News of the Week for August 18th<\/sup>, 2013<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lerner\u2019s FEC Problem <\/a> Were 400 Surface-to-Air Missiles Stolen in Benghazi Attack?<\/a> More Fast and Furious Guns Recovered in Mexico<\/a> WH Tried to Interfere with WaPo’s NSA Story<\/a> <\/p>\n If Democrats Like Women, Why Do They Try To Disarm Them?<\/a> Colorado\u2019s Recall Elections Turn Into a Legal Mess <\/a> Request for gun permits in Newtown set to double last year’s numbers: police <\/a> Colorado Senators Suffer Another Legal Setback In Recall Challenge<\/a> <\/p>\n Interior Secretary: I don’t want any climate-change deniers in my department<\/a> Most Geoscientists Reject Global Warming Theory<\/a> <\/p>\n Reid says Obamacare just a step toward eventual single-payer system <\/a> Dems using Obamacare as pathway to single-payer<\/a> Yet Another White House Obamacare Delay: Out-Of-Pocket Caps Waived Until 2015<\/a> Brain surgeon ‘lied to patient’ about removing her tumour <\/a> Obamacare provision: “Forced” home inspections<\/a> States raise privacy concerns over health law navigators <\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Reggie Love: Obama Played Cards During Osama Raid; ‘I Can\u2019t Watch This Entire Thing,’ Obama Said<\/a> Air Force Veteran Relieved of Duties for Disagreeing with Homosexuality<\/a> <\/p>\n Politico Stealth-Deletes Headline Critical of ObamaCare Event<\/a> Newark Mayor Cory Booker pocketed ‘confidential’ annual payouts from law firm while in office<\/a> North Carolina governor signs extensive Voter ID law<\/a> Drag Queens Perform at Air Force Base<\/a> USDA Wants \u2018Campus Ambassadors\u2019 to Talk Peers Out of 3 a.m. Taco Bell<\/a> So We\u2019ve Got a Little Kid Praying TO Barack Obama Now<\/a> Cory Booker\u2019s Wild Hype-to-Accomplishment Ratio <\/a> New York Health Department trying to cover up bedbug problem at its own headquarters<\/a> Common Core: 3 x 4=11 <\/a> More On Common Core Math <\/a> Maryland Election Official Ignores Dead Voters on Rolls<\/a> \u2018Bias\u2019 Against SSM?<\/a> The White House Thinks Terrifying Overreaction to Rodeo Clown Appropriate<\/a> It Isn\u2019t About A Clown: Missouri\u2019s History Of Attacking Dissent <\/a> The Coming Hillarycult? <\/a> Reince Priebus: Romney\u2019s \u201cself-deportation\u201d quote was \u201cracist\u201d and \u201chorrific\u201d<\/a> The Five Pillars of Islam \u2014 in Kansas<\/a> How Franklin Roosevelt Devastated Black Sharecroppers<\/a> Sen. Rand Paul\u2019s summer break includes performing free eye surgery<\/a> Something Evil This Way Comes With Obama\u2019s New Labor Secretary <\/a> #SolidarityIsForWhiteWomen hashtag unleashes bitter intra-feminist racial grievances<\/a> The Dems Rally Their Legions of Haters for 2014<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Uber: Capitalism hits the streets<\/a> The Top-Secret Tax-Reform Debate <\/a> Cisco to Lay Off 4,000 Workers<\/a> How The SEIU & Union Front Groups Want To Occupy Your Big Mac <\/a> What Corporations Spend Their Cash On<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Naval Buildup in Asia\u2019s Game of Thrones<\/a> ‘Dying’ Russia’s Birth Rate Is Now Higher Than The United States’<\/a> Hours after First Nuclear Sub, India Unveils First Home-Built Aircraft Carrier<\/a> South Korea Joins Asia\u2019s Naval Arms Race<\/a> The Nile Runs Red<\/a> Egypt\u2019s Coptic Church announces support for army, police<\/a> M, F or Blank: ‘Third Gender’ Official in Germany from November<\/a> <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Barbarians at the Campus Gates <\/a> Low Wages Can’t Be Solved By Turning Businesses Into Social Service Agencies<\/a> Technocrats and Populists: Who Trusts the People?<\/a> Are We Serious About Education?<\/a> There Is Only Gender<\/a> The Golden Showers State<\/a> 11 Liberal Rules for Racism in America<\/a> Our Postmodern Angst <\/a> Taken<\/a> John Kerry: Boy Howdy, This Newfangled Internet Machine Sure Makes It Harder to Govern People<\/a> Disagreement as \u2018Harassment\u2019? @StephHerold Says Tell the FBI<\/a> Liberals Reverse Survival of the Fittest Through Owl Genocide<\/a> Obama\u2019s unconstitutional steps worse than Nixon\u2019s<\/a> Be Afraid. The GOP\u2019s Plan To Lose The House<\/a> \u201cWe Don\u2019t Have 10 Trillion People\u201d<\/a> Under Primary Threat? Go Shoot Something<\/a> Sensitive Clowns: The Erosion of Free Speech<\/a>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/impeachreno.org\/politicalhat\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/Newsboy.jpg\" "\\"News")
