Current Events - May 7, 2014

'Rogue law enforcement agency' inside EPA the subject of testimony today

By Thomas Lifson

The House Oversight Committee under Darrell Issa is slated to hear testimony today on another Obama administration cover-up. Dina Cappiello of the AP reports:

 A unit run by President Barack Obama's political staff inside the Environmental Protection Agency operates illegally as a "rogue law enforcement agency" that has blocked independent investigations by the EPA's inspector general for years, a top investigator told Congress.

The assistant EPA inspector general for investigations, Patrick Sullivan, was expected to testify Wednesday before a House oversight committee about the activities of the EPA's little-known Office of Homeland Security.

The office of about 10 employees is overseen by EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy's office, and the inspector general's office is accusing it of impeding its independent investigations into employee misconduct, computer security and external threats, including compelling employees involved in cases to sign non-disclosure agreements.

"Under the heavy cloak of 'national security,' the Office of Homeland Security has repeatedly rebuffed and refused to cooperate with the OIG's ongoing requests for information or cooperation," Sullivan wrote in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press. "This block unquestionably has hamstrung the Office of Inspector General's ability to carry out its statutory mandate to investigate wrongdoing of EPA employees."

Did you know the EPA has an 'Office of Homeland Security'?

By Rick Moran

.....Are you getting this? Political appointees at the EPA have set up an office specifically designed to keep the IG's office in the dark about wrongdoing by federal employees.. Incredible.

The war against the independence of agency inspector generals goes back to the beginning of Obama's first term. Gerald Walpin, IG of the Corporation for Service uncovered massive corruption in the personal and political doings of Obama crony Kevin Johnson, who misused Americorps funds as Mayor of Sacramento. He was subsequently fired, accused of senility. Other IG's have been mercilessly attacked for issuing reports that criticized the administration.

But this takes intimidation to a whole other level. And it makes you wonder what other departments and agencies have their own political hit squad whose job is to squelch politically dangerous investigations by inspector generals.

PK'S NOTE: Lordy, I love Trey Gowdy. Speaker of the House, next yes I agree. After that ... President Gowdy. 

Trey Gowdy rebuffs Pelosi’s call for equal representation on Benghazi committee: Elections have consequenses

By Joe Newby
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she wanted the select committee on Benghazi to be evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.
But Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., basically told Pelosi to go pound sand, reminding her that elections have consequences.  He also called her out for her hypocrisy on the matter.

Video of Gowdy’s comments can be seen below:
The Right Scoop provided a transcript of the exchange:

MARTHA: All right. So talk to me a little it about the makeup of this committee because Nancy Pelosi just said moments ago, to our Chad Pergram, he reported that she wants this to be an evenly divided select committee, an even number of Democrats and Republicans.
And you know that up to that statement, there have been a lot of calls for Democrats to completely boycott this committee. And there’s going to be be very little credibility if it is full of Republicans, many would say.
GOWDY: Well, I certainly hope the Democrats participate. I, Martha, continue to think that some things transcend politics like the murder of four of our fellow citizens and whether or not you trust government. That is not a red or blue issue. That is an American issue. As for whether or not they boycott, I hope they don’t.
I can tell you this. It is not going to be evenly constituted and when she was Speaker Pelosi, she certainly showed no interests in having an equal number of Republicans and Democrats.
We’re in the majority. That may or may not be the case after November but we’re in the majority right now and we’re in the majority for a reason. And I just find it interesting that people’s ability to do math changes when they go from being the Speaker to the Minority Leader.
MARTHA: So what, tell me what composition you see on this select committee? What would you like it to be?
GOWDY: Well, the Speaker is going to decide that. Something in the 10-7 range or like what we have with other committees now. Every committee of Congress is constituted with more Republicans than Democrats because there are more Republicans than Democrats. And i hasten to add, every committee in the Senate is constituted with more Democrats than Republicans. I mean there are consequences to elections.

