A teenager, in jail since March, faces 8 years in prison for making a sarcastic remark on Facebook.
Read the story and weep.
It is now reported that the charges against the high school who refused to remove his NRA t-shirt have been dismissed.
No details yet, however, so it might be too soon to celebrate the return of sanity to this small spot in West Virginia.
Update: The dismissal of charges is confirmed. I think the prosecutor saw the political winds and decided he’d be a fool to pursue this case.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today announced that it has filed charges against former Democratic Governor/Senator Jon Corzine for his part in the embezzlement of customer funds at MF Global.
The article says that most of the embezzled funds have been recovered, but that’s not only news to me, I don’t see how it’s possible. We are talking about the misuse and loss of one billion dollars.
Treasury’s inspector general has revealed that while only six progressive groups were targeted for investigation by the IRS, 292 conservative groups, 100% who applied, were investigated.
Shenzhou 10 has landed safely, completing its 15 day mission.
The new America: The prosecutors trying to put a high school teenager in jail for a year because he refused to take off his NRA t-shirt have tried to put a gag order on the teenager and his parents.
Prosecutors said they wanted to stop White, Marcum, and Marcum’s fathern Allen Lardieri, from sharing their story with the press, claiming the gag order would serve Marcum’s better interest. “These are the same individuals that are trying to prosecute him, so as far as them knowing what is in his better interest, I have a lot of questions about that,” Lardieri said.
A petition to intervene in the gag order hearing on behalf of WOWK-TV and the free press was prepared. Before WOWK reporter Charlo Greene could deliver the petition to the court clerk, she was asked twice to leave the courthouse by a bailiff who told her Judge Eric O’Briant, who presided over Marcum’s case, had requested she be removed from the courthouse. Greene then was told she would be arrested and charged with obstructing an officer if she did not comply with the bailiff’s orders.
One of the lawsuits against the IRS has added 16 more conservative organizations for a total of 41 which claim they were harassed for the political point of view.
Man, those two rogue agents in Cincinnati were damn busy. If only the government workers with real work were as dedicated!
Congress passes a law: The toxic combination of Obamacare and the proposed Senate immigration bill would create a big financial incentive for employers to hire non-citizens.
Under Obamacare, businesses with over 50 workers that employ American citizens without offering them qualifying health insurance could be subject to fines of up to $3,000 per worker. But because newly legalized immigrants wouldn’t be eligible for subsidies on the Obamacare exchanges until after they become citizens – at least 13 years under the Senate bill – businesses could avoid such fines by hiring the new immigrants instead.
Not surprisingly, the idiots who voted for this immigration bill haven’t read it and have no idea this problem exists.
Despite some recent reports, liberal groups were not targeted by the IRS.
It appears these recent reports, that “progressives” were also targeted, are merely spin, an effort to defuse the scandal. A closer look reveals two facts about this so-called leftwing targeting: One, the liberal organizations were not “targeted,” merely “flagged.” Nothing was done to them at all, which is why none has come forward to complain. Second, the liberal organizations were 501c3 non-profits, not 501c4. The former get a greater tax exemption in exchange for not engaging in any political activity. Thus, such non-profits are normally subjected to greater scrutiny by the IRS.
It didn’t take much research to note these two details. That several major news organizations, including the Chicago Tribuine above and CNN, didn’t bother to check and simply regurgitated the spin, tells us a great deal about them.
Update: in related news, it appears that twelve different units at the IRS were involved in the targeting of conservatives.
That’s a far cry from one or two rogue agents in a single IRS office, as Lois Lerner claimed.
The Chinese astronauts have undocked from the Tiengong-1 space station and will return to Earth tomorrow.
Following a separation from the Tiangong-1 at 7:05 a.m. Beijing Time, the manned Shenzhou-10 moved back to a point from where the spacecraft changed its orbit and flew around the target module. Under the command of ground-based professionals, Shenzhou-10 adjusted its flight gesture at a point behind Tiangong-1, and approached and rendezvoused with the target module.
