Tag: freedom

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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