Wow.

Former New England Patriots player Aaron Hernandez, already facing charges in a murder last week in North Attleborough, is also being investigated in connection with a July 2012 double murder in Boston, according to two law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation.

Investigators believe a fight broke out at Cure, a club in the South End, between two men and a group that included Hernandez.

...

[The men Hernandez had fought with] stopped at a traffic light on Shawmut Avenue, about to make a left onto Herald Street, when a silver or gray SUV with Rhode Island license plates pulled alongside the sedan. Someone from the SUV opened fire, killing Abreu, 29, and Furtado, 28.

The men who were with them survived the attack and the killings were left unsolved.

And speculation is that this is why Odin Lloyd was murdered -- and why Hernandez was concerned he was talking to the "wrong people." Perhaps friends of the previous victims?

Yesterday I suggested, based on my understanding, that Hernandez' concern about Lloyd talking to the "wrong people" was some kind of childish gang-mentality thing -- "Don't talk to people I'm feuding with," that kind of senseless gangbanger thing.

But it seems I was probably wrong. It looks like Hernandez wasn't just upset Lloyd was talking to people Hernandez didn't like. It looks like Hernandez was upset that Lloyd was breaking the first rule of Murder Club.

Posted by: Ace at 09:50 AM | Comments (233)
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Via Instapundit, it's a drubbingin all areas. If it was a fight they would have stopped it in round 1. Full article at The Hill.

The most telling indictment of CaliforniaÂ’s performance? If you removed oil and gas from the Texas economy, the Lone Star state has still outpaced growth in California. Apologists for the Golden State shouldnÂ’t forget that it is in possession of two-thirds of AmericaÂ’s proven shale reserves, a treasure trove that rivals many resource-rich sovereign countries.

...

Finally, and most disturbingly, the US Census Bureau found that between 2009 and 2011, California had the highest supplemental poverty measure in America, with 42 percent more people in poverty as a share of the population than Texas. This canÂ’t all be chalked up to immigration either: illegal immigrants account for the same percentage of TexasÂ’s population as they do CaliforniaÂ’s.

California has a way to make up for lost ground, of course: They'll just demand the US government transfer wealth from citizens in well-managed states to the governments of poorly-managed ones.

And thus will terrible, destructive choices be disguised so that they'll never have to be corrected, like an alcoholic's habitual use of breath spray.

Posted by: Ace at 10:30 AM | Comments (244)
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She's a star witness because she's the only witness to contradict George Zimmerman's claim that he stopped following Trayvon Martin. The defense suspects she's making this all up-- that she had nothing important to tell police, which is why she never bothered contacting them.

At some point, weeks later, the Martin family contacted her. She now explains her failure to step forward with critical information in a homicide case by saying she expected police to contact her, because that's what always happens on First 48 (one of those crime documentary news magazine shows).

"Don't you watch First 48?" she asked a defense attorney when pressed on this claim. As if she thought the attorney's knowledge of police procedure came from the same place hers (allegedly) did.

An alternate explanation is that she didn't contact police because she had nothing important to tell them at all, and that now she's been coached into how to deliver perjured testimony that could land Zimmerman in jail.

Yesterday she claimed that, over the cell phone, she could hear the sound of "grass, wet grass." Yes, of course everyone hears vegetation, and especially over a cell phone.

It's in this context that a letter supposedly written by her but not, alas, readable by her, is important.

A teenage friend of Trayvon Martin was forced to admit today in the George Zimmerman murder trial that she did not write a letter that was sent to Martin's mother describing what she allegedly heard on a phone call with Martin moments before he was shot.

In a painfully embarassing moment, Rachel Jeantel was asked to read the letter out loud in court.

"Are you able to read that at all?" defense attorney Don West asked.

Jeantel, head bowed, eyes averted whispered into the court microphone, "Some but not all. I don't read cursive."

It sent a hush through the packed courtroom.

Jeantel, 19, was unable to read any of the letter save for her name.

Posted by: Ace at 08:42 AM | Comments (879)
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An update to Drew's post below-- when only six organizations were looked at, they may be be being targeted, but they're being targeted for the easy treatment, not the rough treatment.

In a letter to congressional Democrats, the inspector general also said that 100 percent of Tea Party groups seeking special tax status were put under IRS review, while only 30 percent of the progressive groups felt the same pressure.

Let's unpack this whole claim -- liberals are clinging to the idea that if any of their groups were targeted, then this isn't a scandal at all, just equal application of the law.

But this is nonsense. The entire point is that the IRS is supposed to review these applications in order to determine whether the applicant fits under the rule for receiving special status. Progressives are now basically saying that if the IRS did its basic job with respect to progressive groups, and looked at a few of them, then there's no scandal.

But that's what the IRS was supposed to do. That doesn't mean it was "targeting" them.

What's targeting? Targeting is when the IRS applies special search terms to give your applications special scrutiny above and beyond the level that other groups receive.

All the progressive defenders of the IRS seem to be able to allege is that the IRS treated their groups properly and did in fact do some basic due diligence on a few of them.

But they weren't targeted for heightened scrutiny-- they got the regular ol' level of scrutiny.

And they know it, and now they're lying.

Meanwhile, 26% of Obama supporters believe the nation's top terrorist threat is The Tea Party, and, oh joy, I guess a lot of them work at the IRS.

new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters consider radical Muslims to be the bigger threat to the United States today. Thirteen percent (13%) view the Tea Party that way, and another 13% consider other political and religious extremists to be the larger danger....

However, among those who approve of the presidentÂ’s job performance, just 29% see radical Muslims as the bigger threat. Twenty-six percent (26%) say itÂ’s the Tea Party that concerns them most. Among those who Strongly Approve of the president, more fear the Tea Party than radical Muslims.

