politics

by

News/Politics 7-3-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. 30 and counting. And these are only the ones they know about. 

From TheDailyMail  “FBI agents have made at least 30 arrests on US soil this year as they try to combat the murderous reach of ISIS and its warped followers, Daily Mail Online can disclose.

Officials revealed this week that the Islamic terror group has a foothold in all 50 states as it continues to target disaffected Americans through its torrent of online propaganda and slick videos of barbaric beheadings and mutilations.

The stark warning comes days after ISIS-inspired gunman Saif Rezgui unleashed horror on at a Tunisian beach resort, killing 39 vacationers and wounding dozens more. 

The FBI has reportedly set up command centers in each of its 56 field officers in case extremists try to mark the July 4 weekend by unleashing similar carnage here in the U.S. American ISIS ‘recruits’ to date have included schoolgirls, a young nurse, a pizza shop boss and even a National Guard soldier who hatched a plan to gun down 120 of his own colleagues. “

“Some have conspired to travel or send friends abroad to link up with fundamentalist fighters while others have plotted jihad here in the US – with Capitol Hill among the targets for a foiled bombing raid.”

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2. How the SSM “anti-polygamy” movement turned into Animal Farm.

From HotAir  “Speaking as a somewhat ideologically removed observer of the gay marriage battle still raging in the national discourse, I have to say that there are some very amusing elements to the current “GAY POINT 2″ argument taking place. I say this with all due respect for my traditional marriage supporting, conservative brethren who consider the matter a cornerstone of faith and a rightly viewed threat to the religious liberty rights of Christians who would opt to not participate in such ceremonies, but even you must surely be able to see some comedic value to the arguments currently coming from the Left. Having won the war for same sex marriage in the Supreme Court, more and more of them seem to be jumping on the dog pile of folks who insist – contrary to Chief Justice John Roberts’ arguments – that plural marriage can not possibly be just around the corner. I completely disagree, and have even come before you to say why plural marriage proponents now have a legally solid argument, but I’m forced to wonder where this sudden zeal for opposing them on the Left is coming from.

I suppose one possible explanation is that, even though there was zero value seen in the traditional definition of marriage as being the union of one man and one woman, the math underlying the equation was somehow sacrosanct. It didn’t really matter what genders filled the values of A and B in the principle of sums so long as C was still equal to two. Any other number would be an insult to… something.

A perhaps more cynical argument might be phrased as follows: Holy cow! We spent so long arguing against that slippery slope theory where letting gays marry could lead to polygamy that we’d damned well better come up with a convincing policy presentation now or we’re going to look like a bunch of self-serving asses! Find us an ethicist, stat!

I didn’t have long to wait to find out how that one would play out. Two examples popped up almost immediately. One came from Jonathan Rauch at Politico, who explains in no uncertain terms that Polygamy can’t be supported in the courts because it’s bad. And why is it bad? Well,it’s unfair to the men who don’t get wives, DUH.”

“But then we finally we come to the kicker of Cathy Young’s entire argument. I sincerely hope that everyone stuck with me this far into the diatribe, because this is the true cherry on top of the cake. With no further prelude, I offer you this closing argument from the author: (emphasis added)

In a free society, the private sexual choices of adults should not be criminalized. But they are not automatically entitled to cultural approval or societal support systems.

My, my my… that sounds awfully familiar. Where might I have possibly heard it before? Could it be some argument about how Christians really aren’t concerned about what gays do in the privacy of their bedrooms, but they just don’t want them redefining the concept of marriage? It is at this point where Young has gone full Animal Farm on us. Having taken over the formerly unassailable position of the farmer and his wife in the farmhouse, she is ready to begin banning the rest of the animals from having any of the apples and milk. After all, we don’t want Boxer the horse to get any strange ideas.”

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3. An interesting read. No truce with the left. 

From SultanKnish  “Republicans are still trying to figure out a truce on gay marriage. They retreated to civil unions, then accepted a full defeat on gay marriage and then acted baffled when Christian bakery owners were dragged into court for refusing to participate in gay weddings. When the left insisted that gay marriage was a civil rights issue, they refused to take them as their word.

Now they’re wondering how an accommodation can be made with tranny rights. A brief look back at gay rights will show that the only possible accommodation is one in which men in dresses have a legal right to use the ladies room and every single closed female space and event. And yes, that means your business will be shut down if you object to Steve using the female locker room.

After a few skirmishes, some fundraising and angry letters, the accommodationists will find ways to accommodate that and we can look forward to conservative activists eagerly crowing about the first gay Republican presidential candidate around say, 2024, and the first Republican man in a dress in the Senate around the same time.

