Tag: government

Trump rally attendees sue San Jose

5:00 pm

Fourteen attendees of a San Jose Trump rally on June 2 have filed a class-action suit against the city, the mayor, and the police chief for their failure to protect them from rioters.

“Law-abiding citizens leaving the Trump rally were victimized by being forced by armed police to walk into a riot in full swing where many were assaulted while police looked on,” said the plaintiffs’ attorney, Harmeet K. Dhillon, who is also the vice chair of the California Republican Party.

Dhillon says her clients range from a 14-year-old who was assaulted by two different individuals and denied assistance by the San Jose Fire Department to a 71-year-old woman whose glasses were ripped off and destroyed by three rioters. She said it was made clear that the “inaction” of 250 San Jose police officers “was colored by political viewpoint considerations.”

As documented at the time, the San Jose police actually arranged things so that the Trump supporters were forced to take a detour that would put them directly in the path of the violent protesters, and then stood down and watched them get attacked.

I hope they win big, and bankrupt the mayor and the police chief.

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Freedom caucus demands impeachment vote on IRS head

11:04 am

Good news: Despite the opposition of Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), the conservative Freedom Caucus in the House is demanding a vote on the House floor on the impeachment of IRS head John Koskinen.

Two points: First, the vote is not guaranteed, as the motion put forth now will expire during the summer recess. The caucus will have to re-introduce it when Congress reconvenes in September, something they say they will do.

Second, Ryan’s resistance to having this vote does not speak well for him, considering the outrageous stonewalling by Koskinen in connection with IRS scandal, including lying to Congress and participating in the destruction of evidence that had been specifically requested by Congress. It also helps confirm the accusations of Ryan’s opponent in the August 9 Republican primary, Paul Nehlen, that Ryan is not the conservative he claims to be.

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Trump picks Pence

10:35 am

It appears that Donald Trump has chosen Indiana governor Mike Pence as his vice presidential running mate.

This article provides a detailed look at Pence’s background, which is decidedly conservative and tightly linked with tea party philosophy.

Trump’s choice here is definitely encouraging. It suggests that his claimed conversion to conservative values might actually be sincere (though clearly shallow), because it suggests he is looking for conservatives to help him figure out how to be a conservative. As I’ve said repeatedly, the best way to make sure Trump governs as a constitutional conservative is to surround him with constitutional conservatives. This choice indicates that he is not going to resist that possibility.

Let me add that picking Pence could help Trump significantly in garnering support from the status quo Republicans that have been resisting him, since these same people respect Pence highly.

Let me also add one cautionary note. I have a memory of Pence at one point waffling on conservative principles for political gain, but I cannot at all remember the context or situation. Thus, it is important to remind ourselves repeatedly that these are all politicians, and that their interest is not necessarily that of the nation’s but of their own self-interest, which means getting elected. At any time they could toss the Constitution in the trash heap if that is what they think will get them votes. UPDATE: This article outlines Pence’s waffling as governor in Indiana, confirming my reservations about him.

It is therefore very important to not only surround Trump with conservatives, all politicians must be surrounded by voters who demand they defend our rights and our freedoms, as defined by the Constitution. Only then can we be reasonably assured that those rights will be defended.

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Angara’s status

9:45 am

The competition heats up: Work on the factories that will build and assembly Russia’s new Angara rocket appear to be nearing completion.

The article is an excellent overview of the entire Angara program. It also includes a number of interesting nuggets of information that might explain events of the past as well as Russia’s future success or failure of Angara.

For example, the repeated problems with Proton’s Briz-M upper station in 2012 could have been caused by the shift of much of its production from the Khrunichev factories near Moscow to a newly absorbed company located in Siberia. The move was made to take advantage of lower costs in Siberia while letting the company sell off land in Moscow.

Beginning in 2009, PO Polyot was to take responsibility for the production of the Briz-KM upper stage for the Rockot booster, as well as Rockot’s adapter rings and the payload fairings. Also, the manufacturing of all key elements for the Angara-1.2 version of the rocket would end up in Omsk as well. Additionally, the Ust-Katav Wagon-building Plant, UKVZ, would produce components for Angara and its KVTK upper stage, along with sections of the Proton rocket and the Briz-M upper stage.

