Memo to liberals: Do you want the next GOP president to govern by decree?
I
had coffee with a liberal friend in the Dallas area this week. We
discussed everything, from the Voting Rights Act to the abortion battle
in Austin.
We had a lot of friendly disagreements but did agree on one thing: It is a bad idea for President Obama to govern by decree.
He
said that liberals should remember that President Obama is very likely
to be replaced by a GOP president. What happens if he decides to go
around Congress and govern by decree?
It
was nice to have coffee with a liberal rather than some "yes we can"
screamer intoxicated with "hope and change"? I love it when I find an
Obama voter who loves the US Constitution more than Obama!
Our conversation eventually ended with Michael McConnell's article at the WSJ:
"The employer mandate in the Affordable Care Act
contains no provision allowing the president to suspend, delay or
repeal it. Section 1513(d) states in no uncertain terms that "The
amendments made by this section shall apply to months beginning after
December 31, 2013." Imagine the outcry if Mitt Romney had been elected
president and simply refused to enforce the whole of ObamaCare.
This
is not the first time Mr. Obama has suspended the operation of statutes
by executive decree, but it is the most barefaced. In June of last
year, for example, the administration stopped initiating deportation
proceedings against some 800,000 illegal immigrants who came to the U.S.
before age 16, lived here at least five years, and met a variety of
other criteria. This was after Congress refused to enact the Dream Act,
which would have allowed these individuals to stay in accordance with
these conditions. Earlier in 2012, the president effectively replaced
congressional requirements governing state compliance under the No Child
Left Behind Act with new ones crafted by his administration.
The president defended his suspension of the immigration laws as an exercise of prosecutorial discretion. He defended his amending of No Child Left Behind as an exercise
of authority in the statute to waive certain requirements. The
administration has yet to offer a legal justification for last week's
suspension of the employer mandate."
There is also Egypt. The Obama administration is now redefining
"coup". The law is very clear: Overthrow n elected leader and we cut
the money! However, we are now going around that too.
To be honest, I don't think that we should tie a president's hand by forcing him to cut off
aid if there is a coup in every country. At the same time, it is the
law of the land and President Obama is supposed to enforce laws.
Perhaps he should address the nation and call on Congress to change the law.
Oops. I forgot that President Obama never speaks to the nation about anything complicated! Wrong president!
The
GOP, and honest liberals like my aforementioned friend, should not let
these latest examples of presidential arrogance pass without
consequences. This latest example of "governing by decree" will have a
devastating impact on the immigration bill in the House.
Question: What if President Obama decides in the near future that he will defer the border security component of that bill?
It's time to draw line. Barrack Obama is the president of the US not Venezuela.
Washington Deserves a Declaration of Incompetence
Big Government is so bloated that its left hand doesn’t know what its far-left hand is doing.
As America celebrates this week’s 237th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence,
the federal government deserves a Declaration of Incompetence. Agree or
disagree with Washington’s policies, it seems to get almost nothing
right. Money flies in every direction as programs flop daily. Subjected
by monarchic tyranny in 1776, America now suffers the abuses and
usurpations of bureaucratic ineptitude.
Obama’s
signature achievement has become a scrawl. Obamacare premieres in six
months. But after three years of rehearsal, this morbidly obese program
is not ready for prime time. On Tuesday, Team Obama postponed the
employer mandate one year — to January 1, 2015, conveniently past the
2014 midterm elections.
Obamacare’s health-insurance exchanges are due October 1. Good luck! The Government Accountability Office reported
in June that, among the federally facilitated exchanges in 34 states,
“on average, about 85 percent of their total key activities” required by
October “were not completed.”
“Rate shock” is erupting, as the hilariously named “Affordable Care Act” proves a masterpiece of false advertising.
Manhattan Institute scholar Avik Roy compared existing health insurance with coverage planned for California. “Obamacare has actually doubled individual-market premiums in the Golden State,” he explained in Forbes. “For
the typical 25-year-old non-smoking Californian, Obamacare will drive
premiums up by between 100 and 123 percent.” For a male non-smoker in
California, “Obamacare will increase individual-market premiums by an
average of 116 percent.”
The Wall Street Journal’s Louise Radnofsky explored Virginia’s exchange. It “offers a fairly typical picture,” she wrote
on June 30. A male non-smoker in Richmond, age 40, can buy a modest
health plan today for $63 a month. Under Obamacare, his cheapest option
will triple — to $193.
In February, the Congressional Budget Office concluded that “in 2019, an estimated
12 million people who would have had an offer of employment-based
coverage under prior law will lose their offer under current law.”
Oops!
Accused
spy Edward Snowden is America’s most wanted fugitive. So, surely,
federal prosecutors filled their extradition papers with extra care.
Wrong!
Hong Kong’s records listed Edward Joseph Snowden. However, Justice Department documents demanded Edward James Snowden and Edward J. Snowden.
“These
three names are not exactly the same,” Hong Kong justice secretary
Rimsky Yuen told the Associated Press. “Therefore, we believed that
there was a need to clarify.”
