Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Thursday, December 19, 2013

PWNT COMIX: The Snowden Effect

Biff Spackle emails:


The NSA reports that Snowden stole 1.7 million classified documents. Although it's not clear that anyone really knows how much he took at this point.

And, yes, in case you hadn't heard: Target Stores suffered a major security breach that has compromised up to 40 million consumer credit cards.


AWESOME NEWS: Obamacare "Navigators" Can Email Your Private Data to Their Home Computers

Guest post by Chris Butler

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Suppose an Obamacare navigator in Tennessee gathered all your confidential information and emailed it to his or her home computer — and then claimed he did it only because he wanted to work from home.

Would you go along with that story?

Conceivably, that Obamacare navigator could have used that information for any number of criminal activities, including selling your Social Security information to others.

While there are no known instances of it happening thus far, the scenario isn’t as far-fetched as you might think — considering what happened in Nashville this week.

A former Tennessee Department of Treasury employee allegedly sent an email to his home computer containing the private information of 6,300 active Metro Nashville teachers, state officials said.

Steven Hunter emailed the information to a computer that was unencrypted, said Treasury spokesman Blake Fontenay.

“All indications are that he sent the information to his personal email to work on a computer at home,” Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Kristin Helm told Tennessee Watchdog on Wednesday.

“From the forensic analysis of that computer by TBI agents, the information does not appear to have been disseminated. At this time, the TBI’s investigation is still open and will be turned over to the District Attorney General for review when completed to determine how to proceed.”

State officials explicitly trained Hunter not to do that, Fontenay said.

The Treasury first employed Hunter in July, but he resigned last week, Fontenay said.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

JUDGE SLAMS HHS: Your Regulations Do Not Trump the Constitution

Guest post by Investor's Business Daily

Health Reform: In yet another legal blow to the president's signature law, a federal judge rules that its contraceptive mandate does not trump Catholic groups' right to exercise their religious liberty and conscience.

Religious liberty advocates and First Amendment defenders are cheering the stunning decision by U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan in New York that promises to speed up the unraveling of ObamaCare. Cogan not only found that the Health and Human Services (HHS) regulation that requires health insurance to include contraceptive coverage was constitutionally questionable, he actually forbade HHS from enforcing it.

As the New York Post details, in ruling on the lawsuit, Cogan decided that the plaintiffs "demonstrated that the mandate, despite accommodation, compels them to perform acts that are contrary to their religion. And there can be no doubt that the coercive pressure here is substantial."

Most prior lawsuits have focused on the law's constitutionality. Cogan's ruling deals with its regulatory enforcement based on the phrase "the secretary shall determine" that appears in the Affordable Care Act no fewer than 1,005 times. This ruling essentially says that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cannot enforce a mandate that Congress did not approve and that she cannot unilaterally decide what the First Amendment means or whether it is rendered irrelevant by her edicts.

In other words, regulations do not trump the Constitution.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

A Quiet Rage Building Across the Nation

Guest post by Richard Larsen

Earlier this week I posted a graphic on my FaceBook wall that stated, “All across America a quiet rage is building against the assault upon American values. More so than ever in the history of America, the concerns and patience of its people are being tested, tried, and attacked by a group of elitists that are hell-bent on the destruction of this country.” It then ended with the phrase, “Refuse to remain silent!”

The post elicited responses by some who concurred with the sentiment, and some who didn’t. The posting afforded a teaching moment about what the right of the political spectrum feels about the “fundamental transformation of America” that has been occurring for several years, but accelerated dramatically over the past five.

Some were upset that the term “rage” was used, and thought it improper to be enraged toward those who’re dismantling our republic. But in a politico-cultural context, emotions like anger and rage can be a powerful motivator, especially in regard to values, convictions, and ideals that are violated and impinged upon.

Likewise, those of us who treasure America as the land of the free and the home of the brave, see contemporary statists, those who are actively engaged in expanding centralized governmental authority at the expense of personal liberty, as adulterators and enemies of freedom.

They are “fundamentally transforming America” into a fiercely potent centralized government that was never intended for this republic; a fascist police state that, regulates, coerces, bullies, and spies on its citizens. And they have done it surreptitiously, clandestinely, and dishonestly. How any thinking person, who professes love for America, can accede to the destruction of American idealism perpetrated by those who have a stated objective of “fundamentally transforming” the nation is beyond my comprehension!