<\/a>
\n<\/p>\n\n
<\/a>Obama Scandals<\/h1>\n
\nDid she illegally disclose information to the FEC?<\/p>\n
\nAre we still talking about Benghazi? Didn\u2019t Miss Transparency say this was old news? Well, maybe this will jog her memory.<\/p>\n
\nMore guns from the disastrous federal gun-walking program known as \u201cOperation Fast and Furious\u201d have been recovered in Mexico<\/p>\n
\nThe Washington Post’s article detailing the fourth amendment abuses by the NSA got some push back from the administration who attempted to “edit” the article before publication.<\/p>\n<\/a>Gun Rights<\/h1>\n
\nThe Left\u2019s current focus on \u201cstand your ground\u201d laws is intended to obscure the fact that what liberals really want to do is abolish the concept of self-defense; or, at any rate, self-defense with a firearm. That objective was made crystal clear in this exchange between Chris Matthews and Mark Glaze, the executive director of Michael Bloomberg\u2019s anti-gun organization, the deceptively-named Mayors Against Illegal Guns. Matthews asked Glaze whether a man wielding an ax handle should be considered to be \u201carmed\u201d for purposes of self-defense with a firearm<\/p>\n
\nThe good news for conservatives in Colorado\u2019s two recall elections is that they\u2019re still on. The bad news is that recent judicial decisions have made a hash of the rules.<\/p>\n
\nPolice said the Connecticut town \u2014 where 26 students and six staffers were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School during gunman Adam Lanza’s massacre \u2014 has already had 211 permit requests this year, a number far above the 171 requested in 2012 and the 99 in 2011.<\/p>\n
\nSupporters of embattled Colorado Senators John Morse and Angela Giron suffered another legal setback this week when District Judge McGahey ruled against mail ballots mandated by HB1303, the recent election reform law championed by Giron and Morse, because it conflicted with the State Constitution.<\/p>\n<\/a>Hide the Decline<\/h1>\n
Environment &
\n“Green Energy”<\/h2>\n
\nBuried in a lengthy Washington Post article about President Obama\u2019s environmental policy is an illuminating anecdote about just how debatable the administration views climate change \u2014 namely, not at all<\/p>\n
\nThe argument from authority is the only argument climate alarmists are willing to make these days\u2013when is the last time you saw one of them sharing a podium with a climate realist?\u2013so this survey, reported by James Taylor of Forbes represents a significant nail in the alarmist coffin<\/p>\n<\/a>Obamacare<\/h1>\n
Government in Healthcare<\/h2>\n
\nIn just about seven weeks, people will be able to start buying Obamacare-approved insurance plans through the new health care exchanges.<\/p>\n
\nHarry Reid stated on Friday that Obamacare was just a step in the direction of a single-payer health care system<\/p>\n
\nFirst, there was the delay of Obamacare\u2019s Medicare cuts until after the election. Then there was the delay of the law\u2019s employer mandate. Then there was the announcement, buried in the Federal Register, that the administration would delay enforcement of a number of key eligibility requirements for the law\u2019s health insurance subsidies, relying on the \u201chonor system\u201d instead. Now comes word that another costly provision of the health law\u2014its caps on out-of-pocket insurance costs\u2014will be delayed for one more year.<\/p>\n
\nMedical tribunal hears that woman was told her tumour had been removed when it had not<\/p>\n
\n\u201cClearly, any family may be visited by federally paid agents for almost any reason.\u201d
\nAccording to an Obamacare provision millions of Americans will be targeted.<\/p>\n