Of course by then it will be something else. Maybe pedophiles. Gay rights activists don’t like the analogy, but their movement and its assorted allies, particularly in Europe’s Green parties, have a long history of advocating it. The same pop culture methods that were used to sell gay rights and Bruce Jenner can easily be flipped around to sell NAMBLA.

By 2024, the Republican gay and tranny candidates will be dismissed as tokens while the media oohs and aahs over a vocal and charismatic campaigner for some other love that dare not speak its name.

And that’s the point. It has always been the point.”

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by

News/Politics 7-2-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

Since I’ve been hobbled the last couple of days I haven’t posted much news. Well that’s about to change.

It’s news dump time. 

The red lines are the links.

1. It’s almost like they don’t want to defeat ISIS.

US blocks attempts by Arab allies to fly heavy weapons directly to Kurds to fight Islamic State

2. Oh, and Syria is probably getting ready to use it’s chemical weapons.

Syria may be a failed state at this point in all but name, but if this is the short term future they have in store the place is preparing to turn into a real world version of hell on Earth.

3. At least the Supreme Court got one decision right…

Supreme Court rules against EPA on pollution rules

4. That’s how you know these are the damaging emails.

State Department asserts privilege against Benghazi committee

5. Here we go again….

Feds predict surge of illegals, see another 127,000 this year

6. Yeah who didn’t see this coming.

It Begins: New Calls To Strip Churches of Tax Exempt Status After Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

7. The ACLU is all about protecting religious freedom, unless you’re a Christian.

RFRAs are great except when they protect Christians

8. The gun grabbers lose again.

Federal Judge Orders Plaintiffs to Pay Ammo Dealer’s Legal Fees After Dismissing Lawsuit

9. After the SC gay “marriage” decision, now what?

The Church Will Survive Gay Marriage if It Sticks to Its Guns

10. RedState provides another answer.

What Actually Comes Next

by

News/Politics 6-29-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The Resistance begins……

From TheChristianPost  “At a press conference in Memphis, Tennessee, members of the Coalition of African-American Pastors joined Christian ministers at the Church of God in Christ’s historic Mason Temple to warn the Obama administration to prepare for massive civil disobedience among pastors and clergy if state bans on gay marriage are deemed unconstitutional.

“If they rule for same-sex marriage, then we’re going to do the same thing we did for the civil rights movement,” said Rev. Bill Owens, president and founder of CAAP. “We will not obey an unjust law.”

“The politicians and courts have tried to take God out of this country,” continued Owens. “This country was founded on Godly principles. We will not stand back.”

Rev. David Welch, president of the Pastor’s Council in Houston, Texas, spoke out at the conference explaining the lengths people of faith might go to resist gay marriage.

“God created marriage between a man and woman and no Supreme Court jurisdiction can define this,” said Welch. “We stand clearly saying we will acknowledge God’s law no matter what the cost, no matter what the price. If they want to fill jails with pastors across the nation of every color, denomination and every size who will stand for the laws of God and His truths.””

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2. Texas isn’t having it. 

From TribuneNewsService/MSN  “Conservatives responded forcefully to the Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage, but nowhere more so than in Texas, which openly defied the ruling.

“No Texan is required by the Supreme Court’s decision to act contrary to his or her religious beliefs regarding marriage,” said Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.

Resistance to the ruling was deep-felt across the conservative spectrum and in many of the 14 states, including Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana, which have had laws forbidding same sex marriage. To opponents of gay marriage, religious liberty trumps the Supreme Court.

“No court can overturn natural law. Nature and Nature’s God, hailed by the signers of our Declaration of Independence as the very source of law, cannot be usurped by the edict of a court, even the United States Supreme Court,” said Frank Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.”

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More here, from TheStatesman  “County clerks can refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples based on religious objections to gay marriage, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said Sunday.

Paxton noted that clerks who refuse to issue licenses can expect to be sued, but added that “numerous lawyers stand ready to assist clerks defending their religious beliefs,” in many cases without charge.

The formal opinion did not specify what constitutes a sincerely held religious belief, noting that “the strength of any such claim depends on the particular facts of each case.”

Paxton said Friday’s “flawed” opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned bans against same-sex marriage in Texas and other states, placed religious people in conflict between following their faith and the U.S. Constitution.

“Friday, the United States Supreme Court again ignored the text and spirit of the Constitution to manufacture a right that simply does not exist. In so doing, the court weakened itself and weakened the rule of law, but did nothing to weaken our resolve to protect religious liberty and return to democratic self-government in the face of judicial activists attempting to tell us how to live,” Paxton said.

Paxton’s opinion also noted that judges and justices of the peace can refuse to perform same-sex marriages.”

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3. The Democrats are gettin’ their crazy on. 

From Powerline  “The floodgates are open, and craziness is pouring out. The Democrats’ Confederate flag victory has them lusting for more. Hillary Clinton says South Carolina is only the beginning:

“It shouldn’t fly there. It shouldn’t fly anywhere,” Mrs. Clinton said of South Carolina….

