Either he'll break the filibuster, he says, or he won't; but the point is, he claims he's bringing it to a vote either way, which is a warning shot to "conservative Democrats" that they won't be permitted any hiding place.

And if he doesn't break the filibuster, he's vowing to use procedural tricks to keep bringing the issue up.

If Democrats fail to achieve the 60-vote threshold required to end the filibuster, Reid pledged to use procedural tricks provided to the majority leader to gum up the Senate legislative calendar to continue to force votes on gun legislation. "It will take a little bit of time, but we're going to do it," he said.

It is unclear whether there are 60 votes in the Senate to end the filibuster, and Reid conceded he did not know either. At least six Republican senators have said they will vote with Democrats to end the filibuster and allow an up-or-down vote on the gun bill. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., is ill and will not be in the Senate this week to vote, and at least two leading Democrats, Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, have not said whether they will support Reid's effort to move to the gun bill.

Posted by: Ace at 01:55 PM | Comments (139)
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I don't think she'll go to jail because the specific Colorado press shield law seems to provide her with the color of legality. But it is threatened.

She's the reporter who revealed the cops had been alerted to the danger posed by the Aurora shooter, James Holmes, and failed to follow up.

Here's a digest of the press shield law:

Section (3) of The Colorado Press Shield Law requires that the news information subpoenaed must be directly relevant to a substantial issue involved in the proceeding, that it cannot be obtained by any other reasonable means, and that a strong interest of the party seeking to subpoena the newsperson outweighs the interests under the first amendment to the United States constitution of such newsperson in not responding to a subpoena and of the general public in receiving news information.

I can't see how she can possibly lose, assuming we still have law and logic in this country (a dicey proposition at best). This is the paradigmatic sort of information that the government will never voluntarily disclose, because it's embarrassing to the government. And yet is is plainly highly newsworthy and directly linked to a major policy question being voted on this week.

But I bet she will lose anyway. Because: We are quickly become the Party of Rulership and the Party of the Ruled, and the party of rulership protects itself, and constantly asserts its domination over the party of the ruled.

Here's something that's going to rock your world and not in a good way. In an affidavit, the reporter, Jane Winters, reveals that she's being threatened by James Holmes' supporters.

In addition to substantially impairing, and potentially destroying, my ability to do my job, the subpoena also causes other hardships.

I am very concerned that being targeted by Holmes in this way may lead to serious harm against me and my family. I read a court filing that stated that Holmes has many supporters who have been harassing the families of victims of his attack. I have also already been harassed, even without stepping foot in Colorado. I have been the subject of numerous threatening Internet postings, including one posted just yesterday that, although it does not specifically refer to the Holmes case, states "May you be one of the first killed when the next Civil War comes." Other posts on websites for Holmes' supporters call for me to be "reprimanded" and publish my contact details. On February 24, 2013, a blog entry was posted on a website called [redacted], which contained personal photographs of myself, my father, my mother (who passed away some time ago), as well as a scary degree of detail about our personal lives.

I honestly don't know why we don't get serious about these maniacs and psychopaths. There are laws they can be charged under. Further, they need, as a general matter, some contact with The System.

Your have the right to be a lunatic, but you don't have the right to threaten other people.

The sort of person who identifies himself as a political supporter of James Holmes is a ticking time bomb.

Posted by: Ace at 12:49 PM | Comments (233)
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More gruesome details, and AllahPundit's take:

Gosnell abortion-clinic worker: One of the babies “sounded like a little alien”
posted at 4:01 pm on April 9, 2013 by Allahpundit

Unimaginable.

A Delaware woman who worked for Kermit Gosnell testified Tuesday that she was called back to a room at his abortion clinic in Philadelphia where the bodies of aborted babies were kept on a shelf to hear one screaming amid the bodies of aborted babies kept on a shelfÂ…

“I can’t describe it. It sounded like a little alien,” West said, telling the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge and jury that the body of the child was about 18 to 24 inches long and was one of the largest babies she had seen delivered during abortion procedures at the Women’s Medical Society clinic…

West, who said she called aborted babies “specimens” because “it was easier to deal with mentally,” said a co-worker had called her back to the room that night because she did not know what to do. West said the baby’s eyes and mouth were not yet completely formed and it was lying on a glass tray on a shelf and she told the co-worker to call Gosnell and fled the room…

She later made it clear that she called it “a baby” in her testimony “because that is what it is.”