\nBondi said that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is making it easier for someone to be hired as a so-called navigator, cutting back on background checks and eliminating a fingerprinting requirement, which could make it easier for a person\u2019s private information to fall into the wrong hands.<\/p>\n<\/a>War & Terror<\/h1>\n
\nReggie Love says he and President Obama played cards during the Osama bin Laden raid, and that the president told him, “I can’t watch this entire thing.”<\/p>\n
\nA 19-year veteran of the Air Force said he was relieved of his duties after he disagreed with his openly gay commander when she wanted to severely punish an instructor who had expressed religious objections to homosexuality.<\/p>\n<\/a>National<\/h1>\n
\nWithout noting what change has been made (there is a generic timestamp about an update), what had been a Sunday headline that correctly noted just how catastrophic a pro-ObamaCare event in Centreville, Virginia, had gone, is now a much more positive headline about how the ObamaCare “message war” has gone local.<\/p>\n
\nCory Booker pocketed \u201cconfidential\u201d annual payouts from his former law firm while serving as Newark mayor.<\/p>\n
\nNorth Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory (R) on Monday signed into law one of the nation\u2019s most wide-ranging Voter ID laws.<\/p>\n
\nThe Obama Regime has made it clear that Christians are no longer welcome in the US Air Force (e.g., here and here). Drag queens on the other hand\u2026<\/p>\n
\nThe Agriculture Department is recruiting college campus \u201cambassadors\u201d to try to wipe the scourge of 3 a.m. Taco Bell from dorms and make students who often live on ramen noodles eat healthier.<\/p>\n
\nObama\u2019s iconography is still producing a cult around President Fore! with his 41% approval rating and his reset-reset with Russia.<\/p>\n
\nCory Booker has the largest hype-to-accomplishment ratio of anybody on the political scene since\u2026 well, since a guy who had been in the U.S. Senate for two years decided to run for president.<\/p>\n
\nThe Health Department is trying to sweep a bedbug problem at its shimmering Long Island City headquarters under the rug, sources told The Post.<\/p>\n
\nThis remarkable and very brief video clip shows what appears to be a teacher-training session for the controversial Common Core, our new de facto, Obama-imposed national curriculum. In it, the instructor says it\u2019s alright if a student says 3 x 4=11. What matters, the instructor says, is not the right answer, but a good explanation of the \u201creasoning\u201d behind whatever answer the child chooses to give.<\/p>\n
\nAs a follow up to that amazing video in which it\u2019s OK to answer 3 x 4=11, here\u2019s some context. The source of the video is identified here (a community orientation session in Chicago). For more on how \u201cfuzzy math\u201d is encouraged by the Common Core, here\u2019s an explanation at the website of the Indiana protesters who first objected.<\/p>\n
\nMaryland state election official Mary Cramer Wagner has been told about dead voters on Maryland rolls, she just isn\u2019t going to do anything about it. So she tells the Southern Maryland News.<\/p>\n
\nA proposed law in San Antonio would set a troubling precedent.<\/p>\n
\nA silly controversy surrounding a Missouri rodeo clown\u2019s decision to don a mask of President Barack Obama before taunting bulls to attack him \u2013 a traditional practice in American rodeo culture \u2013 became frighteningly serious on Wednesday. Rather than push back against the overwrought response from some Obama supporters, offended by the mockery of the president, the White House has tacitly condoned their response. Clown-gate is no longer a laughing matter.<\/p>\n
\nMissouri has a history of persecuting its residents for disagreement with Barack Obama. Clowngate isn\u2019t the first assault against free speech. Let\u2019s review.<\/p>\n
\nThe Left may succeed in turning Clinton into a cultural icon in the Obama mold.<\/p>\n
\nMitt Romney repeatedly used the term during the Republican primary campaign to talk about how his immigration enforcement policies would lead to unauthorized immigrants leaving the U.S. of their own accord, rather than needing to be deported.<\/p>\n
