By the way, if you keep track, you'll see that this Matthew Boyle has his name atop a large number of these Fast & Furious stories. He is keeping at it.

I think Eric Holder specifically had him in mind when he whined like a bitch about people pestering him with this whole silly nontroversy about an illegal covert op with a bodycount of 300 murdered Mexicans and two dead US LEO's.

On that day, records show, Burke wrote to Wilkinson that “[t]he guns found in the desert near the murder[ed] BP officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about – they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.”

The emails also show that Wilkinson “alerted” Holder of Terry’s death on that day. They do not, however, show whether he told Holder that Operation Fast and Furious had provided Terry’s killer with the means to murder him.

Reached by The Daily Caller on Sunday, DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler would not give a yes-or-no answer to the question of whether Wilkinson told Holder, his superior, about the connection between the gunwalking scheme and TerryÂ’s murder.

Instead, Schmaler pointed to a letter Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich sent to Congress Friday with the documents. In that letter, Weich wrote only that Wilkinson “does not recall” whether or not he informed Holder. Weich added that the DOJ has been “advised” that Burke similarly has “no recollection” of discussing these details with Wilkinson in the first place.

Boyle adds a little bit of unhelpful accuracy there -- these emails show Wilkinson confirming the gun came from a "Phoenix gun store" but not that the weapon was from Fast and Furious.

However, given the Administration's desire to prove the "River of Iron" case against guns, of course they would have checked on that politically useful tidbit, and immediately discovered it was not at all politically useful. Quite the opposite, as it turns out.

I think it is generally well-known that LEOs take a special interest in the murders of fellow LEOs. Things happen more quickly in such cases. Information requests to to the top of the stack.

Now, as to this "does not recall" business--

Guilty.

Posted by: Ace at 12:15 PM | Comments (149)
Post contains 408 words, total size 3 kb.

I'm looking for the backstory now, but wanted to get it up. You can skip until 1:00. Nothing happens until that, except for OWSers shouting some f-bombs periodically.

Backstory: The police were putting up notices to vacate. I guess they saw this guy ripping them down.

[H]e allegedly went from tent to tent removing notices from the Park Service....

The arrest coincided with the Monday deadline for protesters to remove camping equipment from the park and nearby plaza. Many have removed prohibited gear, but others have moved in and camped to deliberately challenge police.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 11:40 AM | Comments (234)
Post contains 104 words, total size 1 kb.

Video.

How do you want your steak? Bloody.

And to drink...? Meatballs.

Here's the partial transcript:

"Take your message of equality of achievement, take your message of economic dependency, take your message of enslaving the entrepreneurial will and spirit of the American people somewhere else. You can take it to Europe, you can take it to the bottom of the sea, you can take it to the North Pole, but get the hell out of the United States of America."

...

"I will not allow President Obama to take the United States of America and destroy it. If that means I'm the number one target for the Democratic Party, I've got one thing to say: Bring it on, baby."

Thanks to peaches.

Hilarious: Space opera villain Star Khan Reince Priebus compares Obama to Captain Schettino. Via Hot Air.

"In a few months, this is all going to be ancient history and we're going to talk about our own little Captain [Francesco] Schettino, which is President Obama, who is abandoning the ship here in the United States and is more interested in campaigning than doing his job as president."

Asked to elaborate on what he meant, Priebus doubled down.

"I called him Captain Schettino, you know, the captain that fled the ship in Italy. That's our own president, who is fleeing the American people and not doing his job and running around the country and campaigning."

Love it.

Even funnier is Debbie Wasserman-Schultz accusing Priebus of making "incendiary" remarks.

Posted by: Ace at 10:50 AM | Comments (345)
Post contains 293 words, total size 2 kb.

NPR actually reported on the contents of his Friday Night Document Dump -- to wit, that he was apprised of Brian Terry's murder by Fast & Furious gun on the day of his death, not a "few weeks" before his May 2011 Congressional testimony.

Here's NPR's version of the news:

The email messages show the former top federal prosecutor in Arizona, Dennis Burke, notifying an aide to Holder via email on Dec. 15, 2010 that agent Brian Terry had been wounded and died. "Tragic," responds the aide, Monty Wilkinson. "I've alerted the AG, the acting Deputy Attorney General..."

Only a few minutes later, Wilkinson emailed again, saying, "Please provide any additional details as they become available to you."

Burke then delivered another piece of bad news: "The guns found in the desert near the murder [sic] ... officer connect back to the investigation we were going to talk about — they were AK-47s purchased at a Phoenix gun store.