Federal judge halts John Doe probe in Wisconsin

By Ed Morrissey
Secret subpoenas. Police raids on consultants holding records of political groups. Suspects kept from contacting attorneys. Federal judge Rudolph Randa brought all this to a screeching halt in Wisconsin yesterday with a sweeping order ending the “John Doe” probe into the recall election of Governor Scott Walker. “This cannot square with the First Amendment.” Randa said of the investigation, and perhaps a few other clauses in the US Constitution as well:

A federal judge ordered a halt to the controversial John Doe investigation into campaign spending and fundraising by Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and other conservative groups during the high-profile recall elections.
U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa issued the 26-page decision late Tuesday, calling on prosecutors to immediately stop the long-running, five-county probe into possible illegal coordination among the various groups during 2011 and 2012.
“The Defendants must cease all activities related to the investigation, return all property seized in the investigation from any individual or organization, and permanently destroy all copies of information and other materials obtained through the investigation,” Randa wrote.
“Plaintiffs and others are herby relieved of any and every duty under Wisconsin law to cooperate further with Defendants’ investigation,” he wrote.

Randa revealed some aspects of the investigation in his order that had remained secret. One might wonder how the prosecutors in this case could have defended these tactics at all:

“Sheriff deputy vehicles used bright floodlights to illuminate the targets’ homes,” Randa wrote. “Deputies executed the search warrants, seizing business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys.
“Among the materials seized were many of the Club’s records that were in the possession of Ms. Jordahl and Mr. Johnson,” Randa continued. “The warrants indicate that they were executed at the request of (state Government Accountability Board) investigator Dean Nickel.”
Randa also wrote on the same day that O’Keefe and others with Wisconsin Club for Growth received subpoenas to turn over the club’s records from March 1, 2009, until the present. The subpoenas were subject to a secrecy order.

Secret subpoenas … in a public corruption probe? Two political consultants restrained from contacting their attorneys while search warrants were executed for mundane records? One would question these tactics in a national-security or RICO investigation involving potentially violent criminals. To call this overkill is an understatement.
This seriously smacks of a police state, or at least the attempt to create one, in order to intimidate political opponents. Randa agreed, ending the probe. He also issued a warning about campaign-finance regulations and the way they enable these very intrusions on constitutional freedoms (citations removed):

One of these rights is the First Amendment right to speak freely, which ―has its fullest and most urgent application precisely to the conduct of campaigns for political office. The First Amendment is ―[p]remised on mistrust of governmental power, and its vigorous use assures that government of the people remains so. When government attempts to regulate the exercise of this constitutional right, through campaign finance laws or otherwise, the danger always exists that the high purpose of campaign regulation and its enforcement may conceal self-interest, and those regulated by the Constitution in turn become the regulators. …
Conversely, issue advocacy, which is enabled by what we can call ―issue advocacy money, is not subject to these limitations because it is viewed only one way, and that is as protected First Amendment speech. This is not a recognition that quid pro quo corruption is the only source of corruption in our political system or that issue advocacy money could not be used for some corrupting purpose. Rather, the larger danger is giving government an expanded role in uprooting all forms of perceived corruption which may result in corruption of the First Amendment itself. It
is a recognition that maximizing First Amendment freedom is a better way to deal with political corruption than allowing the seemingly corruptible to do so. As other histories tell us, attempts to purify the public square lead to places like the Guillotine and the Gulag.

The prosecutors plan to appeal this decision, but it’s going to be a rather large lift to get an appeals court to support secret subpoenas and restraint from counsel on the basis of independent-expenditure rule enforcement. From the reporting and from the opinion, it doesn’t appear that Judge Randa will be amenable to a stay, although the appeals court might be. This looks for the moment like a clear win for political freedom, and a stop on political intimidation by the fading former Wisconsin establishment.
Update: They’re not fading without a fight. As I expected, the prosecutors filed an emergency application for a stay with the appellate court. They argue that the federal judge lacks jurisdiction over an elected state official, which may be news to federal appeals courts in dealing with First Amendment cases. 