\nThe questions presents themselves: First, why would a school in the middle of the Bible Belt present something like this? Second, will they give the same pride of place to Christianity? Judaism? Mormonism? Zoroastrianism? Third, where is the ACLU? They have been quick to sue over so-called establishment clause issues in school in the past, so why are they not hammering Minneha Core Knowledge Magnet Elementary School for this outrageous promotion of religion?<\/p>\n
\nIn the annals of disastrous liberal economic policies, Franklin Roosevelt\u2019s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which paid landowners not to grow crops, ranks very high. It violated what David Henderson calls \u201cPillar of Economic Wisdom #9: The only way to increase a nation\u2019s real income is to increase its real output.\u201d Deliberately reducing output, as Roosevelt did on this and other occasions, is profoundly stupid.<\/p>\n
\nSqueezed on his summer schedule between meeting with the Paducah Rotary Club and making an appearance at the Kentucky Farm Bureau Country Ham Breakfast, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., will be performing eye surgery on his constituents for free.<\/p>\n
\nThanks to Mitch McConnell and his fellow Senate Republicans giving in to Harry Reid\u2019s \u201cnuclear\u201d threat last month, America\u2019s employers\u2013large and small\u2013and their consultants and attorneys will be shocked when Obama\u2019s new labor secretary Thomas Perez releases the Department of Labor\u2019s proposed \u201cpersuader\u201d regulations in November.<\/p>\n
\nSaturday Night Card Game \u2014 then they went after #BlackPowerIsForBlackMen and things really got bitter.<\/p>\n
\nThis email arrived yesterday from MoveOn, whose communications are generally indistinguishable from those of the Democratic Party. The subject line was \u201cNew York Times stunner.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a>Economy
\n& Taxes<\/h1>\n
\nIt used to be said that the business of America is business. The rest of the world marveled how the private and public sectors in the United States cooperated to create an ideal environment for the entrepreneurial spirit to thrive. Our nation surpassed Great Britain to become the world\u2019s top industrial power in 1890 and never looked back. The U.S. economy is still the largest in the world thanks to a uniquely American competitive ethic that rewards effort, innovation and risk-taking. Here, unlike anywhere else in the world, anyone could become anything they wanted with hard work and ingenuity. That\u2019s the American Way. That way, however, is under attack as government supplants business as the motivating force in the U.S. economy.<\/p>\n
\nCongress is flirting with the possibility of doing something responsible, simplifying the tax code by eliminating some benefits such as those related to mortgages and property taxes. In the Senate, various grandees of both parties are pitching ideas to finance committee chairman Max Baucus (D., Mont.).<\/p>\n
\nCisco plans to lay off 4,000 workers beginning this quarter, the networking giant announced Wednesday. The cuts amount to 5 percent of its workforce.<\/p>\n
\nWith union bosses once again clamoring that they are \u2018in crisis,\u2019 union bosses are looking to expand their membership into areas that have been traditionally immune to unions.<\/p>\n
\nWhile bullish talking heads are quick to point out that corporate earnings have never been higher, they tend to get very quiet the second corporate cash flow generation is mentioned. The reason is simple: where non-GAAP earnings, much of which are vaporware such as exclusions and other adjustment involving addbacks for “non-recurring” events such as Cisco’s now annual mass termination announcement are indeed at nosebleed levels, actual corporate cash generation is a shadow if its former self which peaked in 2007 and has never been retraced.<\/p>\n<\/a>International<\/h1>\n
\nIndia recently passed a major milestone in the development of its blue-water navy: The country\u2019s first nuclear-powered submarine successfully activated its reactor yesterday. As The Hindu reports, the sub\u2014named the Arihant\u2014is the first of four, all of which of the subs will carry K-15 missiles which can be launched from underwater and carry a nuclear warhead and hit targets up to 700 kilometers away.<\/p>\n
