To Slate’s Jeremy Stahl, the drunk-driving kid of a Democratic politician is far less scandalous than offensive tweets from the progeny of a conservative Republican. There really isn’t much point to Stahl’s June 14 piece, “Hereditary Traits: Bigoted taunts by the children of GOP honchos have everything to do with politics.” In fact, it’s abjectly stupid.  Yet, Stahl runs completely off the rails when he writes:

[I]t’s true that children of Democrats can be just as wretched as children of Republicans and can do equally idiotic, terrible things. (See the news of Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu’s son, Connor, being arrested on charges of drunk driving and hit-and-run driving or any one of Al Gore III’s repeated arrests for driving under the influence and reckless driving.) But when bad Democratic kids behave badly, they’re way more likely to drive 100 mph while drunk than to say the president chucks spears. Likewise, you rarely ever see Democratic officials getting in trouble for passing on horrible, racist chain emails or making horrible racist remarks. This has everything to do with the political differences between the two parties and their voters.

Again, Republicans aren’t all racist. But the party actively cultivates racists as voters. Which means that some portion of the Republican electorate, as well as Republican officials, are racists. When a kid literally lives in that political environment, he has a greater chance of being caught up in the extreme end of it. If all of your friends are Republicans and even a small subgroup of Republicans are racist, homophobic bigots, then you’re more likely to associate with racist, homophobic bigots and become one yourself than if you’re hanging out with liberal, crunchy kids.

So, driving 100mph while intoxicated is ok, but racist tweets need be perused relentlessly?  Last time I checked, you can’t kill anyone with a tweet, but driving drunk is a sure-fire way.  That’s liberal logic.  What’s worse is that Stahl tried to intertwine Sen. Flake’s son’s tweets to the senator himself – and his voting record on LBGT issues.  So, Flake’s son is allegedly a racist homophobe, therefore Jeff Flake is a racist homophobe.  One could think that this is a “squirrel” post to distract us from the poor performance of the Obama administration. And when you try to defend drunk driving – and omit Democratic racism – it’s a legitimate question.

Concerning that aspect, allow me to introduce South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian. He made racist remarks about Governor Nikki Haley, and quipped about Sen. Lindsey Graham’s sexuality, which liberal commentator Peter Beinart, former editor of the New Republic reported on last May:

If Dick Harpootlian were a Republican, liberals would be jumping over one another to call him a bigot. In 2002 Harpootlian called Lindsey Graham, then running for a South Carolina Senate seat, “light in the loafers,” thus fueling a nasty whispering campaign about Graham’s sexual orientation. Last Friday he struck again, telling activists to “send Nikki Haley”—South Carolina’s Indian-American governor—“back to wherever the hell she came from.”

But Harpootlian isn’t a Republican. Until he retired last Saturday, he was chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party. He made his comments about Haley at the party’s annual dinner, just before Joe Biden took the stage. And as a result, the liberal response has been muted. So far, neither Biden nor Elizabeth Colbert-Busch, whose candidacy for a South Carolina congressional seat has gained national attention [last May], has repudiated Harpootlian’s comments. And for now, at least, conservatives are just about the only ones asking them to.

Is it Google?

Maybe it’s Facebook?

Maybe it’s Apple’s new Austin HQ? Or Organizing for Action’s den.

No. But the latter is close.

Former State Department Inspector General Aurelia Fedensin alleges that senior department officials scuttled investigations into eight cases of alleged criminal wrongdoing within the department. One of those cases included Obama campaign bundler turned Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman. The IG’s unedited report looked into allegations that he often ditched his security detail to cavort with prostitutes, some of them underage.

Fox’s James Rosen reports that two senior State Department officials, Scott Bultrowicz and Tracey H. Maffey, were deposed earlier this year about Fedensin’s allegations as part of a lawsuit against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

In their sworn testimony, both stated that they did not know about “any claims by a federal agency that DS officials have failed to follow proper procedures; and Mahaffey claimed not to know about any pending investigations into DS.” DS is Diplomatic Security.

But Rosen has turned up evidence proving that both had been fully briefed on the investigations in details.

Fox News has obtained meeting notes, draft reports and other evidence that suggest both officials were aware, at the time they were deposed, of a pending investigation into DS and its operations by the State Department’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). What’s more, both officials had been apprised of the OIG’s preliminary finding that DS did indeed fail to follow proper procedures in at least eight cases, and possibly more, because of “undue influence” and “pressure” brought to bear by senior State Department officials to halt internal investigations.

The evidence indicates the two officials were presented with those conclusions approximately 60 days before they testified in their depositions.

So the evidence strongly suggests that the two lied under oath.

Perhaps President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry can take a few minutes from their respective efforts to disarm the United States’ nuclear arsenal and starting an air war in Syria to explain what’s going on in the US State Department.

Fedensin, meanwhile, says that two hours after she went public with her story, State Department officials showed up at her home to harass her and her family. Obama, Kerry and Clinton have all offered not a single word about this.

DHS official P. Jeffrey Black tried to fix problems that he saw in the Department of Homeland Security’s air marshal program. He testified before Congress about it. He appeared in a documentary about it.

Then the IRS magically showed up at his door. What are the odds, huh?

He had taken a long list of complaints to lawmakers about how the air marshals service was run, ranging from problems keeping marshals on flights to allegations of ineptitude and favoritism by managers. The same year he retired, he appeared in “Please Remove Your Shoes,” a documentary critical of the airline security measures travelers endure on every trip.

Then came the audit, which an Internal Revenue Service agent told him about the same day the movie premiered — “almost to the hour,” he said.

They slapped a lien on his home after investigating him for a year. They hassled him, determined that the government owed him money, and then poof! they were gone. The government still owes Black money.

Significantly, it’s CNN that is reporting Black’s story. The mainstream media are now actively looking for and reporting on stories about the IRS abuse of taxpayers and whistleblowers, that are not bubbling up out of alternative conservative media.

The IRS claims, of course, that its audit decisions come from the bureaucracy and not any political appointees. That would be the same bureaucracy that gives very heavily to the Democrats. That would be the same bureaucracy, broadly speaking, that targeted the Tea Party. So that excuse really does not fly.

Black’s case lines up disturbingly with Catherine Engelbrecht’s case. She was targeted by a plethora of executive branch agencies after filing for election security watchdog True the Vote’s tax-exempt status with the IRS. Suddenly the IRS was auditing her, the FBI was nosing around, OSHA was around, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (of Waco infamy) was asking questions in her Houston business. The two cases together suggest that the IRS is a couple of years into morphing into a secret police that targets the Obama administration’s political opponents. A nascent Stasi of the East German variety, in other words.

The Stasi was communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security. It deployed a technique for eliminating the state’s political opposition called “decomposing.” That strategy called for targeting enemies of the state and discrediting them by investigating them relentlessly both to demoralize them and to divide them from friends, family members and associates.

The IRS isn’t there yet. But it does look like the IRS is working from a Stasi-style playbook.

Thousands have turned out in Washington to protest the IRS abuse of conservative groups. Of course, the Tatler has someone on the scene.

Love the Groucho glasses. The FBI’s drones see right through them, though.

These patriots turned out knowing full well that the Department of Homeland Security and the NSA will be scouring their personal records before they even get back to their homes.

Journalist Michael Hastings was killed early Tuesday morning in a bizarre car incident in Los Angeles. Hastings, 33, was best known for writing the Rolling Stone story that ended in Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Hastings’ final story, “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans,” was a searing take on the NSA snooping scandal, which Hastings described as “North Korea-esque.” Hastings pulled no punches as he linked the NSA scandal to the Department of Justice’s spying on reporters and the IRS abuse scandal. Hastings built a case that the same Democrats who turned Bush-era anti-terrorism techniques into wedge issues that helped them capture Congress and the White House in 2006 and 2008 were now defending much worse and more widespread spying on American citizens by the Obama administration.

