Obama Nominates Cop Killer Advocate to Head DOJ Civil Rights Division

By Katie Pavlich
In 1982, former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of murdering Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal never denied the killing during his trial. He, and his supporters, are still unapologetic for Faulkner's death. More on this from Matthew Vadum:

“The question of Abu-Jamal’s guilt is not a close call,” according to John Fund. “Two hospital workers testified that Abu-Jamal confessed to them: ‘I shot the motherf***er, and I hope the motherf***er dies.’ His brother, William, has never testified to his brother’s innocence even though he was at the scene of the crime. Abu-Jamal himself chose not to testify in his own defense.”
As Faulkner tried to arrest Abu-Jamal’s brother during a traffic stop, Abu-Jamal shot the policeman once in the back and then stood over him and shot him four more times at close range, once directly in the face. Multiple eyewitnesses were present during the crime.

One of those unapologetic supporters is former NAACP Legal Defense Official Debo P. Adegbile, who has worked tirelessly to free guilty murderer Abu-Jamal from prison. President Obama has nominated Adegbile to head the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division as an assistant attorney general to replace radical Tom Perez, who is now the Secretary of Labor. Adegbile is sure to continue carrying out the radical racial agenda of President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder with the weight of the law behind him.
...Not surprisingly, the mainstream media seems to be less interested in Adegbile's radical ties and more interested in his role on Sesame Street as a child actor.

Oh My: Robert Gates Memoir Slams Obama Administration, Confirms WH's Political Obsession

By Guy Benson
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates serves up several devastating accounts and assessments of the Obama administration in a forthcoming book, alleging that the White House's approach to foreign policy and national security was dominated by political considerations. Gates -- who has worked for every president since Richard Nixon, save for Bill Clinton -- served as Obama's Defense Secretary from 2009 to mid-2011. The Washington Post's Bob Woodward reports on the contents of "Duty," which is due for release later this month:

Gates unleashes harsh judgments about President Obama’s leadership and his commitment to the Afghanistan war, writing that by early 2010 he had concluded the president “doesn’t believe in his own strategy, and doesn’t consider the war to be his. For him, it’s all about getting out.” Leveling one of the more serious charges that a defense secretary could make against a commander in chief sending forces into combat, Gates asserts that Obama had more than doubts about the course he had charted in Afghanistan. The president was “skeptical if not outright convinced it would fail,” Gates writes in “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War.” Obama, after months of contentious discussion with Gates and other top advisers, deployed 30,000 more troops in a final push to stabilize Afghanistan before a phased withdrawal beginning in mid-2011. “I never doubted Obama’s support for the troops, only his support for their mission,” Gates writes.

That mission was ordered by Obama himself. Why would Obama put 30,000 additional troops in harm's way to carry out an effort he believed would fail? The most plausible explanation is that he wanted to appear muscular by signaling support for the Afghanistan war -- which Democrats had long cast as the "good war," vis-a-vis Iraq. "We took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan," etc. This revelation isn't necessarily a surprise, but it's still profoundly jarring to read in black and white from such a credible source. According to Woodward, Gates also writes that he became frustrated by top White House officials' suspicious and disrespectful attitude toward senior military leaders. He includes a damning story about President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussing their Iraq war posturing:

“All too early in the [Obama] administration,” he writes, “suspicion and distrust of senior military officers by senior White House officials — including the president and vice president — became a big problem for me as I tried to manage the relationship between the commander in chief and his military leaders.” Gates offers a catalogue of various meetings, based in part on notes that he and his aides made at the time, including an exchange between Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that he calls “remarkable.” He writes: “Hillary told the president that her opposition to the [2007] surge in Iraq had been political because she was facing him in the Iowa primary. .?.?. The president conceded vaguely that opposition to the Iraq surge had been political. To hear the two of them making these admissions, and in front of me, was as surprising as it was dismaying.”

...Gates surely knows that his candid appraisals will be met with a barrage of furious calumny from Democratic loyalists. His account confirms several of conservatives' worst suspicions about Obama's leadership style and the White House's hyper-partisan modus operandi. By Thomas Joscelyn
The Washington Post reports that U.S. officials suspect Sufian Ben Qumu, an ex-Guantanamo detainee, “played a role in the attack on the American compound in Benghazi, Libya, and are planning to designate the group he leads as a foreign terrorism organization.” Ben Qumu is based in Derna, Libya and runs a branch of Ansar al Sharia headquartered in the city.

