Do They Suspect Sabotage?

Glenn Reynolds points out the odd behavior of law enforcement agencies in the growing Gulf oil spill disaster.

Mr. Obama said SWAT teams were being dispatched to the Gulf to investigate oil rigs and said his administration is now working to determine the cause of the disaster...

[snip]

...Napolitano said the Homeland Security and Interior departments are conducting a joint investigation into what caused the explosion on the rig.

I understand that Homeland Security may have a valid role investigating the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, especially if there are concerns that it may not have been an obvious accident and that sabotage needs to be ruled out.

But unless SWAT means something in some other context than paramilitary special weapons and tactics teams, I'm not understanding why these units are being deployed to oil rigs, when to the best of my knowledge, that is both well outside their normal jurisdiction, and presumably, beyond the average SWAT team's skill set.

Don't get me wrong... I'm not bad-mouthing SWAT officers, but how many of them have the kind of background to investigate oil rigs? The logical use of such teams on a rig would be to provide security and deter criminal actions, right?

So why does the President think that oil rigs need SWAT teams instead of engineers?

Dems: "Show Me Your Papers"

Let me see if I understand this logic.

The pro-criminal immigrant lobby is crying that Arizona's self-defense immigration law is the equivalent of Nazi Germany and other totalitarian states requiring people to carry onerous documentation everywhere they go, drudging up the ominous imagery of MP40-toting German soldiers demanding, " show us your papers."

The Democratic response?

Something even more intrusive:

Democratic leaders have proposed requiring every worker in the nation to carry a national identification card with biometric information, such as a fingerprint, within the next six years, according to a draft of the measure...

[snip]

“The cardholder’s identity will be verified by matching the biometric identifier stored within the microprocessing chip on the card to the identifier provided by the cardholder that shall be read by the scanner used by the employer,” states the Democratic legislative proposal.

The American Civil Liberties Union, a civil liberties defender often aligned with the Democratic Party, wasted no time in blasting the plan.

"Creating a biometric national ID will not only be astronomically expensive, it will usher government into the very center of our lives. Every worker in America will need a government permission slip in order to work. And all of this will come with a new federal bureaucracy — one that combines the worst elements of the DMV and the TSA," said Christopher Calabrese, ACLU legislative counsel.

It sounds crazy, right? Not hardly. You just need to understand their agenda.

The government-loving nanny-state left wing would want more control over the lives of our nation's legal citizens... even as the proposed law would do absolutely nothing to stop criminal immigrants that work in the underground economy, off the books, as millions of criminal aliens already do.

The simple fact of the matter is that importing as many criminal aliens as possible and converting them into voters is the long-term survival strategy of the Democratic Party, and they will never champion laws that protect the integrity of our nation's borders or strengthen our national defense if those run counter to the needs of the Party.

The Democratic Party—and I wish to clarify that I mean the progressive left wing that currently runs the Party—are driven entirely by their desire to grow their power and exert control over this nation's citizens through intrusive government, and are quite content to use invaders who are not citizens as pawns in that game.

This latest stunt is just one more example of their strategy, and another reason the left wing must be destroyed to restore this nation to the land of opportunity our Founders intended.

So, What Is Jaleel White Doing These Days?

He'd be perfect for the lead.

Obama Shows His Marx

Via Hot Air comes Mark Levin, catching Barack Obama going off-teleprompter for a moment and letting his socialism slip out:

We're not, we’re not trying to push financial reform because we begrudge success that’s fairly earned. I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.

Previous leaders of our Republic have proudly boasted of this nation as a land where anyone can grow up to be anything they aspire to be with hard work and determination. Barack Obama is the first to attempt to saddle that dream and denounce that aspiration, saying "no, you've had enough."

What an arrogant, anti-American bastard we have saddled ourselves with as President.

And what shallow, easily-led fools were are for putting him there.

Open Carry Advocates Are The Shooting Community's Second-Worst Enemy

We can count on gun control advocates to tell lies and twist truths in an effort to demonize gun owners, but most citizens realize the mindless zealotry and distortions up, front, and so pay these groups little mind.

Far worse for gun owners are those in our midst that confuse their right to bear arms with their imagined right to shove them in your face... metaphorically speaking, of course. While guns rights seem to be gaining ground across the nation, the confrontational, combative nature of some open carry advocates is detrimental to all gun owners, a fact many readers don't seem to agree with in my latest article at Pajamas Media.

Violent, Racist Senator Discovered... Guess Which Party?

Oh, come on... you already know:

It looks like the circus and childish antics are rearing their ugly head once again in Albany.

It started as an angry blow-up, and then it escalated. A state senator with a history of anger management issues says his race-based rant was part of his fight against the "evil of white supremacy."

Brooklyn State Senator Kevin Parker is a well-documented hothead, and on Wednesday he took to the airwaves to unapologetically defend his latest shouting match.

"It's par for the course for what we have to do in Albany – fighting the forces of evil," Senator Parker said.

Parker shockingly identified the "enemies" he's fighting as other senators.

"These long-term, white supremacist, you know, Republican senators," he said.

Don't ask Parker to rationally explain why state senators doing their jobs are white supremacists... he can't give you a rational answer, because there isn't one. The best he can do is claim minority status and perpetual victimhood in an embarrassing display of the intellectual bankruptcy that has paralyzed modern "progressive" thought.

If that wasn't bad enough, consider this wasn't his first temper tantrum. He may soon face jail time because of his violent, childish behavior.

There have been other temper tantrums involving the senator. Last year he was accused of felony assault after doing $1,000 in damage to the car of New York Post photographer William Lopez and smashing his camera after he snapped Parker's picture.

Two years ago, an aide filed charges against Parker, claiming he pushed her during an argument and smashed her glasses. In 2005, Parker was accused of punching a traffic agent in the face. The charges were dropped after parker[sic] agreed to take anger management classes.

Senator Parker is due in court next month on the assault case. Sources tell CBS 2 his attorney is trying to cut a no-jail deal, but the district attorney isn't buying it.

Of course, I'm probably a racist for pointing this out.

In Praise of Profiling

Arizona's law targeting criminal immigration has drawn tremendous amounts of fire for giving law enforcement officers in that state the procedural tools to require citizens prove who they are, and that they are in the country legally, if (and only if) they are stopped for suspected law-breaking.

Criminal immigrants, their support organizations, and various groups that seek to profit from these criminals are trying to claim that the law is illegal and unconstitutional "racial profiling," and that it will unfairly focus law enforcement on minority populations by targeting the criminals that reside in or transit this nation illegally.

Jamelle Bouie provides us with a typical anger-filled example of this thought pattern:

One of the most objectionable things about Arizona's law is the blatant racial profiling, but that doesn't seem to phase most conservatives. Jonah Goldberg doesn't see a problem with it. George Will doesn’t see a problem with it. Byron York doesn't even understand that it is racial profiling (note to Mr. York: the difference between flashing your ID at the DMV and being asked for your papers is that the latter will only happen if you're brown). There's a straightforward explanation behind this tacit support for racial profiling in Arizona; simply put, conservatives have long been defenders of racial profiling in law enforcement.

You only have to look back five months — after the failed "underpants bombing" — to see conservatives voice their enthusiasm for anything that would give extra scrutiny to brown people. Tom McInerney, a retired Air Force general, proposed that we "be very serious and harsh about the profiling," especially if "you are an 18 to 28-year-old Muslim man," in which case "you should be strip-searched." The National Review's Andy McCarthy endorsed the view of the Wall Street Journal's Bret Stephens, who argued that profiling was necessary given that "suicide bombing is a purely Islamic phenomenon." Even conservative elected officials are willing to voice their enthusiasm for profiling. In an Armed Services Committee hearing on Fort Hood, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) declared that he "believes in racial and ethnic profiling."

In fact, the conservative enthusiasm for racial profiling goes beyond national security and immigration. Conservatives tend not to see a huge problem with the fact that African-Americans are disproportionately stopped and searched by law enforcement.

There is a simple reason that humankind has used profiling techniques for thousands of years: they work. And there is another unpleasant fact that some would rather ignore:

This nation has been in a long emotional discussion concerning the use of profiles by law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, this debate has been entitled, "racial profiling." There is a saying in debating, "If you can define the terms, you win the contest." Utilizing the term, "racial profiling," ensures that the debate will be negative in tone and divisive in nature. I propose that instead of inflaming emotions, we take a look at what actually is being done in this area of enforcement. This issue is so important to law enforcement and its efforts to interdict drugs and terrorists that a dispassionate examination is essential.

No government agency or law enforcement association, in their interdiction training, teaches that race is a characteristic of criminals. Not the Drug Enforcement Administration, United States Customs, The International Association of Chiefs of Police or any national police association, period. Officers are taught to look at the individual for characteristics or indicators of criminal activity. These characteristics, when seen in clusters by trained officers, have been recognized as a valid investigative tool by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Those who purport to be shocked that ethnic groups are over represented in the population arrested for certain criminal activities must have been in a prolonged coma. The fact is that ethnic groups control the majority of organized criminal activity in the United States. They also tend to hire as their underlings and couriers others of their same group. Why? Because these are the people they grew up with, feel comfortable around and because it's human nature.

The truth is, if you work criminal interdiction in this country, you will not arrest the same percentages of ethnic groups as represented in the U.S. general population. People may not like it but that is the reality.

Profiling certain groups for certain types of criminal activity is legal, justified, and proven under fire in the justice system.

Jamelle Bouie may not like reality, but reality doesn't change based upon what is convenient or easy, or because the community-based reality would rather not address empirical truths.

It is an unquestioned statistical fact that black males are more likely to be arrested, incarcerated, unwed fathers, school dropouts, and victims of violent crime than any of their peers in any other significant ethnic group not because of some bias against them, but because they drop out of school more frequently, embrace cultural norms that devalue the family structure, fatherhood, emotional maturity, and responsibility, and they commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes (often at the expense of their peer/victims) with weapons that can lead to serious injury or death.

Likewise, because of our geography and sociopolitical dynamics in this hemisphere, is it far more likely that criminal immigrants will be from nations in Central and South America, and therefore, of the native and/or Hispanic ethnicities that dominate those regions. Obviously, ethnicity is not the only criteria that law enforcement officers use in building a profile. They also look for indicators and characteristics that may indicate illegal behavior or criminal affiliation, and it these additional markers that often make the difference between a simple speeding ticket and a more detailed investigation that may lead to criminal arrest.

But to pretend that there is anything wrong, immoral, or unconstitutional in recognizing ethnicity as part of an overall profile is absurd.

