What’s interesting in the news today?
1. The IRS is now contradicting sworn testimony, and the judge wants answers.
From TheDailyCaller “U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan Thursday ordered the Internal Revenue Service to come up with new answers after IRS employees contradicted sworn testimony about damage to Lois Lerner’s hard drive.
Sullivan ruled that “the IRS is hereby ORDERED to file a sworn Declaration, by an official with the authority to speak under oath for the Agency, by no later than August 22, 2014″ on four issues: the IRS’ attempted recovery of Lerner’s lost emails after her computer allegedly crashed, bar codes that could have been on the hard drive, IRS policies on hard drive destruction, and information about an outside vendor who worked on IRS hard drives.
Recent documents from nonprofit group Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the IRS, which Sullivan is presiding over, showed that IRS technology officials contradicted sworn testimony about damage to Lerner’s hard drive.
Aaron Signor, an IRS technician that looked at Lerner’s hard drive in June 2011, said in IRS court filings that he saw no damage to the drive before sending it off to another IRS technician, leading some in the media to suggest that the lost emails scandal is basically over. But Signor’s statement, issued in response to the Judicial Watch lawsuit, does not jibe with sworn congressional testimony.”
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2. About that indictment of Gov. Perry…….
From NYMag “They say a prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich, and this always seemed like hyperbole, until Friday night a Texas grand jury announced an indictment of governor Rick Perry. The “crime” for which Perry faces a sentence of 5 to 99 years in prison is vetoing funding for a state agency. The conventions of reporting — which treat the fact of an indictment as the primary news, and its merit as a secondary analytic question — make it difficult for people reading the news to grasp just how farfetched this indictment is.”
“I do not have a fancy law degree from Harvard or Yale or, for that matter, anywhere. I am but a humble country blogger. And yet, having read the indictment, legal training of any kind seems unnecessary to grasp its flimsiness.
Perry stands accused of violating two laws. One is a statute defining as an offense “misus[ing] government property, services, personnel, or any other thing of value belonging to the government that has come into the public servant’s custody or possession by virtue of the public servant’s office or employment.” The veto threat, according to the prosecutor, amounted to a “misuse.” Why? That is hard to say.
The other statute prohibits anybody in government from “influenc[ing] or attempt[ing] to influence a public servant in a specific exercise of his official power or a specific performance of his official duty or influenc[ing] or attempt[ing] to influence a public servant to violate the public servant’s known legal duty.””
He’s not a lawyer, but this guy is. And he thinks even less of it.
From NewsMax “Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz calls himself a “liberal Democrat who would never vote for Rick Perry,” but he’s still “outraged” over the Texas governor’s indictment Friday on charges of abuse of power and coercion.
The charges are politically motivated and an example of a “dangerous” trend of courts being used to affect the ballot box and politics, he told Newsmax on Saturday.
“Everybody, liberal or conservative, should stand against this indictment,” Dershowitz said. “If you don’t like how Rick Perry uses his office, don’t vote for him.””
Democrats can’t beat him at the ballot box, so they turn to the courts to do their dirty work for them, yet again.
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3. Boko Haram is at it again(still). And now they’re taking cues from ISIS.
From TownHall “The death toll from Boko Haram’s takeover of the predominantly Christian town of Gwoza is nearly 1,000, not the 100 included in many reports, Nigerian relations expert Adeniyi Ojutiku told Baptist Press.
The Nigerian military abandoned their weapons and fled Gwoza as Boko Haram attacked Wednesday (Aug. 6), burning government buildings, killing residents and taking hostages. Some residents managed to flee to the mountains bordering Cameroon and are without food or water; others made it 85 miles north to Maiduguri, Associated French Press (AFP) and others reported.
News surfaced just today (Aug. 15) of a separate Aug. 10 attack on the remote village of Doron Baga in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram kidnapped dozens of boys and men, leaving women, girls and young children abandoned there.
Boko Haram has escalated its attacks to a new level, capturing towns and hoisting Boko Haram flags instead of killing residents and fleeing, Ojutiku said. He compared them to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). As such, a concerted global effort is needed to conquer the rebels, he said.”
