There is the official policy and then there is the actual practice. The point of undercover sting videos is to discover the actual practice.

What do you do when a politically-inconvenient truth has been discovered? You gin up some fake outrage about it:

Apparently @saletan believes that "exploit" is a synonym for "expose." Hey, they both start with ex-. Close enough!

Having been involved in rhetoric for some time, I know this strategy well: When you have no good objection to an argument or a piece of information, and yet must respond to it, just yell whatever weak objection is at hand and begin throwing out accusations of bad faith and dirty dealing.

The Washington Post documents the exploitation:

An antiabortion group that mounted a six-month undercover investigation has released videos this week that raise questions about what might happen to a baby as a result of an unsuccessful abortion.

One video features a D.C. doctor, Cesare Santangelo, who said that in the unlikely event that an abortion resulted in a live birth, “we would not help it.” Santangelo was answering repeated questions from an undercover operative about what would happen, hypothetically, if she gave birth after an unsuccessful abortion.

...

“I mean, technically, you know, legally, we would be obligated to help it, you know, to survive, but . . . it probably wouldnÂ’t,” Santangelo is shown telling the woman, who was 24 weeks pregnant. “ItÂ’s all in how vigorously you do things to help a fetus survive at this point.”

...

He said he was “tripped up” by a hypothetical at a moment when he was trying to reassure a client. “Once the baby is born, it’s out of everybody’s hands, and the baby has rights, too,” he said. “I understand that and I support that.”

He wants you to know that he's the victim here.

He said he has not watched the video because “I don’t like to feed into these people. I really consider them terrorists.”

Posted by: Ace at 09:01 AM | Comments (237)
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Suspicious minds.

Federal investigators probing who sent potentially deadly letters to President Obama, a senator and a judge believe they have the right man -- this time.

...

Shackled and in leg irons, Dutschke, 41, appeared in Federal Court in Oxford, Miss., Monday, where he was charged with "knowingly developing, producing, stockpiling, transferring, acquiring, retaining and possessing a biological agent, toxin and delivery system, for use as a weapon, to wit: ricin." He faces life in prison if convicted. Like the first suspect, he claims he is innocent.

"I'm a patriotic American," Dutschke told The Associated Press. "I don't have any grudges against anybody. ... I did not send the letters," Dutschke said.

...

Judge Holland also is a common link between the two men, and both know Wicker. Holland was the presiding judge in a 2004 case in which Curtis was accused of assaulting a Tupelo attorney a year earlier. Holland sentenced him to six months in the county jail. He served only part of the sentence, according to his brother.

Holland's family has had political skirmishes with Dutschke. Her son, Steve Holland, a Democratic state representative, said he thinks his mother's only encounter with Dutschke was at a rally in the town of Verona in 2007, when Dutschke ran as a Republican against Steve Holland.

Well there's your headline, huh?

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:23 AM | Comments (146)
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In Sports Illustrated.

Posted by: Ace at 07:47 AM | Comments (320)
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Last week Gabe and I had a back and forth about the House GOP leadership's effort to transfer ObamaCare funds from a "slush fund" to a program that provides subsidies to people in an ObamaCare high risk pool because they can't purchase insurance because of preexisting conditions.

Gabe argued the House GOP wasn't trying to fix an ObamaCare problem but rather by moving money from the preventative care fund (the slush fund) the Democrats would not be able to use that money to lessen the "train wreck" of implementing ObamaCare.

This was in response to my contention that what the House GOP leadership, led by Eric Cantor, was doing amounted to trying to fix and ObamaCare problem that was popular (helping people with preexisting conditions) instead of letting ObamaCare crash as hard as possible.

Here's why I reject the notion that the House leadership is playing some sort of deep game to destroy ObamaCare game...if they were serious about hamstringing the Obama administration's ability to use that "slush fund", thus making a smooth implementation of the system even harder than it will be, they could have either zeroed out that fund or moved the money to the high risk pool when they passed the Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund the government for the year.

The CR was a must pass piece of legislation. If it hadn't passed we'd have seen a government shutdown. This would have been a risk for the GOP but it was also something Democrats wanted to avoid. In other words, it was a point of leverage. But the GOP took a pass on fighting ObamaCare in the CR because they wanted move on from the fiscal cliff battle and live to fight another day.

The House Republican leaders turned aside requests from groups of conservative members to include language in the bill that would have withheld funding for implementation of all of Obamacare, or, alternatively, that would have withheld funding for the Obamacare regulation that requires health-plans to provide cost-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

On Tuesday, the Republican-controlled Rules Committee rejected a request by Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R.-Okla.) to allow the full House to simply vote on an amendment to the CR sponsored by Bridenstine, Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R.-Kans.) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R.-Fla.) that would have stripped funding from implementation of Obamacare.

Now, I don't think they were wrong in doing that because they wouldn't have won but that's irrelevant. The GOP has no real leverage now in passing a bill to drain the slush fund. Sure they could have tried to make a few Democrats in purple districts take a tough vote but in the end the policy would never change since the Senate and White House would never let their slush fund be raided.

What's just as likely to have happened is if the Senate even took it up, they would have come up with a different funding mechanism for the high risk pools. A House Democrat wanted to hike cigarette taxes to pay for it. Suppose the Senate took that funding plan and sent it back to the House. Then what? The House is now on the defensive...do they care about people with preexisting conditions or not?

If anything had been done, odds are in the end we'd have wound up with the worst of all worlds (if anything were to actually have passed)...more money for ObamaCare and the slush fund would be intact.