As for Angara, the article suggests that Russia is struggling to make it as inexpensive to launch as Proton:
» Read more

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Trump doesn’t care if Republicans hold Senate

12:51 pm

Update on the November Democratic primary: Donald Trump was quoted in a news article today that he really doesn’t care that much it the Republicans retain their majority in the Senate.

When I asked him recently whether the party’s maintaining its majority in the Senate meant anything to him, he replied: “Well, I’d like them to do that. But I don’t mind being a free agent, either.” Trump has shown similarly little interest in helping his party’s committees build the sort of war chests typically required in a campaign year. After winning the presidential nomination on a shoestring budget and with fewer paid staff members than the average candidate for governor, he has been visibly reluctant to help build much in the way of national campaign infrastructure, sending a clear message to his fellow Republicans: This fall, you’re on your own. [emphasis in original]

I strongly advice all my readers to read the analysis at the link. From all accounts, Trump’s campaign effort sure does look like he is a Democratic wolf in Republican sheep’s clothing, and that this prediction describing an actual Trump administration will prove amazingly accurate.

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Another Obamacare co-op fails

11:34 am

Finding out what’s in it: The third Obamacare co-op in the past two weeks has failed. .

Illinois regulators took steps Tuesday to shut down Land of Lincoln Health, a 3-year-old startup that lost $90 million in 2015 and more than $17 million through May 31. Illinois Department of Insurance officials announced they are seeking a court order allowing the state to take over Land of Lincoln Health and prepare the company for liquidation. The department’s acting director, Anne Melissa Dowling, will work with the federal government to establish a 60-day special enrollment period for Land of Lincoln policyholders to find and purchase new health coverage.

This leaves the count at 16 failures out of 23 Obamacare co-ops. And there will be more. The economics of the co-ops never made sense, dependent as they were on gigantic and unaffordable subsidizes from the government. In fact, none of the economics of any of Obamacare make sense, which is why the whole monstrous law has raised costs for everyone and made being a doctor a far worse bureaucratic nightmare than it was before the law was passed.

It is a good thing the American people have woken up and decided to nominate candidates for President who are avowed conservatives with proven track records for limiting the power of government. Oh wait…

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Why no one should be surprised by AG Lynch’s failure to uphold the law

10:11 am

This story, about how Attorney General Loretta Lynch refused during testimony to Congress this week to admit the clear illegality of giving classified information to people without clearance, should not surprise anyone. Nor should her partisan willingness to protect Democratic politicians like Hillary Clinton.

Before she was even ratified by the Republican-led Senate in 2015, she was exposed as someone who was easily willing to ignore the law during her nomination hearings. As I wrote then,

The video of Lynch’s non-answer to Cruz’s question is quite shocking. I dare you to watch it and tell me afterward that this administration and Democratic Party is not a threat to your freedom and rights.

Cruz was not afraid to buck the trend and vote against her. The majority of the Republicans in Congress however were, as always, wimps, and let the Democrats get her approved. We are paying for this now.

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New Mexico insurance company abandoning Obamacare exchange

5:52 pm

Finding out what’s in it: A major New Mexico health insurance company has decided to stop selling individual insurance policies through the Obamacare exchange.

Apparently, people who got insurance through the exchange were generally sicker to begin with, and were poorer (80% required subsidies). The company decided the cost was too much.

Meanwhile, Obama has declared that the solution to this very bad government-run health care system is more government!

President Barack Obama, reviewing his signature health law six years into its implementation, is suggesting Congress and his White House successor add a government-run, or public, insurance option to the Affordable Care Act and increase federal financial assistance for people to buy coverage.

The problem with this proposal is this is exactly what the Obamacare exchanges were, except that the health insurance itself was provided by private companies. Obama is suggesting we expand the exchanges (which have failed miserably), but augment that failure with a system kind of like the Veterans Administration, where the government provides the healthcare. That should work just great, assuming we lived in a fantasyland invented by progressive leftists who pay no attention to reality.