\nThis was not the headline that the Center for Disease Control\u2019s National Center for Health Statistics gave its recent release of provisional fertility data for 2012. However, if you compare the most recent CDC data with Rosstat data on Russian births you see that, for the first time in a very long time, in 2012 Russia\u2019s birth rate actually exceeded that of the United States. This is, to put it mildly, a significant reversal from the not too distant past when the US had a birth rate that was as much as 75% higher than Russia\u2019s. As you can see, the speed and scale of the convergence is impressive<\/p>\n
\nIndia unveiled its first domestically produced aircraft carrier on Monday, just hours after turning on the reactor of the country\u2019s first nuclear-powered submarine. The 850-foot, 37,500-ton INS Vikrant is built of local steel, the \u201dcrowning glory\u201d of India\u2019s navy, a vice admiral said.<\/p>\n
\nNot to be outdone by the neighbors, many of which have launched powerful new naval assets recently, South Korea introduced a brand new \u201cstate of the art\u201d submarine, the Kim Jwa-jin. The 1,800-ton vessel, South Korea\u2019s fourth, was christened by President Park Geun-hye, the Defense Minister, and other senior military officials.<\/p>\n
\nYesterday’s confrontation between Egypt’s army and the Muslim Brotherhood may only be the beginning.<\/p>\n
\nEgypt\u2019s Orthodox Coptic Church announced on Friday its support for the military and security forces in their fight against what it called \u201cgroups of armed violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nGermany is set to become the first country in Europe to introduce a third, “indeterminate” gender designation on birth certificates. The European Union, which is attempting to coordinate anti-discrimination efforts across member states, is lagging behind on the issue.<\/p>\n<\/a>Opinion<\/h1>\n
\nWhy colleges cave to the demands of student activists<\/p>\n
\nMany commentators on the left, labor activists, and sympathetic people of all stripes have bemoaned the stagnation in wages at the bottom of the labor market. Wages in the bottom half of the income distribution have not kept up with inflation since 2006. Workers in the bottom 20% of earners have done even worse than the average for the rest of the bottom half of earners.<\/p>\n
\nI appreciate Ezra Klein’s engagement with libertarian populism, and what he views as a fraudulent perspective from the populists on the left and right. But I have a few issues with his analysis. First, I’ve seen nothing from the small cadre of libertarian populist writers out there that suggests life in America’s economy today is a zero sum game, or that bigness alone is the cause of all ills. The problem is not the bigness of the corporate Bigs — it’s that they have partnered with Big Government to insulate themselves from competition, socialize risk, and warp the marketplace in their favor by building “bigger moats”, to use Jamie Dimon’s phrase, around themselves. This exacerbates many existing problems and, in fact, inhibits the kind of economic growth that takes us out of zero-sum politics.<\/p>\n
\nTwo recent events — one on the east coast and one on the west coast — raise painful questions about whether we are really serious when we say that we want better education for minority children.<\/p>\n
\nYou might look at my Caucasian features and wonder why I am claiming to be an African American. I may not be a natural descendent of African American lineage, but I feel black and have thus decided to identify as African American. Since I identify as African American, I am African American, and you must accept me as such. Because I claim my identity as an African American, I demand that the law recognize me as such and afford me all the rights and obligations of that ethnicity.<\/p>\n
