-Azhar University, the most respected authority in Sunni Islam, says that "retaliation is obligatory against anyone who kills a human being purely intentionally and without right." However, "not subject to retaliation" is "a father or mother (or their fathers or mothers) for killing their offspring, or offspring's offspring." ('Umdat al-Salik o1.1-2). In other words, someone who kills his child incurs no legal penalty under Islamic law.

5 held under terror laws near UK nuclear plant
Excerpt: Five men were arrested under anti-terrorism laws near a nuclear waste-processing plant in northwest England, police said Tuesday. Cumbria Constabulary said the men were detained under the Terrorism Act near the Sellafield plant on Monday after officers stopped a car. All are from London and in their 20s. They were being held a police station in Manchester, home to the North West Counter Terrorism Unit.

Senior House Republican unveils leadership-backed plan to boost offshore drilling
Meanwhile, Senate Democrats are planning to repeal oil company tax breaks for developing new sources, on the theory that more taxes will bring down the cost of gas and heating oil, plus hit the IRA's and pension funds that own energy stocks. Duh. ~Bob. Excerpt: House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings (R-Wash.) unveiled bills Tuesday that would require fast action on offshore drilling permits and a major expansion of areas open to development. “In contrast to the President’s drill nowhere new plan, this is a drill smart plan,” Hastings said in a statement. The bills mark the first GOP leadership-backed legislative response to White House offshore oil-and-gas policies that Republicans allege are wrongly locking up U.S. resources.

House passes healthcare de-funding bill
Democrats worried about shifting power to the federal government? Cry me a river. ~Bob. Excerpt: The House voted Tuesday to eliminate federal grant money intended to help states establish their own insurance exchanges. The measure passed 238-183 after Republicans dismissed complaints that the bill would tie states' hands and shift power to the federal government.

Dems, GOP spar over White House visitor logs
Big oil--bad. Big pharma--good. ~Bob. Excerpt: House Republicans hammered the White House on Tuesday for gaps in its publicly released visitors logs. The issue has become a touchstone for many House Republicans frustrated by a lack of information about the administration's meetings with various industry groups in the run-up to healthcare reform. Republicans were rankled by the agreements that the administration and Senate Democrats struck with several healthcare groups — particularly a deal with the pharmaceutical industry — to help ward off opposition to the healthcare bill. Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) has requested records specific to a May 2009 agreement in which a group of industries agreed to trim $2 trillion per year in healthcare spending. The administration has said his requests are overly broad or that no relevant records exist.

Neo-Nazi leader is shot dead by son,10
Excerpt: A 10-year-old Riverside, California boy charged with fatally shooting his father, local neo-Nazi leader Jeffrey R. Hall, had past problems with aggression and violence after being caught in the middle of a bitter divorce fraught with abuse allegations, court records show. ... Investigators said the boy apparently retrieved a family handgun and shot his father about 4 a.m. Sunday on the living room couch. Police declined to say whether Hall was asleep at the time. "We believe it was an intentional act," said Riverside police Lt. Ed. Blevins, "and we believe the 10-year-old was responsible." ... Hall was the Southwest leader of the National Socialist Movement, the nation's largest neo-Nazi organization, and would often take his children to events, a colleague in the organization said.

Excerpt: Everybody is asking that question these days. The average nationwide price for all grades this week is $3.96/gallon; Californians are paying on average $4.26, the highest in the nation. Why does it cost so much, especially considering that the price was below $2.00/gallon just within the last couple of years? Nearly seventy percent of the price of a gallon of retail gasoline is the price of the crude oil it is refined from. Two graphs from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) make that point. The first shows the price of a gallon of gasoline (left axis) plotted against the price of a gallon of crude oil (right axis). The two move in virtual lock-step; if you know the crude oil price per gallon, add $1.00 and you’ll know the price of gasoline within a few cents. (At $105 per 42-gallon barrel, the per-gallon price of crude is $2.50; add a buck, and you get a gasoline price around $3.50.)

Let's Blame Speculators
Excerpt: Here's a non-rocket science question: If you expect a reduced harvest of wheat, corn, rice or any other commodity some time in the future, what would be the wise thing to do about your consumption today? I bet that the average person would answer: Consume less now so that more will be available in the future. But how in the world can people be encouraged to consume less now? Enter the futures market, which consists of a worldwide group of millions upon millions of traders, often called speculators. Speculators, betting on a future shortage, buy up wheat, corn and rice today in the hopes of making money selling it for a higher price when the bad harvest hits. As speculators buy more and more wheat, corn and rice, they drive up today's prices. As today's price gets higher, people consume less, but more importantly, people do the intelligent thing without bureaucratic edicts. The vital role of the futures trader, or speculator, is to allocate goods over different time periods. And, it's not just wheat, corn and rice that must be allocated over time but all commodities including oil.

