Obama nominates a replacement for slain ambassador to Libya

March 14, 2013

Neil Munro
White House Correspondent

(The Daily Caller) - GOP senators are eyeing another opportunity to squeeze a few more facts from the White House about the jihadi attack in Libya last September that killed four Americans.

That’s because Obama has nominated a new ambassador to Libya, to take the place of Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed when he briefly visited the lightly protected diplomatic compound.

The appointee is a career State Department official, Ambassador Deborah Jones.

She has worked for decades in embassies throughout the Muslim region, in Syria, Abu Dhabi, Turkey and Kuwait. She was also a top-level policy officials in Washington from 2002 to 2004, and worked in the U.S. Embassy in the Christian-majority country of Ethiopia.

Her nomination has to be approved by the Senate, allowing GOP senators to delay her confirmation until the administration decides to reveal more details about the attack, and more information about its actions — and inactions — in the months prior to the hours-long attack.

The jihadi attack was clearly successful.

It publicly killed four Americans, and forced the closure of the diplomatic site in Western Libya. Since then, jihadi groups have been able to train and organize in Western Libya, and the Muslim country’s new government have been shown as either unwilling or too weak to arrest the attackers.

The attack also highlighted the weakness of the United States in the country, despite President Barack Obama’s use of U.S. airpower to destroy the previous secular dictatorship.

The announcement was made the same day that Libya’s prime minister, Ali Zidan, is being welcomed in D.C. by Secretary of State John Kerry. He’s also slated to attend meetings in the White House, where he’ll likely meet with Obama.

Obama meets with new advocacy group

March 14, 2013

The president urges on members of Organizing for Action, set up to back his second-term agenda. The group is pushing Congress from the outside, while Obama woos lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

President Obama speaks to members of Organizing for Action in Washington. (Mandel Ngan / AFP-Getty Images / March 13, 2013)

By Matea Gold, Washington Bureau

March 13, 2013, 9:33 p.m.

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday cemented his relationship with a new advocacy group set up to back his second-term agenda, underscoring the unprecedented role the nonprofit is playing as an outside arm of the White House.

In his first speech to Organizing for Action since its January launch, Obama urged former campaign donors, staff and volunteers to channel their resources and energy into the new entity.

"The only idea here that we're promoting is the notion that if the American people are speaking out, organized, activated, that may give space here in Washington to do the kind of work — hopefully bipartisan work — that's required," Obama said at the group's two-day "founders summit." "But in order to do that I'm going to need all your help."

Hours after courting House Republicans on Capitol Hill, the president said Congress also needed to be pressured from the outside.

"The politics of a lot of these issues are tough, and members sometimes are scared about making the right decisions," he told about 75 backers at a closed-door dinner at an upscale hotel two blocks from the White House. Among those in attendance was Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, an advisor and donor.

Although the White House has said the president would interact with Organizing for Action the same way he does with other supportive organizations, Obama's appearance put a spotlight on the group's unique position. Guided by his longtime aides, the organization is drawing on his campaign's data, technology and staff as it seeks to build a grass-roots force to back him on issues such as gun control, immigration reform and the budget.

"If Americans don't organize to support the issues they believe in, and if we don't help them do it, then lobbyists and special interests will drive Washington, just like they did for decades," Jim Messina, chairman of Organizing for Action and Obama's former campaign manager, told the gathering.

During his remarks, Obama said part of the impetus for the group was to avoid the mistake made after his 2008 campaign, when "some of that energy just kind of dissipated, and we were only playing an inside game."

It remains to be seen whether Obama's supporters will be effective on Capitol Hill.

The president's personal involvement will be key to keeping his 2.2 million campaign volunteers engaged, activists said. Sue Langley, a 64-year-old supporter from Vienna, Va., said that after seeing Obama speak, she would be able "to go back home and reassure our volunteers that he is going to be with us for the long haul."

Even as Organizing for Action ramps up plans to run sustained issue campaigns, which will start next week, it has come under fire for its ties to Obama and his former campaign operation.

Set up under Section 501(c)4 of the tax code as a "social welfare" organization, the group can raise unlimited sums and is already coordinating with the White House, as permitted by law.

Obama stayed for two hours at the Organizing for Action dinner, whose attendees included wealthy donors who had been asked to give $50,000 each. During meetings last month between the group's leaders and top campaign fundraisers, the idea was floated to name those who raise $500,000 a year to an advisory board that would meet quarterly with the president.

Campaign finance watchdogs have assailed the organization, arguing that it could serve as a conduit for special interests seeking to influence the administration. To blunt the criticism, Organizing for Action last week reversed its decision to accept money from corporations, a move that could severely hamper its fundraising.

On Wednesday, neither the president nor the group's leaders addressed the controversy directly. But David Plouffe, Obama's longtime political strategist, said in an opening speech that Organizing for Action "is something that should be celebrated, not criticized."

"Just the notion that there's millions of Americans that want to be part of these debates … that in my mind is reason enough to march forward," he said.

Officials said the group was a vehicle for average Americans to engage with their government.

"We are not a partisan organization," said Executive Director Jon Carson. "We are here to move this shared progressive agenda forward, and we will advocate to Democrats to move that forward, we will advocate to Republicans."

Obama noted that the group had been met with some "suspicion," but insisted that it was not created to boost Democrats in the 2014 midterm election.

"I actually just want to govern — at least for a couple of years," he said.

Still, there were no Democrats among the 13 lawmakers targeted in the group's first online ad campaign last month to pressure congressional Republicans to support universal background checks for gun buyers.

And as the group starts campaigns on gun control and the federal budget, it is sharing resources and strategy with organizations allied with the political left, such as the Center for American Progress, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union.

Democratic leaders said that by keeping Obama's supporters energized, the group would be a boon to the party.

"Organizing for Action is going to be involved in making sure we keep our grass-roots activists engaged, and then they will be turned loose on the campaigns in 2014 and help us win the majority in the House back," Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, told MSNBC this week.

Whether the pro-Obama group can harness its resources to shape the messy process of passing legislation remains to be seen. There are already signs that the group's campaign-style tactics could run at cross-purposes with a stepped-up White House effort to court GOP support for Obama's initiatives.

The group recently sent emails to supporters blasting congressional Republicans as obstructionists on the budget, even as Obama was reaching out to them to find what he calls a "common-sense caucus." Among those Obama has contacted are Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire — two of the lawmakers Organizing for Action has publicly pressured to support stronger gun control measures.


Copyright © 2013, Los Angeles Times

Coulter: Trouble in the Nanny State

March 14, 2013

Like the proverbial monkey typing for infinity and getting Shakespeare, Mayor Bloomberg’s obsession with reforming New Yorkers’ health has finally produced a brilliant ad campaign.

Posters are popping up in subway stations and bus stops giving statistics about teen pregnancy that show cute little kids saying things like, “Honestly, Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?” and “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.”

(Based on a recent CBS report, the kid could add, “Then again, I’m in the New York City public school system, so even if I graduate I won’t be able to read.”)

It’s one thing to stigmatize “Big Gulp” drinkers, but liberals are hopping mad at this attempt to stigmatize teen pregnancy, 90 percent of which is unwed. To put it another way, if you’re a New York teen with a distended belly these days, it had better be because you’re pregnant.

