Saturday Morning Open Thread
— andy

Hopefully this Memorial Day weekend will be a little more uneventful than last year's here at the HQ.

Posted by: andy at 04:06 AM | Comments (169)
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Overnight Open Thread
— CDR M

Hot dang, that is one scary looking chart. Student Loan Bubble. And the worst part? We the taxpayers are DIRECTLY on the hook.

For one, though banks likely wouldn’t take a big hit, the government — meaning the taxpayer — would. That’s not great news for the deficit, but the numbers aren’t large enough to be a huge concern. At the same time, it’s much harder for the borrower to discharge a student loan than a mortgage. You can’t get rid of student loans in bankruptcy, for example. So there’s a much higher chance that the government would get its money back eventually.

Jeez. Good to know that over $400B and rising is no biggie. How in the hell is that not large enough to be a concern? And does anyone actually believe that the government will get its money back eventually from these students as stated in the article? Yeah right. Some politicians are already down with forgiveness. Of course they are, it's not their money and they're buying votes with it. more...

Posted by: CDR M at 05:52 PM | Comments (635)
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Democratic Governor's Association Push New Wisconsin Poll That
— CAC

...still shows Walker leading, 49-46, over Tom Barrett.

This is the tenth straight poll showing Walker ahead.

They claim this is "narrower" than a poll they had a week before showing Walker by a wider lead. Conveniently they never released that one. I'll give you each one guess why.

Three observations:

1- Those desperately trying to change the inevitability feeling of Walker winning are now coming out of the woodwork with polls...but point #2

2- These polls still show Walker ahead.

3- The DGA's polls give Walker a wider lead than Barrett's own internals. Oopsie.

4- (I lied about three) They are pushing what now counts as the tenth poll straight showing Walker leading, and only in response to public polls with fully divulged crosstabs giving the Governor a more substantial lead.

5- I miss sunlight.

Live debate between Tom Barrett and Governor Scott Walker can be streamed from here.

Posted by: CAC at 04:12 PM | Comments (81)
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University of Penn Law School Listed Precisely One (1) Female Native American Professor, Too
— Ace

Exclusive, and scoop, I believe.

Here's what we already knew: Elizabeth Warren was listed as a "Minority" at UPenn.

The University of Pennsylvania, where Warren taught at the law school from 1987 through 1995, listed her as a minority in a “Minority Equity Report” posted on its website. The report, published in 2005, well after her departure, included her as the winner of a faculty award in 1994. Her name was highlighted in bold, the designation used for minorities in the report.

But now another piece of the puzzle falls into place. Someone at UPenn Law School was listed as a "Native American female" in its official 1992 Affirmative Action reporting.

Morgen Richmond, who is really an ace researcher (not an Ace researcher, but an extremely good one) has dug up the University of Pennsylvania's old diversity filings.

Now, before 1992, they didn't list Native Americans as their own category. See, for example, 1990's report, listing White, Black, Hispanic and Asian hires.

But now in 1992, Penn does have a Native American column.

There are a lot of schools at U Penn, but only one law school. And way over there in the right hand column, you see "1" as the number of Native American faculty at Penn Law. In fact, the one Native American female at Penn Law is the only Native American, period, at all of Penn.

Here, way over on the right.

Now it's hard to prove a negative, but while Morgen (and now I) have searched for another female Native American law professor at the University of Penn in this time frame, we haven't found one.

So who was UPenn's solitary Native American Female?

If it was Warren -- and so far neither Morgen nor I can find any other Native American female law professor -- how did Penn get this idea that she was Native American?

Surely Penn's EEOC reporting officers don't use some kind of racial divining rods?

Surely it came from Warren herself.

And if not not her -- who then?

Who, precisely, was calling up Elizabeth Warren's employers and tipping them that she might be, maybe, 1/32nd Cherokee?

Have you ever had a stranger dial up your employer to inform him that you were 1/32nd Cherokee, or 1/16th Lenne Lenape, or 1/8th Hungarian?

Who, apart from the individual himself, informs other people that despite not appearing to be Native American, despite not having the sort of name that would be recognized as likely Native American, despite not being listed in any Cherokee records as Native American, that the employee is in fact Native American, and entitled to certain level of cache and promotion for that dubious status?

