Tag: government

A Republican has announced he is running for the Congressional seat in Arizona being vacated by Gabrielle Gifford.

5:11 pm

A Republican has announced he is running for the Congressional seat in Arizona being vacated by Gabrielle Gifford.

As it turns out, I moved from Steny Hoyer’s (D-Maryland) district in Maryland to Gifford’s district in Arizona, so this is an election I will have a say in. Time to start learning something about the candidates, as the primary is now set for April 17 and the special election for June 12.

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Six former and current employees have sued the FDA agency under the Obama administration over its secret surveillance of their private emails.

3:25 pm

How Obama encourages transparency: Six former and current employees have sued the FDA agency under the Obama administration over its secret surveillance of their private emails.

According to a release by the law firm representing the group, the FDA targeted the employees with a “covert spying campaign” that lasted for two years after it learned they had written a letter to President-Elect Obama in early 2009. … The plaintiffs allege the agency used spyware to read the their personal emails and take screenshots while they used government computers. But whether such reconnaissance is illegal is not quite clear. According to the Washington Post, “the startup screen on FDA computers warns employees, ‘you have no reasonable expectation of privacy,’ ” including any communication accessed or sent from the machine.”

According to the law firm representing the current and former FDA employees, the monitoring continued even after the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General “denied the FDA’s request to take any criminal and/or administrative action against the whistleblowers” and noted the whistleblowers’ communications with Congress were protected under law.

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Investigators now think that MF Global, the company run by Jon Corzine, Obama adviser and fundraiser, lost its customers’ money in “a labyrinth of shady trading and raids.”

9:42 am

Investigators now think that MF Global, the company run by former Democratic governor Jon Corzine, Obama adviser and fundraiser, lost $1.2 billion of its customers’ money in “a labyrinth of shady trading and raids.”

In the end, Jon Corzine faces the serious possibility of prison time for his part in this scandal. And he was the go-to guy of the Obama administration for economic advice.

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Romney puts forth his space plans at a rally in Florida

9:35 pm

In a campaign rally Friday in Florida, Mitt Romney put forth his perspective on the state of the American space program, and what he plans to do about it.

The speech is about 16 minutes long. It is worth listening to it in its entirety.

In it, Romney outlined the reasons he thinks a robust space program is important: defense, innovation, exploration, and the ability to respond to potential natural threats from space. Having done so, however, he then refused to outline any specific actions he would take to address these issues, saying instead that once in office he will bring together the right kinds of space experts who will then advice him on the right kind of plan to achieve all these important goals.

I appreciate his refusal to pander. At the same time, his vagueness does not make me enthusiastic. Moreover, he is only offering us the same thing we have seen numerous times before, another blue ribbon panel study outlining a plan. It would make me far happier if he already understood better the problems of the space program, and could articulate the actions he wishes to take, as Gingrich did.
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“The implication that Mr. Cunningham may have engaged in criminal conduct with respect to Fast and Furious is a major escalation of the Department’s culpability.”

3:06 pm

“The implication that Mr. Cunningham may have engaged in criminal conduct with respect to Fast and Furious is a major escalation of the Department’s culpability.”

Mr. Cunningham is a Department of Justice lawyer. The “Department” is the Department of Justice itself. And “Fast and Furious” was the Obama administration’s project to allow about 2000 guns to be smuggled illegally into Mexico, for reasons that remain inexplicable.

Though Cunningham has the right to take the fifth, it should immediately disqualify him from his job, and the Obama administration should fire him. That they don’t tells us a lot about their own culpability in the Fast and Furious gun smuggling scandal. As Issa wrote in his letter to Eric Holder on Tuesday,

Mr. Cunningham’s broad assertion of his Fifth Amendment privilege raises the specter that the Department has allowed him to continue in his position as Chief of the Criminal Division knowing that he might have criminal culpability himself.

You can read Darrell Issa’s (R-California) full letter to Eric Holder here. [pdf]

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Gingrich’s speech on space

8:31 am

In the days ahead there is going to be a lot of talk about Newt Gingrich’s proposals for space exploration. I think it important that people actually see and listen to the entire speech before discussing it. Here is the longest clip I can find on youtube, covering the first seven and a half minutes. I think it is complete, but unfortunately, I can’t be sure. It doesn’t appear to include his remarks about awarding space prizes, and when it ends Gingrich does not appear to be finished. When I find a longer clip I will post it.

Several points immediately come to mind:
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Gingrich pledges a moon base by his second term

7:16 pm

Bumped with Update 2: I will be on the radio in Houston tomorrow morning with Scott Braddock for twenty minutes to discuss Gingrich’s proposals. See the “Recent and Upcoming Appearances” list in the right column for details.
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In a speech today Newt Gingrich pledged a moon base would be operating by his second term.