Gasoline and Onions
Excerpt: The speculators are ripping us off! "The skyrocketing price of gas and oil has nothing to do with the fundamentals of supply and demand, and has everything to do with Wall Street firms that are artificially jacking up the price of oil in the energy futures markets. ... (T)he same Wall Street speculators that caused the worst financial crisis since the 1930s through their greed, recklessness and illegal behavior are ripping off the American people again by gambling that the price of oil and gas will continue to go up." Here we go again. That quote was Sen. Bernie Sanders doing what some always do when the price of oil spikes: complain about speculators. Now, President Obama says he'll investigate them: "We are going to make sure that no one is taking advantage of the American people for their own short-term gain." I assume that his new Financial Fraud Enforcement Working Group, like its predecessors, will uncover nothing untoward. In America, we don't have a free market -- we have a government-saturated economy in which oil companies and other corporations have a cozy relationship with politicians and bureaucrats. That's wrong, but even that can't explain the recent run-up in prices. Oil companies today are no more greedy or clever than they have been all along. We have to look for a better explanation -- and it isn't hard to find. Demand for oil rises with the growth of China, India and other developing countries. When poor people get a little richer, they buy cars, computers and refrigerators. They burn more fuel to make them and to run them. Rising demand, other things being equal, increases prices.

2012 Election is All About Obama and His Failed Policies
Excerpt: The media is gearing up to full throttle to tease and manipulate the public again with the early favorites leading up to the 2012 presidential elections. At the inception of the 2008 election season Illinois Senator Obama wasn't a blip or after thought in the minds of the American people as someone who had a snow ball's chance in purgatory of capturing the coveted prize of the White house. How shocked we all were when the final dust settled that indeed a new breed and untested brand of leadership would covet the most sought after prize in American politics. For that reason this election season is proving very, very interesting to watch.

Question
Is Donald Trump the inspiration for the phrase "Hair-Brained Scheme"? (Yes, I know it's "hare-brained," just having some fun.) ~Bob

How Should Medicare Pay for Medical Care?
Interesting, hard to excerpt. ~Bob.

Trial lawyers lose to arbitration law in Supreme Court
Excerpt: Congress's decades-old federal arbitration law cannot be set aside by a trial-lawyer-friendly rule in states like California, the Supreme Court said in a decision last week with big implications for the future of American litigation. Litigation can be cumbersome and tedious. It's often drawn out and exasperatingly slow. And with so many lawyers billing by the hour, litigation can be very, very expensive. The predictable frustration arising from this reality leads many to seek alternative forms of dispute resolution. While there are several alternatives, arbitration is one commonly written into a contract as a way to settle disagreements without a full-blown court case. Many judges prefer the strict rules and procedures of litigation. As a result of many court rulings pushing people into litigation, as far back as 1925, Congress passed the Federal Arbitration Act.

Former chief aide says Blago bargained with Emanuel on Obama Senate seat
The media will, of course, work to keep Chicago pol Obama out of the Chicago corruption narrative. ~Bob. Excerpt: Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s onetime chief of staff, John Harris, testified about negotiations between his old boss and President Obama to fill the U.S. Senate seat once held by the commander-in-chief. Obama’s former White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, called Harris in 2008 to suggest that Blagojevich appoint Obama’s close friend Valerie Jarrett, according to Harris’s testimony. Harris was the second witness to take the stand in Blagojevich’s corruption retrial, which is taking place in the same Chicago federal court where he was tried last year. In that eight-week circus, the impeached two-term Democratic governor was convicted on only one of 24 counts (for lying to the FBI). The jury deadlocked on all of the remaining counts.

Lobbyist: Forcing contractors to disclose donations injects politics into policy
You contributed to the wrong party--no contract for you until you contribute to Obama! ~Bob. Excerpt: A draft executive order from the White House that would force government contractors to disclose their political contributions is drawing consternation from K Street. Lobbyist sees the latest move by the Obama administration as another attempt to limit their influence in Washington, and it follows a series of policies signed off by the president that have targeted them. Howard Marlowe, president of the American League of Lobbyists, told The Hill that the draft order that has been circulated around Washington would be “bad public policy.” “This is really bad public policy to be asking people to state what contributions they have made to candidates,” Marlowe said. “This is injecting politics into a process that should not involve politics.”

Boeing slams NLRB for making false accusations
Excerpt: Boeing on Tuesday sent a letter to the general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board, blasting him for making false accusations about the company's decision to build a non-union factory in South Carolina, which an NLRB complaint charges is illegal.

