Boom goes the dynamite.

But Walker breaking the rules while campaigning goes back even further, to his time as a college student at Marquette University, which the Democratic super PAC American Bridge is trying to remind people. American Bridge has been hammering Walker over the so-called John Doe scandal in recent days.

...

In 1988, Walker wanted to become president of the school's student government, known as the Associated Students at Marquette University. He was running against John Quigley, a liberal student, in a race that became incredibly contentious. Election rules said that presidential candidates could not begin campaigning until after they registered, which started on Feb. 3.

Walker, however, was caught campaigning on Jan. 24....

At the meeting, according to a student in attendance, Walker asked the fraternity members, "What can ASMU do for the Inter-Fraternity council?" and told them he intended to run for president of ASMU in a few weeks.

As punishment, the campus elections commission prohibited Walker from campaigning until Feb. 4, 7:00 p.m. -- 24 hours after other candidates were officially allowed to begin. In response, Walker said, "I found no fault in their decision. ... All it does is limit me for one day."

He said villainously.

I don't think you people understand the gravity of this situation: In college, even though Walker knew he couldn't start campaigning until February 3, he told a group of people he intended to run for office on February 3. He was assigned a one-day penalty for this grave infraction.

In related news, Rachel Maddow just emailed me: "Looks like I've got my March programming all set."

Posted by: Ace at 08:21 AM | Comments (450)
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You'll like this.

The comic John Mulaney has a joke where he describes Donald Trump this way:

At this point, like, Donald Trump is not just a rich man, Donald Trump is almost like what a hobo imagines a rich man to be.

It's like years ago Trump was walking through an alley, and he heard some guy just like, "Oh boy oh boy, as soon as my number comes in, I'll put up tall buildin's with my name on them, I'll have fine golden hair, and a tv show where I fire people with my children."

And Trump was like, "That is how I'll live my life. Thank you, Hobo, for that life-plan."

A similar observation could be made of Obama (who is in fact a rich man, thanks to two autobiographies written before he'd actually done anything, and thanks also to Tony Rezko): Obama is what struggling-to-comfortable progressives think they'd do if they became rich. "Why, if I were rich, I'd have swank parties with Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour. I'd take $100 million family vacations to Africa, because Multicultural and Teachable Moment. I'd have Paul McCartney and Melissa Etheridge play songs for my birthday, and I'd hang out with Jay-Z and Beyonce. And, whenever I was in doubt, I'd hold a conclave with Oprah and fill my Soul Canteen from her Wisdom Well."

Posted by: Ace at 11:35 AM | Comments (276)
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Happy Tuesday.

The Becket Fund filed the Little Sisters of the Poor's opening brief in the contraception mandate accommodation case at the 10th Circuit last night. Lawgeeks, check it out (PDF). The 7th Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, just denied Notre Dame's request for a preliminary injunction in a similar case on the dubious ground, not even advanced by the Obama administration, that Notre Dame's third-party administrators have to provide the objectionable contraception coverage regardless of whether Notre Dame signs the accommodation form.

Mollie Hemingway reviews the top 12 moments of the "era of austerity."

[ RSS]

[On iTunes]

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (209)
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• HuffPo's New Revelation Will End The Scott Walker Campaign Before It Begins (Not A Parody)
  
• Federal Union Goons Not Happy With The Pay Hike Obama Gave Them
  
• End Of American Military Dominance
  
• Former HHS Official "I Don't Know Who's In Charge On Healthcare
  
• Piers Morgan's Decline And Fall
  
• Two-Thirds Of Small Businesses To See Premiums Spike Under Obamacare
  
• Black Republican History
  
• Arizona Bill Before The Governor Sparks Heated Debate
  
• Piers Morgan's 10 Worst Moments
  
• Mystery Poliolike Virus Infecting Children In California
  
• Congress And America's Diverging Priorities
  
• New Italian PM Calls For Radical Change
  
• Income Inequality Greatest In Liberal Cities
  
• Dictatorship And Double Standard
  
• Dems Leading Senate Candidate In Texas Is A LaRouche Cultist
  
• Gem Found On Australian Sheep Rance Is The Oldest Known Piece Of Earth
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 04:45 AM | Comments (465)
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Rise of the Pink Shirts

By blog standards I would be considered fairly gay-friendly. Which really means zero-effort benevolent indifference on my part. But I'll tell you who I do hate: bigots and proto-fascists.