Who, exactly, is going around spreading incredibly helpful and career-boosting false claims about Elizabeth Warren, if not Elizabeth Warren herself?

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (184)
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Boston Globe Takes a Tomahawk To Elizabeth Warren's Fauxcahontas Claims
— Ace

That's Guy Benson's headline. Even the liberal Boston Globe.

Even them.

Now, Elizabeth Warren's current claim is that she had no idea Harvard was listing her as a Native American, and no idea where they might have gotten that idea from.

I suppose they must have seen her not-terribly-high cheekbones and pale blue eyes and ash-blonde hair and thought to themselves, "My God, I am looking into the eyes of the Spirt Twin of Sacajewea herself."

Artist's reconstruction of famed Indian guide Sacajewea,
as she might look if she posed for Sports Illustrated

Well... maybe not.

US Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren has said she was unaware that Harvard Law School had been promoting her purported Native American heritage until she read about it in a newspaper several weeks ago. But for at least six straight years during WarrenÂ’s tenure, Harvard University reported in federally mandated diversity statistics that it had a Native American woman in its senior ranks at the law school. According to both Harvard officials and federal guidelines, those statistics are almost always based on the way employees describe themselves.

In addition, both HarvardÂ’s guidelines and federal regulations for the statistics lay out a specific definition of Native American that Warren does not meet. The documents suggest for the first time that either Warren or a Harvard administrator classified her repeatedly as Native American in papers prepared for the government in a way that apparently did not adhere to federal diversity guidelines. They raise further questions about WarrenÂ’s statements that she was unaware Harvard was promoting her as Native American.

Posted by: Ace at 01:43 PM | Comments (228)
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Leading Political Indicator: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Says Wisconsin Isn't Such A Big Deal; No Major Repercussions if Democrats Lose
— Ace

No biggie.

“I think, honestly, there aren’t going to be any repercussions,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said in a broad-ranging interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers.”

“It’s an election that’s based in Wisconsin. It’s an election that I think is important nationally because Scott Walker is an example of how extreme the tea party has been when it comes to the policies that they have pushed the Republicans to adopt,” Wasserman Schultz said. “But I think it’ll be, at the end of the day, a Wisconsin-based election, and like I said, across the rest of the country and including in Wisconsin, President Obama is ahead.”

Not Such A Big Deal, and It's a Local Thing Anyway

Which is exactly what you say if you think it's going to be close and you need to energize voters by putting a bee in their bonnets.

Not.

Thanks to @drewmtips, making with the silly.

Update: New poll: Walker by... 12.

But as Woverhamshire Wolf (Winston Wolf's clam-digger great uncle) once observed, "Gentlemen, lets not start shucking each other's conchs just yet."

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (177)
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Barack Obama: Hey, Wanna Get High?
— Ace

Things that could have been reported in 2008. But it's nice to have some vetting in the final months of Barack Obama's presidency.

In his 1995 memoir “Dreams of My Father,” Obama writes about smoking pot almost like Dr. Seuss wrote about eating green eggs and ham. As a high school kid, Obama wrote, he would smoke “in a white classmate’s sparkling new van,” he would smoke “in the dorm room of some brother” and he would smoke “on the beach with a couple of Hawaiian kids.”

He would smoke it here and there. He would smoke it anywhere.

Now a soon-to-be published biography by David Maraniss entitled “Barack Obama: The Story” gives more detail on Obama’s pot-smoking days, complete with testimonials from young Barry Obama’s high school buddies, a group that went by the name “the Choom Gang.” Choom was slang for smoking marijuana.

Maraniss portrays the teenage Obama as not just a pot smoker, but a pot-smoking innovator.

“As a member of the Choom Gang,” Maraniss writes, “Barry Obama was known for starting a few pot-smoking trends.”

The first Obama-inspired trend: “Total Absorption” or “TA”.

“TA was the opposite of Bill Clinton’s claim that as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford he smoked dope but never inhaled,” explains Maraniss. Here’s how it worked: If you exhaled prematurely when you were with the Choom Gang, “you were assessed a penalty and your turn was skipped the next time the joint came around.”

