Ace of Spades HQ

June 24, 2013

The 14 Republicans Who Voted for Amnesty
— Ace

14 Rs who voted w/open borders lobby: Corker Ayotte Chiesa Collins Flake Graham Hatch Heller Hoeven Kirk McCain Murkowski Rubio Wicker
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) June 24, 2013

By the way, you know that "Commission of Border State Governors" that will have a large role in deciding whether or not the border is sealed?

One of those "border states" will be Nevada, where Reid (D) and Heller (R) are both pro-amnesty.

See, they've decided that Nevada is a border state despite, you know, not having a border with anything except other US states.

Â“This amendment ensures the commission created in the underlying bill is fully representative of issues affecting southern border and southwestern states," Heller said. "Although Nevada does not touch the southern border, its current demographics and state issues are reflective of other southern border states and Nevada should have a voice on this commission.Â”

By that logic, New York should be a "border state" too -- and it probably will be.

I strongly suspect "border states" will be getting bought off to okay further amnesties. So of course Reid and Heller want a share of these additional billions in bribery.

Apart from rigging the game dishonestly before it's even begun-- you can totally trust these guys. Honestly.

Posted by: Ace at 02:55 PM | Comments (457)
Post contains 223 words, total size 2 kb.

David Gregory to Glen Greenwald: Hey, Shouldn't You Be Arrested for Aiding and Abetting Snowden?
— Ace

This is the same theory under which James Rosen was branded a co-conspirator in espionage.

David Gregory, who by the way was allowed to skate on a contraband-clip charge because he has Moar Rights than little people, thinks that Greenwald (and Rosen, of course) also have less rights in this regard.

I don't have to support Greenwald (or Snowden) to find David Gregory to be a very energetic member of Obama's Palace Guard.

Eric Wemple discusses this at the Post.

First, here is Greenwald's complaint about David Gregory's Witness for the Prosecution act:

Who needs the government to try to criminalize journalism when you have David Gregory to do it?

Gregory read that tweet even while he was still on the air (the interview with Greenwald was over) and then responded:

[T]his is the problem from somebody who claims that heÂ’s a journalist, who would object to a journalist raising questions, which is not actually embracing any particular point of view. And thatÂ’s part of the tactics of the debate here when, in fact, lawmakers have questioned him. ThereÂ’s a question about his role in this, The GuardianÂ’s role in all of this. It is actually part of the debate, rather than going after the questioner, he could take on the issues. And he had an opportunity to do that here on Meet the Press.

Wemple notes that David Gregory is, as ever, disingenuous. For he had not merely asked a neutral question about what the State might do.

Rather, he seeded his question with a veiled accusation of federal criminal wrongdoing, very much in the tradition of Â“how long have you been beating your wife.Â” To repeat the question: Â“To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldnÂ’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?Â”
Bolded text added to highlight a clause loaded with assumption, accusation, baselessness and recklessness. A simple substitution exercise reveals the tautological idiocy of the query: Â“To the extent that you have murdered your neighbor, why shouldnÂ’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?Â”

@rdbrewer4 earlier noted that Gallup may explain David Gregory's eagerness to punish Obama's accusers -- Obama's disapproval is up to 49%, and his approval is down to 45%.

It's all well and good to have these "debates" but when they begin to hurt Dear Leader's numbers it's time to pull the plug.

One more bit about Snowden -- this isn't going to surprise you, but he's admitted he secured the job at Booz Allen for the purpose of lifting documents to prove the US was engaged in surveillance he didn't approve of.

We've known that for a while, though, even if Snowden is just admitting it now; Neo-Neocon did the math on the timeline and realized that Snowden was speaking to Greenwald about this before he began the job at Booz Allen.

Posted by: Ace at 02:00 PM | Comments (202)
Post contains 511 words, total size 4 kb.

Senate Debating Immigration Bill They Haven't Read Yet;
Vote Slated for 5:30
— Ace

Tom Coburn on now, rejecting the bill.

Voting Now. The outcome is foreordained. The Amenstias' goal is to get to 70 votes, in order to better pressure the House that "the public has spoken and it's suddenly kookoo for Amnesty."