And the radical gay rights movement isn't even trying to hide it any more. Chloe Nelson, a particularly nasty LGBT activist, issued this manifesto on Facebook:

It's time that the LGBT community forms a new organization that targets homophobes, bigots, religious zealots, religious fanatics, and all other assholes who are against equality, and human and civil rights for all people.

By targeting these bigots, and publishing every little detail of their sex lives, or personal lives, taking pictures through their windows, and getting the pics out on the internet, showing every little thing that they do, including how they wipe their asses when in the bathroom, or for that matter if they're wiping their asses in the kitchen - we've got to catch it on camera.

...We need to start making their lives a living hell by constant observation and publishing pics and articles every time they fart, or spit, or even look cross-eyed. It's obvious these bigots only understand one thing, and that is persecution, discrimination and bigotry.

And when LGBT activists disrupted a DC press conference by conservative Christian Dr. Scott Lively (who himself seems slightly questionable regarding free-speech) they proudly declared themselves to be what they are, neo-fascists:

Upon realizing that they would not be allowed to stay, the leader of the trio, Ellen Sturtz (self-described as an"Angry Old Lesbian" on her business card) began screaming "I'm a Homo-Fascist!" and tossed a wad of leaflets in the air. They turned out to be flyers with the title "Lively is Deadly" attempting to convey the message that I am a dangerous person who wants to harm homosexuals around the world.

And Bookworm excepts this excellent comment on the defining down of 'anti-gay' thought crimes:

One thing that really gets to me about all the "gay rights" stuff is the insanity of insisting that anyone who doesn't change their beliefs as facilely as the most hardcore advocates do is evil. Holding the view that Obama had when he was elected in 2008 is now hateful and bigoted.

...Did Obama hate gays until a couple of years ago? Or do you have to change your views constantly in order to not hate gays? It's amazing that if you were an advocate for civil unions 10 years ago and are still one today then you went from loving to hating gays while standing still.

These days agreeing completely with Hillary circa-1997 on gay issues would be enough to get you boycotted and hounded out of polite society.

Also Why Putin is So Concerned About the Gheys

Compensation for the past?

Piers Morgan Stays Classy the Piers Morgan Everyone Loathes

Thanks, chaps - Slate's s**t too > RT @Slate CNN's Piers Morgan Live was rubbish. It will not be missed: http://t.co/RUBAYtoQDs

- Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 24, 2014

I wouldn't get too excited @NRA - I'm not done with you yet. #GunControlNow

- Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 24, 2014

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:37 PM | Comments (477)
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Via Instapundit, Hall & Oates' Rich Girl wasn't about a girl.

No no no, I don't mean that. Hall's girlfriend Sara Allen told him about a rich guy she'd dated, some kind of waffle house heir, and he wrote a song about the guy. But he realized "Rich Girl" sounded better than "Rich Guy." (Also, he couldn't get in the "Rich bitch" line in the fade-out ad-lib. By the way, he'd never get away with that today.)

Via @allahpundit, McDonald's is finally considering extending breakfast hours past 10:30 am. Everyone loves them some McDonald's breakfast.

This is a good piece on the Ukrainian uprising, about which I know so little.

Did you know this about Russia's future plans? Because I didn't.

The future of this protest movement will be decided by Ukrainians. And yet it began with the hope that Ukraine could one day join the European Union, an aspiration that for many Ukrainians means something like the rule of law, the absence of fear, the end of corruption, the social welfare state, and free markets without intimidation from syndicates controlled by the president.

The course of the protest has very much been influenced by the presence of a rival project, based in Moscow, called the Eurasian Union. This is an international commercial and political union that does not yet exist but that is to come into being in January 2015. The Eurasian Union, unlike the European Union, is not based on the principles of the equality and democracy of member states, the rule of law, or human rights.