I’m not sure I trust the reporting here. However, this story fits with many other things that Gingrich has said over the years. And though I like his desire to think big, I dislike the feeling I get that he wants to once again make this a big government-run effort.

There will certainly be more details about Gingrich’s proposals in the coming days.

Update. More details here.

It seems to me that Gingrich’s promise of a moonbase by 2020 is campaign fodder, designed to inspire voters not only to dream big but to vote for Gingrich. However, his proposal that the U.S. offer big prizes for private achievement in space is right on the money, literally identical to ideas I proposed more than eight years ago.

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“My message is simple.” Rating the reading grade level of all State of the Union speeches.

9:59 am

“My message is simple.” Rating the reading grade level of the State of the Union speeches.

The Flesch-Kincaid test is designed to assess the readability level of written text, with a formula that translates the score to a U.S. grade level. Longer sentences and sentences utilizing words with more syllables produce higher scores. Shorter sentences and sentences incorporating more monosyllabic words yield lower scores.

Smart Politics ran the Flesch-Kincaid test on each of the last 70 State of the Union Addresses that were delivered orally by presidents before a Joint Session of Congress since Franklin Roosevelt. Excluded from analysis were five written addresses (by Truman in 1946 and 1953, Eisenhower in 1961, Nixon in 1973, and Carter in 1981) and two addresses that were delivered orally, but not by the President himself (Roosevelt in 1945 and Eisenhower in 1956). The vast majority of State of the Union speeches were delivered in writing prior to FDR.

While you might not be surprised by the results, a close look at the list illustrates both the influence of television and the decline in political thought in the past half century.

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What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?

12:06 am

What really happened in the Gingrich ethics case?

Given all the attention to the ethics matter, it’s worth asking what actually happened back in 1995, 1996, and 1997. The Gingrich case was extraordinarily complex, intensely partisan, and driven in no small way by a personal vendetta on the part of one of Gingrich’s former political opponents. It received saturation coverage in the press; a database search of major media outlets revealed more than 10,000 references to Gingrich’s ethics problems during the six months leading to his reprimand. It ended with a special counsel hired by the House Ethics Committee holding Gingrich to an astonishingly strict standard of behavior, after which Gingrich in essence pled guilty to two minor offenses. Afterwards, the case was referred to the Internal Revenue Service, which conducted an exhaustive investigation into the matter. And then, after it was all over and Gingrich was out of office, the IRS concluded that Gingrich did nothing wrong. After all the struggle, Gingrich was exonerated.

I vaguely remembered the details of the Gingrich ethics case, and the article above confirms what my memory was telling me: Not only was Gingrich innocent of all charges, the charges themselves were political in nature and downright absurd.

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15 Questions The Mainstream Media Would Ask Barack Obama If He Were A Republican

9:28 am

Fifteen questions the mainstream press would ask Barack Obama if he were a Republican.

While many of these questions are simply intended as a way to attack Obama (which of course is what the press does to Republican candidates), the last three are perfectly reasonable and do address directly the actual failures of his administration.

13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?

14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?

15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we’ve had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn’t that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?

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Gingrich plans ‘visionary’ speech on space this week in Florida

1:40 pm

Gingrich has announced that he plans to give a “visionary” speech on space this week in Florida.

To me, this does not bode well. The last thing the American aerospace industry needs right now is another politician dictating a “new” path. The best thing Gingrich could do is to endorse the effort to have private companies do the work, and to then outline how he will get the government out of their way.

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The chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona has refused to testify to Congress about the Obama administration’s policy of allowing guns to be illegally smuggled to Mexican drug lords.

9:24 am

Taking the fifth: The chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona has refused to testify to Congress about the Obama administration’s policy of allowing guns to be illegally smuggled to Mexican drug lords.

As his attorney, Tobin Romero, wrote:

“Department of Justice officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly,” the letter to Issa says. Romero claims Cunningham did nothing wrong and acted in good faith, but the Department of Justice in Washington is making him the fall guy, claiming he failed to accurately provide the Oversight Committee with information on the execution of Fast and Furious.

In other words, give me immunity and I will fry Eric Holder and the Obama administration.

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Obamacare’s 34 pilot programs designed to save money will have no effect or will increase costs, according to a Congressional Budget Office report yesterday.

9:14 am

Repeal it: Obamacare’s 34 pilot programs, designed to save money, will have no effect or will increase costs, according to a Congressional Budget Office report yesterday.

I guarantee that they will increase costs, and actually hinder the work of doctors. The number one task of the new Congress after 2012 should be to repeal this abomination of a law as fast as possible.

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