Hey, quick, let's give them more money.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (3)
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Update: Here's the Treasury Department's letter, indicating, as a formal matter at least, that this is a bona fide investigation. Of course, it will most likely result in a whitewash.

You requested that the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) review the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigations Division's enforcement efforts with respect to taxable nonprofit corporations engaging in political activities that go unreported. In addition, you asked that TIGTA review whether ACORN or its affiliates used Section 501 (c)(3) resources for impermissible partisan work, or engaged in lobbying or made political expenditures or contributions without reporting these activities to the IRS.

In response to your request, TIGTA is initiating a review of the IRS's oversight of tax-exempt Section 501 (c)(3) organizations and Section 527 organizations and will review internal IRS referral processes with regard to nonprofit fraud investigations. This review will be conducted by our Office of Inspections and Evaluations, with assistance from our Office of Audit and our Office of Investigations. David Holmgren, TIGTA's Deputy Inspector General for Inspections and Evaluations, will be leading the review and will contact your staff shortly to schedule an initial briefing.

H/t Major Garrett.

Previously the DoJ IG agreed to "investigate" ACORN, but only investigate what funds had been delivered to ACORN and if those funds had ever been audited. A possible precursor to a genuine investigation, but more likely just the return of basic information.

So this is the first real investigation launched.

Update: Based on the letter, this is a real investigation, so cautionary language that this could be like the DoJ small-potatoes "investigation" has been deleted.

Does This Have Anything to Do With Anything? Even as one hand moves to investigate ACORN for partisan activities incompatible with its non-profit status, the other hand moves to make discovery of those activities more difficult.

Even before U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was sworn in, Big Labor insiders like AFL-CIO lawyer and Obama appointee Deborah Greenfield were busily dismantling useful union financial disclosures produced by former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. It’s another Big Government – Big Labor partnership aimed at keeping individual workers, whom they claim to represent, in the dark.

Why the hurry? Perhaps Union Bosses wanted to prevent the Virginia GOP and inquisitive people like Patrick Semmens from visiting DOLÂ’s UnionReports.gov website that clearly reveals the Big Labor-ACORN collusion. Semmens discovered that teachersÂ’ union bosses gave about $500,000 to the same Brooklyn ACORN office exposed on BigGovernment.com. Both the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) awarded ACORN service contracts.

ThatÂ’s right; union bosses gave teachersÂ’ forced union dues to the same ACORN that appeared to have no problem facilitating child prostitution. No wonder SolisÂ’ Big Labor friends want to shutdown financial disclosure!

In fact, UnionReports.gov provides detailed union financial reports and is a primary source for many union members, reporters, columnists, bloggers, and researchers. But, the days of disclosure are numbered. Big Labor has commanded Labor Secretary Solis to shut it all down.

This sounds to me like a corrupt gift to Big Labor long-planned, so I'm probably just being a dope to suggest a connection.

Still. Odd that Captain Wonderful, Mr. Transparency and Openness, is acting to reduce disclosure as regards his corrupt political allies.

Posted by: Ace at 08:03 AM | Comments (1)
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Guys, when you're operating a vehicle, you need to get ahold of your priorities.

A German trucker suspected of driving under the influence of drugs crashed his vehicle near Borås in western Sweden on Tuesday. He subsequently admitted to masturbating at the time of the accident.

They were inclined to believe him.

The trucker, apparently unable to reach a satisfactory climax, then proceeded to continue to pleasure himself while in the midst of a police interrogation, according to the local Borås Tidning newspaper.

Of course, being in Sweden, the police offered him lubricants and erotica from their standard emergency aid kit. Maybe.
Well, no.
But you know they wanted to. more...

Posted by: LauraW at 08:02 AM | Add Comment
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'Outraised?' Is that a real word? Sounds invented.

"Republicans have been able to tap into some of the anger against Democrats in power and translate that into fundraising," said Nathan Gonzales of The Rothenberg Political Report. "There are a lot of Republicans who wish the election were this November, not November 2010, because they feel like the momentum is on their side now."

Indeed. It would be good to take a snapshot of this time, or list all the important stories, and see how important they seem a year from now. Some of the anger that's driving conservative activism will surely be faded by then.

On the other hand, the Democrats aren't running out of ways to piss people off. They're rather dependable in this regard.

Jennifer Duffy, who follows Senate races for The Cook Political Report, said the Republican surge is not a surprise. GOP "apathy turned pretty quickly into activism" after the White House and congressional Democrats moved swiftly this year to pass an economic rescue plan and work on health care and climate change legislation, she said.

