Update
Remember if you are blocked on getting to an article by a
paywall, you can often get it by Googling the title.
66 degrees here Thursday. Definitely a milder winter than
last year here in WI. Must be that all those plastic grocery bags I get are
speeding up global warming. ~Bob
Why I do this blog: "Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires, but
according to our powers." --Henri Frederic Amiel
General News and Comment
Worth Reading
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415267/why-e-gate-epidemic-victor-davis-hanson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415267/why-e-gate-epidemic-victor-davis-hanson
Excerpt: Former CIA director David
Petraeus plea-bargained to a misdemeanor count of unauthorized removal and
retention of classified material after having given classified government
information to his one-time mistress, Paula Broadwell. How was Petraeus’s
transgression uncovered? By exposure of a non-government e-mail account that he
had set up to communicate with Broadwell free of CIA scrutiny. After a series
of Democratic scandals in the New
York state legislature, Governor Andrew Cuomo is
instituting a policy to have the e-mails of state employees automatically deleted
after 90 days. Apparently, Cuomo did not want e-trails of politicians’
communications. Meanwhile, the former speaker of the New York state assembly, Sheldon Silver,
faces charges of corruption and was forced by subpoena to turn over computer
correspondence.
Time for a FOIA Suit: Three Top
Hillary State
Excerpt: According
to news reports, Huma
Abedin, who was Clinton Clinton Clinton
Tweet from John Betts @JohnFromCranber
Any Reason to Think #Hillary Hasn't
Destroyed Damaging Emails Relating to Benghazi
or "Pay To Play" For Her Charitable Foundation?
Hillary Clinton email
excuses 'laughable,' says top freedom-of-information official
Excerpt: Daniel Metcalfe doesn't buy her explanation. In
fact, he calls it laughable. "What she did was contrary to both the letter
and the spirit of the law," says Metcalfe, the founding director of the
Justice Department's Office of Information and Privacy, which advised the rest
of the administration on how to comply with the law. Metcalfe ran the office
from 1981 to 2007. "There is no doubt that the scheme she established was
a blatant circumvention of the Freedom of Information Act, atop the Federal
Records Act."
Clinton didn't
encrypt emails for three months, security firm finds
Excerpt: After scanning Clinton ’s domain, clintonemail.com, the
security firm Venafi found that
from January to March 2009, the domain had no digital certificate issued by an
authority, which shows a site is secured. “This means that during the first
three months of Secretary Clinton’s term in office, web browser, smartphone and
tablet communications would not have been encrypted,” said Kevin Bocek, vice
president of security strategy and threat intelligence at Venafi, in a blog
post.
Hillary Clinton May Have Committed a Felony By Failing to
Turn Over Emails Before Leaving State Department in 2013. By Katie Pavlich
At this point, what difference does it make? Won't be the
first or last she gets away with. ~Bob
Does the Democratic Party Have a Non-Hillary Option?
By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: Hillary will survive her email woes,
but scandals serve as tests that show the strengths and weaknesses of
politicians. What the email scandal showed is that Hillary lacks her husband’s
breezy ability to weather political outrage. Instead her paranoia and
resentment combine to make her scandals worse. Democrats are looking for
inspiration, but Hillary couldn’t whip up inspiration on a very special episode
of Oprah.
Important: Join Obama on
Pacific Trade. By Kevin D. Williamson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415273/join-obama-pacific-trade-kevin-d-williamson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415273/join-obama-pacific-trade-kevin-d-williamson
Excerpt: The dispute over TPP finds
Barack Obama at odds both with congressional Democrats and with progressive
activists, and making uncomfortably common cause with the most reliable
partisans of free trade: most everybody who hates his guts. Some Republicans
have reservations about investing the president with “fast track” authority —
meaning that he would be empowered to negotiate a deal that would then get a
simple yes/no vote in Congress, which turns out to have a say in international
affairs after all — because they are mindful of this imperial president’s
habitual infliction of violence on the Constitution and of his seething
contempt of the legislative branch in which he served for approximately eleven
minutes. But it is unlikely that Republicans will in the end say no to a trade
deal. (I've been a Free trade advocate since my high school economics classes
with Ben Mark [my only As in that institution]. Adam Smith in the 1700s said
that a nation needed three things for economic progress: pursuit of
self-interest, division of labor and free trade [internal as well as external]
but the government often interferes, preventing prosperity. ~Bob)
Worth subscribing to: For Most Democrats, It Always
Comes Back to ‘Disrespect.’ By Jim Geraghty, Morning Jolt
Excerpt: Notice how quickly the media’s narrative shifts
from whatever the issue at hand is to the Obama administration’s preferred
“Isn’t this a terrible insult to the president?” To judge from some voices on
cable news, the central issue in American life is whether or not the opposition
party is sufficiently respectful of the president. The more time you debate
“Did congressional Republicans insult the president by inviting Bibi Netanyahu
to address them?”, the less time you are debating “Is this deal with Iran a
good idea?” or “Are we forcing our allies the Israelis to live with an
unacceptable risk?” The more time you debate “Did 47 Senate Republicans
undermine or disrespect the president by writing that open letter to Iran?”,
the less time you are debating “Can we trust the Iranians to keep their word?”
