I UNDERSTAND HARRY REID CARRIES BABY WIPES ON HIS PERSON AT ALL TIMES: Roll Call: Reid, Heller Push Proper Hygiene at Capitol Event.
Archive for 2014
September 18, 2014
IRS COMMISSIONER: Our Story On The IRS Scandal Isn’t Changing. It’s Just, You Know, Evolving Now And Then.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) commissioner denied Wednesday that his agency had an ever-shifting story when it came to former official Lois Lerner’s missing emails.
Republicans weren’t buying it.
John Koskinen, the IRS chief, used his testimony to rebut statements from a conservative group that the agency had back-ups of Lerner’s emails, and sought to explain why Lerner’s BlackBerry was wiped clean just months before she started getting questioned about the agency’s improper scrutiny of Tea Party groups.
Koskinen said that Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration was examining back-up tapes, which the IRS had routinely recycled before 2013, to see if any of Lerner’s emails could be retrieved.
Lerner’s old BlackBerry, Koskinen added, was recycled to protect confidential taxpayer information. The BlackBerry, Koskinen said, would have been little help to investigators anyway, because Lerner’s email was managed elsewhere.
“I’ve tried to tell you the truth every time I’ve been here,” Koskinen told a House Oversight subcommittee on Wednesday.
Koskinen’s Wednesday appearance was at least his fourth just before the Oversight panel since the agency said in June that a computer crash left it unable to locate an untold number of Lerner’s emails from 2009 to 2011.
Lerner, who formerly headed an IRS division overseeing tax-exempt groups, has long been the central figure in the agency’s Tea Party controversy.
I’ve taken a dislike to this Koskinen fellow. He seems sleazy even by DC standards.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Poll: Most Americans no longer think a college education is ‘very important.’ “Amid a national debate about the worth of a college education, a respected annual poll about the education views held by Americans has found that only 44 percent of Americans now believe that getting a college education is ‘very important’ — down from 75 percent four years ago.”
That’s a brutal decline. Add to this the threat posed by the campus rape panic — chasing women away with exaggerated claims of rape, and men with quite realistic fears of the Sex Police — and college recruiting will be increasingly difficult, I expect.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Police: New charges after woman visits alleged rape victim’s school.
A Montgomery County woman previously charged with statutory rape was arrested Friday after visiting the alleged victim’s school, according to police.
Jennifer Hodges was charged with violation of protection and contempt of court on top of her statutory rape charge. . . . Hodges was arrested for the statutory rape charge on June 19 and is set to appear in court Oct. 1. Hodges is also set to appear in court Sept. 24 for the violation of protection and contempt of court charges.
You know, you just see more of these stories all the time, it seems.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, OFFICIOUS BUREAUCRATS WOULD BE PRYING INTO PEOPLE’S SEX LIVES. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Public university requires students to submit sexual history or face disciplinary action. “Clemson University is requiring students to reveal how many times they’ve had sex in the past month and with how many partners. In screenshots obtained exclusively by Campus Reform, the South Carolina university is asking students invasive and personal questions about their drinking habits and sex life as part of what they’ve billed as an online Title IX training course.”
REMEMBER WHEN DEMOCRATS WERE SAYING “LISTEN TO THE GENERALS?” Barack Obama silences generals on US ground troops in Iraq.
I’d really like our campaign against ISIS to succeed, but with our current leadership I’m not expecting much. I’ll be happy if we avoid a debacle. Also, surprised.
September 17, 2014
ROGER SIMON: Suppose They Gave a Climate Conference and Nobody Came. “Climate armageddon is a messianic cult based almost entirely on religion and faith and very little on science.”
$22 TRILLION, AND I DIDN’T EVEN GET A LOUSY T-SHIRT: The War on Poverty Has Been a Colossal Flop. “Since its beginning, U.S. taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s War on Poverty (in constant 2012 dollars). Adjusting for inflation, that’s three times more than was spent on all military wars since the American Revolution.”
