Spike Lee retweeted what he thought was the address of George Zimmerman. It wasn't. It was the address of an elderly couple in their 70's. And now they're in a hotel out of fear for their safety.

An elderly Florida couple have been forced to move into a hotel after their home address was wrongly tweeted as belonging to the man who shot teen Trayvon Martin.

The tweets were traced back to a man in California and the address was also reportedly retweeted by director Spike Lee to his almost 250,000 followers.

The couple, aged 70 and 72, have been harassed with hate mail, been hassled by media and had scared neighbors questioning them since the tweet, their son Chip Humble told the Orlando Sentinel.

Lee knows that he made a mistake. Yet he hasn't deleted the tweet, and he hasn't apologized. And now he knows what people were talking about when they said let's not have a rush to judgment.

Ace gave him a hilarious twitter beating yesterday. Scroll down to this tweet for the start of it:

Spike Lee's penalty should be that they don't let him make movies anymore. Wait a tick, they already won't let him make movies anymore.

Update: Film Ladd finds that Lee violated Twitter rules. According to the user agreement:

You may not publish or post other people's private and confidential information, such as credit card numbers, street address or Social Security/National Identity numbers, without their express authorization and permission.

Let @Twitter know. Or Twitter's CEO, @DickC.

Follow me on Twitter.

Posted by: rdbrewer at 07:54 AM | Comments (448)
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This last one isn't a "best case scenario" either. It's how I actually see the few gubernatorial elections going this year. The Demplosion of 2010 on this level was massive, with Republicans entering 2011 up 29-20-1 over the Democrats. If that was the Permian Mass Extinction, 2012 will be Chicxulub: more...

Posted by: CAC at 05:27 AM | Comments (157)
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Happy Wednesday.

Today is the Supreme Court's final day of argument on Obamacare. 90 minutes will be devoted to whether the mandate is severable from the rest of the law. Then 30 minutes will go to the issue of the Medicaid mandate imposed on the states.

In my interview yesterday morning with Rep. Phil Roe, the Tennessee congressman said that he believed that this is one of the most important cases since Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education. Rep. Roe's comment seemed to presage the observation from Justice Kennedy that the individual mandate changes the relationship between the government and the person "in a fundamental way" requiring a "heavy burden of justification." I've now heard Justice Kennedy's comment on the broadcast national news last night, the local TV news last night, the FM radio station I'm listening to as I type this, and the local TV news this morning.

My concern is that Justice Kennedy might just find an extraordinary justification for the individual mandate. That's precisely what the Obama Administration has been arguing: "healthcare is different." That was, by the way, the same language that several congressmen used to explain why their constituents are opposing Obamacare.

Rep. Diane Black explained that people are concerned by the uncertainty in not knowing what's going to hit them next in something so fundamentally important as health care. Rep. Phil Gingrey said that the number one concern of his constituents is that they don't want the federal government to have that much involvement in their lives.

Each of the congressmen I talked to said that either way the Supreme Court rules, more reform is needed. Rep. Wally Herger had the strongest statement on that, vowing "we're not going to stop until we repeal Obamacare." Sen. Ron Johnson suggested that there were many reforms that will help lower costs of healthcare. He cited as examples health savings accounts and opening up the insurance market as much as possible as a free market. Sen. Johnson noted that where the free market fails, for example with individuals who have serious preexisting conditions, the states have seen success with high-risk pools.

Finally, I want to share with you a story from Sen. Johnson I did not know before talking with him yesterday. Johnson explained that he was particularly offended during the Obamacare debate when the President suggested that money-grubbing doctors would unnecessarily "come after your tonsils" or amputate a leg. Johnson explained that his daughter was born with a serious heart condition and that doctors---doctors like the ones that Obama was demonizing---had saved her life after extraordinary efforts. It was, Johnson said, one of the things that impelled him to run for his Senate seat. Johnson noted that, under Obamacare, innovative treatments---like that which saved his daughter---would be limited not according to doctors' decisions, but the decisions of bureaucrats in Washington.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:57 AM | Comments (335)
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The Inconvenient Chart

Via Prof. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection comes the chart that no one wants to talk about - because it serves no one's agenda.

This is the breakdown by race of murdered victims versus the race of the killer taken from the FBI's 2009 statistics.

And it turns out that in general whites kill whites, blacks kill blacks, and 'others' kill 'others'. Which isn't all that surprising given how people tend to segregate themselves socially.

Cross-racial murder is surprisingly rare. So if you're a white murder murder victim, the odds are 84% that your killer was also white. And if you're a black victim, the odds go up to 90% that the killer was also black.

But this doesn't fit the usual narratives and agendas so no one talks about it.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:47 PM | Comments (1015)
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The image below may cause erections lasting more than six hours and irreparable damage to undergarments. AoSHQCorp and its member parties and employees are not responsible for medical conditions and property damage that may arise from viewing the image below.

