He didn't even bother with the "I've evolved" story.

He just went from pre-Election-Day border hawk to post-Election-Day Amnestia.

Sen. Dean Heller was adamant about the DREAM Act.

“I believe it is an amnesty program, a back-door amnesty program for the 12 to 15 million people who are here illegally,” Heller declared, apparently not caring or not knowing that the DREAM Act applied to a small subset (hundreds of thousands) of the total undocumented population (those who go to college or are in the military).

In his zeal to brandish the “amnesty” sword, which had proven to be a cutting issue for Republicans, Heller tossed truth to the wind while also waving off so-called birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants, saying it “makes less sense today” than when the 14th Amendment was passed.

Heller, as usual, was on message. And the message was right out of the standard GOP playbook at the time.

That time was Oct. 15, 2012, a few weeks before the appointed senator became an elected senator by a thin, 12,000-vote margin, despite losing Hispanics by a staggering 41 points. It was Heller's second electoral near-death experience in six years, and he would react just as he had when Sharron Angle almost defeated him (he won by 421 votes) for Congress in 2006 -- he would, ahem, adapt.

Since Election Day 2012, Heller has undergone a remarkable metamorphosis, from Sen. No Amnesty to Sen. Immigration Reform Broker. All the two personas have in common is that they postures rather than positions, and neither is very believable. This is the same protean politician who was a maverick, hardly partisan secretary of state who suddenly became a super-conservative after Angle almost defeated him in that congressional primary.

As you know, I've generally been of the squishy, some-compromises-must-be-made frame of mind on the dishonesty of our representatives.

No more.

Posted by: Ace at 01:53 PM | Comments (212)
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Giada De Laurentiis is attractive. more...

Posted by: JohnE. at 01:20 PM | Comments (262)
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"No matter how high your expectations are here, I promise you wonÂ’t be disappointed."

Apart from the kid's first pop-eyed look when he hears the voice, I suppose the takeaway is that the kid's attitude on sound is right: He understands how amazing it is, because it's new to him. It should be amazing to all of us (as should a hundred other things), but we've lost his capacity for amazement.

Background at the link above. more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (92)
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How the Obama Administration characterized James Rosen: aider, abetter, co-conspirator in espionage, and potential flight risk, thereby having the least possible rights to even know he was the subject of a probe

How the Obama Adminstration characterizes the progressive activist who bugged Senator McConnell's strategy session: "Journalist."

Posted by: Ace at 11:57 AM | Comments (104)
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Chris Stevens once shared this dream.

From the stage at the recent Women Deliver conference, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s daughter Chelsea revealed that her much-admired maternal grandmother was the child of unwed teenage parents who “did not have access to services that are so crucial that Planned Parenthood helps provide.”

Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. And new research shows that her family is not alone in treasuring a person who – if Planned Parenthood had been successful – would not have been born.

Eh. We have four entire sectors, Government, Political Infrastructure, Media, and The Academy, whose employees are paid to say nonsensical things. Nonsense isn't a black mark on their careers; it is their careers.

Posted by: Ace at 11:28 AM | Comments (219)
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Seems pretty unlikely to me, but some people really enjoy this connect-the-dots game. (Link Fixed, but it was just the LATimes anyway, so who cares if the link works?)

During the weeks before he was killed in a car crash in Los Angeles, reporter Michael Hastings was researching a story about a privacy lawsuit brought by Florida socialite Jill Kelley against the Department of Defense and the FBI.

Hastings, 33, was scheduled to meet with a representative of Kelley next week in Los Angeles to discuss the case, according to a person close to Kelley....

Kelley alleges that military officials and the FBI leaked her name to the media to discredit her after she reported receiving a stream of emails that were traced to Paula Broadwell, a biographer of former CIA director David H. Petraeus, according to a lawsuit filed in Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., on June 3.

...

Since HastingÂ’s death early Tuesday, wild conspiracy theories have bloomed on the Internet implying that he was murdered by powerful forces wanting to silence him.

On Wednesday night, the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks inserted itself into the story, publishing a message on Twitter that Hasting had contacted a lawyer for the organization hours before his car smashed into a tree on North Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.

The message read: “Michael Hastings contacted WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson just a few hours before he died, saying that the FBI was investigating him.”

Okay let me explain why I find this so unlikely. I'll do it with a joke I've made before, a joke about one of my favorite shows, Columbo. Every Columbo episode starts like this:

"And you've told no one else about this blackmail information,
or about your relationship with me?
Absolutely no one else, you say?"