In her discussion Tuesday with community leaders at Christ the King United Church of Christ in Florissant, Mo., Mrs. Clinton said the flag’s removal would be “just the beginning of what we have to do” to combat racism.

Of course it is. Everywhere, people preemptively abandoned the Stars and Bars. Alabama’s governor directed that it be taken down from that states’s capitol grounds. Amazon, Walmart, eBay and Sears all dropped the flag like a hot potato. Flag manufacturers terminated their Stars and Bars products. One leftist wrote Pope Francis to request that he denounce the use of St. Andrew’s Cross on the Confederate flag:

Doesn’t the fact that Saint Andrew’s cross appears on this evil symbol serve as an insult to the Catholic church which you lead?

But of course, it’s not just the flag. Shouldn’t every reminder of the Confederacy be eradicated? The New York Times headlines: “Calls to Drop Confederate Emblems Spread Nationwide.””

“It isn’t just the states who are participating in this historical cleansing:

Democratic Senators are reviewing the inventory of 100 statues and a few flags in the U.S. Capitol to identify and remove anything representing the Confederacy, in the wake of the Charleston, S.C. shootings in an historic black church.”

Some Democrats even want to dig up the dead over it. 

From FoxNewsRadio  “Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton wants to dig up the bodies of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife and remove them from a city park in the latest and perhaps most despicable example of the anti-Southern cleansing spreading across the nation.

“Which African-American wants to have a picnic in the shadow of Nathan Bedford Forrest?” Wharton said in a Thursday press briefing.

In addition to desecrating the graves, Wharton wants to tear down a massive statue honoring the Confederate general who was involved in organizing the Ku Klux Klan. The bodies of Forrest and his wife would be relocated to a cemetery.

Memphis city officials have been waging a fierce and unrelenting war on southern heritage.  In 2013, the city council changed the name of Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park. They also changed the names of Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park.

So now they want to disinter the dead? What in God’s name is wrong with the mayor? What kind of sick, twisted person wants to dig up dead people?“

No word yet on how they plan on getting around the Tennessee’s Landmark Protections Act of 2013, which prohibits exactly what he’s proposing. But hey, when have Democrats ever let the law stop them?

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4. How republics die. 

From PJMedia  “Eight hundred years and 11 days after the stamping of the Magna Carta, it’s been an appalling week at the Supreme Court for the Constitution and the rule of law. Today’s ruling is, in a sense, the Roe v. Wade of our generation. And I would think that even if I were gay and wanted to marry.

As I noted on Twitter yesterday, it is entirely possible to like the outcome of a court ruling (or legislation) while being appalled at the process by which it was achieved. For instance, one can be both pro-choice and still believe (as in factRuth Bader Ginsburg does) that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided.

But too many people (including, apparently and sadly, many of the justices themselves, perhaps even including the chief justice) think that the purpose of the Supreme Court is to give them things they like, like subsidies for health care, or the right to marry someone of the same sex. They care only about the results, and are utterly indifferent to the process (as we saw with the way the PPACA was passed). They believe that the ends, if sufficiently desirable,always justify the means. But the means matter.

If, as Chief Justice Roberts implied yesterday, ambiguous laws can  be changed by judges per their divination of legislative intent, then there is no law except what the judges think it is. (I would note that in fact his reasoning was fundamentally flawed by his statement that it was Congress’s goal to simply “improve insurance markets.” I think their intent was to increase their control over our health providers, and ultimately lead us down a path to single payer. But neither of us knows.) This was not judicial activism — it was judicial nihilism.

Similarly, if the Fourteenth Amendment contains a hitherto unknown right to marry someone of the same sex, then it contains multitudes of rights that will be discovered in the future by more “enlightened” judges.”

“When we ignore and side step the Constitutional and legal process to achieve a desired end, the bedrock starts to turn to sand. When the laws are ignored by those who have sworn to uphold or review them, the rule of law itself disintegrates. When the public doesn’t care, or understand the role of the branches of government, but votes anyway for people who tell them they’ll just give them stuff they like, that is how republics are lost.”

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by

News/Politics 6-26-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The FBI is rounding up ISIS sympathizers. 

From BloombergView  “The FBI has been rounding up more potential “lone wolf” terrorists, Congressional leaders and the Justice Department say, in response to the perception of a mounting threat of domestic attacks inspired by the Islamic State.

Since the thwarted attack on a “Draw Muhammad” conference in Garland, Texas, on May 3, the Justice Department has announced the arrests of 10 individuals it says were inspired by and supporting the Islamic State. The lawmakers say there have been more arrests that have not yet been announced.

