Hi all, sorry to barge in on Glenn’s site but my blog on Blogger has been hijacked and is no longer up for the moment. Hopefully, that will be fixed soon. Thanks to all of you who helped me find contacts at Blogger and who wrote Glenn with suggestions. If my blog is not up soon, my readers can find me here and at the PJM Tatler with further posts.
Archive for 2011
July 6, 2011
ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL UPDATE: Gunwalker: The ATF’s Kenneth Melson Blows the Whistle on the Justice Department. “In a blockbuster development in the Operation Fast & Furious gun-running scandal, Acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson secretly testified before House and Senate investigators on July 4 with his own personal lawyer present, former United States Attorney Richard Cullen, without the knowledge of the ATF or the Department of Justice. . . . Contrary to the Justice Department’s denials, according to Melson, ATF agents specifically witnessed transfers of weapons from straw purchasers to third parties without taking any further action.” Read the whole thing.
UPDATE: Reader Christopher Tolley writes: “My take is that the MSM will excoriate those viciously partisan, shoot-from-the-hip, renegade Republicans, Issa and Grassley, for obtaining Melson’s testimony in ‘secret’, and ignore the substance of what Melson actually said.”
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Obama really might have made it worse.
No, not that White House efforts at boosting the American economy and creating jobs and “winning the future” were merely inefficient or wasteful, which they certainly were. Even Obama finally seems to understand that. “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” he joked lamely at a meeting of his jobs council.
Rather, that the product of all the administration’s stimulating and regulating is an economy that’s in significantly worse competitive and productive shape than when Obama took the oath in January 2009. He was dealt a bad hand, to be sure – and then proceeded to play it badly. At least, that is what Republicans have been saying. “He didn’t cause the recession as we know,” presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in New Hampshire yesterday. “He didn’t make it better, he made things worse.”
Team Obama offers a different narrative, of course.
Of course. But the “regime uncertainty” has been a major problem, and they’ve continued to exacerbate it. Read the whole thing.
WASHINGTON IN DENIAL: “The contrast between some state governments — forced by reality into dealing with their huge budgetary problems — and the fantasy world of the feds has never been greater.”
J.E. DYER ON THE THOMAS BALL AFFAIR: The family law system performed exactly as intended—and a despairing father set himself aflame.
CASEY ANTHONY AND THE court of public opinion. “Being seen as despicable, of course, isn’t the same as being legally guilty.”
A. BARTON HINKLE: Why does the media keep downplaying the violence at left-wing protests? It’s all about the narrative.
AT AMAZON, it’s the warehouse deals.
WHY OBAMA REJECTED a short-term debt deal.
President Obama insisted yesterday that Congress reach a long-term budget deal, not a short-term “quick-fix” that could put the debt ceiling debt smack in the middle of the 2012 campaign next year. This is a major shift. Since January, the Obama administration has been calling for a “clean” debt limit hike to avoid economic “catastrophe.” As recently as two weeks ago the White House signaled they were open to a short-term deal. Now Obama’s position is that the deal must include reforms for Medicare, Medicaid and taxes, all to be completed by July 22. Why the monumental shift in position?
Obama wants to minimize how often Republicans in Congress can ask for spending cuts and maximize his own opportunities to seek tax hikes aka “revenue.”
No surprise there.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, WE’D BE HOLDING TERRORISTS WITHOUT TRIAL IN SECRET FACILITIES. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “A Somali man suspected of assisting al Qaeda was held abroad on a U.S. Navy ship for questioning for over two months without being advised of any legal rights, an administration official said.” (Via Gateway Pundit).
TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY? Bid To Tax Web Sales Fizzles . . . In Massachusetts. “The speaker and the governor have made it perfectly clear that they won’t support any new taxes.”
JOHN DICKERSON: “The president will hold a Twitter town hall today which reminded me of @annekornblut story of his 2500 word answer.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WOULD BE ATTACKING ACADEMIC FREEDOM: AND THEY WERE RIGHT! “Researchers who conduct oral history have no right to expect courts to respect confidentiality pledges made to interview subjects, according to a brief filed by the U.S. Justice Department on Friday. The brief further asserts that academic freedom is not a defense to protect the confidentiality of such documents.”
IN THE WAKE OF THAT ATF GUNRUNNING SCANDAL, BOB OWENS ASKS: The Assault Weapons Ban: How Silly Was It? (Part One). “With the Obama admin and a Washington Post editorial calling for its reinstatement — amidst a tie-in to the Gunwalker scandal — it’s worth revisiting the boneheaded law.”
POLITICO: Tea Party’s New Role Model: Mike Lee.
A DESPERATION MOVE THAT DIDN’T WORK: Oil Prices Climb Back to Pre-Reserve Release Levels. “Crude raced higher Tuesday as energy bulls pushed Nymex oil back toward the $100-a-barrel mark, prices last seen before world governments said they would release crude from their reserves last month.”
Note this take: “It would be like intervention in the currency markets in the 1980s. The intended purpose was to psychologically drive down prices and every time they intervened it almost expressed their desperation…it would be like putting gasoline on a burning fire.” Or crude oil, anyway.
BLOGGER BLEG: So the Insta-Wife is locked out of her blog account — suddenly Blogger just quit taking her password. The reset-password isn’t an option because the email she uses to sign in isn’t a good email anymore (yes, I know. . . ). What’s the best way to address this? Anybody got a way to get an actual person at Blogger? Since I haven’t used blogger in over 9 years, my own knowledge is kinda rusty. Anybody from Blogger reading this? If so, please drop me a line.
MICHAEL BARONE: Racial quotas, speech codes and the thought police. “It’s racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That’s the bottom line of a decision issued Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The case was brought by an organization called By Any Means Necessary to overturn a state constitutional amendment passed by a 58 percent majority of Michigan voters in November 2006.”
LOWER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: When Educators Cheat On Tests: “The results of a massive investigation in the government school system in Georgia, one which involved outside agencies such as the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), has revealed what everybody in the state knew. . . . Investigators name nearly 180 educators, including more than three dozen principals, as participants in cheating on state curriculum tests, officials said over the weekend.”
MEGAN MCARDLE: Spending Cuts, Now Or Never?
One thing that I hear over and over from my conservative interlocutors on the budget is that they need spending cuts right now because they just don’t trust the Democrats (or indeed the Republicans) to make spending cuts in the future. If they don’t get the cuts now, the reasoning goes, it will be “jam yesterday, and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.”
I certainly understand the worry, especially after Democrats and their own leadership pulled the cute trick of enacting a bunch of sham spending cuts in the last round of negotiations. But here’s the question: why do you think spending cuts now will be any more likely to stick than spending cuts tomorrow? Anything you enact now, under threat of the debt ceiling, can always be un-enacted tomorrow.
Oh, sure, default would make it pretty hard to borrow money to fund new spending. But what makes you think they won’t raise taxes to fund new spending instead? You cannot credibly bind future congresses to your will.
Yeah, not even the Constitution does a very good job of that.
CHANGE: The Hill: Senate postpones Libya authorization bill to focus on debt. “Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) canceled a vote on legislation authorizing U.S. military action in Libya after facing pressure from GOP lawmakers, who warned they would vote the measure down in order to focus on budget matters.”