But then, I think we do, considering how many people seem willing to vote for Hillary Clinton, a big supporter of Obamacare and a long time proponent of it.

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Ban AC for DC

10:42 am

Link here. As Glenn Reynolds notes

I’m inspired by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Tex., who noticed something peculiar recently. It seems that EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, who spends a lot of time telling Americans that they need to drive less, fly less, and in general reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, also flies home to see her family in Boston “almost every weekend”; the head of the Clean Air Division, Janet McCabe, does the same, but she heads to Indianapolis. In air mileage alone, the Daily Caller News Foundation estimates that McCarthy surpasses the carbon footprint of an ordinary American. Smith has introduced a bill that wouldn’t target the EPA honchos’ personal travel, though: It provides, simply, that “None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to pay the cost of any officer or employee of the Environmental Protection Agency for official travel by airplane.”

This makes sense to me. We’re constantly told by the administration that “climate change” is a bigger threat than terrorism. And as even President Obama has noted, there’s a great power in setting an example: “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times … and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

Likewise, it’s hard to expect Americans to accept changes to their own lifestyles when the very people who are telling them that it’s a crisis aren’t acting like it’s a crisis. So I have a few suggestions to help bring home the importance of reduced carbon footprints at home and abroad:

Reynolds than goes on to suggest further restrictions on the fossil fuel use of the hoi poloi in Washington, including heavy taxes on fuel used by private jets, heavy taxes on coastal regions like liberal cities like New York, Boston, and Washington to prepare for sea rise, and the banning air-conditioning in the District of Columbia.

Obama makes a great point about setting the thermostat at 72 degrees. We should ban air conditioning in federal buildings. We won two world wars without air conditioning our federal employees. Nothing in their performance over the last 50 or 60 years suggests that A/C has improved things. Besides, The Washington Post informs us that A/C is sexist, and that Europeans think it’s stupid.

Makes sense to me!

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Black racism and hate

9:07 am

Three stories today illustrate the growing hate, violence, and bigotry within the modern black power movement:

These are only a sample of the numerous similar stories in the past few years, most of which revolve around the generally racist Black Lives Matter movement, which only cares about black lives and gets very offended if you note that all lives matter. Consider for example the words of Babu Omowale, the “national minister of defense for the People’s New Black Panther Party” in the third link above:

We know that we are owed land, we are owed monies, we are owed restitutions and we are owed reparations.

In other words, blacks today must be rewarded and everyone else who is not black punished because of something that was done to someone else by someone else, a hundred years or more in the past. And the only reason blacks are owed reparations is because they are black, with everyone else who is not black guilty and therefore to be punished, even though no one today had anything to do with the past injustice of slavery.

While most blacks in America are ordinary people who don’t hate anyone and want to live their lives peaceably, the culture they live within is increasingly focused, like the New Black Panthers, on race and hate. That culture is also increasingly abandoning the ideals that made the civil rights movement a success and led to election of a black man as President of the United States, even though blacks comprise less than 15% of the American population.

The consequences of this will be exactly the opposite of what the Black Lives Matter movement and the New Black Panthers claim they want, a greater respect for blacks. Instead, these movements will isolate blacks and make them a target, an enemy to everyone else in the country. I can’t emphasize how mistaken and foolish this is. Unless the good people in the black community reject it soon and loudly, they — as well as everyone else — are going to suffer badly in future years because of it.

It never pays to view people by their race, ethnicity, or gender. What matters is what each person does. We are not races, ethnicities, or genders. We are each a human being, each with a soul and a potential to do good or evil. We should thus be judged as an individual. Everything else is irrelevant, and if you try to include it you are revealing yourself to be racist and a hate-monger.

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Another Obamacare co-op folds

12:41 am

Finding out what’s in it: Another Obamacare co-op folded today, the second to do so this week and the 15th out of the original 23 to fail.

Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services (DCBS) announced Friday that it is taking over the insurer, known as Oregon’s Health CO-OP, and will liquidate the company. The plan’s 20,600 enrollees will be forced to find new health insurance, with their plans ending on July 31. The state will hold a special sign-up period to allow these enrollees to find new coverage.