Planned Parenthood’s Haydee Morales complained that the ads are creating “stigma” and “negative public opinions about teen pregnancy.” (I’m pretty sure that’s the basic idea.)

Instead, Morales suggested “helping teens access health care, birth control and high-quality sexual and reproductive health education.” Like the kind they got before becoming pregnant, you mean? Are you new here, Haydee?

Coincidentally, Planned Parenthood happens to provide reproductive health care! Liberals act as if gun owners, soda-guzzlers and smokers are innocent victims of the gun, food and cigarette industries, but the $542 million-a-year birth control industry is a quarry of angels.

The New York Times’ Michael Powell explained in a column that, as a parent of teenagers, he’s learned that the stupidest thing to do is resort to “the shame-and-blame game.” Teenage pregnancy, he states categorically, is a “problem of poverty.”

I think we have a chicken-and-egg problem, but let’s stick to liberals’ newfound opposition to shaming campaigns.

Far from opposing stigmas, liberals are the main propagators of them — against cigarettes, guns, plastic bags, obesity, not recycling, Fox News, racist “code words,” not liking “Lincoln,” and junk food.

The stigma against smoking has gone so swimmingly that you can’t enjoy a little tobacco pleasure 50 yards from another human being without some bossy woman marching over and accusing you of poisoning her.

California is currently running a series of “Reefer Madness”-style anti-smoking ads, including one that shows cigarette smoke going from a woman outside on her porch, up a story, through the door of another apartment, across the living room, down the hallway and into a room where a baby is sleeping. That would be the equivalent of the Bloomberg ads claiming teen pregnancy causes genocide.

And what exactly was the purpose of the Journal-News publishing the names and addresses of every legal gun owner in various counties in New York state a few months ago? To congratulate them? To start a hunting club?

No, I believe it was to stigmatize legal gun owners. The fact that we didn’t already know who they were proved that the problem isn’t legal gun ownership. All those legal guns — and no rash of drive-by shootings!

Los Angeles has banned plastic bags at supermarkets, even though reusable canvas bags are portable bacterial colonies. But a little ad campaign describing the downsides of teenage pregnancy — which is still subsidized — and liberals howl in protest.

One begins to suspect that liberals aren’t as interested in stopping teenagers from having illegitimate kids as they claim. Do they believe a teenager who gets pregnant out of wedlock is harming herself and her child as much a teenager who smokes? How about an unwed teen who smokes at a landfill?

It’s only a “shame-and-blame game” when liberals secretly approve of the behavior they pretend to oppose.

Unwed mothers have been the perennial excuse for big government, going back to Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, who plotted in the 1960s to create broken families, welfare dependency and urban riots to pave the way for socialist revolution.

That’s why single mothers are revered victims — victims in need of an ever-expanding social safety net, staffed with well-pensioned government workers. As described in that great book, “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America,” liberals concoct fake victims in order to victimize the rest of us.

The only thing single mothers are “victims” of is their own choice to have sex with men they’re not married to. Liberals seem to believe that drinking soda is voluntary, but getting pregnant is more like catching the flu.

It would be hard to make the case that fast food, plastic bags and cigarettes do more damage than single motherhood.

Controlling for socioeconomic status, race and place of residence, the strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison is that he was raised by a single mother.

At least 70 percent of juvenile murderers, pregnant teenagers, high school dropouts, teen suicides, runaways and juvenile delinquents were raised by single mothers.

A study back in 1990 by the Progressive Policy Institute showed that, absent single motherhood, there would be no difference in black and white crime rates.

So liberals don’t try to make that case. They just say they’re against “shaming” and then go back to shaming gun owners, non-recyclers, smokers and “Big Gulp” aficionados — while subsidizing illegitimacy.

http://www.humanevents.com/2013/03/13/coulter-trouble-in-the-nanny-state/

Senate votes to OK gun for any school employee

March 14, 2013

Teacher or janitor could be designated to carry weapon

PHOENIX - State senators voted Wednesday to allow a teacher, administrator, custodian or even a cafeteria worker at rural and some suburban schools to be armed.

Sen. Rich Crandall, R-Mesa, said SB 1325 would improve student safety. He said while better mental-health screening and more police officers at schools are important, it is also necessary to provide schools with a "self-defense component."

Crandall joined with other Republicans to beat back an effort to require that whoever is designated to carry a gun must report to police if the weapon is lost or stolen. That brought derision from Sen. Steve Gallardo, D-Phoenix.

"The only reason that gun owners do not want to report they lost their gun or they misplaced it is because they're too embarrassed," Gallardo said. "They don't want people to know that they're an irresponsible firearm holder."

And Gallardo said that notice of an errant gun really should not be limited to police.

"At the very least, I would believe every parent would want to know that their child is going to a school that may have a gun roaming around," he said.

Crandall's legislation needs a final roll-call vote before going to the House.

The measure is limited to schools with fewer than 600 students that also are more than 30 minutes and 20 miles from the closest law-enforcement facility. He said the most isolated schools, like those in Crown King and Wikieup, are far too far away from anything to be able to depend on prompt police response.

The Republicans who control the Senate also killed an attempt by Gallardo to scale back the legislation so it would apply only to schools of fewer than 200. Crandall said larger schools need similar self-defense capacity, specifically mentioning the elementary and high schools in Elfrida.

But the Senate action may not be the last word. Rep. David Stevens, R-Sierra Vista, already has said he hopes to expand the scope of the legislation when the measure reaches the House.

Stevens had crafted a proposal to allow an armed teacher at all of the state's more than 2,000 public schools. But it was introduced too late to get a hearing of its own.

Crandall said his legislation is modeled after laws in Texas that give school districts similar permission to let school employees be armed.

Aside from the school size and location limits, the legislation says weapons either must be carried concealed by the designated employee or secured in a storage locker.

Senate Minority Leader Leah Landrum Taylor, D-Phoenix, questioned the whole premise of allowing a school board to decide whether one of its employees is qualified to be armed and potentially walking around the building with a loaded weapon.

But Senate Majority Leader John McComish, R-Phoenix, dismissed those concerns.

"Who better to decide than the local school board, elected by the local community?" he said. Ultimately, he said it will be up to the community, acting through the school board, that decides whether it wants any employee armed.

Gun-violence forum set for Saturday / A7

On StarNet: Go to azstarnet.com/politics to find out what your Legislature is doing.


http://azstarnet.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/senate-votes-to-ok-gun-for-any-school-employee/article_179e4225-8aef-59be-a12e-223cfc543dc9.html

How Your Retirement Package Compares to Members of Congress

March 14, 2013

While extending the payroll tax cut through the end of last year, members of Congress last fall took what many feel was a long overdue whack at the cost of their retirement plan. They bumped up the rate at which federal employees contribute to their pension plan, saving an estimated $15 billion over the next 11 years.

They also made sure that none of the increase applied to themselves. Anyone in service before the law went into effect would pay into the pension plan at the old rate.

For all the talk you hear from Capitol Hill about running government more like a business, Congress has a retirement plan that would make any Fortune 500 executive blush. Members can retire younger, having contributed fewer of their own dollars, than almost any worker in the country — even more than the generous terms other federal workers get.

