TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 888.
Archive for 2015
October 14, 2015
MORE ISRAELIS OPTING TO CARRY GUNS:
As Avi Issacharoff recently pointed out in an op-ed in the Times of Israel, it seems there’s frustratingly little to nothing the government can do in Jerusalem to make this better, because the attackers are too diffuse and too apolitical (in that they don’t particularly care about the status of relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, and are often not part of a specific movement—they’re mainly young and stoked by social media). So when attackers become decentralized like this, perhaps, many Israelis seem to be thinking, so too must the defense?
I correctly predicted a similar phenomenon in the United States back in 2001. And I had some related thoughts here.
A decentralized offense requires a decentralized defense. And the only people who are always available to respond are the people who are already there.
MY PREDICTION: SOME OF THEM WON’T BE ALSO-RUNNING MUCH LONGER. The Dem Debate: How Did The Also-Rans Do?
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CRACKED GETS WHACKED: The formerly low-rent cousin of Mad magazine was for a time, believe it or not, far better in its incarnation as a Website — until it went hard SJW, as Kathy Shaidle writes.
SPENGLER: My Prediction: A Cruz-Rubio Ticket.
We could do far worse — but I hope both men are prepared for endless “white Hispanic” references from the very same media outlets who declared references to golf and Chicago as racist.
THAT’S BECAUSE THEY DON’T WORK ANYWHERE: NYPD Deputy Commissioner: Gun Buybacks Don’t Work for NYC. “NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Collaborative Policing Susan Herman today told a crowd of anti-gun violence advocates that gun buybacks—a program long employed by New York police and politicians to exchange firearms for cash in hopes of preventing shootings—do little to reduce the number of weapons on city streets.”
Nope. For that you need “stop and frisk.”
ROLL CALL: Panel Offers Historical Perspective on Prison Reform.
A trio of criminal justice experts spoke on a panel last week on Capitol Hill with the hope that Congress will take their knowledge into account when crafting policy for an overhaul of the system.
The promise of a prison sentencing overhaul in the United States is gaining momentum, with bipartisan legislation introduced this month in the Senate. But while policy has been implemented to reduce incarceration rates — including the U.S. Sentencing Commission’s decision last year to lessen the punishment for federal drug offenders and President Barack Obama’s recent executive actions — the experts cited lingering concerns.
The National History Center, an organization looking to broaden the role of historical knowledge in public decision-making and policy, hosted the discussion on the history of incarceration in the United States.
The panel’s goal in this ongoing series is to address members of Congress. While the audience of some 30 people was made up mostly of academics and advocates, the hourlong discussion in the Rayburn building helped give a historical context to the current mass incarceration system and potential legislation to address it.
Well, good.
NYT’S ‘CONSERVATIVE’ DAVID BROOKS: ACTUAL CONSERVATIVES ARE ‘DANGEROUS.’
And don’t even get him started on how lame their trouser creases are.
SEXYTIME: PLAYBOY’S NEW POLICY OF NO NUDES IS BAD NEWS: At the Federalist, Rich Cromwell and Mollie Hemingway explore what Playboy’s decision says about today’s society:
On some level, the image of manhood and sexuality that Hefner was selling was always contradictory. You don’t get to be a cultured and refined modern man without exercising judgment and self restraint, but the sexual revolution that Hefner helped kickstart encouraged men and women to abandon the very inhibitions that helped make sex so alluring in the first place.
Hefner suggested that the complete male was a man who appreciated the finer things in life. In this view, women were just one of the many consumer goods that a gentlemen would appreciate. But such a view is profoundly demeaning to women and, it turns out, even worse for men. Hefner threw away the intimacy and drama of monogamy for what was supposed to be the excitement and fulfillment of easy sex.
The lack of any naked ladies in the pages of Playboy is a perfect description of where sexual libertinism actually leads.
Read the whole thing.
THEY BUILD QUITE A MEMORY HOLE AT TIME-WARNER-CNN-HBO: Hillary Clinton calls for a “New New Deal” during Tuesday’s debate, which aired on CNN, a division of the Time-Warner-CNN-HBO conglomerate. It seems like only yesterday though, that another division of that corporation was telling us that a “New New Deal” had just arrived:
Naturally, Time magazine itself can’t bothered in its cheerleading to point out how shopworn the idea is; as Jim Geraghty writes, it’s “in fact an Old Old Idea, considering how FDR called for a Second New Deal in 1935.”
Add to that LBJ’s Great Society, which was sold as a Texas-sized extension of FDR’s New Deal(s), and you begin to wonder how many New, New, New, New Deals America can take before it all implodes, Cloward-Piven style.
Which is why Jim proffers the biggest takeaway of yesterday evening: “America Now Has an Openly Socialist Party.”