It's also fun to roll cars while baked.

Of course, smoking, drinking and driving on mountain roads could also be a little dangerous. Especially the night they tried drag racing.

The race to the top of Mount Tantalus pitted the “Choomwagon” against another friend’s Toyota. Obama was in the Toyota. The Choomwagon made it to the top first. When the other car didn’t show up, those in the Choomwagon drove back down to find them. Here’s how Maraniss describes what happened next:

“On the way down, they saw a figure who appeared to be staggering up the road. It was Barry Obama. What was going on? As they drew closer, they noticed that he was laughing so hard he could barely stand up.”

His friend had rolled the car. Fortunately, nobody was hurt.

The White House has no comment.

Buzzfeed actually pokes fun of the God Who Tokes.

Does this matter?

Well, it seems to matter as much as a Gay Haircut Massacre.

Or the fact that Ann Romney likes horses.

Did I say horses?

I meant "Horse Ballet," because, you know, that's what everyone calls the not-terribly-obscure Olympic sport of dressage.

Like, she's rich enough to put horses in tutus and re-enact Swan Lake.

With horses.

Posted by: Ace at 12:34 PM | Comments (180)
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Happy Weinerversary
— andy

One year ago today, we were all minding our own business and looking forward to a nice, relaxing Memorial Day weekend. Then all hell broke loose.

It started late on Friday night, when people started getting wind of a story at Breitbart's about New York Congressman and liberal attack terrier Anthony Weiner tweeting a picture of his member of congress to a young woman. Over the weekend, the story started picking up steam both on Twitter and the blogs, and our humble Head Ewok joined the fray.

I'm not positive Ace slept for about a week after that, but he and a few others (notably Andrew Breitbart, Patterico and Lee Stranahan) kept on the story until the mainstream media had no choice but to finally cover it.

The rest, as they say, is history. Along with Anthony Weiner's congressional career.

Dana Loesch over at Breitbart World HQ has a great personal chronicle of the story:

A year ago I was up late packing for Puerto Rico, having given notice that I'd be offline for seven days' vacation. My phone rang. It was The Boss, the late Andrew Breitbart. When he called, you answered, and a late night call was the meatspace equivalent of the Drudge siren.

"Oh my God," he shouted as a hello. "Did you see it?"

Not to be outdone, a search of the May and June 2011 post archives here for "weiner" is a great walk down memory lane at some of the funniest yet consequential blogging ever done by Ace. I mean, where else are you going to read something like this?

And that's it for me. I woke up at 5:45 which, I gotta tell ya, has lately been a time at which I go to sleep, to cover this arrogant ass' pecker, and I'm really tired of his dick.

Oh, at first, I thought it was spry and puckish. Even charming. But as the hours have ground on, I've just gotten to the point where I'm about to say "I shall scream if I get another face-full of man-root." And I haven't said that since junior high track.

Also, for what it's worth, the Weiner incident is apparently one that really set off this prick Kimberlin and his merry band of asshats. How fitting.

My favorite moment in the whole thing appears below the fold. more...

Posted by: andy at 11:29 AM | Comments (182)
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Be Wary Of Opening Pictures, Attachments, Etc. From Phones Or Accounts You Don't Know
— Ace

This could be nothing, but someone I know has received an email from a "tracfone" (a throwaway phone you can't trace -- a "burner").

Could be nothing. Could just be someone who wants to protect his own anonymity.

But this person has never received an email from a tracfone before in his life.

Pictures and attachments can be used to inject hacker code into your system.

Like I said, I may just be unduly alarming you. Nevertheless, I think it's my duty to warn you. Things like this do happen, after all.

Be very, very wary.

Do not open things if you don't know something about cybersecurity and have any doubts at all about the sender.

Like I said, this could be the most innocent thing the entire world, but there is really no sense taking chances.

Also: Be wary of emails and spoofs generally. Be aware of pretexts to fish information out of you.