Meanwhile, Mickey Kaus puts it like this:

IÂ’ve been trying to think of the right metaphor for the giant Corker-Hoeven amendment, the one that is reportedly giving the Gang of 8′s immigration bill enough votes to pass the Senate. Sure, itÂ’s a fig leafÂ–but a fig leaf is usually something insignificant-yet-real. This is something grandiose thatÂ’s a fraud.
The best I can come up with is this: A man comes into your restaurant. You recognize himÂ–heÂ’s a guy who ate a $100 meal last year and said heÂ’d pay later, but he stiffed you. Now heÂ’s back and wants another meal on credit. He senses you are wary and makes a new offer. Â“This time IÂ’ll pay you Â… $2 million! How can you refuse? ItÂ’s 2 million dollars!Â”
You get the idea. Just try and collect.

Likewise the escalating promises from the Amnestias.

We keep asking them for enforcement first. We ask for enforcement first because we know we will not have enforcement second. They didn't want enforcement before; why would they suddenly give us enforcement when they don't need us anymore?

So now they just keep promising to increase the money they claim they'll be throwing at the problem.

But we don't want more promises; we want some already performed action. We want already-performed action because that's the only promise we know they'll keep -- a fact that's already occurred.

And they keep refusing.

Because they have no intent of performing the action. They don't want it performed. In exchange, they'll offer us promises of performance. Which they all-but-admit they have no intention of honoring.

So let's enjoy our compromise.

Hall of Shame: Tester, Rubio, Graham, McCain, Corker, Hoeven, Collins (of course).

Those are just the ones I think I heard. Don't consider the list complete or accurate.

Incidentally, check out some of these corrupt deals struck to gain votes. Collins had a provision stricken which had specified that 90% of all spending on border security must be directed towards the Southern border; she had that stricken so that Maine could enjoy some unneeded pork spending to keep the Canucks out.

So you know they're serious about this border security business.

Voting No: Borasso, Blunt, Burr, Coburn, Crepo, Cruz, Fischer, Grassley, Johanss, Johnson of Wisconsin, McConnell, Thune, Toomey, Vitter, Inhofe. Again, just some names I've heard thusfar.

Posted by: Ace at 12:50 PM | Comments (433)
Post contains 455 words, total size 3 kb.

Senator Sessions: This Rush to Pass an Unread Amnesty Bill Is Exactly What Happened With ObamaCare
— Ace

Indeed. We'll just have to pass it to find out what's in it.

Â“A yes vote on cloture tonight means that Sen. Reid will have gained full control of the process,Â” Sessions said, referring to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). Â“Senators have to play Mother May I.Â”
Sessions argued that Reid would be able to block any amendment votes he doesnÂ’t want to take once cloture is invoked. Sessions complained that since the Â“border surgeÂ” amendment was filed Friday afternoon, senators havenÂ’t had enough time to review the changes made in the more than 1,000 page bill.
Â“This is exactly what happened with ObamaCare,Â” Sessions said. Â“The majority rushed through a complex bill so there would be no time to understand whatÂ’s in it.Â”

Ted Cruz says the same:

On Monday at 5:30pm, the United States Senate will vote on the most sweeping immigration reform proposal it has considered in almost 3 decades Â– and it will do so having only seen the nearly 1200 pages of text for approximately 72 hours. Americans Â– including myself, my fellow senators and our staffs Â– are still trying to figure out exactly what is in the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven Â“deal.Â”
Sound familiar? Pass it to find out whatÂ’s in it? Reminiscent of Obamacare, the lengthy amendment to replace the Gang of 8Â’s original bill was crafted behind closed doors and introduced late on Friday, after many members had left town. In the 2007 immigration debate, close to 50 amendments were considered. But this year, we have only debated 9 Â– with some of us being completely shut out.
Given only a weekend to review the language, we will now vote on whether to end a debate that never really began. To be clear Â– this is not a difficult vote. On process alone, we should all vote Â“no.Â“ This was by design Â– the President, Harry Reid and the Gang of 8 preferred all along to ram through a Â“deal,Â” and not have a real debate Â– just like Obamacare. Worse, just like Obamacare, the Â“dealÂ” involved lots of horse-trading and buying off of votes at the last minute Â– a display of everything that is wrong with Washington, and one of the things I specifically campaigned against.
But, on substance Â– the vote is even easier. There are too many troubling provisions of the bill to list, such as de facto affirmative action hiring for current illegal immigrants due to Obamacare and huge amounts of discretion for the DHS Secretary to waive deportation and inadmissibility. And for all the talk, the new Schumer-Corker-Hoeven Â“dealÂ” is nothing new at all. ItÂ’s the same amnesty-before-false-promise-of-security of the Gang of 8 and the bills of debates past.
That is why we started this petition, so that Americans can speak out and let Senators know that they oppose the legalization-first bill offered by the Gang of 8 and Schumer-Corker-Hoeven.

