WELL, WELL: IRS watchdog finds 6,400 missing Lois Lerner emails. See, Lois, you should know how all the pros play the game — you have your own server at home, to facilitate evidence destruction.
Archive for 2015
April 30, 2015
SO, QUITE SOME TIME AGO I BOUGHT THE AMAZON FIRE TV BOX and I just realized I never put up the promised review. Short answer: It works really well. Video quality is excellent, whether it’s accessing the Internet via wi-fi or via ethernet, the menus are clear and easy to follow, it integrates Netflix perfectly, and it changes “channels” smoothly and without lag. The small remote works well, and the spoken-search feature does too. I have the box, not the Amazon Fire Stick, but the latter should be equally satisfying, and is cheaper. Well worth it, especially if you have Amazon Prime.
And speaking of Amazon Prime, you now get streaming music stations, a la Pandora, for free with your Prime membership, and there’s even an Amazon Music app for your phone.
WASHINGTON POST: How Hillary Clinton is running against parts of her husband’s legacy.
Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t just running against Republicans. She’s also running against parts of her husband’s legacy.
On issues large and small, the Democratic presidential contender is increasingly distancing herself from — or even opposing — key policies pushed by Bill Clinton while he was in the White House, from her recent skepticism on free-trade pacts to her full embrace of gay rights.
The starkest example yet came Wednesday, when Hillary Clinton delivered an impassioned address condemning the “era of incarceration” ushered in during the 1990s in the wake of her husband’s 1994 crime bill — though she never mentioned him or the legislation by name.
Well, that would be kind of awkward. But it’s worth noting that the 1994 crime bill was an awful piece of legislation, rammed through by the Democrats . . . and that it led to the Republicans taking the House later that year.
Related: Paul camp accuses Clinton of running from husband’s legacy with prison reform speech.
Sen. Rand Paul’s presidential campaign mocked Hillary Clinton’s call Wednesday for justice reform, claiming she’s running from policies her husband advocated during the Clinton administration. . . .
His campaign sent out an email accusing Clinton of pushing ideas that would “undo some of Bill Clinton’s work — the same work she cheerfully supported as First Lady.” His campaign cited the Clinton administration’s “war on drugs” focus, pointing in part to a Salon.com report that highlighted the findings of the Justice Policy Institute. They found “the number of prisoners under federal jurisdiction doubled” under the Clinton administration.
Paul’s campaign accused Hillary Clinton of trying to reverse that legacy while also “emulating proposals” that Paul himself has pushed — like moving away from mandatory minimum sentencing.
Still, the campaign said: “We welcome her to the fight.”
Hillary’s problem is, the more she runs away from Bill’s legacy, the more she has to explain what she, in particular, has to offer America. Which, basically, boils down to her being Bill’s wife.
Heh.
MY GUESS: DIFFERENT ONES, DEPENDING ON WHETHER THEY’RE REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS. Roll Call: What Rules Apply When Members of Congress Date Lobbyists?
YET ANOTHER SOCIALIST ENTERS THE FRAY: Bernie Sanders: ‘I am running for president.’
Hillary Clinton got her first official challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination Wednesday night, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announcing he intends to seek the White House in 2016.
“I am running for president,” Sanders said in an interview with the Associated Press.
Sanders will likely make an official public announcement Thursday. The Hill previously reported the senator will hit the launch button through a low-key event or statement, followed by a kick-off event in his home state in early May, and likely trips to the early-voting states to follow.
Sanders has set a noon press conference Thursday on Capitol Hill to discuss his agenda, which will likely include a huge boost in infrastructure and entitlement spending, free college tuition, higher taxes on the wealthy and initiatives meant to keep money out of politics.
The Vermont independent, who has previously embraced the “socialist” label, believes he is well-positioned to be the liberal alternative to Clinton, who is far and away the frontrunner to be the party’s standard-bearer in 2016.
“People should not underestimate me,” Sanders told the AP. “I’ve run outside of the two-party system, defeating Democrats and Republicans, taking on big-money candidates and, you know, I think the message that has resonated in Vermont is a message that can resonate all over this country.”
And he’s helping to broaden the Democrats’ diversity by making sure that they have the old white man demographic covered as well as the old white woman demographic! I mean, is this not the face of diversity?
Hey, he’s got the Montgomery Burns demographic locked down!