If you think of it not as a program to eliminate poverty, but as a voter-farm for Democrats, it’s been fairly successful, though.
VICTORY HAS A THOUSAND FATHERS. DEFEAT HAS ONE MOTHER: DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ. Politico: Democrats turn on Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
AT AMAZON, Up to 30% off on Select Snowboards. Winter is coming. Also up to 30% off on Downhill Skis and on Ski Boots.
J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: ‘CATALIST’: Obama’s Database For Fundamentally Transforming America. “This tool, the Catalist database, was employed in the 2012 election. That election defied conventional wisdom: Mitt Romney sought and won independent voters overwhelmingly, but still lost. If you wondered why the conventional wisdom about independents and moderates didn’t seem so wise in 2012, the answer is Catalist.”
SCIENCE FICTION WRITER JOHN C. WRIGHT talks to the Honey Badger Brigade.
I read his City Beyond Time. It was good. I liked the way the Time Lords, in constantly rewriting history, got themselves in more and more trouble, sort of like central planners everywhere.
TO BE FAIR, THE FIRST AMENDMENT ALREADY DOES THAT: US law would safeguard free-speech rights to criticize business online. Many businesses, it’s true, don’t seem to understand this.
3 THINGS TO KNOW about NASA’s new private space contracts.
PETER BEINART: ‘Security Moms’ Are Back—and That’s Bad News for Democrats.
JACOB SULLUM: Gee, if only that Obama fellow showed the concern for constitutional niceties on warmaking that George W. Bush did.
To be more precise, Obama claims Congress already declared war on ISIS, although it surely did not realize it was doing that. Thirteen years ago this week, the president notes, Congress authorized George W. Bush “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”
It is hard to see how that Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) covers ISIS, which did not exist at the time and, although it used to be affiliated with Al Qaeda, has been repudiated and expelled by the latter organization. Defending Obama’s interpretation of the AUMF, former Solicitor General Walter Dellinger tells The New York Times you could “read the reference to 9/11 organizations to include all the evolving versions of radical jihadism.” Yes, you could read it that way, but not very plausibly.
In a speech last year, Obama argued that Congress should “refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate,” because “unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states.” You can’t say he didn’t warn us.
Obama has a back-up justification for the war against ISIS—or at least, the part of it that is happening in Iraq. “The 2002 Iraq AUMF would serve as an alternative statutory authority basis on which the president may rely for military action in Iraq,” the White House says. “Even so, our position on the 2002 AUMF hasn’t changed and we’d like to see it repealed.”
So here is another authority that Obama says he should not have but which he is nevertheless happy to use as a rationale to avoid a constitutionally required vote by Congress. Nor is that the only awkward part.
With the Obama presidency, it’s awkward parts all the way down.
ANOTHER CAMPUS SEXUAL ASSAULT WITCH HUNT FAILS: DePauw Punishment Halted in Sex Case.
In the fifth consecutive decision on behalf of due process rights for an accused student (joining Xavier, St. Joe’s, Duke, and Marlboro College), Judge William Lawrence, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a preliminary injunction preventing DePauw University from proceeding with a two-semester suspension for sexual assault meted out to a student named Ben King.
Judge Lawrence’s decision was unusually comprehensive, but DePauw’s handling of this case was unusually bad.
Which is saying something.
COULD’VE BEEN WORSE. COULD’VE BEEN NICKELBACK: Apple’s Devious U2 Album Giveaway Is Even Worse Than Spam. You know what I’d really like? A version of iTunes that’s as good as iTunes was a few years ago. . . .
A MULTITUDE OF OPINIONS: Who Is Running Phony Cell Phone Towers Around The United States?
POLITICO: Fareed Zakaria, Plagiarist. “For years now, Zakaria has made a habit of borrowing facts, language and style from other sources without attributing the work to its original authors, and he has presented such material as if it were his own.”
AT AMAZON, Deals on Fall Coats.
Plus, Women’s Halloween Costumes. Instead of Slutty Nurse, Slutty Policewoman, etc., why not just Slutty McSlutSlut?