Happy Tuesday.

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder isn't backing down on the team name, announces creation of Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation.

White House, Congress, and the intelligence community all aligning on a "fix" for the phone metadata collection program: let the phone companies keep their records like usual and provide them upon request, in real time, to NSA.

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Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:51 AM | Comments (241)
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Your Government Servants at Work: Operation Something Bruin

What do U.S. Forest Service wildlife officers do when they've been ordered to infiltrate bear-poaching gangs, but they can't actually find any poaching gangs? Well they get creative...and became poachers themselves.

In late 2010 through 2011, under time constraints, and possibly due to not finding any illegal activity, Arnold and Webb resorted to various schemes to try to entice the hunters to break laws.

During one hunter's trial in Haywood County, agents admitted to buying illegal bait for bears in Tennessee, and placing it in a hunter's yard in Graham County. Hunters witnessed the officers killing at least four of the ten bears that were taken. These agents, against the advice of hunters, removed the bears' gallbladders and called hunters from surrounding counties to try to get them to participate in the illegal selling of bear parts. The hunters refused to take part in this illegal activity. These are only two of the many tactics used in attempts to entrap hunters of Western North Carolina.

But it gets worse because Someone Must Be Arrested no matter what. And so they arrested all the hunters they tried to frame along with their friends. And arrested them again.

After state and federal wildlife officials arrested these "so-called" poachers in February, 2013, the state dismissed all charges on some of them in April, 2013. Some hunters were arrested again in June, 2013 by United States Forest Service officials.

To date none of the hunters have been convicted and several have been acquitted after a trial. Meanwhile all the officers involved got awards and commendations.

In recent news, it has been reported that six U.S. Forest Service (USFS) employees from Western North Carolina were awarded "Law Enforcement and Investigations Awards" by the USFS for their roles in "Operation Something Bruin", a four-year, multi-agency investigation targeting "bear poachers" in WNC and surrounding states, resulting in arrests in February 2013.

Also, in October, the National Wildlife Federation bestowed "prestigious conservation honors" on Sgt. Chad Arnold, an officer from Charlotte with the Special Investigations Unit of the N.C. Wildlife Commission. Arnold was named "Wildlife Enforcement Officer of the Year", and the Commission was named the "Natural Resources Agency of the Year", according to a press release from the N.C. Wildlife Commission.

And Jesus fucking wept.

Savages

Well the Palestinians are willing to kill their own children in order to attack Israelis so why wouldn't they kill puppies too. Reason #16 why I've become indifferent to the fate of the Palestinian people.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:43 PM | Comments (838)
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You may know Noah Rothman, editor at Mediate, for his daily coverage of the idiocy to be found on cable TV news but his educational background is actually in Russian national security and defense issues.

I took advantage of this to talk to him about the situation in Ukraine, US-Russia relations and the wider issue of America's role as the guarantor of peace and stability across much of the globe. While you may not agree with his support for America to act as the "world's policeman" but he makes an interesting case for it.

Listen: [Stream with Stitcher] [Download]

You can (and should) follow Noah on Twitter.

Subscribe: [ RSS] [iTunes]

Questions?: [Ask The Blog]

On a related note, the Senate passed a Ukraine aid bill yesterday. This follows the House's action from about two weeks ago. Unlike the House however, the Senate's bill includes an unrelated item to approve and fund governing changes for the International Monetary Fund.

James Roberts of The Heritage Foundation sums up much of the conservative criticism of the reforms.

In late 2010 the IMF Executive Board, with strong behind-the-scenes support from the Obama Administration, proposed a series of reforms that would increase the voting power of certain emerging market nations.

Additionally, these reforms would double the amount of member countries’ national “quota” contributions—the primary source of funding for IMF loans. The higher “quota” levels would come from shifting certain special “emergency account” funds over which the United States has had more control. Loss of U.S. control over these “emergency account” funds could also expose U.S. taxpayers to billions of dollars in additional financial liability from morally hazardous IMF loans (e.g. to Greece).

The reform package would also change the rules for IMF Executive Board elections, and the U.S. would lose its current right to appoint its own representative to the board—the epicenter of power at the IMF.
Instead, under the new rules, the U.S. executive director would have to be elected and, if enough other countries were opposed to the person nominated by the U.S., it is possible that a future American President might not be able to name someone to the IMF who shared his or her political and economic philosophies.

One additional problem with the reform package is that in order to offset the costs, the Senate bill takes money away from the US Army and Navy.

House Republicans meanwhile want to do something useful...use this bill or a separate one to tie the IMF money to a one year delay in the anti-free speech regulations Obama's IRS is currently set to enact.