He then discusses the ways in which the "compromise" is extremely weak on border enforcement, and, in fact, even weakens the original Gang of 8 bill in some respects!

Rarely do we see so transparently how votes in the Senate are bought and sold, but the laundry list of buyoffs in this deal details plainly the path to amnesty. The last-minute introduction and overwhelming page count are by design, and this exercise has become more about politics than principle. This is Washington at its worst, and America deserves better. The proponents of this bill are squandering an opportunity to fix our legal immigration system responsibly and finally secure our borders. Instead, they are jamming through amnesty that undermines the rule of law and harms those who will desperately seek it.
Tell your Senator to vote Â“no.Â”

Meanwhile, there is the increadingly confused Jan Brewer, who supports the bill, because, um, "border security MUST come first," and this idiot seems to think that's what the bill is all about.

BrewerÂ’s deliberately misleading the public at the behest of national Republicans who need prominent so-called Â“border hawksÂ” like her to reassure low-information (a.k.a. dumb) GOPers that the bill is awesome. That seems likelier, although I believe BrewerÂ’s term-limited as governor and therefore doesnÂ’t really need anything from the national leadership. She could go her own way if she wanted to. [Or, perhaps]: She supports the bill on the merits because, like Marco Rubio, sheÂ’s not as much of a border hawk as she pretended to be when running for office three years ago. By the same token, how many conservatives who voted for her thought sheÂ’d be a fan of ObamaCare? We have, it seems, been misled. Again.

Evolution is real. I see it in GOP politicians all the time. Particularly the punctuated equilibrium sort of evolution -- GOP positions remain in stable and unchanged form for years and years, and then an event significantly changes their environment (that is, they win their primary and general election bids) and then, Whoa nelly!, the forces of mutation and evolution go bananas.

Posted by: Ace at 11:48 AM | Comments (253)
Post contains 863 words, total size 6 kb.

On Obama's Own National-Security Leaking
— Ace

NR's Kevin Williamson writes, in a qualified, partial defense of Edward Snowden:

What is worrisome to me is the double standard we all seem to have accepted here. If we are to put people in prison for violating our classified-information laws, then we have to deal with the fact that official Washington abuses those laws while at the same time being the main violator of them. For example, the Obama administration is pretty clearly leaking classified information to the media when it suits it to do so. Placing Anwar al-Awlaki on the CIA hit list did not end up on the front page of the New York Times without the White HouseÂ’s blessing. We can take the Times at its word on that: Â“Â‘The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,Â’ said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity.Â” The Times reports the crime as though it were standard operating procedure, because it is.
My objection here is not to simple hypocrisy but to the creation of a standard of selective prosecution under which official Washington can use leaks of classified information as a political weapon while at the same time using the prosecution of rival leaks as a political weapon. We are in effect adopting the Nixon rule: When the president does it, it isnÂ’t illegal.

Mario Loyola writes further on the problem.

I assume at the beginning that the president does not publicly release his order to make certain information non-classified and thus non-criminal to release to the public. I assume this because I have never heard of such an order being disclosed. I assume the order to declassify material is itself secret. Thus he can declassify information at will without having it ever noted that he did so, or questioned, or challenged.

If my assumption that these orders are either themselves secret or else no paperwork whatsoever is filed, and the president decides what he will self-declassify on a whim, then the situation can largely be fixed by requiring Executive Orders declassifying information to be public, not secret.

If the president and his Praetorian Public Relations Guard are forced to have it made part of the official record of the United States each time they declassify information about, say, SEAL Team 6, in order to reap a public relations windfall, they will be restrained in doing so.

Under the current system -- if there's even a system -- the president can never be questioned about these declassifications because if they were officially declassified, that order is itself secret, and more than likely there is no official declassification (and the president is then in breach of the law).

Under a system of full and public disclosure, the president would be brought under the law he supposedly serves, and if his selective declassification becomes obnoxious or detrimental to the security of the United States, at least the voters may have their say.

It seems rather obvious that an order which declassifies information -- which makes that information legal to discuss publicly -- should not itself be secret. If the information is no longer secret, why the hell should the order stating it's no longer secret itself be secret?

Only for one reason: To permit the president to make such declassification decisions on a whim and furthermore to be completely immunized from questions regarding such decisions. You can't ask him why he declassified material about the operations of SEAL Team 6 if he refuses to admit he's done so.

