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Archive for 2013
July 24, 2013
CHANGE: Guess who’s abandoning Obamacare in droves? Moderate Democrats.
Related: Obama approval drops ten points … in California.
UPDATE: First link was bad. Fixed now. Sorry!
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 76.
AFTER BEING BUSTED FOR FALSE-FLAG OPERATION, Leftist Texas Activist Apologizes for Smearing Pro-Zimmerman Group With Hateful Racist Sign at Rally. Her name is Renee Vaughan. Her employer, the Texas Campaign For The Environment, has also apologized. Nonetheless, I hope the picture of her standing with a sign reading “We’re Racist And Proud” winds up being tagged to both. . . .
ATLAS BUGGED: Why the “Secret Law” of the Patriot Act Is Probably About Location Tracking. “All we can do is speculate, of course: only a handful of legislators and people with top-secret clearances know for sure. But a few of us who closely monitor national security and surveillance issues have come to the same conclusion: it probably involves some form of cellular phone geolocation tracking, potentially on a large scale.”
ELECTRONIC FRONTIER FOUNDATION: Congress and the Justice Dept’s Dangerous Attempts to Define “Journalist” Threaten to Exclude Bloggers.
While the DOJ’s effort to limit the scope of who can be recognized as a journalist is problematic, it doesn’t have teeth. Guidelines are, well, guidelines. But the report is part of a broader legislative effort in Washington to simultaneously offer protection for the press while narrowing the scope of who is afforded it. Importantly, Congress introduced federal shield bills in May—both ironically named the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2013”—that arguably would exclude bloggers, freelancers, and other non-salaried journalists from protection because they are not included within the bills’ narrow definition of who qualifies as a journalist.
If these bills—support for which the White House reaffirmed in its DOJ report—pass without change, Congress effectively will create two tiers of journalists: the institutional press licensed by the government, and everyone else. That’s a pretty flimsy shield if what we are really trying to protect is the free flow of information.
Yes, but that’s not what they — not “we” — are trying to do. In machine politics, there’s always a special set of rules for the insiders. This is crony journalism, to go along with the crony capitalism.
SHOCKER: Reuters: Obama’s pick for No. 2 at Homeland Security under investigation. “The source said investigators are looking into whether Mayorkas had assisted in securing an investor visa – which had previously been denied twice – on behalf of Gulf Coast Funds Management. Gulf Coast Funds Management is run by Anthony Rodham, the brother of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.”
Rodham was last seen stiffing Barbara Boxer’s daughter Nicole for child support and alimony.
JAMES TARANTO: Meet William Wilkins. Will the IRS scandal implicate the White House? Let’s hope so.
Have you noticed that the Internal Revenue Service scandal seems to be getting ever closer to the White House? The IRS originally tried to set up “rogue employees in Cincinnati” as fall guys. But in congressional testimony, they revealed that the targeting of dissenting groups was directed from Washington.
As Peggy Noonan noted, the Washington supervisor, Carter Hull, last week implicated the IRS’s office of chief counsel: “The IRS chief counsel is named William Wilkins. And . . . he is one of only two Obama political appointees in the IRS.”
Congressional investigators appear to be conducting a very methodical inquiry, working their way up through the IRS hierarchy and not getting out ahead of themselves by making claims not supported by the available evidence. Note, for example, that they have not (yet) claimed Wilkins himself directed the abusive behavior, only his “office.” Democrats and their media allies, perhaps deceptively, interpret the investigation’s slow progress as a sign that there’s nothing to the scandal. But if that’s the case, they should be all for a thorough investigation.
Indeed.
ACCOUNTING TODAY: Lawmakers Question IRS Chief about Release of Social Security Numbers. “They noted that the forms are filed by political nonprofits filing under Section 527 of the Tax Code. Documents received by the Ways and Means Committee as part of its investigation of IRS targeting showed that IRS senior management knew that the release of sensitive taxpayer information was a risk, they pointed out. One document, referenced and attached to the letter, includes the transcript of a March 2013 speech delivered by Lois Lerner, who was then director of the IRS’s scandal-plagued Exempt Organizations unit, in which she acknowledged that Social Security numbers were at risk of inadvertent release under current IRS practices.”