U.S. officials have found that some of Ben Qumu’s militiamen from Derna “participated in the attack” and “were in Benghazi before the attack took place on Sept. 11, 2012.”

Ben Qumu was fingered early on as a suspect in the Benghazi attack, but his name dropped out of much of the reporting on the assault for more than one year.

What Happened to Transparency?

When President Obama took office in 2009, he promised an “unprecedented level of openness in government.” In a memo issued the day after his inauguration, he wrote, “The government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears.”

In the latest reminder that the Obama administration has failed to live up to that promise, the Justice Department last week won its fight to keep secret a memo that outlines the supposed legal authority for the Federal Bureau of Investigation to collect Americans’ telephone and financial records without a subpoena or court order.

The memo, issued in 2010 by the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, approved of the bureau’s use of what are known as exigent letters to obtain phone records without any legal process, and in the absence of any emergency. From 2003 to 2006, the bureau used these letters to obtain phone records for more than 3,500 accounts.

Last Friday, a unanimous panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the memo could be kept secret from the public because it was the product of internal agency deliberations and had not been formally adopted as department policy. (The F.B.I. has said it no longer uses exigent letters.)

Withholding the opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel, which provides legal advice to the president and executive agencies, is deeply troubling. The office’s advice often serves as the final word on what the executive branch may legally do, and those who follow that advice are virtually assured that they will not face prosecution.

New Record: Instead of Passing Laws, The Obama Regime Issued 3,659 Economy-Crushing Regulations In 2013…

The Obama administration made up for the lack of laws passed in Congress last year, issuing a whopping 3,659 rules regulations, crushing claims that Washington isn’t doing anything.
Only 65 public laws were signed by President Obama in 2013, meaning that his government issued an average of 56 new regulations for every one, a record high ratio, according to the annual analysis by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The surge in regulations has led critics to charge that Congress is now a bystander to federal regulatory agencies.

Study: $112 billion in new regulations in 2013

New federal regulations cost the economy $112 billion in 2013, according to a newly released tally of government figures from the American Action Forum.
Led by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and health care agencies, the federal government added 157.9 million hours of paperwork for U.S. workers.
American Action Forum, a right-of-center Washington think tank, found in an analysis of Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and Federal Register data released Wednesday that regulators have published $494 billion in net costs in final rules from 2009 through 2013.
...Regulatory costs are only going to increase in 2014, predicts AAF. Depending on the White House's sensitivity to the politics around regulations and how quickly rules are moved, they could total $143 billion, the think tank estimates.

Tell Us the Truth About Social Security

By Paul Moreno
....Politicians have understandably been more reluctant to raise taxes (euphemistically called "contributions") than to raise benefits. The inevitable result has been promises that far exceed resources.

The very first recipient of Social Security benefits demonstrated the problems to come. Ida Mae Fuller retired in 1940 after having paid about $22.50 into the fund. She collected over $22,000 over the next 35 years. While Fuller's is an extreme case, there is no doubt that, until now, the vast majority of Social Security recipients have received far more in benefits than they have paid into the system.

It is true that part of the problem is demographic -- that life expectancy was 62 in 1935 and has since risen to 78, and that Americans are having far fewer children today than they had during the Baby Boom. But another part is demagogic: Politicians use benefits to bid for votes. Even before the system began paying out, Congress extended pensions to spouses and surviving dependent children in 1939. In 1950, benefits were extended to millions of previously exempted workers -- who received benefits almost immediately while having contributed almost nothing. The first cost-of-living adjustment was also made that year. A disability program was added in 1956, which today has become a long-term unemployment or welfare program. In the early 1960s, Congress lowered the retirement age. Ten years later, cost-of-living adjustments were made automatic, and minimum benefits were raised. The first serious effort to have contributions catch up to this runaway benefit train came in the 1980s, and it was not nearly adequate.

Congress should pass a "Truth in Social Security Act," which would tell the public the story of the payoffs over the years. Every year, the Social Security Administration sends me a statement detailing how much I have paid into the system, and projecting how much I (or my wife and dependents) will collect if I continue to contribute at the current rate. But the administration does not include such details as the fact that there will be no funds left for anyone by 2033 -- unless the government goes above and beyond the "contributions" to the program and makes payouts from general revenues -- and that it is almost certain that future retirees will get less back than they paid in.

Equality Versus Liberty

By John Stossel

...."It's a zero-sum game. Somebody wins; somebody loses."

