News of the Week (April 21st, 2014)

Posted on April 21, 2014 by The Political Hat

 

News of the Week for April 21st, 2014


 

Election 2014

 

Wendy Davis trails Greg Abbott in Texas — among women
Via the Caller, pollster Kellyanne Conway surveys the state of the “war on women” in Texas: “Women get exhausted with women candidates who say they are pro-woman and then run on issues that real women don’t say are most important to them.”

Jumbaliar
Mary Landrieu’s Fake, Fake Fake Fake ad

Sebelius Eyeing Kansas Senate Run
Kathleen Sebelius recently stepped down from the Department of Health and Human Services, and she is considering her next job: Senator for Kansas.

Ark. Democratic Party Accused of Excluding Black Female Candidate
An Arkansas Democratic gubernatorial candidate has filed a complaint against the state’s party for shutting her out and dismissing her candidacy, while promoting other candidates, including her opponent. Dr. Lynette Bryant, who is running against presumptive favorite former Representative Mike Ross, said she has been denied opportunities to take part in party events.

CNN: Landrieu Ad With Fake Footage Is ‘Blowing Up in Her Face’
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D., La.) is coming under fire for fake footage she used in her latest ad. Landrieu’s attempt to present herself as a serious politician is “blowing up in her face,” CNN declared.

Bruce Braley’s Poll Numbers Fall Following Farmer Comments
50 percent of likely Iowa voters now less likely to vote for Braley

GOP’s bid to take Senate moves to Oregon, which is ripe for ObamaCare attack
Democratic-leaning Oregon seems like an unexpected place for Republicans to advance their efforts to win control of the Senate this year. But with a strong candidate in a state with arguably the worst ObamaCare rollout in the country, Washington Republicans think they have a winning strategy.

Absent Factor X, the Democrats are not going to get back the House this year.
Articles like this are very helpful. For Republicans: “Is there anyway Democrats can win the 17 seats they need to capture the House majority this November? In one word: Yes.”

 

Obama Scandals

 

New Emails Show Lois Lerner Was in Contact With DOJ About Prosecuting Tax Exempt Groups
According to new IRS emails obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request from Judicial Watch, former head of tax exempt groups at the IRS Lois Lerner was in contact with the Department of Justice in May 2013 about whether tax exempt groups could be criminally prosecuted for “lying” about political activity.

Is Obama Cooking the Census Books for Obamacare?
For several months now, whenever the topic of enrollment in the Affordable Care Act came up, I’ve been saying that it was too soon to tell its ultimate effects. We don’t know how many people have paid for their new insurance policies, or how many of those who bought policies were previously uninsured. For that, I said, we will have to wait for Census Bureau data, which offer the best assessment of the insurance status of the whole population. Other surveys are available, but the samples are smaller, so they’re not as good; the census is the gold standard. Unfortunately, as I invariably noted, these data won’t be available until 2015.

GOP writes legislation to deny Eric Holder his salary
A Republican congressman has introduced a bill that would stop government paychecks for officials who have been found in contempt of Congress — a move that seems designed in the short term to go after Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

Gun Rights

 

This is What Happens When You Register Your Guns
A very close friend of mine is an attorney living in Puerto Rico. He loves to shoot and has a multitude of expensive rifles, shotguns and pistols. A little local background first. In Puerto Rico, every single firearm and every ammunition transaction must be registered. Firearms and ammunition can only be purchased by holders of a target shooting license, with or without a concealed carry permit. Hunting licenses are a separate matter. You still must have a target license in order to have a concealed carry permit. The target license is where all the firearms are registered. The target license also lists the guns you decide to carry separately . . .

Gun rights may return to Supreme Court’s agenda
The push and pull over the Second Amendment right to bear arms is heating up again, thanks in part to a former Supreme Court justice’s new book.

FIRST ARREST? Connecticut Man Faces Charges For Unregistered “Assault Rifle,” Standard Capacity Magazines
A Milford man appears to be the first person charged after failing to comply with Connecticut’s law requiring the registration of certain firearms and standard capacity magazines

Leland Yee Received Bloody Pig’s Head with Meat Cleaver in 1990s
More bizarre facts about California State Sen. Leland Yee are coming to light, and they range from receiving the severed head of a pig several years ago, to allegedly supporting or creating laws to benefit special interests who supplied him with campaign contributions.

