Update
I received notice today that my ethics complaint against
Dane County Sheriff David Mahoney and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley for illegally
using his uniform and patrol car in a political ad will be April 13. The
election is April 7. Despite the complaint, I'm told the ad is still running
and the photo below is still on her website. I assume they will tell him don't
do it again, meaning they get clean away with breaking the ethics law for
political purposes.
No county official or county employee shall use or attempt
to use his or her public office or employment to influence or gain unlawful:
benefits, advantages or privileges, personally or for others. The use of county equipment and property
including, but not limited to, county owned
vehicles, cameras, projectors, audio systems, copy machines, fax
machines, telephones and uniforms is
prohibited for use for both partisan and non-partisan political activity.
Supreme Court
Administrative Rules (I understand they have the force of law): SCR 60.03 A judge shall avoid
impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge's activities.
(1) A judge shall respect and comply with the law and
shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the
integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.
Comment: Public confidence in the judiciary is eroded by
irresponsible or improper conduct of judges. A judge must avoid all impropriety
and appearance of impropriety. ... Actual improprieties under this standard include violations
of law, court rules or other specific provisions of this chapter.
General News and Comment
RFRA: Not Like Jim Crow Laws at All. They forced tolerant
black-friendly businesses to be intolerant. By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416402/rfra-not-jim-crow-laws-all-jonah-goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416402/rfra-not-jim-crow-laws-all-jonah-goldberg
Excerpt: It’s the Jim Crow law of
our time.” That exact quote, or one very much like it, has come from the mouths
of reporters, editorialists, activists, corporate CEOs, and, of course,
politicians, all because of Indiana’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.
(RFRA) The other day I wrote a column arguing that it’s ridiculous to compare Indiana ’s RFRA to Jim
Crow laws. It was obvious, at least to me, that lots of people didn’t really
understand what RFRA was. What I failed to appreciate is that perhaps even more
people didn’t really know what Jim Crow laws were. After the Civil War, the
victorious North, led by the fledgling Republican party, brought civil rights,
including economic rights, to Southern blacks by a series of legislative
“Reconstruction” acts — hence, the “Reconstruction era.”
Take Out Your Dictionaries. By Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File
Take Out Your Dictionaries. By Jonah Goldberg, The Goldberg File
Megalothymia is a term coined by Francis Fukuyama. It’s a
common mistake to think Fukuyama
simply took Plato’s concept of “thumos” or “thymos” and put a “mega” in front
of it because we all know from the Transformers and Toho Productions that “mega” makes everything more
cool. But that’s not the case. Megalothymia is a neologism of megalomania (an
obsession with power and the ability to dominate others) and thymos, which
Plato defined as the part of the soul concerned with spiritedness, passion, and
a desire for recognition and respect. Fukuyama
defined megalothymia as a compulsive need to feel superior to others.
And boy howdy, do we have a problem with megalothymia in America today.
Everywhere you look there are moral bullies utterly uninterested in
conversation, introspection, or persuasion who are instead hell-bent on
grinding down people they don’t like to make themselves feel good. If you took
the megalothymia out of Twitter, millions of trolls would throw their
smartphones into the ocean. Make no mistake: This is a problem across the
ideological spectrum, because it is a problem of human nature in general and
modernity in particular. But in this context, it’s a special malady of elite
liberalism.
11 Teachers Found
Guilty in Biggest Cheating Scandal in U.S.
Excerpt: Here is your teacher Union legacy. This is what
happens when you let government schools have control. Check it out: Atlanta
cheating scandal teachers go to cells in hand-cuffs: Eleven educators face up
to 20 years in prison for inflating their students’ test scores to get bonus
money for their schools . . . and for themselves
I'm Shocked! The IRS has an ethics office? Ex-IRS
ethics office lawyer disbarred for … ethics violations. By Stephen Dinan
Excerpt: A lawyer who worked in the IRS ethics
office was disbarred Thursday by the District of
Columbia Court of Appeals, which concluded she misappropriated a
client’s funds from a case she handled in private practice, broke a number of
ethics rules and showed “reckless disregard for the truth” in misleading a
disbarment panel looking into the matter.
The lawyer, Takisha Brown,
reportedly had bragged that she would never be punished because her boss would
protect her, but an IRS spokesman
said Wednesday that she was no longer an employee at the agency.