Profiling—think of it as characteristic clustering—has been used and refined around the world for thousands of years, because it is an effective tool that catches criminals and cuts down time wasted interrogating law-abiding citizens who have done nothing wrong.

If one didn't know better, one might think these liberals were champions of criminal behavior. But that couldn't be right. Could it?

Dingy Harry: Defying My Will is "Un-American"

November can't get here soon enough:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) accused Republicans of being "anti-American" by demanding changes to a Wall Street regulation bill before it's debated openly on the Senate floor.

Speaking to reporters just before the Democrats' third attempt to break a GOP filibuster on the issue, Reid said that Republicans "keep stalling, keep stalling." He charged Republicans with trying to pick apart the bill before it even comes to the floor where both sides could offer amendments and openly debate the measure.

"Even some Democrats would like to offer amendments on this bill," Reid said. "All of this talk from Republicans about wanting to do something about this bill before it gets on the floor is really anti-Senate and anti-American."

Reuters Confirms: AZ Law Targeting Illegal Aliens Is Likely to be Very Effective

Granted, that was probably not the intent of this article lamenting the personal concerns of several illegal aliens, but that is nonetheless exactly what they reveal. They interviewed three of these criminals (you do remember that all illegal immigrants are criminal by definition, don't you?). One said he would stay, but try to keep a low profile. Another said he would return home to Mexico. The third said he would leave for another state.

While grossly too small to represent anything approaching a useful sample size, this anecdotal evidence strong suggests that many criminal aliens will leave Arizona as a result of their new law.

If the law survives the legal challenges that are sure to come, it may have the effect of relieving some pressure on overburdened social services, will free up positions for lower-skilled citizens that need work, and presumably lower crime rates as well.

If those hypothetical results turn out to be verifiable facts, how quickly do you think other states will adopt similar measures?

Who Should You Believe, The Spectator or the Actuary?

The American Spectator claims that the White House and Health and Human Services hid the true cost of Obamacare prior to the vote.

Medicare's Office of the Actuary denies the report was delayed. Some are attempting to parse the wording of his statement into a non-denial denial, but it seems rather straightforward on first read.

The American Spectator sources inside HHS—and they do appear to be multiple sources—indicate they and the White House has the report well in advance of the report, while the Actuary is claiming they didn't release the report until after the report.

We have a conflicting stories here, both claiming to come from insiders. Who to believe? My answer: both of them.

I think it is probably 100% accurate that the Actuary did not release the final and official report until after the vote.

I think it is also quite possible—actually, probable—that the Actuary was working on their report drafts with the draft versions of the Congressional legislation the entire time, and that HHS and the White House were privy to these late-stage report drafts and knew what the final report would say well in advance of the vote.

The question that a responsible news media needs to ask the Actuary is whether or not they were working on late-stage drafts of their report based upon the Democratic legislation in the weeks before the vote, and whether the White House, Congress and Health and Human Services were aware of those draft reports, and what kind of figures these drafts were suggesting.

The Medicare Actuary's denial in no way clears the Democrats in Congress and the Obama Administration, it merely suggests that they are practiced enough in their duplicity to not be caught red-handed.

Supporters of Illegals are Siding with Criminals

What a joke.

Linda Greenhouse and the rest of the shrill Reds at the New York Times are quite welcome to their own opinions about Arizona's recently passed immigration laws, but they are not entitled to make up their own community-based realities that for all intents and purposes are lies.

Despite her hysterical cry that Arizona is a police state, the simple fact of the matter is that Arizona needs better policing. In case you've been head-down in a cave, you might have heard that there is a full-scale drug war going on just over the border between drug cartels and the Mexican government, and that the gangs are not only financing their war through drugs smuggled across this border the federal government won't defend, but also by kidnapping people inside the United States and holding them for ransom.

Where are the drugs coming across the border?

Where are the kidnappers infiltrating?

Where are they taking hostages?

Where are they running drugs?

The answer to all of these is, of course, Arizona.

I suspect if Linda Greenhouse had her community under constant threat of violence from heavily-armed drug dealers, had to worry about her friends and relatives being snatched off the street for ransom, and had to worry about the potential for facing a hail of gunfire from a skittish human smuggler as a part of her life, then her opinion of Arizona's law would change, and change quickly.

Arizona isn't becoming a police state, it is merely defending itself from becoming a police-less state. Their former governor and current Secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, has forsaken them. She has not protected Arizonans or America from the drugs and drug violence raging over the border, and her boss, Barack Obama, does not care either... perhaps content that his own illegal alien aunt lives in Boston, supported by American taxpayers.

Never have I seen such rage and resistance to protecting something as common-sense and fundamental as our nations' territorial integrity and our national sovereignty.

Illegal aliens do not belong here. They are here—see if you can follow—illegally.

Liberals and radicals are supporting criminal behavior by opposing Arizona's immigration law, which had to be passed because of the shameful actions of the federal government.

There is good news for illegals, though. It looks like they'll be welcome in San Francisco.

I trust they can find their way across the state border.

Military Hive Joins BlogAds Initiative

You may (or may not) have noticed in your time here that CY is on both the Conservative Blog Hive and Military Blog Hive on BlogAds, which specializes in blog advertising (such as those ads you see in the margin).

The Military Hive and the Economics Blog Hive are part of a new initiative to draw in advertisers and support blogs (and bloggers) that sometimes get passed over in favor of larger media buys. Henry Copeland has the official word on the BlogAds Blog which explains things better than I can.

Once the kinks are ironed out and the beta period is over, this program will be rolled out to other 130+ blog hives and their bloggers.

Good luck, everyone!

Updated: White House, HHS Hid Report Exposing Cost of Obamacare

This merely confirms the fact that Barack Obama and his administration chose to deceive and defraud the American people in order to further their statist goals:

The economic report released last week by Health and Human Services, which indicated that President Barack Obama's health care "reform" law would actually increase the cost of health care and impose higher costs on consumers, had been submitted to the office of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius more than a week before the Congressional votes on the bill, according to career HHS sources, who added that Sebelius's staff refused to review the document before the vote was taken.

"The reason we were given was that they did not want to influence the vote," says an HHS source. "Which is actually the point of having a review like this, you would think."

The analysis, performed by Medicare's Office of the Actuary, which in the past has been identified as a "nonpolitical" office, set off alarm bells when submitted. "We know a copy was sent to the White House via their legislative affairs staff," says the HHS staffer, "and there were a number of meetings here almost right after the analysis was submitted to the secretary's office. Everyone went into lockdown, and people here were too scared to go public with the report."

58% of voters already support repealing Obamacare. News that Obama and his allies deceived the American people by hiding this report will only push that number higher, while it simultaneously adds to the number of Americans who simply won't trust an Administration that has proven itself to be inherently corrupt and deceptive.

Update: Actuary denies the report was delayed. My thoughts on what this denial means are here.

Breitbart: Audio Shows John Lewis, Andre Carson are Liars

He's right, you know.

If they weren't lying they'd stick to their guns instead of trying to hide or change the subject. There is a certain amount of disgust one must have for Civil Rights veteran John Lewis, Andre Carson, and other Representatives and hangers-on of the Congressional Black Caucus who apparently hoped to incite Tea Party protesters, failed, and then later decided to lie and claim racial epithets were hurled because their attempt at bigotry trolling failed.

John Lewis, who spent his life presumably fighting for equality, now seems little better than racists such as David Duke, Jesse Jackson, or Al Sharpton.

Indeed, it's amusing to watch liberals fume and huff over Duke's most recent comments about the Tea Party, but absolutely refuse to address the cesspits of racial hatred of their own racially-exclusive caucus and it's most recent orchestrated attempt to smear law-abiding citizens peaceably assembled to protest flawed legislation.

Until these faux liberals can admit the racism in their own midst, admit that minorities can be racist, and indeed, that some of the minorities who are the worst offenders hold positions of power in this Democratic Congress in general and the Congressional Black Caucus in specific, then they are simply not worth our further time or attention.

Breitbart has exposed real racists on Capitol Hill. Watch the liberals scatter as they try to avoid admitting that the bigots and liars are their own ignorant brethren.

Framing the Coming Immigration Battle

"'Nobody wins' on immigration reform" blares the Politico headline. And they're right... immigration reform
shouldn't even be an issue until immigration enforcement is rock-solid.

The simple fact of the matter is that the Democratic Party prefers lax immigration enforcement and prefers to have a high influx of illegal aliens streaming over the border, regardless of crime they bring or the drain on social services meant for American citizens. These illegals naturally gravitate towards the politics of the party that will grant them the ill-gotten services illegal immigrants need to survive here, instead of forcing them to return home.

Democrats hope to then convert these millions illegals into Democratic voters by offering them amnesty and citizenship without terms.

Sadly, many Republicans seem scared of championing enforcement efforts out of political cowardice, fearing they will be branded racists... and to a certain extent they are correct, as illegal aliens and their Democratic allies have tarred every supporter of enforcement as bigots.

But respect for American values and law is on the side of the right, and this is a fight that must be waged.

Liberal Democrats are attempting to work this building political battle by casting it as a reform effort.

Conservatives and independents need to make sure that they speak the language of the enforcement of laws and respect for legal residents. Legal citizens far outnumber the coffer-draining tens of millions that the Democrats would conscript as political allies.

Americans respect the law, and revile criminals that steal from the hard work of others. Every illegal alien is a thief, taking services meant for American citizens and legal visitors to this Republic.

Republicans must wage a battle to secure the finances and manpower to enforce existing laws, and make certain that this is the battle that is waged. Democrats don't want reform. Democrats don't want to protect our nation's borders. They desire power, and they don't care how many citizens are denied services or are forced to pay more than their fair share because of these foreign invaders.

We demand that the government builds an effective physical border that makes it far more difficult for illegals and drug runners to invade out nation without detection. We required that it be staffed with as many law enforcement officers as it take to capture those trying to sneak into our nation. We will accept no amnesty. Any alien captured should be stripped of their assets to pay for the cost of deportation. Employers that refuse to comply with existing laws against hiring illegals must be shut down.

We don't need "reform" that only enriches the electoral hopes of Democratic party politicians. We need real enforcement that stands up for the rights of all Americans.

Can Irony Be Fatal?

If it is, we'll be ignoring the funeral of Matthew Yglesias later this week.

Here's a free hint, kid: don't talk crap about someone being a shill for ideologically-driven publications and think tanks when that sums up your entire resume. Your bosses might find you ungrateful...or they may giggle over the fact you're a malleable idiot utterly lacking in self-awareness.

