Hero.

Posted by: Ace at 01:51 PM | Comments (104)
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This is a test vote and persons voting to begin debate are not necessarily in favor of the final bill's passage.

But it is ominous.

Here's Obama making a cascade of ObamaCare-like promises:

At a White House event a few hours before the Senate voted to debate the plan, Obama emphasized that it would increase spending on border security and require undocumented immigrants to pursue what he called an "arduous" path to eventual citizenship.

"You have to pass background checks, you have to learn English, you have to pay taxes and a penalty and then you have to go to the back of the line behind everybody who has done things the right way and have tried to come here legally," Obama said in addressing a major complaint by Republican opponents who call the reform measure an amnesty.

"Under no circumstances will I nut in your mouth this time, swearsies," Obama added, in the middle of Full Nut.

Okay obviously I added that part about "learning English."

Here are the NO votes to open debate:

Barrasso
Boozman
Crapo
Cruz
Enzi
Grassley
Inhofe
Kirk
Lee
Risch
Roberts
Scott
Sessions
Shelby
Vitter

In some cases (Kirk, Inhofe) I imagine the "No" vote here is purely for political show and perfectly dishonest.

Posted by: Ace at 11:06 AM | Comments (733)
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The usual whiff of corruption associated with legal matters erupts into the straight up stench of judge buying and influence peddling.

Judge Bensonetta Lane received the Jack P. Turner Award from the family law division of the state Bar over Memorial Day weekend in Destin, FL. According to the Bar's website, the award recognizes those who made outstanding contributions and achievements in the area of family law in Georgia.

When CBS Atlanta News investigative reporter Jeff Chirico asked Kelly Miles, chairwoman of the family law division, to explain why Lane was selected to receive the honor, she said it was "confidential."...

... investigation found Lane failed to disclose that John Mayoue, an attorney who represented singer Usher Raymond [Purp: yea, that Usher] in a custody dispute, hosted a fundraiser for Lane that raked in 83 percent of all contributions in a key reporting period before the 2008 election. Lane shocked many by giving Usher custody of his two sons even though he travels a majority of the time...

... Bar's family law division selected Lane to receive the award. Court records revealed seven of those members had or currently have cases before Lane. Ten of the members practice in Atlanta, which means it's likely they will appear in Lane's courtroom in the future...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 01:50 PM | Comments (226)
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Wait, who's anti-science again?

Former Vice President Al Gore lamented on Tuesday that scientists “won’t let us yet” link tornadoes to climate change.

Gore alluded to last month’s devastating twister in Moore, Okla., saying that shoddy historical statistics are preventing a connection between “these record-breaking tornadoes and the climate crisis.”

The former vice president made the comments at Sen. Sheldon WhitehouseÂ’s (D-R.I.) annual Rhode Island energy and environment conference at the Capitol.

This speech of his also comes only a day after the New York Times begrudgingly admitted that there has been no warming in the last 15 years.

I wonder how he managed to get from Apple's WWDC in California yesterday to Washington, DC today. Surely by not private plane.

Posted by: JohnE. at 10:51 AM | Comments (97)
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Perhaps he's right.

I don't have much hope this can be stopped in the Senate. But I think part of Their Plan (capitalization intended) is always to convince us that There's Nothing We Can Do and thereby discourage us from acting and encourage us to acquiesce.

The GOP donor class is asserting itself, Ross Douthat has noted. ItÂ’s spotted what it thinks is an intersection of crude self-interest, high-minded tolerance, partisan strategy and libertarian philosophy.

...

Worst of all are distractions that weren’t around in 2007. Probably through sheer bad luck, a series of dramatic scandals has captured the attention of both the press (which would ordinarily be celebrating the Gang of Eight’s epic achievement) and conservatives, who would ordinarily be kicking up a fuss. The distraction factor applies with special force to right-wing talk radio hosts, who instead of mobilizing opposition are pontificating in a daze of either overconfidence (i.e., ‘Democrats want this bill to fail’) or fatalism.You’d think Rush Limbaugh–a rare non-Fox conservative star, who understands what is at stake– might have a good deal of time to spend on the Gang of 8 bill the day before its first test vote in the Senate. You would be wrong. Rush talked mainly about the NSA.

If the conservative public were paying attention, the flaws and crude deceptions of the Schumer-Rubio bill would be common knowledge. They are so obvious, especially in the border enforcement area, that even Sen. Rubio pretends to be dissatisfied with his own bill. Byron York reports that many conservatives are shocked when they learn that Rubio’s bill doesn’t secure the border before legalization. It doesn’t! ”First comes the legalization,” as Rubio boasted yesterday. That’s been obvious for months, but now it’s news. (The border security requirements, themselves evanescent, would only prevent legalized illegals from moving to upgrade from legal status to getting green cards and citizenship.)

ItÂ’s time to wake up!

...

Ignore the f—ing scandals for a few days and save the country from Chuck Schumer.

Via @anncoulter, who tweeted the last line.

Posted by: Ace at 09:37 AM | Comments (367)
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I gotta say, I'm against it on aesthetic grounds. I don't expect it to be beautiful (as the interplay between a streetlamp and a tree's leaves often is). I expect it to be scary and nightmarish. Like one of those Glowing Swamp levels I always hated in World of Warcraft.

But the Kickstarter project is already funded.