This Culture War
We're In. By Daniel Greenfield
Excerpt: How are wars won? To win a war you don't need to
kill every soldier on the other side. What you need to do is destroy the other
army as an organized force. You destroy the ability of the officers to command
and the morale of the men. You destroy their perception of the worth of their
side and of their own self-worth. All wars are culture wars. To win you must
destroy the values of the other side. (That is one reason why we're losing to
Islam no matter how many times we beat them on the battlefield.) You must
destroy their sense of purpose and the values instilled in them to break them
as an organization. That is what the left has been doing to us. (What a great,
insightful essay this is. I guess I was aware of some of this, but never
realized the full picture in the sharp focus that Greenfield has given it. Plenty to think
about. --Del )
Judge orders California
Excerpt: A federal judge on Thursday ordered California 's corrections
department to provide a transgender inmate with sex reassignment surgery, the
first time such an operation has been ordered in the state. U.S. District Judge
Jon Tigar in San Francisco
ruled that denying the surgery to 51-year-old Michelle-Lael Norsworthy violates
her constitutional rights. Her birth name is Jeffrey Bryan Norsworthy. (So now
the taxpayers of CA will pay the serious expense of sex change operation and of
course lifetime hormone therapy for this convicted killer, an operation and
costs that this person could never have afforded on their own in private life. I
do not understand at all the rationale for giving convicts elective medical
procedures. Decent medical care, yes, that's a responsibility we have as
civilized people. But expensive elective stuff just doesn't make any sense at
all to me, and why the taxpayers, who are already paying plenty for keeping
people in jail, with decent conditions, good nutrition, weight rooms,
libraries, etc, should have to pay for stuff many of them could not pay for
themselves, is impossible to rationalize, at least for me. Del )
Gun News
Gun Ownership and
Concealed Carry Surging in Black Community. By Awr Hawkins
Excerpt: On April 2, NPR reported that concealed carry
permits and gun ownership for self-defense is surging in the black community. This
marks a seismic shift toward guns in the black community, as more and more
individuals realize the safety of their lives and the lives of their families
is literally in their own hands. According
to NPR, this positive view of gun ownership in the black community has
jumped almost 50 percent in two year’s time. They cite a PEW Research Poll
showing “54 percent of blacks now see gun ownership as a good thing,” which is
up from the “29 percent” who saw it that way two years ago. (They know that the
vast majority of blacks who are murdered are killed by black thugs and want to
protect themselves. I suppose that makes them racist. ~Bob)
Excerpt: Police say that's when the homeowner and men got
into a scuffle. We're told a woman also living at the residence came downstairs
and fired several shots at the suspects.
Obamacare/Government Healthcare News
Teachers Union Says Obamacare Hurts Women And Old People But
Totally Supports It Anyway. By Eric Owens
Excerpt: The National Education Association, America ’s
largest teachers union, released a report on Thursday which is critical of an
excise tax on high-cost health plans. The tax is required under the Affordable
Care Act. The steep excise tax is intended to burden people who enjoy generous
health plans. However, the NEA’s report asserts, the excise tax actually tends
to burden women, older people and people who live in places where the cost of
living is already high.
Undocumented Democrat News
Illegal Immigrant
Thrown in Jail After His SICK Plan for 14-Year-Old Was Discovered
Excerpt: An illegal immigrant recently received a 10-year
sentence in federal prison for attempting to transport a 14-year-old across
state lines “with the intent to have sexual relations.” He was arrested at the Jacksonville , Fla. , airport
while waiting for the child to arrive from Las Vegas . When questioned, he admitted that
he had arrived in the United States by way of a smuggler who helped him cross the border
from Mexico into Texas in exchange for
$700.
"You're Greener than Gore" News
Worth Reading California
Excerpt: We do know two things.