As Hastings detailed likely short-term fallout as the NSA leak is investigated, he wrote:

[J]udging by the DOJ’s and FBI’s recent history, it would seem that any new leak case would involve obtaining the phone records of reporters at the Guardian, the Washington Post, employees at various agencies who would have had access to the leaked material, as well as politicians and staffers in Congress—records, we now can safely posit, they already have unchecked and full access to.

In short: any so-called credible DOJ/FBI leak investigation, by its very nature, would have to involve the Obama administration invasively using the very surveillance and data techniques it is attempting to hide in order to snoop on a few Democratic Senators and more media outlets, including one based overseas.

At the end of the story, Hastings mentions by name several Americans who have come under questionable government scrutiny in the Obama years. Several are household names, but some are not.

Hastings died in a fatal single-car crash at 4:25 on Tuesday morning. A witness said his car “suddenly jackknifed” before crossing the median and hitting a tree, causing a ferocious explosion that reportedly threw the engine block of the brand new Mercedes Hastings was driving 30 or 40 yards from the car. Mercedes engine blocks typically weigh between 290 and 540 pounds. It would take tremendous speed or force to throw one nearly half the length of a football field.

“It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night,” another witness told the TV station. “The house shook, my windows were rattling.”

Hastings’ body was burned “beyond recognition,” according to reports.

The FBI is renewing its effort to find suspects in the 2008 bombing of the U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Times Square, releasing video and a photo of the “military-style ammunition can” that housed the explosive device.

And whereas officials originally spread the theory that the attacker was a lone wolf disgruntled with the world, the FBI now says the ammunition can used in the attack is “commonly found on the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the bomber may have had spotters helping.

The bombing is also being described as potentially connected to similar attacks at the British Consulate in New York May 2005 and the other at the Mexican Consulate in October 2007.

A reward of up to $65,000 for information leading to an arrest was also announced. The FBI is also launching the Twitter hashtag #BikeBomber and screening the photos in Times Square to try to get tips.

In the early morning hours on March 6, 2008, the suspect rode a blue Ross bicycle near the recruiting station at West 43rd Street and Seventh Avenue, placed the explosive device at the recruiting station, lit a fuse, and fled the scene on the bicycle.

“Although the suspect appears to be working alone, he or she may have had a lookout or surveillance team of as many as five other individuals in Times Square at the time of the attack,” the FBI said. “The suspect then rode his or her bike south on Broadway before turning left on 38th Street. The bike was later recovered in a dumpster near Madison Avenue and 38th Street.”

The device was “filled halfway with black powder and detonated using a time fuse.”

“Although no one was wounded, the device could have caused significant casualties if people had been close to the blast,” the FBI added.

“While published reports have repeatedly cited the early morning time of the attack and the lack of casualties, the fact is the bomber narrowly missed killing or injuring passers-by who can be seen clearly in the vicinity moments before the blast,” said New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly. “The distance between polemics by bombing and the murdering of innocents is short, indeed.”

The suspect on the bicycle was last seen wearing a gray sweatshirt and pants of an unknown color. The height, weight, age, sex, and race of the suspect are unknown, the FBI said.

Seven Washington state Democrats are calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to “respect the will of voters” in states that have legalized marijuana.

Holder said in February that his department would soon unveil a policy on how to deal with Washington and Colorado, whose voters approved marijuana possession in limited quantities and regulated production and sale of the plant.

Lawmakers says that seven months after voters approved Initiative 502 in Washington state, the DOJ dragging its feet on a course of action has left “residents, businesses, and investors in a state of uncertainty.”

Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Reps. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), Denny Heck (D-Wash.), Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), and Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) requested that Holder “announce this course of action as soon as possible to assure our citizens that they will not be penalized by the federal government for activities legal under state law.”

They asked Holder to exercise his “significant discretionary authority by choosing now to pursue preemption of these laws” or prosecute state residents. The lawmakers also want to make sure banking laws aren’t used against pot proprietors who do business in a method other than cash.

“Businesses looking to enter this new market and invest in and add jobs to our economies are seeking the security that your decision would provide,” they wrote. “Further delay will slow the potential for economic advancement and could lead to wasted resources, two outcomes that can be avoided with a prompt announcement by DOJ.”

“During a time of constrained federal resources, we believe DOJ has higher priorities than the pursuit of legal action against persons in compliance with the laws of the states.”

Sad news from Minnesota today.

WCCO-TV has learned that Flynn died Wednesday morning at United Hospital in St. Paul.

Flynn has authored 15 novels centered around the character of Mitch Rapp, an undercover CIA agent. The majority of those novels have made it to the New York Times bestseller list.

He had been battling prostate cancer since 2010.

I had the honor of meeting Flynn in 2008. I was producing the Laura Ingraham show and he came into the studio in DC for an interview to promote one of his books. He was a great guy, very normal and down to earth. The kind of guy you’d like to hang out with. He leaves behind a wife and three children. He was 47.

You’d think a war hero with a magic hat would understand that conducting air strikes in Syria in the midst of a civil war would be a complex and problematic undertaking.

At a principals meeting in the White House situation room, Secretary of State John Kerry began arguing, vociferously, for immediate U.S. airstrikes against airfields under the control of Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime — specifically, those fields it has used to launch chemical weapons raids against rebel forces.

It was at this point that the current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the usually mild-mannered Army General Martin Dempsey, spoke up, loudly. According to several sources, Dempsey threw a series of brushback pitches at Kerry, demanding to know just exactly what the post-strike plan would be and pointing out that the State Department didn’t fully grasp the complexity of such an operation.

Dempsey informed Kerry that the Air Force could not simply drop a few bombs, or fire a few missiles, at targets inside Syria: To be safe, the U.S. would have to neutralize Syria’s integrated air-defense system, an operation that would require 700 or more sorties. At a time when the U.S. military is exhausted, and when sequestration is ripping into the Pentagon budget, Dempsey is said to have argued that a demand by the State Department for precipitous military action in a murky civil war wasn’t welcome.

Further complicating matters, Syria’s air defenses are Russian-made and may be manned by Russian personnel. Is Syria’s al Qaeda-led rebellion really worth shooting at Russians for? Iranians maybe, Hizballah certainly, but Russians?

It’s evident that the Pentagon put this discussion on the record to get its take on the public record. That take is, directly intervening in Syria militarily is a bad, bad idea. Jeffrey Goldberg’s story gives us a bit more of that take:

There are those in the Pentagon who think that the State Department has romanticized the Syrian opposition. What diplomats see as a civil war featuring bands of poorly armed moderates struggling to free themselves from the grip of an evil dictator, the generals see as a religious war between Hezbollah and al-Qaeda. Why would the U.S. risk taking sides in a battle between two loathed terror organizations? Memories of Iraq, too, are fresh in the minds of Dempsey and his colleagues.

Syria is not Iraq. It’s probably worse. When the Iraq war began there was still this idea that if we freed millions of Muslims from their secular dictators, they would naturally choose democracy and freedom. Millions of Muslims have unfortunately proven this idea wrong time after time. There has yet to be an example of a Muslim state throwing off a secular dictator and then remaining truly secular. The Iraqis wrote sharia into their constitution and have become a little too cozy with Iran. Egyptians overthrew Mubarak only to vote in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood. Afghanistan remains a basket case in which an Islamist takeover is likely once Obama removes the last American troops. The best we seem to be able to hope for is Turkey, which has become an Islamist state that is not quite as radical as Iran. Or Libya, a failed state that has become a transit point for arms going into Syria to power the Islamist rebellion there.