Image is also very large, for maximum impact. Your monitor may not be capable of handling the awesomeness.

You have been warned. more...

Posted by: CAC at 05:07 PM | Comments (190)
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I haven't been this excited since Smash debuted!!!!

Suleman posed for the magazine because she was late on rent, the website said.

She reportedly made $10,000 for the shoot and interview.

...

"I get way too much male attention, but I won’t date until the octuplets are 18 – I live for them now," she said. "I know a lot of women like male attention, but I’ll go out with no make-up on and wear tracksuits, a wig and even a fake pregnancy stomach to put them off."

Yeah, when I think about the cohort of men who might be interested in putting it to "The Octomom," I'm thinking a Fake Pregnancy Stomach would put them off.

Or, the opposite.

In related news, we're three months overdue on Levi Johnston's entry into gay porn. Or, I suppose, gay porn's entry into Levi Johnston.

Posted by: Ace at 04:39 PM | Comments (105)
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Breaking ruling. Texas gon' bring this mad-dog to heel.

The law is/was as follows: There are great restrictions on major sources of pollution, per law. But there are "minor sources" noted in the law as well, for which there are only the most minimal standards. Essentially this sort of pollution is left up to the states, except that they must comply with the minimal, sketchy requirements set by federal law.

In addition, the EPA has eighteen months to approve, or disapprove, a state's updated plan as far as handling minor sources of pollution. States update their plans from time to time.

In the case just decided, the EPA missed that eighteen month deadline to approve or disapprove by three months.

Did I say three months? I meant three years. It decided to disapprove a plan Texas submitted four and half years ago.

Further, the EPA created, out of whole cloth, its own "regulations" for minor source pollution, deciding that it now housed within it a special Environmental Congress which may pass laws outside of the normal Constitutional framework, as long as they deal with pollution and are certified For the Children (TM).

The Fifth Circuit did not look kindly upon the EPA's double contempt of the actual written law:

Despite an eighteen month statutory deadline, the EPA did not take action on any of these submissions until September 15, 2010. At that late date, the EPA disapproved the PCP Standard Permit—submitted four and a half years earlier—based on its purported nonconformity with three extra-statutory standards that the EPA created out of whole cloth.

Moreover, the EPA did this in the context of a cooperative federalism regime that affords sweeping discretion to the states to develop implementation plans and assigns to the EPA the narrow task of ensuring that a state plan meets the minimum requirements of the Act. The EPA applied these unauthorized standards to disapprove of a state program for projects that reduce air pollution and that, under the ActÂ’s plain terms, is subject to only the most minimal regulation.

Because the EPA waited until more than three years after the statutory deadline to act on Texas’s submission, we order the EPA to reconsider it expeditiously. On remand, the EPA must limit its review of Texas’s regulations to ensuring that they meet the minimal CAA requirements that govern SIP revisions to minor NSR, as set forth in 42 U.S.C. § 7410(a)(2)(C) and § 7410(l).

If TexasÂ’s regulations satisfy those basic requirements, the EPA must approve
them, as § 7410(k)(3) requires. That is the full extent of the EPA’s authority in the SIP-approval process because that is all the authority that the CAA confers. See La. Pub. Serv. Comm’n v. FCC, 476 U.S. 355, 374 (1986) (“[A]n agency literally has no power to act . . . unless and until Congress confers power upon it.”).

Emphases and some paragraph breaks added.

It's Called "America"

You want me to google that for you, EPA?

Okay, here you go then.

Thanks to Dave in Texas, who actually filed an amicus brief in this case, quoted extensively in the ruling.*

* No he didn't. I just enjoy lying.

Posted by: Ace at 03:27 PM | Comments (269)
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Marquette U has been teasing me all morning with a poll that has finally come out, showing a much better picture for Mitt Romney, both in the primary and the general election:

In February, Romney trailed former Sen. Rick Santorum by 16 points in Wisconsin, but he now leads Santorum by eight points, 39% to 31%, the poll found.
Romney has also narrowed the gap between himself and Democratic President Barack Obama, if the presidential election were to be held today and they were the two major candidates. But Romney continues to trail Obama in Wisconsin – by five percentage points in the new poll, compared to 15 points a month ago...

Governor Walker continues to face a tight race in his recall, but also continues to lead all the Democratic challengers, beating Falk 49-45, Barrett 47-45, Vinehout 49-41, and La Follette 49-42. His favorability and approval ratings have improved as well, up from 46/48 in February to 50/45 with the former, and up to 50/47 from 47/47 on the latter.

Wisconsin voters moved measurably to the right in 2010, with a bit of pushback from the unions in 2011. They are a far cry from the dark blue crowd of 2008, and seem willing, narrowly, to keep Walker around despite all the fuss. They also seem willing to vote for having two Republican senators, with Tommy Thompson averaging a healthy lead in polling over Tammy Baldwin. Perhaps we may see a trifecta of Republican victories in the Badger State after all.

