O.R.S.

Even as the IRS faces growing heat over Lois G. Lerner and the tea party targeting scandal, a government watchdog said Wednesday itÂ’s pursuing cases against three other tax agency employees and offices suspected of illegal political activity in support of President Obama and fellow Democrats.

In one case the Office of Special Counsel, which investigates federal employees who conduct politics on government time, said it was “commonplace” in a Dallas IRS office for employees to have pro-Obama screensavers on their computers, and to have campaign-style buttons and stickers at their office.

In another case, a worker at the tax agency’s customer help line urged taxpayers “to re-elect President Obama in 2012 by repeatedly reciting a chant based on the spelling of his last name,” the Office of Special Counsel said in a statement.
OSC said it is seeking “significant disciplinary action” against that employee.
Another IRS employee in Kentucky has agreed to serve a 14-day suspension for blasting Republicans in a conversation with a taxpayer.

“They’re going to take women back 40 years,” the IRS employee said in a conversation that was recorded. The employee also said that “if you vote for a Republican, the rich are going to get richer and the poor are going to get poorer.”
That employee went on to tell the taxpayer she knew she wasnÂ’t supposed to be voicing her political opinions, and asked the taxpayer not to say anything.

Lois Lerner's lawyer commented, for some reason, questioning the timing of these revelations, calling it "odd."

And meanwhile the House Government Oversight Committee voted, on party lines, 23-14, to refer Ms. Lerner for criminal prosecution, for all the good that does.

Now Eric Holder gets to decide if he wants to prosecute one of Obama's minions for harassing Obama's critics. Gee, I wonder what he will decide.

Rich Lowry noted the obvious, that giving Lerner immunity to secure her testimony would be a double-edge sword. On one hand, you get her testimony. On the other hand, you don't get to prosecute her.

This is particularly a problem when you consider that Lerner's move, after securing immunity, might be to (possibly falsely) claim all responsibility and refuse to provide honest testimony about other actors in the 501(c)3 scandal.

Now, I know, hypothetically, that one could then prosecute such a hypothetical witness for perjury and strip him of the prior immunity. But then that all would just wind up referring the matter to... Eric J. Holder.

What we need is a true independent prosecutor, someone who could, if he found sufficient evidence, prosecute Lerner or anyone else who provably harassed citizens for political purposes.

And of course that's what Obama will steadfastly refuse to do.

Historically, these things have been forced on the Executive by a media which kept making the appearance of a cover-up a nagging issue for the Executive, presenting him with two bad options: Continue taking the PR hit of appearing to be protecting a misbehaving partisan employee, or roll the dice on an independent prosecutor, who might find no prosecutable crime.

But of course we're not in that world anymore. The media won't even suggest that perhaps Eric J. Holder and Barack Obama are not the most disinterested persons available to investigate their partisans in the bureaucracy... or themselves.

Posted by: Ace at 09:32 AM | Comments (260)
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There have been a lot of downer stories lately, so how about something uplifting?

This week is the Masters Championship at Augusta. (That's a golf tournament, you haters!) I've never been (iirc some of our morons have), but from everything I've heard, it's quite a celebration. Many (most?) of the former champions return each year and a select few guests get to meet them.

One of the returning champions is Billy Casper, who is one of the most accomplished pro golfers of all-time. Unfortunately for him, his career was at its peak during the era of the Big Three (Palmer, Player, and Nicklaus), so he didn't get as much acclaim as he might have otherwise.

I've been lucky enough to get to know Billy (and his terrific wife, Shirley) a little since moving to Utah, and he really is an impressive (and fun) person. If you ever have a chance to watch the interview Feherty did with Billy last year, do so. Feherty, who is generally a very snarky guy, was clearly moved by the experience.

In any event, here is a nice story about Billy's visit with a wounded G.I. during Vietnam:

more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 02:29 PM | Comments (114)
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National discussion on knives.

Several video reports at Hot Air, but I'll steal this print report.

[N]ot all of the 20 injured were cut by the knife, though most were. Some suffered scrapes and cuts in the mayhem that ensued at Franklin Regional High School on Wednesday morning. Stevens says it doesnÂ’t appear any students suffered life-threatening injuries.

While Stevens said all the injured are between 14 and 17 years old, hospital officials told CBS Pittsburgh the patients they were taking in from the incident range from 15 to 60 years old.

Some further attacks may have been avoided by a cool-thinking student who pulled the fire alarm when he realized the school was being attacked by a maniac, which caused people to begin evacuating. That probably seems pretty obvious to anyone reading about the situation from the comfort of his home or office, but the obvious is often missed in panic situations.

Posted by: Ace at 08:35 AM | Comments (389)
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This is getting re-goshdarn-diculous.

On my tombstone, under my self-written epigraph "Sorry I'm late," will be a tribute to me: People around him said interesting things.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 AM | Comments (298)
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Hopefully this holds you over until the boss gets into work.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:37 AM | Comments (141)
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• Pro-Business Or Pro-Market
  
• Shady Pal Of Bob Menendez Under Fraud Investigation Rakes In 20 Million In Medicare Payments
  
• Unpacking Progressivity
  
• Free Speech Vs. The Collective
  
• The WH War On Math
  
• Untaxed Corporate Profits Overseas Top 2 Trillion
  
• Al Sharpton Claims Allegations He Was An FBI Rat Are Racist
  
• On Asymmetric Stupidity
  
• Leland Yee Pleads Not Guilty
  
• Last Man Standing
  
• The Rise Of The Anti-Tech Left In California
  
• Smart Guns Are Dumb
  
• My Heart Breaks For This Man
  
• The Ultimate Warrior Is Dead
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:15 AM | Comments (484)
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Good morning, HUMP DAY.