First, Brown and other Democratic leaders will never concede that their own
opposition in the 1970s (when California had about half its present population)
to the completion of state and federal water projects, along with their more
recent allowance of massive water diversions for fish and river enhancement,
left error in a state now home to 40 million people. Second, the mandated
restrictions will bring home another truth as lawns die, pools empty, and
boutique gardens shrivel in the coastal corridor from La Jolla to Berkeley : the very idea of a 20-million-person corridor
along the narrow, scenic Pacific Ocean and
adjoining foothills is just as unnatural as “big” agriculture’s Westside
farming. The weather, climate, lifestyle, views, and culture of coastal living
may all be spectacular, but the arid Los Angeles
and San Francisco Bay-area megalopolises must rely on massive water transfers
from the Sierra Nevada, Northern California ,
or out-of-state sources to support their unnatural ecosystems. (Yep, 40,000,000
people now living in a state which is actually mostly a desert, but using water
as if there is an infinite, readily available supply. Washing cars, watering
lawns, doing laundry daily while using shower towels in quantity, watering all
those golf courses, and so many other ways of pouring millions of gallons of
water out every day. The major aquifer is down by hundreds of feet, the land
itself is changing as a result, but the use of water just goes on for the
moment like there is no tomorrow. But tomorrow is just about here, and
things are going to get interesting in CA fairly soon. Will they kill off
agriculture so people can still shower twice a day and wash their cars and
water their lawns? That won't make any sense at all, since then the flow of
money from taxes on the produce and the jobs in the fields will go away, in a
state that isn't exactly flush with money and has lost too much industry and
too many jobs already. Will they build nuclear power plants to supply the
energy for monster desalinization plants on the coast to turn sea water into
fresh? Probably not, that's another topic that PC says cannot be discussed. So
what will happen? Damifino, but I bet it will get "interesting" and
there will be a lot of unhappy people one way or another. Congratulations to
those who back in those years when things might have been set up better, made
sure it didn't happen. --Del )
Don't cross the Ministry of Truth: Global Warming
Skeptics In Gov’t Stay Silent Under Obama. By Michael Bastasch
Excerpt: “There are skeptics in NASA and NOAA, a good
number. But they are quiet. They know in this administration, they don’t speak
out,” John Christy, a veteran climate scientist at the University
of Alabama in Huntsville , told AL.com. “These guys in government are not unbiased and
they have pressures from above,” echoed Roy Spencer, also a climate scientist
at UAH. “Those organizations, NASA and NOAA, they are part of the executive
branch. So the White House has some influence over what direction they go. The
heads are political appointees so you have political influence from the top
down on scientists. And that’s a problem.”
The Northeast's
Natural Gas Supply and Demand Problem
Excerpt: The cost of residential heating and cooling in the
Northeast is comparatively high. Fracking regulations and
outright bans are pushing entire industries out of densely populated
municipalities as well as entire states, such as New York , where the extraction technology
has met strong opposition at every level of government. Even the importation of
natural gas from other states, such as Pennsylvania — which remains very active
in tapping Marcellus shale deposits — is becoming difficult, with neighborhood
groups and city governments opposing pipelines and other forms of
infrastructure to support burgeoning energy demand. ... Crowded regions pining
for their power needs to be met are unwilling to make concessions for it, with
$700 million projects such as the Constitution Pipeline between Pennsylvania
and New York being put on hold. With less population density, Southern and
Midwestern states do not suffer from the congestion, which limits gas transfer.
Logically, New Englanders are overpaying for gas by $3.58 per thousand cubic
feet. This amount may seem trivial, but for long-term residents and businesses,
it represents a huge cost.
Obama Administration Report Overstates Wind Power's
Potential, Understates Costs and Limitations. BY Julian Morris
Excerpt: Cost of wind power generation more likely to fall
if wind is forced to compete in the market, far less so if it continues to
receive subsidies
Religion of Peace News
Worth Reading : Is ISIS Islamic, and Other "Foolish" Debates. By
Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Amarnath Amarasingam
Excerpt: "Do they think we are Jewish now? lol,"
responded one ISIS fighter in Syria
when asked for his thoughts on the current public debate about whether the
Islamic State is actually Islamic. He went on to make an argument, as many of
these fighters often do when interviewed, that not only is the Islamic
State Islamic but it is the purest and most pristine form of Islam,
the kind most in line with what God and His Prophet had intended all along.
Another ISIS fighter from South
Africa , when asked how
he knew that the Islamic State was legitimate, remarked that "I
just used my brain." "The truth is never endorsed by the
masses," he said. "It's always the smallest groups that are firm in
truth. Migration becomes compulsory when a caliphate is established on the
foundations of Sharia Law, and Muslims around the world have no valid excuse to
remain amongst the infidels in enemy lands."
Geopolitics/ The
Naked Truth About The Lausanne
Excerpt: The same day the Lausanne
agreement was signed, an Iranian general said that "Israel 's destruction is
non-negotiable." The P5+1 and Iran
announced a framework of understanding that U.S. officials told the Associated
Press "would open the
path to a final phase of nuclear negotiations." This is not
an "agreement" -- it's an affirmation that both sides will
keep talking, and a catalog of our deeply alarming concessions that contradict
every pledge the
President made to ensure Iran would abide by
five U.N. resolutions, and do a deal to "end their nuclear
program." Let me be clear: An actual nuclear agreement based on the
framework revealed today would endanger not only Israel
and America ,
but the entire world.