INFLATION: Keeping It Real

Guest post by Jim Quinn

The BLS reported the CPI this morning. They tell me that inflation is well contained and has only risen by 1.2% in the past twelve months. Our beloved Federal Reserve chairman is worried inflation is too low. It is fascinating that the only people worried about inflation being too low are Ivy League educated economists and bankers whose wealth depends upon the middle class sinking further into poverty. As a person who lives in the real world, I can honestly say I like it when the things I need to buy cost less today than they did last year. When did inflation become a good thing for the average American? Our country was somehow able to grow from a fledgling new country to a world power in just over a century while experiencing mild deflation, except during times of war. The fallacy that inflation is beneficial to the common man has been peddled by bankers since 1971 when Nixon and his cronies closed the gold window and unleashed the inflationary boogeyman in the form of feckless politicians, captured Keynesian academics, and greedy soulless bankers.

It is no coincidence inflation accelerated the moment politicians, academics and bankers were unleashed to spend your money at will in order to obtain votes, Nobel prizes in economics, and ill-gotten obscene levels of wealth. David Stockman described Nixon’s dreadful sellout of the American people in his brilliant new book:

“Nixon’s estimable free market advisors who gathered at the Camp David weekend were to an astonishing degree clueless as to the consequences of their recommendation to close the gold window and float the dollar. In their wildest imaginations they did not foresee that this would unhinge the monetary and financial nervous system of capitalism. They had no premonition at all that it would pave the way for a forty-year storm of financialization and a debt-besotted symbiosis between central bankers possessed by delusions of grandeur and private gamblers intoxicated with visions of delirious wealth.” -David Stockman – The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America

The USD has lost 83% of its purchasing power since 1971. The moment Nixon began playing politics with the USD and bullied the Federal Reserve Chairman into pumping up the money supply prior to the 1972 election, the inflation genie got out of the bottle and led to the miserable stagflation of the 1970′s. It took extreme measures by Paul Volcker to get it back under control in the early 1980′s. Since Volcker we’ve had nothing but academics and toadies who have chosen to change the definition of inflation in order to mislead the average American regarding how badly they are getting screwed. Every refinement, tweak, adjustment, or revision to the calculation of CPI has been designed to produce a lower figure. Why control inflation when you can just change the calculation to suit your purposes?

Over the proceeding decades, the BLS has sliced and diced the CPI in such a way that they can make it say whatever TPTB want it to say. They need to keep the mushrooms (you) in the dark regarding your standard of living deteriorating, while the beneficiaries of inflation (bankers, politicians) see their standard of living soaring. They have made hedonistic “adjustments”, quality “adjustments”, substitution “adjustments” and geometric weighting “adjustments”, all with the sole purpose to reduce the level reported to the American people on a monthly basis.

Monday, December 16, 2013

No, really: guess who's helping the Democrats recruit interns.

Oh, dear is right:


Yeah, they went there:


Here ya' go: fixed it for ya'.


"Un self-aware" indeed.



DEMOCRAT LOGIC COMICS: RINO Misdirection Edition

Priorities:


Looks like John Edwards was right: there really are two Americas.

There's the Beltway ruling class. And the rest of us.


Note: Our long-serving intern Biff Spackle has his own Twitter feed: @BiffSpackle. Not that we're endorsing following him, mind you. Just in the interest of full transparency. Like the most transparent administration ever.

Sunday, December 15, 2013

"What happened on Thursday... will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration"

Avik Roy of Forbes is one of the unsung heroes in the battle against Obamacare. His latest article -- "Government Takeover: White House Forces Obamacare Insurers To Cover Unpaid Patients At A Loss" -- outlines the increasingly frenzied thrashing of an administration that is operating completely outside the boundaries of the Constitution.

Of all of the last-minute delays, website bungles, and Presidential whims that have marred the roll-out of Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges, what happened on Thursday, December 12 will stand as one of the most lawless acts yet committed by this administration. The White House—having canceled Americans’ old health plans, and having botched the system for enrolling people in new ones—knows that millions of Americans will enter the new year without health coverage. So instead of actually fixing the problem, the administration is retroactively attempting to force insurers to hand out free health care—at a loss—to those whom the White House has rendered uninsured. If Obamacare wasn’t a government takeover of the health insurance industry [before], then what is it now?

