VIRGINIA POSTREL: Detroit’s Van Gogh Would Be Better Off In LA.
Archive for 2013
June 7, 2013
BLUE STATE UPDATE: In Massachusetts, If You Want To Investigate EBT Fraud, It’ll Cost You.
THE HILL: Obama sponsored bill that would have made Verizon order illegal.
President Obama co-sponsored legislation when he was a member of the Senate that would have banned the mass collection of phone records that his administration is now engaged in.
The SAFE Act, introduced by former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), would have amended the Patriot Act to require that the government have “specific and articulable facts” to show that a person is an “agent of a foreign power” before seizing their phone records.
The bill was referred to the Judiciary Committee in 2005, but never received a vote. It had 15 co-sponsors in all, including then-Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who are now members of Obama’s Cabinet.
Experts said the bill that Obama supported in the Senate would have prohibited the sweeping surveillance that has come to light at the National Security Agency (NSA).
Well, sure, but there was a Republican in the White House then.
THEY APOLOGIZE, BUT THEY DON’T CHANGE: IRS apologizes for lavish conference spending, plastic fish.
Related: Rep. Darrell Issa calls IRS spending ‘maliciously self-indulgent.’
ED DRISCOLL ON OBAMA’S SECOND TERM: Let It Burn. “But to bring this back to the Economist cover above, it turns out that the f***ing Nascar [sic] retards got 2008 right, far more than the Juiceboxers or their fellow leftists at the Economist did.”
KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: An IRS Political Timeline. “President Obama spent months in 2010 warning Americans about the ‘threat’ to democracy posed by conservative groups, right at the time the IRS began targeting these groups. . . . This newspaper reported Thursday that Cincinnati IRS employees are now telling investigators that they took their orders from Washington. For anyone with a memory of 2010 politics, that was obvious from the start.”
LYING TO CONGRESS? Clapper denied NSA surveillance before Senate panel. “Weeks before the National Security Agency (NSA) began a massive phone sweeping operation on U.S. cellular provider Verizon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress the agency does not conduct intelligence on American citizens. Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Clapper denied allegations by panel members the NSA conducted electronic surveillance of Americans on U.S. soil.”
June 6, 2013
AIRBRUSHING: New York Times quietly changes published editorial to make it less damning of Obama. Lame. I wonder if they got a call from the White House. If so, I suppose it was recorded somewhere. . . .
REMEMBERING ESTHER WILLIAMS, who died today at 91.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D HAVE DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE POLICIES THAT JOHN YOO WOULD BE HAPPY TO DEFEND. And they were right!
FOR THE U.K., the coldest spring in 50 years.
HOW IT’S PLAYING IN MASSACHUSETTS: Bay State Dems: Obama admin spying `un-American,’`alarming.’
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Student Loan Fraud Grows. “The Education Department’s watchdog says the number of college students who are suspected of engaging in loan fraud has increased 82 percent since 2009.”
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Tips For Hardening Your Home Against Tornadoes.
AT AMAZON, 25% or more off on Men’s & Women’s Clothing.
REMEMBERING D-DAY.
And — as reader Eric Beeby notes — it’s always nice to remember D-Day with Patton’s Speech To The Third Army.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
ROGER KIMBALL: The Assault On Truth Continues. “If you take certain positions, you will be cast into outer darkness. Whether your statements are empirically accurate is irrelevant. . . . Even worse is the metastasis of this freedom- and truth-blighting habit of mendacity. Increasingly, this sort of craven doublethink has oozed out of the academy and into the corridors of business, the media, and culture at large. Where will it end?”