OBAMA’S ENTIRE PRESIDENCY HAS BEEN ABOUT REVENGE: Politico: Operation Revenge: President Obama is back in his campaign comfort zone: Smiting his political enemies.
Archive for 2014
December 21, 2014
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ILLEGAL POLITICAL LAWFARE FROM WISCONSIN’S DEEP STATE: Government Accountability Board staff participated in John Doe probe without OK from GAB judges.
The state Government Accountability Board’s top officials proceeded with a secret probe into coordination between Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and conservative political groups for months without authorization from the six retired judges who run the board, court records unsealed Friday allege.
The documents filed by a target of the investigation also allege that the board voted to end its involvement in the probe in July but that staff continued to work on it.
The records add ammunition to Republicans in the state Legislature seeking to overhaul or abolish Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog agency.
GAB spokesman Reid Magney referred questions about the unsealed records to the board’s attorney. A message left with Paul Schwarzenbart, the Madison attorney hired to defend the board, was not returned.
Waukesha County Circuit Court Judge Lee Dreyfus Jr. ordered most of the complaint filed by Wisconsin Club for Growth and one of its directors, Eric O’Keefe, unsealed Friday at the group’s request. The previously redacted parts of the lawsuit include snippets of internal GAB memos and minutes of meetings in which the secret John Doe investigation was discussed. . . .
It alleges that GAB chief counsel Kevin Kennedy and Jonathan Becker, administrator of the agency’s ethics and accountability division, “unilaterally admitted the GAB to John Doe II without the knowledge or approval of the GAB Board.” . . .
The lawsuit claims investigators examined “hundreds of thousands of documents” during the 2½-year investigation and GAB has hired four investigators and devoted significant additional staff time to conduct the probe.
Citing internal GAB records, the lawsuit alleges the John Doe has issued at least 30 subpoenas and five search warrants and that other subpoenas and warrants were planned including for “media figures such as Charlie Sykes and Sean Hannity.”
Estimated expenditures listed in the lawsuit remain redacted.
The main thrust of the Club for Growth lawsuit claims that the agency has no legal authority to conduct a criminal investigation, that it can only investigate and act on civil matters and that it has violated the procedures laid out in state law for GAB investigations.
Bankrupt some people and put some people in jail as an example to the others.
More: ‘Outside the … law’: Lawmakers call for investigation of GAB.
Sen. Tom Tiffany, R-Hazelhurst, is calling for a legislative panel to investigate the state Government Accountability Board following documents made public Friday that show GAB staff members appear to have flouted the law and continued to pursue a politically charged John Doe investigation even after the board’s presiding judges voted to shut it down.
“We want to get to the bottom of this,” said Tiffany, who along with state Rep. David Craig, R-Town of Vernon, has been among the most vocal proponents of reforming the GAB, which regulates Wisconsin campaign finance law, ethics, and elections.
Even with Friday’s disclosures, Tiffany said, “I’m not sure we are to the bottom of this.”. . .
In recent years, the GAB has become notorious for its eagerness to use the John Doe law to investigate conservative officials political candidates, activists and even journalists who might seem supportive of Gov. Scott Walker. Walker is the author of Act 10, the 2011 law that reformed public sector collective bargaining in the state. GAB staff and district attorney investigators are asked to pay more toward their health insurance and pensions under the law.
Punch back twice as hard, or this will happen again.
THE HILL: Sony hack reveals threat of ‘psychological’ cyber warfare.
When U.S. policymakers discuss the threat of cyberattacks, the focus is often on their destructive potential — overheating a nuclear power plant’s core reactor, or eliminating essential financial records.
But the apparent success of the Sony hit has exposed the effectiveness of psychological cyber attacks. The attack prompted the studio to pull the movie, costing millions of dollars, damaging Sony’s reputation and reportedly leaving its top executives on the ropes.
“Where cyber can probably be successful is in these psychological operations,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which monitors critical infrastructure attacks. “Cyber is not necessarily extremely useful in conducting physically destructive attacks.”
That raises the question: Has the U.S. been miscalculating a major looming cyber threat?
“I don’t think anybody, and I include the Department of Defense in this, does a good job of thinking about what future kinds of cyber conflicts look like,” said Jason Healey, a director at the Atlantic Council who has worked on cyber defenses at the White House and for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong.
We used to be better at that sort of thing.
TOM MAGUIRE: Obama’s Senior Moment.
HOW TO REPORT ON BAD BEHAVIOR IN THE LEGAL SYSTEM: “The DA involved is Ft. Bend County District Attorney John Heal, the police were from Missouri City, Sugar Land, Stafford and the Ft. Bend County Sheriff’s Department, the judge was Gray H Miller.” Though including the officers’ names too would have been good.
ANOTHER LEFTY SOCIAL-MEDIA CAMPAIGN TURNS OUT TO BE A FRAUD: #illridewithyou Was Even More Fraudulent Than I Thought.
When an Islamic terrorist took hostages in a Sydney, Australia cafe this week, the first thing our moral, ethical, and intellectual betters did — before the siege was even over, before two of the hostages were killed — was change the subject.
The real victims weren’t the hostages. The real victims were Muslims who were too scared to use public transportation because of the imminent anti-Muslim violence that never happened. To combat this nonexistent threat, some genius proposed the Twitter hashtag #illridewithyou, which was supposed to somehow show solidarity with the “victims.” And of course, it went viral among journalists and other people who don’t care about the truth.