Wannabe Cop, Wannabe Assassin?

Sunday afternoon law enforcement officers arrested an armed Ohio man who said he wanted to meet President Obama. Was this a poorly-organized murder plot?

An armed man spotted at a North Carolina airport parking lot just after Air Force One departed Sunday told an officer he wanted to see the president and had a car equipped with police gear, including a siren and flashing lights, authorities said.

Joseph Sean McVey, 23, of Coshocton, Ohio, is charged with going armed in terror of the public, a misdemeanor, said Asheville Regional Airport Police Capt. Kevan Smith.

Security was heightened at the airport because President Barack Obama was leaving after spending the weekend vacationing in Asheville. He was headed to a memorial service for 29 West Virginia coal miners killed in an explosion.

At about 2 p.m., airport police saw McVey get out of a maroon car with Ohio plates and that he had a sidearm, Smith said. Both airport police and the Secret Service questioned him and he was taken into custody. The suspect was nowhere near the president's plane, which had just departed, and was in a rental car return lot that is open to the public, Smith said.

His car was equipped with clear LED law enforcement-style strobe lights in the front and rear dash, Smith said. The car also had a mounted digital camera in the front window, four large antennas on the trunk lid, and under the steering wheel was a working siren box. Smith said McVey was not in law enforcement.

"Going armed in terror of the public" is a bizarre and quite frankly idiotic North Carolina law. It is legal to carry a weapon openly on your hip in North Carolina, until it scares someone. If someone complains, or feels threatened for any reason at all (even if the person carrying the gun is making no threatening mannerisms or gestures) then cops can charge the otherwise legal gun carrier with going armed in terror of the public.

It is a stupid law, and the only law that I aware of that converts an otherwise legal activity into a crime based upon a third party's irrational fears instead of criminal behavior. North Carolinians have been trying to repeal this law for years, but a gun-hating Raleigh Democrat has bottled up in committee in the state legislature.

Anyway, going armed in terror of the public is a odd law to bring against a potential assassin, so the most rational explanation for it is that cops wanted a reason to hold on to him so that they can further investigate McVey's background and determine how much of a threat he might be, or if he even is a serious threat.

I'm not sure what the laws are regarding impersonating police officers, or if McVey ran afoul of other firearms laws, but I imagine we'll her more later today.

Agents of Incompetence, Part IV

What do you do when you can't apparently justify claiming a toy is a machine gun?

Misdirect!

Welcome to the Freak Show

I'll eventually have to head out to the Bay area on business, and while I'm there, I think I'll have to sign up for the ZomGuide Walking Tour.

Seems to kind of be like a walking tour of a zoo, only with more a exotic and bizarre collection of specimens.

Remember, Remember...

Jim Treacher has spanked Michael Scherer for his bed-wetting in Time's Swampland over the new (and brutally effective) ad from the Republican Governor's Association and their new site, RememberNovember.com.

Scherer bleats:

The politics and substance aside, this strikes me as a remarkable bit of political messaging, not just for its cinematic quality. The RGA, under the control of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, is clearly stepping out of the stodgy, safe territory it normally inhabits. It is aiming to tap into the vast well of anti-government fury now coursing through the nation. Who would have guessed that Barbour would embrace the symbolic value of the same would-be mass murderer as the Wachowski brothers?

It's amusing to consider how the left absolutely adored the anti-government message of V for Vendetta when it came out during the start of George W. Bush's second term as they attempted to portray him as a fascist, but are now offended that anti-statist rhetoric is proving effective against the real statist bent of the Obama Administration and the corrupt liberal Congressional leadership.

There isn't anything, of course, remotely close to a call for violence in the RGA message, just a rallying cry to raise funds for electoral justice.

That liberals such as Scherer are reduced to trying to message an effective ad into something else is merely a measurement of just how effective the ad truly is.

Brewer to Hopey McChange: Eff Off

I'm sure you heard it elsewhere first, but Arizona's legislature passed a bill requiring law enforcement to check the immigration status of anyone they suspect may be in the country illegally. the bill was in more or less direct response to the federal government refusing to do their job of defending the border.

Arizona governor Jan Brewer had three options today:

• veto the bill
• let the bill pass without signing it
• sign the bill

It was rumored that Brewer wasn't in favor of the bill and may have even wanted to veto it, and she was certainly getting a lot of pressure to do just that. At most, there was an expectation that she might allow the bill to become law without signing it.

And then Barack Obama had to open his mouth, calling the legislature and people of Arizona "misguided," and made the not at all subtle threat of directing his Justice Department to see what they could do to overturn it.

Obviously, that didn't sit well with Governor Brewer, who decided her citizens needed real hope and change, not empty rhetoric:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer on Friday signed into law a controversial bill that seeks to crack down on illegal immigration.

The sweeping measure will make it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It will also require local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are in the country illegally.

It takes effect 90 days after the current legislative sessions end in the next several weeks.

Before signing the bill, Brewer called the measure "another step forward in protecting the state of Arizona."

She said the bill "represents another tool for our state to use as we work to solve a crisis that we did not create and the federal government has refused to fix -- the crisis caused by illegal immigration."

That Brewer signed the bill—and chose to follow up the signing with the rhetorical shot across Obama's box—seem to be in direct response to his attempt to bully the Governor into vetoing the bill.

One of these day he might learn to keep his mouth shut when all it can do is get him in trouble... but I doubt it will be any time soon.

Obamacare Kills 2,500

Jobs, not people... at least for now.

The Sallie Mae layoffs are a direct result of the student loan takeover Democrats shoved into Obamacare.

A Shock to None: Democrats Lied About the Cost of Obamacare

Most Americans knew that the unrealistic constraints placed upon the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) by the leftists that authored the bill meant that the CBO cost estimate of Obamacare was a fantasy.

The Health and Human Services Department just confirmed what we've known all along:

Economic experts at the Health and Human Services Department concluded in a report issued Thursday that the health care remake will achieve Obama's aim of expanding health insurance — adding 34 million to the coverage rolls.

But the analysis also found that the law falls short of the president's twin goal of controlling runaway costs, raising projected spending by about 1 percent over 10 years. That increase could get bigger, since Medicare cuts in the law may be unrealistic and unsustainable, the report warned.

It's a worrisome assessment for Democrats.

It should be worrisome, but hardly unexpected. Democrats sold their political futures on cheap rhetoric and top-down bullying against the will of the majority of the American people.

There is a price to pay for that, and we'll know the exact cost in November.

Update: Obamacare's cuts to Medicare are already adding to health care costs in Kansas.

Make Way For The Space Marines

I'm not expecting it anytime soon, but the concept is slick:

After decades of unsuccessful development, military space planes are finally getting some respect. On April 19 the U.S. Air Force plans to launch the X-37B, an unmanned space plane that will circle the planet a classified number of times before making an autonomous landing. (Popular Mechanics profiled the effort as the magazine's cover story in April.) The idea of a pop-up reconnaissance platform, to be used if a satellite is not available or is disabled, is an importantrationale for the Air Force's project.

The Marines' space plane takes the Corps' slogan of "first to fight" to the extreme: It could transport a squad of Marine riflemen to anyplace on earth within 2 hours, and then extract them after their mission is complete. Though the goal is appealing—imagine delivering well-armed Marines at hypersonic speed to a suspected Osama bin Laden hideout or besieged embassy—the concept seemed outlandish to many when it was first proposed.

Now, this sort of response time would be incredible, but think about the possibilities of how this hypersonic vehicle can be integrated with other technologies in development, such as micro-UAVs, load-bearing armored exoskeletons, ultra-high velocity kinetic weapons, and ever-shrinking smart weapons.

HALO vs. al Qaeda... could be interesting.

Update: More hyper-velocity future weapons at Ace of Spades.

An Updated Southern Strategy in the City of Brotherly Love

Philadelphia, you're... something.

17 years ago, Tom Hanks played the role of a real-life gay man (Geoffrey Bowers) attempting to survive AIDS and bitter anti-gay bigotry in 1987.

In 2010, incumbent Democrat Rep. Babette Josephs is cynically attempting to use homosexuality in her bid to stay in office... in a rather unusual way:

Veteran Rep. Babette Josephs (D., Phila.) last Thursday accused her primary opponent, Gregg Kravitz, of pretending to be bisexual in order to pander to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender voters, a powerful bloc in the district.

"I outed him as a straight person," Josephs said during a fund-raiser at the Black Sheep Pub & Restaurant, as some in the audience gasped or laughed, "and now he goes around telling people, quote, 'I swing both ways.' That's quite a respectful way to talk about sexuality. This guy's a gem."

Josephs' attempt to brand her opponent as not gay enough is just a slightly more palatable form of bigotry than that that drives supremacist groups around the world. Certainly, nothing in Joseph's remarks can be miscast as a call to violence, but her message is clear, he isn't one of us, and he can't be trusted.

So much for tolerance.

(H/T Allah)

Did Obama Lie About His Role In Selling His Old Seat?

An improperly-redacted copy of a subpoena issued by the defense in United States v. Rod Blagojevich sure makes it look that way. What the subpoena alleges Obama did is at odds about what he claimed publicly.

We know Barack Obama lies. What we don't know is whether or not he has been dumb enough to get exposed as a criminal as well. I certainly hope not.

The thought of "President Biden" is almost too much to bear.

File This Under "Duh." Tea Party Protesters More Peaceful Than Left Wing Protesters

Over at Newsbusters Candance Moore highlights a Christian Science Monitor story that notes Tea Party protesters may be getting preferential treatment because they are far better behaved than the left-wing rabble that typically bring violence to protests.

Predictably, the CS Monitor laments that the preferential treatment afforded to Tea Party protesters isn't fair, and may be unconstitutional... though they don't really do a good job of explaining why treating each protest group based upon the makeup of the crowd and their threat potential is anything other than common sense police work. Instead they cite "experts" and activists that try to claim that the police may be engaged in "viewpoint-based discrimination," which would mean they establish and enforce rules unevenly based upon whether or not they agree with the protesters.

They ultimately fail to establish that this bias is anything other than a pet theory, however, and leave the field open to the more logical conclusion that police agencies see less violence potential out of a group of mature adults than a crowd of militant 20-something anarchists.

The media is left labeling common sense as bias.

How far they've fallen.

The Other 95%... Seriously?

The so-called "Coffee Party" organized by Obama propagandist filmmakers was a farce. I don't know if it is even still around, but what is certain is that friendly media was unable to make that astroturf grow into something to counter the Tea Party movement.

