This was reported previously, but I'm glad to see it reported again. AP's hook for this second report is that the Administration called the story "categorically false" the first time -- but now they have documents confirming it.

Newly released documents show that federal immigration agents were prepared to arrest an undocumented immigrant and registered sex offender days before the November elections.

However according to the internal agency documents, the agents were ordered by Washington to hold off after officials warned of “significant interest” from Congress and news organizations since the suspect was a volunteer intern for New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez.

...

When The Associated Press first disclosed the delayed arrest of last month, Sanchez, 18, the Homeland Security Department said AP’s report was “categorically false.”

...

According to those documents, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Newark had arranged to arrest Sanchez at the local prosecutorÂ’s office on Oct. 25. That was fewer than two weeks before the election.

Noting that Sanchez was a volunteer in Menendez’s Senate office, ICE officials in New Jersey advised that the arrest “had the possibility of garnering significant congressional and media interest” and were “advised to postpone the arrest” until officials in Washington gave approval. The documents describe a conference call between officials Washington and New Jersey to “determine a way forward, given the potential sensitivities surrounding the case.”

In a letter Monday, Assistant DHS Secretary Nelson Peacock said an allegation that the government delayed Sanchez’s arrest “for political purposes” was categorically false. Neither the unnamed U.S. official cited in AP’s original story or the senators in their letters to the department had specifically alleged that the arrest had been delayed for political purposes.

The article goes on to note ICE's friendly treatment of Obama's various illegal relatives.

Sanchez, the sex-criminal in question, was convicted of sexually assaulting an 8 year old, when he himself was 15. The AP pointedly does not report the relationship between Sanchez and his victim, to protect the victim -- which makes it pretty clear the victim is a member of his family.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 AM | Comments (361)
Post contains 394 words, total size 3 kb.

This is a man to lead the opposition to Barack Obama!

"House committees of jurisdiction will review these recommendations," a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner said in response to Obama's announcement. "And if the Senate passes a bill, we will also take a look at that."

I don't know about you guys but I get a Chris Matthews like tingle up my leg! What a forceful defense of the Second Amendment and the values of Repubican and conservative voters across the country! This is the guy I want out there as the face of conservatism!

Marco Rubio did better.

In written statement, Rubio says he'll "oppose the PresidentÂ’s attempts to undermine AmericansÂ’ Constitutional right to bear arms.

“Guns are not the problem; criminals with evil in their hearts and mentally ill people prone to violence are." Sen. Marco Rubio, F-FL

Via @slublog, Rick Perry did even better.

"In fact, the piling on by the political left, and their cohorts in the media, to use the massacre of little children to advance a pre-existing political agenda that would not have saved those children, disgusts me, personally. The second amendment to the Constitution is a basic right of free people and cannot be nor will it be abridged by the executive power of this or any other president."

Would you like to try again Mr. Speaker?

Added thought: I get that Boehner's process statement is DC coder for..."not going to happen". As I emailed some folks that's a reason Boehner should be out in front and making a big deal of it....it's a fight he will win and be on the right side of public opinion. That's not going to happen a lot in the next 4 years. He should be making it a bigger fight, not a smaller one. He can lead bi-partisan (cue the chorus of angels!) coalition to victory! Build up a little capital on the cheap he can use later.

Or you know, release a code word, process statement.

Either/or.

Posted by: DrewM at 09:03 AM | Comments (400)
Post contains 365 words, total size 3 kb.

Live now everywhere.

First though, the administration hit at the NRA.

REUTERS FLASH: WHITE HOUSE SAYS NRA AD CITING OBAMA CHILDREN IS "REPUGNANT AND COWARDLY"

Of course this is the same administration that is hiding behind children to further his gun grabbing agenda.

Oh for God's sake....Obama's statement.

"If there's even one life that can be saved then we have an obligation to try."

Keep an ear out for reporters parroting liberals new talking point calling "gun control" "gun safety".

Obama is now calling for 10 round limit on magazines. No word if he's calling for outlawing "reloading".

And now Obama says the Second Amendment is about "sporting, hunting, personal defense and collecting"

The guy who actively opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act has zero moral authority

— Stephen Gutowski (@collegepolitico) January 16, 2013

Here's Obama's list of executive orders.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:54 AM | Comments (567)
Post contains 154 words, total size 2 kb.

Bumped.

There are no easy answers to the current state of the conservative movement or the Republican Party. Even if there were they wouldnÂ’t matter. The real problem is with the American people.