Further Thought: Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson frequently says global warming is not much of a problem, and to the extent it threatens us at all, it's easily mitigated. He proposes that if excess carbon in the atmosphere really becomes a problem, we could always genetically-modify trees to suck in and store, deep in the roots, more carbon than they do.

This sort of solution is always attacked by the warmists, who react with shock that we would genetically tamper with trees.

And yet this Kickstarter project to make add a bioluminescent gene to trees gets quickly funded.

The difference is really that the warmists insist we simply use less energy, period. When someone like Dyson suggests that we could use as much energy, but then suck more of it out of the air and store it underground in the roots of specially-bred trees, the left/the warmists react with hostility.

And yet the free-carbon-in-the-atmosphere ledgers are the same either way-- whether we add less of it, or we subtract more of it on the back end, less carbon is less carbon. The bioluminescent trees pass muster, not because such trees are "natural," but because they comport with the plan preferred by the warmists (add less carbon).

As if it needed further underscoring: This reveals the anti-science streak of the warmists, a simple Naive Luddism, a fantasia about "returning" to an imagined Eden. It is also an anti-prosperity streak, and, ultimately, an anti-human one as well.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:49 AM | Comments (347)
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Another coverup with Hillary, Patrick Kennedy, and Cheryl Mills conspiring at the center.

This is worse than Watergate.

The New York Post will take all the scoops the media deliberately gives up.

A State Department whistleblower has accused high-ranking staff of a massive coverup — including keeping a lid on findings that members of then-Secretary Hillary Clinton’s security detail and the Belgian ambassador solicited prostitutes.

A chief investigator for the agencyÂ’s inspector general wrote a memo outlining eight cases that were derailed by senior officials, including one instance of interference by ClintonÂ’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.

...

A DS agent was called off a case against US Ambassador to Belgium Howard Gutman over claims that he solicited prostitutes, including minors.

At Hot Air (first link, at the top), Ed Morrissey says that Gutman raised over a half million for Obama's campaign and also cut checks for his inaugural ball.

I guess that kind of money buys a certain amount of latitude vis à vis Sex With Underaged Children. At least on Team Obama.

There are two ways an Administration can avoid the taint of scandal.

One, actually avoid scandals or, where misbehavior is detected, confront it openly and vigorously and thereby correct it.

Two, just cover the scandals up and count on an supplicative press to assist in the cover up.

Posted by: Ace at 07:46 AM | Comments (466)
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We've "solved" the mystery, he says.

Representative Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made a somewhat startling claim about the burgeoning IRS scandal, as Eliana Johnson noted on Sunday.

“Based upon everything I’ve seen, the case is solved and if it were me, I’d wrap this case up and move on, to be frank with you,” Cummings said.

The comment was an abrupt departure from what Democrats, including President Obama, have been saying about the issue, which is that they are committed to a thorough investigation to make sure something like this never happens again.

Obviously the Democrats are not acting like they expect this to turn out to be a couple of bad apples. They're acting, as Doc Zero said, as if they believe this scandal constitutes an "existential threat" to their party.

Were it a couple of bad apples, they could just fire those bad apples and themselves join the Hero Squad. Instead, they're taking dangerous political positions.

Why would they do that? Well, for the obvious reason: Because the dangerous political positions they're taking are yet safer than permitting the truth to out.

Posted by: Ace at 06:58 AM | Comments (202)
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Many of us raised an eyebrow at Snowden's imaginative claims that he would have been "disappeared" if he had used the proper channels to report wrongdoing or that the "triads" could come after him. Other parts of his claims are also unravelling.

Booz Allen Hamilton just issued this statement:

Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, was an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii. Snowden, who had a salary at the rate of $122,000, was terminated June 10, 2013 for violations of the firmÂ’s code of ethics and firm policy.

Not $200,000? Many folks were wondering about that. Seems to have been a boast.

Also, did you notice that WaPo made major stealth-edits to its PRISM story? ZDNt's Ed Bott has an extensive review, but here's a taste:

And then a funny thing happened the next morning. If you followed the link to that story, you found a completely different story, nearly twice as long, with a slightly different headline. The new story wasnÂ’t just expanded; it had been stripped of key details, with no acknowledgment of the changes. That updated version, time-stamped at 8:51 AM on June 7, backed off from key details in the original story.

Crucially, the Post removed the “knowingly participated” language and also scrubbed a reference to the program as being “highly classified.” In addition, a detail in the opening graf that claimed the NSA could “track a person’s movements and contacts over time” was changed to read simply “track foreign targets.”

Click over and read the whole, extensive thing. Did the journalists get it wrong, or did Snowden?

Revealing the truth was allegedly the whole point of Snowden's decision to turn over top secret material to journalists. If it turns out he was less than truthful, he will have severely damaged U.S. national security for questionable benefit.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:01 AM | Comments (507)
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Happy Tuesday.

Poll finds Americans, by 2 to 1, not really bothered about cell phone tracking in the context of terrorism prevention. The interesting thing is that the overall number remained stable, while Republicans and Democrats shifted on the issue after Obama was elected.

I didn't realize that it had been confirmed that Snowden was the source for Greenwald's cell phone metadata scoop. Investigators are trying to figure out how a contract IT guy managed to get his hands on it. "When he said he had access to every CIA station around the world, he's lying."

Snowden has now given Greenwald thousands of documents. According to Greenwald, "dozens" are newsworthy.

Alright, switching to happier news, folks seem to like 'Man of Steel.' I'm excited.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:46 AM | Comments (626)
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