“”This is a new dimension in this crisis,” Ojutiku said. “A completely new dimension. Now they are following the strategy of ISIS. They attack, they occupy, they hold the town. Now that they have started adopting ISIS methodology, they should be receiving the type of treatment that ISIS is receiving.””
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4. Meanwhile ISIS continues it’s rampage.
From TheHuffPost “The Islamic State militant group has executed 700 members of a tribe it has been battling in eastern Syria during the past two weeks, the majority of them civilians, a human rights monitoring group said on Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has tracked violence on all sides of the three-year-old conflict, said that reliable sources reported beheadings were used to execute many of the al-Sheitaat tribe, which is from Deir al-Zor province.
The conflict between Islamic State and the al-Sheitaat tribe, who number about 70,000, flared after Islamic State took over two oil fields in July.
“Those who were executed are all al-Sheitaat,” Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman said by telephone from Britain. “Some were arrested, judged and killed.”
They continue to take women as spoils of war.
From TheWashingtonPost “Hundreds of Yazidi women who were captured by Islamic extremists during their sweep through the town of Sinjar are being incarcerated at scattered locations across northern Iraq in what increasingly looks like a deliberate attempt to co-opt them into service as the wives of fighters.
As the militants with the al-Qaeda-inspired Islamic State surged into the area from surrounding Arab villages two weeks ago, snaring those who had not managed to flee, they showed a marked interest in detaining women, notably the youngest and prettiest, according to witnesses, relatives and in some instances the women themselves.”
“Those who convert to Islam can be promised a good life, with a house of their own and — implicitly — a Muslim husband, because the extreme interpretation of Islam promoted by the Islamic State does not permit women to live alone.
Otherwise, they have been told, they can expect a life of indefinite imprisonment — or, they fear, death.”
It’s gotten so bad that some would rather die than accept the fate that awaits them.
From TheDailyMail “The call came in the early hours, the voice muffled, furtive and shaking with fear. ‘If they see me talking to someone they will kill me for sure, maybe kill all of us.’
This was Nisreen, a 17-year-old seized by the vicious Islamic State forces who have swept through Iraq and Syria spreading fear and panic.
She told how she was one of 96 Yazidi girls kidnapped when their towns and villages fell to the fanatics. Now these teenagers wait in terror to be sold into slavery or forced into marriage with militant Islamists.”
“The husband of another teenage woman, heavily pregnant, held captive by the IS told me how she would rather the US bombed her prison – with her inside – than be handed out like a piece of property to an extremist fighter.
She said: ‘Let those jets come to bomb us and save us from this situation by killing all of us.’ She added death would be a better fate than to ‘be forced off with a strange man.’”
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5. And things are heating up again in Ukraine.
From Bloomberg “Tensions flared in Ukraine yesterday as the government said its army destroyed part of a column of military vehicles that crossed the border from Russia, even as Vladimir Putin denies any military presence.
President Petro Poroshenko said Ukrainian forces destroyed part of a column that had arrived from Russia. The Foreign Ministry in Moscow rejected the statement and warned about a potential attack on another convoy that carries aid. Ukraine’s top diplomat, Pavlo Klimkin, said he will meet with his Russian, German and French counterparts tomorrow in Berlin.
The incident adds to the building unease over Russia’s plan to send about 275 trucks with what it says is humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas in eastern Ukraine. Even with Ukraine saying it doesn’t see the armed vehicles as the sign of potential invasion, their arrival raised the stakes, said Volodymyr Fesenko, of the Penta research institute in Kiev.”
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Wandering Views 
From yesterday: SolarP, I went to your recommended site. Some interesting reading that didn’t change my views. Let’s see if we can form some consensus.
1. I agree there is wasteful federal spending on police equipment. Clinton started it as a typical Democrat ploy to buy votes. Little Bush continued it as an overreaction to 9/11 and because he was a big spender.