At a time when traditional pensions are disappearing and many workers are struggling to save for retirement, the Federal Employees' Retirement System (FERS), an old-school defined benefit pension program, pays 215 former congressmen and women an average of $39,576, for an average of 16 years of service, according to a recent Congressional Research Service report.

That's about what the average private-sector worker makes in retirement from all sources after a lifetime of work, according to the Employees Benefits Research Institute. The average income that worker gets from a pension is about $8,800 — if they have one. In 2010, fewer than 15 percent of private sector employees were enrolled in a defined-benefit pension.

"It's not keeping pace with what's happening in the private sector," said Veronique de Rugy, a senior researcher with George Mason University's Mercatus Center. "It's not sustainable."

(Read More: Latest GOP Budget Is Ambitious, Unlikely to Pass)

It's inaccurate, in fact, to refer a single retirement plan, since any senator or representative elected after 1986 has access to three: Social Security, a 401(k) program that matches 5 percent of their contributions up to $17,500, and FERS, which as the name implies covers anyone paid from the federal till.

FERS alone is a plan any U.S. worker would envy. As Jim Kessler, co-founder of the think tank Third Way and a former congressional aide, said, "It's not wrong to have three plans, but the matching is one-to-one for two of them and the other [FERS] is one-to-14."

(Read More: Despite Gains, Many Still Cut Spending)

As a result, all federal employees get a return on their FERS contributions at a rate that's almost double what other workers do. (See chart.) But thanks to a faster accrual rate granted to elected employees—how fast the value of their benefits pile up—members of Congress even get a higher percentage payout on FERS for the same time served than other federal workers do.

According to calculations by Pete Sepp, executive vice president of the National Taxpayers Union, who has been tracking congressional benefits for decades, an executive branch employee with 10 years of service and who is retiring at age 62 this year would begin his pension at roughly $15,600. But a member of Congress of identical age, salary and service would begin at approximately $26,600, reflecting his higher contribution. But for his extra $11,000 in the first year's benefit, the lawmaker will have contributed only $8,350 more to the plan.

Defenders of the system point out that elected politicians have less job security than appointees like our executive branch workers. Sepp doesn't buy it. "Not only do you get a lot more in benefits for the extra you pay," he said, "but how many Cabinet secretaries stay in government for even eight years?"

Some critics say congressional retirement plans are not only too numerous and too generous, but the wrong kind. One of them is Republican Rep. Mike Coffman, who has put forward a bill with a fellow Coloradan, Democrat Jared Polis, that would end FERS.

"It makes no sense for Congress to continue to reward itself using taxpayer dollars, with a defined benefit plan when ... much of the country has moved to a defined contribution plan like a 401K," Coffman said in a statement earlier this year.

But as Washington is consumed with the sequester, the chances that Coffman and Polis' bill, or the $25 million we spend to support our congressional retirees, will get much notice. More pundits have teed off on the fact that our senators and representatives—the very people charged with averting the automatic cuts to the federal budget—are among the few federal employees who won't be touched by them.

Congress didn't enjoy plush pensions until 1946, when it was thought that a gold-plated plan would induce members to cede their seats to young men who had been galvanized by the war. But if the current deal is no longer gold-plated, said Sepp, "it's silver-plated, and it hasn't been attractive enough to get them rotated out of office."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100546584

The Military Doesn't Want You to See this Video

March 14, 2013





source: beforeitsnews

The Democrat's Family Tree

March 14, 2013

image: sodahead

You don't beat poverty by trapping families on welfare benefits, Archbishop

March 13, 2013

By Melanie Phillips

How very disappointing. It appears that the arrival of a new head of the Church of England has not managed to prevent the collective clerical knee from jerking in the same old way over the poor.

When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, there were high hopes that Dr Justin Welby would usher into the Church a new era of more rigorous thinking.

As a former oilman, he was thought to be more worldly than his predecessor, Dr Rowan Williams, who had come out tiresomely with one Left-wing political position after another.

Disappointing: When he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, there were high hopes that Dr Justin Welby would usher into the Church a new era of more rigorous thinking

Expectations that Dr Welby would be more in touch with the real world were further raised by the fact that he hailed from the Church’s evangelical wing, which subscribes to largely traditional attitudes.

In his first public comments in his new role, he did indeed display some mettle by reaffirming his opposition to gay marriage, a stance which suggested he had the courage and character at least to stand up to politically correct intimidation.

Yet at the weekend, Dr Welby backed a protest by a number of Anglican bishops who said that, in its welfare reforms, the Government was abandoning the poor.

In line with attempts earlier this year by the senior clergy to scupper the Government’s flagship Welfare Reform Bill, a letter signed by 43 bishops condemned its plans to cap benefit rises for those out of work at one per cent for three years.

The bishops claimed this would have a deeply disproportionate impact on families with children.

Their letter read like a press release from the Children’s Society. It sounded the kind of boilerplate activist rant which the welfare lobby produces with such monotonous regularity.

It did not seem to have occurred to these bishops to question any of the Children’s Society’s assumptions — such as that welfare is always good, and those who want to restrict it always bad.

The charity says, for example, that children should not be financially punished for the ‘choices’ made by their parents.

Welby was thought to be more worldly than his
predecessor, Dr Rowan Williams, who had come out
with one Left-wing political position after another

But since so many households contain children, that argument has been advanced over and over again to give adults a free pass for selfish or anti-social behaviour — which is then subsidised and incentivised courtesy of the opened welfare spigot. It is tantamount to using children as hostages for a moral and social free-for-all.

Now, with around half the population receiving some kind of social security benefit, it is vital to get public spending under control.

As the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has said, it cannot be right for some people to be receiving more in benefits than the average family’s take-home pay of £26,000 per year. This is merely the level at which the new welfare cap will be imposed. Yet from the outrage of the welfare lobby and its clerical shock-troops, you’d think the Government was proposing the contemporary equivalent of the slaughter of the first-born.

What is so offensive is the false contrast this lobby draws between, on the one side, supposedly heartless ministers abandoning the poor to destitution and, on the other, people of conscience and principle (themselves).

But the idea that Mr Duncan Smith, of all people, is motivated by anything other than Christian compassion is demonstrably absurd.

Famously, his views were transformed by what he saw in the poverty-stricken Glasgow neighbourhood of Easterhouse.

For there, he witnessed not just material but also — and much more important — spiritual poverty. And what he understood from this was that the Welfare State had created a dependency culture which, far from liberating the poor, enslaved them.

Of course the truly needy required financial help. But what would mostly lift the poor out of disadvantage, he realised, was to help them change their behaviour.

Which is why Mr Duncan Smith places so much emphasis on making it more profitable to work than to live on welfare.

For his part, Archbishop Welby claimed that only by protecting children from the effects of the welfare reform could politicians help fulfil their commitment ‘to end child poverty’. It is very unfortunate that he did not support Mr Duncan Smith instead.

A change of emphasis: To his enormous credit, Mr Duncan Smith plans to redefine the measures of poverty to take into account factors such as family breakdown, debt, addiction and education

One of the greatest tragedies for poor people is the way in which, for decades now, poverty has been politicised by those pushing a Left-wing agenda. At some point it was redefined by a mechanistic formula which said everyone receiving less than half the average income was poor.