Intervening in Syria is a bad, bad idea for a number of reasons, not least of which is that US interests are not directly at stake and our current leadership consistently avoids discussing the jihad that is leading the rebellion now. There are no truly good US options with respect to Syria, but there are a lot of bad ones. Direct US military intervention may be the worst. Americans would be siding with al Qaeda, and “victory” might hand our worst enemies a new country and base of operations to use against us, Israel and Europe. But a desperate and scandal-plagued president may decide to intervene for any number of bad reasons. Bill Clinton did end up intervening in the Balkans, and hey, we “won” that war too.

h/t Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt

President Obama used his speech before the Brandenburg Gate this morning to tout further planned reductions to the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“This is the latest in a series of concrete steps the President has made to advance his Prague agenda and the long-term goal of achieving the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” the White House said in a fact sheet. “…The guidance narrows U.S. nuclear strategy to focus on only those objectives and missions that are necessary for deterrence in the 21^st century. In so doing, the guidance takes further steps toward reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our security strategy.”

Obama’s latest initiative “directs DOD to strengthen non-nuclear capabilities and reduce the role of nuclear weapons in deterring non-nuclear attacks” and “directs DOD to examine and reduce the role of launch under attack in contingency planning, recognizing that the potential for a surprise, disarming nuclear attack is exceedingly remote.

“The President has supported significant investments to modernize the nuclear enterprise and maintain a safe, secure, and effective arsenal,” it continued. The president, though, never followed through on his promises to modernize the arsenal after then Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) made a deal with the administration to secure ratification of the New START treaty.

“The U.S. intent is to seek negotiated cuts with Russia so that we can continue to move beyond Cold War nuclear postures,” the White House said. “The resulting strategy will maintain strategic stability with Russia and China, strengthen regional deterrence, and reassure U.S. allies and partners, while laying the groundwork for negotiations with Russia on how we can mutually and verifiably reduce our strategic and nonstrategic nuclear stockpiles and live up to our commitments under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.”

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), who along with 33 other lawmakers sent a letter to Obama in February 2012 concerning previous reductions to nuclear weapons systems, immediately slammed the address.

“President Obama is not Dick Cheney, and he is most certainly not President Reagan either. In fact, he’s nothing like Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, or FDR who all recognized the importance of growing and improving upon national defense. Since no discussions have even started with Russia, and the President has no actual plan to implement the reductions, this appears to be more of a publicity stunt than any substantive plan for the U.S.’s future nuclear armament capabilities,” said Bishop.

“The President’s idea to further diminish our nation’s nuclear weapons systems seems to embrace and even encourage the decline of America as a superpower. Making further reductions to our defense systems could leave our country vulnerable, especially as other countries are aggressively advancing their weapons programs and nuclear capabilities,” the congressman continued. “Our land, air, and sea defense systems are essential to the security of the United States and while we all wish we lived in a world free of nuclear weapons, the reality is that we don’t. We need to have the ability to adequately defend our country and allies and today’s decision will hurt our ability to do so.”

“I remain concerned by the fact that the United States is far behind the curve of nuclear advancements, which is only exacerbated by the constant reductions to missile defense made by the current Administration. The U.S. weapons systems are antique compared to some of the modern technologies that have been developed by other countries, including Russia and China, in the last decade.  We are not modernizing our arsenal to provide for future deterrence and today’s announcement does nothing to address this. Cutting our nose off to spite our face isn’t a sound national security plan.”

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said any additional limitations of the U.S. nuclear arsenal without first fulfilling commitments to modernization of existing forces could amount to “unilateral disarmament.”

“While the administration has assured me that no further reductions will occur outside of treaty negotiations and the advice and consent of the Senate, the president’s announcement without first fulfilling commitments on modernization could amount to unilateral disarmament,” he said. “The president should follow through on full modernization of the remaining arsenal and pledges to provide extended nuclear deterrence before engaging in any additional discussions.”

So here’s how you try to execute a whitewash. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have released a full transcript of one of the IRS abuse scandal witnesses. Not all of them, just a “key” one. Ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings then writes to Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa that this single interview with one witness exonerates the White House of any involvement.

This interview transcript provides a detailed first-hand account of how these practices first originated, and it debunks conspiracy theories about how the IRS first started reviewing these cases.  Answering questions from Committee staff for more than five hours, this official — who identified himself as a “conservative Republican” — denied that he or anyone on his team was directed by the White House to take these actions or that they were politically motivated. Instead,  the Screening Group Manager explained that the very first case at issue in this investigation was initially flagged by one of his own screeners in February 2010. [...]

This is one witness. This witness’ testimony contradicts that of others, who have said that Washington-based IRS officials were involved in targeting the Tea Party groups. It only addresses how one agent believes that the targeting started. This witness could by lying to protect others. This witness could simply be wrong. The Democrats did not even release the witness’ name so Americans could assess their credibility. Cummings released the transcript to “select reporters,” Greg Sargent the reliable Democrat among them. If Cummings is interested in the truth, why did he do that? What sort of ground prep came with this selective release?

This witness’ testimony defies common sense, as low-level employees did not have the power to come up with the full questioning regime on their own, and would not have come up with questions that read like political opposition research if they had. It does not answer why Lois Lerner pled the Fifth Amendment. It does not address why she lied about there having been a flood of applications by Tea Party groups in 2010. It does not explain why the IRS policed the speech and prayers of pro-life groups. It does not explain why some groups waited for years, while liberal groups sailed through the tax-exempt process. It does not explain why the acting IRS commission and the head of the exemptions office both met with the White House well over 100 times, each. Cummings’ letter even admits that the low-level employees did not come up with the BOLO list that the IRS used to target conservative groups. Who did?

After spending a few hundred words building up Cummings’ partisan take on the single witness interview, Sargent has the gall to close his post this way:

To be clear, I only just received these documents, so I’m not prepared to reach any definitive conclusions about their full meaning, and wanted to get them out there for readers to judge. Have at it.

The FBI has yet to interview a single Tea Party victim. Why?

Rep. Elijah Cummings declared the case “solved” before the FBI had interviewed anyone. He badly wants this investigation to be over, and for the Obama White House to escape. This one witness’ testimony does not accomplish his goal.

Both the White House and Group of Eight member Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) lauded a Congressional Budget Office scoring of the immigration bill that found the mammoth bill would significantly reduce the deficit.

The CBO found that the bill would reduce the deficit over the next 10 years by $197 billion, and by about $700 billion over the following decade.

“Today, we have more proof that bipartisan commonsense immigration reform will be good for economic growth and deficit reduction: this time, in the form of a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimate,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a statement.

“This comes on the heels of a recent analysis by the independent Social Security Administration’s Chief Actuary last month, that the Senate bipartisan immigration bill will strengthen the long-term solvency of Social Security for future generations,” Carney continued. “The Congressional Budget Office also made clear that passage of the immigration bill would not only reduce the deficit, it would increase economic growth for years to come.”

Rubio touted the CBO report as proof that the bill needs to move forward.

“The CBO has further confirmed what most conservative economists have found: reforming our immigration system is a net benefit for our economy, American workers and taxpayers,” Rubio said.

“There remain some key areas that need to be tightened up to prevent those who have violated our immigration laws from accessing federal benefit programs,” he continued. “But overall, the CBO report offers encouraging evidence that the status quo is unacceptable and we can end it without burdening our already burdened taxpayers and, in fact, reduce the deficit over the next 20 years.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) slammed the Obama administration for “getting around” his amendment that blocked contracts for Bashar al-Assad’ main arms supplier.

