Tag: freedom

The House vote to fund the government but not Obamacare will force vulnerable Senate Democrats to either endorse the unpopular law again or shut it down.

9:57 am

The House vote to fund the government but not Obamacare will force vulnerable Senate Democrats to either endorse the unpopular law again or shut it down.

Exactly. Force these Democrats to once again endorse this turkey of a law, just as it is about to go into effect. Even if the Republicans eventually back down, they will have successfully put these senators on record, only a year before the next election.

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IRS officials specifically targeted conservatives for harassment because they thought that was what President Obama wanted.

9:00 am

Working for the Democratic Party: IRS officials specifically targeted conservatives for harassment because they thought that was what President Obama wanted, according to an interim House report.

In the report, the investigators do not find evidence that IRS employees received orders from politicians to target the tea party, and agency officials deny overt bias or political motives. But the report says the IRS was at least taking cues from political leaders and designed special policies to review tea party applications, including dispatching some of them to Washington to be vetted by headquarters. “As prominent politicians publicly urged the IRS to take action on tax-exempt groups engaged in legal campaign intervention activities, the IRS treated tea party applications differently,” the staff report concludes. “Applications filed by tea party groups were identified and grouped due to media attention surrounding the existence of the tea party in general.”

It was about this time that both Obama and Democrats in Congress were demanding the IRS go after conservative organizations.

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New documents show that more than 80% of the organizations targeted by the IRS in 2011 for harassment were conservative.

10:22 pm

Working for the Democratic Party: New documents show that more than 80% of the organizations targeted by the IRS in 2011 for harassment were conservative.

A handful of liberal organizations were definitely targeted for close inspection, but it appears to me that these were merely picked to give the IRS some cover while it mainly focused at harassing as many conservatives organizations as possible.

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Another look at the leaked IPCC draft report.

10:11 pm

Another look at the leaked IPCC draft report. Key quote:

To those of us who have been following the climate debate for decades, the next few years will be electrifying. There is a high probability we will witness the crackup of one of the most influential scientific paradigms of the 20th century, and the implications for policy and global politics could be staggering.

The article also takes a close look at the contradiction between the data and the IPCC models and says this:

[W]hat is commonly called the “mainstream” view of climate science is contained in the spread of results from computer models. What is commonly dismissed as the “skeptical” or “denier” view coincides with the real-world observations. Now you know how to interpret those terms when you hear them.

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The Obama administration has decided to actually follow the law and not give its Democratic union buddies a waiver on Obamacare.

3:58 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The Obama administration has decided to actually follow the law and not give its Democratic union buddies a waiver on Obamacare.

It shows us how far we have fallen that we are surprised that the Obama administration is going to follow the law, as written and passed by Congress, rather than arbitrarily rewrite that law illegally into order to help its political allies. Nowadays we are increasingly expecting this administration to treat the law as a plaything that it can ignore willy-nilly, without any opposition from anyone.

This story also illustrates the danger of blindly supporting the actions of one political party. Union leaders have for decades allied themselves with the Democratic Party, without ever really questioning the wisdom of anything those Democrats were doing. Obamacare was only one example of this foolishness. Now they are going to suffer badly for their blind partisanship.

It would have been much smarter for those unions to have done what conservatives and tea party advocates demanded back in 2009 and 2010: Read the damn law before you pass it!

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The increasing harassment of their members by Homeland Security has caused the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) to begin a political campaign against the agency.

11:54 am

Gotta have your KGB: The increasing harassment of their members by Homeland Security has caused the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) to begin a political campaign against the agency.

The link above takes you what looks like a fundraising letter sent about by the AOPA to its membership. The significance is that they are centering their campaign around the harassment by Homeland Security, which suggests that this harassment has become a very big issue within this community.

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Indiana University is laying off 50 maintenance workers to avoid Obamacare costs.

4:34 pm

Finding out what’s in it: Indiana University is laying off 50 maintenance workers to avoid Obamacare costs.

The employees will now work for an independent company, which I am sure will either make sure its total staffing is under 50 or those employees work less than 30 hours per week in order to also avoid Obamacare.

The numbers here aren’t gigantic, but the story is notable in that these employees and the university that had employed them almost certainly supported Obamacare and Obama blindly this last five years. The sad thing is I doubt they will finally face reality and link their troubles with his policies.

And then there’s this: Trader Joe’s to drop health insurance for part-time workers because of Obamacare.

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The two Colorado Democrats who were key instigators of that state’s new gun control laws were both decisively voted out of office yesterday in recall elections.

10:26 am

Pushback: The two Colorado Democrats who were key instigators of that state’s new gun control laws were both decisively voted out of office yesterday in recall elections.

The election, which came five months after the United States Senate defeated several gun restrictions, handed another loss to gun-control supporters. It also gave moderate lawmakers across the country a warning about the political risks of voting for tougher gun laws.

The recall elections ousted two Democratic state senators, John Morse and Angela Giron, and replaced them with Republicans. Both defeats were painful for Democrats – Mr. Morse’s because he had been Senate president, and Ms. Giron’s because she represented a heavily Democratic, working-class slice of southern Colorado.

The article says almost nothing about Angela Giron’s defeat, which I find intriguing. She was not expected to lose, considering her district was so Democratic, but her margin of defeat was actually larger than Morse’s. See also this article for a very good election analysis which suggests that any effort by Democrats to impose oppressive gun control laws is going to backfire for them very badly.