Oh, and skip down to "Motives Doubted" in this profile of key Fast and Furious figure (fall guy?) Dennis Burke for a media broaching of the "deliberate scheme to assault the Second Amendment" theory.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (77)
Post contains 204 words, total size 1 kb.

Goldberg discusses this statement of Romney's, made on the Laura Ingraham show.

Of course it’s getting better. The economy always gets better after the recession. There’s always a recovery. There’s never been a time anywhere in the world where an economy has never recovered. The question is how is recovered by virtue of something the president has done or has he delayed the recovery and made it more painful? And the latter, of course, is the truth.” “The president’s policies have made the recession deeper and have made the recovery more tepid and more difficult on the American people. This is the worst recovery that we have seen from a recession since Hoover. And President Obama wants to take credit for things getting better, he’s in fact made things worse. He’s made this recovery take much longer, but, will our economy get better someday? Of course it will.

And it will not be thanks to President Obama, it will be in spite of President Obama, and that's of course the message we have to give. If people think the right course for improving an economy is to massively expand debt and the federal government, why of course they can vote for Obama. But we know better.

This surprised Ingraham.

When Laura asked Romney if that’s a hard argument to make — that “Obama is making the economy better, but vote for me,” Romney replied: “Do you have a better one Laura?”

Goldberg lays out some alternate lines Romney might have deployed.

Although I'd like to see Romney sharper on this, it seems to me that Romney is seeing two moves ahead and planning for contingencies.

If you're arguing a case at law, you tend to make contingency arguments. "Your honor, my client did not kill that man, and, even if he did, he was out of his mind on peyote at the time and could not legally form the required intent to make him guilty of murder."

Romney is making a contingency argument here. What if the economy continues improving? A lot of people pooh-pooh this, but in fact Romney's sense is correct: The economy generally does improve... at least until it doesn't. Even during the Great Depression, there were long periods when the economy seemed to be on the mend (only to suffer another shock).

Here's my belief:

If the critics of Romney here are right, and that the economy will continue deterioriating, Romney needs to make no argument at all.

That's like playing chess when you're up a rook, a knight, and a queen. Assuming you don't make some catastrophic rookie own-goal error, you win. Period.

Fans of the "Obama killed the economy and it's dead until we get someone else in office" argument should bear in mind that if you're right, the election is going to be a very, very, very difficult thing for Obama to win.

But if you're playing chess, you do not make moves assuming that your opponent's moves will be awful. You assume your opponent will make great moves, the best moves possible, and you play your game with that assumption.

That analogy doesn't quite work here, but I analogize "opponent's moves" to "the electoral environment."

If the economy deteriorates further -- if there's a second dip -- if Europe experiences a credit crisis and that contagion hurts the American economy -- then Romney really needn't make much of an argument at all. (Only on that last one can I see the need for any kind of argument -- Obama will claim that this is just happenstance and he shouldn't be blamed for it, and etc.)

But what if present conditions continue, with the economy slowly, microscopically improving? What if GDP grows 2.0% through the next year -- which is very anemic growth for an alleged "recovery," and yet still is in the positive column?

In that case, you do have to make the argument. And the argument will be:

1. The economy can be expected to grow some on its own. Obama should not have credit for a natural rebound of the economy.

2. The economy grew despite Obama's policies, not because of him.

3. The economy grew at a much more anemic rate than it should have, due to Obama laying burden upon burden on already overtaxed wealth-generators.

And so forth.

I don't see much advantage to a campaign strategy of saying "The economy is definitely, definitely going to get worse under Obama."

Indeed, it might. I think there's a reasonably good chance it will.

But the American economy is robust and hard to kill -- despite Obama's best efforts.

If we have a second dip, Game Over.

But why plan for that? Why build a campaign around the assumption of a nearly automatic-win scenario?

If that scenario comes to pass, great, collect your Presidential Election Trophy.

And if it doesn't?

I don't want to be in the situation where we have no shot at winning just because the economy managed some very anemic growth in GDP and some very modest reductions in unemployment.

I want a candidate planning for that eventuality and making arguments based upon the assumption of that eventuality.

And if it gets worse for Obama -- then it gets worse for Obama. Bonus damage.

Goldberg's right that Romney must reiterate all the horrible things about this economy whenever he's asked about it. But the basics of noting that there is, in fact, GDP growth, tepid as it is?

It's not like the MFM isn't going to tell people that. Any candidates' argument must be along the lines Romney suggests -- yes, we are having weak "growth," but not of the type usually associated with a true recovery, and that's Obama's fault.

Update: Here. The discussion begins around 5:20.

I've added more to one of his quotes above. At around 7:45, he notes that the unemployment rate is dropping chiefly because of discouraged voters exiting the workforce.