Do not be surprised if most if not all of the remaining 8 co-ops also shut down in the next year. Do not be surprised if we also see the failures of several private for-profit insurance companies as well.

Too bad no one predicted these failures, except for every Republican in Congress as well as conservatives and tea party activists across the country.

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TMT likely to abandon Hawaii

3:55 pm

Officials from the consortium that is building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) have revealed that they are looking very seriously at alternative locations.

Officials behind the proposed Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) are considering new locations for the $1.4bn facility, and expect to decide whether to opt for a new site early next year. The TMT is due to be built on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountain but, following protests from local residents, its building permit was revoked last December by the state’s Supreme Court. New locations that are being considered include Baja California in Mexico, the Canary Islands and Chile, as well as locations in India and China.

They claim that Hawaii is still their first choice, but if they don’t see any progress by summer in the permitting process, I expect them to tell Hawaii to go to hell (though not in those words) and pick somewhere else.

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A blunt honest appraisal of America today

12:32 pm

The coming dark age: This op-ed encapsulates perfectly my despairing sense of today’s American culture, and what it will bring to the future.

After noting the effort by Obama and the Democrats these past eight years to divide Americans by race, party, gender, religion, and creed, he then adds:

Into this, Republicans are responding not with a candidate who will rise above the fray and try to unite us all back into common culture, but a man with no temperament to do anything other than divide. His loudest supporters embrace a “convert or die” mentality. We are either with him or against him.

Republicans have embraced a man who takes tribalism to new levels and, in the process, have put on blinders and willfully ignored how much he excites white nationalists and the race baiters of the right. For every New Black Panther in love with Barack Obama there are two white nationalists willing to march through hell for Donald Trump.

In his conclusion he adds

I’m afraid 2016 is the beginning of a chaotic time and not a one off occasion. We may look back on 2016 as the calm before the storm. What is most galling to me is that my party, the party I once served as an elected official, has turned to a man who has no intention of uniting the nation, who brings out the worst in absolutely everybody, and with so much on the line has so little a chance of even winning. But to point this out is to be accused of being a traitor and helping a woman I find equally offensive.

All of this is to say we get the government and national character that reflects us and right now it is all a damning indictment of our American character. How many more will die? How many more Americans will turn against each other? How many will seek blame instead of reconciliation?

Meanwhile, I am reminded of how, during the primary campaign, Ted Cruz was always willing to graciously reach out to protesters and debate the issues with them politely, face-to-face. That behavior, in modern America, has now been called “creepy” and the act of a liar.

We get the government we deserve. Be prepared for bad things in the future.

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The terrorist murders in Dallas

10:41 am

Last night, during a Black Lives Matter protest, five policeman were killed and nine people (seven cops) were wounded by rooftop sniper fire. One shooter was killed, after police learned that “he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”

This was clearly a terrorist attack, aimed very specifically at the police. It was clearly inspired and instigated by the hate being expressed during this election year by leftists and by the very bigoted Black Lives Matter movement, which really only cares about black people, and gets offended if you try to tell them that all lives matter.

Five years ago shortly after the Tucson shootings that badly injured Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, I noted in disgust the inflammatory language of the left. Even as they were demanding more civility from conservatives, they were also demanding the murder of conservatives. At that time I called on them to tone down their rhetoric.

This behavior must stop. Violent and angry rhetoric can and will cause violence. And it probably has, considering the fact that a large number of the random violent acts in recent years have actually been committed by deranged individuals with liberal, not conservative, leanings. This is not to say that I blame the left for this violence, but that the left has as much of a responsibility as the right to think carefully about what it says, before it says it. Otherwise, they might find that they have made their less rational followers more angry than they ever imagined, or can control.

Or as Michael York says to his NAZI friend at the end of this scene from the 1972 movie, Cabaret. “You still think you can control them?”