Washington also failed to include Snowden’s passport number or, for days, invalidate his passport.
“Up
until the moment of Snowden’s departure, the very minute, the U.S.
Department of Justice did not reply to our request for further
information,” Yuen said.
“Therefore, in our legal system, there is no legal basis for the
requested provisional arrest warrant.” In its absence, the “Hong Kong
government has no legal basis for restricting or prohibiting Snowden
leaving Hong Kong.”
So, off Snowden flew to Moscow, in whose Sheremetyevo Airport he now languishes.
D’oh!
How
did Snowden get his top-secret security clearance anyway? He may have
slipped past a federal contractor called USIS. After completing initial
background checks on job applicants, USIS was required to re-scrutinize
such candidates. However, as the Washington Post reported,
from 2008 through 2011, USIS allegedly skipped up to 50 percent of
these secondary checks while claiming to federal authorities that they
had completed them.
Sorry!
Federal
officials exquisitely have drone-killed Islamofascist terrorists
overseas. They also quickly identified and neutralized the Muslim
Tsarnaev brothers, who allegedly bombed the Boston Marathon. However,
Washington’s handling of terrorists in the federal witness-protection
program is . . . terrifying.
According to a House Judiciary Committee statement,
the Justice Department’s inspector general “found that the number of
known or suspected terrorists admitted to the Witness Security Program
is unknown, that DOJ has lost track of two suspected terrorists in the
program, and that critical national security information is not being
shared with other agencies,” including the FBI. Such confirmed or
assumed terrorists previously on the federal No Fly List did not have
their new names added to the list. Thus, “several known or suspected
terrorists have been able to board commercial airplanes in the United
States.”
A Judiciary Committee statement added,
“This is especially problematic since . . . terrorists admitted to the
program include persons who have been trained in aviation and explosives
and individuals who have been involved in bombing attacks.”
Uh-oh!
The
U.S. Park Police were supposed to destroy some 1,400 guns. Instead,
they are intact. Another 198 guns that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco,
Firearms, and Explosives donated to the USPP are stored in Washington
but appear on no official documents. Similar problems identified in 2008
and ’09 have gone unfixed. The Interior Department’s inspector general denounced the USPP’s “decade-long theme of inaction and indifference.”
Such casual disregard for weapons safety defined the Fast and Furious scandal.
Justice flooded the southern frontier with some 2,000 high-powered
rifles (such as AK-47s) and hoped to track them back to Mexican drug
lords. Then federal officials lost those firearms. Drug traffickers
eventually turned those guns on three U.S. law-enforcement agents, two
fatally, and used those weapons to kill some 300 Mexicans.
Oh, no!
Meanwhile,
in 2011, the IRS mailed 23,994 tax refunds totaling $46,378,040 to
“unauthorized” aliens — all supposedly at the same Atlanta address. That
year, according to a Treasury inspector general’s report cited
by CNSNews.com, the IRS sent 2,507 refunds worth $10,395,874 to one
address in Oxnard, Calif., and 2,408 such checks equal to $7,284,212 to
an address in Raleigh, N.C.
“Leave aside the question of who got
the refunds. Couldn’t someone, or something, at the IRS have recognized
that when almost 24,000 refund checks are going to one address in
Atlanta, there just might be a bug in the system?” asks Pete Sepp of the
National Taxpayers Union. “The IRS
brags about its DIF program for scoring and spitting out tax returns for
possible audits. So the agency can’t, or won’t, perform a simple audit
of outgoing refunds?”
DIF stands for “Discriminant Function System.” Naturally, it’s DIF, not DFS.
Also, the IRS assigns taxpayer-ID numbers to illegal aliens, even though they are not supposed to be here. As a 1999
IG report noted: “This IRS practice seems counter-productive to the
Immigration and Naturalization Service’s (INS) mission to identify
undocumented aliens and prevent unlawful alien entry.”
Drats!
At least these illegal aliens are alive. That evidently is not a requirement to receive federal money.
According
to the Social Security Administration’s inspector general, at least
1,546 dead people were receiving benefits, totaling $30.9 million
through May 2012. Some had been receiving checks for almost 20 years. A
2009 audit discovered 6,733 Deceased Americans who had been paid $40.3
million. As the IG learned, 91 of them “remained in current payment status” and still are getting Social Security checks, four years later.
As CNSNews.com explains,
the SSA’s Death Alert, Control, and Update System is designed to inform
the agency when beneficiaries have expired. Unfortunately, it fails 80
percent of the time.
Whoops!
As
if its anti-conservative political profiling and harassment were not
bad enough, the IRS’s bungling and lavish self-pampering have tarnished
this outfit’s reputation even further. IRS agents spent some $108
million on official credit cards over the past two years. An internal
audit showed that this bought “multiple lunches, dinners, and related
alcohol purchases” as well as “diet pills, romance novels, steaks, a
smart phone, and baby-related items, such as bottles, games, and
clothing.” One revenue officer’s taxpayer-funded card financed
subscriptions to pornography websites.
