It is. More and more Obama simply disregards the law, or asserts his authority -- apparently as a tyrant, unchecked by a legislature -- to change the law via his sole decision it should be changed.

Graham is deeply concerned about the move, and about the lack of attention it is receiving — within and without Congress. The manouvre is “incredibly disturbing,” he told me. How disturbing? “It is exhibit A in the march toward an imperial presidency.” The “statute is clear,” Graham continued, “the WARN Act is the law of the land.” Here, “we have a White House saying, ‘we don’t care what the law we signed says.’” The OMB analysis — which holds that as the law might change, there is no need for businesses to comply with it — is “absurd on its face,” the senator told me, and the Department of Labor’s advisory opinion “a political move.” It is “patently illegal for the federal government to absorb the financial cost of a private company for not following the law. Never have we put the taxpayer on the hook for a private company failing to follow the law.”

Graham wondered aloud, “why are Democrats are not upset about the precedent? This has implications beyond this election cycle.” What implications?, I queried. “Imagine if a Republican president said that, because his proposed tax cuts were likely to become law, there was no need for the existing rates to be paid.” What we have here, I suggested, is the government instructing people to violate the law, and offering to mitigate the consequences. “Yes,” Graham agreed. “It’s crazy legal analysis. We are in danger of being no longer a rule of law nation. It’s a mini-coup.”

As you probably heard, Michelle Obama has never been more proud of her country than when her husband "worked around" Congress and the Constitution he swore to defend.

Posted by: Ace at 12:37 PM | Comments (411)
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Thank goodness for the media, huh?

Of course they're also publishing them.

A sampling of the documents discovered by a Washington Post reporter on Oct. 3, 2012, in the remains of the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya. The documents detail weapons collection efforts, emergency evacuation protocols, the full internal itinerary of Ambassador J. Christopher StevensÂ’s trip to the city and the personnel records of Libyans who were contracted to secure the mission. The documents have been redacted by the Post to protect the identities of some individuals.

Posted by: Ace at 12:09 PM | Comments (159)
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Turn your biggest stumbling block into an advantage by admitting it directly. In the opening prepared remark:

"Hello, and thank you for watching at home, and thanks to all those in attendance here in Denver.

"I've learned a lot in my last several years of campaigning. I've met a lot of my fellow Americans, and I've heard their concerns and their aspirations.

"I've also learned a little about myself. As many of you know -- and my legions of critics in the media are quick to tell you -- I'm not a very natural politician. It's a strange skill, an odd talent to be able to walk into very unnatural circumstances -- like this one, standing at a podium, debating a rival, while being watched by 50 million citizens, and behave as if you're just sitting around the kitchen table with your family, talking about stuff.

"Now, I've thrown myself at a lot of challenges in my life. I've been successful at most of them -- I turned Bain Capital from a start-up into one of the most successful venture capital firms in the world. I walked into an area I had no previous experience in -- the Winter Olympics -- and turned a failing enterprise, riddled with corruption and debt, into a sterling exhibition.

"But one thing I still can't master -- and I try -- is pretending that highly unnatural or at least unusual situations are just part of my normal schedule. Like standing up in front of 50 million people, on television, making a case for my candidacy for the office of President of the United States, and trying to come across like I'm just talking to my friends or my sons or my wife.

"I've tried. I'm still trying. But it's a tough skill to master. As they say in Hollywood, you either have It or you don't. I seem to be one of the 99% of the population that doesn't have It. I'm still not sure what It is.

"So what I'm going to do tonight is just tell you what I think the problems in America are. How I would fix them as president. How I think the man currently in office has gone wrong, so many times, and made them worse.

"I'm just going to tell you what I think. I might not come off as a Television Star, I might not have that screen presence that makes you a millionaire in Hollywood, but I am a guy who's spent all of his life solving problems, and particularly problems with enterprises that, while once thriving, have gone badly off-track and are now close to bankruptcy.

"I hope you'll evaluate me based on my achievements and my plans -- and hopes -- for this country. While my critics judge me on acting talent and ability to "emote," I trust citizens to remember what the critics don't -- that, at the end of the day, this is America we are talking about here, not American Idol. Thank you for listening, and I hope I can win your vote."

I'm sure that could use a good edit and compression down to 2/3rds that length.

As O'Reilly says: Now where am I going wrong?

Here's Where I'm Going Wrong: @tsrblke says there are no opening statements this year.

Seven years of college down the f***ing drain.

Posted by: Ace at 11:46 AM | Comments (244)
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A couple of days ago, Syria lobbed shells into a Turkish border town.

The shells exploded after being fired into Akcakale from Tall al-Abyad in Syria, where forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are trying to put down an 18-month-old insurgency.