Only 17 GOP Senators stood up yesterday and opposed Harry Reid's effort to reduce America's influence at the IMF and to preserve the House's leverage to block the Obama IRS regulations.

Just remember when the media goes on and on about GOP obstructionism, the House already passed a clean Ukraine aid bill and the Senate could have done the same two weeks ago. The "delay" will be blamed on those crazy House Republicans but it's Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats who are playing political games with aid to the Ukraine.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:28 AM | Comments (101)
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So, it turns out one of our morons is a paramedic and firefighter and as it happens was the guy who shot the video of a dust devil dragging hundreds of tumbleweeds into a controlled burn in Colorado (I linked it in the headlines over the weekend).

It also turns out he can kill you with fire tornadoes.

Anyway he wrote "Ask the Blog" and sent along this about how it all went down. Apparently there's a lot of embellishments and claims of "out of control mayhem" and whatnot.

Video and his write up (kinda long but chock full of factual facty things) below the fold. He calls himself "Thomas" but I call him "Prometheus, Bringer of Fire and Also Dude Who Can Kill You With Fire Tornadoes".

You got to respect that right there.

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Posted by: Dave in Texas at 04:15 PM | Comments (179)
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From @ComradeArthur, a very short (128 seconds) horror film made for a short horror film contest.

Is it scary? Well, I got scared 20 seconds in. Then it got worse.

Then I turned it off, because: I don't need this crap.

Also below: The new trailer for X-Men: Days of Future Past, which is just like Star Trek Generations, except instead of Jean Luc meting Kirk, he meets himself.

Oh, and it's got Sentinel robots.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:13 PM | Comments (194)
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For any Identity category that more than two people associate themselves with, the left has a Grievance Workshop explaining why people should be angry at other people for all their failings.

You say, "Why 'Fat Justice'? Hasn't this gotten a little absurd?"

But like the Son of Sam, I say: "What took you so long, Fat Justice Identity Grievance Movement?"

A “Fat Justice and Feminism” seminar sponsored by Swarthmore College blamed Ronald Reagan for the suffering of fat people and accused the Body mass index (BMI) of having “direct links to a white supremacist.”

The workshop, taught by feminist activist Cora Segal and self-identified “angry, man-hating lesbian,” Nicole Sullivan, took place Thursday and sought to “address the ongoing exploitation and oppression of fat people.”

“There is no scientific consensus whatsoever that fat people need to exercise more, or that fat is unhealthy. There is no evidence that [being] fat causes diabetes. Medical professionals are informed of this so-called knowledge by lobbying groups.”

The Swarthmore Independent reports that Segal and Sullivan took aim at a variety of subjects including President Ronald Reagan, who they claimed “f*cked everything up” for fat people—though the Independent drily reports that “[n]o specific evidence about Reagan’s perverse policies or animosity toward obese people was offered.”

...

Paige Willey, an attendee to the conference, told Campus Reform "the whole event had a negative tone to it."

"Their whole argument was based in hatred. Very unproductive."

You don't say.

The guy they claim is a "white supremacist" is Adolphe Quetelet, who was an astronomer and sociologist who lived from 1796 to 1874, and created the BMI after recording the heights and weights of a lot of people. I don't see any mention of his "racist white supremacism" but he was French, and he was named Adolphe, so...

By the way, if you think this is a punking: It's not a punking. It's all too real.

Posted by: Ace at 02:16 PM | Comments (316)
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It's a useful bit of propaganda for Obamacare supporters to say "Even those opposed to Obamacare still want their Congressmen to work to improve the system, to make it work."

Pew's supplied the Democrats with that very bandwagon-effect-promoting propaganda.

But did they get the answer they wanted fairly?

Well, imagine how you, personally, would inquire into the preferred course of action of Obamacare supporters. You might give them the options of "Work to improve it anyway," or "Stay out of the way of it/Let it collapse under its own weight," and so forth.

Here are the options -- two of them -- that Pew gave respondents to choose from:

What do you think elected officials who oppose the health care law should do now that the law has started to take effect? Should they [X] or should they [Y]?

Do what they can to make the law work as well as possible

Do what they can to make the law fail

Emphases added.

Pew gave them a binary choice between "doing what they can to make the law work" and actively working to subvert and sabotage the law, and they present it as a meaningful bit of data that 30% supported the former choice, and only 19% the latter.

Good God.

Now, there are those who do actually favor just that -- working to make the law fail. But very few people are at that level of decisiveness (decisive enough on this issue to decide the long-term harms of Obamacare justifies short-term "let it burn" pain).