2. Our current drug laws are like Prohibition. They are not supported by a large segment of society. Most of the cases of police breaking into the home of an innocent party seem to be drug busts gone bad. I would legalize all drugs as was the case in 1900. If people want to kill themselves with drugs, let them. However, the drug users, not the taxpayers or insurance consumers, should pay for the drugs.
3. There are undoubtedly some cases of police brutality. However, I question how big the problem is when it appears to me that the most “infamous” cases like Rodney King and the Missouri case may not have involved police brutality.
4. There is a segment in our society that will seize any incident as an excuse to go on a looting, burning and protesting spree.
5. The looting segment also commits a high percentage of our murders, rapes, robberies and assaults. They have made a number of US cities completely uninhabitable. Don’t look now. Your city may be next on the list.
Support Your Local Police.
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As usual Thomas Sowell is brilliant and honest. I have not read any of Paul Kersey’s books, but as Sowell says, they raise tough questions and those are questions that no one wants to answer.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/362030/early-skirmishes-race-war-thomas-sowell
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As long as the taxpayer doesn’t have to pay for upkeep of the druggies when it finally wipes them out and they’re living under bridges and eating handouts. Somebody is bound to think the government should do something for those poor people.
Re the news of the day:
I am teaching Daniel 7 next Sunday. Daniel 7:2″…and behold, the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea.”
It’s generally agreed among scholars that “the sea” always represents the sea of humanity.
The four winds are spiritual beings striving, and creating chaos among humanity.
It has always been so, to some extent through history.
But this is a different world. It is different now. In so many ways.
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Thank you. Chas. The burden will fall on the taxpayer. I wonder how many people do not do drugs just because they are illegal and would try it if it were legal. Abortion really took off once it it was legalized.
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RickyWeaver, I still don’t get the impression you know the full nature of the complaints about cops that some of us are talking about–where people who have not committed crimes are at risk of injury or death because an infrastructure is built to support strong-arm law enforcement, or petty criminals are met with what is essentially corporeal/capital punishment *on the scene,* without being charged or tried. People who love freedom see those things as the serious problems they are. That’s not how justice is done in free societies. That stuff is *part and parcel* of what we’re decrying when we complain about government abuse, in general.
Somewhat related: the WSJ today released an article regarding cops wearing body cameras. The entire police force in Rialto, CA, is doing that now. One line from the article reads, “In the first year after the cameras’ introduction, the use of force by officers declined 60%, and citizen complaints against police fell 88%.”
–from http://online.wsj.com/articles/what-happens-when-police-officers-wear-body-cameras-1408320244
Could you imagine allowing police to shoot looters? How atrocious that would be? Not giving people trials, endangering onlookers, etc? Would it be *just* to kill someone for stealing? When I see looters, my blood boils in anger at them. We should make penalties for that crime, and many others, far harsher (and more Biblical) so that people would be deterred from committing them in the first place. But just shooting folks? Yowza that’s a terrible idea. That’s what Abe Lincoln would do.
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KBells, I agree. Sometimes it’s said that these behaviors (drug use — which with many powerful drugs leads almost invariably to addiction) is something of a privacy right, something that’s not hurting others.
But of course it does affect so many other people.
Our current drug laws may need an overhaul. But I still think a society that says it is wrong (as is abortion) is a reflection of the moral law and is striving to protect individuals, families and communities.
Interesting article by Sowell — I think I’ve generally viewed some of these incidents as the tail end of what has been a centuries-old racial divide in our country; the death rattles as it were. But he’s seeing it as the start of something new which is worrisome.
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LAPD also has been using the cameras — it’s a way to protect both officers and citizens.
Maybe we could just chop off the hands of looters? Oh wait. …
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About Ferguson, Why are they still protesting. The shooting is being investigated. Are they now just demanding this officer be punished without due process.
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Yes, several are doing just that. Certain idiots in the media have even gone so far as to give directions, the address, and even photos/video of the officer’s house. They’re gonna get him killed. I hope he has sent his family someplace safe.
Now about Thomas Sowell….