Conservatives are fond of pointing to surveys that show majorities of people identify themselves as “conservatives” and that they support smaller government but it's clearly misleading and ultimately irrelevant.

If “conservative” means whatever the respondent thinks it means there’s no actual definition, so how can we hang our hat on that? I’m not suggesting some sort Nicene Creed one swear to before they can call themselves a “conservative”, I’m just pointing out the myth too many people believe in that prevents us from dealing with reality.

Even if all those people were roughly what could be described as “conservative” in their values and politics (which aren’t the same), their actions betray that supposed belief.

A conservative country that claims to support smaller government doesnÂ’t elect Barack Obama not once but twice (no matter how awful Romney was). A conservative country doesnÂ’t run up annual $1 trillion deficits and a $16 trillion cumulative debt. A conservative country doesnÂ’t accept ObamaCare as either good policy or a law within the bounds of the Constitution. A conservative country doesnÂ’t build a welfare state that has unfunded liabilities of "$86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP" and growing.

I could go on but you know the rest.

Far from being a bulwark against this out of control spending and growth in federal partner, the GOP has been at best an enabler and at worst a perpetrator.

And I donÂ’t blame the GOP one bit.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 04:16 PM | Comments (551)
Post contains 935 words, total size 6 kb.

• Despite Meaningless New NY Gun Laws, Two Shot Dead In The Bronx
  
• NYC School Bus Drivers Strike Leaves 150,000 Kids Stranded
  
• NRA AD: Obama Is An Elitist Hypocrite
  
• Obama Exaggerates Deficit Savings
  
• Mali: Dien Bien Phu All Over Again?
  
• NRA Membership Has Grown By 250,000 In A Month
  
• Environmental Regulations Turning Outdoorsmen Into Eco-Felons
  
• AARP Warns Against Cutting Entitlements To Solve Budget Crisis
  
• Finally: Gay Star Wars Characters
  
• Nebraska Gov Proposes Ending State Income Tax
  
• White House Releases Letters From Little Kids Pleading For Gun Control
  
• Carmakers Steering Away From Steel In Order To Meet Fuel Economy Standards
  
• Fitch May Downgrade US Credit Rating
  
• Police Shoot Mans Dog Three Times After Going To His House By Mistake
  
• Photographic Tour Of 19th Century Germany
  
• New York's Gun Laws Make The Patriot Act Look Like A Model Of Legislative Deliberation
  
• White House Paid Female Staffers Less
  
• Did Assad Use Chemical Weapons Or Didn't He?
  
• The Atlantic Confronts Job Stealing Robots
  

Follow me on twitter

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:30 AM | Comments (196)
Post contains 170 words, total size 3 kb.

Happy Wednesday. Hey, it's Wednesday! Half over!

As expected, those ninnies in Congress passed the non-Sandy Sandy relief package last night. 49 Republicans voted in favor, including Oklahoma Reps. Tom Cole and Frank Lucas, who, if you're not from there, come from safe seats.

Allah observed that the "majority of the majority" rule appears to be dead in the House: "Looks like heÂ’s feeling awfully good about his leverage after being reelected Speaker. Presumably tonightÂ’s vote was his way of signaling to the tea partiers in the caucus that, if push comes to shove, heÂ’ll let Democrats pass a debt-ceiling hike with help from Republican centrists too. "

The Navy's Littoral Combat Ship is, reportedly, a floating wreck. The first one, USS Freedom, puts to sea in two months with a host of flaws that the Navy doesn't have the money to fix.

The President will announce his gun grabbing proposal today. The NRA is prebutting it with a hard-hitting web video that blasts Obama as an "elitist," "hypocrite" who uses guns to protect his own children, but doesn't want anyone else to do the same.

Kathryn Bigelow writes about 'Zero Dark Thirty' and torture at the Los Angeles Times, and, I think, gets it mostly right.

Added: The NRCC is initially targeting seven House Democrats for the midterms. These are folks come from districts that voted for the Republican candidate in the last three elections. There's no reason Democrats should be representing districts like that.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (171)
Post contains 254 words, total size 2 kb.

The 2013 Annual AoSHQ Color Blindness Test

You should see numbers in the circles below. (Answers below the fold).

If you don't see a number, you might just be color-blind or intoxicated or possibly both.

But don't feel so bad - there may good evolutionary reasons for this.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:33 PM | Comments (619)
Post contains 578 words, total size 10 kb.

I'm sympathetic to the idea that controlling the House means you can't make big positive changes in thinks like entitlements but you can at least stop bad things from happening.

Of course you have to want to do that and John Boehner doesn't seem to want to.

