Tag: government

The Obama administration has been caught tracking the emails of a group of scientists critical of certain FDA actions.

9:28 am

George Orwell would be proud! The Obama administration has been caught reading the emails and personal files of a group of scientists who were critics of the FDA.

The agency, using so-called spy software designed to help employers monitor workers, captured screen images from the government laptops of the five scientists as they were being used at work or at home. The software tracked their keystrokes, intercepted their personal e-mails, copied the documents on their personal thumb drives and even followed their messages line by line as they were being drafted, the documents show.

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The Obama administration has backed off and is giving Florida access to a database of noncitizens so the state can check for illegal voters.

10:44 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The Obama administration has backed off and is giving Florida access to a database of noncitizens so the state can check for illegal voters.

What sadly surprises me about this is that the Obama administration obeyed the judge’s ruling. Based on this administration’s past behavior, I would have expected them to defy it.

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The EPA is attempting to enforce a regulation requiring ships to use low-sulfur fuel, despite the fact that the regulation has not yet been voted on by Congress.

10:27 am

The law is such an inconvenient thing: The EPA is attempting to enforce a regulation requiring ships to use low-sulfur fuel, despite the fact that the regulation has not yet been voted on by the Senate.

The treaty amendment at issue is a 2010 agreement under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, or MARPOL. The United States has signed onto MARPOL, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted the 2010 amendment. Domestic enforcement of the amendment is not permitted without ratification by two-thirds of the U.S. Senate.

And the Senate has not voted on this yet.

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Against the advice of almost every farm organization the USDA is proceeding with regulations that will require farmers to individually tag every chicken and cow.

4:11 pm

Racists! Against the advice of almost every farm organization the USDA is proceeding with regulations that will require farmers to individually tag every chicken and cow.

Fidelis Hegngi, a senior staff veterinarian at USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, also has his doubts. “To really truly have something like tagging work on poultry you would need to have something absolute because birds move a lot, if you don’t have something absolute, it’s not going to work. … I don’t think the technology is there yet to really implement the bird ID to be fully, fully functional,” Mr. Hegngi said. Government officials have not said whether they would check animals for identification at traffic stops.

Ms. Bergener has a simple solution to the poultry police: “I’m going to do selective passive resistance,” she said. “I’m not tagging.” …

According to the letter to OMB, the USDA’s disconnect with farmers does not stop at rules for poultry. The USDA estimates a rancher’s cost to identify cattle at 18 cents a head, but the letter cites a study from North Dakota State University that places the actual cost of cow citizenship at $20 a head.

Nowhere is it explained why the USDA is demanding such stringent ID requirements of farmers, other than to make their lives difficult and to increase the petty power of the Washington bureaucracy.

In other words, for the Obama administration it all can be summarized like this: “Voter ID bad! Chicken ID good!”

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At least 80 House Republicans have signed a letter demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) block any further funding of Obamacare.

7:24 pm

At least 80 House Republicans have signed a letter demanding that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) block any further funding of Obamacare.

This story illustrates two things. First, the House Republican leadership has been timid about using its power to block the implementation of Obamacare, even though the public clearly wants it blocked. Second, that about a third of the House Republican membership has already signed the letter, with more signatures expected, suggests that the bulk of the Republican Party is not as timid as their leadership. Moreover, I expect the November election to significantly strengthen this fiscally conservative trend.

Thus, it will not surprise me if we see some very radical budget cuts in the next Congress.

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National Park Service is proposing the removal of several historic bridges in Yosemite because they interfere with water flow, according to environmentalists.

5:55 pm

The National Park Service is proposing the removal of several historic bridges in Yosemite because they interfere with water flow, according to environmentalists.

Look, why don’t they simply admit it: They really want don’t want any humans to visit these parks, and simply outlaw them all? That way, the job of the National Park Service will be so much easier: They — and their environmentalist buddies — will finally have the park to themselves to play in without being bothered by all those disgusting American citizens.

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The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $1.4 billion cut in the budget of EPA, also including 31 additional riders limited the agency’s regulatory powers.

1:57 pm

The House Appropriations Committee has approved a $1.4 billion cut in the budget of EPA, also including 31 additional riders limiting the agency’s regulatory powers.

That would make the 2013 EPA budget equivalent to its budget in the early 2000s, numbers that would hardly be crippling.

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A Phoenix man has been jailed for hold Bible study sessions in his own home.

3:13 pm

This is freedom? A Phoenix man has been jailed for holding private Bible study sessions in his own home.

Salman is the owner of Mighty Mike’s Burgers — and he is also an ordained pastor. He and his wife have been hosting Bible studies on their 4.6 acre property since 2005. The gatherings were originally attended by as many as 15 people.

Wow! As many as fifteen people! The mind boggles. Just imagine the traffic problems these mobs must have caused, especially as they gathered on a plot of land as small as 4.6 acres!

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Vice President Paul Ryan?

2:20 pm

Vice President Paul Ryan?