Even worse, the Washington Times editorialized, “the IRS didn’t
bother to cancel credit cards of employees who quit or retired, meaning
the party could continue long after the government ‘service’ ended.”
Amid
such gross mismanagement, and still-emerging evidence that it
politically persecuted 100 percent of tea-party groups that sought
tax-exemption, IRS employees will share some $70 million in bonuses.
Sequester? What sequester?
Yikes!
The
overarching problem here is a government that, at worst, hammers the
freedoms and rights of the American people — as do the IRS and Justice
Department with increasing relish. At best, Washington is so busy
attempting everything (from fixing sugar prices to banning incandescent
light bulbs to subsidizing bird-killing windmills) that it barely accomplishes anything.
Hapless
bureaucrats blunder upward. Among them, only serious criminals ever
face accountability. Federal employees do pretty much what they please —
for life.
America now is subjected by “an administrative state of
sprawling departments and agencies that govern with increasing autonomy
and decreasing transparency,” argues George Washington University law
professor Jonathan Turley, a mainstream liberal. In the Washington Post, Turley described
a callous, hulking fourth branch of government. “Today, we have
2,840,000 federal workers in 15 departments, 69 agencies and 383
nonmilitary sub-agencies,” he wrote. To these 467 executive-branch
units, add the legislative and judicial branches. Is it any wonder that
Uncle Sam’s left hand does not know what his far-left hand is doing?
In
a perfect world, Obama would take ownership of this massive federal
enterprise and, at least, make it set priorities. But even that may ask
too much of him. Sounding like the late, great free-market hero Milton
Friedman, Obama’s consigliere David Axelrod recently got to the heart of the matter: “Part of being president is that there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know, because the government is so vast.”
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352728/washington-deserves-declaration-incompetence-deroy-murdock
EPA regs shutter two more coal plants
High costs associated with stricter federal environmental
regulations and increased competition from low-priced natural gas have shut down two coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania.
FirstEnergy Corp. will close the coal plants by October 9, according to Reuters, due to weak power prices.
Another factor is the high cost of complying with the Environmental
Protection agency’s Mercury Air Toxics Standards, or MATS, which would
require the company to spend $275 million at the two plants.
These two Pennsylvania plants add to the already 15,000 megawatts of
coal-fired power that have been taken offline since President Barack
Obama came into office in 2009. Most of that reduction in energy
availability has come through tougher environmental regulations and
cheap natural gas.
Reuters reports that more than 37,000 megawatts of coal-fired power is slated for shutdown in the next ten years or so.
The Obama administration recently came under fire from industry
and Republicans for targeting the coal industry with a slew of new
regulations aimed at curbing U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, which
environmentalists say contribute to global warming.
“[Obama] is personally responsible for the loss of thousands of jobs.
He obviously does not have much interest in states like Kentucky, Tennessee and Wyoming, where the coal industry is so vitally important and we are losing jobs dramatically,” said Kentucky Republican Rep. Ed Whitfield.
The administration has denied allegations that it is waging a “war on coal.”
The president “expects fossil fuels, and coal specifically, to remain
a significant contributor for some time,” Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz
told Reuters. It is “all about having, in fact, coal as part of that future. I don’t believe it is a ‘war on coal.’”
However, statements
made by the administration’s advisers have coal supporters alleging the
new global warming push is part of a larger effort to cripple the
industry.
“If the Obama administration fails to recognize the environmental
progress the industry has made and continues to adopt more regulations,
coal power could cease to exist, which would be devastating for our
economy,” said Mike Duncan, president of the American Coalition for
Clean Coal Electricity.
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/09/epa-regs-shutter-two-more-coal-plants/#ixzz2YfOus4QV
The billion-dollar ObamaCare advertising campaign
It isn’t the only legislation and/or policy that’s had its own
accompanying media onslaught, but in terms of the combined campaigns
both for and against the health care overhaul, ObamaCare-related
advertising is fast becoming one of the most expensive — and doing so in
the shortest-ever amount of time, according to a media firm’s analysis:
Counting money spent on ads since debate on the measure
heated up in 2009 until the most recent spending records available, the
Campaign Media Analysis Group, part of Kantar Media, found more than
$500 million has already been spent on trying to sway public opinion and
political races tied to the issue.
“The law both parties now call ‘Obamacare’ seems due to join Social
Security and Medicare in one respect: as a public policy advertising
phenom, a program that is reviled and perhaps eventually revered in
political advertising for billions of dollars in ad spend to come,” said
Elizabeth Wilner, vice president for strategic initiatives at CMAG in a
release accompanying the analysis. “Yet while Social Security and
Medicare have been litigated on the airwaves for more than 40 years,
CMAG expects the ACA to break the $1 billion mark by its fifth birthday.”
Opponents of the legislation have outspent supporters by a 5-to-1
margin, according to CMAG’s estimates, but that ratio will likely shift
as implementation deadlines approach in the coming years, coinciding
with the midterm elections. …
“We expect Democrats on the ballot in 2014 to embrace the individual
mandate in TV advertising after basically forfeiting the airwaves to
Republicans and other critics for the past three years,” Wilner said.