The Pentagon announced Monday that it has awarded a contract to Russia’s Rosoboronexport. The $572,180,894 firm-fixed-price contract modification is for 30 Mi-17 helicopters, spare parts, test equipment, and engineering support services for the Afghan National Army.

“I sponsored an amendment to prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars in America to enter into contracts or agreements with Rosoboronexport. My amendment had strong bipartisan support, and it passed unanimously,” Cornyn said.

“So how did the Obama Administration get around my amendment? Well, they argued that the Rosoboronexport contact was in our national-security interests. In other words: they want us to believe that we are promoting U.S. security by doing business with a Russian arms dealer that is helping an anti-American, terror-sponsoring dictatorship commit mass atrocities.”

Cornyn spent much of last year lobbying the Pentagon to seek other alternatives for the helicopters instead of awarding the no-bid contract to Rosoboronexport.

“Now they are refusing to complete that audit, on the grounds that Rosoboronexport simply has refused to cooperate,” he said. “Meanwhile, my office has learned that Army officials within the Non-Standard Rotary Wing Aviation office — whose primary focus is the Mi-17 program — are the subjects of an ongoing criminal investigation. This obviously raises troubling questions about whether the terms of the new Mi-17 procurement contract resulted from criminal misconduct.”

“I want to take this opportunity to say, once again, that American taxpayers should not be indirectly subsidizing the murder of Syrian civilians, especially when there are perfectly good alternatives to dealing with Rosoboronexport.”

In the height of a number of scandals for the Obama administration, a journalist whose coverage gave the president a reason to fire the leader of coalition forces in Afghanistan has died.

Michael Hastings, 33, wrote “The Runaway General” article for Rolling Stone magazine in June 2010 in which Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides said disparaging things about Obama and Vice President Joe Biden.

Hastings’ body was burned beyond recognition in the single-car crash at 4:25 a.m. in the 600 block of North Highland Ave. in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles, which is a residential area with lanes on either side of a grassy median.

A photo from the L.A. Times showed a scorched, mangled car alongside a palm tree. A witness told KTLA that the car suddenly jackknifed before the fiery crash.

“It sounded like a bomb went off in the middle of the night,” another witness told the TV station. “The house shook, my windows were rattling.” Another witness noted that the engine flew far from the car.

Police said he was driving a brand-new Mercedes.

Obama and McChrystal tangled in 2009 when the general went public with the need for more troops, saying in a leaked report to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, “We are going to win.” The White House, meanwhile, had been encouraging the commander to just worry about degrading the Taliban instead of defeating them.

“Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked ‘uncomfortable and intimidated’ by the roomful of military brass,” Hastings wrote in the Rolling Stone piece. “Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. ‘It was a 10-minute photo op,’ says an adviser to McChrystal. ‘Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.’”

Just one day after Hastings’ article appeared online, before the issue even hit the newsstands, Obama called McChrystal to his office to accept his resignation. The four-star general then announced his retirement from the Army.

A subsequent Pentagon inquiry found no proof of wrongdoing by McChrystal and his aides and found no witnesses to corroborate key parts of Hastings’ article.

Hastings’ last story, for BuzzFeed, was “Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans.”

Either Obama’s hand-picked National Labor Relations Board has awful, terrible, pitiful lawyers — or, it keeps picking stupid fights that it is destined to lose.

Or both.

Here’s a look at the NLRB’s latest round of drubbings, follies and screw-ups.

RedState: Out Of Bounds: Another Court Smack’s Obama NLRB’s Overreach On Union Rights Posters

The National Law Review: Another Loss For The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) On Notice Posting Rule

Inside Counsel: 4th Circuit Invalidates NLRB Poster Rule

Washington Business Journal: You Likely Won’t Have To Put Up Pro-Union Posters At Your Work Site; NLRB Loses Again

The American Prospect: The Fourth Circuit’s NLRB Smackdown

And The Beat Goes On:

The Associated Press: Judge Rules NLRB Overstepped Its Authority In Portland Port Dispute

The Oregonian: Judge Michael Mosman Throws Out Ruling That Gave Port Of Portland Jobs To Electricians Instead Of Longshoremen

For Good Measure:

Law 360: NLRB Thumbing Nose At Noel Canning, DC Circ. Told

Last But Not Least:

The Washington Examiner: NLRB Defies First Amendment Ruling, Sanctions Newspaper

Did I say “last?” How about a little bit more:

The Washington Times: Home Invasion By Big Labor: Home Day Care Providers Would Be Forced Into Unions

The Washington Post: Do Private-Sector Unions Still Have A Future In The U.S.?

Tatler’s editorial reply: Only to the extent that the Democrats’ unholy relationship with government unions continue. And those unions should be banned.

In The States:

Napa Valley Register: Project Labor Agreements Give Unions Unfair Advantage

Michigan Capitol Confidential: Majority Of Fastest-Growing U.S. Cities Are In Right-To-Work States

Union Bosses Gone Wild:

National Legal & Policy Center: AFGE Local Secretary-Treasurer In Cincinnati Pleads Guilty

National Legal & Policy Center: Steelworkers Secretary-Treasurer In Tennessee Sentenced For Theft

Via Israellycool.

Domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, an Obama supporter, thinks the president is guilty of war crimes.  In a discussion with Real Clear Politics’ Tom Bevan and Charlie Stone during Morning Commute, Ayers noted how Obama is no better than Johnson and Nixon. And that he should be put on trial for war crimes in the Hague over his drone policy.  Jessica Chasmar at the Washington Times writes that: 

while he [Ayers] still likes President Obama personally, he deserves “a failing grade” on the presidency and should be tried for war crimes.

[...]

“Every president in this century should be on trial for war crimes. Every one of them goes into an office dripping with blood, and adds to it. And yes I think that these are war crimes, that these are acts of terror,” [said Ayers.]

Ok, the every president has blood on his hands remark is debatable, but it’s a bit amusing that an unrepentant radical views Obama as a war criminal.  After all, it’s coming from a guy who set off a bomb in the Pentagon.  Yet, he’s an authority on what’s ethical and moral within the realm of international relations? What’s odd is that Ayers feels that Obama hasn’t moved away from his centrist roots as a politician  He likes that the president is curious. Additionally, Ayers fawned over the fact that Obama asks questions, reads, and wants to know things. It’s a weird area concerning the growing discontent with President Obama and his presidency.

We have a terrorist, who thinks the president is a war criminal, but feels that he isn’t letting the country down.

All of the Gang of Eight voted against border security, which Congress had already promised to deliver years ago, today.

Senators on Tuesday rejected building the 700 miles of double-tier border fencing Congress authorized just seven years ago, with a majority of the Senate saying they didn’t want to delay granting illegal immigrants legal status while the fence was being built.

The 54-39 vote to reject the fence shows the core of the immigration deal is holding. The vote broke mostly along party lines, though five Republicans, including Sen. Marco Rubio and the rest of the bill’s authors, voted against the fence, and two Democrats voted for it.

Republicans had offered the fence as a way to build the confidence of voters skeptical that the government will enforce its laws, but opponents said building more fencing is costly, would take too long, and shouldn’t be dictated by Washington.

Sen. Marco Rubio described the bill he now supports as amnesty in 2010, when he opposed the bill. He promised border security before legalization. He now supports the bill he once decried, and votes against the thing he said should come first.

Yet he thinks we should trust him and his fellow Gangsters.

A new smartphone app from the Federal Railroad Administration tells you if you’re about to be hit by a train.

The Rail Crossing Locator, said the Department of Transportation, provides the public with easy access to safety information about the nation’s more than 200,000 highway-rail grade crossings:

“Safety is our highest priority, and at the Department of Transportation, we believe that giving people better information leads to smarter and safer travel,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.  “With the Rail Crossing Locator, individuals can use a mobile app to access information wherever they are to improve neighborhood safety and make better personal travel choices.”