or “Shouldn’t something that looks like a treaty, sounds like a treaty, and has
the impact of a treaty be ratified by the Senate like a treaty?”
Those are the questions we would prefer to debate -- both
because they’re more important and because we think we have a stronger argument
there. The administration’s eagerness to change the subject to perceptions of
disrespect is a quiet hint that they don’t think they have a stronger argument
there . . . or, alternately, that a full-throated defense of the Iranian
regime’s right to enrich uranium in a non-weaponized program just doesn’t stir
their base. But “the Republicans are disrespecting the president!” Well, that sort of thing gets more than 200,000 Democrats to call for
arresting 47 senators on charges of treason. (By the way, things like that
petition or the New York Daily News headline ‘TRAITORS’ are why we
can’t have a more civil discourse in this country.)
Is Obama Really a Christian? By David French
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415266/obama-really-christian-david-french
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415266/obama-really-christian-david-french
Excerpt: With a new presidential
election looming, it’s apparently urgently important for members of the media
to know whether Republicans such as Scott Walker believe that President Obama
is a Christian. Walker ’s
answer — “I don’t know” — is not one the media want to hear. But how can any
man know another man’s heart — especially the heart of a person he’s never met?
Who but God knows our deepest beliefs? To the extent that a president bares his
soul to anyone, it won’t be to a reporter or to any person likely to speak to a
reporter. Thus, any pundit or commentator who purports to declare what a
president “really believes” on matters of faith should be viewed with deep
suspicion. But while we can’t know the faith in a man’s heart, we can discern
quite a lot about the faith he manifests. (Well, Obama says he's a Christian,
ad he's never lied to us. Okay, other than to get Obamacare passed, about
Keystone, about his opposition to gay marriage, about Benghazi being caused by
a video, about transparency, about the IRS and Fast and Furious, about the
world being safer, about... Personally, I think he's a secular humanist, like
so many of the left, who uses religion as needed, but believes only in the
Progressive creed. But he holds that as an article of faith, unmoved by facts
or results. ~Bob)
Interesting: Ex-NBC Reporter Meyers: Journalists
'Appear to Have Chosen Sides.' By Greg Richter
Excerpt: Former NBC reporter Lisa Meyers tells The Des Moines Register the quality of television
journalism is going downhill and that reporters have picked sides. Meyers is
scheduled to give a talk in Des Moines on
Thursday, and told the Register, "I am going to talk about the
deterioration in the quality of journalism you see on TV. There is less and
less interest in network television today holding the White House or any other
part of government accountable." Meyers said she believes newscasts are
catering to an audience thought to care less about serious news. (The article
is about more than journalistic bias, although that certainly is part of the
problem, as the second article mentions. But the overall picture is just of
media people who are dumbing down the news, while also in bias mode anywhere
from mild to deep, and clearly neglecting some parts of the news such as the
significant scientific opposition to the Climate Change models while focusing
obsessively on other things like racial conflicts and tensions. (Speaking of
not helping things get better, now we've had a sniper shoot two Ferguson cops who were
just standing in front of the police station. The DOJ report just threw some
gas on a fire that had started to die down. The idea of open season on
uniformed officers is horribly unfortunate.) A democracy depends on an informed
electorate, and that in turn hinges on a responsible press, and we don't have
very much of that anymore. --Del )
Bernard Goldberg: 3
Reasons Liberal Media Are Failing. By Greg Richter
Excerpt: Media critic Bernard Goldberg said there are three
main reasons liberal media such as MSNBC can't find an audience: They are
preachy, too far left and not the only liberal game in town. Appearing Thursday
on Fox News Channel's "The O'Reilly
Factor," Goldberg said liberal news media violate the cardinal
rule of all media in that they are not entertaining.
Hillary Clinton and My Crystal Ball. Bernard Goldberg
Excerpt: Through the cloudy haze, I can see Republicans
going after Mrs. Clinton on Benghazi .