On Wednesday afternoon, health policy reporters found in their inboxes a friendly e-mail from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announcing “steps to ensure Americans signing up through the Marketplace have coverage and access to the care they need on January 1.” Basically, the “steps” involve muscling insurers to provide free or discounted care to those who have become uninsured because of the problems with healthcare.gov.

HHS threatens to throw non-complying plans off the exchanges

HHS assured reporters that it would be “urging issuers to give consumers additional time to pay their first month’s premium and still have coverage beginning January 1, 2014.” In other words, urging them to offer free care to those who haven’t paid. This is a problem because the government has yet to build the system that allows people who’ve signed up for plans to actually pay for them. “One client reports only 15 percent [of applicants] have paid so far,” Bob Laszewski told Charles Ornstein. “So far I’m hearing from health plans that around 5 percent and 10 percent of consumers who have made it through the data transfer gauntlet have paid first month’s premium and therefore truly enrolled,” said Kip Piper.

“What’s wrong with ‘urging’ insurers to offer free care?” you might ask. “That’s not the same as forcing them to offer free care.” Except that the government is using the full force of its regulatory powers, under Obamacare, to threaten insurers if they don’t comply. All you have to do is read the menacing language in the new regulations that HHS published this week [PDF], in which HHS says it may throw otherwise qualified health plans off of the exchanges next year if they don’t comply with the government’s “requests.”

...There are other services HHS is asking insurers to offer for free. The administration is “strongly encouraging insurers to treat out-of-network providers”—i.e., costly ones—“as in-network to ensure continuity of care” and to “refill prescriptions covered under previous plans during January.” But the issue of unpaid premiums looms largest.

It’s unconstitutional to force insurers to cover people for free

The administration could pay insurers to cover up for its mistakes. But that would lead to criticism—as it has in other instances—that the White House is lawlessly throwing taxpayer money at insurers to, well, cover up for its mistakes. So, instead, they’re asking insurers to pay for the mistakes.

But, of course, the cost of paying for those mistakes won’t end up being paid by insurers, but by consumers, in the form of higher premiums.

In theory, the Obama administration’s actions aren’t merely illegal—they’re unconstitutional. The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights says that no one can “be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

But it will be up to insurers to sue to protect their rights. Like battered wives, they are unlikely to do so. Companies like Aetna and Humana are so terrified that the administration will run them out of business that they are more likely to do what they’re told, and quietly pass the costs on to consumers. The chaos and recriminations have made insurers like UnitedHealth, who have largely stayed out of the exchanges, look smart.

In 2010, PolitiFact said that the claim that Obamacare was a “government takeover of health care” was its “lie of the year.” The Federal Register disagrees.

So as the long list of Obama administration scandals continues to expand -- seemingly every day -- what are the Republican leaders doing?

You guessed it: allowing Democrats to destroy the spending caps ("the sequester") that had been promised for 10 years... just two years ago.

Oh. And passing Amnesty for illegal immigrants.

It's time to vote out every fake Republican. Find out when your primary is and start working to support the most conservative candidate you can in your local race. It's time. November is coming.


Hat tip: BadBlue Money News.

Democrat Logic Comics: Chicago Crime Edition

Chicago is number one!

I love the libnards who say that Chicago is only violent because of the lax gun laws in surrounding cities and states. Would those be the same cities and states where gun crime is a fraction of that in Chiraq?


Fun With Socialized Medicine: the Comic Book

It just keeps getting better and better. Obamacare, that is.


Obamacare isn't so much a law -- considering that it's continually rewritten by the Executive Branch -- as it is an amorphous TripTik to single-payer.


Saturday, December 14, 2013

OH, THE HUMANITY: Warmal Colding Strikes Syria

I wonder how the climate grifters like Michael "Piltdown" Mann will explain Earth's slow, inevitable slide into global cooling? You know, caused by the one factor the Climategate kooks forgot to countenance? You may know it as the "Sun":


Quick! Someone find fat-boy some tree rings -- I hear they taste like onion rings!


