“Men who are strong are more likely to take a right-wing stance, while weaker men support the welfare state, researchers claim.
Their study discovered a link between a man’s upper-body strength and their political views.”
“The figures revealed that men with higher upper-body strength were less likely to support left-wing policies on the redistribution of wealth.
But men with low upper-body strength were more likely to put their own self-interest aside and support a welfare state.”
“The son of a Lutz fertility doctor killed a girlfriend’s unborn child by tricking her into taking an abortion drug, federal authorities said Wednesday.The act could put John Andrew Welden, 28, in prison for life.Welden forged the doctor’s signature on a prescription for Cytotec, relabeled a pill bottle as “Amoxicillin” and told the woman that his father wanted her on antibiotics, a federal prosecutor asserted Wednesday.”
Next up, an update on Boston bomber #2. From CBSNews
“Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left a note claiming responsibility for the April 15 attack on the Boston Marathon, reports CBS News senior correspondent John Miller.
Sources tell Miller that Tsarnaev wrote the note in the boat he was hiding in as police pursued him, and as he bled from gunshot wounds sustained in an earlier shootout between police and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. It reads as part manifesto, part suicide note and part justification for the killing and maiming of innocent civilians.
The note — scrawled with a marker on the interior wall of the cabin — said the bombings were retribution for U.S. military action in Afghanistan and Iraq, and called the Boston victims “collateral damage” in the same way Muslims have been in the American-led wars. “When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims,” Tsarnaev wrote.
Tsarnaev said he didn’t mourn older brother Tamerlan, the other suspect in the bombings, writing that by that point, Tamerlan was a martyr in paradise — and that he expected to join him there soon.”
That should lay to rest any assertions that his religion didn’t motivate this.
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Now we’ll start getting to those scandals… First up, a good question. From IllumeMagazine
Do Muslim Nonprofits Have it Easier Than Tea Party Groups?
“Having spent most of my legal career working with tax exempt entities, the IRS scrutiny on the Tea Party isn’t news to me. In my days at large law firms, I handled a portfolio of nonprofit Tea Party organizations and saw firsthand how the IRS treated them when it came to granting exemptions.”
“In many cases, the organizations fight tooth-and-nail to get through IRS scrutiny, often facing pages of questions from the IRS on their activities.”
“On the flip side, I’ve worked with numerous Muslim organizations as well. And every single application of a Muslim nonprofit has gone through the IRS, with less scrutiny. Of course, they still did get scrutiny– after all, Islamophobia is still pretty rampant everywhere and it’s inaccurate to say that they got a free pass. But truth be told, they never got a 10-page questionnaire on each and every one of their grantees.
What does this say about the way that the IRS is handling applications from Muslim nonprofits? For one, in the application phase, Muslim nonprofits seem to have an upper hand over Tea Party groups. Of course, the Muslim groups face their struggles post-determination, when they’re suddenly placed under investigation. And the IRS isn’t the agency that tends to target Muslim nonprofits, even though the Treasury has a list of “scary Muslims” (ever heard of the OFAC list?). It’s usually the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security who run Muslim nonprofits to the ground and put their founders in jail. But going back to the IRS Tea Party scandal, the IRS certainly makes it hard for Tea Party groups to make it through the door.”
We already know how the IRS treated Franklin Graham’s ministry, and other Christian groups as well. Why the disparity?
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If the White House is the one who encouraged this behavior from the IRS, then this must be how they rewarded the behavior. From ABCNews
“The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.
Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.”
And don’t buy the “we fired the guy responsible” meme from the WH. He was leaving in June anyway. He was an obvious choice to go under the bus.
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About those Benghazi e-mails….
Where’s the rest, you know the ones where the shenanigans took place? Where are the first 2 days? From TheDailyCaller
“The Benghazi-related emails released by the White House late May 15 exclude the critical emails between administration officials that were sent during the crucial first two days after the deadly jihadi attack that killed four Americans last September.”
“The two-day gap — the first released email was sent 67 hours after the attack began — plus the Petraeus comment, undermines the White House’s explanation for the rewrite.”
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Next up, Holder’s abdication. From WaPo
“As the nation’s top law enforcement official, Eric Holder is privy to all kinds of sensitive information. But he seems to be proud of how little he knows.”
“On and on Holder went: “I don’t know. I don’t know. . . . I would not want to reveal what I know. . . . I don’t know why that didn’t happen. . . . I know nothing, so I’m not in a position really to answer.”
Holder seemed to regard this ignorance as a shield protecting him and the Justice Department from all criticism of the Obama administration’s assault on press freedoms. But his claim that his “recusal” from the case exempted him from all discussion of the matter didn’t fly with Republicans or Democrats on the committee, who justifiably saw his recusal as more of an abdication.
“There doesn’t seem to be any acceptance of responsibility in the Justice Department for things that have gone wrong,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), after Holder placed the AP matter in the lap of his deputy. “We don’t know where the buck stops.””
Well it ain’t stoppin’ at Obama’s desk either, that’s for sure. I guess this is Bush’s fault too.
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A second court has handed Obama a loss on the NLRB issue. Good. From Politico
“A second appeals court has joined the D.C. Circuit in ruling that President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional, concluding that some board actions taken in the wake of those appointments were also invalid.
The issue has far-reaching implications for both the NLRB and other boards, including Obama’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has been a frequent target of conservatives and whose director was a recess appointment.
The 2-1 decision Thursday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (posted here) found that the presidential recess appointment power is limited to breaks between sessions of Congress, not breaks within sessions or other adjournments during which the Senate might meet in pro forma sessions. The reasoning mirrors that in a ruling of the D.C. Circuit Court in January.”
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These last two are on the next potential scandal, the one emerging at the EPA that I posted about yesterday. From TheHill
“Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) on Wednesday accused the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of exempting left-leaning political groups and green energy producers from various fees and fines that it routinely assesses to right-learning groups.
Whitfield, who chairs the House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Energy & Power, called the EPA’s actions a “pattern of conduct in which this administration rewards its friends and punishes its opponents.”
“We cannot afford a government that systematically goes against groups that it opposes, and yet rewards groups that it favors,” he said on the House floor. Whitfield’s charges come just as the Internal Revenue Service has admitted that some of its officials were targeting conservative groups for closer scrutiny.”
Also From TheHill
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s inspector general will review claims the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) refuses to waive public records fees for conservative groups while granting the waivers for environmental organizations.”
“Republicans compared the CEI report to recent revelations that IRS officials improperly targeted Tea Party groups and pressed for unnecessary information when those groups sought tax-exempt status.
“When we take this in the context of what has just been exposed at the IRS … it seems at the EPA, the same thing is happening,” said Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.).
“It certainly appears there is a bias,” said Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).”
All this makes the scheduled Senate vote for a new EPA head on Thursday a bit more interesting.
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Wandering Views 