UPDATE: The Free Beacon responds. A pretty major slap-down from the folks at Covington & Burling.
Archive for 2014
June 20, 2014
THE ECONOMIST: A dog ate my e-mails.
If your taxes are being audited and you tell the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that you just so happen to have lost the records relating to the period in question, you cannot expect much sympathy. The taxman has heard it all before, and “the dog ate my accounts” gets you nowhere. Odd, then, that the IRS is offering more or less exactly that excuse to Congress. . . .
American tax law is so complex and burdensome that more and more big firms are fleeing the country for friendlier domiciles (see article). But people had assumed that the law was enforced impartially. Since the tax system relies on voluntary compliance, the IRS must be seen to be scrupulously neutral. That is tricky when it appears to have gone after conservatives (and, in a grotesque conflict of interest, anti-tax groups) after some Democratic senators had publicly suggested this would be a good idea. John Koskinen, the IRS’s boss, is to testify before Congress on June 20th. Expect fireworks.
Related: Dallas Morning News: Last straw for IRS should lead to special counsel.
RAYMOND IBRAHIM: Can Islam Be Reformed? Part 1.
JAMES TARANTO: Mindless Iraq Debate: It’s so bad, Jonathan Chait is the voice of reason.
In 2003, The New Republic caused a mild stir when it published a rant by Jonathan Chait titled “Mad About You: The case for Bush hatred.” (The subheadline doesn’t appear on TNR’s website.) At the moment, Chait, now with New York magazine, is the voice of reason on the left–which means, of course, that the debate in which he’s involved is an exceedingly stupid one.
Chait’s piece yesterday on the New York website is in part a response to a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney (she is his daughter) in which they accuse President Obama of having “betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.” The piece begins with a series of fatuous quotes from the president to the effect that terrorism is no longer much of a threat and peace is breaking out all over, followed by the observation: “Rarely has a U.S. president been so wrong about so much at the expense of so many.”
The Chait piece doesn’t directly respond to the Cheneys’ argument but rather to the left’s response to it. That response has been hostile, which should surprise nobody, but it’s also been remarkably mindless–which, come to think of it, will probably surprise hardly anybody either. . . .
Of course nobody is actually going to ban anybody from commenting on the Iraq crisis. We live in a free country, not some communist dictatorship or college campus. As Chait notes, the should-shut-the-hell-up argument is nothing more than an argumentum ad hominem delivered with bravado.
Which is pretty much all they’ve got left. I like the “college campus” dig, too, which is sadly accurate.
RED LINE: Roll Call: White House Threatened Veto of Spending Bill Over McConnell Amendment.
Top senators signaled the White House threatened to veto a Senate spending bill over a possible amendment from Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to block EPA power plant regulations.
The amendment, billed by the Kentucky Republican as a fight against the Environmental Protection Agency’s “war on coal” was cited by the chairwomen of the full Appropriations Committee and the Energy-Water Subcommittee as the key factor in removing that fiscal 2015 bill from Thursday morning’s markup agenda.. . .
McConnell’s amendment would have required certification of no job losses or electricity cost increases as a result of the implementation of the EPA’s proposed regulations on carbon emissions from existing power plants. . . .
Energy-Water ranking member Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., tied the delay of the bill that he worked to craft with Feinstein to the broader GOP complaints about the floor operations of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., including a recurring blockade of floor amendments.
Reid’s running the Senate — into the ground.
THE HILL: Cruz slams Obama’s ‘collapsing’ foreign policy.
Cruz highlighted what he sees as threats to religious liberty abroad, speaking of American Pastor Saeed Abedini sentenced to eight years in Iranian prison “for the crime of sharing his Christian faith.”
The senator charged that while the president has been unable to secure the release of Abedini, Obama’s administration is negotiating with Iran. Cruz said that dialogue “is only increasing the likelihood of Iran developing nuclear weapon capability that greatly damages the security of both Israel and the United States.”
Iran is not the only place where Christians are being persecuted for their faith, Cruz said. He cited the radical Islamic terrorist group ISIS, a group he said aims “to create an Islamic Taliban that runs from Syria to Iraq and work to exterminate Jordan, Israel and ultimately America.”
Cruz questioned Obama’s ability to control his foreign policy and to protect the rights of Americans to religious freedom, both at home and abroad, and assailed the president for his failure “to stand with our unshakeable ally, the nation of Israel.”
If I were Israel, at this point, I’d be at least somewhat shakeable.
STEPHEN MILLER: Why The Democrats Own Iraq Now.
“If you were one of the architects of this mess you don’t get to tell the rest of us how to fix it! Meah!”
Fair enough.
Progressive media is certainly welcome to go this path but they do so at their own peril. The right will be perfectly content to let the press automatically discredit anyone tied to the old Iraq policy who attempts to speak about the current Iraq policy.