Now why is that funny to me? Well, it's a plot contrivance in the show. The show wants to set up a situation where the villain has a clear motive to kill the victim. They frequently resort to this motive, the motive of I Gotta Kill This Guy To Keep This Big Information From Getting Out. And then, in case you're wondering "But wouldn't killing the blackmailer alert all the blackmailer's friends that the villain killed him, who would then inform the police?," the show adds the next contrivance, that the blackmailer has told no one else about the blackmail.

Basically telling the murderer: "Please Murder Me. It Will Be Eazy I Swearz."

We accept this as a plotline in Columbo because it's a TV show and Peter Falk is awesome.

But in reality, you can't just Kill That One Guy to keep information from getting out. People with interesting dirt like sharing that dirt with other people. So in all likelihood, your blackmailer has told one or more people about the dirt they have on you; killing the blackmailer doesn't keep the information bottled up.

What it does is alert several other people that, in addition to having committed some scandalous action in your past, you're currently a murderer at large to boot.

The suggestion in the instant case is that Hastings had explosive information about Jill Kelley.

Oh really? He was planning to meet with her. Planning. Hadn't done so yet. Didn't yet get the MacGuffin Thumb Drive With All The Cluez.

Furthermore, Jill Kelley's accusation has been publicly made, as you can see above. Her accusation isn't secret; it's out there. It's in newspapers. And not just in the LATimes, but in newspapers people actually read.

If someone interviews her -- anyone with a decent reputation, not just Michael Hastings -- she'll tell you about it.

And, furthermore: She's still alive. If Jill Kelley's Not-Secret Secret is so explosive to kill Michael Hastings over, then surely it's explosive enough to kill Jill Kelley over, isn't it?

Well, the Conspiracy Theory may now turn, perhaps the Lethal Secret wasn't about Jill Kelley; perhaps it was some other huge secret he'd discovered.

Again: A huge secret that none of his friends or coworkers had any idea about? A huge secret that he didn't mention to his editor, when his editor called him up to ask "Hey what have you been doing the last couple weeks?" (No slight to Michael Hastings: I understand editors frequently call up reporters to ask what the hell they've been doing. Reporters want to dig up stories, but editors want product they can put in their magazines. Editors tend to think that when reporters aren't actually submitting stories, they're just wasting time on the company expense account, which, to be fair, is only true 60% of the time.)

So, like, no one at Buzzfeed's chain of editorial command knows about this story?

It's not on any of his computers? Which, per the rules of inheritance, will pass to his heirs?

There are no emails about it floating out there?

Again, this is the precisely the sort of premise that kicks of thousands of thriller novels -- a man dies in the first chapter (or commits suicide, or is helped in committing suicide), and we know nothing about him except for hints that he knows Something That Will Change Everything. And then the hero spends the next 300 pages putting together that something.

It's a great plotline that immediately springs into our brains because we've seen it happen, at least in fiction, literally 1000 times by the times we are adults. Literally that many. Even more, if you particularly like the thriller genre.

But while it's a convenient plot for a thriller, it's not a very convenient fact-pattern to serve as a motive for murder in real life. Information is never really kept Completely Secret Except for the One Guy Who Cuts His Own Throat in Chapter One But Leaves a Series of Clues and Riddles for the Hero to Solve to Learn the Secret.

In fact, if Hastings knew something, ten other people did too. And probably more than that.

But they're still alive.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (269)
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I really hate doing the question headline, but this definitely needs answering. I started poking around last night.

At first I pinged mayorsagainstillegalguns.org and found that it was resolving at a New York City government IP address.

Pinging NYC.gov returns the same information.

It turns out I didn't even have to look that closely, because the mayorsagainstillegalguns.org domain is registered to the city of New York. As you can see there, the registrant name is "NYC DoITT", which is the New York City Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications.

According to this, Mayors Against Illegal Guns appears to be a 501(c)(4).

Bloomberg's group, a social welfare organization set up under section 501(c)4 of the tax code, is the first to comply with a U.S. District Court ruling requiring such organizations, which normally keep their donors secret, to disclose them if they run issue ads that mention federal candidates. The case, Van Hollen v. Federal Election Commission, was settled March 30, 2012.

Even if MAIG is reimbursing the city for these services, questions would still remain. Like, would New York City offer these same services to NYCTeaParty4Eva.org? Section 1072(p) of the city's charter on information technology appears to give the Mayor a little leeway, but I can't imagine it would cover his personal nonprofit groups.

p. to perform such other responsibilities with respect to information
technology and telecommunications matters, including responsibilities
delegated elsewhere by the charter, as the mayor shall direct.

At best, this is really sloppy. At worst, this could be pretty serious. We'll see what develops.