And I can see (and hear) James Carville, Paul Begala, Howard Dean, Lanny Davis,
Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, the New York Times editorial page, and ten
thousand other Clinton cronies screaming, “Sexist!” That’s what we have to look
forward to. Every time someone says something the Clinton campaign doesn’t like, her detractors
are going to be portrayed as women haters – Neanderthals who think women should
know their place … and that place is the kitchen baking cookies for her man and
their 15 children.
Some top Democrats are alarmed about Clinton
Excerpt: Senior Democrats are increasingly worried that
Hillary Rodham Clinton is not ready to run for president, fearing that the
clumsy and insular handling of the nine-day fracas over her private e-mails was
a warning sign about the campaign expected to launch next month.
Veteran Honor Flight availability
Now that they are basically running short of WW2 vets for
these free trips to DC, they will be opening up for Korean and Viet Nam
vets. If you know people who could benefit from this nice experience, below is
the link for them to apply. --Del
AAN Political Intel:
New Polling in Wisconsin
http://americanactionnews.com/articles/aan-political-intel-new-polling-in-wisconsin
http://americanactionnews.com/articles/aan-political-intel-new-polling-in-wisconsin
Excerpt: A new Public Policy Polling survey posts former
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold (D) to a 50-41% lead over first-term incumbent Ron
Johnson (R) according to just-released data. The poll (3/6-8; 1,017 WI
registered voters) may be a better indication of what happens to former
politicians once they leave office for an extended period of time instead of a
clear forecast of the upcoming campaign, however. Typically, former office
holders are viewed more favorably the longer they have been out of office, as
Feingold’s 46:35% approval ratio attests. Five years ago, the Wisconsin
electorate defeated him 52-47%, preferring newcomer Johnson.
Ginsberg has since "clarified"
this quote
Gaming a Russian
Offensive
Excerpt: Russia 's
current military position in Ukraine
is very exposed and has come at a great cost relative to its limited political
gains. The strategic bastion of Crimea is
defensible as an island but is subject to potential isolation. The position of
Ukrainian separatists and their Russian backers in eastern Ukraine is essentially a large bulge that will
require heavy military investment to secure, and it has not necessarily helped Moscow achieve its larger
imperative of creating defensible borders. This raises the question of
whether Russia will take
further military action to secure its interests in Ukraine . To answer this question,
Stratfor examined six basic military options that Russia
might consider in addressing its security concerns in Ukraine , ranging from small harassment
operations to an all-out invasion of eastern Ukraine
up to the Dnieper
River
Insider Buzz Grows for Marco Rubio. By Eliana Johnson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415280/insider-buzz-grows-marco-rubio-eliana-johnson
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415280/insider-buzz-grows-marco-rubio-eliana-johnson
Excerpt: Jeb Bush’s announcement
in December launched both a fundraising juggernaut and an aggressive hiring
spree, and Scott Walker’s speech in Iowa the
following month lifted Walker
to the top of national polls. But a little more than a month later, says the
operative, “The Jeb boom is over and people are having second thoughts about Walker .” The beneficiary
in terms of buzz is Marco Rubio, who now has many of the party’s top donors
looking at him in a way they weren’t even a month ago.
Gun News
New Gun Radio Show: Sunday's Armed American Radio Launches
'AAR Daily Defense' Hour April 6. By Neil McCabe
Excerpt: The new show, Armed American Radio's Daily Defense,
will be produced by the United just as the Sunday show, said Walters, who
got his start in the fight for gun rights after he was forced to draw his
handgun to fend off an attacker coming as him and his daughter.
Race Card News
Cry "Racism!" and let slip the dogs of war: Ferguson
Excerpt: Two police officers were shot early Thursday
morning outside the Ferguson ,
Mo.
Excerpt: The NBA consists of 76 percent black players. But
blacks are just 13 percent of the country. Clearly, the league engages in
racial discrimination against whites. Silly, right? Well, this is exactly what
the sleight-of-hand Department of Justice pulled off to find that the Ferguson
Police Department engages in “implicit and explicit racial bias”! The report
insults anybody who’s ever studied the statistics – or logic. (Black writer.
~Bob)
Excerpt: On Monday of this week, Soglin stood,
megaphone in hand, trying to explain to a group of 1,500 largely black
protesters why one of his police officers had shot Tony
Robinson, an unarmed black teenager. Soglin, a progressive
standard-bearer first elected
Madison mayor in 1973, pathetically tried to pass the buck to
Republicans in state government for cutting state school aids. He was
frequently shouted down by protesters yelling, "Murder!" It was a
rare time when a progressive mayor had to face the very type of racial animus
he has spent a career fomenting. White liberals often think they have a
monopoly on race relations in America ,
frequently using racial issues to drive wedges in the electorate and bolster
their own standing. Yet by almost any measure, decades of pure, uncut
progressivism have done nothing to mend the racial divide in a liberal
playground like Madison .