This includes Hillary Clinton, who voted for it. This includes Joe Biden, who voted for it. This includes John Kerry, who voted for it but then voted against it. All willingly gave President Bush authorization for military action in Iraq.
And all three are possible Presidential candidates in 2016.
None of the suspected 2016 GOP contenders will be tied legislatively to the past mess or the current mess in Iraq. Not Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Scott Walker, Rick Perry or Bobby Jindal. Not even Jeb Bush, which has got to sting the left just a little.
Ouch.
PREJUDICE: Gay, white professor sues historically black university for discrimination. Hey, it was the black vote that put Proposition 8 over the top in California.
THEY DIDN’T “MISREAD” GEORGE WILL. They deliberately misrepresented George Will to advance a political agenda. That’s who they are, that’s what they do. And the St. Louis Post Dispatch is joining in because it’s just part of the team.
COMMENTS FROM THE FOLKS AT F.I.R.E. on the DOJ’s proposed campus sexual assault regulations.
THOUGHTS ON SCOTT WALKER, and Wisconsin’s “Deep State.”
June 19, 2014
ANDREW KLAVAN: I’m Make-Believe Outraged!
MARION ZIMMER BRADLEY: The Roman Polanski of Science Fiction?
THE COURAGE OF HER CONVICTIONS: Wendy Davis’ campaign pretends her filibuster wasn’t about abortion.
21st CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: “It wasn’t a date, it was a hangout.”
BUT I TOTALLY TRUST THEM WITH THIS REVIVED-SPANISH-FLU THING: In Slip, 75 CDC Scientists May Have Been Exposed To Anthrax.
NOTHING GETS BY OUR “SMART DIPLOMACY” CREW: White House beginning to consider conflicts in Syria and Iraq as single challenge.
SO, I BOUGHT THIS Canon Pixma wireless printer to replace the dead HP machine upstairs. (Downstairs in the Insta-Bunker we have an Epson WorkForce 545 and a Brother HL-2170). Setup was easy, MacBooks recognized it and installed software instantly, printing works fine. It prints photos wirelessly from my iPhone, too, via AirPrint, and has a separate photo paper tray, which was the big selling point, really. Also, the touchscreen control panel is good. Expect it to be an ink-hog, but that’s why we have the laser printer for big jobs.
The Insta-Daughter, by the way, has this (cheaper!) later-edition Brother laser printer for her dorm room (it prints two-sided) and loves it. It also makes her popular with other folks on her hall. . . .
BRING BACK DDT: Georgia woman infected with chikungunya virus describes pain. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in so much pain.”
BECAUSE IT SELLS? Why Does Doomsaying Dominate Discussions Of New Technologies? After all, Frankenstein is still a big seller.
THE PERILS OF POTS:
PoTS is believed to affect around one in 558 people, based on figures from the USA, but many doctors are still unaware of its existence. It is often misdiagnosed, or attributed to an associated condition such as anxiety, panic disorder, or chronic fatigue.
The new study, published in the online journal BMJ Open today, assessed 84 members of the national support group PoTS UK, and 52 patients diagnosed at an NHS clinic in Newcastle.
Many had been forced to change jobs or give up work by the condition, which causes fatigue and makes many basic, everyday tasks exhausting and difficult.
More here:
The chronic condition causes dizziness, anxiety, nausea, heart palpitations, migraines, and a host of other miserable symptoms when sufferers stand upright. The half-million affected have it as a product of the body’s circulatory system adapting poorly, at times, to evolution.
“When humans stood upright, our system of blood vessels evolved to tighten and push blood upward to the heart and brain when we’re in a vertical position,” said Dr. Blair Grubb, a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the University of Toledo College of Medicine who has published research on POTS. “In those with POTS,” he added, “the system is malfunctioning and their blood vessels fail to tighten when they stand,” which causes their heart rate to surge — making some feel so sick that they climb back into bed. . . .
POTS is often diagnosed using a tilt table test where patients lie prone on a table that’s tilted vertical – to mimic standing – while their heart-rate is monitored. Those with the condition experience a sudden increase in heart-rate of at least 30 beats per minute – or a pulse greater than 120 beats per minute — when they stand upright.
Certain lifestyle therapies are frequently tried before prescription drugs. Patients are also told to drink about eight 8-ounce glasses of water each day and eat 2,000 to 4,000 milligrams of salt to increase the blood volume in their legs and help push blood upward. Wearing compression stockings can also help.
They’re also encouraged to exercise — quite a bit — to, in Grubb’s words, “enhance the effectiveness of the peripheral skeletal muscle pump” which pushes blood up from the legs and abdomen when they rise. He recommends at least 20 to 30 minutes a week of aerobic activity like walking, running, or biking and weight training for the legs, hips, and thighs.
Squats and deadlifts probably help too.