Not content to crash and burn just once, desperate Obamaphiles have attempted to bring back the Coffee Party under another name, with a different group of professional activists pushing a slightly different message. "The Other 95%" reveals the desperation of the far left as we approach the November elections.

It's pretty bad when your best attempt at faking bipartisanship grassroots support is an effort fronted by a professional far left radical basing a group on a lie.

AZ House Passes Anti-Birther Bill

I doubt the state has the legal authority to ask candidates for birth certificates, but let's grant that it does for the sake of argument.

When asked for proof, Obama will merely turn over the same certificate of live birth that he's previously shown, and that meets the standard the Arizona House requires.

Whether by intent or incompetence, this is an anti-birther bill that will validate any state's recognized birth certification document as evidence of eligibility to run for President.

Can you say, "d'oh"?

So Dumb, Even a Caveman Wouldn't Do It

Let me pass along a bit of common sense that apparently never occurred to actor Lance Baxter: if your career hinges on the public liking you—or at least not being offended by you—it is probably best that you don't call them names:

Actor Lance Baxter, otherwise known as "D.C. Douglas," currently known as the man who informs you how much GEICO can save you on car insurance, left a message last month with FreedomWorks in which he asked the group how many "mentally retarded" people it had on staff and what it would do when a tea partyer "killed someone." On April 14, FreedomWorks put his voicemail online.

Let me explain this very clearly for the whining Mr. Baxter and his would-be defenders. As an American, you have the freedom of speech. You do not have the right to avoid entirely reasonable responses to the speech you decide to exercise.

Baxter chose to take actions that led to a response by the target of his ire, which was entirely within their rights. GEICO, likewise, was entirely within their rights to dump Mr. Baxter, who could not control himself and made an outburst that could cause the company financial losses.

Freedom isn't free, it requires responsibility and knowing that you may be required to pay a price for your convictions.

Mr. Baxter has now learned that lesson.

Love Unrequited

Yesterday, six gay-and-out military veterans handcuffed themselves to the fence outside the White House as a way of protesting the Administration's handling of "don't ask, don't tell" provisions they'd like to see struck down. The police response was to bum rush the journalists covering the unfolding story, forcing them away from the protest in what appears to be a clear violating of First Amendment rights.

The outrage on left-wing blogs to this totalitarian behavior is as shrill as it is predictable, as is the blubbering of left-leaning new organizations. Both campaigned for Obama, championed him, fawned over him, and in return, they've been rejected and marginalized by his Administration time and again.

The sad thing is that you know they'll come crawling back for his approval like whipped dogs.

How pathetic.

FBI & IRS Raid NY State Senate Majority Leader

Hello, corruption:

Federal authorities raided a government-funded clinic run by the state Senate's majority leader, one day after New York's attorney general accused him of siphoning money from it.

About a dozen FBI and IRS agents appeared Wednesday at the Soundview Healthcare Network in the Bronx, where a big canopy above the front door lists Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. as its president and CEO.

The agents removed Espada campaign posters and other items from an 8-foot-tall, 25-foot-long storage container behind the building. They also stacked boxes on the grass, and agents wearing blue or green gloves leafed through the contents and wrote notes.

Espada spokesman Steve Mangione didn't immediately respond to requests for comment left on his cell phone and through e-mail.

FBI spokesman Jim Margolin said only that the search was part of an ongoing investigation.

On Tuesday, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced a lawsuit accusing Espada of siphoning $14 million from the clinic. It said the money was used for lavish restaurant meals, trips to Las Vegas and Espada's campaign.

After hours of searching, investigators were still unable to recover Espada's party affiliation.

Amazon Sues North Carolina to Protect Customer Data

Amazon.com is suing to stop the NC Department of Revenue to block the state from collecting individual customer data:

Amazon contends in the suit that it routinely provides the Revenue Department with "voluminous information" about its sales to North Carolina as part of routine audits of the company's compliance with sales and use tax laws. The information includes the date and total price of each transaction, the city, county and ZIP code to which each item was shipped and Amazon's standard product code for each item, which allows officials to see the description of every product purchased.

In March, however, the Revenue Department threatened to hold a civil contempt hearing for Amazon if the company doesn't also turn over the names and addresses of anybody in North Carolina who has purchased goods off its website since August 2003, according to the suit. The company said that amounts to nearly 50 million purchases.

"If Amazon is forced to comply with this demand, the disclosure will invade the privacy and violate the First Amendment rights of Amazon and its customers on a massive scale," the suit states. "The (Revenue Department) does not need personally identifiable information
about Amazon's customers in order to audit Amazon's compliance with state tax laws. All it needs to know is what items Amazon sold to North Carolina customers and what they paid, and Amazon has already provided that information."

This would seem to be a significant invasion of privacy by the Department of Revenue, and I will be very interested to see if they can find a reasonable way to justify this intrusion.

Bill Clinton: Child Torturer and Killer

I'd never heard this before.

CS gas was used at the compound, in order, as senior White House adviser George Stephanopoulos said, echoing senior Justice Department statements, to "try and pressure" those in the compound. It was hoped, he said, that as this "pressure was increased, the maternal instincts of the mothers might take over and they might try to leave with their kids" (Washington Times, April 23, 1995).

But the FBI knew beforehand that adults in the compound had gas masks; the gas therefore would not put pressure on them. On whom, then? If the FBI knew that the adults had gas masks, but went ahead with the gas attack anyway, it is plain that this "pressure" was brought directly against the children because, as the FBI knew, they could not fit into adult– size gas masks. "Maternal feelings", the FBI hoped, would be unleashed in the mothers by watching their children choking, gasping and blistering from the gas.

The plan Reno approved and took to President Clinton for approval contemplated the children choking in the gas unprotected for forty-eight hours if necessary, to produce the requisite "maternal feelings". By taking aim at the children with potentially lethal gas, their mothers would be compelled, according to the FBI plan repeatedly defended by the Clinton administration afterwards as "rational" planning, to flee with them into the arms of those trying to gas them. [Emphasis added.]

An independent report on Waco written by the Harvard Professor of Law and Psychiatry, Alan A. Stone, for the then Deputy Attorney General Philip Heymann, says it “is difficult to believe that the US government would deliberately plan to expose twenty-five children, most of them infants and toddlers, to CS gas for forty-eight hours”. Unfortunately, however, that appears to have been exactly the plan.

The effect of CS gas on an unprotected infant exposed for only two to three hours is discussed in the report; in that case report, dating from the early 1970s, the child’s symptoms during the first twenty-four hours were upper respiratory; but, within forty-eight hours his face showed evidence of first degree burns, and he was in severe respiratory distress typical of chemical pneumonia. The infant had cyanosis, required urgent positive pressure pulmonary care, and was hospitalized for twenty– eight days. Other signs of toxicity appeared, including an enlarged liver.

Professor Stone's report is measured, careful and damning.

There is more at Volokh, and Dr. Stone's report suggests that some of the infants, toddlers, and children died as a direct result of suffocation caused by the CS gas.

President William Jefferson Clinton signed off on a plan that he knew would cause innocent babies and children to suffer the effects of CS gas... in fact, the entire plan hinged upon their torture and suffering.

Someone please explain to me why Clinton should not be brought up on felony charges and spend the rest of his life in prison for agreeing to a plan that counted on the torture of 25 innocent infants and children. Convince me that he shouldn't face the death penalty for those that suffocated to death because of his decision.

Clinton had the audacity to try to tell us Sunday to be wary of another Timothy McVeigh. Evil bastard that he was, McVeigh's plan didn't hinge on the torture and abuse of children. Bill Clinton's did.

His life should end in a federal prison.

Sadly, we all know that will never happen.

Top AQI Terrorists Killed

It has taken several years of hard work, but the top two leaders of al Qaeda in Iraq have been confirmed killed in a joint U.S./Iraqi operation:

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki announced Monday that two top insurgent leaders had been killed, including a somewhat mythic figure who has operated under the name Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. Mr. Baghdadi has been reported dead or detained several times previously, and his very existence had been called into question a few years ago by American military leaders.

After Mr. Maliki’s press conference, the American military released a statement verifying that Mr. Baghdadi was killed in a joint raid between Iraqi and United States forces in the dark hours of Sunday morning near Tikrit, near Saddam Hussein’s hometown.

Also killed, according to Mr. Maliki and American officials, was Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, also known as Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a largely Iraqi group that includes some foreign leadership.

The simple fact of the matter is that al-Baghdadi was a fictional character when he began, and was a voice played by an actor. Later a former officer-turned-terrorist picked up the moniker, and it is this second al-Baghdadi that was killed.

al-Masri's death was the most important of the two, but it was nice that both were terminated together, which should serve to fragment the group further.

More Thuggish Threats of Teabagger Violence

That is what you call it when Democrats are arrested for threatening Republican politicians with violence, right?

A 66-year-old man was arrested Sunday for threatening Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla.) last month, the FBI said.

The man, Erik Lawrence Pidrman, was arrested by FBI and local law enforcement agents Sunday afternoon.

Pidrman left a voice mail at Brown-Waite's district office saying, "Just wanna let you know I have 27 people that are going to make sure that this ***** does not live to see her next term."

Pidrman was a $250 Democratic donor to the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign and a self-described blackout drunk.

Sounds like he'd be right at home in the State Department.

Organized Thuggery Getting More Organized in NC

The Washington Post notes this morning that North Carolina Democrats are attempting to create a hard-left third party to oust those NC Democrats who voted against Obamacare. The State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) is building an organization called North Carolina First in order to punish Democratic Reps. Larry Kissell, Heath Shuler and Mike McIntyre for their "no" votes on Obamacare.

It is worth noting that SEANC is a part of SEIU, the purple-shirted thugs that have assaulted people at several town hall meetings. SEANC is only marginally less bullying, as a family friend and a prison guard found out when blue-shirted SEANC members shouted down and intimidated attendees at a health care townhall meeting in Greenville, NC, last August 11th.

SEANC and SEIU are cut from the same dirty cloth, and so there should be little doubt that North Carolina First is actually Democratic Party First, Union Power Second, North Carolina Third (or Lower). I guess the more accurate DPFUPSNCTOL was a bit unwieldy and hard to fit on a sign.

...And He Still Doesn't Understand

Bill Clinton took to the pages of the New York Times yesterday with an op-ed entitled What We Learned in Oklahoma City.

The former President laments the lives lost when Timothy McVeigh detonated a massive truck bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building 15 years ago today. He struck the right notes as we remember and mourn those who died in this act of mass murder.