I say “Please!” and I say it loudly. Picking Ryan for number two would reverse Ronald Reagan’s biggest mistake, picking moderate George Bush Sr. as his VP. The result of that bad choice was 12 years of Bush rule in the late 1980s and in the 2000s, during which there was little effort to rein in the power or size of government. In fact, the Bushes did a lot to increase government’s power and size.

Picking Ryan as VP would place a competent fiscal conservative into the limelight and make such a person a leading contender for the Presidency in future years. It would also help demonstrate again that the 2010 election was a trend, not a fluke.

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Is the U.S. government reading your emails? The answer appear to be “Maybe.”

2:09 pm

Is the U.S. government reading your emails without a warrant? The answer appear to be “Maybe.”

And the stance of the Obama administration?

The Justice Department and the Obama administration had a chance to settle the issue in April 2011, during a Senate hearing on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. Instead, officials with both the Commerce and Justice departments failed to provide any clarity. Instead, a Justice Department official argued against extending Fourth Amendment protections — specifically strict warrant requirements — to email, saying that doing so would hinder investigations. “Congress should consider carefully the adverse impact on criminal as well as national security investigations if a probable-cause warrant were the only means to obtain such stored communications,” James Baker, associate deputy attorney general, testified at the hearing.

This behavior is not only immoral it is constitutionally illegal. It should stop.

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Another dismal jobs report.

9:47 am

Another dismal jobs report.

Job growth amounted to a disappointing 80,000, below analyst expectations of 90-100K, while the jobless rate remained the same at 8.2%:

Read the whole article. There’s a lot more, all of its depressing and trending downward.

While no President should be blamed entirely for the unemployment numbers, the policies of any President do have a direct influence on those numbers, and should bear some responsibility, especially in this era where we have ceded so much power to the federal government. Consider this graph (below the fold), which shows the “total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force.” The steep upward swing, beginning in 2008, sadly corresponds too closely with the beginnings of the Obama administration. And it is with this administration that we have seen the worst deficits, the most regulation, and the biggest increase in the power of government in our lifetimes. It is thus no surprise the economy has crumbled.
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Happy Independence Day!

9:14 am

Happy Independence Day!

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. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. [emphasis mine]

A warning, and prediction, for November.

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A Tea Party event today in Tucson

10:28 pm

Last week I received an email from the local Tucson tea party, asking if I would be willing to attend a demonstration today in response to last week’s Supreme Court decision on Obamacare. To quote the email,

We would like to stage two simultaneous protests against the train wreck they call ObamaCare, at two separate locations Monday July 2nd, 4:00pm-5:45pm. 75 people at both locations are needed to make the necessary impact. They say the Tea Party is dead. What say ye? We need your commitment.

Today those protests took place at two different prominent street corners in the Tucson area. At each location there were about fifty people lining the sidewalk and holding signs and American flags out to passing motorists. My wife Diane and I went to one of those protests. Here are my impressions:
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The Secret Service shut down a “Fire Holder” rally this morning in front of the White House.

11:01 am

Freedom of speech in modern America: The Secret Service shut down a “Fire Holder” rally this morning in front of the White House.

After discovering a “suspicious package,” the Secret Service ended the protest. “Several agents seemed hostile to our march and seemed anxious for us to leave the area,” Maurice Lewis, a University of California student, told Campus Reform. “The discover[y of] the ‘unidentified package’ came just as the protest began gain traction.”

Not only should Holder be fired, so should Obama, for allowing this. And Romney should announce that he plans to investigate the Secret Service and fire them if this “suspicious package” report turns out to be false.

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Obamacare: the final battle.

9:27 am

Obamacare: The final battle.

Mitt Romney said it best on Thursday. “If we want to get rid of Obamacare, we’re going to have to replace President Obama.” Those who have been sitting on the sidelines, out of complacency or loyalty to someone else from the primaries, must get out of their chairs and get to work. But while that work must end with Mitt Romney in the White House, it must begin with a Republican majority in the Senate.

As I said last week, the only right way to get this terrible law it is for the voters to insist upon its repeal. And the only way to do that is to elect politicians who say they will repeal it. Not only will that get rid of the law, but it will instill such fear in politicians that it will be decades before any of them will attempt to introduce another one of these kinds of draconian laws.

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Wiretap applications by Eric Holder’s Justice Department are now providing evidence that top officials, including Holder, knew about the Fast-and-Furious program and its smuggling of guns illegally into Mexico long before the murder of border agent Brian Terry by one of those guns.

9:49 pm

It’s not the crime but the coverup: Newly revealed wiretap applications by Eric Holder’s Justice Department show that top officials, including Holder, almost certainly knew about the Fast-and-Furious program and its smuggling of guns illegally into Mexico long before the murder of border agent Brian Terry by one of those guns.

This evidence provides an explanation why Obama, Holder and other Justice officials have been stonewalling Congressional investigations. The documents they are withholding likely prove that they have been lying, from the beginning, about what they knew about Fast-and-Furious. Worse, their willingness to let guns pass over the border into Mexico illegally would make them accessories in the murders of Terry and numerous Mexicans.

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