The Rail Crossing Locator app works by prompting users to enter a specific location, which then allows them to locate highway-rail grade crossings in their area and retrieve important information, such as the physical characteristics of a crossing and the type of traffic control devices used. The app allows users to report information about grade crossings to the FRA to ensure the most accurate and up-to-date information is available. This new app is free through Apple’s App Store and can be used on any iPhone or iPad.

Over the past decade, highway-rail incidents have declined by 34 percent, and deaths resulting from these events have fallen 30 percent.  However, while the total number of incidents has been trending downward, collisions at highway-rail crossings remain a challenge to safety.  Last year alone, highway-rail crossing collisions accounted for nearly 20 percent of all reportable rail accidents and incidents and represented nearly one-third of all rail-related fatalities.

Perhaps you’ve heard about the new thing in D.C.  It’s all the rage on Capitol Hill.  It’s called comprehensive immigration reform.  Doesn’t that sound impressive?  But I must confess I’m not at all impressed.  Why on Earth would any patriotic American, much less an educated Latino, be impressed by another Obamacare-like bill making its way through our irresponsible government?  I’m skeptical of CIR because it seems designed to obfuscate, confuse and deflect blame for the immigration mess from resting where it belongs, on the lawmakers of America.  Real reform must address the areas in which our current system has abused the American tax payer.  It must recognize how the current system has ravaged both the legal and illegal community.   And any solution must restore American’s faith in our government, which has so completely failed in the realm of immigration.

The common refrain from both Democrats and Republicans on the Hill is that, “Our immigration system is broken.”  It bears pointing out that it was our elected leaders who broke it.  As usual, our leaders place the responsibility for their failures on the backs of the American tax payer.  Even our esteemed leaders must be familiar with the axiom that speaks of an “ounce of prevention.”  If they had followed the law, the way they expect us to, there would be no need for a bloated, costly, and confusing CIR.  The anti-immigration group FAIR says that illegal immigration cost the tax payers $113 billion dollars a year.  Many left-wing groups dispute the finding.  But aside from FAIR, plenty of services go unmonitored and utilized by the illegal immigrant community.  Even Obamacare is extended, with a wink and a nod, to illegals.  HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced in 2010, the awarding of 28.8 million dollars to access point health services from Obamacare.  The clinics are not allowed to ask for proof of citizenship.  So illegals can, and often do, partake in these and emergency room services for their medical care.  Guess who foots the bill?  It’s just one example of how America’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” immigration policy continues to screw American citizens.  Did the “geniuses,” who fancy themselves leaders, actually think they could ignore our laws for over four decades without consequences?

Our politician’s dereliction of duty has hurt both the legal and illegal Hispanic populations.  Look that the destruction wrought by our leaders’ refusal to follow our immigration laws:

• Some families have legal and illegal members.  This casts a shadow over the entire family unit.  They fear, one day, a key member of the family may just be uprooted and forced to leave.
• Some children, who were brought here at a young age, believe they are citizens but have no legal standing.  The tax payers funded their education and for all intents and purposes they are Americans.  But they have no legal status.

There are people here who have no desire to be Americans.  They come here to work. In turn they send the money back to their country of origin to feed their families.  This is a huge detriment to America, but a big benefit to the country of origin.  Before the latest financial crash, remittances sent by illegals back to Mexico accounted for that country’s fourth largest industry.  That’s right, Mexico directly profits off of illegal immigration to America.

Legal immigrants, who waded through the costly mire to come here legally, are forced to watch as illegals get to skip those trials and live blissfully in the shadows. All the while these legal immigrants ask why they even bothered to follow laws that politicians don’t feel compelled to follow.  It’s a sentiment that legal, illegal and citizens share.  We’ve all lost faith in the American government.

Three to 1 tax cuts to tax increases, that was a joke.  Oh, the tax increases came right away.  But the elected folks, who apparently lack the simple ability to balance a check book, promptly ignored the spending cuts Reagan trusted them to make.  So too was it with the 1986 amnesty.  The 40th president trusted that the promised border enforcement would happen in exchange for a “one-time” amnesty.  The American people watched as the legalization came, but no border security.  Illegal immigration sky-rocketed and the problems I’ve already outlined took their toll on America with ever increasing severity.  But government is up to the same old tricks today.  The sequestration “cuts” were nothing of the kind, merely reductions in the rates of increased spending.  And now the “Gang of Eight” Senate immigration bill is poised to pull the same bait and switch Americans witnessed in 1986.  I get the sense that Americans are tired of being played.  Any reform that deals with legal and illegal immigration must include easy following steps.  Each step of reform must activate the next step in a methodical, well-though-out manner.  Not only will this approach increase the likelihood of solving the problem, but it will also restore confidence in a government that has shown evidence of turning on its citizens.  The Obamacare legislation has shown why Americans can’t “wait to pass a bill to find out what’s in it.”

It defies logic and common sense to think that our government can solve a problem, over four decades in the making, in one huge bill.  But that’s been the hallmark of Congress and the White House lately hasn’t it?  They seem devoid of logic and common sense.  Immigration reform must not only fix the problems our elected leaders created.  It must also restore American’s confidence in government, while making sure we never have to deal with this problem again.   One huge comprehensive immigration reform bill will not accomplish these goals.  In fact, it seems our government is taking a page from Obamacare in making a bill so vast that Americans won’t know what they’re in for until it’s already law.  This approach appears designed to obfuscate truth from the people and is wholly unacceptable.   Real reform will require a well-articulated, easy to understand series of bills that will trigger in a sequential order.  One would think that would be an easy lift for an administration that promised to be the most, “open and transparent,” in American history.

In negotiating nuclear arms reductions with the Soviets, Ronald Reagan insisted that America “TRUST BUT VERIFY.”   In an era where government is watching every citizen, where the IRS is targeting the president’s political opponents, where our government lies about four dead Americans killed in a terrorist attack to protect a president’s reelection, Americans must, in self-defense, insist on a “trust and verify” system with our own government.  Let’s start with immigration reform.

For the moment, anyway.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday starkly warned Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) not to eliminate the filibuster on presidential nominations, threatening to end the 60-vote threshold for everything, including bills, if he becomes the majority leader.

“There not a doubt in my mind that if the majority breaks the rules of the Senate to change the rules of the Senate with regard to nominations, the next majority will do it for everything,” McConnell said on the floor.

There are two problems here.

One-the Senate has to be taken back and that actually is a possibility next year but the GOP will have to get out of “OMG 2012!!!!!!!!” hand-wringing mode and start focusing on that soon.

Two-like his Republican counterpart in the other chamber, McConnell has a history of talking a bigger game than he plays.

Baby steps…

A Montana Democrat introduced a constitutional amendment today that would say “the words people, person, or citizen as used in this Constitution do not include corporations.”

Sen. Jon Tester said his amendment would effectively overturn the “unpopular” 2010 Citizens United decision that protected campaign contributions as free speech.

“Montanans expect real people and their ideas —not corporations and their money—to decide our elections,” Tester said. “The Citizens United decision undermines Montana values and distorts the democratic process. Montanans rejected corporate control of elections a century ago, and I’m proud to join them in standing up for our long-held values.”

Tester even released a video of himself backdropped by the Constitution to push his amendment, which is co-sponsored by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).

Tester has also co-sponsored a constitutional amendment from Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) that authorizes Congress to regulate the raising and spending of money for federal political campaigns.

A constitutional amendment must pass both chambers of Congress by a two-thirds majority before being ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures.