But even if nothing had passed or this was just a "message bill", the GOP would be on record saying this is something that must be addressed at the federal level and that ObamaCare can be tweaked rather than ripped out root and branch.

What the House leadership wanted to do had nothing to do with making ObamaCare harder to implement because that ship sailed back in March. Eric Cantor has been pushing something he calls "making life work". How exactly the federal government is supposed to help people do that seems a question better left to liberals but it's the centerpiece of Cantor's ideas.

As House Whip Kevin McCarthy put it.

“I hear about the debt and the deficit. I hear about the fights,” McCarthy said in an interview in his Capitol office Tuesday. “And if I’m sitting at home, or if I’m trying to make within my household different things work or go forward, I think, ‘How does it relate to me?’ ”

It seems the challenge for conservatives, not necessarily Republicans, is to explain just that thing to voters. Instead the GOP leadership, for very practical reasons, is moving to "making life work" by "fixing" the mess Democrats made.

And how bad was the preexisting care pool that Cantor wanted to "fix"?

ObamacareÂ’s federal high-risk pools were projected to cover 375,000 people; however, only 110,000 enrolled before the funding ran out. The cost of enrolling individuals into the federal high-risk pool was 2.5 times higher than anticipated.

Fewer people than they expected signed up but they burned through $5 billion faster than planned anyway. Yes, let's "fix" that please!".

The danger in that is once you accept the legitimacy of an "entitlement" you are stuck with it forever. Remember that during the Medicare debate Ronald Reagan called it "socialism" but as President a mere 15 years after it's enactment, he never moved against it because it was politically impossible.

Be very wary of Republicans who tell you they want to hurt ObamaCare by fixing parts of it. Especially when they took a pass on hurting it when they really had the chance.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:19 AM | Comments (357)
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Happy Monday.

The New York Review of Books scooped the other news organizations to find "Misha," the person the Tsarnaev's uncle said "brainwashed" Tamerlan Tsarnaev into radical jihad. Over the weekend, word surfaced that Russia had recorded wiretaps of Tamerlan "vaguely" discussing jihad with his mother. The word on Twitter is that Russian special forces have raided a group with possible links to Tamerlan, but I haven't seen it on the wires yet.

Republican Rep. Mike Rogers was SWATted. So was Wolf Blitzer.

Top GOP donors are pushing the party to support gay marriage.

Reporter takes probably the best accidentally cool selfie you'll ever see.

Iraq suspended Al Jazeera broadcasts for "unprofessional reporting which escalated sectarian tension."

This one dude is SUPER into Google Glass. I suspect it's something like most people feel about smartphones. Once you get used to having near-instaneous information and communications, you don't want to go without.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (538)
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No.

Posted by: JohnE. at 01:22 PM | Comments (88)
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Where the comment lines are long and we have no bread.

In Soviet AoSHQ ONT, the comments entertain the Blog!

I've just checked into my hotel for the night, and saw there was no ONT on deck and a missive from Maetenloch for a fill in. So here comes a really crappy stripped-down ONT.

First though, a rant: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:20 PM | Comments (657)
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• Syrian Prime Minister Survives Damascus Bombing
  
• Good At Campaigning, Bad At Governing
  
• Dems Plan To Run Pro-Gun Candidates In Battleground States In 2014
  
• Egypt's Morsi Backs Down From Second Attempt To Take Over The Judiciary
  
• Chris Christie Continues To Position Himself To Win The 2016 Democratic Primary
  
• Losers Turn To Islamist Carnage
  
• Tamerlan's Former Girlfriend Said He Beat Her And Tried To Convert Her To Islam
  
• Chelsea Clinton, Hard Hitting Journalist
  
• Stuff Like This Makes Me Hate Our Society
  
• Feel Good Gun Story Of The Weekend
  
• Apparently Billionaires Are Awesome When They're Leftists
  
• Political Assassination Prevented In Rome
  
• It's Looking Like Hillary Will Run Unopposed In The 2016 Dem Primary
  
• College: What's The Point?
  
• Shocker, No One Wants To Buy Student Loan Backed Securities
  
• British Left Wants To Turn Dog Poop Into Energy
  
• Shortage Of Pizza Makers In Italy Because Italians Are Too Proud To Work
  
• Feds Looking Into Who Profited From AP Twitter Hoax
  
• Tim Tebow Released By The Jets
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:05 AM | Comments (381)
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No shit. Management 101 says "be humble, be firm. Get over yourself."

Not so with TFG. We've probably had spoiled brats in the office before, I just don't recall one who was this in love with himself and I recall Bill Clinton so that's sayin something.

Behold the humble man, loving on the hurt and wounded. With a White House photographer at the ready (unsequestered I assume).

I am all choked up.

Part of my respect for GWB despite the many times he bugged the hell out of me was that I really believe his humility is genuine. I do respect that.

This President, I don't think he has the ability. Which I find a bit remarkable considering his humble beginnings. more...

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 09:42 AM | Comments (274)
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Air Travel With A Gun

Last weekend I took my shotgun down to Georgia for a turkey hunting trip. It's the first time I've ever flown with a checked firearm, mainly because I always thought it'd be a big hassle.

It isn't.

(Shockingly ... not even at Logan Airport in Boston on the morning they're chasing terrorists around the city)

The TSA has instructions on their website for how they need to be transported. I followed these instructions to the letter, and the process at the airport couldn't have gone more smoothly.

Barack Obama: Gun Salesman of the Millenium

The WSJ explains everything you need to know about why the gun and ammo shelves are bare.

NICS Background Checks:

Gun Of The Week

(answer below) more...

Posted by: andy at 07:58 AM | Comments (160)
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