“Once the ACA begins to impact voters, we think Democrats will have no
choice but to embrace the upsides in advertising.”
But conservatives, Wilner noted, have plenty of ammo to use in likely
political advertising still to come. Not only are new taxes are going
begin kicking in and the potential for higher premiums continue to climb
still higher (especially if they can’t wrangle the necessary influx of
healthy individuals to balance out the inherently riskier insurance
pools), the law’s popularity isn’t going to get a boost from the rampant
signs of unraveling at every available corner as the administration falls over itself
to prepare the exchanges ready by the October deadline. The recent
delay of the employer mandate, as well as the holiday news-dump
revelation that the administration doesn’t intend to verify individual
eligibility for insurance subsidies — at least until such a time as they
can get around to it — and the egregious opportunities for fraud, probably aren’t going to help matters for them, either:
HHS is disowning eligibility quality control because
pre-clearance is “not feasible” as a result of “operational barriers”
and “a large amount of systems development on both the state and federal
side, which cannot occur in time for October 1, 2013.”
You’ve got to love that passive voice. It’s true that coordinating
and managing vast amounts of information from hundreds of millions of
Americans and corporations, and monitoring compliance with more than
10,000 pages of fine-print Federal Register regulations so far, is hard
to do. Yet that is the system Democrats installed when they passed the
law, which is not supposed to be optional due to administrative
incompetence.
HHS promises to develop “a more robust verification process,” some
day, but the result starting in October may be millions of people
getting subsidies who don’t legally qualify. This would mean huge
increases in ObamaCare spending. Some of these folks could be
fraudsters, much as 21% to 25% of Earned Income Tax Credits flow to
people who aren’t eligible, according to the Treasury inspector general.
The same error rate for ObamaCare would amount to as much as $250
billion in improper payments in its first decade.
Democrats’ advertising, on the other hand, won’t have too much of a
choice other than to embrace the law and keep trumpeting the ostensible
benefits as loudly as is humanly possible, as a general-avoidance tactic
is getting harder and harder — and even if the delay was partially
meant to give them a little breathing room, it could very well have a
negative effect anyway. The one-year grace period probably won’t be enough to rescue Democratic candidates in tight races in the midst of a still “recovering” economy, says Alexis Simendinger at RCP:
“What is a Democratic candidate supposed to say in light
of this: ‘Yes, I supported Obamacare but thankfully we delayed it to
protect you from how bad it is’?” asked Brad Dayspring, spokesman for
the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
Administration officials, who this summer embarked on a campaign to
encourage young, uninsured Americans to sign up for health coverage
after Oct. 1 through new state-based insurance exchanges, said the
individual enrollment required through January will proceed. But Obama
senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, in a statement
posted on the White House website Tuesday, said the administration
wanted to show flexibility as a law initially passed in 2010 will
continue to take effect in 2015.
“As we implement this law, we have and will continue to make changes as needed,” Jarrett said.
“As needed” may have more to do with politics than the substantive
changes Obama’s decision may have on the law, its defenders conceded.
But, whatever. The legislation was signed, sealed, and delivered
without the vote of a single Republican, but all of these failures are
still pretty much Republicans’ fault, or something. Natch.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/10/the-billion-dollar-obamacare-advertising-campaign/
‘What the Hell Were They Thinking’: U.S. Abandoning Brand New, Multi-Billion Dollar Buildings in Afghanistan
The two-story, windowless, 64,000
square feet of offices and operations center that compose the U.S.
Military’s headquarters in Afghanistan cost $34 million to complete. A
building to repair the military’s vehicles and other equipment cost $45
million. And the State Department spent $80 million and signed a 10-year
lease on a site for a consulate, according to a Washington Post report.
But these sites are expected to see
little to no use as they have either been deemed in a dangerous location
or relatively useless as the U.S. military expects to pull out combat
troops by 2014.
A
look at the exterior of the Regional Command-Southwest Command and
Control Facility that won’t be used but cost $34 million. (Photos: SIGAR
site visit, May 8, 2013)
Some are calling into question the
extravagance of the headquarters located at Camp Leatherneck in the
Helmand province, which the Post reported the military said three years
ago it didn’t need and now has no plans to occupy:
But some senior officers
see the giant headquarters as the whitest elephant in a war littered
with wasteful, dysfunctional and unnecessary projects funded by American
taxpayers. A hulking presence at the center of Camp Leatherneck in
Helmand province, it has become the butt of jokes among Marines
stationed there and an object lesson for senior officers in Kabul and
Washington.
The top Marine commander in Helmand
sent a memo to the U.S. headquarters in Kabul three years ago stating
that the new structure was unnecessary. But his assessment was ignored
or disregarded by officers issuing contracts for construction projects,
according to senior military officials familiar with the issue.