In a new interview, President Barack Obama questioned people who have voiced skepticism of his Syria policy.

In the interview on Sunday, Obama sought to defend his handling of the situation in Syria while straddle a delicate balance between committing to more involvement in Syria and justifying U.S. intervention in the first place.

“Unless you’ve been involved in those conversations, then it’s kind of hard for you to understand that the complexity of the situation and how we have to not rush into one more war in the Middle East,” the president said, describing the months of deliberations among his national security staff in the White House situation room.

“Unless you’ve been involved in those conversations…” Shorter President Obama, on Syria: Shut up, and because, is my explanation. You weren’t there!

Was Barack Obama, the senator, “involved” in any of the “conversations” that led to any of President Bush’s foreign policy actions?

Of course not. He was not only not involved, he wasn’t even in the Senate when Bush, with the backing a majority of Democrats at the time, took most of the actions that he took. At that point, Barack Obama was voting “present” in the Illinois Senate. As a senator he was a backbencher whose chief claim to foreign policy was, and I’m not making this up, that he had lived in Indonesia as a boy. But Senator Obama knew everything and was so much smarter than everyone else. That’s what he kept telling us.

The basis of Barack Obama’s election was destroying George W. Bush’s anti-terror policies. That’s what he ran on. The war was unpopular. He ran on that. The war was complex and forced difficult choices. He simplified and caricatured those choices and ran against whatever choices Bush made. He was better at slamming Bush because he is charismatic and was willing to go farther and be harsher on Bush than Hillary Clinton was. Obama articulated very few specifics of his own policies. He believed that Bush’s eeevil was the immediate cause of terrorism, that America was largely to blame for terrorism, that Gitmo somehow reached back into time and inspired terrorists whose modern ideology has been around for decades, and that his own election would by itself change the game.

It has not. It will not. The terrorists mostly don’t care who the President of the United States is, though they’re happy if POTUS is not going to take the fight to them. They’re happy to go back on offense, as they are in Syria and have in Libya. If our president is dumb enough to arm them, even better! And our president is dumb enough to arm them.

Obama is aware that he ran and won the presidency as a harsh critic, in fact, one of the harshest critics in the entire country, of Bush’s anti-terror policies. He was Dennis Kucinich plus Howard Dean plus the charm that neither of them have, plus a racial background that made him irresistible to too many voters. Criticism was his fuel to power. His political prime directive remains Not Being Bush (or Cheney), and Not Doing Another Iraq. He won as a kn0w-it-all armchair general. Now that the armchair general is commander in chief, he resents the input of other armchair generals. You weren’t there!

Senator Obama would never give President Obama a pass on any of the things he is doing with respect to Syria. Senator Obama would question the “red line” and wonder aloud if President Obama is trying to involve America in another unnecessary war. He would slam President Obama for fueling the “cycle of violence” by sending arms to one side. Or he would slam President Obama for being slow to act at all. Heck, he would probably slam President Obama for both and no one in the media would call him on his glaring contradiction.

By the way, remember when liberals blamed the US for “creating” al Qaeda by arming the mujihadeen in Afghanistan when they were fighting against the Soviet Union back in the 1980s? Well, forget all about that. Forget it. Wipe it from your memory. In those days, the US did not know what would result from arming those ragtag fighters in Afghanistan. Now, we know all too well what’s going to result from arming those ragtag fighters in Syria. We no longer have the excuse of ignorance. In Syria, Obama will either help them win a country or he will arm them to the point that even if they lose there they may live to fight elsewhere. Heads, they win, tails, we lose.

But President Obama will do it anyway, against the objections that Senator Obama would have stridently and confidently voiced.

Sadly, in the end, both Senator Obama and President Obama were, and are, fundamentally wrong.

Yesterday, when I first saw this photo I immediately thought “Photo Caption Contest” because this is just one of those photos that is worth a “1000 words” and a few good captions.

The caption, “Cold War” was how the Drudge Report described  this photo, but we expect many more colorful and creative alternatives from our loyal contest followers and any newcomers who care to match wits with our esteemed group of “Caption Kings.”

Certainly, when the history of the Obama presidency is written, I expect this photo will be used to illustrate Obama’s rocky relationship with our former/current – friend/enemy Russia and President Putin who (thank goodness) happens to have his shirt on in this photo. (But now that Putin is divorcing his wife, one can only imagine how many more shirtless poses await us.)

Many of you are aware that for the last year we have kept this contest orderly by enforcing our one rule, “be nice and stay classy because the media is watching.” But recently that rule has become inoperative because we no longer care if the media is watching or what they are thinking.  However, staying classy never goes out of style even in a world gone mad.  So do try to abide by whatever you think this rule means.

Here again are the winners from our last contest and please use them as an example of “staying classy.”

Good luck and remember that in the early 1960’s President Kennedy and Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev also had quite a testy relationship but the Russians never did manage to “bury us.”

Here’s the story:

A leader of the House Pro-Choice Caucus suggested Tuesday that Republicans don’t have strong feelings against rape.

The remark came as Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) criticized the GOP’s proposed ban on late-term abortions ahead of a House vote on the measure.

Slaughter slammed Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee, all men, who rejected a rape exception to the bill during its markup last week.

“I’m of the opinion now … that if you really were to question all of them, that there is a sort of continuity of thought that rape is really not so bad and that the likelihood of getting pregnant is small,” Slaughter told a press conference.

Vote fraud isn’t so bad for Democrats, so I guess it’s even.

To hear the media tell the story, the left won big and the right lost big in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision to strike down part of Arizona’s voter-registration law Monday.

But PJ legal editor Christian Adams says the reverse is true: The right won big and the left lost. He also argues that Justice Antonin Scalia used the case to undermine the left’s longstanding campaign to use federal pre-emption to gut states’ ability to create and enforce election law.

Adams made his convincing case on The Mike Huckabee Show. Listen to the interview here.

He also spells out how the right won the Arizona case in this piece for PJ Media.

The Taliban justified their participation in peace talks as a formality in their continuing jihad to try to gain support in the international community as they try to return Afghanistan to its darkest burqa days.

Senior administration officials told reporters on a conference call today that President Obama supported the opening of a Taliban office in Doha, Qatar, as key to “an Afghan-owned and Afghan-led reconciliation process that provides an opportunity for there to be discussions amongst Afghans and a pursuit of a peaceful resolution of differences among some of the parties within Afghanistan.”

An official said the Taiban must meet the “end conditions” of breaking with al-Qaeda, ending attacks, and accepting Afghanistan’s constitution, “including its protections for women and minorities.”

Another official said “there’s been a lot of personal diplomacy” toward the Taliban from Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry.

The anonymous administration mouthpieces said “the U.S. will have a role in direct talks, but this is a negotiation that will have to be led by Afghans.”

“Everyone is aware that the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has been waging Jihad and working tirelessly to bring an end to the invasion of Afghanistan and establish in it an independent Islamic government and has always utilized every legitimate method to achieve this goal,” the Taliban said in a statement. “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has both military as well as political objectives which are confined to Afghanistan. The Islamic Emirate does not wish to harm other countries from its soil and neither will it allow others use Afghan soil to pose a threat to the security of other nations! The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan wants to have cordial relations on basis of mutual respect with all the countries of the world including its neighbors and desires security for its nation as well as security and justice on international level.”

“Undoubtedly the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan considers it its religious and national obligation to free its country from occupation and has used every legitimate method for this goal which it will keep on doing in the future. Similarly, it considers the struggle of every oppressed nation working for their due rights and independence to be their legitimate right because every nation deserves to secure freedom from imperialism and attain their rights,” the Islamist group continued. “It is due to these objectives that the Islamic Emirate considered it necessary to open a political office in the Islamic country of Qatar.”

