Archive for 2014

IRS SCANDAL UPDATE: House Republicans want Justice Department to provide details of IRS probe, possible interview with Lois Lerner.

Related: Power Isn’t Funny: Obama bombs when he jokes that he’ll sic the IRS or the Secret Service on his critics.

The president’s latest witticism was inspired by his much-debated appearance on Between Two Ferns, during which he traded carefully scripted barbs with actor Zach Galifianakis. “Zach actually was pretty nervous,” Obama explained to Ryan Seacrest in a postmortem interview. “His whole character is to go after the guest, and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, I wonder what happens here if I cross the line? But we had a great time.”

Gettit? Because if Galifianakis had said something that the president didn’t like, the president’s armed guards would have killed him. In consequence . . . and prepare yourself, because this is hysterical . . . the comedian self-censored, permitting Obama to get in a nice little barrage of prepared zingers and sitting by quietly while he hawked his vision for the federal government! Nice thing you’ve got going here, matey. Shame if anything were to happen to it. Funny or Die! Ha, ha, ha. . . . The joke in each case is simple and similar: I’m more powerful than you, and, if I want to, I can kill you. Is it funny?

Funny as an assassination joke. Likewise with the audits. As noted, I made a similar observation back in 2009. What’s interesting is that Obama hasn’t matured at all in the interim.

REMEMBER, WE HAVE A SHORTAGE OF MALE TEACHERS BECAUSE PEOPLE THINK MEN ARE LIKELY TO BE SEXUAL PREDATORS: Ga. teacher accused of classroom sex assault on two students. “An arrest affidavit reveals investigators said Quigley had a sexual encounter in her classroom with two students in September and October of 2012, reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. A third encounter with one of the two students allegedly took place this past January at a Waffle House restaurant.”

21ST CENTURY RACISM: Blacks with white friends are ‘less black.’

When Washington, D.C., councilman and former Mayor Marion Barry this week said that whites need to be “more open-minded” about African-American politicians, claiming “blacks are more open-minded than” whites, he was suggesting that whites can’t do what blacks do — embrace the other race.

But a new study of 212 black college students made available to Secrets found little open-mindedness: Blacks don’t like it when other blacks associate with whites, to the point of refusing help to an African-American experiencing “a run of bad luck” — just because they have white friends.

The study in the April edition of the authoritative journal Social Psychological and Personality Science found the so-called “black code” alive and kicking, prompting blacks far more than whites to frown on one of their own if they associate with the other race.

We need drastic action. Perhaps Obama should give a speech on this.

ROGER KIMBALL: The Meaning of Mireille Miller-Young, or Free Speech for Me, Theft, Battery, and Vandalism for Thee. “Dr. Miller-Young is a typical specimen of homo academicus (or perhaps I should say, mulier academica), circa 2014. The non-stop racial grievance mongering. The anaphrodisiac obsession with gutter sex. The bad prose. The cutesy nods to pop culture. The reflexive left-wing politics. The angry, intellectually nugatory posturing. It’s all a dime a dozen in the trendy precincts of the university today. Dr. Miller-Young is as dreary and predictable a representative of the low-wattage, affirmative-action branch of that enterprise as any cultural pathologist could wish for. Would you let her loose on your delicately brought up daughter? While you ponder that question, let me repeat that there is nothing out of the ordinary about Dr. Miller-Young. She is exactly what you can expect when you sign up for a course in the ‘humanities’ these days.”