That Lois Lerner just keeps popping up everywhere, doesn’t she?
IF SHE’S WILLING TO SHILL FOR OBAMACARE, it’s going to be kind of hard to trust her shilling for Weight Watchers.
THE HILL: Poll: Obama approval drops to near record low at 45 percent. Demagoguery over the Zimmerman case may have helped him with his base, but it obviously didn’t help him in general.
HOW’S THAT HOPEY-CHANGEY STUFF WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? (CONT’D): Sorry, Mom and Dad: The Kids Aren’t Moving Out Yet. “Our early analysis of the 2013 Current Population Survey data (see note below) shows that there are still 2.4 million missing households, stubbornly close to the high of 2.6 million in 2010 and 2011. That’s equivalent to more than two years of normal household formation that have gone missing. The majority of the missing households are young people who aren’t heading up their own households. Instead, they’re living with their parents: the share of 18-34 year-olds living with their parents rose from around 27% before the crash to above 31%, where it remains in 2013.”
DIRTY TAX TRICKS: Records of snooping into Christine O’Donnell tax records disappear. “Delaware state officials have told Congress that they likely destroyed the computer records that would show when and how often they accessed Christine O’Donnell’s personal tax records and acknowledged that a newspaper article was used as the sole justification for snooping into the former GOP Senate candidate’s tax history.” How convenient.
More and more, the weakening of the Tea Party movement is looking kind of arranged.
IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: Attorney in Federal Agency General Counsel’s Office: There Is ‘No Innocent Explanation’ for IRS Chief Counsel’s Meeting With Obama. “I can’t for the life of me come up with any kind of innocent explanation for why Obama would have met with the Chief Counsel of the IRS. That meeting shouldn’t ever happen, and especially not without the Commissioner of the IRS being there. Presidents just don’t go to agency chief counsels with legal questions. Presidents don’t go to anyone with legal questions. Their staff does. The idea that the President would sit down with some random agency chief counsel and discuss some pressing legal issue is just bizarre to anyone who has worked in the legal field at that level. I am not sure the reporters covering this story understand how legal advice is actually delivered to the President and just how out of the ordinary that meeting was.”
CONVENIENTLY UNAVAILABLE: Jeffrey Zients is out of the country. “A top former Obama Cabinet member who met with IRS officials at the White House during the targeting scandal is currently out of the country, a White House source told The Daily Caller. Former acting Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jeffrey Zients has still not returned from an overseas exile that began after his departure from the Obama administration in April, two weeks before the IRS scandal broke.”
July 23, 2013
FALL FOR IT, OR GIVE IT A HELPING HAND? Video Proof: Media Fall for Hoax Racism at Pro-Zimmerman Rally.
“I WAS AN INDEPENDENT WOMAN WORKING TO ACHIEVE MY GOALS.” “During that decade I relied on welfare, housing assistance, and food stamps to help me support my daughter while I earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees.”
PAUL MIRENGOFF: Cornelia Pillard, Obama’s extreme feminist judicial nominee.
I DON’T THINK THE PROBLEM IS SO MUCH “TOO MANY PEOPLE” AS IT IS “PEOPLE WHO LACK EVEN THE COURTESY AND ORDERLINESS OF NEW YORKERS:” Video: Beijing Subway A Wee Bit Crowded. Culture matters.
THOUGHTS ON eminent domain and the decline of Detroit.
OKAY, I DON’T HAVE MUCH TO SAY ABOUT THE Weiner/Huma Clown/Doormat Show, but it makes a good excuse to run this Andrew Breitbart video from the first phase of the Weiner scandal. Since then, of course, the NYT, People, and other house organs pronounced Weiner rehabilitated. They look just about as credible as they did when Andrew was talking about them
UPDATE: Ruby Cramer: Huma Abedin Has Her Own Life. Maybe that’s why Anthony is spending so much time online.
UPDATE: “Can you IMAGINE the colossal Weinerclysm if he were Republican?”