Someone who knows you doesn't have to ask about such things-- and could call you, using their own recognizable voice, if they somehow forgot where you lived.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (163)
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What Can You Do?
— Ace

My belief is that this will not be "won" by publicity.

Publicity without action? What's that? So Brett Kimberlin is a bad man. He knows he's a bad man. His public-record convictions demonstrate he's a bad man.

His associates and donors probably know he's a bad man -- and they probably appreciate having a Bad Man to do their Dirty Business.

No, this will be resolved by either judicial action or legislative action. In a court of law, or an Act of Congress, or an act by a state government.

So what can you do?

If you are interested in seeing justice and Free Speech prevail, please write or call your Congressman (or a nearby Congressman, or a Congressman known to be responsive to abuses by the left, if you think your own Congressman won't act).

Write to him and ask him or her for the following tangible steps, or any other steps he might think prudent:

In addition to reading his record into the Congressional Record, to finally end this absurd contention that it is now apparently illegal to mention the facts laid out in US federal court records, there is tangible legislative action that can be requested:

* That a 501(c) "charity" must certify its principals and employees are not engaging in harassment, intimidation, or attempts to punish free speech, on pain of perjury if this is false.

Will Brett Kimberlin's business partners and co-principals sign such a certification?

* That a 501(c) principal conducts his legal affairs through a licensed lawyer and not pro se (on his own behalf) unless he can demonstrate that he is indigent.

See, 99% of lawyers would not put their license at risk for frivolous crap like this. Kimberlin can because he has no law license to lose. He represents himself, as as is his right as a citizen... but then, he has no right to run a 501(c). I think a 501(c)'s principals can be slightly burdened to have their suits signed off by a real lawyer, who can face sanctions for false or vexatious litigation against Free Speech.

* That they urge the FBI and DoJ and IRS investigate this matter, as well as possibly-related crimes of intimidation of Free Speech, such as Patterico's and Mike Stack's SWATting.

Are those related? We don't know. It would be nice to know, however.

* That the Government Oversight Committee (or whichever committee is proper) hold hearings on the possible abuse of 501(c) charities for uses against the public interest.

* That Congress stiffen penalties (or add them) such a punitive damages and possibly inductive relief against anyone attempting to use harassment and intimidation to suppress Free Speech. And that they add a law which permits a judge to rule that a litigant bringing vexatious lawsuits with the purpose of chilling free speech be henceforth required to post a large bond before suing, and to have his lawsuits signed off by a lawyer or judge before filing.

I am no expert in this area. Quite frankly, I don't know what, specifically, can be done. These steps seem reasonable to me, and accomplishable; but perhaps they are unworkable.

Our Congressmen are, however, experts in these things (or have staffers who are experts).

We can at least ask them to put their expertise to use, searching for some resolution to this.

We should all remember that this is supposed to be a participatory democratic republic.

We have the right to petition our representatives with our concerns and our grievances.

We should exercise that right.

Our Congressmen, as we keep insisting, work for us. When their are outrages, abuses, and injustices, we should ask them to take an interest.

This is how laws are passed -- by concerned citizens writing to their Congressmen and asking them for their aid.

Complaints that remain in a blog's comments area might as well be written on the ice of Saturn's moon Titan. You cannot blame Congressmen for failing to act when they've never been asked to actually do anything.

If they don't know about it, why would they be expected to act? If their constituents and other citizens don't alert them, how can it be charged that they are to blame?

This is a representative democratic republic. And a participatory one.

Ultimately, government is not -- or at least should not be -- left solely to representatives.

It's on us.

It's on us.

No one can blame Congress for failing to act if citizens fail to act first.

They're not psychics, and they do not read every single blog in the world. They probably read three, just to have a sense of things.

They do not serve blogs. They serve citizens.

And citizens must make themselves heard.

Here's an Easy Thing: Ask Congress to pass a special law against SWATting with serious penalties -- like 10-20 years.

Telephone lines are a federal concern. The use of telephone lines to both waste police resources and put citizens' lives at risk should be a major crime.

Add a kicker penalty -- another 10 years -- if the crime is determined to be conducted for the purpose of intimidating or squelching free speech.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 AM | Comments (194)
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