As it turns out, #illridewithyou was an even emptier gesture than I first thought. The incident that so inspired all those smug leftists worldwide didn’t actually happen.
But it was successful in portraying Muslims to whom nothing had happened as the real victims in the immediate aftermath of the Sydney jihad-murders, and that was the point.
Jim Treacher observes:
The only bigotry here is among people who assumed the worst about their fellow man. People who went along with the idea that innocent Muslims were in danger, and damn the evidence or lack thereof. People who couldn’t face facts.
Finding no ready target for their confused rage at the unwelcome intrusion of reality into their carefully constructed fantasy world, these people did what they always do:
They lied.
No wonder Obama thought it was great.
Notice that the lefties spend a lot of time trying to keep part of the populace riled up, and the rest of the populace embarrassed and apathetic. I wonder what would happen if the balance-of-anger were reversed? Their fear and hatred of the Tea Party suggests that they’d find that catastrophic.
GOOD NEWS FOR THOSE WITH ACHES AND PAINS: Ibuprofen use leads to extended lifespan in several species, study shows. “This study was a proof of principle to show that common, relatively safe drugs in humans can extend the lifespan of very diverse organisms. Therefore, it should be possible to find others like ibuprofen with even better ability to extend lifespan, with the aim of adding healthy years of life in people.” Faster, please.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Tutor facing decade or more in prison for having sex with her 15-year-old student REJECTED plea deal that would have given her just a few months behind bars. She probably didn’t believe a judge would sentence a woman to serious time. And based on history, that was a fair — though in this case losing — bet.
TWEET OF THE YEAR: My favorite part about the Obama era is all the racial healing.
AT AMAZON, Deep Discounts in Electronics. But only through Monday.
FRUITS OF THE POISONOUS TREE: Two NY City Police Officers Shot Dead in Brooklyn.
Now, if I were to analyze this incident the same way that liberals analyze similar incidents where they think they can blame conservatives, I would blame the shootings of these two officers on liberal websites fanning the flames of rage against the police. I would blame the murders on Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, the Black Caucus, the parents of Michael Brown — all the race hustlers who have been exploiting the situation for their own benefit.
I’d blame Eric Holder and Barack Obama for pandering to black anger. I’d blame the climate of cop hatred that has been created by so-called activists and has sprung up and infected black communities across the country.
But I’m not a liberal so I am going to withhold judgment until we find out why the perpetrator committed this horrific act.
Well, it looks like it was payback for Eric Garner.
UPDATE: Gunman kills self after 2 NYPD cops fatally shot ‘execution style’ as ‘revenge’ for Garner.
The two officers were pronounced dead at Woodhull Hospital, where their colleagues and family members huddled tearfully.
City Council President Melissa Mark-Viverito and Mayor Bill de Blasio were less than welcome guests at the poignant gathering.
“We’re all in this together,” the mayor told grieving cops, according to a cop who was there.
“No we’re not,” one officer said tersely in response.
Just last week cops began signing a “Don’t Insult My Sacrifice” waiver, distributed by the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, that warned the mayor and speaker to stay away from funerals of cops killed in the line of duty.
It’s going to get ugly in New York, I expect.
Last Thursday morning, Boston.com staff were called into a meeting to discuss what they thought was the worst mistake they would have to deal with that day. The previous evening, the site had posted a story accusing Harvard Business School Professor Ben Edelman of sending a racist email to a Sichuan Garden employee—only to retract the story a short time later, as it became clear that Edelman didn’t actually send the email, a key fact they hadn’t verified before going live with their version of events.
In the meeting, Corey Gottlieb, executive director of digital strategy and operations at Boston Globe Media Partners, assured the team that, this incident notwithstanding, Boston.com’s values and processes are solid. “There’s a reason this doesn’t happen every other week,” Gottlieb said. “This feels more like an exception.”
What Gottlieb probably didn’t know at the time was that the next act was unfolding right in front of him. The morning meeting was being secretly recorded, and the leaked audio would later land in the hands of a couple of media outlets around town, prompting rumors of disciplinary action of two staffers. And Hilary Sargent, the top editor in the room, would be handed a weeklong suspension after a “joke” she made online landed with a thud.
Layers of editors and fact-checkers. Plus, stonewalling media inquiries about the debacle: “When it comes to answering journalists’ difficult questions, the Globe’s policy is Do as we say, not as we do.”
YOU CAN’T WIN ‘EM ALL: My first loss in the Texas Supreme Court. I think my position was right, though, and so does the dissent by Justice Don Willett, himself a social-media household name.
HARVEY MANSFIELD: Contradiction Rules Feminism.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: In 2014, only 39.1 percent of students who had entered community colleges six years before had completed a degree or certificate. And it’s not for lack of trying: “Despite many efforts and investment to boost college degree attainment, community colleges – which educate about 44 percent of the nation’s low-income students – have yet to make a dent in national graduation rates.”
Part of the problem, of course, is that these students come out of a broken K-12 system.
FASTER, PLEASE: Scientists accidentally stop skin aging in mice.
FASTER, PLEASE: Bio Bigwigs Go after Drugs for Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and ALS.
SO WHEN NICK MCCALL WAS ON BOOK TV PLUGGING HIS BOOK THE OTHER DAY, there was also another guy on plugging his book. It was James Scott’s The War Below, which followed three submarines through World War Two. I got it, read it, and found it quite enjoyable.
SEAFOOD: Wild vs. Farmed.