Total Chaos: Pennsylvania Democrats WALK OUT of Hearing on Members Accused of Taking Bribes

By Bryan Preston
[Yesterday] the Pennsylvania House State Government Committee held a hearing on the case of the Democrats caught accepting bribes in exchange for voting against voter ID in the state. The case against the Democrats is well-documented, yet Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, scuttled it shortly after she took office. Kane also accused the career investigators who built the case of racism.
That charge doesn’t stand up to any level of scrutiny. The investigation targeted Republicans and Democrats, male and female, black and white. As it so happens, only Democrats chose to accept the bribes, and those members who did happen to be black.
Today’s hearing included PJM’s J. Christian Adams and other witnesses. As Adams and the other witnesses were about to testify on Kane’s “corrosive effect on election integrity,” the Democrats on the committee attempted to adjourn, to prevent Adams from speaking. That motion to adjourn failed. Then a Democrat (apparently state Rep. Michael O’Brien) attempted to make a point of personal privilege to block Adams’ testimony from being heard. That was ruled out of order. The Democrats persisted.
The committee chairman, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, had that Democrat who tried to block Adams’ testimony on a point of personal privilege seized and ejected from the hearing room.
After that, it was total chaos. All of the Democrats on the committee got up and stormed out of the room.
The committee is looking at whether Kane should be impeached for scuttling the investigation and smearing the investigators. Even some fellow Democrats in Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who is both black and a Democrat, have strongly objected to Kane’s actions.

Hillary is the corporate candidate, Twenty-nine of the 30 Dow Jones Industrial Average index companies have given money to her

By Nick Sorrentino
Bush was a corporatist. There is no doubt about that. Obama is a corporatist as we have documented over and over and over. But Hilary Clinton is taking things to a new level. She is tight with the banks, pharma, defense, you name it. She watched Glass-Steagall twitch and die at her husband’s hand from the guilded confines of the White House. She is a crony capitalist through and through.

And yet I am absolutely sure that throngs of “progressives” are going to run around the country with “Ready for Hillary” t-shirts. They will loudly exclaim how Hilary is wonderful for the country and how she is doing so much for women.
That’s it right there too. The bet is that no matter how corrupt, no matter how much the country doesn’t need the Clinton-Bush dynasty to continue, (The 2 families are close friends. In fact GW Bush refers to Bill Clinton as his “brother from another mother.” No joke.) Madam Clinton will be elected because she is the first viable woman candidate. And it’s probably a good bet.
But despite the cheers and tears we might see on election night 2016 from those who will herald Ms. Clinton’s election as “historic” and “progress” it will be another sad day for the republic. The business/government nexus will become even stronger. The state will become stronger. Our liberties will diminish. The powerful will become more powerful. And the little guy will get screwed once again.
Meet Hillary Clinton your candidate for Crony in Chief.
Oh and by the way. Don’t call the shilling she did for donors while she was Secretary of State corruption or cronyism. No, no, it was economic statecraft.

The United States Has Not Warmed Since 1991

By Sierra Rayne

With the release of the latest National Climate Assessment, media outlets are filled with incorrect information.

At Vox.com, Blad Plumer gives us "nine maps that show how climate change is already affecting the US" and then claims next to his very first map that "since 1991, every region in the United States has been warming, with the biggest temperature increases occurring in the winter and spring."

Wrong.

Here are annual temperatures in all U.S. climate regions since 1991, along with annual temperatures for the contiguous U.S. as a whole.

On the contrary, there has been no significant change in annual temperatures since 1991 in any U.S. climate region with the sole exception of the northeast division, for which there has been an increasing trend since 1991 (but no trend since 1998).

There has been no significant change in annual temperatures for the contiguous United States since 1991. None.