14 Experts Predict Economic Catastrophe for 2014 and Beyond

Guest post by Michael Snyder

Some of the most respected prognosticators in the financial world are warning that what is coming in 2014 and beyond is going to shake America to the core. Many of the quotes that you are about to read are from individuals that actually predicted the subprime mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis of 2008 ahead of time. So they have a track record of being right. Does that guarantee that they will be right about what is coming in 2014? Of course not. In fact, as you will see below, not all of them agree about exactly what is coming next. But without a doubt, all of their forecasts are quite ominous. The following are quotes from Harry Dent, Marc Faber, Gerald Celente, Mike Maloney, Jim Rogers and nine other respected economic experts about what they believe is coming in 2014 and beyond...

-Harry Dent, author of The Great Depression Ahead: "Our best long-term and intermediate cycles suggest another slowdown and stock crash accelerating between very early 2014 and early 2015, and possibly lasting well into 2015 or even 2016. The worst economic trends due to demographics will hit between 2014 and 2019. The U.S. economy is likely to suffer a minor or major crash by early 2015 and another between late 2017 and late 2019 or early 2020 at the latest."

-Marc Faber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report: "You have to say that we are again in a massive financial bubble in bonds, in equities, in [other] asset prices that have gone up dramatically."

-Gerald Celente: "Any self-respecting adult that hears McConnell, Reid, Boehner, Ryan, one after another, and buys this baloney… they deserve what they get.

And as for the international scene… the whole thing is collapsing.

That’s our forecast.

We are saying that by the second quarter of 2014, we expect the bottom to fall out… or something to divert our attention as it falls out."

Thursday, December 12, 2013

SO SCAWY: Issa Issues Stern Warning #642 to Administration for Obstructing Congressional Investigators

Oh, I'm certain the Obama administration is absolutely terrified of House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa. At last count, Issa is trying to orchestrate 162 separate investigations. So what's one more?

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa sent a stern warning to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Wednesday night: Obstructing a congressional investigation is a criminal offense.

At issue are the “attempts by the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit contractors working on HealthCare.gov from cooperating with congressional investigators,” and Issa informed Sebelius in a letter that this obstruction is criminal.

“The Department’s hostility toward questions from Congress and the media about the implementation of Obamacare is well known,” Issa wrote... Issa called out an HHS instruction to a HealthCare.gov contractor, Creative Computing Solutions, Inc., to not comply with the Oversight Committee’s request for documents...

“The Department’s most recent effort to stonewall, however, has morphed from mere obstinacy into criminal obstruction of a congressional investigation,” he said.

And, despite all of the obstructions, the gun-running to Mexican drug cartels, the Americans left to die in Benghazi, the politicization of the IRS, the wiretapping of reporters, and numerous other impeachable offenses, House leadership refuses to form a Select Investigative Committee.
 

I get the distinct impression that John Boehner and Darrell Issa have no interest in getting to the bottom of these high crimes and misdemeanors.

I leave the reasons as an exercise for the reader.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.

FIRST AMENDMENT? WHAT FIRST AMENDMENT? FCC to interrogate local news media to ensure appropriate content

The hard left Democrat Party despises free speech and every sunrise seems to bring new proof.

The Obama administration, like some sort of tinpot dictatorship, has created its own propaganda broadcasts, restricted press access to the president, seized phone records of 100 Associated Press reporters, wiretapped others, and publicly excoriated or banned media outlets that offered unfavorable coverage of the White House.

Now the next phase of the Obama administration's totalitarian scheme has begun, as Tim Cavanaugh describes.

It is, among other things, a thinly disguised attack on conservative talk radio.

The Federal Communications Commission is planning a broad probe of political speech across media platforms, an unprecedented move that raises serious First Amendment concerns.

The FCC’s proposed “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs,” which is set to begin a field test in a single market with an eye toward a comprehensive study in 2014, would collect a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview.

The airwaves regulator would also subject news producers in all media to invasive questioning about their work and content.

A methodology (PDF) worked up by Silver Spring, Maryland-based Social Solutions International (SSI) says that in addition to its general evaluation of news content, the survey will include a “qualitative component” featuring interrogations of news organization owners, management and employees.

Among the questions federal contractors will be asking of private media companies... [f]or media owners:

“What is the news philosophy of the station?”

For editors, producers and managers:

...“Who decides which stories are covered?”

For reporters:

“Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers (viewers, listeners, readers) that was rejected by management?” (Followup questions ask the reporter to speculate on why a particular story was spiked.)