\nNow I\u2019m about to write the most goddam patriotic thing ever written in history, so brace yourselves. America is the greatest country in the history of this planet, and if a man (for example) wants to go to a doctor to get pumped full of hormones and have his gennies cut off and replaced with an ersatz vagina, that person is still my fellow American and entitled to the same legal protections as everyone else. If a transgender person is assaulted, the person who carried out the attack should go to jail. At the same time, I have problems of my own, and it\u2019s not my obligation, morally, professionally or otherwise, to worry about the sensitivities of people who actually think that God or nature made some sort of colossal mistake with their bodies. See? That\u2019s tolerance.<\/p>\n
\nWhen America was a racist country, Democrats were primarily the ones engaged in racism. However, now that racism has been largely relegated to the fringes of American society (the KKK, the New Black Panthers, the Nation of Islam, La Raza, MEChA, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, American Nazi Party, etc.), the Democrats are constantly wagging their fingers about it. Of course naturally, given the racist history of the Democrat Party, liberals have managed to rig the rules in order to benefit themselves and hurt their political opponents. That’s a pretty neat albeit despicable trick that they’ve managed to pull off.<\/p>\n
\nIn our unheroic age, victimhood has replaced valiant struggle.<\/p>\n
\nUnder civil forfeiture, Americans who haven\u2019t been charged with wrongdoing can be stripped of their cash, cars, and even homes. Is that all we\u2019re losing?<\/p>\n
\nHe is right, I suppose, and I guess I shouldn’t overread into the remark; and yet I can’t help but think, like any nobleman, he rues the day Guttenberg created his cursed invention and made the commoners less pliable and acquiescent than they had been.<\/p>\n
\nTalking back to a Queer Feminist is a now evidently a hate crime or something, and Badger Pundit chronicles how my reply to a \u201creproductive justice\u201d activist made Sara Alcid a heroic martyr in the \u201cWar on Women.\u201d Disagreement is hate, because feminism.<\/p>\n
\nIronically, liberal proponents of Darwinism have worked a miracle of evil by reversing a natural process at the heart of Darwin\u2019s theories: survival of the fittest. Their all-smothering welfare state provides financial incentives for the least fit to produce as many offspring as possible; whereas the taxpayers who finance their counterproductive lives of fecund sloth cannot afford many children and are too busy working to pay their taxes to raise them. Consequently, we are becoming genetically debased: conspicuously less industrious and less intelligent with each generation as we de-evolve into a species resembling an infernal cross between domestic pigs and tapeworms.<\/p>\n
\nPresident Obama\u2019s increasingly grandiose claims for presidential power are inversely proportional to his shriveling presidency. Desperation fuels arrogance as, barely 200 days into the 1,462 days of his second term, his pantry of excuses for failure is bare, his domestic agenda is nonexistent and his foreign policy of empty rhetorical deadlines and red lines is floundering. And at last week\u2019s news conference he offered inconvenience as a justification for illegality.<\/p>\n
\nMatthew Continetti has a post up at the Free Beacon entitled Be Afraid: The Democratic plan to take back the House. In it he argues the House GOP majority in danger because the Democrats, led by Obama, are playing for keeps and have already begun their campaig. He\u2019s also worried that conservatives are being complacent in thinking that the electorate will be like 2010\u2019s and not 2008 or 2012\u2019s.<\/p>\n
\nMy old partner in crime Ken Green has one of his typically delicious op-eds out today in the Financial Post of Canada, commenting on the viral video \u201cThe Story of Stuff\u201d that is all the rage among the green left (but I repeat myself). It\u2019s the usual Malthusianism in fancy dress combined with big corporation conspiracy-paranoia about how corporations are all out to poison us, because somehow it is good for the bottom line to kill off all your customers.<\/p>\n
\nWhen you\u2019re a Republican incumbent facing a primary challenge, there\u2019s only one thing to do: go shoot something. With lots of press.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cControlling what people say is very close to controlling what people think.\u201d<\/p>\n