At the same time, children’s principal need was redefined as enough money coming into their households. This deflected attention from their truly overwhelming need, which is wherever possible to be brought up by both their parents. As a result, lone parenthood was subsidised instead.

The baleful result of all this was to institutionalise both permanent poverty and mass fatherlessness — and to create a welfare industry which relies upon the perpetuation of poverty for its own employment, and which accordingly opposes any reform that may reduce welfare dependency.

To his enormous credit, Mr Duncan Smith plans to redefine the measures of poverty to take into account factors such as family breakdown, debt, addiction and education.

What is needed is moral leadership. That emphatically does not mean subscribing to the prevalent view that people are merely the hapless victims of circumstances - an extreme Left-wing position

If anything cries out for a moral lead, this is surely it. And there was a time when the Church well understood this, when, out of a deep reverence for human dignity, it led the great 19th-century reform movements that tackled such evils as illegitimacy, prostitution, or drunkenness.

In recent years, the Anglican Church has seen attendances falling away as it has seemed to replace worship of God by worship of the state, and substituted social protest for religious faith.

By contrast, the evangelical churches whose faith is uncompromising and whose social attitudes reflect the morality of Scripture are packing worshippers into the pews.

It is imperative that Archbishop Welby does not repeat the performance of his predecessor who turned the Church into the Labour Party at prayer. From his earlier writings, it seems that Dr Welby is all too well aware that his principal challenge is to reverse the haemorrhaging of his flock.

What is needed above all is moral leadership. That emphatically does not mean subscribing to the prevalent view that people are merely the hapless victims of circumstances. That is an extreme Left-wing position which is fundamentally amoral, since it assumes that people do not have the capacity to change their behaviour for the better.

Tackling poverty is indeed a moral imperative. But there is nothing remotely moral about trapping people in permanent disadvantage.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Archbishop of Canterbury were to say something like this: ‘Wealth is not immoral. On the contrary, it should be spread to as many as possible to enhance their lives. To achieve that, however, people must take responsibility for their own actions and their consequences.

‘Of course, the truly needy must be given financial help. But if people are subsidised to live in idleness or moral squalor, more and more will be trapped in disadvantage and their very humanity will be destroyed.

‘Tragically, that is what we have all been doing for too long. Now it has got to stop.’

If the Church were to deliver such a message, it would truly assist the poor, begin to arrest the decline of our fractured society — and breathe new life into the Church itself.

The country is crying out for such spiritual and moral leadership. Dr Welby has a great opportunity. It would be such a pity if this current row closed it off.


Source: UK Daily Mail

Broadcast Networks Ignore Kwame Kilpatrick Conviction; PBS Fails to Report Party Label

By Paul Bremmer
March 13, 2013

(NewsBusters) - Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (D) was convicted yesterday on 24 separate federal corruption charges, which could cost him up to 20 years in prison. However, ABC, CBS, and NBC could not be bothered to even mention the conviction of this disgraced ex-mayor of a major, blighted American city on their nightly news programs.

Perhaps they were busy with what are clearly weightier matters. Monday’s NBC Nightly News, for example, found time to mention Justin Timberlake’s recent appearance on Saturday Night Live, the ten worst places to retire in America, and the plight of penguins in Antarctica.

The CBS Evening News and ABC World News both broadcasted from the Vatican and focused most of their attention on the pending election of the next pope. But even when they got around to other news, there was not a peep about Detroit’s ex-mayor.

PBS, to their credit, did mention Kilpatrick on the NewsHour. However, the story was condensed into a 25-second blurb and stuffed into the “Other News of the Day” segment. What’s more, PBS failed to mention that Kilpatrick is a Democrat. Here is the news brief, narrated by Hari Sreenivasan:

"Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted today on 24 counts of racketeering and other federal corruption charges. Witnesses in the five-month trial said Kilpatrick steered city contracts toward a friend for a share of the spoils. He also used political donations and a non-profit fund for personal spending. Kilpatrick could get 20 years in prison. He already served 14 months in an unrelated obstruction of justice case."

Kilpatrick’s political career has been a mess of corruption, scandal, indictments, and prison time. One would think he would be a national laughingstock by now -- especially given that he's the son of a former congresswoman -- and if he were a Republican, he may very well have become one of the most ridiculed men in America. But because of the “D” that follows his name, the liberal media hold back on the venom, opting instead for either the kid gloves treatment or complete silence.   

Justice Dept.: Racial disputes abound in voting section, but no partisan slant

March 13, 2013
By Jerry Seper

(Washington Times)  -   Deep ideological divisions within the Justice Department’s voting rights section fueled disputes harmful to its operation and often evolved into the harassment of its employees and managers, but there was “insufficient evidence” to show that either the Bush or the Obama administration used the enforcement of voting laws to seek improper partisan advantage, the agency’s inspector general said Tuesday.

The long-awaited report, spawned by the New Black Panther Party voter harassment investigation, was released as Assistant Attorney General Thomas E. Perez, who oversees the section, is being considered for appointment by President Obama as labor secretary.

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz’s 258-page report outlines concerns by section employees that attorneys could not pursue cases against black defendants for the benefit of white victims, and located emails in which current and former voting section attorneys criticized and mocked Christopher Coates, the section chief, for his work in a discrimination case in Mississippi against a black official who used fraud and lawlessness to discriminate against the white minority.

One email sent to four former voting section attorneys after the Mississippi complaint had been filed referred to Mr. Coates as a “klansman.” Another section employee wrote in an email that those who “fought and died” for the Voting Rights Act were “rolling over in their graves with that perversion of the act … im sorry, but [White people] are NOT covered for a reason.”

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, immediately called on Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to appoint an outside panel to conduct a review of all officials and correct the systemic dysfunction within the division. He said the report “validates concerns” he first raised in 2009 about the “politicization and inappropriate activities” within the civil rights division, including the dismissal of the New Black Panthers voter intimidation case.

“The report makes clear that the division has become a rat’s nest of unacceptable and unprofessional actions, and even outright threats against career attorneys and systemic mismanagement,” Mr. Wolf said Tuesday. “Above all, I believe that Attorney General Holder has failed in his leadership of this Justice Department.

“As the head of the department, he alone bears ultimate responsibility for the serious abuses that occurred on his watch over the last four years,” he said.

The report said polarization within the voting rights section had been exacerbated by the question of whether voting rights laws that were enacted in response to discrimination against blacks and other minorities also should be used to challenge allegedly improper voting practices harming white voters.

Views on this question among many employees within the section were sharply divergent and strongly held, the report said, noting that disputes were ignited when the division’s leadership decided to pursue particular cases or investigations on behalf of white victims, and more recently when division leadership stated that it would focus on “traditional” civil rights cases on behalf of racial or ethnic minorities who have been the historical victims of discrimination.

“We also found that some career employees in the voting section contributed significantly to the atmosphere of polarization and distrust by harassing other career employees due at least in part to their political ideology or for positions taken on particular cases,” Mr. Horowitz said, noting that the behavior included outward hostility, snide and mocking emails, and accessing the attorney’s electronic documents on the voting section shared drive without his permission.
In a written response to the report, Mr. Perez said the Justice Department “takes very seriously” any allegations of harassment, mistreatment, unauthorized disclosure of internal information, and other unprofessional conduct, adding that “a number of troubling incidents” in the inspector general’s report “have no place in the department, and we have taken steps to prevent similar incidents from recurring.”