But Clinton showed that he still doesn't understand the heart of the nation he led, nor its purpose or dreams with one telling paragraph:

Finally, we should never forget what drove the bombers, and how they justified their actions to themselves. They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government, and that public servants do not protect our freedoms, but abuse them. On that April 19, the second anniversary of the assault of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, deeply alienated and disconnected Americans decided murder was a blow for liberty.

Clinton is dead wrong when he questions whether or not the greatest threat to American freedom is our government. Of course it is. The Federal government is a far greater threat to our liberties than any external threat.

Protected by the breadth of the two great oceans and the world's most dominate air and naval forces and the most experienced, combat-capable Army and Marines in world history, there simply is no threat of foreign military invasion. Nor is any nation likely to challenge our economic might externally, as the American economy is the economic engine of the interconnected world... if it collapses, it hurts them as well.

It is a literal fact that the only significant and constant threat to our liberties is government, and especially the over-reaching federal government.

Clinton was always admired by liberals and reviled by conservatives for his ability to tell the American people a lie with the greatest sincerity. Perhaps that is still his greatest asset, as he tries to tell us just weeks after a far-left Democrat Party rammed through legislation that mandates we purchase a product of their choosing or face fines, that our public servants seek protect our freedoms, when it is obvious to us all that they abuse them.

He goes on to mention almost in passing the most telling thing about our would-be tyrants, when he nearly whispers:

Americans have more freedom and broader rights than citizens of almost any other nation in the world, including the capacity to criticize their government and their elected officials...

We almost have more freedom.

We almost have more rights.

What the former President will not mention is that our freedoms are declining under our current radicalized President and Congress. We now rank eighth in economic freedom, with "notable decreases in financial freedom, monetary freedom, and property rights."

The sad fact Clinton himself intentionally contributes to oppression, with this very op-ed attempting to draw parallels between today's peaceful protests against a power-crazed federal government, and the Oklahoma City terrorist attack that was a response to his Justice Department's inept handling of the Branch Davidian siege that left dozens of men, women and innocent dead.

The former President strays back on message almost accidentally, if for but a moment, when he mentions that, "Criticism is part of the lifeblood of democracy," and "Civic virtue can include harsh criticism, protest, even civil disobedience. But not violence or its advocacy."

The sad fact of the matter, however, is that neither the explosively-tempered Clinton nor our notoriously thin-skinned current President or liberal Congress can handle even the most mild criticism without waging full-scale counterattacks in response. There has been precious little violence except that committed by leftists. There hasn't even been civil disobedience.

Instead, we have a former President hoping to tie an act of domestic terrorism 15 years ago to freedom-loving groups often led by genial mothers and grandmothers today. Why? Because they've organized protests, and have made remarks critical of his preferred ideology.

Bill Clinton's government was responsible for killing more American civilians on American soil than any President alive, and he seeks to chide Tea Party protesters for pithy signs espousing a return to the core principles of our Founders.

Have a Coke and a smile, Bill, and quit attempting to smear your fellow Americans for desiring freedom instead of government control.

Why the Sudden Anti-Gay Hysterics From the White House?

I don't know the first thing about Judge Elena Kagan and couldn't care one bit about her sexuality preferences, anymore than I care about Samuel Alito's sex life.

The Obama White House, however, certainly made a scene when it got hysterical over Ben Domenech's claim that possible Supreme Court nominee was openly gay. Kagan's preference is apparently common knowledge on gay blogs, but apparently not something the White House wants broadcast.

Domenech eventually retracted his claim under pressure, but not before vehement White House denials made it appear that a charge of being gay was on par with child molestation.

I'm not really sure what message the Obama Adminstration is trying to send by telling everyone they support gay rights on one hand, only to turn around and make being gay sound like the most objectionable sin possible on the other.

At the very least it is bad optics, and quite possibly, evidence of their own underlying bigotry.

Don't Fire Up The Black Helicopters Just Yet...

It was several years ago—during the Bush Administration—that Ward Brewer was pitching the idea of reconfiguring a small fleet of retired naval vessels into long-term, heavy-lift emergency response vehicles that could provide food, water, shelter, power, medical care and emergency transportation in the event of a major national disaster or terrorist attack.

The idea had a lot going for it.

In the big scheme of things it is relatively inexpensive (remember, we're talking in government dollars) and could turn retiring Tarawa-class Amphibious Assault Ships into even more important national assets than they were as weapons. Loaded with first responders and equipment, such vessels would have been a godsend in the response to the recent earthquake in Haiti, not to mention the hurricane season.

For various reasons, plans for what I'd quickly dubbed the &qout;Salvation Navy" never came together, but that doesn't mean that Ward's ideas weren't good ones. His ideas found champions in various political and military leaders, along with similar plans already under discussion.

One of those ideas evolved into cross-training military units to perform roles in disasters, and plans were made to create both interim and long-term solutions.

Sadly, some of the same sort of conspiracy theorists that think 9/11 was an inside job to hide Barack Obama's Kenyan birth quickly assigned a sinister purpose to the unit in question, which observant blogger David Luckie noticed in a conspiratorial column in the Examiner.

Nutty, much?

In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.

The special force, which is the new name being given to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, has been training at Fort Stewart, Georgia and is composed of 80,000 troops.

According to the Army Times,

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

The key phrase is 'may be called upon to help with civil unrest.'

This afternoon a local radio talk show host reported that he had been in contact with a member of the military. This military source stated that the armed forces have been alerted to the strong possibility that civil unrest may occur in the United States this summer, prior to the midterm elections of 2010.

The gist of the column was to gin up fears that Barack Obama was building a massive Gestapo-like force to be unleashed so that he could seize control of the government and declare himself Emperor... or something. Read the rest, if you want.

Mr. Luckie, who blogs at I Bleed Crimson Red, simply shreds the conspiratorial ranting of the Examiner columnist by actually talking with real, honest to God people-who-know-what-they're-talking-about.

It won't dissuade those poor souls that need conspiracies the way the rest of us need oxygen, but Luckie's demolition of this myth of Obama's secret Army should satisfy any questions most normal people have about the unit.

Latest on the Bautsch/Brown Attack in New Orleans

The Hayride continues to make the case that the attack on Bobby Jindal's 25-year-old campaign fundraiser Allie Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown after an event at Brennan's last Friday night was politically motivated.

I agree that is by far the most likely scenario. The reports the victims made to police make it clear that when they left the restaurant they were followed and then set-upon by left-wing protestors that had attempted to rush the restaurant much earlier in the evening, and which had chased another person into a cab shortly before the attack on Bautsch and Wilson.

Ambushed from behind by 3-5 thugs, Wilson suffered a concussion, broken nose, and broken jaw. Bautsch had her ankle broken. Both will take months to heal.

High-ranking Democrats and their media allies continue to trumpet the threat of "right wing violence." That call to caution isn't completely unwarranted, as the recent arrest of the Hutaree militia-cult proves. But the simple fact of the matter is that most violence of this sort comes from leftists, and the media spends most of its time finding way to ignore that fact.

Numerous Bigots Photographed At Tea Party Protests

I've written several articles about the Tax Day Tea Party protests this past week for Pajamas Media and PJTV, noting that left wing groups hoping to infiltrate the movement and portray themselves to the media as racist Tea Party protestors largely never materialized.

But that isn't to say there weren't distinct examples of bigotry and hatred on display at some rallies. We've posted pictures of some of these this racists and bigots at Pajamas Media in a post entitled, 'Left' Behind: Tolerance and the Tea Party.

Update: Zombie finds the few spasmodic counter-protesters at the San Francisco Tea Party, doing a very bad job of fitting in... if they were even trying at all.

Obama: Let Them Eat Cake

We learned during the 2008 Presidential campaign with his "bitter clingers" comment that Barack Obama's true feelings seep out when his guard is down in front of a friendly crowd.

It came out again last night at a Democratic Party fundraiser in Miami:

President Barack Obama said Thursday he's amused by the anti-tax tea party protests that have been taking place around Tax Day.

Obama told a fundraiser in Miami that he's cut taxes, contrary to the claims of protesters.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

Point One: Obama is lying about cutting taxes. Sure, he's cut a few, but he's raised others, and the massive spending bender he and his allies in Congress have gone on since the 2008 elections mean that a significant increase in taxes is now mandatory... and we aren't even talking about the billions in unfunded liabilities Democrats are tacking on to the federal deficit that will drown future generations.

Point Two: How tone-deaf can a politician be? The very day that hundreds of rallies are held across the nation, with tens of thousands of protesters drowning out the scattered voices of his supporters, he chooses to mock the concerns of growing number of Americans. That goes beyond mere arrogance to outright stupidity.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you."

History will remember that with those sneering words, Barack Obama further alienated the liberal wing of the Democratic Party from Main Street America and converted on-the-fence conservative Democrats and independents into tens of thousands of new Tea Party Patriots.

Thank you, Barack Obama. Every time you utter gems like these, you move us one step closer to restoring this Republic to the principles our Founders held dear.

Too Bad We're Not Building New Garbage Scows

Politicians—more than likely led by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi— have pressured the Navy into naming a new San Antonio-class amphibious ship after ex-Marine and Democratic pork champion John Murtha.

Once put to sea, the Murtha, a amphibious transport dock (LPD), will take part in landing Marines on hostile shores before then retreating to a safe distance to call a press conference to accuse them of intentionally killing women and children in cold blood.

Boston Leftists Just Not That Sharp

Some hipsters tried to heed Scott Levin's cry to "crash the tea party" yesterday in Boston.

Their efforts were, well, see for yourself.

CrashTheTeaParty.Org Founder's Twitter Page Goes Dark

Jason Levin's twitter account, http://twitter.com/xenex11/ no longer exists.

I wonder why.

Tea Party Crashers With A Sense of Humor

I suspect that as coverage unfolds throughout the day that we're going to discover that the bulk of individuals and groups trying to "crash" Tea Party protests are going to be young and surly and obviously out of their element, but at least one group at the Washington, DC Tea Party yesterday last year had a great sense of humor... and a nice flair for the dramatic.

Reminder: Expose The Party Crashers

If you attend one of today's Tax Day Tea Party protests and run across those looking to malign the movement, capture them in photos or video and send it to tpcrashers@pjtv.com.

More on how to do that (and constructive advice how to interact with those involved) at Pajamas Media.

Another Lie Bites The Dust

That members of the Congressional Black Caucus lied about the use of racist language during their walk through a crowd of Tea Party protestors prior to the Obamacare vote is all but certain. Only the handful of black Congressmen—who took an unusual path to Congress through the crowd in a thinly-disguised attempt to provoke a response—claim that "n*gger" was screamed at them.