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“The [US Justice Department] just stuffed a rag in Barrett Brown’s mouth, as well as his lawyers.”

3:15 pm

“The [US Justice Department] just stuffed a rag in Barrett Brown’s mouth, as well as his lawyers.”

The case might be complicated, and Brown might have even broken a reasonable privacy law, justifying his imprisonment. Nonetheless, it disturbs me greatly that the government’s response is to silence the man. Something about this stinks.

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Militant gays force an Oregon bakery out of business.

9:31 am

The thugs win: Militant gays force an Oregon bakery out of business.

The background:

On January 17, a mother and daughter arrived at Sweet Cakes By Melissa, an Oregon bakery owned by the Kleins. When the pair explained they wanted a wedding cake for a lesbian wedding, the shop owners politely refused informing the would-be customers that their religious beliefs don’t condone gay weddings and that, because of this, they did not want the women’s business. Before the week was up the bakery was beset by attacks in person, on the phone, and in email. The gay mafia from across the country had sprung into action to threaten the lives of the religious couple. [emphasis mine]

The threats and loss of business have now forced them to shut their bakery. And the reason: Their religious beliefs forbid them from catering to a gay wedding, an act which would be the equivalent of endorsing that event. Note also that they had not been refusing to serve gays, only refusing to cater a gay wedding.

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A businessman fights a federal regulatory effort that destroyed his business. The government responses by trying to destroy him.

8:54 pm

A businessman fights a federal regulatory effort that destroyed his business. The government responds by trying to destroy him.

Read the article. It will send chills down your spine. The business was legal, did no harm, and was very successful. The government shut it down, killed it. Now they are going after the creator because he had tried to stop them.

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“The timing couldn’t be worse.”

11:23 pm

The next IPCC report: “The timing couldn’t be worse.”

The author describes how the new report, due out in just a couple of months, is probably already obsolete because of a slew of new papers documenting the long 10 to 15 year pause in global warming that was not predicted by any of the climate models used by the IPCC.

This quote I think sums things up nicely, however:

Due to a ‘combination of errors’, the models have overestimated warming by 100% over the past 20 years and by 400% over the past 15 years.

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The IRS harassment of conservatives continues.

9:02 am

Working for the Democratic Party: The IRS harassment of conservatives continues.

An IRS letter sent to [a tea party] group last week and obtained by The Washington Times contains a laundry list of requests related to virtually all the group’s activities, including its involvement in the 2012 election cycle and its get-out-the-vote efforts, fundraising activities, all radio and TV advertising, and other information. The IRS also is asking for detailed financial records, including “the amounts and percentages of your total expenses that were for fundraising activities in the tax year 2011, 2012 and 2013.” [emphasis mine]

Key quote: “We got away with discriminating against you and we’re not stopping.”

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The Israeli spring.

9:26 am

The Israeli spring.

In comparison to the ruined economies of the Arab Spring — tourism shattered, exports nonexistent, and billions of dollars in infrastructure lost through unending violence — Israel is an atoll of prosperity and stability. Factor in its recent huge gas and oil finds in the eastern Mediterranean, and it may soon become another Kuwait or Qatar, but with a real economy beyond its booming petroleum exports.

Israel had nothing to do with either the Arab Spring or its failure. The irony is that surviving embarrassed Arab regimes now share the same concerns of the Israelis.

Read it all. It gives you a different but (I think) more accurate perspective on the chaos in the Middle East.

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A disabled security guard was fired for asking a Muslim woman to remove her veil.

8:57 am

An upside down world: A disabled security guard was fired for asking a Muslim woman to remove her veil.

The dispute occurred in May when Krause asked a Muslim woman to remove her face scarf thinking he was enforcing the mall’s no-mask policy. Instead of just reprimanding him after informing him that the woman’s veil was a vestige of her religion, Krause was fired after the woman filed a lawsuit of her own.

Without doubt there are real security concerns when someone arrives wearing a full face mask. Muslims might claim this is part of their religion, but it has been used too often by Islamic terrorists to do terrible harm. Moreover, there is real dispute within the religion whether such veils are required.

Finally, from a western perspective requiring women to be masked seems oppressive, even if they choose to do it.

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Identifying the real racists.

11:11 pm

Identifying the real racists.

A very honest, thoughtful and blunt look at the source of today’s racial hate.

Note that I comment very little on these despicable criminal acts that are all the rage these days in the media because that’s what they are, criminal acts first and foremost. To emphasize the racial component of either the victims or the criminals, which is what too many journalists and pundits on both the right and the left are doing, would be to play into the hands of the bigots. I won’t play that scorecard game.

What matters is the crime itself, and the use of the law to find a just sentence.

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The Homeland Security employee who runs a website promoting race war has been put on paid leave.

4:31 pm

Does this make you feel safer? The Homeland Security employee who runs a website promoting race war has been put on paid leave.

Then there’s this quote:

The website declares, “in order for Black people to survive the 21st century, we are going to have to kill a lot of whites – more than our Christian hearts can possibly count,” the Alabama-based SPLC said in its report.

One of Kimathi’s former supervisors at DHS told SPLC’s Hatewatch that, “Everybody is the office is afraid of him,” and that his co-workers are “afraid he will come in with a gun and someday go postal.”

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