That’s not the first time a clinic worker’s resorted to Orwellian euphemisms to make her “work” more bearable. Ed e-mails to remind me that you’ll also find “Product of Conception” in usage. More on Gosnell from NBC Philadelphia, one of the precious few media outlets covering this story:

An unlicensed medical school graduate delivered graphic testimony about the chaos at a Philadelphia clinic where he helped perform late-term abortions.

Stephen Massof described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, “literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body.” He testified that at times, when women were given medicine to speed up their deliveries, “it would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place.”

The Anchoress notes correctly that, simply for reasons of sensationalism, the media should be all over this story. Dead children, body parts, harrowing testimony on the stand — even the most soulless news editor, untroubled by the horror-movie accusations against Gosnell, should be pushing heavy coverage for selfish reasons, to boost readership. (Britain’s Daily Mail, whose tabloid instincts are unerring, has posted several stories about it.) Out of curiosity, I skimmed the last week’s results for “Kermit Gosnell” on Google News to see what turned up among major U.S. media. I found a few articles from local Philadelphia and Delaware outlets, a couple of AP items picked up by ABC, a Mona Charen op-ed carried in the Chicago Sun-Times, and … that’s basically it. There’s no explanation for the omission except one, just as there’s no explanation for ignoring Mark Mattioli in the Newtown coverage except one, just as there’s no explanation for disinterest in the Salmon family’s saga except one.

Posted by: Ace at 12:10 PM | Comments (305)
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image from ABCNews;
Ashley Judd with her "Psychological Support Dog,"
which keeps her from going batty over her Puffy Face

There is a real question about Watergate-style illegal wiretapping here. It's possible that one of McConnell's top people is a mole, and leaked a recording to Mother Jones. (But note, Kentucky law seems to make this a crime.)

However, it's also possible that someone illegally recorded a conference call.

A mole is something we'd get angry about and may in fact be illegal. Intercepting a wire communication is definitely illegal.

Here's Democratic Communications Director Brad Woodhouse thoughtfully considering this latter possibility:

He's now settled on a cover story as to Why This Nothingburger Leak is So Damaging to McConnell, to wit, how awful it is that McConnell could possibly consider making Ashley Judd's previous struggles with mental wellness a campaign issue:

As Brad Woodhouse would say: "LOL!"

Surreptitious recordings are illegal under Kentucky law.

Here's what Mother Jones has to say about the possibility that this was an illegal, Watergate-style bugging:

Mother Jones said the recording was provided to them last week "by a source who requested anonymity." In a statement they said they "were not involved in the making of the tape, but we published a story on the tape due to its obvious newsworthiness."

"It is our understanding that the tape was not the product of a Watergate-style bugging operation," the statement reads.

Ah, it's your "understanding."

I do not believe this statement can be counted as vouching for the legality of the tape. I believe it's the opposite: Claiming that as a legal matter Mother Jones is itself not guilty of any illegality, because of their "understanding," which may or may not be accurate.

After all, it's just an "understanding."

Note what they didn't say: They did not say something like, "We have investigated the provenance of the tape and have determined it was created in a fully lawful manner."

I believe "it's our understanding" means only this: We knew we could get in trouble if we published an illegal recording so we asked our source to say it wasn't illegal and he did. After we asked him to.

Nope! They're not getting out on the branch on this.

By the Way: There's no mystery about Ashley Judd's shaky grasp on sanity. She speaks openly about it, and her "Psychological Support Dog," whose name, I believe, is "Make the Bad Thoughts Go Away."

This last part via @nkronos.

Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (476)
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A stabbing spree on a college campus.

At least five people have been stabbed inside a building at Lone Star CollegeÂ’s Cy-Fair Campus in Texas, an EMS spokesman says.

The Cy-Fair EMS spokesman told Fox 26 News that the stabbings occurred in the Health Science Center building. One of the victims was flown to Memorial Hermann Hospital, while two others were transported by ambulance to another hospital.

One suspect has been detained, but another may be at large. Just a general note: After any mass attack, there are always suspicions of, and reports about, a second attacker perhaps still at large. I think it's just prudence on the cops' part to assume there might be another attacker out there. And they might think this because it's so hard to believe just one person could wreak so much carnage on so many.