“We acknowledge, as your report notes, that voting rights enforcement is a particularly important area in which to assure professionalism and impartiality, and we recognize the need to continue taking additional steps to maintain and strengthen the culture of the Voting Section and to foster a work environment that is as collegial and healthy as possible,” said Mr. Perez, who heads the department’s civil rights division.

‘No direct evidence’

The report found “no direct evidence,” such as emails or memoranda, to show laws were enforced in a discriminatory manner or to establish a policy prohibiting cases against black defendants or in support of white victims.

“We found that people on different sides of internal disputes about particular cases in the voting section have been quick to suspect those on the other side of partisan motivations, heightening the sense of polarization in the section,” Mr. Horowitz said. “The cycles of actions and reactions that we found resulted from this mistrust were, in many instances, incompatible with the proper functioning of a component of the department.”

The IG focused on accusations that voting section employees were harassed for participating in specific investigations or prosecutions. There also were questions about what types of cases were being investigated, whether there had been changes in enforcement policies and procedures, and whether civil rights laws were being enforced in a non-discriminatory manner.

The investigation was requested in September 2010 by Mr. Wolf and Rep. Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, who asked the inspector general to examine the enforcement of voting rights laws in the wake of the department’s handling of a civil rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party.

Glenn A. Fine, who preceded Mr. Horowitz as inspector general, could not investigate the Black Panther case since it had been turned over to the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, but he said he would examine the overall enforcement of voting rights laws within the civil rights division. That examination culminated in Tuesday’s report.

The office’s investigation of the New Black Panther incident, made public in March 2011, said Justice Department attorneys did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment in their handling of the case by dismissing three defendants, who were accused in January 2009 of intimidating voters with racial insults, slurs and a nightstick at a Philadelphia polling place.

The Office of Professional Responsibility said it “found no evidence” that the decision to dismiss the case against the New Black Panther Party and two of its members was “predicated on political considerations.”

Section chief review

Tuesday’s report noted that there were “serious discussions among senior leadership in the division and the department about removing Mr. Coates as section chief, at least in part because of a belief that Mr. Coates had a “very conservative view of civil rights law” and wanted to make “reverse-discrimination” cases such a high priority that it would have a negative impact on its ability to do “traditional” cases on behalf of racial and language-minority voters.

But the report said there was no evidence Mr. Coates had declined to implement the decisions or policies of the new administration at the time of this effort, despite his admittedly conservative views and his acknowledged willingness to pursue “reverse-discrimination” cases.

Division leaders also believed, based in part on complaints from career employees, that Mr. Coates was a flawed manager and a divisive figure whose removal would improve the functioning and morale of the section, the report said. Ultimately, it said, Mr. Coates requested and was granted a transfer out of the division.

In a March 2011 report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which also investigated the New Black Panther Party case, Mr. Coates said that based on his “own personal knowledge of the events surrounding the division’s actions in the Panther case and the atmosphere that existed and continues to exist in the division and in the voting section against fair enforcement of certain federal voting laws,” he did not believe the Justice Department had been truthful in telling the commission about its handling of the New Black Panther Party case.

He also said the Justice Department explanations did not “reflect the hostile atmosphere that existed within the division for a long time against race-neutral enforcement of the Voting Rights Act.” He said the presidential election victory of Barack Obama allowed those most opposed to “race-neutral enforcement” to move into leadership positions at the civil rights division. One of those officials, then-acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King, ordered the dismissal of the New Black Panther case.

J. Christian Adams, lead prosecutor in the New Black Panther case, testified before the commission that Justice Department officials instructed civil rights division attorneys to ignore cases that involved black defendants and white victims. He said that “over and over and over again” the department showed “hostility” toward those cases.

Mr. Adams, who left the department after the Black Panther case was dismissed, said Justice had “abetted wrongdoing and abandoned law-abiding citizens.”

The inspector general’s report said that many of the career and political employees involved in the most troubling incidents have since left the department and are no longer subject to administrative discipline.

Mr. Coates, a veteran Justice Department section chief who had recommended going forward on the civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party, transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina. New Black Panther Party members had disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 elections, one of whom intimidated would-be voters with a nightstick.

Mr. Smith and Mr. Wolf had raised concerns regarding the dismissal of the civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party, but also sought a review of broader allegations regarding the civil rights division’s enforcement of federal voting rights laws. They focused on “potential improprieties” in the department’s dismissal of the complaint brought against the New Black Panther Party after its members disrupted the Philadelphia polling place.

Recess Appointments Ruling to Be Appealed

March 13, 2013
By CHARLIE SAVAGE
New York Times

Terence F. Flynn’s appointment to
the National Labor Relations Board
is among those at issue.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has decided that it will appeal to the Supreme Court a sweeping ruling by an appeals court in January that President Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate in making three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board last year.

While the dispute grew out of a narrow and novel legal question — whether brief “pro forma” sessions by the Senate could prevent the president from making recess appointments during a lengthy winter break by lawmakers — the appeals court blew past that issue and called into question nearly two centuries of recess appointments by presidents of both parties.

The three-judge panel of the appeals court in Washington ruled that presidents may bypass the confirmation process only during the sort of recess that occurs between formal sessions of Congress, rather than other breaks throughout the year. The gaps between formal sessions generally arise just once a year and sometimes — as in 2012, when the Senate had not formally adjourned before the next session began — are skipped entirely.

Two of the three judges on the panel also ruled that presidents may fill only vacancies that arise during that same recess. Together, the reasoning would virtually eliminate the recess appointment power for future presidents at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to obtain up-or-down Senate votes on nominees.

Partisan views on the issue are volatile. In the fairly recent past, Democrats have argued against the validity of appointments in the middle of a session, and Republicans have supported them.

In 1993, after President George Bush made a recess appointment just before leaving office, the Senate legal counsel developed a friend-of-the-court brief for a legal challenge to the appointment, arguing that it was invalid because it did not come between sessions.

The Senate majority leader at the time, George Mitchell, Democrat of Maine, wanted to file the brief in the lawsuit on behalf of the Senate, but the minority leader, Bob Dole of Kansas, blocked him from doing so. The case was later resolved on different grounds.

And in 2004, after President George W. Bush, during a weeklong break in the midst of a Senate session, made a recess appointment of William H. Pryor Jr. to be an appeals court judge, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, filed briefs in several court cases challenging the appointment. Mr. Kennedy also sent letters to each of the judge’s fellow jurists warning them that any ruling they might make with him on the bench could be invalid.

The Bush administration and conservative groups defended Judge Pryor’s appointment, and the appeals court on which he served later upheld its validity even though the appointment was not made between sessions. The Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal. Three lawyers who helped work on legal challenges to Judge Pryor’s appointment — Laurence H. Tribe, Martin Lederman and Ronald Weich — later became officials in the Justice Department during Mr. Obama’s first term.

Now, however, it is the Obama administration that is arguing for those same recess appointments in the face of a ruling celebrated by conservatives. An official familiar with the deliberations said that lawyers at the White House and the Justice Department, including the White House counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, and Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., had been meeting to discuss strategy with the labor board lawyers.