Sadly, in the five years since I have seen no effort at all by the left to tone down its rhetoric. If anything, they have notched it up, repeatedly expressing hate against conservatives and calling for increased acts of violence and oppression against them. Thus, we should not be surprised by last night’s attacks in Dallas. Nor should be be surprised if it gets worse in the coming months, as we get closer to the election. While the right wants to win in the voting booth, too many people on the left now seem to consider the idea of elections inconvenient and a problem, and also consider violence as a reasonable response should they lose at the polls.

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A description of SLS’s first launch

9:18 am

This article provides a detailed look at the planned 2018 first launch of SLS, describing step-by-step the launch process that will send an unmanned Orion capsule toward the Moon.

As my readers know, I am not a fan of SLS. I consider it an incredible waste of money that will never accomplish anything. Nonetheless, that first launch will be a cool thing to watch, as the rocket will generate comparable energy as the Saturn 5.

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State Department reopens investigation into Clinton private server

5:56 pm

The Obama State Department announced today that they are reopening their investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server and the mishandling of classified material by her and her aides.

Don’t be fooled by this. The only reason the State Department is announcing that they are reopening this investigation is to deflect criticism of the Obama administration before the election. Nothing will ever come of it, as long as the Democrats control the executive branch.

And there is no guarantee anything will come of it should Trump win, though the odds for a real investigation do increase.

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Most of America’s elite universities do not require history majors to study U.S. history

4:30 pm

The coming dark age: More than fifty American universities do not require history majors to take a course in United States history.

This bears repeating: The universities allow history majors to get a degree in history without having to study American history. The article also includes lots of interviews from lots of academic types, all making excuses for this dismal policy.

No wonder no one seems to know what the Bill of Rights is. Our universities, run almost exclusively by leftwing hacks, have sent it down the memory hole to be forgotten and ignored.

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Obama illegally funding Obamacare, stonewalling Congress

11:51 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: According to a new report, the Obama administration has been illegally funding Obamacare, and stonewalling Congress when it tries to exercise its constitutional required fiscal responsibility.

Among the report’s seemingly endless list of bad behavior by the Obama administration, it noted that multiple federal agencies withheld or redacted documents from Congress, “without any valid legal basis to do so.”

Hey, who cares about the law? That’s just some silly piece of paper that some old white guys wrote some 240 years ago. We are liberal, we are Democrats, and we know best. Now shut up and do as you are told!

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VA performance worsens with more money

11:40 am

Government in action! A new report has found that the billions in increased funding given to the Veterans Administration to fix its problems apparently only made things worse.

The report, obtained by CNN but slated for public release Wednesday, highlights a variety of “deficiencies” that contribute to health care issues within the agency, including flawed governance, insufficient staffing, inadequate facilities, antiquated IT systems and inefficient use of employees. The commission also criticized changes that have been implemented since the scandal became known, including the VA’s Choice Program. The system was set up in 2014 to alleviate wait times by enabling veterans experiencing month-long delays or more to seek private care. The report states the program has only “aggravated wait times and frustrated veterans” due to confusing eligibility requirements and conflicting processes for coordinating with private health care providers.

As a solution, the commission recommends establishing a “VHA Care System,” which would function as a network of VA, Department of Defense and VA-approved private healthcare providers available to all enrolled veterans.

First, notice that the solution of this government report is a new layer of bureaucracy. That should fix things, eh? Second, note that the VA is really nothing more than what the left likes to call a “single-payer” system, whereby healthcare is entirely run by the federal government, which is the system the left still sees as the only solution to the failures of Obamacare. That should fix things too, eh?

Finally, the report demonstrates again that giving more money to a failed federal program will not fix it. The real solution is to kill the program entirely and start fresh.

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House Freedom Caucus opposes Republican gun control measure

10:28 am

At least someone in Washington wants to defend the Bill of Rights: The House Freedom Caucus has announced that it would oppose the effort by the Republican leadership to pass a gun control law that would allow the federal government to deny citizens their second amendment rights.

The effort will probably kill the Republican proposal, which would have allowed the federal government to block a gun sale to someone on the no-fly list for three days, during which the Attorney General would to go to court to prove that the individual is a suspected terrorist.