The building’s amenities also have
prompted alarm among senior officers. A two-star Marine general who has
toured the facility called it “better appointed than any Marine
headquarters anywhere in the world.” A two-star Army general said the
operations center is as large as those at the U.S. Central Command or
the supreme allied headquarters in Europe.
“What the hell were they thinking?” the Army general said. “There was never any justification to build something this fancy.”
The Post also pointed out Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko writing in a letter this week
to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel that although it was “the best
constructed building I have seen in my travels to Afghanistan,” it is
“unused, unoccupied, and presumably will never be used for its intended
purpose.”
“This is an example of what is wrong
with military construction in general — once a project is started, it is
very difficult to stop,” the letter continued.
While plans for construction of the
building continued to go forward despite many signs showing it was no
longer necessary, it wasn’t until spring that the project was stopped
before computer equipment could be ordered, according to the Post.
The military is now investigating how
the multi-million dollar contract continued until this point for a
building that will either be demolished or given to the Afghan army.
As for the State Department’s consulate site, the Post reported officials eventually deciding the location
could be easily attacked and was thus unsafe. The military’s facility
for repairing vehicles and other equipment is actually being used, but
as a place to hold equipment before it is shipped out of the country.
The White House recently said the
decision on how many U.S. troops to leave in Afghanistan won’t be
imminent. But it’s leaving open the possibility the U.S. won’t leave
forces there after combat troops depart in 2014.
White House press secretary Jay Carney
says the so-called “zero option” — leaving no troops behind — is still
on the table. He says the U.S. will have clear objectives for its
mission in Afghanistan after the long-planned drawdown. He says those
objectives could be met with a residual force or through other means.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/10/what-the-hell-were-they-thinking-u-s-abandoning-brand-new-multi-billion-dollar-buildings-in-afghanistan/
Let them starve: Gitmo swindlers strike again
By Michelle Malkin
World Crisis Alert: Guantanamo Bay detainees don’t want to eat.
Muslim rapper Yasiin “Mos Def” Bey is so worked up about their appetite
plight that he videotaped himself being force-fed to build support for
closing Gitmo. Cry me a river.
This latest round of hunger strikes isn’t an international human rights tragedy. It’s another manipulative act of Jihad Theater.
Have you forgotten? Calculated Gitmo fabulism goes back to 2005, when
Newsweek fell for false rumors that U.S. soldiers “flushed” the Koran
down a toilet at the military detention facility in Cuba. Gullible media
reports of “desecration” provided a handy pretext for anti-American
riots across the Muslim world that resulted in nearly a dozen deaths.
Detainees later ‘fessed up that the conflagration stemmed from one of
their own dropping the Koran in prison and blaming a guard.
Meanwhile, it was Gitmo residents themselves who were purposefully
tearing up Korans. One guard reported in May 2003: “Detainee residing in
cell (redacted) block tore his Quran into small pieces.” Another
prisoner “did intentionally destroy his Quran and throw (it) out of his
cell,” according to a separate government report.
Al-Qaida explicitly instructs its operatives to lie. A central jihad
tenet, taqiyya, encourages Islamists to use deceit and victim politics
to wage war. And while soft-on-terror sympathizers cast our military
personnel as ruthless war criminals, Gitmo detainees have violently
attacked them with everything from makeshift weapons and radios to
disgusting cocktails of blood, vomit, feces, urine and sperm.
To date, there are no reports of detainees attacking our guards with
the dozens of Sony PlayStations, Nintendo DS consoles, art supplies and
DVDs that detainees have been given over the years. The toys and crafts
are off limits!
Have you forgotten? The Gitmo stuntmen coordinated suicide threats to
drum up global outrage over America’s decision to hold and try them in
our military system, instead of in our civilian court system. These
sabotage strikes were clear acts of asymmetric warfare by cold-blooded
terror operatives versed in exploitation of Western sensibilities and
civil liberties. Detainees considered suicides at the facility acts of
martyrdom and “a continuance of their jihad against the U.S.,” according
to leaked documents. Military commanders discovered that detainees were
abusing confidential attorney-client privileges by hiding notes and
plots in special envelopes protected from the guards’ reach.
Sound familiar? The same kind of subversive techniques were used by
convicted jihad legal helper Lynne Stewart, who smuggled coded messages
of Islamic violence on behalf of her client — jailed terrorist Sheik
Omar Abdel-Rahman, mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing and spiritual
instigator of the 1997 massacre of Western tourists in Luxor, Egypt, and
the 9/11 attacks.
Also forgotten in all the knee-jerk hoopla over the Gitmo food fight:
just how much American officials have bent over backward to accommodate
militant detainees’ demands. In his 2005 tell-all book condemning
Gitmo, turncoat army sergeant Erik Saar inadvertently exposed our
suicidal restraint and indulgence.
Each detainee’s cell has a sink installed low to the ground for
feet-washing before prayer, Saar reported. Detainees get “two hot halal,
or religiously correct, meals” a day in addition to an MRE (meal ready
to eat). Loudspeakers broadcast the Muslims’ call to prayer throughout
the day. Every detainee gets a prayer mat, cap and Koran. Every cell has
a stenciled arrow pointing toward Mecca. And Gitmo’s library — yes,
library — is stocked with jihadi books. “I was surprised that we’d be
making that concession to the religious zealotry of the terrorists,”
Saar admitted.