One option was to petition the full United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to rehear the case, hoping that at least one of the judges might write a dissenting opinion that could put more formal analysis before the Supreme Court to counter the ruling. In the end, however, the officials decided that such a move would only delay a resolution that both businesses and labor unions are anxious to have.

The current dispute traces back to the end of the George W. Bush administration, when Democrats in the Senate, seeking to prevent recess appointments over its breaks, developed the tactic of sending a senator into the nearly empty chamber every three days to bang the gavel. That act was deemed a pro forma session that carved the longer adjournment into a series of short ones, considered too brief for recess appointments.

Then, in 2011, after Republicans took over the House, they used their power under the Constitution to refuse to let the Democratic-controlled Senate adjourn for more than three days.

But in January 2012, Mr. Obama challenged the tactic, calling the pro forma sessions a sham and appointing the three members of the labor board, Sharon Block, Terence F. Flynn and Richard Griffin, as well as Richard Cordray to be the director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Mr. Obama has made fewer recess appointments than recent predecessors. But his pronouncement that a president got to decide whether the Senate was in session led many conservatives and some liberals to accuse him of an unconstitutional power grab.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 13, 2013, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Recess Appointments Ruling to Be Appealed

Obama Supporter Buyback Program: U.S. Will Provide Millions More in Storm Aid for New York

March 13, 2013

By JENNY ANDERSON

The federal government has agreed to spend an additional $436 million to repair dunes, beaches and sea walls in coastal communities in New York that were hammered by Hurricane Sandy, officials announced on Tuesday.

Four projects that had previously been authorized but never completely financed will now receive full federal support through the hurricane relief bill, which was signed in January, according to Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York.

Mr. Schumer said he was able to obtain the additional money for the state by persuading the Army Corps of Engineers and the Office of Management and Budget to loosen the restrictions on the projects.

The $51 billion emergency aid package passed by Congress authorized the federal government to finance 65 percent of these projects.

The state and local communities would have been responsible for the other 35 percent of the projects, which have been under consideration for years. Now, the federal government is paying the entire $1.2 billion cost.

The projects include dune protection for several miles of oceanfront in Long Beach and other localities in Nassau County; hurricane protection and beach erosion control along Fire Island; and beachfront repairs in Brighton Beach, Coney Island and other parts of Brooklyn, as well as in the Rockaways in Queens.

“These are some of the most important projects in New York and you might even argue in the country in terms of protecting heavily populated areas from storms,” Senator Schumer, a Democrat, said. “They have been held up for decades — the Long Island one for 50 years — for lack of funding.”

The projects are in various stages, and some are dormant. For example, a Congressional committee passed a resolution requiring a feasibility study for the Long Beach project in 1986. A decade later, the Water Resources Development Act authorized construction of the project.

But local concerns and further study prevented the project from ever being started.

The wording change that shifted the entire cost to Washington came in the form of an additional one-paragraph definition. An Army Corps of Engineers report identified four categories of construction: built, under construction, repair and restore.

But after negotiations with Senator Schumer, the corps added a new category: “completion of ongoing construction,” which included any authorized corps project that had received construction-account funds in the previous three fiscal years.

Since New York State requested that assessments be made to restart the Long Beach project last year, it could be categorized as ongoing construction.

“If these projects had been completed when they should have been, we would have suffered much less damage,” Senator Schumer said. “This is not sand replenishment. This is real damage control.”

source: new york times

Matthews: ‘If You Waterboard Cheney,’ We would Learn Real Reasons For Iraq War

March 13, 2013
by Noah Rothman

MSNBC host Chris Matthews scoffed at a guest on Tuesday who suggested that conservatives were beginning to come around to the notion that President George W. Bush “mismanaged” the war in Iraq.

Matthews fumed at the suggestion that the war was just poorly managed. He said that if former Vice President Dick Cheney was subjected to waterboarding, he would confess that even Bush administration officials knew they were justifying that war based on a false pretense.

In an interview about the legacy of the Bush presidency for the Republican Party, Bush’s Brain author Wayne Slater told Matthews that he had recently attended a dinner with a group of orthodox conservatives who he said are no longer reflexively defensive about the Iraq War.

“These are very strong, Republican conservatives coming around to the view that the Bush administration mismanaged the war,” Slater said.

“Mismanaged?” Matthews challenged. “What a dodge that is.”

“This mismanaged thing – [they] went to war on false pretenses that they didn’t even believe were the reason they went to war,” he continued. “If you waterboard Cheney, he ain’t going to say weapons of mass destruction. He’s gonna say, ‘I wanted to get Iraq, and I saw my chance.’”

Watch the clip below via MSNBC:





source: Mediaite

'Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah': Outrage over 'racist' ad campaign launched in San Francisco

March 13, 2013

Ads will run on 10 San Francisco buses for next month

Paid for by American Freedom Defense Initiative, but were condemned by city officials

Sparks debate between free speech and hate speech

By Beth Stebner

Several anti-Islamic ads featuring the photographs and quotes of Osama bin Laden, the Times Square Bomber, and the alleged Fort Hood shooter have caused outrage in San Francisco after their release today.

The ads, which will run for the next month, are featured on 10 buses in the Bay Area and have caused a stir in the community, sparking a fierce debate between free speech and hate speech.

The ads were paid for by the American Freedom Defense Initiative. One of the spots contains a quote attributed to Hamas, the militant Islamic group, and reads: ‘Killing Jews is worship that brings us closer to Allah.’

Controversial: A month-long campaign paid for by the the American Freedom Defense Initiative will be featured on 10 of San Francisco's buses for the next month; here, the same campaign in Chicago

Strongly worded: Similar ads appeared in the Washington D.C. Metro stations featuring former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Ladin

Another ad features Osama bin Laden’s explanation of why he decided to take down the Twin Towers on 9/11. ‘The first thing we are calling you to is Islam,’ the quote reads.

It is accompanied by a picture of the former Al Qaeda leader, who was killed in a covert operation a year and a half ago.

Yet another shows would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad and says how jihad involving ‘weaponry’ is an ‘obligation and duty in Islam on every Muslim.’

Beliefs: Pamela Geller serves as the president
of AFDI and has launched several ad campaigns

San Francisco civil officials and Arab and Muslim leaders alike were quick to denounce what they said was ‘racist’ and offensive ads.

District Attorney George Gascon told the Associated Press today that the ads were ‘offensive’ and ‘serve no purpose than to denigrate our cities Arab and Muslim communities.’

Mayor Ed Lee added, 'San Francisco is a city that celebrates its diversity and hateful speech and discrimination against our Arab and Muslim communities will never be tolerated.'

Board of Supervisors president David Chiu was expected to introduce a resolution on Tuesday condemning the ads.

Condemned: Officials have spoken out against the campaign, which also features Major Nidal Malik Hasan, M.D., a U.S. Army psychiatrist who is the sole suspect in the 2009 Ft Hood shootings

Similar ads have appeared on transit systems in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Portland, Oregon.

The group ran similar ads in San Francisco in August and has also posted ads in New York City, including one in September that called enemies of Israel 'savages.'

Officials with San Francisco's Municipal Transportation Authority believe a First Amendment court decision protecting freedom of speech means it must accept the advertising.