We currently have the worst of all possible worlds. We should at least have a middling-bad of all worlds. That doesn't seem like too high a goal to aim for.

Posted by: Ace at 10:58 AM | Comments (265)
Post contains 642 words, total size 4 kb.

Media Deliberately Misreported George Zimmermann Case from Earliest Moments
— Ace

Interesting piece from John Hayward, building on an argument made by Jacob Sullum at Reason.

The media often defends itself from charges of bias by confessing to other sins -- sensationalism, laziness, simple lack of expertise, etc.

Let's focus on laziness. I believe the press is extremely lazy -- but I also believe this laziness has a strong ideological edge to it.

I divide in my mind reportage into Hard and Easy reporting. Hard reporting consists of ferreting out a story from those who don't wish to divulge it. Easy reporting consists of accepting the spoon-fed claims of lobbying organizations, pressure groups, who hand-deliver all the difficult parts of a story right into a reporter's hand.

It's difficult to know who to ask questions of. But if a pressure group has a list of "experts" or "witnesses" for the reporter to contact, all the reporter has to do is make a couple of phone calls and then type it all up.

There's an ideological edge to this laziness, though: Reporters get their pre-fabricated stories from lobbying groups, politicians, and pressure groups they are predisposed to trusting, and all of these groups lean to the left (or are outright self-identifying as progressive).

The easiest story for a reporter to write is the one that is basically dropped on his desk. To work to get "the other side" of the story, and truly vet claims, would take, well, work.

Consider: Groups aligned with Justice4Trayvon can tip a reporter that there is video showing George Zimmermann looking reasonably healthy as he enters the police station after the attack. These groups probably already have the tape themselves.

It's the easiest thing in the world for ABCNews to now run that tape.

What would take work is to determine Zimmerman's appearance immediately after the beating -- that's not hand-delivered to them by a Justice4Trayvon pressure group, so it would take some work to get the pictures of a battered and bloody Zimmermann from the prosecutors' office. You'd have to do a lot of source-chiseling and favor-trading to get those.

And work is hard. So they don't bother. They have the easy story. Why bother with the full, accurate story?

In addition, it's always the case that agreeing with the herd is the safest position to take. Political correctness is always a good safe harbor for the stupid or uninformed, and every reporter knew that in this case that they would not be challenged nor would they be subject to the scorn of fellow members of their class if they simply went along with the script and demonized George Zimmerman. If they were wrong, they would all be wrong together, and hence they could not suffer, in relative terms, compared to any other member of their class.

On the other hand, pushing back against the demonization of George Zimmerman entailed risks.

Yes, as the media often claims when defending itself, it is indeed incompetent, ignorant, and lazy. Yet if there were not any underlying political bias we'd expect them to be wrong to the benefit of either "side" more or less equally.

But that's not the case at all; their errors run to the benefit of a single "side," consistently. And that's because ideology tells you what to think when you don't quite no what to think; the more unsure of the facts someone is, the more he relies on his basic worldview and ideology as a first approximation for the truth.

And in the case of the media, that first approximation (and the second and third approximations, oftentimes) is the liberal ideology.

Incidentally, the prosecutors today led the case by quoting George Zimmerman as having said, on his cell phone call to the police, "F***in' punks."

Which is what skeptics had said he'd said.

But that's not what the media claimed he said.

And where did they get this story from? From leftwing bloggers and podcasters.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:10 AM | Comments (507)
Post contains 784 words, total size 5 kb.

Out: JournOList
In: WeigOList
— Ace

Groupthink.

Indeed, Journolist's only casualty was Dave Weigel's gig at the Washington Post; and then, almost immediately after departing, he founded a new listserv, one dedicated to promoting his writing. Ironically, Weigel's listserv morphed quickly into something Journolist wasn't: a forum in which writers of all political shades and depths talk to each other. Full disclosure: I'm on the list, but I mostly lurk.

To Cox, conversations among journalists are a necessary weapon against "groupthink," which she describes as "the biggest threat to freedom of the press." What she means is that by exchanging ideas, journalists can work together to resist conventional wisdom and the orthodoxies of those in power. Yet Cox does not seem to realize that such coordination among journalists also often creates its own form of media groupthink.

Given that the last list was given mostly to protecting Barack Obama -- thinking up ways to push the Reverend Wright story out of the media, for example -- one has to suspect of the new list of being fairly similar in tone.