Hide the Decline

Environment &
“Green Energy”

 

Ice dating from Krypton
Here’s something useful that works like radiocarbon dating, but on ice. Since it is cosmic ray based, it makes me wonder if it could be used to reconstruct the cosmic ray record to test Svensmark’s theory of cosmic ray modulation of climate.

Elements of the Mann-Steyn case: Climate Science, Free Speech and Legal Liability
The field of climate science, with controversial issues such as whether the planet is warming due to man’s burning of fossil fuels, or the world is blissfully ignoring additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or perhaps the globe is cooling down into the next ice age, has created and still creates vigorous expressions of opinion, and some name-calling, defamatory statements, and calls for deliberate lies and deceit. There appears to have also been outright lies, false statements, and fabrication of data, among other deceitful practices.

Obamacare

Government in Healthcare

 

The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Millions may get “insured” through Obamacare, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to see a physician.

 

War & Terror

 

NATO Promises More Military Presence as Pro-Russian Forces Take More Buildings in East Ukraine
Pro-Russian forces continue to push their way through east Ukraine targeting more government buildings in Donetsk and Sloviansk. After these incidents, NATO announced they are going to add more troops in eastern Europe.

National

 

Nevada GOP drops platforms against abortions, gay marriage, endorses Sandoval
Amid raucous debate, Nevada Republican Party conventioneers on Saturday stripped opposition to gay marriage and abortion from the party platform and endorsed Gov. Brian Sandoval for governor in the June 10 primary despite misgivings by conservatives, his criticism of the process and his absence from the meeting.

Is This Republic On Such Unsound Footing That It Must Respond to Civil Disobedience As If It Is Girding for War?
Harry Reid seems to have taken the Bundy standoff rather personally

Zero Tolerance: Another Public School Decides to Wreck a Kid’s Life
The short version of the story: Kid gets bullied at his school in Pennsylvania, school pays no attention and fails to help him. So he records audio of the bully bullying him, to provide proof to his mother. His mother tells the school and lets them hear the audio. The school administrators do the absolute stupidest possible thing. They tell the boy to delete the audio, and call the cops. The responding officer then does the dumbest thing he can do, and charges the kid with a crime.

Colorado Democrats Take Extreme Position on Abortion Rights
Colorado Democrats have taken the assault on the unborn to new depths. The anti-life legislation currently making its way through the Colorado Senate is so extreme that I am not sure that even Wendy Davis would support it. Basically, the Democratic party in Colorado has decided to advance a virulently anti-life position that would enshrine into Colorado law the right to murder a child in the womb at any time for any reason, with no regulatory oversight or requirements to meet basic standards for clinics that will perform abortions.

Missouri High School Girl Yelled at for Carrying Bible
In Potosi, Missouri, a teacher yelled at a high school girl for holding a Bible and discussing Christianity with a fellow classmate.

The war on standards — standards win a round
I have written often about the left’s war on standards, an attempt to bulldoze standards of conduct and achievement that stand in the way of equal distribution of society’s benefits and prizes to Blacks. One major front in that war is the federal government’s attack, via EEOC lawsuits, on employers that use the background checks to screen applicants for employment. The government takes particular exception to the use of criminal history and credit checks because these devices tend to exclude African-American job applicants to a statistically disproportionate degree.

Brandeis Feminist Faculty Led Petition Against Aayan Hirsi Ali
The wretched cowardice of Brandeis University in rescinding an honorary degree for human rights activist Aayan Hirsi Ali surprised a lot of people. A victim of female genital mutilation (FGM), Ali was the target of terroristic threats in the Netherlands for speaking out against Islamic oppression of women. The question was asked, “Where’s the feminist anger at Brandeis over Ayaan Hirsi Ali?”