Friction Grows Between Lawmakers and DOJ Over 'Project Gunrunner' Probe
Excerpt: It started with one whistleblower, but now involves dozens of investigators, has created a standoff between the Department of Justice and lawmakers and threatens Mexico’s diplomatic relationship with the United States. Friction is growing over the probe into the failed “Project Gunrunner” program -- run by the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms that intended to stop the flow of guns to criminals in Mexico. Whistleblowers claim the bureau actually encouraged the illegal sale of firearms to known criminals, then allowed those guns to be smuggled to Mexico and tracked.

Climate Activists Target States With Lawsuits; Atmosphere As a 'Public Trust'
Excerpt: A group of attorneys using children and young adults as plaintiffs plans to file legal actions in every state and the District of Columbia on Wednesday in an effort to force government intervention on climate change. The courtroom ploy is backed by high-profile activists looking for a legal soft spot to advance a cause that has stumbled in the face of stiff congressional opposition and a skeptical U.S. Supreme Court. The goal is to have the atmosphere declared for the first time as a "public trust" deserving special protection. That's a concept previously used to clean up polluted rivers and coastlines, although legal experts said they were uncertain it could be applied successfully to climate change. (...) Speth, now at the Vermont Law School, said public trust litigation over climate change could work if its backers can find a judge willing to innovate a new area of law. Yet that outcome could only result if a judge is willing to buy into what conservative analyst Hans von Spakovsky called "a creative, made-up legal theory." (
This is one of the times when "loser pays" (for the winner's legal expenses) combined with outlawing "contingency participation" (attorneys working for a percentage of the winnings) would save the republic a great deal of time, money, and aggravation. Ron P.)

Feds Allow Illegal Aliens to Cross Border 14 Times Before Charging Them With Felony, Sheriff Tells Congress
Sheriff Larry Dever of Cochise County, Ariz., told a House subcommittee today that in one U.S. attorney's district in Texas illegal aliens are allowed to be caught crossing the border 7 times before they are charged with a misdeamanor and 14 times before they are charged with a felony. Dever further said the policies call for considering federal human smuggling charges only if at least 6 illegal aliens are being transported. (What say we deploy a Navy Seal Team to the border? ~Bob.)

A Letter to the New Secretary of Defense: American security requires the near-seamless integration of land, sea, and air power.http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/266374/letter-new-secretary-defense-jim-lacey
Excerpt: ‘When we lose the next war, and an American boy, lying in the mud with an enemy bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat, spits out his last curse, I want the name to be not MacArthur, but Roosevelt,” General MacArthur said to President Roosevelt in reaction to administration-proposed budget cuts in 1933. MacArthur, who well remembered the terrible price unpreparedness cost the nation in the First World War, was speaking from the heart, though with more vitriol then is wise when addressing the president of the United States. He later admitted to vomiting on the White House steps after the meeting. Unfortunately for the nation, the budget cuts went through anyway, and America paid a terrible price for its shortsightedness again in World War II. There is a lesson here: The bills for unwise cuts are paid for in the blood of America’s youth.

We are All Lars Hedegaard
 Excerpt: The President of International Free Press Society and of the Danish Free Press Society, historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard, has been fined 5,000 kr. (€660 / $1,000) under the Danish section 266b — the so-called “racism clause” — for uttering the following phrase: “Girls in Muslim families are raped by their uncles, their cousins or their dads.” A group of free speech activists has decided to contribute and collect money to support Hedegaard’s appeal. The initiative is entitled “We are Lars”, and is represented by the psychologist and author Nicolai Sennels. The group’s statement: “What matters is not whether Hedegaard is right in his statements about Muslims, but that he is being punished for them..."

Geert Wilders Comes to Nashville
Excerpt: The Canadian chapter of the International Free Press Society is bringing Geert Wilders to North America next week. After visiting three Canadian cities (Toronto, London, and Ottawa), on May 12 Mr. Wilders, along with Sam Solomon and Bill Warner, will appear at the Cornerstone Church in Madison, a suburb of Nashville. This event is being held under the auspices of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition. Mr. Wilders, who initiated his discussion of “The Failure of Multiculturalism” in Rome on March 25, will continue his battle against cultural relativism and Islamization, beginning in Canada on May 8 and ending in Nashville on May 12. Canada is famous for having invented Multiculturalism under Pierre Trudeau in the late 1970s, so it will be ironic for Canadians to be lectured by Geert Wilders on this modern disease, and to receive a warning from the rising political star in the Netherlands.

1 comment:

  1. Wanted to say thanks for the blog. I've been a daily visitor for a year now, and realized I haven't properly thanked you for your hard work yet. Keep it up, your efforts are greatly appreciated!

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