Their demands include an agreement that “establishes an independent Islamic government.”

Taliban tweets today naturally displayed something less than a peace partner:

It is realities like these that is forcing out US-nato terrorists and has Kabul shaking in fear http://t.co/yEb99Y6BZ5 #KbWaleed

— Abdulqahar Balkhi (@ABalkhi) June 18, 2013

Why is the American General disappointed? http://t.co/DdbNAhF7SS

— Abdulqahar Balkhi (@ABalkhi) June 18, 2013

Appearing on the Andrea Tantaros Show today, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) took on Sen. Marco Rubio and the other seven members of the Gang of Eight who are pushing for Congress to pass a sweeping, “comprehensive” immigration bill.

Tantaros asked Sessions if Rubio has “betrayed the Tea Party” by pushing the bill. Sessions did not directly answer, but instead said that while Rubio is “wonderful,” he is “in error” on the bill. Sessions also said that no one, including the Gang of Eight themselves, really understand everything that is in the bill. “The legislation does not accomplish what they say” is does, Session said. “I’m not happy about the legislation,” Session added. “I think it’s a disastrous event.”

Sessions said that the issue is complex and that the American people do want action. They just don’t want what the Gang is selling.

“People do want something done. But the polls show that four to one, they get it. That is, the enforcement needs to come first, and the amnesty second.  And we’ve got it just backwards in this bill and that’s one of the fundamental problems,” Sessions said.

Sessions outlined some problems with the bill: It does not put security first, and it dramatically increases legal immigration despite two-thirds of the American people wanting legal immigration to either stay at the current rate or decrease.

Listen to the entire interview here.

“This immigration bill grows government,” Tantaros asked as she restated her question of whether Rubio has betrayed the Tea Party that worked to elect him.

Session replied indirectly, saying that the immigration bill is worse than ObamaCare, which the Tea Party opposed. Sessions said that he is concerned that Rubio could be permanently damaged by the bill, and that the Republican Party stands to be heavily damaged as well. Sessions also said that the Gang’s bill was written by the most liberal members of both the GOP and Democrat caucuses and is not a good bill.

“The Senate ought to kill this bill,” he said, adding that the GOP-controlled House is doing “great work” on immigration and should take the lead.

The Andrea Tantaros Show is produced by the Fox and Rice Experience for Talk Radio Network.

Last Friday, Organizing for Action exploited the six-month anniversary of the Newtown shooting.  They mobilized their supporters for a series of anti-gun rallies across the country.  In San Bernardino, that call to action was answered by three people.  Ryan Hagen of the Sun, a local paper, wrote on June 14 about the failed rally.

On Flag Day growing up, I used to always wave a flag with my grandson, and it hit me that the victims of that horrible tragedy won’t ever be able to do that,” said Curtis Lewis, the group’s gun violence prevention coordinator. “We need people to stand up and write to Congress to say they want laws that respect the Second Amendment but also help prevent these tragedies.”

Lewis said he supported HR 1565, a bill that would require background checks for sales at gun shows and online, “close the gun show and other loopholes,” and create a commission to study the causes of mass violence in the United States.

The protest drew three members of Organizing for Action, a nonprofit group that supports President Barack Obama’s agenda, to the National Orange Show Events Center.

“It’s three people today, but it will be 23 next time, and we’ll see the time after that,” Lewis said.

Well, that’s progress.  In the meantime, Michael Bloomberg is softening Sen. Mark Pryor in Arkansas over gun control, but it’s an issue that isn’t gaining much traction with the public.  With the failure of the Manchin-Toomey bill, 62% of Americans want Congress to move on to other issues.  They don’t want a reboot of this failed campaign, which– on a positive note – robbed Barack Obama of the most precious moments of his second term.  In one of the most liberal states in the country, only three people showed up for an anti-gun rally.  It’s another example of the absent voter intensity that pervades the gun control crowd.

(H/T Lachlan Markay)

Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) old partner in campaign finance reform is being shipped off to the Congo.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who lost re-election in 2010 to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs from 2001 to 2003 and 2007 to 2011.

Now, President Obama has appointed Feingold special envoy to the Great Lakes region of Africa — the tumultuous Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Last month the World Bank pledged $1 billion to the region contingent on parties in the region abiding by a peace deal. That hasn’t been easy.

“America can and should be playing a stronger role in the international community’s efforts to achieve peace in the Great Lakes region, stop the human rights violations being committed against Congolese civilians, and promote the establishment of a democratic, accountable government in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), current chairman of the Africa subcommittee.

“Senator Feingold is a superb choice for the first U.S. Special Envoy to the Great Lakes region. Over the last decade, there was no more passionate advocate in the Senate for responsible and constructive U.S. engagement in sub-Saharan Africa.”

Over the past year, more than 650,000 people have been displaced by fighting in North Kivu province.

Coons introduced a resolution last month calling on Obama to appoint a special envoy to “support and strengthen international effort to end conflict in the region; support accountability and justice for human rights violations; expand efforts to develop conflict-free and responsible mining practices; and strengthen the commitment by the DRC and regional actors to end the threat posed by armed groups in the region.”

“The challenges to peace in the Great Lakes region are as complex as they are urgent,” Coons continued. “Having a dedicated, high-level envoy to work with regional governments and the international community is essential to ending the violence and destruction plaguing the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and continuing to confront the threat posed by the LRA.”

“I have enormous confidence that Senator Feingold will make a real difference in this new role. I applaud the President’s selection and look forward to working with Senator Feingold to help advance the prospect for peace in the region.”

Our city just held its annual Juneteenth, which celebrates the abolition of slavery in Texas. It’s a perfect time to reflect on how far so many Americans of African descent haven’t come, courtesy of the human foibles that plague us all.

First, a history lesson is in order. After Emancipation, freed slaves referred to Republican President Abraham Lincoln as “Father Abraham.” One of the founding principles of the Republican party was abolishing slavery in America. Democrats controlled the South, but even Democrats in non-slave states fought to preserve slavery. The only reason the 13^th and 14^th Amendments passed Congress was because of the Republican majority.

During Reconstruction, blacks naturally looked to the Republican party as their own. All early black congressional representatives from the formerly slave states were Republicans. But southern Democrats never admitted defeat. By encouraging and protecting terrorist organizations—White League, Ku Klux Klan, and others—Democrats successfully intimidated blacks into either not voting, or voting Democrat, enabling them to regain control over state legislatures and congressional delegations.

As southern Democrat opposition against Reconstruction policies mounted, the Republican party cut and ran, leaving the Democrat party free to consolidate power. Thus began the long-celebrated Republican tradition of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Slavery didn’t disappear, but labels changed to protect the guilty. Southern slave masters soon learned that not having to pay for housing, food, clothing and healthcare presented a unique business opportunity. These masters still owned much of the arable farm land. This resulted in sharecropping, where black farmers paid rent by giving a large portion of their production to the white landowners. Black farmers often incurred more debt to their white masters—excuse my Freudian slip, I meant land owners—than they could repay. This, along with Black Codes restricting blacks’ ability to travel and relocate, continued the plantation system where poor blacks were again tied to the land they worked.

Many blacks expected reparations from the federal government in the form of free land and farm animals. This created an opportunity for the Democrat party to experiment in social engineering without having to worry about an election backlash. By using carrot/stick methods, Democrats gradually conditioned blacks to accept their new servitude. One method used to control blacks was through patronage and punishment, which had its roots in the old paternalism promoted by antebellum slave masters. They were shepherds exercising “responsible dominion over a less fortunate, less evolved people.”

Punishment for straying off the plantation, combined with reward-based entitlements, has grown more sophisticated over time. Today, all the “free” incentives allow many blacks to survive in relative comfort, but these golden chains thwart their progress towards true freedom.