UPDATE: From the comments: “He’s just a prop to make people not notice Clinton’s age.” Well, she does look younger by comparison.
IT’S HARD TO TELL THE “FACT-CHECKING” BIZ FROM THE “DEMOCRATIC TALKING-POINTS SHILLING” BIZ THESE DAYS: Conservative webmag goes to war with Clinton-connected fact-checker.
SO MY REVOLVING-DOOR SURTAX JUST KEEPS LOOKING BETTER: Congressman Investigated By Feds Now Gets Paid By Feds To Lobby Congress.
IT’S POTEMKIN ACCENTS ALL THE WAY DOWN: Speech Pathology: Tracking Hillary Clinton’s Use of Every American Accent East of the Mississippi.
CHARLIE MARTIN: Hurricane Hugos: The controversy surrounding the prestigious sci-fi Hugo Awards. A report on the Hugos’ politicization, and on the pushback.
FIFTY SHADES OF FREDDIE GRAY: The Washington Post reports that a prisoner sharing a Baltimore police transport van with Freddie Gray could hear Gray “banging his head” against the van walls and believes Gray was “intentionally trying to injure himself.”
Earlier reports that Gray may have had prior spine or neck surgery due to an automobile accident–which may have rendered Gray’s spine vulnerable or weak–now appear to be untrue. The Baltimore Sun examined the court records related to this rumor and determined that the lawsuit involved claims by Gray and his sister that they were injured by exposure to lead paint.
All of this just emphasizes the need to have a full investigation before jumping to conclusions, much less rioting. But then again, the actual facts of police encounters in cases such as Ferguson and Baltimore don’t seem to matter to the protesters.
COMPLICATING THE NARRATIVE: Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says.
I’m skeptical, but this wouldn’t be the first time a black-and-white narrative of police misconduct turned out to be . . . well, to be honest, just plain false. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: As you can see from Elizabeth’s post just above, great minds really do think alike!
MARK RIPPETOE: Strength Training At 92. “Gus has put away her walker and cane, and hasn’t fallen in a year.”
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Mom Says School Wouldn’t Let Daughter Finish Lunch Because It Was Not ‘Nutritious.’ The more bullying, the more people will exit the system.
UPDATE: Oops, my mistake. I’m not sure how, but I somehow missed that this was a preschool. Still lame, though.
OH, GOODY: U.S. Officials Expect Bird Flu to Return in the Fall.
Officials with the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the H5N2 virus, along with two other highly pathogenic strains of bird flu, would probably be passed among birds at breeding grounds in the northern United States and Canada through the summer.
The strains are difficult to control, say scientists, in part because wild birds can carry the viruses without appearing to be sick.
The statement marks a shift in tone in the agency’s assessment of the likelihood for a renewed outbreak tied to fall migration. More than 15 million commercial birds nationwide have died or are expected to be killed in the current outbreak, and exports of U.S. poultry and eggs have slowed sharply.
We need better antivirals.
THE JOYS OF LAW REVIEW PUBLICATION: I once had a law review editor tell me I needed to find a footnote to support a sentence that began “In my opinion, ….” No lie.
DANIEL HANNAN: Why conservatives have more empathy than liberals.
If you start from the conviction that you’re standing up for the underdog, you will naturally assume that your political opponents are for the powerful. You will subliminally screen out evidence that challenges that view. As Danusha Goska put it in American Thinker not long ago, “Never, in all my years of leftist activism, did I ever hear anyone articulate accurately the position of anyone to our right. In fact, I did not even know those positions when I was a leftist.”
Do rightists also caricature their opponents? Yes, but not to anything like the same extent. A 2012 study by Jesse Graham, Brian A. Nosek and Jonathan Haidt asked conservatives and liberals to answer a series of questions as themselves, and then to answer them in the imagined personae of a typical conservative and a typical liberal. It found that the liberals were the least able to accurately to guess their opponents’ views, seeing conservatism as a kind of moral failure.
Yes, very few lefties can pass the ideological Turing Test.
MICROBIOME NEWS: The Cure for Brain Diseases Is in Your Gut: Researchers are just now starting to link inflammation in your gut with some of the most deadly and debilitating diseases we have. Faster, please. Though I’d take this article a bit more seriously if it didn’t use the words “holistic” and “reductionist” so many times.
SMARTPHONE SECRETS: Better Authentication Than A Password?