The Left's Phantom Wars

By Ben Shapiro
On Monday, as Vladimir Putin waged an actual war in Ukraine, Bashar Assad waged an actual war in Syria, and a Nigerian terror group waged an actual war on underage girls, President Barack Obama announced his own war on "climate disruption." White House adviser John Podesta explained on Monday afternoon that Obama would be acting alone to push new regulations under the Clean Air Act to combat climate change. That announcement came in the wake of an 840-page report from the federal government suggesting that the globe is on the verge of a meltdown: "Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present."
That's hardly the only war in which the left is currently engaged. The left is fighting a war on racism -- a war in which the declared enemy is America, given that America is apparently plagued by "hidden bias." That's the newest term trotted out by MTV, which has launched its "look different" initiative, in coordination with shakedown groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the NAACP, the National Council of La Raza and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The goal: to convince young people that while they aren't overtly racist, they hold secret racist beliefs that can only be cleansed by embracing the leftist agenda. The war must go on, after all, even if the enemy has been largely vanquished.
There's the left's phantom war on sexism, too, in which Democrats claim women are victimized by a male patriarchy. Women, leftists say, earn significantly less than men, despite studies showing that in most major cities, young women without children and with the same jobs as men earn significantly more. Women, leftists say, are victimized by a conservative religious minority that doesn't want to pay for their birth control. Again, the enemies of women remain faceless -- but we are told they lurk behind every corner. The winning strategy, once again: embrace leftism.
The war on poverty continues apace, as well. The latest incarnation: the war on income inequality -- a war specifically geared toward endlessness. After all, sans Communist revolution, income inequality will always exist. And according to the left, it will always require rectification. 
Today's leftism tilts at windmills rather than fighting real opponents. It ignores actual conflict in favor of broader, amorphous battles with shapeless opponents and no clear measures of victory. After all, how will we know if we defeat climate change? There is no way to tell whether we did it, or whether the global temperature was set to drop anyway. How will we know if we defeat sexism? Clearly, the left believes that women in the workplace in record numbers and achievement of equal pay for equal work doesn't do the trick. How will we know if we defeat racism? The left has already moved the goalposts from equal opportunity to equal result, an unachievable pipe dream in the absence of totalitarian control.
And so the wars go on -- endless, expensive, draining. They sap America of our vitality, our strength and most importantly, our core values. But at least, the left tells us, we have gained heaven: an everlasting unearned moral superiority over our fellow nonracist, nonsexist, non-poverty-hating Americans.

Moral Bankruptcy

By Thomas Sowell
If you want to get some idea of the moral bankruptcy of our educational system, read an article in the May 4th issue of the New York Times Magazine titled, "The Tale of Two Schools."
The article is not about moral bankruptcy. But it is itself an example of the moral bankruptcy behind the many failures of American education today.
Someone had the bright idea of pairing public high school kids from a low-income neighborhood in the Bronx with kids from a private high school that charges $43,000 a year.
When the low-income youngsters visited the posh private school, "they were just overwhelmed" by it, according to the New York Times. "One kid ran crying off campus." Apparently others felt "so disheartened about their own circumstances."
What earthly good did that do for these young people? Thank heaven no one was calloused enough to take me on a tour of a posh private school when I was growing up in Harlem.
No doubt those adults who believe in envy and resentment get their jollies from doing things like this -- and from feeling that they are creating future envy and resentment voters to forward the ideological agenda of the big government left.
But at the expense of kids?
There was a time when common sense and common decency counted for something. Educators felt a responsibility to equip students with solid skills that could take them anywhere they wanted to go in later life -- enable them to become doctors, engineers or whatever they wanted to be.
Too many of today's "educators" see students as a captive audience for them to manipulate and propagandize.
These young people do not yet have enough experience to know that posh surroundings are neither necessary nor sufficient for a good education. Is anyone foolish enough to think that making poor kids feel disheartened is doing them a favor?
This school visit was not just an isolated event. It was part of a whole program of pairing individual youngsters from a poverty-stricken neighborhood with youngsters from families that can pay 43 grand a year for their schooling. 

Offensive Speech

By John Stossel
Last week, when the NBA banned racist team owner Donald Sterling, some said: "What about free speech? Can't a guy say what he thinks anymore?"
The answer: yes, you can. But the free market may punish you. In America today, the market punishes racists aggressively.
This punishment is not "censorship." Censorship is something only governments can do. Writers complain that editors censor what they write. But that's not censorship; that's editing.
It's fine if the NBA -- or any private group -- wants to censor speech on its own property. People who attend games or work for the NBA agreed to abide by its rules. Likewise, Fox is free to fire me if they don't like what I say. That's the market in action, reflecting preferences of owners and customers.
But it's important that government not have the power to silence us. We have lots of companies, colleges and sports leagues. If one orders us to "shut up," we can go somewhere else.
But there is only one government, and it can take our money and our freedom. All a business can do is refuse to do business with me, causing me to work with someone else. Government can forbid me to do business with anyone at all.
Of course, government never admits it's doing harm. Around the world, when government gets into the censorship business, it claims to be protecting the public. But by punishing those who criticize politicians, it's protecting itself.
That's why it's great the Founders gave America the First Amendment, a ban on government "abridging the freedom of speech."