The fly-around and rendezvous was apparently controlled by ground controllers, not the astronauts on board.
The religion of peace: Islamic gunmen kill ten mountain-climbers in Pakistan.
As planned, the Chinese astronauts successfully completed a manual docking today to their station Tiengong 1.
Want to complain about your water quality? You’re a terrorist, according to one Tennessee government official.
“We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously,” deputy director of TDEC’s Division of Water Resources Sherwin Smith told a baffled and outraged audience in Maury County, Tennessee. “But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.”
The worst part of this is that this bureaucrat might actually be quoting the law correctly. When Congress created the Department of Homeland Security they created an American version of the KGB, something we don’t need, don’t want, and contradicts every principle this country was founded on.
Two reports issued today have concluded that implementation of Obamacare by the federal government is behind schedule.
I’m not surprised, considering the opposition to the law combined with its draconian complexity. Even angels — with to cooperation of God and everyone else — would have trouble implementing this mess. Without that cooperation is will be next to impossible.
It appears that the IRS targeted a Homeland Security whistleblower.
They slapped a lien on his home after investigating him for a year. They hassled him, determined that the government owed him money, and then poof! they were gone. The government still owes Black money.
It’s not just the tea party the IRS goes after, it’s anyone who causes trouble for those in power.
A recap of the broken promises of Obamacare.
Most of these will be familiar to regular readers of Behind the Black, though the article lays them out very clearly. However, this one is a new one to me:
If your state ran a program to help the uninsured, that’s also a violation, because Insurance is what the ACA is all about. It’s a mandate that you purchase insurance. Any unique solutions generated in one of our 50 incubators must stop even if they have served people well, because they will be in violation of the Affordable Care Act. One of the most successful state Medicaid systems was denied a waiver by the Obama administration despite its proven track record. The worst part of one-size-fits-all solutions is that they are tailored for no one. [emphasis in original]
A Virginia school board has voted unanimously to revise their zero tolerance policy in connection to guns after two boys were suspended for “using pencils like guns”.
Under the revised policy, school administrators can look at factors such as intentions of harm and whether the object is listed as a weapon to determine the punishment. Ordinary objects will not be considered weapons.
Well, duh. Sounds like common sense, doesn’t it?
NASA picks 8 new public relations figureheads, calls them astronauts.
To put it bluntly, NASA presently can’t put any astronauts into orbit, and might not be able to do ever again. Any astronauts on NASA’s payroll will thus likely have to beg a seat on a spacecraft built by others. Eventually, that begging won’t get them anywhere, which means that the work these new astronauts will mostly do will be to sell NASA to the public.
In the past, the PR work of astronauts only consumed a significant part of their time. For the present and probably in the future, it will be the only work they do.
Which makes me question the need to hire these astronauts in the first place. If I had my druthers and ran NASA, I’d rather wait until I actually need some astronauts and then hire the pilots who are flying SpaceShipTwo.
Leftwing justice: A liberal state bar spends three years destroying a lawyer’s career merely because she is conservative.
In interviews to Congress, Washington IRS supervisor Holly Paz admitted to scrutinizing tea party applications.
So, very clearly this harassment wasn’t limited to low level employees in Cincinnati. Lois Lerner lied.
Still, this article appears to me to be a leak specifically designed to exonerate the Obama administration and to make it seem that the harassment of conservatives was merely bad management. To me, it reads like hogwash. I suspect when we get to see the entire transcripts of her interviews and when Paz is finally forced to answer some questions publicly things won’t look so innocent. For one thing, it seems impossible that only conservative organizations were picked for harassment without someone making a conscious political decision. For another, the following claim doesn’t meet the smell test for me:
Paz said an IRS supervisor in Cincinnati had commonly referred to the applications as “tea party” cases. But, Paz said, she thought that was simply shorthand for any application that included political activity.
Yeah, right. Anyone could see plainly that “tea party” could also be shorthand for radical leftwing organizations or Democratic Party front groups.