But as a general rule, despite the suspicions about a second attacker, it usually (usually) turns out to be just the one.

Update: My skepticism about two attackers seems misplaced in this case -- police are actively searching for the second knife-attacker because initial warnings were about two armed men.

Lone Star community college's campus in Cypress posted an alert on its website just before 12 p.m. warning students of two armed suspects and saying one person remains at large. The alert warned people to seek shelter in a secure location.

Nope! My initial skepticism was right. There's just the one attacker, and the search for other suspects has ended.

via @danriehl, and thanks to @mpoppel, the claim on twitter that the figure is 14 stabbed, but I'm not sure where people are getting that.

A genuinely sick crime and of course my thoughts are with the victims.

Obviously there are some political angles to this story. "Assault knives" and such.

The problem, obviously, is "assault people," which is what we used to call psychopaths and murderers before The Burning Times, when all words were replaced by a poll-tested political euphemism.

Posted by: Ace at 09:46 AM | Comments (556)
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I came across this in Le Figaro, trying to keep my hand in at French. It doesn't seem to be getting much play in the American press.

But Le Figaro is pretty much this story all down the home page. (Oh, I should note that Le Figaro is a conservative-leaning paper (conservative, for France) so one could expect them to be particularly delighted in a socialist scandal.)

It's a full-blown political crisis. The Socialist Prime Minister President is down to 24% favorable, 70% unfavorable.

Cahuzac's secret Swiss back account is particularly problematic because Cahuzac had been tasked with... exposing those who hid money in secret bank accounts, to escape France's confiscatory tax rates.

Oops.

"Allo! 'Ere eet eez! I found un!"
-- Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac,
as reported by @zamoose

But getting back to the real reporting:

Cahuzac, a cabinet heavyweight who had been tasked with fighting tax evasion by President Francois Hollande, finally admitted to having a foreign bank account last week, following weeks of denials.

The scandal has been a major blow to Mr Hollande, with surveys indicating yesterday that nearly two-thirds of French people are in favour of a government reshuffle.

Three in five respondents to a poll conducted for the Journal du Dimanche newspaper said they were in favour of a government reshuffle over the "Cahuzac affair".

...

"For the French, the Cahuzac affair is not an isolated act. There is mistrust towards their elected representatives," Frederic Dabi, deputy head of Ifop, the polling company that conducted the survey, was quoted as saying.

And then this is just weird:

Meanwhile, Jean-Yves Le Drian, France's defence minister announced that a camel given to Mr Hollande in Mali in February as a gift from a local official for liberating the county from Islamic extremists had been killed and eaten.

Mr Hollande was presented with the camel on his triumphant visit to Mali, but left it in the care of a family in Timbuktu because of complications in transporting it back to France. The young camel has now apparently been killed and turned into a stew.

Hollande has proposed a series of laws and initiatives to quell the crisis, such as requiring all government ministers and high-ranking personnel to declare their "patronomie" (net wealth and total holdings; I note this because it took me like an hour to figure out what the "patronomie" scandal was about.). This is being resisted, as some government folks are objecting to having the public know about, say, the value of a country home.

Cahuzac has since been ejected from the Socialist Party for being too awesome at Socialism.

The bigger suspicion is of course that Cahuzac is not some kind of aberration, and in fact this practice of government ministers hiding money from their own tax regimes is widespread.

Why isn't a major political scandal, which may well yet bring down the government of a major power, getting any play in America?

You have to think it's due to the fact that this hurts the "wrong" people, the Socialists. And that what Cahuzac is (allegedly) guilty of -- an entitled member of the socialist-leaning political class engaged in self-dealing to enrich himself at the expense of the public -- is an issue that the Obama Administration would like to not talk about.

More Context: From JeffB. He notes I "undersell" it. True. Honestly I had no idea this was even A Thing until last night. But this has been a grave and growing scandal -- the words for "storm" and "tempest" are frequently used -- since March 19th, and Hollande has yet to turn any kind of corner on it.

Anyway, some of the backstory and context:

It's hard over-emphasize how big a story this currently is in France right now. If anything, Ace undersells it.

It all goes back to the insane tax rate (70%, IIRC) that Francois Hollande tried to impose upon top earners in France. France is, as you might know, a pretty left-wing country in general, however the Socialist Party was stunned to find out that the people (99% of whom, of course, don't earn enough to be touched by it) were opposed to it when they moved to implement. Shit got worse when the French courts did what I wish our SCOTUS actually had the balls to do, and struck it down due to problems with its inconsistent and inequitable application.