Can You Buy a License To Speed In California?
“Alex Mayyasi reports that in the parking lots of Silicon Valley’s venture capital firms, expensive cars gleam in the California sun and a closer look reveals that the cars share a mysterious detail: they nearly all have a custom license plate frame that reads, ‘Member. 11-99 Foundation.’ Are the Bay Area’s wealthy all part of some sort of illuminati group that identifies each other by license plate instead of secret handshakes? The answer is the state highway patrol — the men and women that most people interact with only when getting ticketed for speeding. A number of the frames read ‘CHP 11-99 Foundation,’ which is the full name of a charitable organization that supports California Highway Patrol officers and their families in times of crisis.

House Immigration Bills Are Still in the Mix
Boehner Tells Attendees at Fundraiser He’s ‘Hellbent on Getting This Done’

Pete Peterson: A Conservative Idealist, Winning in California
Amidst the general gloom about Republican electoral fortunes in California, past and present, came some good news last week: Pete Peterson, director of the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University, is leading the race for Secretary of State by double digits.

Twitter parody account holder sought in police raid
Authorities say Twitter impersonation carries maximum year jail term, $2,500 fine.

LA Sheriff’s Dept. On New Surveillance Program: We Knew The Public Wouldn’t Like It, So We Kept It A Secret
from the because-screw-those-whiners-and-their-‘rights’ dept

The War On Standards Comes to College Debate
Paul has been writing about the war on standards in various aspects of our society, generally as a means of advancing the interests of minorities (or purporting to advance them, anyway). Now it appears that the decline of standards–indeed, the abolition of any standards at all–has come to the world of college debate.

Western lawmakers gather in Utah to talk federal land takeover
‘It’s time’ » Lawmakers from 9 states gather in Utah, discuss ways to take control of federal lands.

Scalia To Student: If Taxes Go Too High ‘Perhaps You Should Revolt’
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told a crowd of law school students that if taxes in the U.S. become too high then people “should revolt.”

Calif. moves to ban judges affiliated with Boy Scouts
California is proposing to ban members of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) from serving as judges because the Boy Scouts do not allow gay troop leaders, The Daily Caller has learned.

The Great Gibson Guitar Raid: Still No Charges Filed
‘They…come in with weapons, they seized a half-million dollars worth of property, they shut our factory down, and they have not charged us with anything,’ says Gibson Guitars CEO Henry Juszkiewicz, referring to the August 2011 raid on his Nashville

Nevada Assemblywoman Faces Off With MSNBC Host Over Bundy Ranch
Yesterday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes interviewed Assemblywoman Michele Fiore, and the result was a fantastic bit of back and forth about the Bundy ranch situation.

“Shut Up culture” takes on dissent over campus “rape culture”
Is campus “rape culture” off the list of acceptable debate?

Economy & Taxes

 

Guerilla Conservative Artists Strike On Tax Day With ‘Debt Star’ Balloon
A group of guerrilla conservative activists has struck again, this time putting up a large helium filled balloon looking similar to Star Wars “Death Star” with the letters IRS on it.

California Demands $55 Million from Microprocessor Inventor
The state has been harassing him for decades

8 Infuriating Facts To Remember On Tax Day
Happy Tax Day, America! It’s not every day that you either get to write a big fat check to Uncle Sam or discover that you’d been loaning him money interest-free for the last year. But have no fear: at least your hard-earned money has been spent on vital projects essential to America’s well-being. Projects like studying shrimp running on treadmills (seriously, you paid for that), or Bridges to Nowhere. Super important stuff like that.

Sriracha Hot Sauce May Leave California
Sriracha Hot Sauce may move its factory out of California because of a months-long battle with the city of Irwindale over the smell from the factory, the Los Angeles Times reports.

 

International

 

Weirdo Radical TDSB Trustee Candidate John Furr Says Education System Should Teach His Values, Instead Of Teaching Facts
Forget math and reading and writing, trustee candidate John Furr thinks the TDSB should be teaching his values (which include supporting Students Against Israeli Apartheid, calling people bigots if they oppose public nudity, and acting like an obsessive troll on Twitter.)