Posted by: CAC at 02:59 PM | Comments (76)
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Lazy.

“I recently talked to a very senior friend of mine in the White House, and I said, ‘How did we not spend a year talking about the economy?Â’ ” a Democratic think-tank maven recalls. “And he said, ‘Look, I think Barack did the stimulus and he thought he checked the box and he moved on.Â’ I said, ‘ThatÂ’s not governing, dude. ThatÂ’s some other thing.’”

Check the box? That reminds me of a similar disclosure.

Are you impressed with the image of Obama-at-work left by Ryan Lizza’s “Obama Memos” piece in the New Yorker? The President’s decision-making method–at least as described in the piece–seems to consist mainly of checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him. … They offer him four stimulus packages, none bigger than $890 billion. He does not ask for more but does push for an “inspiring ‘moon shot’” initiative. At first it’s a “national ‘smart grid’”–hard not to get inspired just hearing those words! When aides explain that this isn’t stimulating enough, he settles for “high-speed trains.” … He’s presented with a list of $60 billion in cuts to his core stimulus policies, and writes “OK.” … He “authorize[s] his staff” to plan a likely-to-be-useless “bipartisan ‘fiscal summit,’” asks “what are the takeaways”” is told he could “ask .. for continued dialogue,” and doesn’t write “this is all BS” and cancel the summit, which in fact proves useless. … He asks, “Have we looked at any of the other GOP recommendations (e.g. Paul Ryan’s) to see if any make sense” instead of, I dunno, looking at them himself.

Â…

Finally, he’s presented with a classic three-box-con memo–two extreme boxes (big new jobs package, big new deficit package) and a safer middle box (“smaller, more symbolic” deficit efforts), a matrix clearly designed to get him to choose the middle option. He chooses the middle option.

IÂ’m sure Obama is smarter than this. He canÂ’t be an executive who spends his days checking boxes, accepting the choices presented by his aides, never reaching outside them through unconventional channels or reaching unconventional thinkers, never throwing over the framework with which he is presented.

I'm not so sure.

Posted by: Ace at 02:24 PM | Comments (187)
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Good piece from John Fund, quoting from a 1972 Playboy interview of Obama's political mentor.

But just before his death in 1972, he synthesized the lessons he had learned into a book called “Rules for Radicals,” in which he urged radicals to make common cause with anyone to further their ends. The book was even dedicated, presumably tongue in cheek, to Lucifer, “the very first radical,” who “rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.”

Alinsky argued for moral relativism in fighting the establishment: “In war the end justifies almost any means. . . . The practical revolutionary will understand [that] in action, one does not always enjoy the luxury of a decision that is consistent both with one’s individual conscience and the good of mankind.”

Where did Alinsky get this amorality? Clues can be found in a Playboy magazine interview he gave in 1972, just before his death. In the closest thing to a memoir Alinsky left, he told how he decided to do his (never-completed) doctoral dissertation in the 1930s on the Al Capone mob, and to do it as “an inside job.” He caught the eye of Big Ed Stash, the mob’s top executioner, and convinced him he could be trusted as a sort of mob mascot who would interpret its methods to the outside world. “He introduced me to Frank Nitti, known as the Enforcer, Capone’s number-two man,” Alinsky told Playboy. “Nitti took me under his wing. I called him the Professor and I became his student. Nitti’s boys took me everywhere.”

Alinsky recalled that he “learned a hell of a lot about the uses and abuses of power from the mob,” and that he applied that knowledge “later on, when I was organizing.” The Playboy interviewer asked, “Didn’t you have any compunction about consorting with — if not actually assisting — murderers?” Alinsky replied: “None at all, since there was nothing I could do to stop them from murdering. . . . I was a nonparticipating observer in their professional activities, although I joined their social life of food, drink, and women. Boy, I sure participated in that side of things — it was heaven.”

This actually encapsulates the difference between a classic liberal and a left-wing radical pretty succinctly.

The classic liberal believes that there should not be a war in society, nor a state of unrest approaching a war. There are rules of good behavior, within a society. There are lesser rules of good behavior owed to foreign actors (as in a war against an alien state). But within the actual "family," a higher standard of conduct is required towards one's fellow citizens.

The leftwing radical of course holds the opposite -- nearly every leftwinger believes that war against foreign states is somehow illegal, and that we owe greater standards of good conduct to those outside the family.

And within the state? They believe in the rules of war.

They fundamentally see their fellow citizens -- at least those not part of The Cause -- as hostile enemies to be defeated By Any Means Necessary. And that includes violence, where needed.

Posted by: Ace at 01:04 PM | Comments (214)
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