Gee, what’s wrong with that? Doesn’t the Attorney General as well as the courts always enforce the law fairly and objectively? Who could imagine them teaming up to squelch a citizen’s rights, merely because that citizen might have opinions these federal officials don’t like?

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FAA moves to regulate backyard drone use

10:15 am

The law is only there to crush the little people: The FAA has issued a subpoena against a father and son who posted youtube videos showing off their modifications to a drone, equipping it first with a gun and then with a flame thrower.

They are fighting the subpoena, noting that the FAA lacks any authority to regulate the use of recreational drones.

The Haughwouts’ attorney, Mario Cerame, told CBS News that the decision could potentially set an important precedent about the FAA’s power to regulate recreational drone use. Cerame added, the FAA should not be using airplane regulations to seek information about “a kid playing in his backyard…. They shouldn’t use airplane regulations,” Cerame told CBS News. “They should go get the authority from Congress. It’s about keeping the government in check as to what Congress said they can do.”

Hey, we know they never intended to do anything wrong! And besides, no reasonable prosecutor would ever consider bringing charges, right?

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Hotel clerk loses her job and might be jailed for reporting suspicious behavior

9:48 pm

Madness: A hotel clerk who called 911 because a Muslim man was behaving strangely about getting a room during the Republican convention in Cleveland has been fired and might be prosecuted by the local authorities.

Read the whole article. The Muslim man was asking odd questions, refused to accept the fact that all the rooms were booked, and had multiple cellphones. The article also includes the transcript of the clerk’s 911 call, which clearly shows she was not trying to profile unfairly but thought it wise to let the police know about what was happening.

In a sane world, the hotel and the police would simply drop things. Instead, the hotel fired the clerk, and the police are considering prosecuting her. And people wonder why Islamic mass murderers can literally announce on social media what they intend to do and no one reports it.

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Another Obamacare co-op to fold

5:54 pm

Finding out what’s in it: The fourteenth of the original twenty-three Obamacare state health insurance co-ops has announced it is closing shop.

I like this quote from the article:

Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, which advocates for free-market solutions in the health industry, said those who wanted the co-ops to be part of Obamacare believed “if they didn’t have a profit, they could charge less money, provide more service.” But she said the cascade of failures “is an indictment of the idealistic notion that you could put people in charge of billions of dollars who have little or no experience in the insurance industry.”

Across the country, the federal government loaned $2.4 billion to launch the co-ops [emphasis mine]

In other words, Obamacare was written and run by people didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing, but they not only went ahead with it, but then handed out billions in taxpayer money to their friends, money that will never be returned. Pretty good gig, if you can get it!

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Court rules Obama adminstration can’t use private email accounts to bypass law

9:57 am

I love the timing: A federal court today ruled that government officials in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) cannot use private email accounts to evade public record laws.

Throughout the case, the government argued that “[d]ocuments on a nongovernmental email server are outside the possession or control of federal agencies, and thus beyond the scope of FOIA.”

Judge David Sentelle, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, disagreed with that reasoning and ordered the lower court to reconsider the case. “If a department head can deprive the citizens of their right to know what his department is up to by the simple expedient of maintaining his departmental emails on an account in another domain, that purpose is hardly served,” Sentelle wrote. “It would make as much sense to say that the department head could deprive requestors of hard-copy documents by leaving them in a file at his daughter’s house and then claiming that they are under her control,” he said.

This absurd rulling, which says that government officials have to follow the law, will surely be overturned. We can’t have these saints oppressed by things as evil as the law.

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The fix for Hillary Clinton is IN

8:45 am

The law is for little people: The head of the FBi today spoke to reporters, outlining in detail how Hillary Clinton and her aides repeatedly broke the law in their use of her private server to send and receive classified State Department emails. Because of these facts, he of course concluded that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges, and therefore will not make any recommendations to the Department of Justice.

You can read his entire surreal statement here.

As noted correctly here, “The cover-up is now finished.” Or as this writer noted recently

Now it seems we actually have a new social contract – do what we say and don’t resist, and in return we’ll abuse you, lie about you, take your money, and look down upon you in contempt. What a bargain!

