File this one under “aren’t you glad we didn’t elect an idiot like Sarah Palin to be one heartbeat away from the president?” Actually, according to the current buffoon who is a heartbeat away from the president, we didn’t elect George W. Bush in 2000 etiher. Maybe it is his dementia kicking in or maybe he’s in a time warp, but Joe Biden claimed at a fundraiser for Ed Markey on Tuesday that Al Gore had actually won and that the Supreme Court was wrong.
Big Government
Stuff and nonsense: The NSA data mining
It wouldn’t be an American political scandal if there weren’t an element of farce in it. There is a whole periodic table of farce in this one, so it’s hard to choose, but I guess I pick, as Farce Number One, the inability of U.S. national intelligence to find Edward Snowden after he fled overseas and checked into a Hong Kong hotel. I’ll let you know if that changes.
I imagine readers have a clear picture of what’s going on with this NSA collection scandal, but let’s clarify one aspect of it. The phone data collection involves metadata only, at least Continue reading
Town criminalizes parents for their kids’ bullying and offensive speech
Law Professor Eugene Volokh recently had an interesting post on a Wisconsin town’s “bullying” ordinance, which criminalizes speech by minors as “bullying” or “harassment” if it creates an “offensive” or “hostile” environment, or if it is deemed “emotionally abusive.” I explained at this link why the ordinance in Monona, Wisconsin, is unconstitutionally vague, and how it would chill speech protected by the First Amendment. What is perhaps most disturbing about the ordinance is that it punishes parents for the speech and conduct by their children that it defines as “bullying.”
Has GOP the steel to repeal liberty-stealing Obamacare after IRS stole election?
Predictions that Obamacare would cause private health insurance premiums to soar fueled the 2010 tea partier-fueled landslide mid-term election that returned control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans. Sadly, the GOP had been thwarted in its effort to prevent enactment of the Orwellian-titled “Affordable Care Act” earlier that year, despite the special election that replaced the late-Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) with Republican Scott Brown as the self-described 41st vote against the ACA, when Democrats broke their own congressional rules and used the “reconciliation” budget process to avoid an additional vote in the Senate that would have required 60 votes to invoke cloture.
Obama administration attack on free speech and due process on campus finally covered in newspapers
Earlier, I wrote about a recent letter from the Justice and Education Departments demanding that the University of Montana define as a reportable “sexual harassment” offense “any” speech on sexual topics that is “unwelcome” to any listener, even if most listeners do not find it “unwelcome,” and it would not offend the “reasonable person.” This pretty obviously violates the First Amendment, as I explain here in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
Anti-business and anti-freedom: The U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
In the American Spectator, Iain Murray and Geoffrey McLatchey explain why the Senate should reject the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which fell six votes short of the 67 needed for ratification last December. As they note, “the treaty would enable an enormous increase in the potential power of UN bureaucrats over the American people and undermine national sovereignty.” Moreover, although “CRPD proponents argue that it merely reiterates existing U.S. disability law,” this is simply false, based on the treaty’s plain language.
Is it time for the media to group the scandals together and call them ‘Obamagate?’
At this moment, no daily news cycle is complete without one hearing or reading the word “Watergate” in connection with the four Obama Administration scandals currently swirling around in various stages of unraveling.
For example, look no further than PJM yesterday with a piece by Ed Driscoll titled Obama and the IRS: Worse Than Watergate. That title perfectly illustrates the Watergate reference framework across all media platforms, regardless of ideological tilt.
Currently, the four scandals are categorized in one of three ways: nothing like Watergate, worse than Watergate, or just like Watergate.
Can 1/2 of 1/3 of government force out Holder and Lerner?
Absent the emergence of scores of elected Democrats in Congress with Howard Baker-like character, does any power exist in Washington, D.C. that can hold the lawless Obama Administration accountable?
It’s not as if defiance, if not out-right abrogation, of the Rule of Law by President Barack Obama wasn’t known before his re-election. Despite contempt citations for illegally imposed deepwater oil drilling moratoriums in the Gulf of Mexico, executive orders defying welfare-to-work laws, and Continue reading
Yes, this is Watergate, the remake
Poor, misguided Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service’s director of exempt organizations. She thinks she’s done nothing wrong, even though she oversaw the IRS effort that unfairly targeted conservative groups applying for tax exempt status. She made this claim before a House committee, passionately stating her innocence of wrongdoing not once, but twice. That was before she went mute, pleading the Fifth—lest any elaboration on her non-wrongdoing incriminate her. Continue reading
Taxi magnate sues Bloomberg following nanny mayor’s profanity-laced rant
A taxi fleet boss who received a profane tongue lashing from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg replete with two f-bombs announced on Wednesday that he is suing “hizzoner.”
The New York Post reports that Gene Freidman, CEO of Taxi Club Management, was accosted last Thursday by a spitting-mad Bloomie.