Dave Weigel was asked if he'd be asking anyone from Breitbart to join the list. He said he had no such plans at the moment.

Posted by: Ace at 08:13 AM | Comments (295)
Post contains 207 words, total size 1 kb.

Jim Carrey: I Denounce Myself and Kick-Ass 2 for the Violence Therein Depicted
— Ace

After cashing the check, Jim Carrey is feeling remorseful.

Jim Carrey has shocked producers of forthcoming comic-book sequel Kick-Ass 2, in which he stars as a baseball-bat-wielding masked crimefighter, after denouncing the "level of violence" that permeates the film in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings.
Carrey, who has been an outspoken proponent of increased gun control in the wake of the shootings by gunman Adam Lanza in December, tweeted on Sunday that he could no longer support the film. He wrote: "I did Kick-Ass 2 a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involve[d] with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart."
...
"[I'm] baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay 18 months ago," [executive producer and writer of the original comic Marc Millar] wrote. "Yes, the body count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin. A sequel to the picture that gave us Hit Girl was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much Â…
"Like Jim, I'm horrified by real-life violence (even though I'm Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn't a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorsese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-wook Park, Kick-Ass avoids the usual bloodless bodycount of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence Â… Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can't be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action movie."

I suppose he's attempting to be consistent, and bowing to the logic of those who argued he couldn't both appear in violent movies and also agitate for gun control.

I don't think it's dangerous for law-abiding people to have guns, and I also don't think it's particularly dangerous to make movies depicting gun violence. I guess Carrey has decided all are too dangerous.

At least he's taken some kind of step to embrace the logic (or illogic) of his position. This will of course warn people off of hiring him for similar movies in the future.

Posted by: Ace at 07:32 AM | Comments (224)
Post contains 421 words, total size 3 kb.

Immigration Day In The Senate
— DrewM

Today the Senate will pass amnesty. This will be the most important piece of Senate legislation made possible by the Tea Party election of 2010 (think Hoeven and Rubio). Oops.

Speaking of Marco Rubio.

Rasmussen: Rubio had 73% favorable rating among Republicans in February. Now 58%. Very favorables down 44% to 21%. http://t.co/8u34BOM5yV
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 24, 2013

Maybe lying, amnesty and shilling for Obama aren't so popular after all.

Speaking of John Hoeven...can we stop calling this Hoeven-Corker thing "Hoeven-Corker" please? Do you really think these two back benchers came out of nowhere and with their staffs rewrote an entire bill that was months in the making that just happened to be the only"Republican" plan acceptable to Reid, Schumer and Obama?

Hoeven and Corker are just shilling for Obama.

Meanwhile Mickey Kaus hits it out of the park over the remark Rubio's aide and that by his lack of discipline for the aide Rubio seems to agree with that not all American workers can cut it.

Â“There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, canÂ’t cut it. There shouldnÂ’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just canÂ’t get it, canÂ’t do it, donÂ’t want to do it. And so you canÂ’t obviously discuss that publicly because Â…Â”
...
It was offensive, in the first place, because it seemed to assume that the 11.8 million American unemployed were unemployed mainly because they were bad workers. MightnÂ’t a big recession or bad luck disrupt the meritocratic perfection of the labor marketÂ–so lots of good workers find themself unemployed, at least temporarily?
...
More important, even if you assume, thanks to the perfect efficiency of the market, that all those Americans who are unemployed are worse workers than those who are employed, and all those who would be displaced by immigrant labor are worse laborers than the immigrants who displaced them, why would that lead you to give up on the unemployed Americans, and say, in effect, Â‘Screw Â‘emÂ’?

Read the whole thing.

The best line from the piece isn't actually about immigration. Kaus' column is set up opposed to a post on the subject from Ezra Klein's Wonkbook .

With the traditional Wonkblog tone of someone explaining to sixth graders a concept he just learned 25 minutes ago...

Perfect!

That Kaus column touches on something I wrote about a few weeks ago. As action moves to the House opponents of the amnesty really need to broaden the argument out from just security to the wider issues at play. Economically this a terrible idea for America and it's morally indefensible.

Security is fine and important but it doesn't solve the wider problems are dealing with lower class Americans and those who want to move to this country legally. Democrats and pro-amnesty types like Rubio want to make the illegals the victims of this country, we should be demonstrating that there are people who didn't break the law that will be hurt by putting illegal immigrants first.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:26 AM | Comments (290)
Post contains 518 words, total size 4 kb.

Monday Already? News Dump
— Pixy Misa