Friday, March 20, 2015
Kimberley Strassel detects a sign of a spine in Mitch McConnell on the Lynch AG appointment
Kim is smart as ever and looking good |
From her Wall Street Journal column here:
Mr. McConnell made clear that so long as he didn’t get his trafficking bill, Democrats didn’t get Ms. Lynch. He would devote the rest of this week to the Cornyn-Klobuchar legislation, next week would be about the budget, the week after that would be Easter recess, and so on. Let’s hope Ms. Lynch enjoys Sudoku. No give, no get.
Thursday, March 19, 2015
Grover Norquist is full of malarkey: G.H.W. Bush accepted the Profiles in Courage Award for raising taxes!
Seen here.
Bush 41 might have regretted what he did in 1992, but by 2014 he and his family were all too happy with the strange new respect award from the liberal Kennedy clan.
Bush 41 might have regretted what he did in 1992, but by 2014 he and his family were all too happy with the strange new respect award from the liberal Kennedy clan.
Hey Rush! Bibi was just kidding about that about-face on a two-state solution!
Quoted here in The New York Times:
Mr. Netanyahu said he had not intended to reverse his endorsement in a 2009 speech at Bar-Ilan University of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but only to say that it was impossible right now. He cited the Palestinian leadership’s refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and its pact with the militant Islamist Hamas movement, as well as the rise of Islamic terrorism across the region.
“I haven’t changed my policy,” Mr. Netanyahu said in an interview with MSNBC, his first since his resounding victory on Tuesday, which handed him a fourth term. “What has changed is the reality.”
“I want a sustainable, peaceful two-state solution, but for that, circumstances have to change,” he said. “I was talking about what is achievable and what is not achievable. To make it achievable, then you have to have real negotiations with people who are committed to peace.”
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The "peace process" is very useful also to Israeli liberals. Even they can make a career of it.
Labels:
Bibi Netanyahu,
Hamas,
Islam,
Israel,
NYTimes,
Rush Limbaugh 2015,
terrorism
Dick Durbin knows all about the back of the bus: He and 12 other Democrats voted against the first African-American woman Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State in 2005
The Washington Post reported here at the time:
The Senate voted 85 to 13 to confirm Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state, providing the most negative votes cast against a nominee for that post in 180 years.
Maybe if Dick and Dirty Harry had gotten their shit together last fall Loretta Lynch could already have been confirmed as the first African-American female Attorney General.
From the AP story here:
Lynch was nominated last fall and Democrats are growing increasingly agitated over the holdup in confirming her, although they were in control of the Senate for some of that time. "Loretta Lynch, the first African-American woman nominated to be attorney general, is asked to sit in the back of the bus when it comes to the Senate calendar," Durbin said. "That is unfair. It's unjust. It is beneath the decorum and dignity of the United States Senate."
It's not like Obama didn't have plenty of time to fill the position while Democrats still had control of the Senate. Eric Holder resigned in late September 2014, and Obama didn't nominate Lynch until after Democrats had taken a good thrashing at the polls on November 4th.
Labels:
AP,
Barack Obama,
Condoleezza Rice,
Dick Turban Durbin,
Eric Holder,
Harry Reid,
Loretta Lynch,
WaPo
What a shock: Big Sis thinks students' protests are crap
That's also what she thought about objections to speed cameras in Arizona, and to surveillance by Homeland Security generally and to naked scanners at airports specifically.
The arrogance is par for the course with liberals.
Video here.
Outgoing US Attorney Ron Machen has stonewalled Lerner contempt case for 10 months, as has Obama
From the story here:
Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia appointed by President Obama and set to step down next month, has not acted on a contempt of Congress charge for former IRS official Lois Lerner.
Machen, who announced at the beginning of the week he'd step down April 1 to return to private practice, has not referred Lerner's case to a grand jury. Her contempt citation for not testifying at two hearings has been in Machen's hands since May 2014. ...
The Obama administration has also not publicly released hundreds of documents related to the IRS's targeting of Tea Party groups.
Wednesday, March 18, 2015
M'bala M'bala of France gets two months in jail, suspended, just for saying he's Charlie Coulibaly
The cartoonist Coco let the terrorists into the offices of Charlie Hebdo. |
The story is here.
Condoning terrorism is punishable in France, unless you work for Charlie Hebdo.
Hey Rush! The only people who really believe in a two-state solution are liberals like George W. Bush, right?
From today's Rush Limbaugh show, here:
So you terrorize Israel with bombs from Gaza and bombs from Hamas and bombs from Hezbollah, and then while the peace process is going on you then demand the right of return. And both of those stratagems are designed to effectively bring about the end of the Jewish state. The people who believe in this two-state solution, like our caller here from the last hour, the only people who really believe in it are Western liberals such as American liberals, Western European socialist liberals.
Dateline Washington, December 2008, here:
US President George W. Bush summed up eight years of his administration's affairs in the Middle East on Friday, and said he still believed that "the day will come when the map of the Middle East shows a peaceful, secure Israel beside a peaceful and democratic Palestine. I was the first American President to call for a Palestinian state, and building support for the two-state solution has been one of the highest priorities of my Presidency."
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Hillary Clinton should be in jail, not running for president
From Ronald D. Rotunda, here:
Whether or not Mrs. Clinton violated a State Department rule, her admitted destruction of more than 30,000 emails sure looks like obstruction of justice—a serious violation of the criminal law. Let’s consider some of the basic, undisputed facts, and then the law.