Can the feckless Stupid Party stop them next year?
THE HILL: House GOP: Planned Parenthood probes ‘must continue.’
House Republicans are not letting up in their investigations of Planned Parenthood, after the group announced Tuesday it is ending its controversial practice of accepting compensation for fetal tissue donations.
Top Republicans, like House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), are seizing on Planned Parenthood’s policy change as a “good, tangible result” of the investigations. But he and others said it’s not enough to end the inquiries.
“Significant questions still remain about Planned Parenthood’s finances,” Chaffetz, a candidate for Speaker, wrote in a statement.
“I’m glad to see Planned Parenthood is finally recognizing the need to end this disgusting practice,” added Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), vice chairwoman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is leading a separate investigation.
“However, there are still many questions yet to be answered surrounding Planned Parenthood’s business practices and relationships with the procurement organizations. This is exactly why the House is investigating abortion practices and how we can better protect life.”
Planned Parenthood has been under investigation since August after anti-abortion activists released videos accusing several clinics of trying to profit from fetal tissue that is donated for medical research. The health provider has forcefully denied the claims, arguing that the money it receives from procurement companies is only used to cover Planned Parenthood’s expenses.
Only one affiliate in the U.S. still received compensation before the policy change was announced. Still, conservatives say Planned Parenthood’s move adds fuel to the allegations.
“It is curious that, while Planned Parenthood officials maintain there has been no wrongdoing, they still find it necessary to change their policy following the recent undercover videos,” said Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.), who has helped lead the push against Planned Parenthood in the House.
Related: Anti-abortion group: Planned Parenthood move is ‘admission of guilt.’
CORNEL WEST: OBAMA ‘NOT MLK’ FOR COZYING TO WALL STREET, DRONE ‘WAR CRIMES.’
Hey the cognitive dissonance inherent in corporatism and the Gleichschaltung. can be brutal — it’s not easy being President Goldman Sachs.
(As Hillary may discover — along with her more rabid leftwing supporters — starting in 2017.)
ROGER SIMON: The Evil Party and the Stupid Party Debate:
Let me make a few comments on the only interesting moment in the entire Democratic debate on Tuesday night — that is, of course, when Bernie Sanders (a fatuous moral narcissist who reminds me of a Jewish Norman Thomas) gave an immense gift to Clinton by pushing the email scandal to the side, saying the American public wasn’t interested in such tiresome peripheral stuff when the middle class was suffering, shaking hands with Hillary on that “brilliant” insight and getting a huge ovation from the partisan audience for his trouble.
How much a gift was that to Hillary? Besides being a capitulation for Sanders (how else is he going to battle Hillary ultimately other than on her non-existent integrity?), time will tell, maybe sooner than later, because in a very few days — Oct. 22 — she is slated to be testifying in front of the Benghazi Select Committee. (Trey Gowdy is under intense pressure now.) But Hillary clearly had a victory tonight and that victory could encourage Joe Biden to stay out of the race.
Read the whole thing.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS FREE SPEECH ON CAMPUS, 9-0.
So if a group wants to express hostility to homosexuality — or hostility based on race, or sex, or religion, or what have you — it has the right to do that. And that’s so even if the group seeks access (on the same terms as other groups) to generally available university property, services, and subsidies. And on this point, the Court was unanimous: The liberal Justices plus Justice Kennedy took this view; the other conservative Justices would have just taken this further, to secure student groups’ right to choose their members as well as their right to choose their speech.
Well, good.
ABOUT RIGHT: Rand Paul On Bernie Sanders: Nothing “Sexy Or Cool” About Socialism.And it is greatly against us that we let entire generations be indoctrinated in the idea of socialism as a positional good. Yeah, I know. They had the schools and the media. But that’s changing and we have the means to push that change. Put your shoulder to the wheel.
WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURASIA: AP FACT CHECK: Clinton, Sanders revise history in Dem debate.
OPTICS? WHAT OPTICS: Ashe Schow on Hillary, on twitter.
WHEN THINGS GET SO BIG, I DON’T TRUST THEM AT ALL; YOU WANT SOME CONTROL, YOU’VE GOT TO KEEP IT SMALL: For “DIY” home music recording enthusiasts, I have a product review of the sE Electronics’ Reflexion Filter Pro Portable Vocal Booth over at the PJ Lifestyle blog.
WHEN THE INTERNET IS FOR PORN: End of an Era: No More Nudes in Playboy.
WEAPONIZED EMPATHY: Eastern Europe’s Compassion Dilemma.
OIKOPHOBIA IS SO IN THIS SEASON: Watch: Most Journos Fail to Stand for Anthem at Democratic Debate.
LOST IN THEIR OWN UNDERWEAR: Democrats eschew all semblance of a concept of national defense.