They say the FBI has shifted its approach toward arrests rather than keeping suspects under surveillance, and is also targeting individuals thought to be planning attacks in the U.S., unlike the bureau’s past focus on volunteers preparing to join ISIS’s fight abroad.

“Lately, we have seen an uptick in the number of arrests of ISIL followers who were planning violent acts in our homeland,” said John Carlin, the assistant attorney general for national security. “ISIL, differing from some other foreign terrorist organizations, has demonstrated that they see value in mobilizing sympathizers anywhere in the world.”

The spate of arrests comes in response to what Congressional leaders and the Justice Department say is a mounting threat that radicalized Americans will attempt low-tech, lone wolf attacks in the near future. Lawmakers see the changes as necessary because the Islamic State uses social media so effectively to radicalize Americans and because the group is getting better at using encryption to shield its communications with new recruits.  

The shift has downsides. An emphasis on arrests rather than surveillance limits intelligence gathering. Arresting suspected recruits before they’ve acted makes prosecuting them more difficult. It could also violate the First Amendment right to free expression, if terrorist sympathizers are treated as terrorist supporters.“

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2. The Confederate flag has an unlikely ally, the former head of the N.C. NAACP. 

From WYHH  “Hours after “Black Lives Matter” was spray-painted on monument for “North Carolina’s Civil War Governor,” H.K. Edgerton stood with a Confederate flag, telling those passing by why he wanted it to continue to fly.”

“Edgerton, one of few African-American members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, was outside the monument waving the Confederate flag soon after the graffiti was removed.

He said the graffiti artist protested incorrectly.

“I’m not going to blame it on a Yankee because I’ve seen some southern folk around here that are real questionable too that don’t know anything about who they are and their families and the honorable people in the southland of America, red, yellow, black, white and brown,” Edgerton said.

He said the Confederate flag needs to continue to wave.”

More here from WISTV

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3. Words mean nothing anymore. 

From TheNYTimes  “The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that President Obama’s health care law allows the federal government to provide nationwide tax subsidies to help poor and middle-class people buy health insurance, a sweeping vindication that endorsed the larger purpose of Mr. Obama’s signature legislative achievement.

The 6-to-3 ruling means that it is all but certain that the Affordable Care Act will survive after Mr. Obama leaves office in 2017. For the second time in three years, the law survived an encounter with the Supreme Court. But the court’s tone was different this time. The first decision, in 2012, was fractured and grudging, while Thursday’s ruling was more assertive.”

“In dissent on Thursday, Justice Antonin Scalia called the majority’s reasoning “quite absurd” and “interpretive jiggery-pokery.”

He announced his dissent from the bench, a sign of bitter disagreement. His summary was laced with notes of incredulity and sarcasm, sometimes drawing amused murmurs in the courtroom as he described the “interpretive somersaults” he said the majority had performed to reach the decision.

“We really should start calling this law Scotus-care,” Justice Scalia said, to laughter from the audience.”

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4. It. Just. Keeps. Getting. Worse. 

From TheDailyBeast  “Infidelity. Sexual fetishes. Drug abuse. Crushing debt. They’re the most intimate secrets of U.S. government workers. And now they’re in the hands of foreign hackers.

It was already being described as the worst hack of the U.S. government in history. And it just got much worse.

A senior U.S. official has confirmed that foreign hackers compromised the intimate personal details of an untold number of government workers. Likely included in the hackers’ haul: information about workers’ sexual partners, drug and alcohol abuse, debts, gambling compulsions, marital troubles, and any criminal activity.

Those details, which are now presumed to be in the hands of Chinese spies, are found in the so-called “adjudication information” that U.S. investigators compile on government employees and contractors who are applying for security clearances. The exposure suggests that the massive computer breach at the Office of Personnel Management is more significant and potentially damaging to national security than officials have previously said.

Three former U.S. intelligence officials told The Daily Beast that the adjudication information would effectively provide dossiers on current and former government employees, as well as contractors. It gives foreign intelligence agencies a roadmap for finding people with access to the government’s most highly classified secrets.”

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5. Anyone shocked?

From TheWashingtonTimes  “Homeland Security will begin releasing more illegal immigrant families from detention, Secretary Jeh Johnson announced Wednesday as he bowed to political pressure from activists and members of Congress who’d called the conditions inhumane for families.

Despite offering amenities for the illegal immigrants ranging from flat-screen televisions in every suite, classrooms and ball fields at their disposal and 24-hour access to snacks and sodas, Mr. Johnson said he’s concluded things are still too harsh in the three facilities designed to hold families.

He said illegal immigrant parents and children who claim they fear for their lives back home will now have the chance to post a “reasonable and realistic” bond that will earn them the right to be released into the U.S., with the hope that they eventually return for their deportation hearings.”

“It’s a major reversal for Mr. Johnson, who just a year ago pointed to detaining families as one of the key steps he was taking to push back against the surge of illegal immigrant children and families from Central America.