According to a May article in Communications Daily, Social Solutions International will be paid $917,823 for the study, which also questions news consumers about their habits and numerically codes news content according to how well, in the FCC’s view, it meets the “critical information needs” (CIN) of particular “communities.”

FCC Chairwoman "Mignon Clyburn" (yes, that's her name and she is related -- I'm sure -- to the far left, perma-politician James Clyburn) claims that "...the FCC has a duty to make sure that the industries it regulates serve the needs of the American public no matter where they live or what financial resources they have..."

Wrong, Filet. The FCC is to abide, first and foremost, by the Constitution. You have no -- zero -- right to interfere with media companies.

“In this study, the FCC will delve into the editorial discretion of newspapers, web sites and radio and TV stations,” Hudson Institute Fellow Robert McDowell, who served as an FCC commissioner from 2009 to 2013, told The Daily Caller. “This starts sticking the government’s nose into what has traditionally been privileged and protected ground. Regardless of one’s political stripes, one should be concerned.”

I urge all media outlets to refuse to cooperate with the FCC.

Our free speech rights aren't subject to the whims of these Marxist hacks.

Every single media outlet should reject the FCC's intrusive interrogatories on constitutional grounds.


Hat tip: Mark Levin.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

About those "devastating" cuts to the food stamp program...

Let's ignore the fact that we are told incessantly we're in an economic recovery, yet the food stamp program keeps exploding.

And let's ignore the fact that, by some estimates, more than half of the food stamp program is wasted on fraud and criminal activity.

Let's ignore the fact that you can buy food stamps on Craigslist and every social media site known to man (and some scientists have yet to discover). And let's ignore the notion that you can walk into liquor stores in some neighborhoods and pay with food stamps. No, let's put all of that aside.

As Mike Shedlock explains, the entire program is poised to crash, which makes the Democrats' bleating whines about draconian cuts all the more ludicrous. But, then again, that's why they're Democrats.

Please note that the alleged $40 billion in cuts is really only $4 billion in a close to $80 billion program. They arrive at $40 billion by multiplying $4 billion by 10 years ... The cuts then are $40 billion in an $800 billion program. And I actually doubt we will ever see those "cuts" in the first place.


  • SNAP benefits more than doubled between 2000 and 2007.
  • Between 2007 and 2013 snap benefits went up another 150%.
  • Trendline growth would have annual benefits at about $32.5 billion.
  • Instead benefits are more than double.
  • Liberals are whining about a 5% cut when a cut to the trendline would be a 50% cut


  • Participation is nearly double what it was in 2007.
  • Participation in 2013 is 275% of the 2001 total.

...Supposedly a 5% cut is draconian.

The Problem

  • Growth in the number of participants is on an unsustainable trend. 
  • Growth in benefits per person is also on an unsustainable trend.
  • Multiply the two together and you get the first chart.

As is typical with government programs, there is no incentive by the administrators to eliminate waste or fraud.  ... The more funding for food stamps, the bigger the salaries and staffs of the administrators.

I suggest that we need a way to provide necessary safety-net benefits while simultaneously providing an incentive to get off the program and get a job.

I repeat my proposal...

  • Prohibit food stamp purchases of potato chips, snacks, soft drinks, candy, pizza, frozen foods of any kind except juice.
  • Limit food stamp users to generic (store brand vs. name brand) dried beans, rice, peanut butter, pasta, fresh vegetables, fresh fruit, frozen (not bottled) juice, canned vegetables, canned soup, soda crackers, poultry, ground beef, bread, cheese,
    powdered milk, eggs, margarine, and general baking goods (flour, sugar, spices).
  • Calculate a healthy diet based on current prices, number in the family, ages of recipients, and base food stamps allotments on that diet.
  • In the interest of health and cleanliness, expand the food stamp program to include generic soap and laundry products.

My proposal will not only lower the cost of the food stamp program, the resultant healthier diets would lower Medicaid and Medicare costs as well.

Moreover, my proposal would give people a strong incentive to get off the food stamp program without intrusive, costly big-brother ideas like drug-testing which cannot possibly work...

Let me put this in terms even progressives can understand: either the economy is recovering, in which case we can slash food stamps... or we're still in the Obama Depression.

Which is it, dimwits?