Undocumented Democrat News
Unbelievable: US Attorneys Didn't Prosecute Illegal
Immigrants Who Used Dead Americans' Social Security Numbers to Work. By Leah Barkoukis
Excerpt: Apparently discovering that the Social Security
Administration had roughly 6.5 active social security numbers for Americans
aged 112 or older wasn’t the only eye-catching discovery from
the office of the inspector general’s audit. Tucked away in a footnote was
another “minor” detail: U.S.
attorneys did
not prosecute illegal immigrants who used the social security numbers
of deceased Americans to work in the U.S. (Unbelievable? I'm not
surprised at all. We have ceased to be a government of laws. ~Bob)
Federal Judge Orders
Investigation into Obama Administration’s Illegal Amnesty
EXCERPT: On Monday, a Texas
judge who temporarily blocked Barack Obama's illegal executive amnesty
determined to postpone his final ruling on the matter in order to investigate
how the administration was able to hide giving 100,000 illegal immigrants
three-year amnesties.
"You're Greener than Gore" News
Biden says of Obama Move Against Coal – “A Lot of People
are Going to Get Hurt.” By Onan Coca
Excerpt: Remember when then candidate Obama and his choice
for VP, Joe Biden, travelled coal country telling all those nice people
how they
weren’t going to hurt their jobs or their futures? Well, they may have
misspoken. At least that’s the case if we are to believe what Joe Biden is NOW
saying. “Us moving away from coal because it’s such a polluter, there’s a lot
of people going to get hurt, good people who worked their whole life,” Biden
told VICE, a documentary series that premiered on HBO last Friday. (The
"War on Coal" is actually a war on low and middle income Americans.
~Bob)
Religion of Peace News
Take off on "Bathhouse
John” Coughlin , a corrupt Chicago
Very Important: Saudi nuclear deal raises stakes for Iran
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/saudi-nuclear-deal-raises-stakes-for-iran-talks-2015-03-11-21103596
Excerpt: As U.S.
and Iranian diplomats inched toward progress on Tehran ’s
nuclear program last week, Saudi Arabia
quietly signed its own nuclear-cooperation agreement with South Korea .
That agreement, along with recent comments from Saudi
officials and royals, is raising concerns on Capitol Hill and among U.S. allies that a deal with Iran , rather
than stanching the spread of nuclear technologies, risks fueling it. Saudi Arabia ’s former intelligence chief, Prince
Turki al-Faisal, a member of the royal family, has publicly warned in recent
months that Riyadh will seek to match the
nuclear capabilities Iran
is allowed to maintain as part of any final agreement reached with world
powers. This could include the ability to enrich uranium and to harvest the
weapons-grade plutonium discharged in a nuclear reactor’s spent fuel.
(Flashback to 1998: "America ’s
War on Terror will be Long, Slow and Cruel." By Robert A. Hall http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2015/02/flashback-to-1998-americas-war-on.html.
Excerpt: "A man with a wild look in his eye, a pipeline to his god, and a
weapon in his hand has ever been a danger. But the weapons now are explosives powerful enough to destroy
buildings, snuffing out hundreds of lives. Soon they will be gasses that
can slaughter thousands, diseases that can kill millions. Perhaps even atomic bombs." A local Congressman called me and
said he had circulated my column to the House Anti-Terrorism Caucus. For all
the good it did three years later. ~Bob)
Tom Cotton’s Letter to Iran
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/415254/tom-cottons-letter-iran-gets-constitution-right-john-yoo
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/415254/tom-cottons-letter-iran-gets-constitution-right-john-yoo
Excerpt: As a description of
American constitutional law, Senator Cotton has it exactly right. It was as if
he were just informing Iran
about the text of the Constitution. There are three types of international
agreements under U.S.
law: ... The Cotton letter is right, because if President Obama strikes a
nuclear deal with Iran using only instrument (c), he is only committing to
refrain from exercising his executive power — i.e., by not attacking Iran or by
lifting sanctions under power delegated by Congress. Not only could the next
president terminate the agreement; Obama himself could terminate the deal.