It also comes as new data shows those released from detention almost never show up for their court hearings or to be deported, meaning that any of those families later deemed deportable will likely be difficult to round up.”

90+% aren’t showing up for their hearings now, and they do nothing about it. 

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by

News/Politics 6-25-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. The number just keeps growing. Turns out their were actually 2 major breaches. It went from 4 million affected, to 18 million, and now we’re up to 32 million. 

From TheWashingtonTimes  “As many as 32 million Americans might have had their most sensitive data stolen in a breach of the federal government’s human resources agency computers, lawmakers speculated Wednesday as pressure grew on President Obama to oust the woman who heads the agency that botched its cybersecurity.

Katherine Archuleta, director of the Office of Personnel Management, fought for her job, telling the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that she, herself, is likely a victim of the breach and takes it seriously.

But her uneven performance, which often included reading rote responses from prepared notes rather than answering direct questions, didn’t sit well with key lawmakers, who called for a housecleaning at the agency.”

“The OPM has acknowledged losing data in two breaches: One intrusion stole personal information of about 4.2 million current and former federal employees, and hackers in the second breach gained access to the background check system, with some of the most sensitive information on millions of Americans who have filled out the government’s background check packet.”

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2. It seems Obama’s BFF Valerie Jarrett isn’t just a Muslim Brotherhood supporter. She’s got some commies in her closet too. 

From JudicialWatch  “Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files obtained by Judicial Watch reveal that the dad, maternal grandpa and father-in-law of President Obama’s trusted senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, were hardcore Communists under investigation by the U.S. government.

Jarrett’s dad, pathologist and geneticist Dr. James Bowman, had extensive ties to Communist associations and individuals, his lengthy FBI file shows. In 1950 Bowman was in communication with a paid Soviet agent named Alfred Stern, who fled to Prague after getting charged with espionage. Bowman was also a member of a Communist-sympathizing group called the Association of Internes and Medical Students. After his discharge from the Army Medical Corps in 1955, Bowman moved to Iran to work, the FBI records show.

According to Bowman’s government file the Association of Internes and Medical Students is an organization that “has long been a faithful follower of the Communist Party line” and engages in un-American activities. Bowman was born in Washington D.C. and had deep ties to Chicago, where he often collaborated with fellow Communists. JW also obtained documents on Bowman from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) showing that the FBI was brought into investigate him for his membership in a group that “follows the communist party line.” The Jarrett family Communist ties also include a business partnership between Jarrett’s maternal grandpa, Robert Rochon Taylor, and Stern, the Soviet agent associated with her dad.

Jarrett’s father-in-law, Vernon Jarrett, was also another big-time Chicago Communist, according to separate FBI files obtained by JW as part of a probe into the Jarrett family’s Communist ties. For a period of time Vernon Jarrett appeared on the FBI’s Security Index and was considered a potential Communist saboteur who was to be arrested in the event of a conflict with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). His FBI file reveals that he was assigned to write propaganda for a Communist Party front group in Chicago that would “disseminate the Communist Party line among…the middle class.”

It’s been well documented that Valerie Jarrett, a Chicago lawyer and longtime Obama confidant, is a liberal extremist who wields tremendous power in the White House. Faithful to her roots, she still has connections to many Communist and extremist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood. Jarrett and her family also had strong ties to Frank Marshal Davis, a big Obama mentor and Communist Party member with an extensive FBI file.”

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3. Have we officially reached peak leftism?

From NationalReview  “If it seems to you that the Left has, collectively, lost its damned mind as the curtain rises on the last act of the Obama administration, you are not imagining things. Barack Obama has been extraordinarily successful in his desire to — what was that phrase? — fundamentally transform the country, but the metamorphosis is nonetheless a good deal less than his congregation wanted and expected. We may have gone from being up to our knees in welfare-statism to being up to our hips in it, and from having a bushel of banana-republic corruption and incompetence to having a bushel and a peck of it, but the United States of America remains, to the Left’s dismay, plainly recognizable as herself beneath the muck.

Ergo, madness and rage.

We have seen an extraordinary outburst of genuine extremism — and genuine authoritarianism — in the past several months, and it will no doubt grow more intense as we approach the constitutional dethroning of the mock messiah to whom our progressive friends literally sang hymns of praise and swore oaths of allegiance. (“I pledge to be a servant to our president” — recall all that sieg heil creepiness.) There is an unmistakable stink of desperation about this, as though the Left intuits what the Right dares not hope: that the coming few months may in fact see progressivism’s cultural high-water mark for this generation.