Charts: Tim Wallace. Related: How we lost the "War on Poverty".

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

ATF Caught Using Felons, Teens, and the Mentally Handicapped to Systematically "Manufacture" Gun Crimes

Charles C. W. Cooke, writing at National Review, describes the latest appalling ATF scandal:

Since the president was reelected in November of last year, a good deal of poison has been poured into Washington’s grimy alphabet soup. Among the departments that have become embroiled in scandal are the IRS, the DOJ, the DOE, the EPA, the NSA, the USDA, and, of course, the ATF. This week, the lattermost is back in the news — and for good reason.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is probably best known these days for the failure of its disastrous Fast and Furious scheme — a botched initiative that aimed to give American guns to Mexican cartels first and to ask questions later. Under pressure, the administration was quick to imply that the mistake was an aberration. But a watchdog report, published last week by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, suggests that the caprice, carelessness, and downright incompetence that marked the disaster was no accident. In fact, that it is endemic in the ATF.

After a bungled sting attracted the suspicion of the Milwaukee press earlier this year, reporters started to examine similar enterprises in the rest of the country. What they found astonished them. Among the tactics they discovered ATF agents employing were using mentally disabled Americans to help run unnecessary sting operations; establishing agency-run “fronts” in “safe zones” such as schools and churches; providing alcohol, drugs, and sexual invitations to minors; destroying property and then expecting the owners to pick up the tab; and hiring felons to sell guns to legal purchasers. Worse, perhaps, in a wide range of cases, undercover agents specifically instructed individuals to behave in a certain manner — and then arrested and imprisoned them for doing so. This is government at its worst. And it appears to be standard operating procedure.

As with Fast and Furious, the primary objective of the ATF’s stings seems not to be to fight a known threat but instead to manufacture crime. Across the country, the agency has set up shops in which it attempts to facilitate or to encourage illegal behavior, and it has drafted citizens into the scheme without telling them that they were involved. It is fishing — nonchalantly, haphazardly, even illegally. And the consequences can go hang.

Some of the stories are heartrending. Tony Bruner, a convicted felon with an IQ of 50, was hired in Wichita to work at “Bandit Trading,” a fake store that agents had established as a front. Bruner didn’t realize that he was working for the ATF — he thought he had finally found a steady job. But the agents knew how valuable Bruner could be to them, recognizing immediately that he was disabled (or “slow-headed,” in one agent’s unlovely phrase) and that he would therefore be easy to manipulate. Having established his trust, agents asked Bruner to find guns for them, which he agreed to do...


The Journal Sentinel investigation is worth reading in its entirety. Some of the low-lights:

■ Agents in several cities opened undercover gun- and drug-buying operations in safe zones near churches and schools, allowed juveniles to come in and play video games and teens to smoke marijuana, and provided alcohol to underage youths. In Portland, attorneys for three teens who were charged said a female agent dressed provocatively, flirted with the boys and encouraged them to bring drugs and weapons to the store to sell.

■ As they did in Milwaukee, agents in other cities offered sky-high prices for guns, leading suspects to buy firearms at stores and turn around and sell them to undercover agents for a quick profit. In other stings, agents ran fake pawnshops and readily bought stolen items, such as electronics and bikes — no questions asked — spurring burglaries and theft. In Atlanta, agents bought guns that had been stolen just hours earlier, several ripped off from police cars...

■ Agents pressed suspects for specific firearms that could fetch tougher penalties in court. They allowed felons to walk out of the stores armed with guns. In Wichita, agents suggested a felon take a shotgun, saw it off and bring it back — and provided instructions on how to do it. The sawed-off gun allowed them to charge the man with a more serious crime.

Perhaps House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa could open up a formal inquiry into the almost unbelievable misbehavior of the ATF.

That is, if it doesn't impact the 42 other investigations he's "working on".


37 Reasons the Media is Lying to You About a "Recovery"

Guest post by Michael Snyder

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it." Sadly, that appears to be the approach that the Obama administration and the mainstream media are taking with the U.S. economy.