He’s been warning of this for years. The problem has only gotten worse. I posted this a couple years back.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/299918/censored-race-war-thomas-sowell?pg=1
“When two white newspaper reporters for the Virginian-Pilot were driving through Norfolk, and were set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks — beaten so badly that they had to take a week off from work — that might sound like news that should have been reported, at least by their own newspaper. But it wasn’t.
The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel was the first major television program to report this incident. Yet this story is not just a Norfolk story, either in what happened or in how the media and the authorities have tried to sweep it under the rug.
Similar episodes of unprovoked violence by young black gangs against white people chosen at random on beaches, in shopping malls, or in other public places have occurred in Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Chicago, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles, and other places across the country. Both the authorities and the media tend to try to sweep these episodes under the rug.”
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Some observations;
Michael Brown had a red baseball hat on. St. Louis Cardinals hat? It just happened to be “Bloods” (the gang) red.
In TV pictures of the rioting I see young men, and women, in “Blood” red shirts and/or pants but never in “Crips” blue.
According to the “friend/witness” the policeman grabbed Michael Brown “by the throat.” Is that a recognized police tactic? Who would be stupid enough to do that?
Michael Brown lived with his grandmother. Why not with either of his parents?
As a former teacher in the Middle School where the Crips started, these things don’t add up to “innocent.” Something is off.
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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/17/james-risen-obama-greatest-enemy-press-freedom-generation
“The New York Times reporter James Risen, who faces jail over his refusal to reveal a source and testify against a former CIA agent accused of leaking secrets, has called President Barack Obama ‘the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation’.
“Speaking to his colleague Maureen Dowd, Risen accused the president of aggressively pursuing journalists, including himself, who report sensitive stories that reflect poorly on the US government. …”
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Donna J, Both of your comments reminded me of a missionary couple whom we know. They have seven children and have served in Syria, communist Poland and free Poland, but the worst 2 years of their lives were two years spent in Philadelphia while the father attended seminary. They felt unsafe in their home, in their neighborhood and the children were constantly victimized in their public schools.
Black on white crime isn’t something new and it certainly isn’t in its “death rattles”. It has been a constant for at least the last 45 years. The remedy is to move to the far suburbs or a gated community and pay for private schools. The missionary family couldn’t afford those options so they got to experience a part of America most of us rarely glimpse.
If I had young children and I had to raise them in either St. Petersburg, Russia, Saudi Arabia or Detroit, I would head for Russia. If we had to leave there I would move to Saudi Arabia. They cut off the hands of thiefs in Saudi Arabia, but it is a better place to live than many cities in America.
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Let’s say “thieves”.
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Wow, take a break from the internet — I moved again so was wifi less — and AJ installs like buttons…..
2. Of course its political motivated but then again so is most of the acts coming from our legislatures. Its rather amusing that its Rick Perry who gets dinged with abuse of authority — mostly because he’s been in perpetual campaign mode he’s been far too grandiose with his speech. Now if he simply and quietly suspended funding, nothing could be done but instead he preceded it with a threat; resign or I cut off funding. He made it far too easy for any grand jury so inclined to nail him to do exactly that.
3,4 — ISIS like the Taliban is a case of backdraft. Both groups got their start through Saudi, US, etc funding to fight a Russian backed gov’t. And now its out of control. Despite that, I have no qualms about intervention there and in Nigeria. We can argue about who’s to blame later.
5 – Rationally, Putin should have no interest in actually occupying eastern Ukraine — its an economic basketcase, a rust belt which makes my rust belt city look good. However, keeping Ukraine chaotic and ungovernable is in his personal interest. The “humanitarian” convoy is a tactic borrowed from NATOs own “responsibility to protect” doctrine which was used in Yugoslavia. Much of Russia’s actions and propaganda in the Ukrainian conflicts has deliberately echoed NATOs actions and propaganda in Yugoslavia. The apparent destruction of armored vehicles is strange as it lacks any substantial proof, leading one commenter to wonder if the Ukrainians shot their own APVs.