If there is desperation, it probably is because the Left is starting to suspect that the permanent Democratic majority it keeps promising itself may yet fail to materialize. The Democrats won two resounding White House victories but can hardly win a majority in a state legislature (seven out of ten today are Republican-controlled) or a governorship (the Democrats are down to 18) to save their lives, while Republicans are holding their strongest position in Congress since the days of Herbert Hoover. The Democrats have calculated that their best bet in 2016 is Hillary Rodham Clinton, that tragic bag of appetites who couldn’t close the deal in the primary last time around. “Vote for me, I’m a lady” isn’t what they thought it was: Wendy Davis, running for governor of Texas, made all the proper ceremonial incantations and appeared in heroic postures on all the right magazine covers, but finished in the 30s on Election Day. With young people trending pro-life, that old black magic ain’t what it used to be.”

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4. You knew this was coming. The fact that they trying to defend them means someone already wants them changed. 

From StarsAndStripes  “The U.S. Army on Wednesday defended its past practice of naming forts and posts after Confederate Army generals, saying they memorialize historic figures, “not causes or ideologies.”

The issue arose following the deadly shooting at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C., and amid debate over Confederate flags and other Civil War-era symbols of the pro-slavery secessionist Confederacy. The white shooting suspect has been shown holding Confederate flags in widely-seen photos.

Numerous U.S. Army posts in the South are named for Confederate soldiers.

The Army’s top spokesman, Brig. Gen. Malcolm B. Frost, issued a brief statement in the aftermath of questions about whether the military ought to consider changing the name of bases such as Fort Bragg, N.C., which is named after the man who led the Confederate Army of Tennessee, Gen. Braxton Bragg.

“Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history,” Frost said. “Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies. It should be noted that the naming occurred in the spirit of reconciliation, not division.””

History means nothing to them. 

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by

News/Politics 6-24-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. That didn’t take long……

From TheWashingtonPost  “In the wake of the Charleston shooting, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) are considering ways to renew their failed push to pass meaningful gun-control legislation.

In separate interviews Tuesday night, at a reception before a ceremony hosted by Sandy Hook families where Toomey was honored, the senators discussed their desire to find a new way forward.”

Yeah, because criminals intent on killing always follow gun laws…. 🙄

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2. Good, now throw the book at ’em. 

From Reuters/MSN  “The United States has arrested 1,140 people on charges of sexually preying on children as part of a nationwide sweep to protect children, the U.S. Justice Department said on Monday.

The arrests stemmed from a two-month operation in April and May tracking alleged offenders who use the Internet to lure youths and traffic them into commercial sexual exploitation, child pornography and traveling abroad to engage in child sex tourism, it said in a news release.

The arrests were part of Operation Broken Heart, which last year netted 275 arrests for child sexual predation.”

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3. What’s wrong with this picture?

From BloombergView  “The U.S. military and Iranian-backed Shiite militias are getting closer and closer in Iraq, even sharing a base, while Iran uses those militias to expand its influence in Iraq and fight alongside the Bashar al-Assad regime in neighboring Syria.

Two senior administration officials confirmed to us that U.S. soldiers and Shiite militia groups are both using the Taqqadum military base in Anbar, the same Iraqi base where President Obama is sending an additional 450 U.S. military personnel to help train the local forces fighting against the Islamic State. Some of the Iran-backed Shiite militias at the base have killed American soldiers in the past.

Some inside the Obama administration fear that sharing the base puts U.S. soldiers at risk. The U.S. intelligence community has reported back to Washington that representatives of some of the more extreme militias have been spying on U.S. operations at Taqqadum, one senior administration official told us. That could be calamitous if the fragile relationship between the U.S. military and the Shiite militias comes apart and Iran-backed forces decide to again target U.S. troops.

American critics of this growing cooperation between the U.S. military and the Iranian-backed militias call it a betrayal of the U.S. personnel who fought against the militias during the 10-year U.S. occupation of Iraq.

“It’s an insult to the families of the American soldiers that were wounded and killed in battles in which the Shia militias were the enemy,” Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain told us. “Now, providing arms to them and supporting them, it’s very hard for those families to understand.””

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4. I guess if we’re going to fight alongside terrorists, we might as well negotiate with them too. 

From CNN  “The White House will release on Wednesday a presidential directive and an executive order that will allow the government to communicate and negotiate with terrorist groups holding Americans hostage, a source briefed on the matter told CNN.

While the government will maintain its policy of not making “substantive concessions” to captors or paying ransoms, the White House will announce that officials will no longer threaten with criminal prosecution the families of American hostages who do pay ransoms to their relatives’ captors, according to a senior administration official.

Family members of former hostages were meeting at the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday to learn of the administration’s decisions after a months-long review of U.S. policies in dealing with American citizens held captive. The families were set to meet with President Barack Obama on Wednesday.

The payment of ransoms to terror groups has long been tolerated in many instances, though it is technically illegal. The administration has looked the other way when families of Americans held overseas have paid ransoms.