They seem to believe that if they just keep telling the American people over and over that things are getting better, eventually the American people will believe that it is actually true. On Friday, it was announced that the unemployment rate had fallen to "7 percent", and the mainstream media responded with a mix of euphoria and jubilation. For example, one USA Today article declared that "with today's jobs report, one really can say that our long national post-financial crisis nightmare is over." But is that actually the truth? As you will see below, if you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent. There has been absolutely no employment recovery. The percentage of Americans that are actually working has stayed between 58 and 59 percent for 51 months in a row. But most Americans don't understand these things and they just take whatever the mainstream media tells them as the truth.

And of course the reality of the matter is that we should have seen some sort of an economic recovery by now. Those running our system have literally been mortgaging the future in a desperate attempt to try to pump up our economic numbers. The federal government has been on the greatest debt binge in U.S. history and the Federal Reserve has been printing money like crazed lunatics. All of that "stimulus" should have had some positive short-term effects on the economy.

Sadly, all of those "emergency measures" do not appear to have done much at all. The percentage of Americans that have a job has stayed remarkably flat since the end of 2009, median household income has fallen for five years in a row, and the rate of homeownership in the United States has fallen for eight years in a row. Anyone that claims that the U.S. economy is experiencing a "recovery" is simply not telling the truth. The following are 37 reasons why "the economic recovery of 2013" is a giant lie...

#1 The only reason that the official unemployment rate has been declining over the past couple of years is that the federal government has been pretending that millions upon millions of unemployed Americans no longer want a job and have "left the labor force". As Zero Hedge recently demonstrated, if the labor force participation rate returned to the long-term average of 65.8 percent, the official unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#2 The percentage of Americans that are actually working is much lower than it used to be. In November 2000, 64.3 percent of all working age Americans had a job. When Barack Obama first entered the White House, 60.6 percent of all working age Americans had a job. Today, only 58.6 percent of all working age Americans have a job. In fact, as you can see from the chart posted below, there has been absolutely no "employment recovery" since the depths of the last recession...

#3 The employment-population ratio has now been under 59 percent for 51 months in a row.

#4 There are 1,148,000 fewer Americans working today than there was in November 2006. Meanwhile, our population has grown by more than 16 million people during that time frame.

Monday, December 09, 2013

Former Federal Prosecutor Makes Ironclad Case for Impeachment

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy was in rare form on Saturday and his NRO op-ed is worth reading in its entirety.

...The Constitution assumes that the different branches of government will protect their institutional turf. That is, the Framers calculated that, faced with a Democratic president who usurps legislative prerogatives, a Democratic congressman would see himself, first and foremost, as a congressman. Valuing the duties of his office over party loyalty, he would join with other legislators to rein in executive excess.

Today’s Democrats, however, are less members of a party than of the movement Left. Their objective, like Obama’s, is fundamental transformation of a society rooted in individual liberty and private property to one modeled on top-down, redistributionist statism. Since statism advances by concentrating governmental power, Democrats — regardless of what governmental branch they happen to inhabit — rally to whatever branch holds the greatest transformative potential. Right now, that is the presidency. Thus, congressional Democrats do not insist that the president must comply with congressional statutes. Laws, after all, must be consistent with the Constitution to be valid, and are thus apt to reflect the very constitutional values the Left is trying to supplant. Democrats want the president to use the enormous raw power vested in his office by Article II to achieve statist transformation. If he does so, they will support him. They’ll get back to obsessing over the “rule of law” if, by some misfortune, the Republicans someday win another presidential election.

...Impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. Thus the quasi-legal component — proving high crimes and misdemeanors — is the easy part. As a practical matter, fundamental transformation cannot occur without high crimes and misdemeanors being committed against the constitutional order that is being transformed. That’s the whole point.

So, as one would expect, President Obama is intentionally and sweepingly violating his oath of office. He is not faithfully executing federal law — he picks, chooses, “waives,” and generally makes up law as he goes along. He has willfully and materially misled the American people — his Obamacare and Benghazi lies being only the most notorious examples. He has been woefully derelict in his duty to protect and defend Americans overseas. His administration trumped up a shameful prosecution (under the guise of a “supervised release violation”) against a filmmaker in order to bolster the “Benghazi massacre was caused by an anti-Muslim video” charade...

