A SHORTAGE OF NISSAN LEAFS? “The world’s most popular highway-speed EV (over 60,000 have been sold worldwide, and around 30,000 in the US) got a big price drop earlier this year when the company started making the car in the US. Previously, all Leafs were exported from Japan.”
Archive for 2013
July 17, 2013
POLL: Plurality favors Zimmerman verdict as correct, 48-34. Funny, you wouldn’t know that from the media coverage. “For the Democrats, everything is about 2014. Their base represents a minority view of the Zimmerman case, but it is a passionate minority. As with gun control and various other issues, the Democrats don’t expect any practical results from politicizing the Zimmerman case, other than to drive turnout in next year’s election.” Yep. If they lose the Senate, and face investigations from both houses — particularly with an election looming and limiting Obama’s ability to threaten or protect potential witnesses — they’re in big trouble.
Related: Holder Indicts America. “As his own Justice Department quietly tells reporters, there is no evidence of racism on which to base a civil rights case. Yet Holder bonds with his audience over another round of racial aggrievement and anger.”
NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF HOPEY-CHANGEY: Foreign Policy: The CIA’s New Black Bag Is Digital: When the NSA can’t break into your computer, these guys break into your house. “The fact that the NSA and CIA now work so closely together is fascinating on a number of levels.”
Remember, if they can do that to spy on you, they can do that to plant evidence. Of course, neither agency is supposed to operate domestically, so there’s nothing to worry about here.
ORIN KERR: Metadata, the NSA, and the Fourth Amendment: A Constitutional Analysis of Collecting and Querying Call Records Databases. Personally, I’m more of a fan of the “Mosaic Theory” than Orin is.
RACISM IN AMERICA: Black Man With Pistol Permit Shoots White Teen, Is Acquitted. Funny, didn’t get much coverage — not politically useful.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 69.
WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: This Is What Class War Looks Like: Bonfires Banned in SoCal.
Ultra-wealthy Southern California residents have just won a victory in the battle to impose their social preferences on the poor. The neo-puritan landowners of Newport Beach, worried about their “asthma and allergies,” have convinced air-quality regulators to make it impossibly hard for the public to use the beach fire-pits that have lined California’s coast for half a century. . . .
This is what actual class warfare looks like: rich citizens winning legal battles to regulate and restrict the freedom of the lower classes to enjoy their beach communities.
One of the main functions of the progressive state has always been to impose the cultural and behavioral preferences of the upper middle class on the poor. Stopping immigrants and working class Angelenos from having noisy, disruptive fun along pristine waterfronts is exactly the kind of challenge that nanny state puritans long to solve. Now a relentless lobby campaign of purse-mouthed puritans has succeeded in taking yet another chunk of liberty from young working class people.
War on the young; it’s a multi-front item.
THEY SEEM TO FIND IT KIND OF ALARMING, BUT I THINK IT’S AWESOME: Americans Own Nearly Half of the Privately Owned Guns on Earth: That’s 88 guns per every 100 Americans. With three more years in Obama’s term, I’ll bet we can get that up to even numbers. Best gun salesman of all time!
NEXT GENERATION TV: Allen West: Trayvon Martin Outrage Masks Real Crisis in Black Community.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, THE INTERNET WOULD FACE A “PORNPOCALYPSE.” And they were right!!!
DOJ IGNORES MILTON: Michael Walsh on the new DOJ press regulations.
PAYBACK: The Hill: Dems Set Sights On Treasury Watchdog. Neutering watchdogs has been a hallmark of this administration. Just ask former Inspector General Gerald Walpin.
JAMES TARANTO: Shut Up and Speak Honestly: Holder urges candor. Does he mean it?
To be sure, the smug mockery of twits like Yglesias and Klein, while it does not contribute to the honest conversation Holder claims to want, is not much of a detraction from it either.
On the other hand, the “racist” label is intended as a conversation-stopper. And “this isn’t the first time Cohen has come under fire for making insensitive comments about young black men,” as Calderone notes. In 1986 two dozen protesters gathered outside the Post’s headquarters to protest (among other things) a Cohen column that appeared in the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. According to a contemporaneous account from United Press International, Cohen “sided with city jewelry store owners who refuse to allow young black men to enter their shops because of a fear of crime.” Executive editor Ben Bradlee issued a printed apology. Hiatt’s unapologetic stance is encouraging by contrast.
That said, Hiatt’s suggestion that Cohen’s detractors “seek to stifle” his views poses a bit of a conundrum.They are, after all, doing nothing more than expressing their views, and one imagines that Madden, for instance, honestly believes Cohen’s views make him a “racist.”
But an honest conversation requires more than honesty. It requires a willingness to engage constructively with people who hold views with which one disagrees, or that one finds disagreeable. In that regard, Cohen measures up while his detractors fall short.
If America is a “nation of cowards,” it is likely because many people with views similar to Cohen’s prefer to avoid the subject rather than endure the unpleasantness and potential serious repercussions that come with the accusation of racism. Holder’s call for honest conversation would have some force if he exhorted fellow liberals and fellow blacks to be sensitive to the reasons for these inhibitions. Absent that, it’s more lecture than conversation.
Like Obama, when Holder says “conversation,” he means “shut up while I lecture.”
ERIC HOLDER IS BLASTING “STAND YOUR GROUND” LAWS IN LIGHT OF THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT. Ann Althouse comments:
What nonsense! Let me translate: Holder wants relief from the pressure to prosecute Zimmerman, so he’s shifting to a topic that has nothing to do with Zimmerman but that low-information people think has to do with Zimmerman. (Zimmerman was pinned down before he decided his life was on the line, and he had no route of escape.)
And, yes, I know Holder is also talking about investigating the Zimmerman matter. But “investigating” is code. As we saw with Benghazi, it means: We’re hoping that if enough time passes, you’ll forget about it.
This is all so thoroughly lame. But at the same time: It’s a very powerful person speaking dishonestly and threateningly about the exercise of power. What a disgusting combination.
But predictable enough that Obama voters — especially 2012 Obama voters — have to share responsibility for the disgustingness.
SIR THOMAS MORE ON the trial of George Zimmerman.
A NICE REVIEW for my colleague Greg Stein’s book on Chinese Real Estate Law.
ROLL CALL: DesJarlais’ Paltry Fundraising Raises Doubts About Re-Election #TN04. Nobody seems that happy with him around here, from what I can tell. I think he’s quite vulnerable to a primary attack.
THE HILL: US should consider Russian Olympics boycott, says Graham. “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said the U.S. should consider boycotting the 2014 Olympics Russia is set to host if Moscow grants NSA leaker Edward Snowden asylum.”
MICHAEL BARONE: ObamaCare Delay Breaches Trust.
On Obamacare, as on immigration enforcement and welfare requirements, President Barack Obama is following the course that cost King James II his throne. He is dispensing with the law.
James II was ousted in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, in large part for claiming that he could in particular cases dispense with — that is, ignore — an act of Parliament.
America’s Founders followed the English Bill of Rights of 1689, which stated “that the pretended power of dispensing with the laws, or the execution of the law by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal.”
That seems to be the clear import of Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution, which requires that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” But the former constitutional law teacher now in the White House is ignoring that duty.
A recent blog post by the assistant secretary of the Treasury for tax policy announced that the government would not enforce Obamacare’s employer mandate, the penalty for not offering health insurance to full-time employees.
That announcement appeared the day before the Fourth of July.
Read the whole thing.
GLASS HOUSES: D.C. Government Doesn’t Pay A “Living Wage.”