Here's a long read by Seymour Hersh in the London Review of Books that a reader sent on Syria, CBW, and the red line.

Moviegeeks, here's an interesting three-part piece on the future of film, particularly the tentpole strategy.

Lawgeeks, Judge Facciola denied another warrant application for seizure and search of email.

In last night's special election in Arlington County, Virginia, an unlikely union between the GOP and the Greens has given the county its first non-Democrat board member in 15 years: " the result is likely to be viewed by many as a voter rebuke of the County BoardÂ’s major capital spending projects."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:48 AM | Comments (279)
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Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:34 PM | Comments (930)
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So here is some stuff I've collected from the various corners of the web, all the way from Hot Air to Hot Air's Archives.

I don't know why we're talking about this but there is some concern that Jeb "Act of Love" Bush will be, or won't be, our nominee in 2016.

He recently claimed that illegal border crossings were just a Crazy Little Thing Called Love, causing many conservatives to ask in turn, What's Love Got to Do With It?

Charles Krauthammer notes that we're not just talking about one family that crossed the border, but 11 million illegal migrants. And that's a Whole Lotta Love for the American fisc to start being responsible for.

On that, Kausfiles offered a strange but oddly plausible theory: Bush decided to Keep Talkin' 'Bout Love not to advance his own bid (which won't happen), but to say something so outrageously out of sync with GOP primary voters that it makes his protogé Marco Rubio's position on immigration seem palatable, by comparison.

If the full Rollercoaster of Love offends you, would you accept instead a Lovin' Spoonful?

Karl Rove warns Jeb Bush that maybe he ought to stop needlessly offending the base lest he become a Victim of Love.

Steve Hayes looks at Jeb Bush's prefatory statement -- in which he declared that he didn't care if this was going to be on tape or not -- and concludes that Jeb Bush is definitely thinking seriously about running for President, hoping to ride The Power of Love to the White House.

And, by the way, the Executive Director of the Virginia GOP just called for the party to purge itself of all "nativists," by which he means anyone who doesn't support Comprehensive Immigration Amnesty.

You know, I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That).

Today the President was pumping out the verbal fog (Love Is Like Oxygen), attempting to gin up his base, depressed and anxious (possibly feeling a case of Tainted Love) by declaring it Equal Pay Day, demanding that we end the gap between women's and men's pay. Raising women's wages up to the top floors, much like Love in an Elevator.

Ed Henry wondered why, at the White House itself, women made 88 cents on each man's dollar. Jay Carney then did what he does best, which is babbling aimlessly for five minutes and asking unmarried female voters to Let Me Put My Love In You.

Even CNN had to say, respectfully, To Sir With Love, that's just stupid.

Oh, and somewhere, a Congressman got trapped in his Chains of Love. You're seeing the leaked security footage of his kissy-necky embrace because he's a Republican.

Well, that's what I got. I ain't got no more.

I'm All Out of Love.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 03:48 PM | Comments (539)
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You can read all the "game changing" type hype at the article.

Here's how it works, supposedly:

The [Navy Research Labs] process begins by extracting carbon dioxide and hydrogen from seawater.

As seawater passes through a specially built cell, it is subjected to a small electric current.

This causes the seawater to exchange hydrogen ions produced at the anode with sodium ions.

As a result, the seawater is acidified.

Meanwhile, at the cathode, the water is reduced to hydrogen gas and sodium hydroxide is formed.

The end product is hydrogen and carbon dioxide gas, and the sodium hydroxide is added to the leftover seawater to neutralize its acidity.

In the next step, the hydrogen and carbon dioxide are passed into a heated reaction chamber with an iron catalyst.

The gases combine and form long-chained unsaturated hydrocarbons with methane as a by-product.

The unsaturated hydrocarbons are then made to form longer hydrocarbon molecules containing six to nine carbon atoms.

Using a nickel-supported catalyst, these are then converted into jet fuel.

Hydrocarbons -- fossil fuel molecules -- are basically just chains or rings of carbon atoms, say 6 to 18 carbon atoms long, each carbon atom in turn connected to 2-3 hydrogen atoms.

Ummm... it seems so game-changing as to be paradigm-shifting -- suddenly we have as much high-power jet fuel as we have gallons of ocean -- that it's hard, bordering on impossible, to believe.

Here's the harder to believe part: This process would be almost carbon dioxide neutral. It's true, of course, that upon burning the jet fuel, you'd turn it into carbon dioxide and water atoms (as you do whenever you burn a fossil fuel).

However, in this process, the carbon in the fuel is being extracted from sea water in the first place. That carbon dioxide gas is just atmospheric carbon dioxide, dissolved into liquid.

So while you are liberating carbon dioxide gas at the end of the process, it's just carbon dioxide gas you previously sucked out of the hydrosphere in the first place.

More or less a neutral, one carbon dioxide atom liberated for each carbon dioxide atom consumed process. I'm sure that you'd add some carbon dioxide, as you'd have to burn some energy to catalyze this whole process. (I suppose you could avoid that by setting up nuclear reactors that did nothing but provide electricity for this jetfuel-from-seawater process.)

I don't particularly care about that. I guess maybe that makes me extra-special-skeptical -- I know that any energy source claiming to be nearly carbon-neutral is going to get extra hype and lots of funding.

But who knows. I don't.

via @rdbrewer4.

Posted by: Ace at 01:59 PM | Comments (404)
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