On the contrary, it is a hierarchical organization, which by its nature seems unlikely to admit any members that are democracies with the rule of law and human rights. Any democracy within the Eurasian Union would pose a threat to PutinÂ’s rule in Russia. Putin wants Ukraine in his Eurasian Union, which means that Ukraine must be authoritarian, which means that the Maidan [protest movement] must be crushed.

Oh and by the way: A puppy emailed me. He says he's gonna kick your ass.

No seriously he's bringing a friend:

The dog pics via @CuteEmergency, as usual.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:53 PM | Comments (519)
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Because people are talking about it in the Open Thread, and maybe some people don't want to have it spoiled, and maybe people generally don't want to hear about ritual murder, sexual abuse, and sodomy in the Open Thread.

By the way: I'm pretty sure Justified returns tonight, with its penultimate* episode.

* "Penultimate" means "very well written."

Nope, I was wrong. It returns tomorrow. It's been off so long I forget.

Posted by: Ace at 02:48 PM | Comments (129)
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You know when I say "Read the Whole Thing?" Here's my suggestion: Don't read the whole thing.

It's not that there isn't some minor interest to parts of it; there is. But overall, it's long-winded, self-justifying, and self-indulgent.

You can read a bit of at Hot Air, but here's the part I focus on:

In the New Media culture, anything good you do is tossed in a pit, and you are measured by who you are on your worst day. What’s the Boy Scout code? Trustworthy. Loyal. Helpful. Friendly. Courteous. Kind. Obedient. Cheerful. Thrifty. Brave. Clean. Reverent. I might be all of those things, at certain moments. But people suspect that whatever good you do, you are faking. You’re that guy. You’re that guy that says this. There is a core of outlets that are pushing these stories out. Breitbart clutters the blogosphere with “Alec Baldwin, he’s the Devil, he’s Fidel Baldwin.”

Broadway has changed, by my lights. The TV networks, too. New York has changed. Even the U.S., which is so preposterously judgmental now. The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred. Who would ever dream that Obama would deserve to be treated the way he has been? The birth-certificate bullshit, which is just Obama’s version of Swiftboating. And all for the electoral nullification that seems like a cancer on the American system. But this is Roger Ailes. And Fox. And Breitbart. And this is all about hate. It’s Hate Incorporated. But the liberals have taken the bait and run in the same direction—and it’s just as corrosive. MSNBC, in its own way, is as full of shit, as redundant and as superfluous, as Fox.

Wait, we started this, and the left then imitated us?

Of course this is nonsense on stilts. I have decried this Scalp-Hunting culture myself, frequently, as infects both the left and the right.

But here's why I sometimes am conflicted about it:

The right is engaging in this defensively, as an Alinsky-style attempt to "Make them live by their own rulebooks."

The right has been savaged by these tactics for decades. It is frustration over that that I believe is responsible for so many people being unwilling to acknowledge that Ted Nugent's remarks were way over-the-line: Because they know this game is played by the left relentlessly, but the left is never (or very rarely) called to account for its own PC Speech Transgressions.

No one on the right -- or very, very few on the right -- wish this odious, toxic, censorious regime to continue.

But many on the right worry about unilateral disarmament. We know that if the left is permitted to engage in this game, without the sick rules of this game ever being turned against them, they will do so zealously and in perpetuity.

They will have no reason whatsoever to re-assess their strategy of Scalp-Hunting based on accusations of Speechcraft. (That is, witchcraft -- only the "magic words" here are not Satanic, but contrary to the PC code. And you can't be burned at the stake for Speechcraft accusations, but you can and will probably lose your job.)

I don't think that Alec Baldwin should have been fired due his own Speechcraft Trial. Not per se, I mean. In a properly-functioning civic culture, Badlwin would have been criticized, laughed at, jeered at, and made to pay a social penalty commensurate with his crime. (Which was, at the end of the day, a crime equal to about that of Ted Nugent -- he got mad, he wished to make an insult sting, and he resorted to broad slurs against large numbers of people when he should have kept his insult to his actual target.)