Most people would still choose a less aggressive, underhanded-sounding response, like "Let it collapse under its own weight."

But Pew refuses respondents that choice, insisting that people either declare their desire to "make Obamacare work the best we can, by Golly!" or declare themselves hostage-taking terrorists of the sort often decried by one Harry Reid.

Why, you'd almost think that major institutions of the media are entirely captured by the political left or something.

Posted by: Ace at 12:28 PM | Comments (359)
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Be afraid.

UN scientists are set to deliver their darkest report yet on the impacts of climate change, pointing to a future stalked by floods, drought, conflict and economic damage if carbon emissions go untamed.

The report goes on to claim:

A great and rich power will be subject to serious natural disasters,
particularly earthquakes and flooding, and rend the nation from end to end, causing enormous conflict, despair, and misery. The wealthy power will be bankrupted attempting to deal with its disasters. Three other great nations will send aid to help the citizens survive.

Oh I'm sorry, that's not from the IPCC report, that's from the Prophecies of Nostradamus, Volume I, Century VIII quatrain 29.

Here's The Australian previewing the new prophecies:

It predicted global temperatures would rise 0.3C-4.8C this century, adding to roughly 0.7C since the Industrial Revolution. Seas will creep up by 26cm-82cm by 2100. The draft warns costs will spiral with each additional degree, although it is hard to forecast by how much.

Let me note there is such a vast difference between a low-end prediction of zero point three degrees Centigrade -- over a century! -- and 4.8 degrees C that this hardly counts as a prediction at all.

And let me note that actual observed warming is lower than 95% of all "modeling" predictions.

Andrew Bolt notes the odd inverse relationship between evidence and shrillness: as the former declines, the latter rises up in a hockey-stick like spike.

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Posted by: Ace at 11:02 AM | Comments (419)
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No really, that is the column's title.

Meanwhile, a group of conservative and libertarian writers and editors have founded a start-up they call "Liberty Island," a forum featuring fiction (mostly of the pulp variety) with a right-leaning sensibility.

Sarah Hoyt interviews one of the founders, Adam Bellow, at PJ Media.

SH: Who is the audience for Liberty Island? What is “conservative fiction”? Shouldn’t good stories just stand on their own?

AB: Great literature stands on its own, but the productions of popular culture often carry a hidden freight of ideology that reflects its authors’ biases. Sometimes not so hidden — the evil conservative businessman is essentially the default villain in Hollywood these days. But think about what happens when great stories are told from a conservative perspective: you get Tom Clancy, or Brad Thor, or James Patterson, or Vince Flynn. Mega-bestselling authors with a huge following. Our audience is anyone who loves great pulp writers like those guys. At Liberty Island you will find dozens of stories like these, in genres ranging from humor to thriller to SciFi. These writers aren’t heavy handed in the least – their conservative outlook is sometimes explicit but just as often merely implied or completely submerged. Besides, a case can be made that traditional pulp genres are inherently conservative.

...

SH: What made you think of the project – and commit to it and work so hard for it?

AB: Two things: first, an impulse to carry the culture war into the field of popular culture. And second, the writers themselves. In 25 years as an editor of nonfiction books I’ve watched the conservative intellectual project thrive and flourish. But like others on the right I’ve been dismayed by the slowness of conservatives to challenge the liberal dominance of popular culture. It’s not enough to carp and criticize the frequently substandard and offensive crap that liberals produce. As Andrew Breitbart used to say, we have to make our own—and it has to be good. But recently we began to notice an exciting development: hundreds, indeed thousands of conservative and libertarian writers were seizing the opportunity afforded by new digital technologies to produce and publish original works of fiction. Others were making music, video, graphics, and other forms of entertainment right on their laptops at home. These were ordinary men and women all over the country, working in isolation, doing their best to hone their art and find an audience. Yet no one seemed to know that they existed. So we started talking about what we could do to help them. Liberty Island grew out of those discussions.

They take submissions. They don't actually pay for those submissions, though they do encourage satisfied readers to hit the tip-jar of any author whose work they like.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (221)
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A gruesome detail about hospital practices in the UK, reported by the Telegraph.

Allahpundit (first link) considers the various possible positions of the pro-choice on this report. In the comments, there's also something of an argument between those on the pro-life right: Some assert that focusing on the remains of a baby post-abortion is focusing on the wrong thing entirely, as, at that point, there isn't a strong pro-life interest in the dead (apart from affording the dead dignity in death).

In other news of the abortion debate: An atheist posts at Patheos why she is pro-life, basing her objection to abortion on humanist grounds.

Posted by: Ace at 08:58 AM | Comments (565)
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