KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: New Links Emerge in the IRS Scandal: Emails released this week sweep the Federal Election Commission into the conservative-targeting probe. “The broader AIP case is, in fact, beyond improper. It’s fishy. The Obama campaign takes its vendetta against a political opponent to the FEC. The FEC staff, as part of an extraordinary campaign to bring down AIP and other 501(c)(4) groups, reaches out to Lois Lerner, the woman overseeing IRS targeting. Mr. McGahn has also noted that FEC staff has in recent years had an improperly tight relationship with the Justice Department—to which the Obama campaign also complained about AIP. Democrats are increasingly desperate to suggest that the IRS scandal was the work of a few rogue agents. With the stink spreading to new parts of the federal government, that’s getting harder to do.”
Archive for 2013
August 2, 2013
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Sci-Fi Movies Can Save Us From Aliens.
DEMOGRAPHIC COLLAPSE: Why Russia Turned Against The Gays. “Analyzing all the circumstances, and the particularity of territorial Russia and her survival…I came to the conclusion that if today we want to resolve the demographic crisis, we need to, excuse me, tighten the belt on certain moral values and information, so that giving birth and raising children become fully valued.”
JOEL KOTKIN: The Childless City: It’s hip, it’s entertaining—but where are the families?
Families abandoned cities for the suburbs, driven away by policies that failed to keep streets safe, allowed decent schools to decline, and made living spaces unaffordable. Even the partial rebirth of American cities since then hasn’t been enough to lure families back. The much-ballyhooed and self-celebrating “creative class”—a demographic group that includes not only single professionals but also well-heeled childless couples, empty nesters, and college students—occupies much of the urban space once filled by families. Increasingly, our great American cities, from New York and Chicago to Los Angeles and Seattle, are evolving into playgrounds for the rich, traps for the poor, and way stations for the ambitious young en route eventually to less congested places. The middle-class family has been pushed to the margins, breaking dramatically with urban history. The development raises at least two important questions: Are cities without children sustainable? And are they desirable?
Indeed. Related: Obama’s Second-Term Assault On The Suburbs.
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: No, You’re Probably Not Smarter Than a 1912-Era 8th Grader.
In the early years of the 20th century, the students in Bullitt County, Kentucky, were asked to clear a test that many full-fledged adults would likely be hard-pressed to pass today. The Bullitt County Geneaological Society has a copy of this exam, reproduced below—a mix of math and science and reading and writing and questions on oddly specific factoids–preserved in their museum in the county courthouse.
But just think for a moment: Did you know where Montenegro was when you were 12? Do you know now? (Hint: it’s just across the Adriatic Sea from Italy. You know where the Adriatic Sea is, right?)
There’s a link to the test, and the answer key.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: How Much Caffeine Is Actually in Your Coffee, From Dunkin’ to Starbucks.
WAS THERE EVER ANY DOUBT? Tom Maguire 1, Huffington Post 0.
IN THE MAIL: From John Pepple, Begging For Sex: Gender Equality From The Other Side.
DO TELL: The Atlantic: The Attack in Benghazi: Worth Investigating After All. “Suddenly it is imperative that Congress investigate details surrounding the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. I’ve never felt that way before. But Drew Griffin’s scoop changed my mind. . . . To be clear, it isn’t at all certain that the CIA was secretly funneling Libyan weapons to Syria, long before Congress ‘lifted its hurdles’ on arming Syrian rebels. But if CNN’s report is correct, the CIA is at minimum trying to hide something huge from Congress, something that CIA agents might otherwise want to reveal — itself a reason for Congress to press hard for information. And if speculation about moving weapons is grounded in anything substantive, that would be an additional reason to investigate what the CIA is doing in Libya. Dozens of CIA agents were apparently on the ground in Benghazi, Libya last September. What I want to know is why.”
Yet another “phony scandal” that’s not looking so phony after all.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 85.
CARBON COST: House votes to block costly EPA power grab. “The House of Representatives voted in favor of an amendment that would make it more difficult for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate without congressional approval.” That’s nice, but we actually need to make it hard for all agencies to regulate without congressional approval. The next Congress needs to take up wholesale reform of the Administrative Procedure Act to make agency rulemaking more accountable.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Don’t Grade The Economy On A Curve:
GDP grew at an annualized pace of 1.7 percent in the second quarter, triggering a rash of positive headlines . . .
. . . wait, positive headlines? For growth under 2 percent? If that were our annual raise, we’d be grousing in the break room. Why are headline writers happy to see such an anemic rate?
Well, because it beat expecations. But talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations! I mean, there is good news, in that the sequester is apparently resolutely refusing to completely trash the economy, the way many had feared it might. But growth is still 1.7 percent. And growth for the first quarter was revised downward to 1.1 percent, from a prior estimate of 1.8 percent. Overall, there’s not too much to be happy about here.
Perhaps, as Neil Irwin suggests, we’ve all started grading on the curve. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff tell us that growth is usually very slow after financial crises; it takes a lot of time to rebuild damaged balance sheets from households to the government. And, after all, many other countries are doing worse. At least we’re growing.