But that is not the regime we live under. The regime we currently live under, perpetrated by a censorious, Scalp-Hunting left, which even attacks progressive dope Piers Morgan for being insufficiently sensitive to transexuals' feelings. (Morgan's transgression consisted of asking a transexual about being a boy, before having a sex change -- this was a horrible aggression, you see, because the transexual in question believes that "she's" always been a girl.)

Here is the ultimate consequence if this ridiculous regime of ginned-up social media offense-taking and consequences-demanding is permitted to persist: We will simply wind up silencing ourselves, for fear of outraging the latest Censor On a Warpath.

I would like very much for this regime to end. I'm sure most readers believe the same thing.

But it is silly to claim this is all due to "Breitbart" and "Roger Ailes" and "FoxNews." Conservatives are very late to the politically-correct Scalp-Hunting game-- the left has been doing this for decades.

It's not the right, after all, which is siccing the IRS and a host of other government agencies on Catherine Engelbrecht.

It's not the right, in this climate of government harassment of critics, declaring that Health and Human Services should now monitor each and every social media message in America.

It's not conservatives calling for an end to academic freedom on college campuses.

It's not Republicans who are purging even the Science Fiction Writers of America of veteran members for alleged "sexism," nor who are proposing a regime of censorship in that organization's quarterly Bulletin.

The regime will come to an end when those on the left -- especially liberals who have upset by this transformation of the movement into a censorious Scalp-Hunting club but who have kept silent about it in order to keep the left/liberal alliance intact -- begin speaking up about it, and defending those accused of new Speechcraft violations, including those on the right.

I will tell you personally that I and most of the people I know are ready, willing, and dying to put this corrupt, vicious, anti-free-speech, and anti-American sport to an end.

But we can't quite do that when people like Chuck Todd are always ready to call the right's outrage "fauxtrage" or false outrage, but never willing to say the same thing about the perpetual outrage of his fellow travelers on the left.

A detente can be reached, and most on the right wish for there to be one. But this detente cannot simply be a return to the old system whereby this vicious tactic was gleefully employed by the censorious left and no one else.

It's about time that anyone interested in Free Speech -- or America -- begins telling the censors of all stripes to pipe down.

Posted by: Ace at 12:30 PM | Comments (313)
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Wow.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is seeking a “social media analytic tool” that will give the government access to “full Twitter historical data,” according to a solicitation released on Tuesday.

The agency is seeking feedback for a “possible future acquisition to provide near real time social media analysis.” HHS said it wants to use the tool for “ongoing monitoring” of public health issues.

HHS provides a long list of requirements, including “access to real-time social media posts,” and “access to full Twitter firehose.”

The agency requires an archive that goes back at least five years of “full Twitter historical data.” The government will also need “access to multiple account log-ins,” “real-time alerting,” the “ability to construct lengthy Boolean searches,” and a function that can filter search results based on the location of a Twitter user.

There are no words.

I wonder what "disease" they'll be monitoring.

Get in their faces.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 AM | Comments (397)
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No one believes these numbers, because Obama refuses to parse the numbers to determine how many people were already eligible for Medicaid, and how many became eligible due to Obamacare.

Even Politico raps Obama for deeming this basic question an "unreasonable" one which Obama's team refuses to offer answers to.

Two different groups have estimated the extent to which ObamaCare has expanded Medicaid to the uninsured. One is Acela, which estimates the figure at between 1.1 million and 1.8 million. Kessler also quotes Charles Gaba, who puts the number at 2.6 million. Both are far below Barack Obama’s claims, and also far below what the administration expected to see by this stage. The most motivated of all the uninsured should have been those eligible for Medicaid, and yet we haven’t seen a rush to enroll — and those who are motivated to do so probably already have. That means there won’t be a big spike coming in the next couple of months.

Omelets and eggs.

Meanwhile, Freddoso notes the "most brutal anti-Obamacare ad yet" running in Michigan.

The Administration and its supporters claim the ad is false. We'll see.

But in the meantime, the Democrats' candidate for the Michigan Senate, Gary Peters, is siccing lawyers on local tv stations to block them from airing the ad.

Posted by: Ace at 01:17 PM | Comments (153)
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