Kerry's Hypocritical Indignation. From The Patriot Post
Kerry's Hypocritical Indignation. From The Patriot Post
Secretary of State John Kerry really wasn't happy with the
47 Senate Republicans who wrote a letter to Iran warning of the temporary nature
of any deal with the Obama administration. Testifying before
Congress Wednesday, Kerry said his reaction to the letter was "utter
disbelief" because it "ignores more than two centuries of precedent
in the conduct of American foreign policy." He added, "During my 29
years here in the Senate, I never heard of -- nor even heard of it being
proposed -- anything comparable to this. ... This risks undermining the
confidence that foreign governments, in thousands of important agreements,
commit to between the United
States and other countries." Funny that
he's "never even heard of it" because an open letter to Iran
restating the obvious hardly compares to Kerry's own record of going it alone on
foreign policy. While he was in the Senate, he traveled to Nicaragua to
meet with the communist Sandinistas and then returned home to shill on their
behalf. And let's not forget his most infamous moment: meeting with the North
Vietnamese in 1970 and 1971 while still a Navy reserve officer. Few are now
willing to bring up this treasonous behavior, but it's unbelievable hypocrisy for
Kerry to attack this letter now.
Tweet from AdolfJoeBiden™ @Bidenshairplugs
Anybody find it ironic that the same people who haven't let
us build a nuclear power plant in years support Iran building one?
A brief modern
history on Congressional “treason.” By Ed Morrissey
Excerpt: The Reagan administration wanted to block Soviet
influence in the Western hemisphere by backing rebellions against Communist
dictators, especially in Nicaragua .
Reagan supported the contras against Daniel Ortega, a policy which
Democrats opposed and for which they later passed the controversial Boland
Amendment in an attempt to restrict Reagan’s options in foreign policy (and
which led to the Iran-Contra scandal.) Before Boland, though, 10 Democrats in
the House — including Edward Boland (D-MA) — wrote a letter to Ortega
called the “Dear Commandante” letter pledging their support
to his government. ("Treason doth not prosper; what's the reason? If it's
done by Democrats, the media dare not call it treason." ~Bob)
Report: Dem Reps Met
with Iranian Regime to Sabotage George W. Bush. By Jordan Schachtel
Excerpt: Between 2006 and 2007, at least twelve Democratic
Congressmen agreed to meet with Iranian officials in the Ayatollah’s regime at
the behest of National Iranian American Council (NIAC) President Trita Parsi,
according to a report by Hassan Dai of the Iranian
American Forum. Parsi allegedly solicited the help of current Iranian
Defense Minister Javad Zarif, who was Iran ’s Ambassador to the UN at the
time. Zarif is now one of the lead negotiators for Iran ’s nuclear program on behalf of
the Islamic republic.
Obama: World is Safer. How
Arab Spring Opened the Door to Terrorism’s Ugly March. By Sharyl Attkisson
Excerpt: It’s not your imagination. Global terrorism,
dominated by Muslim extremist groups, is by far the worst it’s been in modern
times. In the past six years, the United States has added 21 names to
its list of foreign terrorist organizations: all but one of them radical Muslim
groups. That’s more than the previous 10 years combined. At the same time, the
number of terrorist acts has shattered previous records. Experts predict data
for 2014, which is still being compiled, will likely reflect more than 15,000
terrorist attacks: a vast increase over 2013—which was already the deadliest
year for global terrorism since data was first collected in 1970. (Obama tells
troops: ‘The world is better, safer, more peaceful.’ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/26/obama-tells-troops-world-better-safer-more-peacefu/
~Bob)
Excerpt: Regular readers of FrontPage and Jihad Watch will
not be as impressed. For years they have understood the link between jihadism
and Islam. ... For all the differences among tribal peoples, the components of
this mentality are consistent, from the ancient Gauls and Germans Caesar
conquered and the Vikings terrorizing much of Europe, to the American Indians
the U.S. Cavalry fought and the jihadist gangs rampaging in the Middle East . First, there is little notion of a common
humanity that transcends ethnicity or culture. ... Ignoring the tribal mentality
is as dangerous for our foreign policy as downplaying Islamic doctrine.
Muslim accused of
threatening to cut off heads of Jewish congregation denies allegations
If this was a Jew or a Christian at a Mosque, be
international front page news for a week. ~Bob
US not sure how it
will support Syrian rebels in battle
Excerpt: The U.S.
military is training and equipping 5,000 Syrian rebels to fight the Islamic
State in Iraq and Syria , but is
not yet sure if and how it could protect them in battle, according to the
Pentagon's top leaders.
*****
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five
terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Collapse-American-Republic-prevent/dp/1461122538/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1304815980&sr=1-5
For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. Hall’s
eleven books are listed here:
http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html.
His blog of political news and conservative comment is www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com.
Posts
All I can say is that it's time to get this POS what she deserves. We all need to sign this petition and pass it to everyone we know! http://investigatehillary.org
ReplyDeleteNixon also condoned an illegal break in by assholes such as yourself.
ReplyDelete