It’s not a social contract anymore – American society today is a suicide pact we never agreed to and yet we’re expected to go first.

I say “No.”

We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. Nothing.

We make it easy for them by going along. We make it simple by defaulting to the old rules. But there are no rules anymore, certainly none that morally bind us once we are outside the presence of some government worker with a gun to force our compliance. There is only will and power and we must rediscover our own. If there is no cop sitting right there, then there is nothing to make you stop at that stop sign tonight.

They don’t realize that by rejecting the rule of law, they have set us free. We are independent. We owe them nothing – not respect, not loyalty, not obedience. But with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we will still mutually pledge those who have earned our loyalty with their adherence to the rule of law, our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

It is especially ironic that the FBI’s announcement that it was going to help cover-up illegal activity by a high government official was made one day after the Fourth of July.

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The Declaration of Independence

10:07 am

It behooves every American to read at least once a year the document that outlined the principles and reasons why the American colonies declared their independence from Great Britain. These words remain its most profound statement:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

It seems that the Fourth of July seems the most appropriate day for that reading.

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The story of the writing of the Battle Hymn of the Republic

9:55 am

Some more Civil War history on this July fourth.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic became one of the most popular songs in the North during the Civil War, and was also an important rally song used during the 1950s/1960s civil rights movement. And its central theme is stated by its last stanza:

In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom
That transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy,
Let us die to make men free;
While God is marching on.

That stanza in many ways encompasses much of American history, since many of the original colonies were formed by deeply religious Christians who had made their religion and its moral rules central to their lives. That faith ended up being seeped in much of American culture for the next four hundred years, and guided the country’s actions both in domestic and foreign policy.

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Federal court rules a farmer plowing his land violates Clean Water Act

9:14 pm

Fascists: A federal court has ruled that a farmer in California is violating the Clean Water Act by plowing his own property.

The court ruled that the company violated the Clean Water Act by plowing its property, even though the Act exempts normal farming practices. And, the implementing regulations state that plowing is never even subject to the Act, so long as it does not convert wetlands to dry land. Since no wetlands were lost or reduced in acreage by the plowing in this case, the court’s decision amounts to a rule that you may not plow in federally regulated wetlands without an Army Corps permit, the clear exemptions to the contrary notwithstanding.

The court also reversed an earlier ruling in the case and held that although the Corps ordered Duarte Nursery to halt all activity in any area of its property that could be considered waters of the U.S. on its property, the company did not suffer any deprivation of its property. On this basis, the court then ruled that Duarte Nursery’s due process rights have not been violated by being ordered not to farm its property for the last three years.

More here. Even though the Supreme Court has twice told the EPA and the Army Corp of Engineers that their interpretation of the Clean Water Act is wrong and overreaching, the agencies continue to use their interpretation to fine and restrict the actions of farmers and private property owners. In this case, they are forbidding a farming company from farming their property under Clean Water Act regulations, even though the law specifically exempts farming from Clean Water Act regulations and the Supreme Court has also ruled that interpretation of the law by these agencies is wrong.

What makes this worse is that a California federal court has agreed with the agencies, even though the Supreme Court has previously ruled otherwise. It is as if the lower federal court in California have decided they don’t need to follow the rulings of the higher court.

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TSA injures and arrests a disabled teenager, because they can

3:58 pm

Does this make you feel safer? A disabled teenager, partially deaf, blind in one eye, paralyzed, and easily confused, was injured and then arrested by TSA agents at Memphis Airport when they tried to subject her to a hands-on body scan.

Despite her concerns, Shirley [the mother] was kept away from her daughter by police. Hannah, obviously afraid, tried to get away from the grips of the TSA. “She’s trying to get away from them but in the next instant, one of them had her down on the ground and hit her head on the floor. There was blood everywhere,” said Shirley.

The teen was arrested, booked, and sent to jail. “Here we were with nowhere to go, not even a toothbrush, our bags had gone to Chattanooga,” said the distraught mother.

The mother is suing the airport, the TSA, and the local police, all of whom acted like brainless thugs, especially since anyone with any brains would have likely realized instantly that the girl was not a threat to anyone.

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