Those who become fully-actualized individuals, making their own decisions and finding success in life, have strayed off the plantation, and get ostracized by the “entitled.” White masters can stay safely in the background; they have enough trained black race-baiters to declare mainstream, successful blacks as traitors to “true” black culture. As educator and civil rights activist Booker T. Washington said:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

You think I’m being harsh about today’s picture? Well riddle me this: Part of the old Black Codes—promoted by Democrat state governments—was a ban on black gun ownership. The goal was to make whites safer as they terrorized blacks, resulting in higher black homicide rates and lower white homicide rates.

Today’s Democrat party is still the party of gun control. And today’s gun control still correlates with the same outcomes: States with the most gun control have the highest black homicide rates and the lowest white homicide rates, just like in the Old South.

Yet, blacks vote predominantly Democrat. Blacks voted overwhelmingly for Democrat Barack Obama: men 87%; women 96%. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News survey, 78% of blacks support stricter gun control laws in this country. The Congressional Black Caucus is 100% Democrat, averages a NRA grade of “F” and has only one each of “A” and “B” grades, while 30 of 38 received an “F.” The Democrats’ century-plus social engineering program has been a resounding success.

But there’s plenty of shared responsibility. The Real Clear Politics Congressional Approval rate has remained around 15-20% the last two years, and never topped 37% since 2009. Sure, it’s fun to hate “those bums” in Congress. But when election time comes around, people think their guy or gal is okay: Incumbents consistently win reelection about 90% of the time. We get the government we elect.

The questions we all desperately need to answer are:

• Are you better off now than you were ten or 20 years ago?
• Considering Obamacare, government overreach, the IRS political witch hunt, the Benghazi cover-up, and the ATF’s Fast and Furious gun running for the Mexican drug cartels, do you think you’ll be better or worse off in the future?
• Why do both parties only vote benefits for party elites and their corporate sponsors?
• Why do we consider excuses and blaming the other party a form of acceptable, responsible representation?

Try making an honest attempt to cut out partisan rhetoric from your diet for one month, and seriously reach out to people as if your life depended on it—as indeed it does—and simply communicate what’s important to you. You’ll find many people responding in kind, because we have far more in common than not.

Benjamin Franklin said: “We must, indeed, all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” Every despot throughout history knew that divide and conquer works. These days, we don’t even have talking points anymore, we have screaming points. And while we’re busy screaming, those in power obtain more of our personal sovereignty each day; a little more of our wealth; a little more of our self-respect; a little more of our freedom; a little more of our children’s future.

What kind of country do you want to pass forward? There’s three options:

1. We can stop relying on divisive rhetoric and work together to restore the basic freedoms most of us hold dear.
2. We can decide that there’s no hope for a peaceful resolution.
3. We can give up, and let our children grow up slaves to the state.

References cited here:

Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War by Harvard Professor David Herbert Donald

Lincoln by David Herbert Donald

The Abolitionist Legacy by Princeton University Professor James M. McPherson

So this was done by the people our illustrious President Barack H. Obama wants to send arms to.

Syrian rebels beheaded a Christian man and fed his body to dogs, according to a nun who says the West is ignoring atrocities committed by Islamic extremists.

The nun said taxi driver Andrei Arbashe, 38, was kidnapped after his brother was heard complaining that fighters against the ruling regime behaved like bandits.

She said his headless corpse was found by the side of the road, surrounded by hungry dogs. He had recently married and was soon to be a father.

Sister Agnes-Mariam de la Croix said: ‘His only crime was his brother criticised the rebels, accused them of acting like bandits, which is what they are.’

There have been a growing number of accounts of atrocities carried out by rogue elements of the Syrian Free Army, which opposes dictator Bashar al-Assad and is recognised by Britain and the West as the legitimate leadership.

“Rogue elements”? I’d say that they’re proving to be who they’ve always been.

Do you want to know just how far off Obama’s policies are from where we were just a few years ago?

On September 14, 2001, Congress overwhelmingly passed a joint resolution called the Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF. That joint resolution authorized President George W. Bush and his successors, including Barack Obama, to use military force against al Qaeda. Three days before the AUMF passed, al Qaeda had murdered nearly 3,000 Americans in a mass terrorist attack.

Here we are in 2013. President Barack Obama wants the AUMF repealed. He blames one al Qaeda-linked terrorist attack on a movie. He calls another terrorist attack on American soil “workplace violence.”

Is al Qaeda dead?

No, in Syria alone they have 10,000 militants at war and they’re beheading people who criticize them. And Barack Obama is intent on arming them.

United Liberty has the story:

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) seems a litte confused about what party he belongs to. During an appearance on CNBC, the Alaska Democrat tried to distance himself from his the Leftist-wing of his party by telling the hosts that he is a “Rockefeller Republican.”

Begich was probably a shoe-in as Alaska’s next former Senator, but the GOP ads for 2014 now practically write themselves.

Check out this email, from the US Department of Homeland Security.

Did you know:

Yesterday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), along with representatives from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., announced the seizure of the long-lost “Rosenberg Diary.”

Alfred Rosenberg, a close confidant of Adolf Hitler, was one of the most influential members of the Third Reich and of the Nazi Party. Thanks to the efforts of ICE, this important record of the crimes committed by the Nazi Party is now preserved for all to see, study and learn from.

In November 2012, HSI special agents received information from an art security specialist, who was working with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, regarding the search for the Rosenberg Diary. The Rosenberg Diary was subsequently located and seized. This important document will expand our understanding of a dark period in history and also provide invaluable information to scholars and historians as part of the collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

ICE plays a leading role in criminal investigations that involve the illegal importation and distribution of cultural property. Since 2007, ICE has returned more than 7,150 artifacts to 26 countries.

Skeptical that our government could be so irony-proof, in the words of the emailer who sent this email to us, I searched around and found this.

Hundreds of pages of the long-lost diary kept by one of Adolf Hitler’s advisors were recovered by federal officials, who said today they hope the discovery will be an “important record” of crimes perpetrated during the Holocaust.

The diary, which was penned by Alfred Rosenberg, is roughly 400 pages of loose-leaf paper and spans from 1936 to 1944, according to a statement from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The museum said it worked with a private investigator, the FBI and the Department of Justice to locate the missing diary earlier this year at a private company in New York. It was seized by federal agents who worked with a scholar to authenticate the diary before its recovery was announced today. (emphasis added)

This diary is surely worth scholarly investigation, but it was private property, in private hands. It isn’t anymore, because our government considered itself entitled to swoop in and take it. There is no indication that the government intends to pay the owners for it. The owners had reportedly intended to donate it to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum since 1997, but had not. It was not stolen. It just had not been donated.

Federal agents from the Department of Homeland Security tracked the thing down and took it. Why is DHS even involved in what is a scholarly pursuit? Was this diary more important to national security than, say, shoring up the borders? Is this really why we have a Department of Homeland Security, and a section called the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, with a Homeland Security Investigations subsection? To track down and seize a Nazi diary? Really? ICE-HSI’s mission sounds far more urgent if you go by its own statement.

The ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) directorate is a critical asset in the ICE mission, responsible for investigating a wide range of domestic and international activities arising from the illegal movement of people and goods into, within and out of the United States.

HSI investigates immigration crime, human rights violations and human smuggling, smuggling of narcotics, weapons and other types of contraband, financial crimes, cybercrime and export enforcement issues. ICE special agents conduct investigations aimed at protecting critical infrastructure industries that are vulnerable to sabotage, attack or exploitation.

Do you see anything about tracking down and seizing Nazi diaries in there? I’m not seeing it.