This is how the left sees the market: a zero-sum game. If someone makes money, he took it from everyone else. The more the rich have, the less others have. It's as if the economy is a pie that's already on the table, waiting to be carved. The bigger the piece the rich take, the less that's left for everyone else. The economy is just a fight over who gets how much.
But this is absurd. Bill Gates took a huge slice of pie, but he didn't take it from me. By starting Microsoft, he baked millions of new pies. He made the rest of the world richer, too. Entrepreneurs create things.
Over the past few decades, the difference in wealth between the rich and poor has grown. This makes people uncomfortable. But why is it a problem if the poor didn't get poorer?
Progressives claim they did. Some cite government data that show middle class incomes remaining relatively stagnant. But this data is misleading, too. It leaves out all government handouts, like rent subsidies and food stamps. It leaves out benefits like company-funded health insurance and pensions, which make up increasing portions of people's pay.
And it leaves out the innovation that makes life better for both the rich and poor. Even poor people today have access to cars, food, health care, entertainment and technology that rich people lusted for a few decades ago. Ninety percent of Americans living "below the poverty line" have smart phones, cable TV and cars. Seventy percent own two cars.
But hold on, says the left. Even if the poor reap some benefits from capitalism, it's just not "fair" that rich people have so much more. I suppose this is true. But what exactly is "fair"?

Inequality of language muddies debate

By Kathleen Parker
...What is missing from the trumpeting of income inequality is the hundreds of billions in annual government redistribution that already takes place. How much will be enough to satisfy the inequality camp? When incomes are equal?
In the end, fairness isn’t the issue. The issue is justifying policies — government intervention, higher taxes, spending and redistribution — that can’t otherwise be easily sold. How about this for a midterm catchphrase, reflective of true circumstances — the need for a higher-skilled labor force that pits no American against another and qualifies people for jobs that are actually available: “Learning for earning.”
It’s not as emotionally evocative as inequality, but it just might do some good. Other suggestions welcome.

Common Core and the EduTech Abyss

By Michelle MalkinThe Common Core gold rush is on. Apple, Pearson, Google, Microsoft and Amplify are all cashing in on the federal standards/testing/textbook racket. But the EduTech boondoggle is no boon for students. It's more squandered tax dollars down the public school drain.
Even more worrisome: The stampede is widening a dangerous path toward invasive data mining.
According to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, the ed tech sector "is expected to more than double in size to $13.4 billion by 2017."

Obama Campaign Donors Bag Record Wall Street Profits

By Wynton Hall
Americans on main street may have a bleak outlook on the Obama economy in 2014, but President Barack Obama's Wall Street campaign donors and friends are scoring record profits off the Obamacare debacle--a reality that may further complicate Democrats' "income inequality" message when voters head to the polls in November.
The most recent Gallup poll finds that 56% of Americans believe the economy is getting worse. For Obama's big money backers, however, the Obamacare fiasco has generated massive profits and contracts. In 2008, the healthcare industry contributed an astounding $22,471,562 to Obama--a sum nearly three times greater than it donated to his Republican challenger. Their "investment" paid off in 2013, as the healthcare sector index gained 37.5%, making it the S&P 500's best-performing sector.
That means big gains for Obama's big donors, notes Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer. For example:

UnitedHealth Executive Vice President Anthony Welters raised over $500,000 for Obama in 2012. Wall Streeters expect UnitedHealth stock to rocket 40% over the next two years. UnitedHealth "also won big contracts to help implement the [Obamacare] rollout."

Obamacare winner Qualcomm has a subsidiary called Qualcomm Life that Schweizer says is "specifically designed to profit off Obamacare exchanges." Qualcomm former Chairman Irwin Jacobs raised over $500,000 for Obama's campaign in 2012.

HBJ Investments chief Jay Snyder bundled over $500,000 for Obama's campaign. HBJ invests in healthcare medical companies and pharmaceuticals and is "positioned to cash in on Obamacare."

Obama bundler David Friedman helped pump over $500,000 into Obama's 2012 campaign coffers. Friedman, who founded Sandy River Health Systems, is "poised to do well" with Obamacare's requirements that will boost his company's nursing homes and long-term care businesses.

Vice President Al Gore and his business partner David Blood's Generational Investment Management has put over a quarter of its portfolio in healthcare investments. "Predictably, Blood bundled more than $500,000 for Obama in 2012."

Obama bundler Robert Pohlad bundled $500,000 for Obama's 2012 election. His company, Pohlad Companies, which has a subsidiary called Arcadia Solutions, is a software company that is selling software to hospitals and doctors affected by Obamacare.