"If the administration and Democrats in Congress were doing nothing, it might be harder to raise money," Duffy said. "They have certainly given Republicans something to work with."

No kidding. Guess you take the good with the bad, eh?

Posted by: LauraW at 08:02 AM | Add Comment
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Breaking on WSJ.

He's a 71 year old retired lobbyist and lawyer with long and close ties to... Big Pharma.

The Kennedy-backed pick for interim senator - a Beltway insider who could enjoy a lifetime pass to the Senate floor - has deep ties to special interests, sitting on a board that oversees a health-insurance provider and having lobbied for the pharmaceutical industry, the Herald has learned.



“Obviously, this is a conflict of interest and raises serious concerns,” Craig Holman of the non-partisan watchdog Public Citizen, said of the potential appointment of Paul G. Kirk Jr. to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s seat. “It is distressing. There were many qualified people.”



Â…

Kirk, 71, a retired lobbyist and lawyer who lives on Cape Cod, raked in a whopping $250,942 in salary and stock options as a board member for Hartford Financial Services, the umbrella for The Hartford, which sells health coverage to retirees.



Until a successor is elected in January, Kirk would wield a critical vote in health insurance and financial industry reforms, raising concerns about potential conflicts.



“Why in the world would they choose someone who has close ties to the insurance industry?” asked Wendell Potter, a former health insurance exec-turned-whistleblower. He noted the health insurance industry has much to gain in the current reform package, especially if coverage is mandated without competition from a government insurance option, as a bill now before the Senate finance committee proposes.

Yeah I wouldn't sweat that. I'm pretty sure he gets his main job is to vote for any health care bill any Democrat proposes.

Plus, PhRMA was paid off already by Obama to support this.

Thanks to PetiteDov.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Add Comment
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It seems like black letter law-- no reasonable expectation of privacy when dealing with the public, even if in your own home or office.

And that is accepted Maryland law, as well as being the general law of the land.

That right there would seem to explain why local news can do all those undercover-camera stings of shady used car dealers and the stuff they do all the time without having to worry about the two-party consent laws.

And, that being the case, I am befuddled at how ACORN believes it can possibly get around that massive exception.

Thanks to ATaLien.

Posted by: Ace at 07:19 AM | Add Comment
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I'm not sure why the article's headline says the indictment was for "WMD" -- I suppose it's possible WMD has become a law enforcement term of art including explosives intended to kill many at once. But it seems very, very misleading for the media to claim this when everyone's understanding is that WMD means chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

I've been sitting here wondering what WMD the guy had.

I don't want to pull a nutroots and say the media is trying to give Obama a bigger anti-terrorism coup than he has by pushing the WMD line, but I cannot imagine the press calling peroxide-based bombs "WMD" if Bush were the president overseeing the arrests. Bombs are bad and I sure do not mean to denigrate the plot -- but bombs are not what we understand as "WMD."

Anyway, indictment in.

According to the Department of Justice, a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of New York returned a one-count indictment alleging that between Aug. 1, 2008 and Sept. 21, 2009, Zazi knowingly and intentionally conspired with others to use one or more weapons of mass destruction, specifically explosive bombs and other similar explosive devices, against persons or property within the United States.

...

Zazi, his father and New York City imam Ahmad Wais Afzali were all scheduled to be in court for detention hearings later Thursday in Denver and New York. Authorities say they found bomb-making instructions on a hard drive on Zazi's laptop computer but still were unsure of the specific target or scope of a possible terrorist attack.

The 24-year-old Zazi -- whom authorities have linked to al-Qaeda -- his father and Afzali have already been charged with lying to FBI investigators trying to uncover the terror plot. Zazi met with his attorneys in Colorado on Wednesday. His father, Mohammed Zazi, was expected to be freed on $50,000 bail after Thursday's hearing.

The WSJ pushes the story as the first Al Qaeda cell uncovered in America since 9/11. This is why I grow suspicious of the leftwing media:

Hundreds of terrorism-related prosecutions, many for far more serious charges than lying to investigators, have been filed by U.S. authorities since the 9/11 attacks. On numerous occasions, U.S. officials have made startling allegations about terrorism suspects, only to later significantly dial back their rhetoric.

What is the dig about Bush "walking back" its "startling allegations"? Is it only now that genuine terrorists are being arrested?

And speaking of making startling allegations only to be walked back -- what is with the media's new policy of talking up a WMD attack when they only mean improvised explosives?