As it did last summer, the transit agency plans to give the $5,000 paid for the ads to the city's Human Rights Commission to study the impact of discrimination on San Francisco's Islamic communities and run its own ads against discrimination.

Convicted: Another ad features would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad

AFDI executive director Pamela Gellar said in a statement Tuesday that Americans ‘need to understand the threat they’re facing,’ adding: ‘That is the point of our ads. The slaughter of Christians in Nigeria, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Algeria, et al… Hundreds of thousands dead, but it would be blasphemy to talk about.’

Messages sent to Geller by MailOnline were not immediately returned.

The AFDI ‘Jihad Awareness Campaign’ that has raised just over $1,200 of a $50,000 goal.

Gellar has also been outspoken on the controversial building of a mosque blocks away from Ground Zero.


source: UK Daily Mail 

Exclusive: Baucus Bashes Fellow Democrat Murray over Budget

March 13, 2013
by Matthew Boyle



(Breitbart.com) - Senate Democrats are infighting on the eve of the release of Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray’s budget, Breitbart News has exclusively learned.

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, slammed Murray on Tuesday evening through a spokesperson. A Baucus spokesperson told Breitbart News that the Montana Democrat believes Murray’s decision to include what The Hill’s Erik Wasson describes as “reconciliation instructions on tax reform, a move that could allow the budget, which cannot be filibustered in the Senate, to become the legislative vehicle for a tax reform bill,” will be catastrophic for tax reform efforts.

“He [Baucus] does not think the budget reconciliation process works from a policy perspective when it comes to comprehensive tax reform,” a Baucus spokesperson told Breitbart News. “Every provision needs to have a score and reconciliation would kill the possibility of doing any tax code simplification.”

Nonetheless, Murray is supposedly moving forward with that idea, as Politico has confirmed.

A spokesperson for Murray has not responded to Breitbart News’s request for comment in response to Baucus’s spokesperson's comments.

The KKKrazy Glue That Holds the Obama Coalition Together

March 13, 2013

by Steve Sailer

We are constantly told that the GOP is doomed because it’s the party of straight white men. That may well be true, but few have asked: How can the diverse Democrats hold together? How can special interests as different as blacks and gays be kept in sync?

The answer appears to be: The Obama coalition can stay together only by stoking resentment—and, indeed, hatred—of straight white men. This naked animus is rationalized by projecting the hate felt by the victorious Democrats onto the losers:

We hate straight white Republican men because…they are so full of…uh…hate. Yes, that’s the ticket: We hate them because they are hateful. No, wait, I mean, we hate them because they are hate-filled. They’re practically Ku Klux Klanners.

To service this Hunger for Hate, the prestige press assiduously generates the Democratic Party’s KKKrazy Glue by whipping up fear and loathing over hate crimes, even when they didn’t technically happen.

Last week we were solemnly informed of a one-man KKK rally at Oberlin College. (Apparently it was a lady in a blanket.)

Then the top story on washingtonpost.com last Friday evening was the “mysterious” murder back on February 26th of Marco McMillian. He was a black gay candidate for mayor of Clarksdale in Mississippi, a state with a “dark history of racial brutality,” as the Post helpfully reminded.

A hate crime, right? It’s Mississippi, so what else do you need to know? Clearly, a gang of homophobic redneck Christians had hunted down with their AR-15s the gay black activist bravely challenging Clarksdale’s white power structure. No doubt, County Sheriff Bull Connor III then covered it up, which must be why it’s still big news in the Washington Post a week and a half later.

Thus, a recent Google News search found 1,750 hits for “Marco McMillian” and “hate crime.”

Except for…well, except for everything.

First, the sheriff of Coahoma County, Charles Jones, is black.

And McMillian was running against a local black political dynasty. Clarksdale has had a black mayor for 20 of the last 24 years, Henry Espy. You might vaguely recognize the Espy name because Henry is the brother of Mike Espy, who was Bill Clinton’s first Secretary of Agriculture. One favorite in the race is the mayor’s son Chuck, who just resigned from the Mississippi legislature to run.

As mentioned in countless blues songs—Clarksdale is home to Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” where Highway 49 and Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 intersect—the Mississippi Delta is a poor place. Thus, political jobs are sharply contested. The Espy family has spent much time in court on corruption charges but always seems to come out on top.

(The 34-year-old McMillian had himself already figured in a financial scandal when he had been executive assistant to the president of Alabama A&M University. Improprieties in his pay led to the downfall of his boss.)

The New York Times, which embarrassed itself in its initial Oberlin assault-blanket story, actually did a reasonable job of hinting back on February 28th that the dead man’s family was suspicious of the local black power structure:

…the police said they had no reason to suspect that his death was a hate crime.…“I believe it was political,” said one family member.…“Maybe some people didn’t want him to run. Maybe he was a threat. They wanted Clarksdale to stay the same.”

The Times didn’t mention the race of who wants things to stay the same in Clarksdale, but it did link to the hereditary leaders’ pictures:

With the exception of a four-year period during the 1990s, the town has been led since 1989 by Mayor Henry Espy, who has announced that he would not seek another term. Those vying to succeed Mr. Espy include his son, Chuck Espy, a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives.

But how many journalists can be bothered to click on links before hyping their favorite obsession: white hatred and homophobia in Dixie? Very few, apparently.

The bereaved family then issued a press release claiming that the victim had been “beaten, dragged and burned (set afire).” These words triggered a Pavlovian media mania, complete with stock references to the dragging death of James Byrd in Texas and the beating death of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming. (Texas, Wyoming, and Mississippi…why, they all voted for Romney!)

On March 5th, the Times tried to quell the hysteria with another surprisingly responsible story:

A Mississippi mayoral candidate who was found dead last week was not killed by being beaten, burned or dragged, the coroner said on Tuesday, challenging a statement from the victim’s family that the official said was misleading.

But that only had a modest dampening effect on the flames of press hatred.

The most striking thing about McMillian’s “mysterious” murder is its lack of mystery. There’s no need for conspiracy theories because the killer, a poor 22-year-old black man named Lawrence Reed, confessed last month. The cops didn’t even know the missing man was dead until Reed crashed the victim’s stolen SUV on February 26th, then confessed where he’d stashed the body. The auto accident, which might have been an attempt at suicide, happened moments after Reed, who had become friendly with McMillian at a Clarksdale bar, told female friends that he’d strangled the politician with his wallet chain.

That’s about as open-and-shut a case as there is. (The killer’s precise motivation will no doubt be argued over at the trial. Carjacking? Thelma & Louise-style rape resistance? Gay lovers’ quarrel?) But London’s Daily Mail had the black killer’s picture on February 28, more than a week before the Washington Post splashed the story.

One of the reasons the national media keeps making ever-stupider mistakes about local police-blotter items is that pragmatic wisdom about human beings is increasingly demonized as stereotyping. For example, there’s a two-word phrase that ought to have occurred to journalists when thinking about a case involving an affluent 34-year-old gay and a poor 22-year-old, and it’s not “hate crime.” Instead, it’s “rough trade.” But that term seems to have disappeared from public consciousness for being “homophobic” (i.e., not on GLAAD’s Approved List).

When my wife and I owned a condo in Chicago two decades ago, we suddenly started running into strung-out young men on our building’s interior staircase. Who was buzzing in 19-year-olds in black leather? And why?