It’s no surprise that President Overseas Contingency Operation is
bowing to the cunning grievance-mongers. As former federal prosecutor
Andrew McCarthy explains: “The hunger strike is on because the jihadists
figure Obama is ripe for the taking.” Faraway drones are A-OK, “but he
is petrified by the prospect of performance-art jihad: the languishing
martyrdom of self-starving death cultists, whose rapt audience of Obama
favorites — Brotherhood front groups and the Lawyer Left — remind the
administration every long day that he promised to shut this theater down
almost five years ago.”
Don’t be distracted by Cirque du Jihad. Remember: The Close Gitmo
mob, led by the left-wing Center for Constitutional Rights, lobbied for
the release of Libyan Gitmo detainee Abu Sufian bin Qumu — now a
fugitive terrorist suspected of plotting the bloody Benghazi attack.
Remember: Obama’s terror-coddling lawyers have dragged their feet on
prosecuting suspected U.S.S. Cole bombing suspect and former Persian
Gulf Operations Chief for al-Qaida Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Gitmo
detainee since 2006.
Remember: As Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder spearhead renewed
efforts to close Gitmo, intelligence officials report that 27.9 percent
of the 599 former detainees released from Guantanamo were either
confirmed or suspected of later engaging in jihadist attacks. That’s a
2.9 percent rise over the 25 percent aggregate recidivism rate reported
in 2010.
Remember, as Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan warned his military
superiors: The soldiers of Allah “love death more (than) you love life.”
The enemy combatants at Gitmo are playing bleeding-heart Westerners
for fools. Their eternal goal is the destruction and subjugation of
infidels. Why do we continue to enable them? Let them starve.
http://michellemalkin.com/2013/07/10/let-them-starve-gitmo-swindlers-strike-again/
YMCA Kicks Out Pro-Life Students
A group of pro-life students from around the nation was banned from
an Austin, Tex. YMCA after pro-choice activists complained about an
agreement allowing the students to use the YMCA’s shower facilities.
Students for Life of America had made arrangements with the Town Lake
Branch of the Austin YMCA to use their shower facilities during a
week-long pro-life protest at the Texas state capitol, spokesperson
Alexa Coombs said.
About 56 members of the group are staying in local churches without
showers. The Washington, D.C.-based pro-life organization had received
permission to use the YMCA’s facilities between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. each
night.
“We had an agreement and that was the arrangement for the whole week,” Coombs told Fox News.
The YMCA did not return multiple calls and emails. A staff member at
the Town Lake Branch told Fox News they were aware of the incident. The
staffer said the YMCA strives to be politically neutral. He did not
explain why the YMCA revoked their agreement with the pro-life
organization.
On Monday, the group arrived at the YMCA at the appointed time
wearing matching blue pro-life shirts. And that’s apparently what
sparked the trouble, Coombs said.
“There were some pro-abortion people working out in the gym and they
saw our blue shirts and complained,” Coombs said. “The staff told us
they felt bullied and threatened by the pro-abortion customers.”
The next day, the group was told they would no longer be allowed to use the YMCA’s facilities.
“He was very nice and respectful but he said they had some push back
from people who are pro-abortion,” she said. “They staff felt threatened
so they were not going to allow us to come back to use their showers.”
That prompted a scramble to find an alternative way to accommodate 56 college students in need of a shower.
“Some supporters offered their homes but with 56 people that’s a little difficult to do,” she said.
Eventually, a Catholic high school about 30 minutes outside Austin offered their facilities – at midnight.
“We took the bus up there and everybody came home around 1 a.m. – finally showered,” she said.
Coombs said she was extremely disappointed in the YMCA’s decision to ban their group.
“We were shocked,” she said. “The YMCA is known for helping young
people. They’ve always had an open door policy to everyone. We felt
discriminated against because of our pro-life beliefs.”
Coombs said she’s not surprised that the YMCA staff felt bullied by the pro-choice activists.
“This is how the pro-abortion people operate every day,” she said.
“When you have people chanting ‘Hail Satan,” swearing at people, yelling
at kids – it’s going to have an effect outside the capitol.”
Brendan O’Morchoe, director of field operations for SFLA, said they weren’t the only ones bullied by the pro-choice activists.
“Unfortunately, the anger and rage from the pro-abortion protestors
has created a toxic environment even outside the capitol building,” he
said. “It’s really a shame that the YMCA was bullied by these people.”
http://townhall.com/columnists/toddstarnes/2013/07/10/ymca-kicks-out-prolife-students-n1637757/page/full
Court finds Apple colluded on e-book price fixing scheme with publishers
A federal court paved the way to take a big bite out of Apple
for its attempt to wrest control of the e-book market from Amazon.