Now, place all of this in the context of 1.) an ongoing Euro crisis, one where France with its moribund economy isn't quite being lumped in with the PIIGS (and Cyprus), but is being eyed warily at the very least by Germany and the northern Euro countries, and is feeling a sense of national helplessness; 2.) the French unemployment rate is at a 16 year high, nearing 11%; 3.) Did I mention the Eurozone looks like it's teetering on the brink of collapse?

All of this, plus an increasing reputation for bumbling and ineffectiveness, had already brought Hollande's numbers into the crapper. So what's their solution? The "shiny object!" strategy: let's go after those plutocrat bastards hiding their money in other countries to avoid paying their social responsibility to their fellow Frenchmen! Let's go after them hard! Let's appoint a TASKFORCE to bring these bastards up to the surface!

Oops.

And that's how you get to a 25% approval rating within two years of sweeping into office.

The rumors all over French media are chattering about how there are more shoes yet to drop -- other cabinet ministers with hidden bank accounts, money squirreled away to avoid the confiscatory tax rates, etc. This could get well and truly AWESOME before it's done.

It's at Le Drudge: Commenters noted that it actually has been on Drudge. I missed that myself. But here's another British paper reporting on it.

Posted by: Ace at 09:07 AM | Comments (273)
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At the risk of being ostracized from the movement, this one comes from @BuzzFeedAndrew.

NBC, naturally. Hysterical. Also, open thread.

Oof, guess I have to explain. J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson was canned yesterday. The picture above shows Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI).

Posted by: JohnE. at 08:05 AM | Comments (297)
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• Gravedancer Obama Accused Second Amendment Supporters Of Political Stunts
  
• IRS Collecting Taxpayer Information From Facebook And Twitter
  
• Democrats Worried About Obama Cannibalizing Donors
  
• Leftists Celebrate Thatcher's Death In The UK By Rioting
  
• US, Japan Now Global Allies In Printing Money
  
• As Aereo Threatens To Alter TV Landscape, Major Networks Promise A Fight
  
• Egypt's Government Losing Grip On Security
  
• Thatcher Was Right, The Left Was Wrong
  
• Thatcher Helped Invent Soft Serve Ice Cream
  
• Jindal Less Popular Than Obama In Louisiana?
  
• McConnell Will Block Gun Bill Until He Gets More Details
  
• Glenn Reynolds On Dealing With Killer Asteroids
  
• Bitcoin Passes $200
  
• No, The Libertarian Movement Didn't Go Nuts, Just The One Inside Bill Maher's Head
  
• Australia Doubles Tax On Retirement Savings
  
• When You Buy A Dog, Make Sure It Is A Dog And Not A Ferret On Steroids
  
• Most Of Mars Atmosphere Lost In Space
  
• 1.7 Million Dollar Lamborghini Goes Up In Flames
  
• Man Faces Charges For Defending Himself Against A Bear
  
• Read This Story About A Golf Outing Between The President Of Bowdoin College And A Potential Donor
  
• Then Read The 355 Page Report The Potential Donor Paid For To Analyze The F*cking Mess That Is Bowdoin
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:30 AM | Comments (403)
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Happy Tuesday.

CNN/ORC International has another one of those weird polls of the Obama Administration (PDF). The President's personal favorables are up. But he's way, way down -- actually underwater -- on handling the major issues of the day. On immigration, only 44 percent approve, down from 51 percent in January. On guns, disapproval has edged up to 52 percent, from 49 percent in January.

Speaking of polls, it is yet early, but there's an odd gender gap forming for Sen. Rand Paul among Republican voters.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (461)
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As Emeril would say: BAM! The Canadians are doing it. 8% of the Canadian population are "cord cutters".

The comments on that article are awesome too.

This is the sound of cable's lunch being eaten.

I cut the TV cord and the umbilical cord when I left the parental home 44 years ago. Now my large-screen computer allows me endless hours of uninterrupted viewing enjoyment of videos, movies and a handful of past and recent TV series, via the net or DVD (in Hi-Fi Dolby 5.1 Surround™ if encoded).

It's a revolution!

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:37 AM | Comments (69)
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