Posted by: Ace at 07:52 AM | Comments (363)
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Democratic Congressman Sander Levin claimed the IRS didn't just go after "tea party" groups but also ones that were "progressive".

Just one small problem, it's total BS.

“Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” [Treasury Inspector General for Tax Adminstration Russell] George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention.

“While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria we described in our report, including employee interviews, e-mails and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention,” George wrote to Levin, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.

The Democrats, for obvious reasons, desperately want this to go away but it just will not.

Republicans on the other hand need to figure out what they want from this. It's not going to end in Obama's impeachment or the flat tax, so what's the goal? Is it just politics for 2014 or is there some policy goal? I'd like to see civil service reforms along the lines of what Mitch McConnell was talking about last week. I hope the GOP starts pushing bills now while the issue is hot and not waiting for endless investigations. We know there were abuses and they were enabled by a corrupt system. Let's get to fixing it while there are new revelations to keep the public focused.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:44 AM | Comments (591)
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Better late than never, I guess.

Whaddya got this morning, Vic?

Posted by: andy at 03:35 AM | Comments (663)
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The Immigration Bill AKA The Fire Americans Act

ObamaCare + the Amnesty Bill = the perverse incentive to fire American employees and replace them all with amnestied illegals.

Under the Gang of 8's backroom immigration deal with Senators Schumer, Corker and Hoeven, formerly illegal immigrants who are amnestied will be eligible to work, but will not be eligible for ObamaCare. Employers who would be required to pay as much as a $3,000 penalty for most employees who receive an ObamaCare healthcare "exchange" subsidy, would not have to pay the penalty if they hire amnestied immigrants.

Consequently, employers would have a significant incentive to hire or retain amnestied immigrants, rather than current citizens, including those who have recently achieved citizenship via the current naturalization process.

Just gets better and better doesn't it?

Hey Guess Who Wanted Leakers Tortured?

Hint: It's one of these men.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:13 PM | Comments (930)
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He may or may not have pulled the triggers; he had a little team to pull off this stupid little murder.

The murdered man was named Odin (!) Lloyd-- apparently guilty of "talking to the wrong people," whatever that means. I do think it just means "talking" -- that he was socializing with people Hernandez didn't like.

So he and two confederates killed him.

Surveillance footage from Hernandez's home showed him leaving with a gun, and he told someone in the house that he was upset and couldn't trust anyone anymore, the prosecutor said.

The three men picked up Lloyd at his home around 2:30 a.m., according to authorities. As they drove around in their rented car, they discussed what happened at the nightclub, and Lloyd started getting nervous, McCauley said.

Lloyd texted his sister, "Did you see who I am with?" When she asked who, he answered, at 3:22 a.m., "NFL," then, a minute later, he sent one final text: "Just so you know."

Within a few minutes, people working the overnight shift at the industrial park reported hearing gunshots, McCauley said. Surveillance video showed the car going into a remote area of the industrial park and emerging four minutes later, the prosecutor said.

A short time later, Hernandez returned to his house, and he and one of the other men were seen on his home surveillance system holding guns, McCauley said. Then the system stopped recording, according to the prosecutor.

This guy's got his priorities straight:

To review:

Aaron Hernandez, Biggest Loser.

Tim Tebow, Big Winner.

Also a Big Loser: Odin Lloyd, the guy Hernandez killed.

I shouldn't make a big deal but it is strange the guy analyzes the Hernandez Situation chiefly from the perspective of lineup changes on the Patriots.

Posted by: Ace at 04:10 PM | Comments (448)
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A so-called "citizen filibuster" succeeded last night when abortion supporters blocked Texas from outlawing post-20th-week abortions by hooting the legislative session into disorder. Rich Perry has called for the legislature to reconvene on July 1st.

I didn't see the coverage, but apparently the media was fawning over the "citizen filibusterers."

Here's the most incredible example imaginable -- something that proves a profound bias. You'll remember previously that Sarah Kliff, who covers abortion policy for the Washington Post, explained that she wasn't covering the Gosnell story because she doesn't cover "local crime stories."

Well, here's how she gushed over a pro-choice legislator's filibuster and the "citizen filibuster" that shut the house down:

Ah. Not merely a "local crime story" about some disorderly conduct at a state house, then?

How long will the media continuing lying directly to our faces even as they claim for themselves special status as "truth tellers"?

From Hot Air, a flashback to this two part analsys by long-time newspaperman Carl Cannon on the press' most sacred of sacred cows, abortion. It's the second part that is directly on this subject, while the first part is about media disdain for religion and the religious generally.

Mollie Hemingway continues along these lines by exposing the AP's reliable Narrative Template for abortion stories.

Posted by: Ace at 02:40 PM | Comments (152)
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"Like a movie," Sexton says, and it would seem hokey in a movie. But it's the actual truth of the matter.

Perhaps the most damning statement found in Stevens' journal is one reported by Foreign Policy dated September 6th "Dicey conditions, including car bombs, attacks on consulate, British embassy, and our own people. Islamist 'hit list' in Benghazi. Me targeted on a pro-Q [Qaeda? Qaddafi?] website (no more off-compound jogging)." This is similar to a paragraph found in early drafts of the Benghazi talking points:

Since April there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British ambassador's convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has [sic] previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.

Last night, @slublog p-shopped a picture. Look closely at the t-shirt.

The only person I know of who's suffered the consequences for this deadly fiasco is whistleblower Thomas Hicks.

Posted by: Ace at 01:58 PM | Comments (161)
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