The US District Court in Manhattan ruled that Apple colluded with
publishers in a price-fixing scheme that made e-books more expensive to
consumers, and set the stage for the next phase of the trial to
determine damages:
In a decision that could reshape how books are sold on
the Internet, a federal judge ruled that Apple Inc conspired to raise
the retail prices of e-books in violation of antitrust law, and called
for a trial on damages.
The decision by U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan is a
victory for the U.S. government and various states, which the judge said
are entitled to injunctive relief. …
Only Apple went to trial, while the publishers – Lagardere SCA’s
Hachette Book Group Inc and Macmillan, News Corp’s HarperCollins
Publishers LLC, Pearson Plc’s Penguin Group (USA) Inc and CBS Corp’s
Simon & Schuster Inc – settled with the U.S. government and the
states.
Cote said the conspiracy resulted in prices for some e-books rising to $12.99 or $14.99, when Amazon had sold for $9.99.
“The plaintiffs have shown that the publisher defendants conspired
with each other to eliminate retail price competition in order to raise
e-book prices, and that Apple played a central role in facilitating and
executing that conspiracy,” Cote said.
“Without Apple’s orchestration of this conspiracy, it would not have succeeded as it did in the spring of 2010,” she added.
The settlement with the publishers earlier probably made this outcome
inevitable, but Apple tried to fight it by claiming that the
negotiations were handled separately — and contentiously. The Wall Street Journal offers more background on the testimony:
Mr. Cue testified that Apple clashed with the publishers
repeatedly about pricing as the company rapidly tried to negotiate
agreements with the publishers before the iPad was unveiled in late
January 2010. Mr. Cue said that HarperCollins, for example, wanted to
set a $18-to-$20 price for best sellers and new releases and withhold
books from Apple’s online book store: both nonstarters for Apple.
“I struggled and fought with them about many, many things,” Mr. Cue
said. “If they had been talking to each other, I would assume I would’ve
had a much easier time getting those deals done.”
David Shanks, chief executive of Penguin Group (USA), separately
testified that Penguin tried to get Apple to abandon a price-matching
provision and caps on pricing. “I did not get the deal I wanted, but I
wanted to be sold to Apple’s customers,” Mr. Shanks said.
However, Russell Grandinetti, vice president for content for Amazon’s
Kindle e-reader device, testified that the publishers gave him an
ultimatum if the company didn’t switch to an agency model: they would
withhold newly released books from its digital bookstore for months.
Instead, the government argued, Apple essentially set the price for
books and pressured publishers to push the same deal with Amazon:
In closing statements in June, Mark W. Ryan, a Justice
Department lawyer, said that Apple’s agreement with the publishers
created price caps for best sellers and new releases, but publishers
quickly adopted those prices—$12.99 to $14.99—as the going rates for
e-books.
“This is an old-fashioned, straightforward, price-fixing agreement,” Mr. Ryan said.
Next comes the damage phase, which may end up costing Apple a very
large chunk of cash. Most of that will end up in government coffers,
apparently, rather than in consumer pockets. Don’t expect anything to
change hands except appeals motions, because both sides have the
resources and the motivation to take this all the way up the chain to
the Supreme Court. At some point, though, cooler heads may prevail and a
settlement might be found, especially now that Apple has lost on the
finding of fact level.
http://hotair.com/archives/2013/07/10/court-finds-apple-colluded-on-e-book-price-fixing-scheme-with-publishers/
Sex-crazed government workers could be leakers, Obama admin warns
Government workers with “a lust for money and sex” could be potential
“insider threats” to the government, according to the Obama
administration.
The Obama administration has quietly implemented the “Insider Threat Program”
to force federal employees to report their co-workers if they identify
signs that they might harm the government’s interests from within.
“Insiders who seek to harm U.S. security interests normally are
either long-term plants or they are people who have been lured to betray
their nation for ideological reasons, a lust for money or sex, or
through blackmail,” warns the Office of the National Counterintelligence
Executive on its website, the federal government’s top counterintelligence agency.
The administration’s “Insider Threat Program” requires federal
employees to report “indicators of insider threat behavior” among their
own colleagues, in order to defend against potential spies and security
leaks.
Obama created the program by executive order in October 2011, after
soldier Bradley Manning leaked classified military information to
Wikileaks. The program triggers investigations into federal employee
conduct both in the office and online, where computer network monitoring
systems patrol for “suspicious user behavior.”
The program requires federal workers to pay close attention to their
colleagues’ lifestyle patterns — with odd working hours or unexplained
travel indicators of suspicious activity.
But the federal government also identified “a lust for money or sex”
as one of the primary motivating factors for espionage in its
description of potential “insider threats” posted online prior to the
public revelation Wednesday of Obama’s program.
Black Education Tragedy
As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education,
Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman
murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that
evidence unfolded when Zimmerman's defense attorney asked 19-year-old
Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon
Martin's mother. She responded that she doesn't read cursive, and that's
in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.
Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the
world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read
cursive writing? That's a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader.
Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few
achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students
score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37
percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is
the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery
of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade
level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.
Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the
true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education
establishment might claim that it's not their fault. They're not
responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs,
violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally
responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It's educators who
graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to
pass her along in high school. It's educators who will, in June 2014,
confer upon her a high-school diploma.
It's not just Florida's schools. According to the National Assessment
of Educational Progress, nationally most black 12th-graders test either
basic or below basic in reading, writing, math and science. Drs.
Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom wrote in their 2004 book, "No Excuses:
Closing the Racial Gap in Learning," "Blacks nearing the end of their
high school education perform a little worse than white eighth-graders
in both reading and U.S. history, and a lot worse in math and
geography." Little has changed since the book's publication.
Drexel University history and political science professor George
Ciccariello-Maher disapprovingly says that the reaction to Jeantel's
court performance "has been in terms of aesthetics, of disregarding a
witness on the basis of how she talks, how good she is at reading and
writing." Harking back to Jim Crow days, he adds: "These are subtle
things that echo literacy testing at the polls, echo the question of
whether black Americans can testify against white people, of being
always suspect in their testimony. It's the same old dynamics emerging
in a very different guise." Then there's Morgan Polikoff, assistant
professor of education at the University of Southern California, who
says: "Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it's already dying,
despite having been taught for decades." That's the kind of educational
philosophy that accounts for much of our nation's educational decline.
The educational system and black family structure and culture have
combined to make increasing numbers of young black people virtually
useless in the increasingly high-tech world of the 21st century. Too
many people believe that pouring more money into schools will help.
That's whistlin' "Dixie." Whether a student is black or white, poor or
rich, there are some minimum requirements that must be met in order to
do well in school. Someone must make the student do his homework, see to
it that he gets a good night's sleep, fix a breakfast, make sure he
gets to school on time and make sure he respects and obeys his teachers.
Here are my questions: Which one of those requirements can be achieved
through a higher school budget? Which can be achieved by politicians? If
those minimal requirements aren't met, whatever else is done is mostly
for naught.
I hope Rachel Jeantel's court performance is a wake-up call for black
Americans about the devastation wrought by our educational system.
http://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2013/07/10/black-education-tragedy-n1636072/page/full
Docs: Justice Department facilitated anti-Zimmerman protests
A division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) was deployed to
Sanford, Florida in 2012 to provide assistance for anti-George Zimmerman
protests, including a rally headlined by activist Al Sharpton,
according to newly released documents.
The Community Relations Service (CRS), a unit of DOJ, reported
expenses related to its deployment in Sanford to help manage protests
between March and April 2012, according to documents obtained by the watchdog group Judicial Watch.
CRS spent $674.14 between March 25-27 related to having been
“deployed to Sanford, FL, to work marches, demonstrations, and rallies
related to the shooting and death of an African-American teen by a
neighborhood watch captain.” CRS spent another $1,142.84 for the same
purpose between March 25-28.
CRS spent $892.55 “to provide support for protest deployment in
Florida” between March 30-April 1, and $751.60 “to provide technical
assistance to the City of Sanford, event organizers, and law enforcement
agencies for the march and rally on March 31.”
Sharpton, who promoted the Tawana Brawley hoax in the 1980s and in
1995 led a protest against the “white interloper” owner of a Harlem
clothing store that ended in a deadly shooting rampage at the store, was
a featured speaker at the March 31 rally, called “The March for Trayvon Martin,” where he advocated for Zimmerman’s prosecution.
CRS expenditures related to the anti-Zimmerman protests continued
through mid-April. Between April 11 and April 12, CRS spent $552.35 “to
provide technical assistance for the preparation of possible marches and
rallies related to the fatal shooting of a 17 year old African American
male.”
Local government officials noticed the Department of Justice’s efforts in building “bridges of understanding” in Sanford.
“Congratulations to our partners, Thomas Battles, Regional Director,
and Mildred De Robles, Miami-Dade Coordinator and their co-workers at
the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service for their
outstanding and ongoing efforts to reduce tensions and build bridges of
understanding and respect in Sanford, Florida,” wrote Amy Carswell,
Miami-Dade County Community Relations Board Program Officer, in an April
16 email.
“Thank you Partner. You did lots of stuff behind the scene to make
Miami a success. We will continue to work together,” DOJ official Thomas
Battles wrote in reply to Carswell.
“That’s why we make the big bucks,” Carswell replied.
CRS was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the
CRS web page, “The Community Relations Service is the Department’s
‘peacemaker’ for community conflicts and tensions arising from
differences of race, color, and national origin. Created by the Civil
Rights Act of 1964, CRS is the only Federal agency dedicated to assist
State and local units of government, private and public organizations,
and community groups with preventing and resolving racial and ethnic
tensions, incidents, and civil disorders, and in restoring racial
stability and harmony.”
A Department of Justice spokesperson said that she did not know off
the top of her head what CRS’ role was in the anti-Zimmerman protests
but is currently trying to figure out that answer. The Daily Caller will
update this story upon receiving a statement from DOJ.
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