...His administration has used the federal bureaucracy to usurp Congress’s legislative powers and to punish political enemies. Obama has presumed to make recess appointments when Congress was not in recess. His administration intentionally allowed firearms to be transferred to Mexican drug cartels, predictably resulting in numerous violent crimes, including the murder of a Border Patrol agent. His administration — and, in particular, the Justice Department — has routinely stonewalled lawmakers and frustrated their capacity to perform agency oversight, to the point that the attorney general has been held in contempt of Congress. The Obama Justice Department, moreover, has filed vexatious lawsuits against sovereign states over their attempts to vindicate their constitutional authorities (and, indeed, to enforce federal immigration laws), while the Justice Department itself adheres to racially discriminatory enforcement policies in violation of the Constitution and federal civil-rights laws.

This is not an exhaustive list of Obama abuses, but you get the idea. If the only issue were commission of high crimes and misdemeanors, the Constitution requires only one for impeachment — not the Obama pace, which is more like one per week.

But here is the important thing: High crimes and misdemeanors are a subordinate consideration. In an impeachment case, they are necessary but they are not close to being sufficient. Because impeachment is a political remedy, its most essential component is the popular political will to remove a president from power.

...As things now stand, the public is not convinced. There is no political will to remove the president...

...Absent the political will to remove the president, he will remain president no matter how many high crimes and misdemeanors he stacks up. And absent the removal of the president, the United States will be fundamentally transformed.

As the pro bloggers say, read the whole thing.

But if impeachment isn't today an option, are there other alternatives?

Writing at The Black Sphere, J. Andrew Peak suggests that there are.

In the age of reality television, what better than a trial of a president?

The People vs. Barack Obama should be held in two phases... The first phase could be a televised, one hour, grand jury indictment for each matter: Obamacare fraud during passage, its ongoing rewriting and the disparate application thereof; Benghazi; Fast and Furious; IRS scandal; NSA scandal; corruption, etc., etc., etc. If a true bill was returned by the grand jury so impaneled, that single matter would be referred to trial and docketed for a later date. If not, the case on those individual counts would be dismissed.

At trial both sides could be given a finite and equal time, wherein they could enter facts into evidence, give short openings and brief summations and provide oral arguments. Perhaps each affirmative count returned by the grand jury could itself be a two hour television special, broadcast on the weekend, with a brief discovery of public knowledge beforehand and a vetting of facts “in chambers” prior to trial.

Each “trial” could be conducted in a combination of both “mock” and “moot” fashion where an impartial panel of jurors was seated, facts heard, issues presented, the jury appropriately charged and a single poll of the jury taken. A simple majority carries the issue.

...Admittedly, these trials would have no force of law. Nor would they be legally binding. But they would serve two very important functions.

First they would act as an explanation to, and education of, the people. They would serve to inform the populace as to the issues in question and wherein the abusive dangers lie.

Second, any “true bills”, “findings” or “convictions”, made by those impaneled, when splashed across the headlines, would serve to pressure the administration and their agents in Congress to answer, explain, dismiss and rationalize such judgments made by the people.

This alone is the preeminent function of the press – to make those in power answer.

This is a great idea: a reality show.

I suggest Mark Levin and Andrew C. McCarthy for the prosecution; perhaps Alan Dershowitz and Simon Lazarus for the defense.

This, my friends, would be a true ratings bonanza.

And POTUS is such a narcissist, I'd wager anything he'd be glued to the TV watching.


Hat tip: BadBlue Real-Time News. Related: Constitutional Crisis Comix.

Sunday, December 08, 2013

OCT. 1, 2014: "Once the employer mandate kicks in they'll be hunting Democrats with dogs in this country"

I have an idea designed to eradicate Obamacare once and for all.

Every employer in America should plan to celebrate October 1st, 2014 as National "I Lost My Health Insurance" Day:


The president has unlawfully delayed, waived, and otherwise rewritten vast portions of the Obamacare bill.

For example, imagine what would have happened if this year's Healthcare.gov rollout had occurred in 2012, just before the presidential election.

Now the president and the Democrats are trying to once again unlawfully delay the employer mandate, pushing the signup process from October 1, 2014 to after the elections.

A public request to every employer in America: don't let the Democrats hide their colossal failures until after the midterms.

If you're an employer, please celebrate October 1st, 2014 as National "I Lost My Health Insurance" Day. If you're an employee, urge your employer to do so.

It's time to put Democrat politicians where they belong: back in the private sector, trying to earn a real living for a change.


Headline via Clarice Feldman.