Rewriting the First Amendment

Chuck Schumer thinks he can improve on James Madison.

 A standard liberal talking point about the Tea Party is that its constitutional designs are "extremist." But you will search in vain for any Tea Party proposal that is anywhere close to as radical as the current drive by mainstream Democrats to rewrite the Bill of Rights.
The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision allowing unions and corporations to donate to independent political groups has driven liberals to such fits that they now want to amend the First Amendment. At a Senate Rules Committee meeting last week, New York Democrat Chuck Schumer announced a proposal to amend the Constitution to empower government to regulate political speech.
"The Supreme Court is trying to take this country back to the days of the robber barons, allowing dark money to flood our elections," Mr. Schumer said. The Senate will vote this year on the amendment to "once and for all allow Congress to make laws to regulate our system, without the risk of them being eviscerated by a conservative Supreme Court." He even rolled out retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens to pronounce his unhappiness with freedom's bedrock document.

According to the text of the proposed revision to James Madison's 1791 handiwork, sponsored by New Mexico Senator Tom Udall, the states and federal government would have the power to regulate the "raising and spending of money" through a wide range of means "to advance the fundamental principle of political equality for all."
The real guarantee would be political advantage for all incumbents, since it's the sitting lawmakers who really benefit from any law limiting contributions to candidates or on their behalf. While Beltway boys like Messrs. Schumer and Udall have the name recognition to raise money in small increments, challengers often need the financial boost from a few individuals to get their message heard.
Mr. Schumer is conjuring the age of robber barons, but there were no general limits on what an individual could donate to a federal candidate in this country until as recently as 1974. Contrary to the outrage that greeted the Supreme Court's recent decision ending aggregate limits to candidates and political party committees in McCutcheon v. FEC, at the time that ruling was issued 32 states already had no aggregate or similar limits on contributions to candidates. That fact was so uncontroversial that Mr. Udall may not even know that New Mexico was among the 32.
Mr. Udall's amendment is careful to specify that nothing "should be construed to grant Congress the power to abridge the freedom of the press." In case you don't follow campaign finance, that is supposed to protect newspapers and TV networks, most of which embrace Democratic causes and candidates.
The real target will be the corporations Democrats have railed against since Citizens United. But why should Warren Buffett's company enjoy free speech rights because he owns a handful of newspapers along with insurance companies, while Jeffrey Immelt's is muzzled because GE makes jet turbines? For that matter, what's to stop political groups from incorporating themselves as newspapers?
Once you've opened the First Amendment for revision by politicians, and reinterpretation by judges, anything can happen. We know liberal editors tend to lose their bearings when they write about money in politics, but is the problem so great that it's worth letting, say, Senator Ted Cruz determine whether the New York Times Co. NYT -0.65% qualifies for protection under the First Amendment?
This prospect doesn't seem to bother even the great totems of the legal left, who also see an amendment as the only way to end-run the Supreme Court. Amending the First Amendment is a "particularly worthy enterprise," Harvard's Laurence Tribe wrote on Slate.com in 2012 "given that the composition of the court prefigures little chance of a swift change in direction." Who would have thought that the legal left considered rights of speech and association to be so easily tradeable for partisan gain?
Professor Tribe added that thanks to the rise of Super PACs, campaign donors are "invisible to the electorate, though they are all too visible to the candidates who benefit." Think of the Koch brothers—or, as Mr. Tribe suggests, the "invisible" tycoon Sheldon Adelson, whose contributions to Newt Gingrich's political action committee during the 2012 GOP primary "singlehandedly sustained a floundering presidential campaign." These donors are so "invisible" that Mr. Tribe can put their names in an op-ed and his readers all know who they are.
A Constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate and ratification by 38 states, so it has scant chance of passing any time soon. Those ample checks against self-interested legislatures are another reason to thank the Founders. But who knows what might happen the next time Democrats get supermajorities in Congress, or find a Republican like John McCain willing to give their effort bipartisan cover?
The larger story here is how far the American left is willing to go to cripple their political opponents. They're even willing to write a giant loophole into America's founding charter so Congress can limit political speech. The Tea Party's concerns about eroding liberty turn out to be more accurate than even its most devoted partisans imagined.