Dozens of videos were shot that day, at the time and location where the delegation trolled through the crowd. No one took the bait. The Caucus' own camcorder-toting underlings could not capture one slur. Men once championed as civil rights icons for standing against racism against blacks were revealed as cynical bigots who will use race as a weapon for the cheapest of political stunts.

Recently, so have tried to reignite the lie, claiming that Democratic Rep Heath Shuler (NC) walked with the Caucus and heard the imagined slurs.

That has now been debunked as well.

But he wasn't there. He was near Barney Frank, and did hear already documented slur uttered at his expense (though somehow missed the alleged f-bomb the foul-mouthed Frank uttered to elicit that response).

Heath Shuler was nowhere near the race-baiting liars of the Congressional Black Caucus when they slandered thousands.

Marine Closes "Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots" Page After Controversy Erupts

When you join the military you agree to abide by the rules and regulations noted in your enlistment contract. While I am aware of regulations that prevent service members from certain kinds of advocacy, I wasn't aware it was meant to go this far:

A Camp Pendleton Marine has removed his Facebook page after his comments fueled a free-speech debate about whether troops are allowed to criticize President Barack Obama's policies while serving in the military.

Sgt. Gary Stein said he was asked by his superiors to review the Pentagon's directive on political activities after he criticized Obama's health care reform efforts and then was asked this week to talk about his views on the MSNBC cable TV channel.

Stein said his supervisor told him of his right to an attorney about the matter. He said he decided to close his Facebook page and review his military code obligations. He also contacted private attorneys who told him he had done nothing wrong.

[snip]

Camp Pendleton spokeswoman Maj. Gabrielle Chapin said the Marine Corps is not considering filing charges and simply wanted him to be aware of the rules so he did not break them.

The Pentagon's directive states that military personnel are not allowed to write anything to solicit votes for a political cause, sponsor a political club or speak before any gathering that promotes a political movement.

I don't know the regs. Did this Marine cross the line, or not?

Match Game?

As we discussed some last night, Bobby Jindal's campaign finance director Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown were hospitalized after they were assaulted Friday night after leaving a fundraiser at Brennan's Restaurant in the French Quarter.

There are at least two very similar descriptions of the primary assailant.

NOLA notes:

...in his 20s, looked "dirty," and wore his hair in an auburn-colored ponytail. The man was 6 feet, 1 inch tall with a thin build, police said. He wore a light-colored T-shirt and dark pants.

WWLTV says:

...a white man who appeared to be dirty, in his 20s, about six feet tall with a thick build and thin face. He had a beard and auburn-colored hair in a pony tail

As it so happens, a parade of protesters on their way to harrass the SLRC and Jindal's fundraiser at Brennan's were caught on camera and posted in a series of videos on YouTube.

One video in particular, titled "SRLC Protest 9 April 2010 - Onward to Brennan's" captured a brief shot of a young man who comes close to matching those general descriptions at the 1:40 mark on the video.

I caution that this is by no means a smoking gun proving that this is the man who assaulted the couple (he can be seen walking with a child at the 2:00 mark of this video). Odds are that he is not related to the attack, but I hope that the New Orleans Police are showing this and similar videos captured around Brennan's that evening to Bautsch and Brown so that they either identify or rule out assailants that may have been caught on film.

NY Times About To Put American Lives at Risk?

I sure hope that Brad Thor's tipster is wrong, but considering the recent track record of the leftist media giant, I won't be surprised if the New York Times really is considering publishing a list of names of Americans working to protect U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

The release of this information serves no practical purpose other than to expose these individuals and their families to threats of violence. The intent can only be to undermine and distract those individuals. This puts the lives of our soldiers and Marines in greater danger.

How can they morally justify this?

Update: CIA Deputy Director suddenly "retires." Thor seems to think this was the man who leaked the names of DoD personnel to the press.

I would not want to be him.

Setting the Stage For An American Neda

When I wrote on CrashTheTeaParty.Org for Pajamas Media I thought it was vile that so-called "liberals" were organizing to smear and misrepresent Tea Party protesters as crazies and racists.

I privately suspected that the Democratic Party approved of such behavior with a wink and a nod, but never has any suspicion that they may get directly involved in such underhanded scheming.

Apparently, my expectations of Democrats were set too high.

New Hampshire Democrats are engaged in a statewide search for liberal activists willing to attend so-called tea parties on Thursday and carry signs expressing racist or fringe sentiments, a Democratic source with knowledge of the effort tells NowHampshire.com.

According to the source, who sought anonymity for fear of reprisals, the Dems last minute scramble reflects a growing obsession among party leaders that they need to discredit the tea party movement soon or it will overwhelm them come the November election.

Former Democratic State Party Chairman Kathy Sullivan is heading up the search, the source said. Sullivan has been calling and e-mailing liberal activists trying to get them to attend tea parties in different parts of the state and hold signs denying the authenticity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate and make racially disparaging comments to reporters.

"This is Kathy's [Sullivan] project," the source told NowHampshire.com. "She is absolutely obsessed with painting the tea party people as racists."

Liberals are open—even proud—about their plots to foment false charges of racism and misappropriate Social Security numbers and other personal information, championing identity theft to harm Tea Party protesters.

If they are willing to proudly go to these extremes in their public statements, it is only logical to wonder if they are plotting violence in private, like the Molotov cocktails liberals planned to hurl at cops and delegates of the 2008 Republican National Convention before that plot was thwarted.

The Iranian people became rightly inflamed when Neda Agha-Soltan was callously shot in the heart by a thug supporter acting on behalf of the Iranian regime.

If Democrats think that the Tea Party has little use for them now, imagine what the sentiment will become if some bomb-throwing left-wing sociopath splashes a peaceful group of Tea Party protesters with homemade napalm.

Reasonable Men

Bill Whittle—one of my favorite thinkers, writers, and PJTV personalities—has transcribed his latest Afterburner segment entitled "Reasonable Men."

I found myself especially drawn to a line drawn from a collaboration between Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson, where Dickinson smoothed over the rhetoric of a too militant Jefferson.

"We are reduced to the alternative of choosing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers or resistance by force. Honour, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us."

The document this was drawn from was the July 6, 1775 Declaration of Taking Up Arms of the Second Continental Congress. It was a warning to England that the rights of men—not the newly-imagined "rights" of today's usurpers that involve the appropriation of the rights of others—are not forfeit to any government, but granted by our creator and not to be surrendered. This was not yet a call to revolution, but a clarification of intent.

It is worth noting that this declaration took place even after the battles at Lexington and Concord that left more than a hundred dead and hundreds wounded. At this late hour, they still strove for a peaceful accord.

Peace was always the goal... but not at the expense of liberty.

Foul

As a rec league soccer coach the past six seasons I can assure you that there are other options than just school-related teams, and so I think that this attempted controversy proves mostly nothing.

Mostly.

But As Don Surber astutely points out, President Obama made the following statement about the incident, which could be very worrisome.

President Obama Sunday seemed to shrug off the brouhaha after he broke with White House tradition and ditched his press pool earlier this weekend to watch one of his daughter’s soccer games.

Prior to Obama’s bilateral meeting with Pakistan Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, Obama told his colleague, "Apparently I caused quite a problem," adding something about his secretary not telling the Secret Service, according to, ironically enough, the pool report.

Surber notes that Obama made it sound like he ditched the Secret Service to attend a soccer game, unattended, in a rough part of town, leaving himself defenseless against any possible assassination attempt. If that was the case, that would indeed be extremely irresponsible of the President... but I suspect that isn't what occurred.

Despite Hollywood's insistence that member's of the first family can slip away from the Secret Service without really trying, I find it very hard to believe that Obama slipped away from 1600 Pennsylvania without his bodyguards in tow. For starters, what car would he drive?

No, I suspect that Obama's muttered comment about not telling the Secret Service he was going to a game is either a mistake by the Politico writer, or more likely, simply the latest lie by a man serially uncomfortable with telling the truth.

Jindal Staffer and Boyfriend Badly Beaten, Hospitalized After Leaving Fundraiser

Bobby Jindal's campaign finance director Allee Bautsch and her boyfriend Joe Brown were hospitalized this weekend after they were badly beaten leaving a Friday night fundraiser at Brennan's Restaurant being held for the Louisiana Republican Party.

According to various reports, Bautsch and Brown left the restaurant and were going to their car parked two blocks away when the incident occurred. One of Bautsch's legs was badly broken, and required surgery. It will be 2-3 months before she recovers. Brown suffered a concussion, broken nose, and broken jaw. It sounds as if he was very lucky to avoid a fractured skull, or worse.

Some commenting on the story have implied that the couple was targeted for wearing Sarah Palin pins, and that the assailants were left wing protestors that has been outside the restaurant earlier in the evening. There is absolutely no evidence that supports either of these contentions at this time. In fact, Michelle Malkin reports that they were not wearing Palin pins.

There simply isn't enough information to know what occurred or why at this time, and the NOPD and Jindal's office are refusing to provide more details because of the assault investigation.

If it turns out that they were targeted for being part of the fundraiser and suspects can be identified, it will be interesting to see if hate crimes charges will be filed.

Update: More details of the assault have been released:

New Orleans police say that the incident began about 10:45 p.m. when a group of three to five men made "derogatory comments" to Bautsch and her boyfriend. When the man described as the male victim "turned toward" the group of men, at least one of the men struck him repeatedly. The woman "fell to the ground and screamed," the news release said.

Police released a description of one suspect, saying he was in his 20s, looked "dirty," and wore his hair in an auburn-colored ponytail. The man was 6 feet, 1 inch tall with a thin build, police said. He wore a light-colored T-shirt and dark pants.

Update A slightly different description:

Police said they only have a description of one of the suspects, who was described as a white man who appeared to be dirty, in his 20s, about six feet tall with a thick build and thin face. He had a beard and auburn-colored hair in a pony tail. His accomplices were also said to be white men

The Man Behind CrashTheTeaParty.Org

My latest article is up at Pajamas Media, providing some of the details about the man who created a Web site dedicated to organizing left-wing radicals to smear their fellow Americans.

As disgusting as their tactics are, the group has preemptively failed in their April 15 mission. By making a public declaration of their plans to create the worst stereotypes possible, they've already identified and marginalized themselves, creating a situation where the media knows well in advance that these agent provocateurs will be the likely sources behind any disturbances at famously sedate and friendly Tea Party rallies.

