Archive for 2013

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” “The Obama administration is supporting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood in the current crisis of the regime. That is my reading of Elise Labott’s CNN story and Matthew Lee’s AP story on the administration’s position. The Obama administration has supported the Muslim Brotherhood right along. See, for example, the Daily Beast article by Josh Rogin and Eli Lake documenting the administration’s ‘revisionist history’ of Obama’s approach to Egypt.” One wonders why they are so enthused about the Muslim Brotherhood. It certainly doesn’t seem to be enhancing our popularity among Egyptians.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Spengler.

CITIZENS UNITED: The IRS’s Smoking Gun? “Like the IRS harassment campaign that replaced it, FEC suppression of political speech relied on uncertainty, intimidation, and delay to work the administration’s political will. This was not lost on the court.”

J.D. TUCCILLE: Snowden Took a Job To Leak NSA Secrets? Cool. Let’s Have More Like Him at the DOJ, IRS …

In the age of Justice Department snooping on the Associated Press and Fox News’s James Rosen, wouldn’t we benefit from a whisteblower who deliberately took a position to find out just how many journalists the feds are spying on? I’ll bet there are just a few more lurking in the files.

How about Internal Revenue Service targeting of political organizations? This is a recurring problem dating back decades. Rather than wait for IRS officials to slip revelations out themselves in hopes of minimizing the impact, an infiltrator or two would be a welcome way to keep a close eye on a long-abusive agency.

And now that the federal government is centralizing control over health care, wouldn’t you like to keep a closer eye on how it wields its new power? Especially since we know that it will be sharing patient records without our consent? The government already considers our medical data to be a rich vein it can mine for its own purposes, and it does so with little respect for our privacy.

Bore from within, as part of a long libertarian march through the institutions.

“SMART DIPLOMACY:” Bolivian leader’s plane rerouted on Snowden fear. “The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales was rerouted to Austria after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, Bolivian officials said Tuesday. Officials in both Austria and Bolivia said that Snowden was not on the plane, which was taking Morales home from a summit in Russia, where he had suggested that his government would be willing to consider granting asylum to the American.”