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For those following/discussing the Ferguson case, here is an extensive post, with numerous links, looking at the issues from a variety of angles.
http://thecommonroomblog.com/2014/08/eyes-on-the-balls-in-ferguson.html
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Libertarians should if they are consistent be appalled by the police response in Missouri. Here one could actually make a case for Second Amendment rights — perhaps some of the open carry activist should go to the McDonald’s for dinner in Ferguson. The actual rights and wrongs of the police shooting have long ceased to be the issue and now instead its the police response. The heavy handed response to what was originally peaceful protest has ignited a cycle of violence. Here is a stark example of the militarization of the police — you have a suburban police force equipped with APVs, snipers, military grade night vision goggles, etc yet not a single dashboard camera. The war on drugs contributed to this militarization for if you are fighting a war, you need to act like the military. Add to this, the discount sale of military goods to police depts generously subsidized by Homeland Security and you have a problem. And lets face it, if solarpancake and I agree on an issue, there has to be some merits to our opinion.
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As for the cost of drug abuse; as a proponent of free health care I have to be consistent and have the govt bear the cost (it will anyway — drug abusers are usually broke and as a law and order issue, the less drug addicts the better) However, there is a means to have the addict pre-pay — “sin” taxes. Tobacco use cost the health care system millions so its taxed far more than most products, do the same to marijuana and other drugs: legalize and tax.
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HRW, My late father agreed with your “legalize and tax” plan for drugs. He came to that position relatively late in life.
You and SolarPancake do make an interesting coalition.
In 1967 Detroit initially went in with a very light-handed response to a riot and half the city was burned to the ground. The response to the Rodney King riots was also initially very light.
SolarP was right this morning when he reminded us that Licoln had his soldiers shoot rioters in New York in 1863. Since that was a Yankee vs. Yankee affair I didn’t have a side to root for, but I have to admit that Lncoln stopped the riot.
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Interesting look at climate change prophecies through the decades:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2014/08/prophecies-from-1986.html
From 1986:
” ‘… by the year 2000, the atmosphere and weather will grow warmer by several degrees and life – animal, plant, human – will be threatened. The experts say that melting ice caps, flooded cities, droughts in the corn belt and famine in the third world could result if the earth’s mean temperature rises by a mere two or three degrees.’ ….
“I am constantly struck by how the climate change argument perpetually arrays itself in the language of faith and not science. Priests in white lab coat vestments utter prophecies ‘with great authority.’ Apocalyptic language abounds….”
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There’s really no big whoop to *stopping* a riot. All kinds of bad guys can do that–I suppose Tiananmen comes to mind for most of us. The greater trick is to deter them from happening in the first place, or to put an end to them while still respecting justice. Free societies actually give a hoot about those things, especially the latter.
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There is a “big whoop” to stopping a riot. If you don’t, many innocents may lose their lives and property, and in some cases (Detroit) entire cities can be ruined. I really don’t think the protesters in China had much in common with American looters.
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Quick, stiff punishment deters rioters and looters. Passivity, criticism of the police and a wringing of the hands about “society causing the riot” encourages more rioting and looting.
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RickyWeaver, it’s amazing how liberal-like you are at refusing to get a point. So far, you have ignored, intentionally (I’m guessing?) misconstrued, and diverted from what I (and others) have said about this. Now you’re implying all I want is “Passivity, criticism of the police and a wringing of the hands about ‘society causing the riot,'” without any reason to think I’m *for* looters and rioters. That’s terrible argumentation (except to a liberal).
Simply stopping a riot is no great accomplishment. All you need is guns and a sense of vigilantist “leg God sort ’em out” justice. It’s pretty clear what my point was in bringing up Tiananmen, but how you missed is is weird.
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RickyWeaver asserts, “Quick, stiff punishment deters rioters and looters” as if I or others disagree (I guess?–or maybe I’m not sure who he’s talking to). But I’ve said that exact thing a couple times already in this discussion. But I DO oppose just a-shootin’ into a crowd of looters. That would be craziness.
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