Tea Party protestors champion liberty, delight in each other's company, and relish the expression of American exceptionalism, past, present, and future. The other side champions deception, delights in fraud, bigotry, division, the creation of paranoia and distrust, and desires to radically remove this nation for it's core principles to align with lesser states they admire.

Chose your side, and chose it wisely as reasonable men should, America.

You cannot afford to do nothing.

Fool House

Too perfect:

In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the "personal health insurance coverage" of senators, representatives and their staff members.

For example, it says, the law may "remove members of Congress and Congressional staff" from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

The confusion raises the inevitable question: If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?

See what they did there, right at the end? That is what you call a rhetorical question.

Get That Man A Spine

How many times has this occurred now? Three? For someone who tries so hard to cultivate the image of a intellectual and sophisticate, he seems doggedly determined to cast himself as an unteachable buffoon, once again bowing to a foreign dignitary that is his equal.

Great Depression Ended Because Roosevelt Died and Couldn't Extend It

That's the soundbite take-away from this WSJ article that runs counter to the great liberal myth that make-work government programs do anything other than prolong economic downturns and stifle the prospects for recovery.

FDR had every intention of ramming through "New Deal II," and after he expired, Truman asked Congress to carry out his wishes.

Congress said "no" and instead undertook strategic tax cuts that spurred the private sector growth that finally pulled the nation out of the Roosevelt-lengthened Great Depression. That's something to keep in mind as we head into 2010.

The President can propose any budget he wants, but it is ultimately Congress that makes the laws and has the power to cut taxes and repeal or de-fund bloated federal spending.

If we want to power our way out of our current economic malaise, our best course of action is to elect fiscally responsible representatives that favor cutting bloated federal programs and taxes, no matter which party they represent.

Rising Disgust: 58-Percent Want to Repeal Obamacare

The latest from Rasmussen.

Stoner Obama Quoted Reggae Artist In Nuclear Arms Screed

Wow. He's so deep.

In his article Obama praised the nuclear freeze movement and celebrated the work of two groups: Arms Race Alternatives and Students Against Militarism. By Obama's description of them, the groups were among the "useful idiots" promoting the Soviet line on Reagan's build-up: "These groups, visualizing the possibilities of destruction and grasping the tendencies of distorted national priorities, are shifting their weight into throwing America off the dead-end track."

Obama expressed and dismissed a possible reservation regarding the "narrow focus" of the groups, citing the deep wisdom of Peter Tosh that "everybody's asking for peace, but nobody's asking for justice." Heavy, man.

Finally! Audio Exposes Racist Comments Hurled at Black Prof During Obamacare Debate

Unlike the faked cries of racism ginned up by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, these were actually recorded.

A related article is also worth your time.

Pimp My Rifle

I know that cultures throughout world history have decorated their weapons, but the gentleman to the left in this article is a great example of going over the top, with artistic license taken with his rifle, its magazine, and the underslung grenade launcher.

It probably would have been more impressive if he'd actually taken care of the AK, which appears to have a field-repaired cracked wood stock and the finish worn down to bare metal almost everywhere.

Planned Parenthood: Don't Tell Anyone you Have HIV. Just Do It.

Patterico has found just another facet of the Responsibility-Free Lifestyle™ that the left always champions, where no one should have to account for their actions and everything becomes a "right," from the "right" to marry whoever you want to the "right" to health care to the "right" to affordable housing to the "right" Planned Parenthood is trying to create, the "right" of HIV-positive people to have sex with someone without informing them that their life may be put at risk.

CNS News cites the shocking claim:

"Some countries have laws that say people living with HIV must tell their sexual partner(s) about their status before having sex, even if they use condoms or only engage in sexual activity with a low risk of giving HIV to someone else," the guide states. "These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges." Under the heading "Sexual Pleasure and Well-Being," the guide declares that it is a human right and not a criminal issue as to whether a person decides if or when to disclose their HIV status, even if they engage in sexual activities.

According to this most favored and revered of liberal institutions, it is your "right" to put someone else's life at risk for your pleasure.

Warped?

Beyond belief.

CNN Commentor: Confederate Soldiers Were All Terrorists

How horrible it must be to view your world through a prism like that that blinds CNN's Roland Martin. The poor man is so conflicted by his own bigotry that he can't tell the difference between Confederate soldiers of the Civil War and al Qaeda terrorists.

When you make the argument that the South was angry with the North for "invading" its "homeland," Osama bin Laden has said the same about U.S. soldiers being on Arab soil. He has objected to our bases in Saudi Arabia, and that's one of the reasons he has launched his jihad against us. Is there really that much of a difference between him and the Confederates? Same language; same cause; same effect.

If a Confederate soldier was merely doing his job in defending his homeland, honor and heritage, what are we to say about young Muslim radicals who say the exact same thing as their rationale for strapping bombs on their bodies and blowing up cafes and buildings?

If the Sons of Confederate Veterans use as a talking point the vicious manner in which people in the South were treated by the North, doesn't that sound exactly like the Taliban saying they want to kill Americans for the slaughter of innocent people in Afghanistan?

Defenders of the Confederacy say that innocent people were killed in the Civil War; hasn't the same argument been presented by Muslim radicals in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places where the U.S. has tangled with terrorists?

We can't on the one hand justify the actions of Confederates as being their duty as valiant men of the South, and then condemn the Muslim extremists who want to see Americans die a brutal death. These men are held up as honorable by their brethren, so why do Americans see them as different from our homegrown terrorists?

Implied Roland Martin's bizarre comparison is a direct parallel between Fort Sumter and the 9/11 terror attacks.

Does CNN really want to stand behind this view?

So Who Really is More Dangerous for America?

A fraudulent showman who twists people's emotions with falsehoods in order to get rich as Bob Cesca alleges, or a radicalized neophyte ideologue with his own extensive record of fraudulent and deceptive statements and a residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

Glenn Beck might bankrupt a handful of true believers. Barack Obama seems intent on bankrupting 300 million. If Bob Cesca wants to spend time targeting who is more dangerous for America's future, he needs to change his target.

A: Crips, Bloods, and the NJ Teacher's Union

Q: Who wants New Jersey Governor Chris Christie dead?

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's take-no-prisoners demand for education cuts got him a whole lot more than he bargained for -- a death wish.

It was in a controversial e-mail sent by the Bergen County Teachers Union to its members asking that Christie be "taken" by the Lord.

In seven years as the Garden State's pugnacious U.S. Attorney, Christie got only two death threats -- from the bloods and the crips.

It took only three months as governor for an adversary to wish him six feet under.

"To have the leader of the Bergen County Teachers Union send out an e-mail to their 17,000 members asking them to pray for my death I think just goes beyond the pale," Christie said.

President Kaczynski, Other Gov't Leaders Killed in Crash

All 96 aboard were killed when the Russian-built Tu-154 crashed short of the runway in heavy fog:

Russian and Polish officials said there were no survivors on the Soviet-era Tupolev, which was taking the president, his wife and staff to events marking the 70th anniversary of the massacre of thousands of Polish officers by Soviet secret police.

On board were the army chief of staff, national bank president, deputy foreign minister, army chaplain, head of the National Security Office, deputy parliament speaker, civil rights commissioner and at least two presidential aides and three lawmakers, the Polish foreign ministry said.

Russia's Emergency Ministry said there were 96 dead, 88 part of a Polish state delegation. Poland's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Piotr Paszkowski, said there were 89 people on the passenger list but one person had not shown up for the roughly 1½-hour flight from Warsaw's main airport.

"We still cannot fully understand the scope of this tragedy and what it means for us in the future. Nothing like this has ever happened in Poland," Paszkowski said. "We can assume with great certainty that all persons on board have been killed."

This is not the sort of blow the crash of Air Force One would have on the United States since most of the domestic duties of their government are handled by the Prime Minister. Commander-in-Chief duties will be taken over by the Speaker of the Parliament, who was running for the Presidency in elections this fall and projected to win.

May prayers go out to the families of the victims and to the Polish people.

Obama Questions Palin's Nuclear Wisdom

He simply doesn't know when to shut up:

President Barack Obama on Thursday made clear he was not going to take advice from Republican Sarah Palin when it comes to decisions about the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Palin, the former vice presidential candidate, has not been shy about criticizing Obama's policies and this week weighed in on his revamped nuclear strategy, saying it was like a child in a playground who says 'punch me in the face, I'm not going to retaliate.'

"I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues," Obama said in an interview with ABC News.

Palin's view of nuclear weapons was shaped by her stint as the commander in chief of the Alaskan National Guard, our first line of defense against Soviet nuclear weapons. Obama has held his same views since he was a stoner college student and has showed no signs of maturing.

Which of the two would you trust?

Update: I stand corrected. Palin does not have any experience with the AANG. The 49th Missile Defense Battalion AANG, Fort Greely is (literally) the first line of defense against Soviet nukes with 25-30 anti-ICBMs, but they do not report to the governor.

Obama? Still utterly untrustworthy, and getting more so every day.

Update: And she zings Dear Leader... again:

"Last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues," he said.

Palin shot back in her comments Friday, mocking the president for "the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer." She said that his alleged experience had not helped him make progress in the issue with Iran and North Korea.

What dim-witted liberals cannot seem to grasp is that Obama simply isn't any more competent than Palin... or almost anyone else. Nothing in his self-promoting career gave him any leadership experience, nuclear, or otherwise.

Breaking: Stupak Retiring

Good riddance:

Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak of Michigan tells The Associated Press he'll retire from Congress rather than seek a 10th term this year.

Stupak has drawn stinging criticism from opponents of the recently enacted health care overhaul after leading a bloc of anti-abortion Democrats whose last-minute support was crucial to its approval by the House.

The target of Tea Party groups gunning for his seat, Stupak claimed he could have won reelection if he tried.

Uh-huh.

His retirement came over the objections of Democratic Party leaders:

President Barack Obama called Stupak on Wednesday and asked him not to retire. Stupak, 58, also resisted entreaties from Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), the dean of the Wolverine State delegation.

NSFW: No Shame For WikiLeaks, Part 2

The founder of WikiLeaks admits he is an activist first and a journalist second in interviews. That label applies equally well to WikiLeaks, a group that attempts to turn video if combat deaths into a fundraising vehicle.

Read Shame on WikiLeaks: Framing Lawful Engagement as Anti-American Propaganda (Part Two), and you'll never feel the same about them again.

(For those who missed it yesterday, I suggest first reading Part One) and the excellent work done by the Jawa Report here and here.