Family Ties
We have an opportunity society—at least for the children of lawmakers. 

By Jim Geraghty
....There’s much discussion in Washington of creating an “opportunity society”; that term is in fact a pretty good description of life for the offspring of lawmakers, as opportunities abound — campaign work, jobs in congressional offices, campaign committees, political action committees, lobbying firms, and the occasional steered earmark.
In 2012, the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington examined the publicly disclosed financial ties to family members and found:
82 members (40 Democrats and 42 Republicans) paid family members through their congressional offices, campaign committees, and political action committees;
44 members (20 Democrats and 24 Republicans) have family members who lobby or are employed in government affairs;
90 members (42 Democrats and 48 Republicans) have paid a family business, employer, or associated nonprofit;
20 members (13 Democrats and seven Republicans) used their campaign money to contribute to a family member’s political campaign;
14 members (six Democrats and eight Republicans) charged interest on personal loans they made to their own campaigns;
38 members (24 Democrats and 14 Republicans) earmarked to a family business, employer, or associated nonprofit.
Only a true cynic would doubt that all of the above individuals reached those positions on their own merits or claim that organizations and institutions brought on these children of lawmakers in order to establish a connection or curry favor with their parents. That’s . . . aristocratic.
Some might dismiss the denial of an aristocracy and suggest all of these familial connections are troubling. They might even argue that the governing of the U.S. is now dominated by a small group of powerful families, some allied, some rivals, in a system more fit for Game of Thrones than a constitutional republic.
The good news is the issue will surely be discussed and resolved by a 2016 presidential race featuring Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush; we can all look forward to the MSNBC coverage from Ronan Farrow, Luke Russert, and Abby Huntsman.

The Terror Behind the Hashtag: Kidnapped Girls Warn World About Boko Haram

Al-Qaeda-allied Nigerian terrorists are thinking globally while acting locally, and their latest victims are canaries in the coal mine.

 By Bridget Johnson
....With hashtags and street protests, people around the world and throughout U.S. political and activist circles issued tweets calling the “stolen” girls an “outrage” and a “disgrace,” demanding answers while infrequently mentioning the obvious root of the Nigerian families’ anguish: Boko Haram. A CNN anchor said Monday the story was not about the abductors, as if it was an isolated school shooting in which the perpetrator’s name shouldn’t be glorified.
The teenage girls are the canaries in the coal mine, warning a world that just might be ready to listen that Nigeria hardly has the control over al-Qaeda-linked Boko Haram that it claims. The criticized dithering response of the Nigerian government is unfortunately matched by an international response that correctly brands the insurgents as misogynistic and nihilist, but tucks under the rug the world’s lack of response to the explosive al-Qaeda threat in North Africa.

...Dutch intelligence firm Ultrascan HUMINT, which closely follows Boko Haram, noted in April that the terror group “is not just a local insurgency but a movement with a strong brand name that promises to fight the sin of non-Islamic education.”
“A much broader notion, easy to identify with and potentially inspiring Muslims across the globe,” the firm added, noting that they’re taking the al-Qaeda 2.0 philosophy of “think globally, act locally” to heart. “…Until today the Government has no clue about who, what and where Boko Haram is and it desperately tries to downplay the clear and present danger of Boko Haram.”
Indeed, Shekau has repeatedly warned in recent videos that “we are everywhere in your cities.”
...“Thousands of people have been killed in increasingly sophisticated attacks on civilians, government, and police installations over the last three years,” the senator added. “…These abductions are just the latest atrocity committed by Boko Haram.”