Obama’s Nuclear Deal
With Iran
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/dubowitz-mark-obamas-nuclear-deal-with-iran-puts-the-worlds-safety-at-risk/
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/dubowitz-mark-obamas-nuclear-deal-with-iran-puts-the-worlds-safety-at-risk/
Excerpt: On April 2 officials announced they had agreed
on “key parameters” for the long-anticipated nuclear deal
between the United States ,
its allies, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Coincidentally, just as the Obama
administration’s Middle East policy is in complete meltdown,
with Sunni and Iranian-backed Shiite extremists murdering their way through Iraq , Syria ,
and Yemen .
Worried yet? The Obama administration isn’t.
What else is Iran
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/ali-alfoneh-what-else-is-iran-hiding/
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/ali-alfoneh-what-else-is-iran-hiding/
Excerpt: We don’t know all that has transpired in the talks
on Iran ’s nuclear program
being conducted in Switzerland ,
but we do know that the White House has shied away from a potentially
paralyzing issue: the “possible
military dimensions” — the PMDs — of the regime’s program. As Olli
Heinonen, a former No. 2 at the International Atomic Energy Agency, has
warned, outsiders really can have no idea where and how fast the mullahs could
build a nuclear weapon unless they know what Iranian engineers have done in the
past. Without “go anywhere, anytime” access for IAEA inspectors and a thorough
accounting of Tehran ’s
weaponization research, we will be blind to the clerics’ nuclear capabilities. And
one of the most important issues — probable North Korean nuclear cooperation
with the Islamic Republic — deserves special scrutiny. This disturbing
partnership casts serious doubt on the Obama administration’s hope that
President Hassan Rouhani and his team have any intention of limiting Iran ’s nuclear
ambitions.
Report: Islam To
Become World’s Majority Religion By 2070. By Thomas D. Williams, PhD
Excerpt: On April 2, the Pew Research Center released
its report on
“The Future of
World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050,” which explores not
only demographic trends, but also the underlying causes behind them. The study
projects the number of Christians as a percentage of the global population
remaining stable for the next several decades, while the number of Muslims—both
in absolute figures and as a percentage of the population—increases steadily.
Oppressive View of
Women Came with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Islam Conversion. By John Nolte
Excerpt: The relationship abruptly changed when Lew asked
her to start calling
him Kareem. He had begun a conversion to what would become a lifelong
commitment to Islam. Immediately, he demanded she stop working. “A conservative
man at heart who was getting more so by the day,” Grier writes, “he didn’t want
to see his girlfriend working.” At the time Grier was working as a dancer in a
nightclub. The type of work she was doing wasn’t the only issue. He did not
want her working at all, and he also wanted her to convert to Islam. His faith
told Jabbar he could date a non-Muslim, but not marry one. Her heart set on an
education, she didn’t want to move to Milwaukee .
“If we get married, you don’t have to get an education,” was his reply,
according to Grier. “I’ll take care of you.”
Doomsday: Stopping a Middle East Nuclear Arms Race. By David Andrew Weinberg
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/david-weinberg-doomsday-stopping-a-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race/
http://defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/david-weinberg-doomsday-stopping-a-middle-east-nuclear-arms-race/
Excerpt: Imagine the imposition of financial sanctions on
the central bank of the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia Saudi
Arabia ’s oil production from being sold on
international markets. If these measures seem preposterous, it is because they
are. Yet American counter-proliferation policy in the Middle
East may be premised on implementing this bizarre, nightmarish
scenario.
[VIDEO] Find Out What
Happens When Muslim Bakeries Asked to Bake Gay Wedding
Excerpt: “None of those measures” that will move to scale
back Iran ’s
program “include closing any of our facilities,” Zarif said. “We will continue
enriching; we will continue research and development.” “Our heavy water reactor
will be modernized and we will continue the Fordow facility,” Zarif said. “We
will have centrifuges installed in Fordow, but not enriching.” The move to
allow Iran to keep
centrifuges at Fordow, a controversial onetime military site, has elicited
concern that Tehran
could ramp up its nuclear work with ease.
Excerpt: Mere hours after the US triumphantly announced a
framework deal with Iran over its nuclear program and subsequently released
a fact sheet, the Islamic regime charged that America
was lying about details of the agreement...Speaking on Thursday after the
agreement, Zarif claimed that upon the signing of a final agreement by the end
of June, "all US nuclear related secondary sanctions will be
terminated...." He added that Iran will be allow to sell
"enriched uranium" on the international market, "hopefully
making some money" from the sales. (Bolding mine. --Barb)
*****
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.
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