But several families — including the family of James Foley — have said they were threatened with prosecution as they considered making ransom payments. A member of the National Security Council staff had threatened Foley’s family with prosecution during their ordeal.”

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5. Time to find a new browser. 

From TheGuardian  “Privacy campaigners and open source developers are up in arms over the secret installing of Google software which is capable of listening in on conversations held in front of a computer.

First spotted by open source developers, the Chromium browser – the open source basis for Google’s Chrome – began remotely installing audio-snooping code that was capable of listening to users.

It was designed to support Chrome’s new “OK, Google” hotword detection – which makes the computer respond when you talk to it – but was installed, and, some users have claimed, it is activated on computers without their permission.

“Without consent, Google’s code had downloaded a black box of code that – according to itself – had turned on the microphone and was actively listening to your room,” said Rick Falkvinge, the Pirate party founder, in a blog post. “Which means that your computer had been stealth configured to send what was being said in your room to somebody else, to a private company in another country, without your consent or knowledge, an audio transmission triggered by … an unknown and unverifiable set of conditions.”

The feature is installed by default as part of Google’s Chrome browser. But open source advocates are up in arms about it also being installed with the open source variant Chromium, because the listening code is considered to be “black box”, not part of the open source audit process.

“We don’t know and can’t know what this black box does,” said Falkvinge.”

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by

News/Politics 6-23-15

What’s interesting in the news today?

Open Thread

1. Repealing ObamaCare would help the deficit, but we already knew that. 

From TheDailySignal  “These new “dynamic” estimates aren’t perfect by any means. However, they will provide policymakers with a better assessment for how legislation will actually affect the federal fisc.

The new dynamic scoring rule was recently tested in response to a request from Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., to estimate how the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, would affect the deficit and the economy.

For the first time, the CBO and JCT found that repealing Obamacare would increase the gross domestic product by 0.7 percent and that effect alone would reduce projected deficits by $216 billion over the 2016 to 2025 period.

This may sound trivial, but a 0.7 percent increase in GDP is equivalent to an additional $1,400 in the pocket of each household per year. CBO also found that repealing Obamacare would increase capital stocks and the number of people working over the next 10 years.

CBO and JCT also found that that repealing Obamacare would reduce the deficit over the next five years but would then steadily increase the unified budget deficits. However, that assumes Congress will allow both the 40 percent excise tax on high cost health care plans and an automatic reduction in Obamacare subsidies to kick in by 2018, both which seem increasingly unlikely to actually happen.”

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2. Today is the vote on ObamaTrade in the Senate. Let’s hope it loses, but with so many RINO’s, it’s looking unlikely. 

From CenterForImmigrationStudies  “Republican leaders, who seem curiously eager to facilitate this deal for the president, have bent over backwards to assure the many skeptical Republican members that neither Trade Promotion Authority (TPA, or “fast-track” authority) nor the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, which would be the next trade agreement to be rushed through the approval process on an up or down vote without possibility of amendments, includes or allows changes to immigration or visa law.

Some might be willing to trust our leaders on that, but in fact the biggest danger is not that the TPA bill and the TPP treaty make direct changes to immigration law. The biggest danger lies in theother deals that the president’s team is working on. Provisions in these deals do change immigration laws, and also would preventCongress from adjusting immigration laws that are currently being abused. That is the very goal of all trade pacts — to lock in open access to markets under current or more favorable terms, so that it cannot be changed. (For more on the implications of trade agreements for immigration law, see here.)

If we were just talking about free trade in widgets, these treaties would not be particularly relevant to immigration law. But other countries are pushing hard for open access to U.S. job markets, too, euphemistically calling it “trade in services” and the “movement of natural persons”.

Our current visa rules allow foreign-owned labor contractors who “trade in services” to bring in hundreds of thousands of foreign guestworkers each year. These rules, which the president’s trade negotiators would like to freeze in place, have permitted employers to replace some of their U.S. workers with foreign guestworkers, not because the guestworkers have better skills, but because they are cheaper (see the testimony at a recent Senate Judiciary committee hearing). Those who think the current guestworker rules are adequate certainly will not be troubled by freezing them in place, but there is a growing bipartisan consensus that Congress should change the law to curb abuse.

One of the treaties being negotiated by President Obama’s team is known as the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). The contents were secret until it was obtained by Wikileaks. The documents reveal that the administration hopes to greatly expand access for foreign workers in dozens of occupations including engineering, veterinary medicine, management consulting, construction, waste disposal, hotel and restaurant work, transportation, and recreation. This is not just about computer programmers and nurses; TiSA would facilitate the movement of unlimited numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from participating countries.”

This is what they’ve been trying to hide. 