Finally, note that the IRS has admitted to replacing Paz, though they haven’t yet said whether she was actually fired. If she was so innocent, why did they do this?
The world upside down: Even as the IRS was harassing any nonprofit using the word “patriot” in its name, it was rubberstamping exemptions for “Islamic” groups, even those that have violated laws and are thought to have links to terrorist organizations.
An eight grade high school student, suspended from school for wearing an NRA t-shirt, now faces the possibility of a year in jail.
My heart bleeds: A Democratic Congressman thinks it “is simply not fair” to make his staffers subject to Obamacare like everyone else.
The problem it seems is that
Dozens of lawmakers and aides are so afraid that their health insurance premiums will skyrocket next year thanks to Obamacare that they are thinking about retiring early or just quitting. The fear: Government-subsidized premiums will disappear at the end of the year under a provision in the health care law that nudges aides and lawmakers onto the government health care exchanges, which could make their benefits exorbitantly expensive.
Well, ain’t that just too damn bad. As I say, my heart bleeds.
The law is such an inconvenient thing: It appears that Homeland Security and Customs both train their officers to believe that pilots have “no right to refuse a search” of their planes.
To put it another way, these agencies think that they don’t need a warrant to search the private property of pilots.
Coming soon to a blue state near you! Detroit announces that it will default on its debt today.
The City currently faces approximately $17 billion in total liabilities. Detroit is insolvent and cannot meet its financial obligations without a significant restructuring.
It is important to note that Detroit has been run exclusively by Democrats for about a half century. Thus, this bankruptcy is an entirely partisan event, supported by voters who blindly insisted on one-party rule, and never questioned the incompetence or corruption of that Democratic Party.
And please, don’t argue with me by mentioning examples where Republicans screwed up. They have their own lock on stupidity, corruption, and failure. The point here, however, is to recognize that the failure in Detroit, as well as all of the recent other cities that have gone bankrupt, is because of decades of liberal Democratic rule, where money got funneled to unionized city employees at the expense of the taxpayers, with no regard to cost or affordability.
And if you doubt me, read this history of Detroit’s last fifty years.
Why doctors are bailing out of health insurance.
And yes, Obamacare is a major reason, though not the entire reason. It is instead the worst symptom of an on-going philosophical failure that goes back decades.
Stonewalling: Not one tea party group has yet been contacted by the FBI, one month after the IRS scandal began.
Worse, the head of the FBI can’t even name the FBI person in charge of the investigation.
Republican Rep. Jim Jordan lit into Mueller for his lack of knowledge during a House judiciary committee hearing. “This is the most important issue in front of the country in the last six weeks, and you don’t know who the lead investigator is?” Jordan asked, sounding shocked.
“At this juncture, no I do not,” Mueller responded.
“Do you know if you’ve talked to any of the victims?” Jordan went on. “Have you talked to any of the groups that were targeted by their government? Have you met with any of the tea party groups since May 14, 2013?”
“I don’t know what the status of the interviews are by the team that’s on it,” Mueller said.
Reached for comment Thursday afternoon, the FBI’s Washington, D.C. press office transferred TheDC to a long-ringing phone line and eventually hung up.
I have embedded the video of this hearing testimony below the fold. Watch and you will know that the claims of “outrage” by Obama and Holder are utter crap.
» Read more
The law is such an inconvenient thing: An audit has revealed that in 2010 and 2011 more than 1,000 IRS employees misused government charge cards.
The key quote from the article is this conclusion from the audit:
The inspector general’s bottom line conclusion in this area was that the IRS is more tolerant of its own employees who misuse government charge cards than it is of American taxpayers who fail to pay their taxes in a timely manner.
“Of particular concern is the fact that the IRS ask taxpayers to voluntarily pay taxes owed in a timely manner and yet was more tolerant when its employees became delinquent and defaulted on outstanding payments, violated the terms of the Citibank contract, abused a Government-provided resource (travel funding), and compromised the integrity of the IRS.”