Alexa Wesner bundled over $500,000 for Obama's 2012 presidential campaign. Wesner works for Austin Ventures, which "has big stakes in Emerus Hospital Partners, which offers software to the health care industry. It also has holdings in Explorys, which "hopes to leverage big data in the health care sphere."

Likewise, The Hill reports that over 30 former staffers, members of Congress, and White House officials with Obamacare experience are now working on K Street.

A few of those cashing in by walking through the revolving door are:

Former Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), who served on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee where he oversaw healthcare and tax policies, signed up with Alston & Bird in 2011.

Yvette Fontenot, former legislative adviser to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), who joined Avenue Solutions, a four-woman Democratic lobbying firm that bags nearly $3 million a year.

Dora Hughes, former senior counsel to Obama Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who signed up last year with Sidley Austin law firm to provide "strategic policy advice."

Chris Jennings, formerly of the Clinton administration, was picked up by the Obama White House last month to help with Obamacare implementation.

Whether Obama and Democrats can convince voters that his policies are serving main street interests over Wall Street and K Street interests remains to be seen.

Audit the IRS!

By Cindy Simpson

...Just as auditors estimate the impact of identified errors or issues, the "coincidental" news items listed above also have serious implications -- affecting the integrity of our electoral process, free speech and privacy, and wastefulness and fraud in government spending.

Note also the characteristics some of the "coincidences" share: biased media reporting of what appears to be politically-motivated targeting of citizens, carried out by Big Government bureaucrats -- and therefore paid for by you.

With your taxes, while over three billion dollars of taxes are owed yet unpaid by over 300,000 federal employees, many of them actually working on Capitol Hill. But apparently the IRS is too busy "using Google maps to spy on taxpayers" to see the delinquents who work right in front of their noses (including around 40 Obama staffers and over 1,000 in the Treasury Department), since the same group was reported as owing around one billion two years earlier.

Although Congress has not completed its investigation into the targeting of Tea Parties (which coincides with a "strange" Justice Department-ordered FBI investigation that's "impeding" Issa's inquiries), the IRS recently proposed rules that "essentially eliminate an entire class of advocacy groups that just happens to be used by far more right-wing activists than left-wingers."

"Just happens?" An auditor would never believe that one. And since the Complex describes Obama's "Organizing for Action" as a "non-partisan advocacy group," the amply-funded, massive database that's an "extension" of the White House needn't worry about new IRS restrictions.

It's time for Congress to demand an audit of the IRS to prove whether our "paranoid" friends were right -- not only about the NSA's ability to snoop over shoulders, but also that impending IRS knock at the door -- just because, coincidentally, they voiced contrary views.

If the audit proves not coincidence but craftsmanship -- that this administration really has employed the IRS as its thugs -- it will be doubly ironic to find that just as in the case of another famous Chicago boss, taxes would be the source of the downfall.

A Millennial's Rolling Stone Rant Offers Up Some Tired Old 'Solutions'

By Jonah Goldberg
....Writing with unearned familiarity and embarrassingly glib confidence in the rightness of his positions, Myerson prattles on about how "unemployment blows" and therefore we need "guaranteed work for everybody." He proceeds to report that jobs "blow" too, so we need guaranteed universal income. He has the same disdain for landlords, who "don't really do anything to earn their money." Which is why, Myerson writes, we need communal ownership of land, or something.
One wonders why he bothered to single out landlords, since he calls for the state appropriation of, well, everything. Why? Because "hoarders blow," and he doesn't mean folks who refuse to throw away their Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets and old Sharper Image catalogs. He means successful people who "hoard" the wealth that rightly belongs to all of us.
...In the ensuing kerfuffle, Myerson, whose Twitter hashtag is "#FULLCOMMUNISM," seemed shocked that any of his ideas sounded Soviet to his critics. Andrew McCoy, a conservative blogger, offered the specific citations for Myerson's proposals in the Soviet constitution. I suspect this was news to Myerson, but even if not, I bet he doesn't care. It is a permanent trope of the left that its ideas failed because we didn't try hard enough. This time is always different.
...One of the wonderful things about America is that both the left and right are champions of freedom. The difference lies in what we mean by freedom. The left emphasizes freedom as a material good, and the right sees freedom as primarily a right rooted in individual sovereignty. For the left, freedom means "freedom from want." If you don't have money, health care, homes, cars, etc., you're not free. Or as FDR put it when pitching his failed "Economic Bill of Rights": "Necessitous men are not free men."