France lost 2,300 tubes of a deadly virus
In the world of European medical research, few names carry more clout and prestige than the Institut Pasteur. In 1983, the French non-profit discovered HIV, and three years later found another strain of the disease. It has posted groundbreaking research in the study of diseases from yellow fever to tetanus to diphtheria. In all, its scientists have netted numerous Nobel Prizes, one of which came in 2008.

Berlusconi ordered to do community service for tax conviction
A court on Tuesday ordered former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to serve a tax fraud sentence by doing community service with the elderly, in a ruling that restricts his movements but not his political activity.

Venezuela’s Largest University ‘Nearly Abandoned’ After Chavista Attacks on Students
The Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, the nation’s largest academic institution, is in shambles. In a heartfelt report in Harper’s Magazine, Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez recalls the greatness of his alma mater and how the socialist Maduro government has created a “nearly abandoned,” dangerous atmosphere at the university.

David Axelrod Hired to Make a Socialist the U.K.’s Next Prime Minister
The British Labour Party has appointed David Axelrod as a strategic adviser to Ed Miliband’s 2015 campaign. Axelrod, who went on to serve as a senior adviser to President Obama after acting as an adviser on the president’s 2008 campaign, will reportedly be paid a six-figure sum for his work.

China Seizes Japanese Ship — As Payment for Pre-World War II Debt
Tokyo warned Monday that the seizure of a Japanese ship in Shanghai over pre-war debts threatened ties with China and could undermine the very basis of their diplomatic relationship.

SWEDEN passes law to criminalize any criticism of Muslim immigration
Gee, I wonder how this will affect the Sweden Democrats, an anti-Muslim immigration party that is soaring in popularity?

Social Engineers Infuse Their Own Quasi-Religion Into Schools: Progressivism
The Catholic teachers’ union in Ontario recently voted overwhelmingly to march in the gay pride parade, and they almost never mention religion except to quote the Pope when he says something positive about labour unions or left-wing economics.

 

Opinion

 

The Case for a Little Sedition
The Bundy standoff reminds us that government is our servant, not our master.

Sex Roles: ‘Me Tarzan, You Jane’
Common sense has become extraordinarily rare in recent years, especially among the intelligentsia, who seem increasingly angry that reality refuses to conform itself to their abstract theories. The idea that women enjoy being women — and “need a man to be a man” to make “relationships work” — is such a direct contradiction of feminist gender theory that it’s practically a hate crime to say so

Statistical Frauds of the Left
Liberals’ “war on women” consists of talking points to excite the gullible.

Why You Should Be Sympathetic Toward Cliven Bundy
On Saturday, I wrote about the standoff at Bundy Ranch. That post drew a remarkable amount of traffic, even though, as I wrote then, I had not quite decided what to make of the story. Since then, I have continued to study the facts and have drawn some conclusions. Here they are.

Bundy vs. BLM: A Visceral Reaction
One can be a supporter of the rule of law and still recoil in anger and disgust from the militarized display of force by the federal government toward Clive Bundy.

Bundy Ranch and the Political Powerlessness of Rural America
While rural America literally sustains life for urban America, many urbanites dislike large-scale farming (this parody is worth seeing), would like to see the rest of the country essentially transformed into a nature preserve, and argue that to the extent land is “used,” it should be used for selectively-defined “renewable” purposes, like solar energy or wind farms. The result — when urban regions become dominant — has been amply chronicled by Victor Davis Hanson and many others: rural regions increasingly serve urban ones and do so under comprehensive urban regulatory schemes that disrupt lives, destroy livelihoods, and lead to widespread frustration and despair.

Cults In Our Midst: Patty Hearst And The Brainwashing Of America
Exactly forty years ago Patricia Hearst stunned the nation when she turned up as a bank robber, a mere two months after she was kidnapped by the violent cult that called itself “The Symbionese Liberation Army.” Her astonishing transformation was documented by bank cameras on April 15, 1974.

The Road to Progressive Dhimmitude
In the recent Hobby Lobby Case, Justices Elana Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor said that corporations that don’t want to pay for abortions should simply not provide any health insurance: “But isn’t there another choice nobody talks about, which is paying the tax, which is a lot less than a penalty and a lot less than — than the cost of health insurance at all?” Dissenters from the official line must pay a tax. That sounds familiar.