We figured out that our upstairs neighbor, a fat, middle-aged, effeminate white corporate comptroller, had developed a taste for rough trade.

That’s not extremely rare. Some affluent gay men are fascinated by poor young men of a more masculine demeanor. The Wikipedia article explains:

Often the attraction for the gay male partner is finding a dangerous, even thuggish, partner who may turn violent.

Not surprisingly, bad things sometimes happen to wealthy gays who like to be alone with brutish yobs.

It wouldn’t have been terribly startling if my neighbor’s hobby of trading drugs for sex with barely legal boys had wound up getting him murdered. (I’m glad one of the hustlers he let into our building didn’t break into our condo.) The comptroller’s health soon failed, requiring a colostomy, and he sold his apartment to two male flight attendants who proved to be a wealth of stylish decorating tips.

In the Marco McMillian-Lawrence Reed case, the phrase “rough trade” should have gone off like an alarm in reporters’ heads back in February.

But the concept of rough trade has largely been prodded down the memory hole for the last 15 years. Thus, a Google News search for “Marco McMillian” “rough trade” brings up zero pages.

What happened to this useful concept? When the well-to-do Matthew Shepard left a bar with two meth-heads who were out looking to rob somebody to get a fix, the media hive-mind immediately decided to turn it into an iconic lesson about hate crimes rather than the felony murder it actually was.

Camille Paglia had the bad taste to point out about the Shepard murder:

It used to be called “rough trade”—the dangerous, centuries-old practice of gay men picking up grimy, testosterone-packed straight or semi-straight toughs.

She was excoriated for doing so. And most pundits have less courage than Paglia. So say goodbye to the notion of “rough trade.” As Orwell pointed out in the appendix to 1984, reducing our vocabularies benefits those with political power by making us all stupider.

source: TakiMag

Man Who Waterboarded Kids Has Been Sentenced to 2 Years of Probation

March 13, 2013

A man from Jefferson County, Montana has entered a plea agreement in a case in which he has been accused of waterboarding four children.

42-year-old William Albert Province pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of the kids, The Independent Record writes. On Friday, March 9, the District Court in Boulder, Province found him guilty on four misdemeanor counts.

Waterboarding is a practice in which one person gives the other the feeling that they are drowning, by pouring water on their face while putting a cloth over their mouth and nose.

It has been banned for CIA troops who used it in Guantanamo Bay, Missoulian reports. While a cloth is used to obstruct the person's breathing in the army, Province used his hands to cover his two sons' face and mouth as he tried to teach them survival skills.

“Bill described it as a learning experience for them,” said a witness who walked in on him. He had reportedly applied the same practice with two other local boys.

Province had also made threats to a local school and the foster parent of one of his sons, according to the same witness' testimony.

“When he gets back on Wednesday, he is going to the school, the CPS office and the foster parent’s house and he will take care of everything and everyone,” he allegedly told the child.

While the witness indicated that he possessed assault rifles and armor-piercing ammunition, police could only find body armor on him.

He was initially charged with felony intimidation for making said threats, but the charge was dropped. In return for his admission of guilt in the simulated drowning case, a felony count of partner and family member assault was also dropped.

He was arrested at Helena Regional Airport in December, and has already served 80 days in jail. District Judge James B.

Wheelis awarded him a suspended sentence of 2 years in total, 180 days for every count for which he was found guilty.

source: softpedia

GOP Ready To Cave On Gun Control

March 12, 2013

By Herschel Smith

(Captain's Journal) - Ammoland has two extremely depressing reports. We already knew that Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan were pretend conservatives with plans to cave on universal background checks. This first report makes it sound even worse.
[The] Republican Majority Leader is leading the charge to cut a deal with President Obama.

The following are just some of the threats to innocent school children and our God-given 2nd Amendment liberties that Republicans are about to shove down our throats:

1.The NRA is cutting backroom deals to centralize gun owner data collection into the Obama/Holder massive government data base.

A centralized system is less costly to fight and far more lucrative for the NRA to appear to be “fixing“.

Like all establishment political lobbies the key to their job security is assisting in making problems they end up being called upon to “fix“.

2. Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor is leading the charge to give Obama and Holder what they want in exchange for appearing to be “fixing” the problem of innocent children being butchered in our public and private schools.

3. Newly appointed Republican Judiciary Chairman, Bob Goodlatte R-VA 6th District, is providing political cover for the sneaky back room gun control deals and gun grabbing sell outs that his political masters - – John Boehner and Eric Cantor – - are cutting with Obama and his corrupt Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Political insiders have confirmed to me, that Goodlatte earned his brand new chairmanship by ignoring the constitutional demands and grievances of every Republican Unit Chairman in his own 6th district.

And for the second report.

You might think that with Republicans in control of the US House of Representatives there would be no way ANY gun control legislation could reach the floor.

But sadly we are already beginning to see so-called “conservative champions” folding to pressure from the anti-gun media to sell-out gun owners.

Former Vice Presidential candidate, Congressman Paul Ryan, has stated that he would support legislation that bans private sales at gun shows.

In the House, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, along with the help of Rep. Scott Rigell (VA), Patrick Meehan (PA) and others, have stated openly that they will work together with anti-gun Democrats from Maryland and New York to tighten restrictions on private firearms sales and expand background checks.

Possibly even more upsetting has been Senator Tom Coburn’s willingness to work alongside anti-gunner Chuck Schumer (NY) to propose “bi-partisan” anti-gun legislation in the Senate.

Make no mistake, so-called “expansion” of background checks is little more than a blatant attempt by anti-gunners to register all firearms and gun owners in America.

That is why Representatives Steve Stockman (TX-36) and Paul Broun (GA-10) have drafted a letter to Speaker Boehner and the Republican leadership urging them to require the support of the majority of Republican members in the House before bringing any anti-gun bills to the floor.

This so-called “Hastert Rule” would mean that 117 Republicans would have to support a particular bill before it had any chance of getting a floor vote, not just the support of the anti-gun elitist in leadership.

Such political ploys would be unnecessary if the GOP weren’t filled with such weasels. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these reports, but I have followed Cantor and Ryan for a while now on firearms freedoms and gun rights, and it doesn’t surprise me in the least.

It’s fascinating that the GOP leadership would be willing to sacrifice their careers on the altar of political correctness. And it will cost them their careers. I don’t know how else to say it other than to keep repeating myself. The gun owners who recently waited in lines for three or more hours to pay exorbitant prices for guns were not repeat buyers (long time gun owners like me already had most of the firearms we wanted and so we are purchasing ammunition now). They were first time buyers.

I’ve watched them at the ranges. I have overheard their conversations, I have watched them at the gun stores and gun shows. I have heard their relatively ignorant questions (not ignorant because they’re stupid, but because they’re in the process of learning). They are not us. We already have guns. These are new gun owners. The polls they are trotting out to show the number of gun owners decreasing are all lies.

I don’t know whether the questions aren’t being honestly answered or what other source there could be for the error. But the polls are in error. Don’t believe them. And as for older gun owners like me, and even the newer gun owners like I have monitored for the past half year, we have made it clear with our voices and wallets. No new gun laws. None. Period. Not one more inch. Not one.

Is this so hard to understand? Note to legislators. Tread carefully. Don’t cross lines from which there is no return.