And him taking credit for people becoming so desperate that they drop out of the work force altogether is a very weak position from which he'll be campaigning.

All of this sounds pretty reasonable in full context. Check it yourself. It's about three and a half minutes, 5:20 to 8:00.

He also says he expects there's a pretty good chance the economy will go into a second dip, but can't predict that.

Posted by: Ace at 09:58 AM | Comments (461)
Post contains 1091 words, total size 7 kb.

Some good news.

Santorum spoke with Florida supporters by telephone from 3-year-old Bella's hospital room and said doctors hope she can go home in the next few days.

The former Pennsylvania senator also said, "We're going to get out on the campaign trail later tomorrow ... heading out to the Midwest, and start campaigning in the next states as we move this campaign forward."

Posted by: Ace at 09:28 AM | Comments (117)
Post contains 80 words, total size 1 kb.

"We believe that there should be must-carry, that is, that everyone should have health insurance, or, if you're an absolute libertarian, we would allow you to post a bond."

Note that he's speaking about "must carry" -- the individual mandate -- in a federal bill.

He ties this into the end of the pre-existing conditions clause. He says that if the law says everyone is must-carry, then insurers can be mandated to be must-issue (that is, if everyone's mandated to carry insurance, insurers don't have to worry about gaming the system, and can be mandated to issue a policy to anyone who asks, minus the pre-existing condition clause).

That sounds like it kinda-sorta makes sense, but...

As I've said, there has been a sea change in conservative opinion in just the past few years. The Tea Party was an enormous change in thinking, but before that, a proto Tea Party emerged to defeat Comprehensive Immigration Reform. What was billed as "conservative" five years ago is defined as anti-conservative now.

And that's fine. Movements change, they clarify.

But there it's an ahistorical vanity to punish a politician over-much for subscribing to conservative doctrine as he understood it at the time. Much of what is "conservative" now was, until three or four years ago, "libertarian" or "paleoconservative" or just plain "radical."

That said, this gets at my objection to claims that Gingrich is deeply conservative. Many of his policy responses remain in the category of "agreeing broadly with the goals of the liberal welfare state, but proposing that those goals be satisfied by ostensibly pro-business mechanisms or market-disciplined widgets."

That's not the worst policy impulse I can imagine, but that's very far from the "revolutionary" posture he's now assuming, and which his supporters are claiming on his behalf.

Posted by: Ace at 07:04 AM | Comments (398)
Post contains 306 words, total size 2 kb.

AmericaÂ’s GDP grew by a smokinÂ’ hot 1.7% last year. Whee! It bears repeating: if youÂ’re counting on getting investment returns in the 7-8% range, much less the 10% range, youÂ’re likely to be disappointed for the next, oh, ten to twenty years. If you plan to retire on your savings, you need to be realistic about how much you need to put away, because youÂ’re not going to be able to count on investment returns to fill the hole.

Don't read this story (it's just more of the same "California is boned" stuff I've been yelling about for a long time); read the comments to it. The mindset of the public employees -- particularly the unionized ones -- is pretty common to states high in the rankings of the LOTB. In fact, this attitude is pretty prevalent across the public sector generally. The sense of entitlement, grievance, and utter lack of clue about private-sector compensation and benefits is rife. But taxpayers are beginning to get a gut full of this rancid porridge, even in California. The window of opportunity where this fiasco can end amicably is closing fast.
more...

Posted by: Monty at 04:40 AM | Comments (279)
Post contains 1823 words, total size 15 kb.

Gotta run in early, so you're on your own this morning.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:13 AM | Comments (141)
Post contains 19 words, total size 1 kb.

AoSHQ: The Very Early Years

Technology may change but the popularity of drink, dirty jokes, and political snark hasn't:

Crude jokes, beer and a hearty disregard for politicians were part of life in ancient Mesopotamia - 3,500 years ago.

A newly translated tablet from the area of present-day Iraq runs through a series of riddles which show that even in 1,500BC, people liked a puzzle.

True some of the jokes and riddles don't quite make complete sense - but then that's also true of most of the ONT comments say between 2am and 6am.

The two rudest riddles have missing answers - or ones that don't make sense.

'The deflowered girl did not become pregnant. The undeflowered girl became pregnant. What is it?'
Answer: Auxiliary forces. The term for a group of soldiers is puzzling here, says Wasserman.

'... of your mother, is by the one who has intercourse with her. Who is it?'
Answer: Perhaps thankfully, this answer has been lost.

And then of course we have the ever popular depictions of Mesoptamian cheerleaders:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:19 PM | Comments (389)
Post contains 819 words, total size 8 kb.