The slow death of free speech
How the Left, here and abroad, is trying to shut down debate — from Islam and Israel to global warming and gay marriage

The Rule of the Lawless
Armed federal agents defend turtle habitat but fail to secure our national borders.

Progressives are wrong about the essence of the Constitution
In a 2006 interview, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said the Constitution is “basically about” one word — “democracy” — that appears in neither that document nor the Declaration of Independence. Democracy is America’s way of allocating political power. The Constitution, however, was adopted to confine that power in order to “secure the blessings of” that which simultaneously justifies and limits democratic government — natural liberty

College: The Sixty-Five Thousand Dollar Misunderstanding
Back in 1962, Robert Gover published a novel called the One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding whose premise Amazon describes this way: “A college sophomore spends a weekend with a pretty 14-year-old black prostitute under the manly misapprehension that she has invited him because she finds him irresistible.”

Voting against Bushes is an act of love
A popular online dictionary offers four definitions for the word “bushed.”

Equal ? The Same: Sex Differences in the Human Brain
While advances in brain imaging confirm that men and women think in their own way and that their brains are different, the biomedical community mainly uses male animals as testing subjects with the assumption that sex differences in the brain hardly matter. This month’s Cerebrum highlights some of the thinking and research that invalidates that assumption.

The United States of SWAT?
Military-style units from government agencies are wreaking havoc on non-violent citizens.

The United States of Envy
Income redistribution will lead to high unemployment, crushing tax rates, and the end of innovation.

The zealots win again
The debate over campaign contributions is never-ending for a simple reason: Both sides of the argument have merit.

The Rise Of The Same-Sex Marriage Dissidents
Eich broke the rules of the game. Suddenly everything appears in another light.

Demographics Isn’t Destiny
Memo to Republicans: Your constituents care more about the local high school than about Yemen.

Federal Arrogance Fuels The New Sagebrush Rebellion
The recent standoff between the paramilitary wing of the US Bureau of Land Management and Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy is simply bringing to the surface a long standing controversy between BLM, USDA, and other federal agencies and ranchers and miners in the West. This is not new. It is merely a continuation of the Sagebrush Rebellion that began under the regime of the odious James Earl Carter.

The Gay Rights Revenge Movement?
Remember when Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich was fired for donating to California’s Prop 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage? Turns out that there were thousands of people who gave as much as or more than Eich gave, and an MSNBC panelist says gay-rights activists are willing to pursue a campaign of scorched-earth retaliation against them

Policing Political Speech
Government’s increasing reach becomes increasingly indiscriminate.

Cliven Bundy and The Rural Way
I’m sure that Cliven Bundy probably could have cut a deal with the Bureau of Land Management and should have. Of course, it’s never wise to let a federal court order hang over your head. And certainly we cannot have a world of Cliven Bundys if a legal system is to function.

Logic and Reason Are Symbols of White Privilege
I’ve thought about writing a quick and dirty primer on the pseudo-intellectual basis for this kind of thought (with cosplay girls, ’cause that’s how I roll.) If that sounds interesting to anyone, let me know. Until then, it appears that the debate club has become the latest victim in the campus left’s War on Thought.

My own personal Cloward-Piven breakdown — and request for your ideas about uniting the base
I haven’t written much in the last two days. It’s certainly not because there’s been an absence of material, both serious (just about everything) and ridiculous (“Oh, my gawd! Hillary’s going to be a grandmother!”). Instead, my problem is that there’s too much to write about. I’m overwhelmed, and all I can think of is the Cloward-Piven strategy.

Cattlemen stand by rule of law but explain the problems being caused by BLM ignoring the law Apr21 by Thomas Mitchell
When the tensions first began to escalate at Cliven Bundy’s Bunkerville ranch as the Bureau of Land Management began rounding up cattle that they said were trespassing on federal public land, the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association distanced themselves, issuing a statement that NCA “does not feel it is in our best interest to interfere in the process of adjudication in this matter, and in addition NCA believes the matter is between Mr. Bundy and the federal courts.”

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