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3. Sen. Sessions is pleading with Republicans to vote no on this immigration expanding, jobs killing piece of trash. 

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., called on GOP lawmakers to block a “Fast Track” trade bill on Tuesday that President Obama hopes to finalize in order to secure a string of new trade pacts.

Sessions, one of the Senate’s staunchest opponents of the Trade Promotion Authority legislation, or TPA, said new trade deals threaten to cause further economic damage and job loss in the United States and could lead to a back-door deal with China later on.

Approval of TPA will give President Obama expedited power to secure new trade deals, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership with 11 Pacific Rim nations, or TPP. But Sessions said in his letter that Obama has not spelled out how the U.S. economy might change if the TPP were approved, and that Obama is looking to inject environmental issues into the agreement.

“All of this information gives us more than enough basis to slow down and not fast track anything until all of our questions are answered,” Sessions said in a letter sent to Republican Senate lawmakers on Monday. “We should be inherently skeptical of grand designs, too complex to oversee, whose creators can provide no specifics yet pledge utopian results.”

Sessions’ call to oppose the bill came just two hours after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell signaled he was optimistic lawmakers will approve a two-part trade package this week.

The plan calls for lawmakers to vote on TPA on Tuesday, and then vote on Wednesday to extend the Trade Adjustment Assistance Act, a retraining and aid program for workers displaced by trade deals.”

So they’re trying to bribe unions into supporting it. 

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4. First the IRS harasses conservative groups, now the DoJ is harassing conservative websites. 

From HotAir  “Two weeks ago, Ken White at Popehat reported that the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the records of Reason Magazine to identify anonymous commenters on its website.  Nick Gillespie had criticized the DoJ for its prosecution of the Silk Road case, and a few of its commenters had responded with the usual hyperbole. White found out about the subpoena, but Reason remained so quiet that it became a matter of open speculation as to whether the court had slapped a gag order on the libertarian magazine. Today, Gillespie confirms the gag order, which has since been vacated, and explains the circumstances in which the government of the United States prevented a publication from discussing the abuse of power directed at it:

At about 10:30 am ET on Thursday, June 4, our attorney Gayle Sproul (of Levine, Sullivan, Koch, & Schulz) called Velamoor to discuss the subpoena. The call did not go well. Sproul asked Velamoor to consider scaling back the scope of the subpoena by omitting the more benign commenters. Velamoor said simply, “No.” Then Sproul informed him that we would be notifying our commenters about the subpoena to give them the chance to defend their rights to remain anonymous, and that we would not comply with the subpoena as it related to any commenters who moved to quash the subpoena before our compliance deadline. Sproul explained to him that there is case law firmly establishing that these commenters have the right to speak anonymously, and that we would withhold the information of anyone fighting the subpoena. Velamoor disputed that any such free speech rights exist. He asked that we delay notifying the commenters so he could get a court order prohibiting us from disclosing the subpoena to them. We refused. Sproul pointed out that we were perfectly within our rights to share the subpoena given the law and the wording of his own letter. Velamoor then suggested that Reason was “coming close” to interfering with the grand jury investigation. The call ended abruptly. …

Later that day, at approximately 5:35 pm ET, Velamoor sent Reason a gag order he had later secured blocking us from discussing the subpoena or the order itself with anyone outside of Reason, other than our attorney. …

Having already suggested that Reason might have interfered with a grand jury investigation, Velamoor contacted Sproul on the afternoon of Friday, June 5, in response to a letter from her explaining the commenters’ constitutional rights and laying out the timeline of Reason’s notification to them. Velamoor told her that he now had “preliminary information” suggesting that Reason was in violation of the court order. Sproul said we were not and asked for further information. Velamoor refused to give any specifics, saying simply that he was “looking into it further.”

So as of this point in the saga, Reason had been subpoenaed, we had been vaguely—and falsely—accused by a United States Attorney’s office of actions verging on obstruction of justice and contempt of court, and we were now told that we were being investigated further.

Be sure to read it all. White is outraged over the intimidation from the DoJ, especially given the specious claim that any of these comments represented a “true threat” in a legal sense. He calls it “the everyday arrogance of unchecked power”

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5. These guys never seem to get the numbers right in anything. The Chinese hackers were supposed to have gotten the info on 4.2 million Americans. But as with all the math this administration does, the numbers don’t add up. 

From TheWashingtonExaminer  “Approximately 18 million Americans reportedly had their personal records compromised when hackers attacked the Office of Personnel Management’s databases last year.

That number is exponentially bigger than the 4.2 million OPM first acknowledged earlier this month, and far more than the “up to 14 million” figure that began circulating after OPM acknowledged a second attack reached the sensitive information of not just current and former federal employees, but also of some people who simply applied to work for the federal government.

According to CNN, the larger number reflects family members of government workers who may have had their information stolen.”

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