I want to stress again that I'm not trying to imply that explosives are no big shakes -- witness Madrid. Witness London. They are a big deal. But the common definition of WMD is NBC weapons and, while it's perfectly acceptable to change that common definition, it seems awfully strange that the media is selling "WMD Bust!" in headlines without even explicitly noting, "By the way, we are now hewing to a definition of WMD we hitherto never embraced."

Hell, under Bush, not even actual WMD plots were acknowledged as WMD plots. Jose Padillo? Aspirational only. And just a dirty bomb anyway, so, you know. No biggie.

Also: I don't really mind this definition of WMD, either. Makes sense -- a coordinated bomb attack could and probably would kill more people than a chemical weapon or bio attack. So it probably makes sense to define the term according to the intended or likely effect, rather than the vehicle used to achieve it.

However.

This definition has been available since 9/11, or before. This is the first time I have ever seen the media embrace the notion that conventional (though improvised) bombs can constitute WMD. The very same explosives, for example -- peroxide-based -- were intended to be used in the SkyBomb plot of 2006, intended to bring down, what?, up to ten airplanes crossing the Atlantic?

Was that called WMD? No, it was not. Why not?

Jose Padilla's other plot -- besides the endlessly-denigrated dirty bomb plot -- was to blow up an entire apartment building, all living souls inside to be killed, of course.

Was that a WMD plot? No, it was not. Why not?

If, as seems to me to be the case, the statute in question includes coordinated mass-casualty bomb attacks as WMD, this statute has of course been on the books since at least shortly after 9/11 (if it wasn't always drafted in this manner).

Why were WMD plots minimized under Bush? Why are they maximized only now, when calling a foiled "WMD plot" can benefit Captain Wonderful?

Here it comes:

I question the timing.

Apparently, at some recent date -- and let me just take a wild stab in the dark and say that date was January 20th, 2009 -- it became cool and hip to acknowledge the deadly potential of terrorist bomb plots, and, indeed, it became Standard Journalistic Practice to deem such plots "WMD plots."

And the media never alerted us to this change in the stylebook. Go figure on that.

So I've been sitting here for a week wondering if there was anthrax being spread around the city, all because the media "forgot" to inform me that in the Age of Obama they're going to include non-NBC weapons in the definition of WMD.

Ah: Ben asks:

I think there is peroxide in iraq, does that mean we did find WMD?

Posted by: Ace at 07:10 AM | Add Comment
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Ralph has all the self control of a 12 year old. Always willing to play the outrageously outraged card over any form of reasoned discourse, he gives hyperbolic rhetoric a bad name. What a buffoon.

In Afghanistan, our leaders are complicit in the death of each
soldier, Marine or Navy corpsman who falls because politically correct
rules of engagement shield our enemies.

Mission-focused, but
morally oblivious, Gen. Stan McChrystal conformed to the Obama Way of
War by imposing rules of engagement that could have been concocted by
Code Pink:

* Unless our troops in combat are absolutely certain that no civilians are present, they're denied artillery or air support.

* If any civilians appear where we meet the Taliban, our troops are to "break contact" -- to retreat.

McChrystal is morally oblivious, really? What an insulting and obviously wrong thing to say. He is a well-respected and honorable man, and for a bomb-throwing jackass like Peters to call him morally oblivious is shameful. Hell in a better world McChrystal would call him out and shoot the bastard in a duel. 

You can disagree about whether the new ROE will achieve the desired effect but to impugn the morals of a good man by saying he doesn't care for the lives of his troops is low. But Peters inhabits the gutter and I guess it is probably foolish of me to expect anything other than douchebaggery from him.

Posted by: Uncle Jimbo at 07:07 AM | Add Comment
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And you stupid wingnuts were worried there might be indoctrination going on in schools.

I denounce these kids and their teachers for using Husein in their little song. That's racist and scare mongering. Oh wait, that was only during the campaign.

Well, I still denounce the teachers or whoever put this little propaganda display together and wish them a good long spell of funemployment. Maybe they can get an NEA grant at their next job.

More: Michelle Malkin is on the case and seems to have identified the school and the person behind it.

Update: Kim Jong-il emails to say, "Dude, that's a little over the top, no?"

Posted by: DrewM at 06:07 AM | Comments (13)
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This space is for comments on headlines and other stuff in the Top Headlines sidebar. It's also a place to suggest what you think are top headlines. A link to these comments is stickied at the top of the Top Headlines sidebar.

Also: Just as an FYI, I haven't written anything about Glenn Beck so I'm a little puzzled why some folks are writing elsewhere that I bad-mouthed him. I don't mind at all when people disagree with me, but I kinda hope that when they do it's about something I actually wrote and not something they imagined.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:22 AM | Add Comment
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