Posted by: JohnE. at 09:38 AM | Comments (239)
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A bit of media hype has been made over the so-called "supermoon" visible tomorrow night. While it is the largest in apparent size for the year, it will only be about 6 or 7% larger than the average full moon. Still, it makes for a great opportunity to get out there and enjoy our natural satellite. more...

Posted by: CAC at 04:08 PM | Comments (85)
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On today's epidsode, Drew M. discusses the latest updates on the Gang of 8 immigration bill with Allen Ginzberg (@AG_Conservative) and then discusses Scott Walker's speech at the Heartland Institute with Heartland's Ben Domenech (@bdomenech).

Ben also authors the Transom, which is an indispensable daily newsletter for conservatives. I'm a subscriber and encourage you to give it a look.

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Rick Tempest (@RickTempest)
Drew M. (@DrewMTips)
Gabe (@GabrielMalor)
John E. (@JohnEkdahl)
Andy (@TheH2 and @AndyM1911)

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Posted by: andy at 12:15 PM | Comments (103)
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Before we get to that: during a committee hearing, Senators grilled members of the Office of Personnel Management, which, in theory, conducts background checks on those who need security clearance and, in theory, ensures that people like Edward Snowden aren't granted high clearance.

That's the theory. The reality seems to be that they wouldn't know a security risk if it was sitting on their face and singing The Internationale. Here is some of the information elicited.

87 percent of background checks are never fully completed. OPM uses the information it has to make a judgment on whether to approve these checks.

There are no uniform guidelines across the government for different levels of clearance. This means that top-secret clearance at one agency means something completely different at another.

Within each agency, there are no strict guidelines for determining security clearance.

USIS, a private contractor, conducts 65 percent of all U.S. government background checks.

USIS, which conducted a background check on Snowden, is now under investigation by OPMÂ’s IG for failing to conduct proper background checks.

OPM has already paid USIS $200 million this year.

The $1-billion-dollar fund that OPM uses to pay for background checks has never been audited.

OPMÂ’s IG said they have not been granted access to documentation on the fund.

Miller said the documentation did not exist.

Even if it did exist, OPMÂ’s IG said he didnÂ’t have the staff to audit the fund.

And so on.

Apparently our Founding Fathers worked an additional structural protection against tyranny into the Constitution: The separation of ass from hole in the ground.

But Obama seeks to rectify this situation: by ruthlessly hunting down leakers and whistleblowers.

It's called the Insider Threat program. I'm glade they didn't give it an ominous sounding name or anything.

The exposé at McClatchy is very long and detailed. Here's the basics and a few quotes.

Even before a former U.S. intelligence contractor exposed the secret collection of AmericansÂ’ phone records, the Obama administration was pressing a government-wide crackdown on security threats that requires federal employees to keep closer tabs on their co-workers and exhorts managers to punish those who fail to report their suspicions.

President Barack Obama’s unprecedented initiative, known as the Insider Threat Program, is sweeping in its reach. It has received scant public attention even though it extends beyond the U.S. national security bureaucracies to most federal departments and agencies nationwide, including the Peace Corps, the Social Security Administration and the Education and Agriculture departments. It emphasizes leaks of classified material, but catchall definitions of “insider threat” give agencies latitude to pursue and penalize a range of other conduct.

Government documents reviewed by McClatchy illustrate how some agencies are using that latitude to pursue unauthorized disclosures of any information, not just classified material. They also show how millions of federal employees and contractors must watch for “high-risk persons or behaviors” among co-workers and could face penalties, including criminal charges, for failing to report them. Leaks to the media are equated with espionage.

“Hammer this fact home . . . leaking is tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States,” says a June 1, 2012, Defense Department strategy for the program that was obtained by McClatchy.

...

“It was just a matter of time before the Department of Agriculture or the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) started implementing, ‘Hey, let’s get people to snitch on their friends.’ The only thing they haven’t done here is reward it,” said Kel McClanahan, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security law. “I’m waiting for the time when you turn in a friend and you get a $50 reward.”

...

The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”

If you don't have the right level of Team Spirit and Pro-Department of Education Morale, you're a subversive and a potential Insider Threat.

Well, perhaps I'm exaggerating. I mean, it's not as if the government's obsession with controlling the flow of information has resulted in the Department of Agriculture now advising its workers to be on the look out for spies and traitors.

An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.

Ah. I sit corrected. Well I guess that's only prudent. We need our frontline national security agencies, like the Department of Agriculture -- you know, the Corn Police -- rooting out all potential subversives.

Via Instapundit and Hot Air, respectively.

Update: Treason 101: Are you a Spy? Are you a Traitor? Take the USDA's Treason 101 tutorial to find out!

Via @davereaboi.
more...

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