First, Mrs. Clinton was worried that communicating through email would leave a trail that might be subject to subpoena. “As much as I’ve been investigated and all of that,” she said in 2000, “why would I ever want to do email?” But when she became secretary of state, she didn’t have much choice. So she set up a private server in her house. That way, in the event of an investigation, she could control which emails would be turned over. ...
By her own admission, Mrs. Clinton destroyed more than 30,000 emails once the subpoenas started coming in. She claims that she only destroyed personal records. Team Clinton initially explained that her work emails were separated from her personal emails using keyword searches. Now, after the outcry about how much this method might have missed, Mrs. Clinton is insisting that every email was individually read before the deletion. ...
The law says that no one has to use email, but it is a crime (18 U.S.C. section 1519) to destroy even one message to prevent it from being subpoenaed. Prosecutors charging someone with obstruction don’t even have to establish that any investigation was pending or under way when the deletion took place. As T. Markus Funk explained in a journal article for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the prosecutor “need only prove that the defendant shredded the documents, at least in part, to make life more difficult for future investigators, if and when they eventually appear.”
Legal commentators call this “anticipatory obstruction of justice,” and the law punishes it with up to 20 years imprisonment. The burden of proof is light. The Justice Department manual advises that section 1519 makes prosecution much easier because it covers “any matters” or “’in relation to or contemplation of’ any matters.” It adds, “No corrupt persuasion is required.”
Monday, March 16, 2015
The completely daft and utterly ridiculous political news suitable only for a Monday: Lindsey Grahamnesty for president!
The story here about John McCain's closest ally says he's going to explore a run for president for a couple of months.
And just to show old Lindsey hasn't completely cornered the market on tin ears:
"[P]otential rival Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, last week noted he takes advice from Graham on foreign affairs."
The only way I can imagine those three characters together is with Rick Perry holding a bottle in one hand and a six shooter in the other telling those two lovebirds to start dancing.
The only way I can imagine those three characters together is with Rick Perry holding a bottle in one hand and a six shooter in the other telling those two lovebirds to start dancing.
Labels:
firearm,
John Mccain,
Lindsey Graham,
POLITICO,
Rick Perry,
tin ears
Saturday, March 14, 2015
Where's Vladimir?
From a story about Putin's "disappearance" since the 5th of March, here:
Those keeping track insist Putin has not been seen since March 5.
Regardless of how or when this speculation ends, it tells us much about the political realities of Russia.
This whole thing started after Putin's trip to Kazakhstan was canceled on Wednesday and a Kazakh official told a reporter that the Russian President had fallen ill. Then the Kremlin released a picture of Putin speaking with the leader of the Republic of Karelia. But it turns out that happened on March 4.
On Thursday, Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the President would miss his regular meeting with the Federal Security Service (FSB). When asked about his boss's health, Peskov said he is "absolutely healthy," his handshake so strong he could "break your hand." To illustrate the point, the Kremlin's Russia Today posted a picture of the mighty President slamming a judo opponent hard against the ground. Peskov says Russia is in the grips of a "spring fever" that is causing people to dream up harebrained scenarios.
Friday, March 13, 2015
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Rand Paul steals Joe Biden's thunder, supports the creation of a Kurdish state
December 1, 2011 |
Rand Paul, quoted here:
"I think they would fight like hell if we promised them a country. It’s a little easier to say than it is to actually make it happen, because in order to actually draw a new country you’d have to have the complicity of Turkey and probably Iraq a little bit as well. There really is no Syria to be complicit with, but there is just a little piece of Syria—Kobani and in there is predominantly Kurdish. I think if you did that and could get piece peace between the Kurds and the Turks, and then the Turks would actually fight if the Kurds would give up any claim to Turkish territory."
Joe Biden, discussed here in early 2014:
Although Biden denied it at the time [of the 2007 troop surge], his proposal would almost certainly have led to the de facto soft partition of Iraq into three autonomous regions dominated by Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. A similar approach in the 1990s patched together Bosnia out of the detritus of the Balkans civil war between Serbs, Croats, and Muslims. In a 2007 op-ed, Biden warned, "If the United States can't put this federalism idea on track, we will have no chance for a political settlement in Iraq and, without that, no chance for leaving Iraq without leaving chaos behind."
George Will confuses self-defense with imitation
Here:
When Fred P. Hochberg, the [Export-Import] bank’s chairman and president, defends it, an old joke comes to mind: A pastor officiating at a man’s funeral asks if anyone in the congregation would like to say something about the deceased. After a long, awkward silence, a voice shouts: “His brother was even worse.” South Korea, Hochberg says, provides “four to five times more export support than we do.” Thus does sound policy get defined down: Others are even worse, supposedly forcing us to emulate them.
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Nice try, George. War is evil, but when we are attacked, that we fight back doesn't mean that we are evil, too.
In this case a paraprosdokian aptly applies: We dispense with so-called free-trade in order to defend free-market principles.
Labels:
free-trade,
George Will,
National Review,
paraprosdokians,
South Korea
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Hillary Clinton, user of multiple phones and devices said two weeks ago: "I don't throw anything away, I'm like two steps short of a hoarder"
About 1:15 into the video of an interview fifteen days ago here.
But yesterday she was a user of only one phone to simplify things, and deleted over 30,000 emails:
"First, when I got to work as secretary of state, I opted for convenience to use my personal email account, which was allowed by the State Department, because I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two." ...
"In going through the e-mails, there were over 60,000 in total, sent and received. About half were work-related and went to the State Department and about half were personal that were not in any way related to my work. I had no reason to save them, but that was my decision because the federal guidelines are clear and the State Department request was clear."
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Liar.
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