The House approved a $50 billion Sandy relief bill Tuesday evening, after several hours of contentious debate in which scores of Republicans tried unsuccessfully to cut the size of the bill and offset a portion of it with spending cuts.

Members approved the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, H.R. 152, in a 241-180 vote. Among Republicans, 179 voted against it, and just 49 voted for it, a protest against a bill that many conservatives say is too big and provides funding for things other than immediate relief for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

...

"According to the Congressional Budget Office, more than 90 percent of this money won't even be spent this year," Rep. Tom McClintock said. "That's not emergency relief."

Just like the fiscal cliff deal, Boehner brought to the floor a bill he knew a majority of the Republicans opposed. I'll cut him some slack on the fiscal cliff deal but to do it over pork spending?

Either Boehner is now the Democrats' leader or Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House. No matter which it is, Boehner and the House GOP is absolutely useless.

GOP delenda est.

Two things:

-Obama's big tax hike? Yeah, that's going to bring in about $60 billion this year, so...gone.

-Here's Gabe's post on the Sandy pork.

Even more outrageous: The total Sandy relief is $59 billion: $9 billion in flood insurance relief already passed and the $50 billion today. But of that $50 billion today only $17 billion is for Sandy related matters.

The base bill, H.R. 152, provides $17 billion for Sandy relief, and the rule makes in order an amendment from Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) providing another $33.7 billion.

So less than half of the $59 in "Sandy relief" ($26 billion) is actually related to Sandy.

Being a fiscal conservative and a Republican is simply no longer possible. Pick one.

Posted by: DrewM at 03:44 PM | Comments (478)
Post contains 403 words, total size 3 kb.

The real debt danger is from people's sense of entitlement. And their unwillingness to make difficult choices. Ultimately, a representative government is reactive, not proactive. Things are the way they are because the majority of the people insist on it.

You know...if I had to borrow 40% of the money I need to pay my bills every month, IÂ’d be fairly alarmed. When you come up a few bucks short at the end of the month for necessary bills, you can cut back: get rid of the cell phone, stop eating out, whatever. But when your monthly nut is routinely running to almost twice what you can pay, youÂ’re kind of out of options. ItÂ’s probably time to re-examine your resistance to sleeping outdoors and pooping outdoors, and...well, doing everything else outdoors, because outdoors is where youÂ’re going to be living before long.

Bad news: recent retirees will outlive the Social Security trust fund. Worse news: most of the estimates on the exhaustion of the trust fund (in 2033 or thereabouts) are over-optimistic. Even worse news: there probably is no politically-viable way to fix this problem, hence uncontrolled collapse is almost certain. Good news: wasteland rats are a good source of protein, and The Humongous doesn’t mind if you hunt on his land as long as you pay the proper tribute and stay well away from his precious reserves of gasoline. (If you’re wondering why Democrats resist means-testing Social Security when it’s such an obvious cost-saving measure, here’s why: it would expose Social Security as the pure welfare program it is, rather than the egalitarian “pension plan” it’s always been billed as. Moving to means-test Social Security in effect exposes the whole program as a lie. It becomes just another redistributionist liberal government program, and a completely unsustainable one at that.) more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:00 AM | Comments (186)
Post contains 1884 words, total size 14 kb.

It's really only a matter of time with Pakistan.

The streets of Pakistan were packed on Tuesday, when hundreds of thousands of demonstrators joined the protest called by Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri, a self-proclaimed revolutionary leader. Indeed, it was to be his day of "revolution."

He likely wasn't expecting help from the country's highest court, but in the middle of the march, the news suddenly broke that the court had ordered the arrest of Pakistani Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on suspicion of corruption and nepotism.

...

The order issued by the Islamabad-based court came following hearings in a corruption case in which Ashraf, who has been prime minister since last June, stands accused of having received bribes in connection with an energy project during his stint as minister of water and power from 2008 to 2011. He is said to have purchased property in London with the money he received.

The only good thing here is that this cleric, at least according to this story, is a "moderate" and his agenda is reformist, not jihad.

But... we'll see.

Observers believe [this sudden-superstar cleric] his expensive campaign is largely being financed by the military. His movement has transformed him from being largely unknown into a political superstar in the space of just a few weeks. Since December, he has been using television and newspaper ads to call on Pakistanis to join him on a "long march" against corruption and in favor of election reform.

The trouble with "election reform" in a country of jihadists is that they might actually get to pick their jihadi leader.

I'm very suspicious this guy is a Clean Front for dirty actors.

Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (169)
Post contains 298 words, total size 2 kb.