NSFW: No Shame For WikiLeaks, Part 1

The WikiLeaks videos calling American helicopter pilots responsible for "collateral murder" hit the mainstream earlier this week, and now the backlash against the group's dishonest propaganda is beginning to explode.

Fox News is currently covering the controversy in its lead story, and does present a decent overview of some of the issues.

If you want a true understanding of just how deceptive WikiLeaks was, however, you need to read these posts by the investigative team at the Jawa Report, and a pair of articles I've written for Pajamas Media that tell the true story of what happened, starting with Part 1.

President Who Has "Known Islam on Three Continents" Removes References to Islamic Extremism From National Security Strategy Document

It appears that the White House is once again putting political correctness above all:

President Barack Obama's advisers will remove religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" from the central document outlining the U.S. national security strategy and will use the rewritten document to emphasize that the United States does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terror, counterterrorism officials said.

The change is a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventative war and currently states: "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

As for the quote i cited in the headline, take it up with the author, who we presume in this instance is not Bill Ayers.

Knocking Down Another NY Times Smear

The ideologues at the increasingly partisan Times managed to slip in another attack against the Tea Party Movement several days ago, comparing them to the domestic terrorists of the Weather Underground.

Larry Grathwohl, who infiltrated the Weathermen and helped stop one of their attempts at mass murder, is understandably disgusted with the comparison of today's patriots with the left-wing terrorists the Times has all but embraced.

Tangos Down: WikiLeaks Misrepresents Apache Assault on Medhi Army Militia

WikiLeaks has posted video of what they decided to frame as "collateral murder."

Anyone with a passing knowledge of the strict rules of engagment our soldiers and aviators follow, and who took the time to pay attention to the audio and video, cannot be swayed by the deceptive rhetoric offered up by WikiLeaks. While the video below confirms the deaths of two Reuters employees and the wounding of two children, it also confirms the presence of weapons within the first few seconds of the video playing.

Two Reuters employees made the mistake of joining a ragtag group of Muqtada al Sadr's Medhi Army militia, some of which were still clearly armed, with at least one folding stock AK-pattern assault rifle (3:41, top left) and an RPG-7 (3:44, second from top left) antitank rocket carried by men at the rear of the group (the Reuters employees were near the front) in the video that WikiLeaks chose to show us.

As for the father who made the tragic mistake of trying to intercede in a hot combat zone with dust still rising and blood flowing... I admire his courage, but question his intelligence. He put his children in harm's way, and broke laws of war that civilians in their fifth year of war should have known by rote.

People die in war, and those who die aren't always combatants. It sucks.

But it isn't a crime.

We would all be better off if some of those who decided to opine about things they don't understand would withold their ignorant commentary so that those who do understand can cut through the deception offered by WikiLeaks' editorializing.

Update: Dan Froomkin, fired from the Washington Post for too-liberal bias, captures the idiocy we're seeing from terrorist defenders in just two short paragraphs:

Two crewmen share a laugh when a Bradley fighting vehicle runs over one of the corpses...

[snip]

...The helicopter crew, which was patrolling an area that had been the scene of fierce fighting that morning, said they spotted weapons on members of the first group -- although the video shows one gun, at most. The crew also mistook a telephoto lens for a rocket-propelled grenade.

The vehicle than ran over what appears to be human remains in a vacant lot filled with trash and rubble was decidedly not a 27-ton Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV), a tracked personnel carrier similar to a tank, but was instead a much smaller 4-wheeled Humvee, as is obvious in the video.

Froomkin, who can't tell a tank from a truck, wants us to believe he has the discernment to tell a telephoto lens from a grenade launcher carried by a different individual at the rear of the group in the opening of the video (3:44, top of frame, second man from left).

Update: Got a call from BBC Radio, and may be on World Have Your Say between 1:00-2:00PM ET to discuss this story.

So Easily Drawn In

This is just the latest example of stupid politics from a thin-skinned lightweight of a President:

Obama's shot at Limbaugh and Beck demonstrates that a long-running White House effort to undermine influential elements of the Republican coalition remains in effect.

Asked generally about the "level of enmity that crosses the airwaves," Obama slammed Limbaugh and Beck by name.

"Well, I think that when you listen to Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck, it's pretty apparent, and it's troublesome, but keep in mind that there have been periods in American history where this kind of vitriol comes out," Obama said. "It happens often when you've got an economy that is making people more anxious and people are feeling like there is a lot of change that needs to take place. But that's not the vast majority of Americans. I think the vast majority of Americans know that we're trying hard, that I want what's best for the country."

Anyone—and I do mean anyone—knows that you never address your critics directly if they hold a lesser status than you do, because doing so diminishes your status while acknowledging them and their credibility as a critic. Obama's been blasted on this before and has to know better... he just can't seem to help himself.

In response, Limbaugh and Beck have the chance to cast themselves as the victims of a vindictive and petty White House.

This is dumb politics. No wonder the rest of the world recognizes our President as a rube.

He's the One The Call Dr. Feelgood Bullsh*t

Toward the end of a question-and-answer session with workers at an advanced battery technology manufacturer, a woman named Doris stood to ask the president whether it was a "wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care" package.

"We are overtaxed as it is," Doris said bluntly.

In response, the Great Manipulator rambled for 17 minutes and 12 seconds... and to the best anyone can tell, still didn't provide an answer.

A simple "I have to raise your taxes to cover the trillions I'm forcing you to spend," would have been enough.

Racist Black Congressman Runs Away From Spitting Lie; Constituents Shrug Shoulders and Do Nothing

Let the record show that the Congressional Black Caucus members who attempted to goad Tea Party protestors into making racial slurs in advance of the Obamacare vote failed in that tawdry enterprise, and when they failed, they then lied. They claimed they were spat upon, or heard cries of "n*gger."

The congressman who heard the slur now claims that he never heard anyone utter the slur (an anonymous staffer gets the blame), and now his fellow race-baiter Emanuel Cleaver is trying to blot out the lie that he was intentionally spat upon.

I am getting tired of Democrats attempting to use false cries of racism as an excuse or cover for their behavior, and I'm even more disgusted with the constituents that continue to allow their representatives to continue to act this way.

Do these voters have any sense of community or personal pride? Why do they allow continual racist demagoguery on their behalf? Are they never embarrassed by the blinding ignorance or transparent stunts of those they elect?

True equality means wanting to be judged based upon the merits of your intellect and strength of your character. Instead, we see whoring politicians attempting to provoke reactions to their skin color instead of their inept championing of flawed ideology.

Blacks in America have claimed for years that they want equality.

Until they start electing representatives from their communities that can rise above their most base and vile instincts, take that claim with a grain of salt.

Kutner Kills Himself Off (Again)

This time he did it to get out of the White House.

Who needs Washington when you can have White Castle? Kal Penn's reps confirm that the actor will leave his post as Barack Obama's associate director of public engagement to return to his acting career. First up for the actor: a new Harold & Kumar movie, this one with a Christmas theme. New Line Studios has confirmed that the movie, to be directed by newcomer Todd Strauss Schulson, will begin filming in late June with an eye on a holiday 2011 release.

How bad must the White House have been for Penn to bail on the Obama Adminstration in favor of a stoner movie?

FBI Warns of Threats From "Sovereign Citizens" Group

Letters sent to more than 30 state governors from members of the "sovereign citizen" movement are getting the attention of state and national law enforcement authorities.

The letters—addressed to Democrats and Republicans alike—warn the governors to step down within three days or be removed. Authorities do not see threats of violence in the letters, but "fear the broad call for removing top state officials could lead others to act out violently."

The group that sent the letters calls itself "Guardians of the Free Republics" and their Web sites reek of the kind of tin-foil nuttery you would expect from the 9/11 Truthers, Obama birthers, chemtrail conspiracy theorists and Alex Jones-followers that the broader movement represents.

I've met and (once worked with) believers true believers in this stuff and agree with the FBI's apparent assessment that the people themselves are loony, but mostly harmless.

Olbermann Out on "Countdown"? New Host Named?

As MSNBC's rating continue to plunge and viewers looking for the reassurance of a strong alpha male anchor continue to defect the Rachel Maddow Show, executives at the cable network are looking to replace Countdown host Keith Olbermann with a new host.

Eduard Khil, the perspective replacement for Olbermann, shares the political views championed by the network, and focus groups suggest that Khil articulates his views better than the blustery former ESPN sports anchor.

More info here.

Blinded by Hate

One thing we have learned in the last few weeks is that hate speech is alive and well... on the editorial page, and directed squarely at people like you.

Party of No to be Visited By Party of D'Oh

The Politico reports that a trio of groups representing the lowest common denominators of left-wing politics is staging an utterly absurd public relations stunt:

Three liberal groups will drop off a petition at the Republican National Committee's headquarters Thursday, urging conservative leaders to "take responsibility" for threats and incidents of vandalism against Democrats.

The event is being organized by the Brave New Foundation, MoveOn.org, CREDO and Color of Change.

The groups say about 330,000 people have signed their petition, which urges Republicans to "apologize for your hate-spewing proxies in the Tea Party Patriots. It is not acceptable for you to build your party's political fortunes by encouraging and defending bigotry and hatred among your supporters."

Reader comments are running 26-1 against this coalition of the shilling as I write this, and I suspect the event merely serves as a useful reminder of just how radical the fringe is that these groups represent.

Presumably, these group will themselves accept responsibility for the murders of innocents that occurred because of left wing rhetoric during the Bush Administration, the countless threats they and their drones issued, and for the compatriots attempted terrorist attack on the 2008 Republican National Convention that was spurred on by their rhetoric.

What... You think they won't?

In that case, I'd advise that RNC staffers keep their hands in their pockets where they'll be safe.

I'd also advise any RNC staffers avoid coming into close proximity to the group, to avoid beat-downs like the one their thugs gave Kenneth Gladney after shoutinging "What kind of n*gger are you?"

For the sake of diversity, of course.

And make sure that you keep them away from anything flammable, since burning people singly (or sending a few tens of millions to concentration camps) is also part of their belief system... anything for the "greater good."

Lastly, after they leave, the RNC should have bomb disposal teams on hand in case the group plans on leaving something behind other than a petition.

I'm not saying all liberals are violent, but with their documented track record, we can't afford to take chances.

When It Hits the Fan

Despite my chosen title, this isn't about healthcare (At least for those outside the potential blast radius). This is an article about a significant volume of crap generated outside of Washington, DC.

This quote makes the entire article worthwhile:

Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.

Democratic Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia is watching the situation closely, worrying that if the bubbles in the hog lagoon get too large, Indiana could tip over.