The dead are said to include a woman and her three children.

Nine other people were wounded.

Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc was quoted as saying that Syria must be made to account for the incident and there must be a response under international law.

Reuters just reported:

TURKEY SAYS HAS STRUCK TARGETS IN SYRIA IN RESPONSE TO MORTAR STRIKE ACROSS BORDER - STATEMENT FROM PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE

Via @johnekdahl

Panetta: We've Lost Track of Some of Syria's Chemical Weapons. And they don't know whose hands they might have fallen into.

Posted by: Ace at 11:05 AM | Comments (278)
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What's a sexcast? Made it up. That's what I did. I just made up that word. That's all me.

Anyway, this woman, who possesses the pulchritude and desirability of a burned-out, rain-mashed petroleum charcoal briquette, goes into the standard leftist jag that conservatives are "obsessed" with sex, chiefly because we're not gettin' it good, as this uncouth cougar claims to be gettin' it.

Actually "cougar" isn't the right word. Doesn't cougar usually imply some kind of desirability? Usually. Okay, what's a Great Cat that you don't want to have sex with? An ocelot? I don't know, I could see myself with an ocelot. They're cute.

To demonstrate how obsessed with sex (and obsessed because we're not gettin' it) we are, she does a weird sex podcast about it.

We're not bothered by sex. We're a little put off by aged hippies doing orgasm simulations, though. It's not that we don't want to think about sex; it's that we don't want to think about you and sex at the same time.

Boundaries. Look into them.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (330)
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Before getting to that, Obama seems to lead by 2 nationally, or about that much. Rasmussen has it Obama 49-47; Gallup has it Obama 49-45 (but they're still polling registered voters).

Politico's Battleground poll also has Obama up by a couple, nationally.

I don't really care about state-by-state polling or even the block of swing states for a simple reason: the state tallies tend to be highly, highly correlated to the national vote.

That said, given that the media enjoyed freaking us the f*** out by playing up Obama's lead in swing states, a little payback is order, via Breitbart's Mike Flynn.

Each candidate leads in states considered "safe" for their party. In safe GOP states, Romney leads by 8. In safe Democrat states, Obama leads by a massive 22 points. But, in the more numerous and more important "toss up" states, Romney leads by 4, hitting the critical 50% threshold.

In the slightly different category of "battleground" states identified by Politico, Romney leads by 2, 49-47. Romney's lead over Obama is powered primarily by his edge with independents. Romney leads Obama by 4 among the important swing voters. By 11 points, these voters think Romney would do better on the economy than Obama, 51-40.

Posted by: Ace at 09:57 AM | Comments (185)
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Preen.

ccording to Bowden in the story—in November’s Vanity Fair—in the unlikely event that bin Laden surrendered, Obama saw an opportunity to resurrect the idea of a criminal trial, which Attorney General Eric Holder had planned for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This time, the president tells Bowden, he was prepared to bring bin Laden back and put him on trial in a federal court. “We worked through the legal and political issues that would have been involved, and Congress and the desire to send him to Guantánamo, and to not try him, and Article III.” Obama continues: “I mean, we had worked through a whole bunch of those scenarios. But, frankly, my belief was if we had captured him, that I would be in a pretty strong position, politically, here, to argue that displaying due process and rule of law would be our best weapon against al-Qaeda, in preventing him from appearing as a martyr.”

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (161)
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Oh, by the way, to the extent people were thinking Hillary in 2016, she's not the favorite anymore.

Clinton asked Issa to withhold any final conclusions about the Benghazi attack until the review board finishes its work and reports to Congress, which could come as early as November or as late as early next year. She pledged to work with IssaÂ’s committee and asked him to submit any requests for information or witnesses at hearings to the State DepartmentÂ’s Office of Legislative Affairs.

Chris Stevens is dead but the Nixonian coverup is alive.

Posted by: Ace at 08:43 AM | Comments (311)
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I don't know what's going on over at Reuters, but they are actually doing a decent job reporting on Benghazi and the Administration's many lies and deceptions.

Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.

Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.

It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office issued an unusual public statement, which described how the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had "evolved" into an acknowledgement that the attacks were "deliberate and organized" and "carried out by extremists."

Posted by: JohnE. at 08:06 AM | Comments (185)
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Hard to believe it's been 19 years.

Two Medals of Honor were awarded, to MSG Gary Gordon and SFC Randy Shughart, along with seven Silver Stars, ten Bronze Stars, and an awful lot of Purple Hearts.

The crew of Super 6-4, 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, about a month before the battle.

*corrected via xbradtc

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 07:12 AM | Comments (160)
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