But there’s a problem with grading on a curve: It’s no good being the top person in the class if no one in the class can do basic math.
We’re not ready for a post-growth America.
But we’ve been fundamentally transformed. Time to do some transforming of our own.
BENGHAZI: Report: Arms Smuggling Operation. “The CIA has been subjecting operatives to monthly polygraph tests in an attempt to suppress details of a US arms smuggling operation in Benghazi that was ongoing when its ambassador was killed by a mob in the city last year, according to reports.”
AT AMAZON, markdowns on bestselling Power Drills.
Also, today only: Save Up to 67% on Actron Code Readers. “Take advantage of Actron’s code readers to diagnose and analyze what is happening with your vehicle. With Actron’s code readers, you can see live engine data, graph live data, freeze frame data, enable drive cycle mode, print information, and more.”
BEN DOMENECH ON BLOGGINGHEADSTV: Why libertarian populism is the right response to Obama’s “Life of Julia” politics.
RADLEY BALKO: The Untouchables: America’s Misbehaving Prosecutors, And The System That Protects Them. Read the whole thing.
I’ve offered some suggestions for addressing this problem. Abolishing official immunity would be a good start.
And speaking of prosecutorial misconduct: Glenn Loury on the decision to charge Zimmerman as a capitulation to the mob.
WAPO: Democratic divide over NSA could pose problem for Obama. “A former constitutional law lecturer, Obama came to office pledging to ensure that his national security policies complied not only with the law but also with what he called American traditions that respect human rights and civil liberties. But his record has been mixed.” Ya think?
THE HILL: Issa Subpoenas State Department For Benghazi Documents.
And, of course, there’s CNN’s big story from last night.
But scapegoated filmmaker Nakoula is still in jail.
Phony scandals? Let’s recycle this from Ken Gardner:
COURT STENOGRAPHERS: The New York Times fails its readers—and the country. “A sort of pep talk to the liberal bourgeoisie, Democrat and Republican, is what the New York Times under Jill Abramson has become. One reads it to confirm rather than challenge one’s perceptions of the world.”
UPDATE: I can’t resist including this:
My favorite moment is when the president mentions someone he’s been talking to. “I had a conversation a couple of weeks back with Robert Putnam,” Obama says, “who I’ve known for a long time.” Putnam is a renowned sociologist, and the ability to drop his name is a requirement for membership in elite circles. What makes this name-drop special is that Obama not only assumes the reporters know who Putnam is, he amplifies his snobbery by mentioning that the author of Bowling Alone and American Grace has been a personal acquaintance for years, as though that in itself is an achievement, as though that somehow makes the sentence he is about to utter more meaningful.
Just then, though, one of the Times reporters, Michael D. Shear, interrupts the president and says what has to be one of the most beautiful and revealing sentences ever to appear on Nytimes.com: “He was my professor actually at Harvard.” Almost every word of this sentence is an act of social positioning worthy of Castiglione. “My” conveys ownership, possession, and intimacy; the “actually” is a subtle exercise in one-upmanship, implying a correction of fact or status, and suggesting that Shear, who seems to have taken a course with Putnam while pursuing a graduate degree at the Kennedy School, is on closer terms with him than the president of the United States of America; and of course the big H, “Harvard,” before whose authority all must bow down.
The president’s response is just as priceless. “Right,” he says, pausing, and one can easily imagine the look of annoyance on his face as he reacts to Shear’s gratuitous lunge into the spotlight. He then makes it clear exactly who is in charge. “I actually knew Bob”—note that it’s “Bob” we’re talking about now—“when I was a state senator and he had put together this seminar to just talk about some of the themes that he had written about in ‘Bowling Alone,’ the weakening of the community fabric and the impact it’s having on people.” Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mike.
The “Peter Principle,” which holds that individuals rise to the precise level where they are incompetent, is well known. But it is time to coin the Putnam Principle, which I take to hold that the number of softball questions a reporter asks is in direct proportion to the power of the Democrat to whom he is speaking. . . . The Putnam Principle applies to the Times. Here are the questions Shear and his colleague Jackie Calmes asked the president. See if you’d have any trouble answering them
It’s all very clubby. Truth to power, indeed.
UNFORTUNATELY, HE HASN’T DONE SQUAT FOR THE REST OF US: Obama Solves ObamaCare Issue For Lawmakers, Staff. “During a meeting in the Capitol Wednesday with the Senate Democratic caucus, Obama said that he would personally step in to work on the issue before the health care law’s requirement that those on Capitol Hill get insurance through the exchanges.”
UPDATE: Congress Gets Its Own ObamaCare Waiver. “My thoughts at this turn of events are unprintable.”
#WARONWOMEN: Ninth woman accuses San Diego mayor Filner of sexual harassment. Remember, Democrats — and members of the press, but I repeat myself — knew this stuff was going on but kept quiet. Because, you know, he was pro-choice and stuff.