Gays threaten the continuation of the human race, Libya’s delegate told a planning meeting of the UN Human Rights Council today, reported the Geneva-based UN Watch monitoring group. It was the first appearance in the 47-nation body by the post-Gaddafi government, whose membership was restored in November following Libya’s suspension in March.

You know, President Bush kept the U.S. out of this fraudulent group of nincompoops because he knew who would be allowed to sit in the council. But thanks to the “smart diplomacy” of the idiot-in-chief and the harridan masquerading as Sec. of State, the U.S. gets to be accessories to this fraud.

Thanks for nothing, Barry.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Did you ever notice how progressives, of both sexes, those who supposedly believe in equality, put the onus on women to take care of contraception? I mean, a guy can dump $10 into one of those condom machines you find in the public restroom of a gas station. Or just go to the drug store to pick up a box. But progressives would rather make the woman take care of it. I would suspect they would make the women get their tubes tied rather than have the men get vasectomies.

I also notice how progressives complain about how existing institutions like the Catholic Church should use their own money or taxpayer dollars to support the policies promoted by misogynist progressives. They never use their own money to buy up all the condoms needed and distribute them for free, do they?

That’s because progressive men want a free ride through life, to be as irresponsible as they want to be without having to pay for anything themselves. Worse, progressive women are stupid enough to let them get away with it.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Below is a primer on Charles and how many of his actions are being repeated by our own tyrant Barack Obama.

The Anglican Church, the Church of England, was formed by England’s King Henry VIII officially in 1534. Henry did this so that he could annul his marriage to find a wife who could bear him a son and successor; Henry’s wife Queen Catherine (of Aragon) had one daughter Mary but no sons and was past the age of bearing any more children. With the Act of Supremacy, as mentioned by Steyn, Henry became the Supreme Head of the new Church of England. Henry eventually found a wife who did bear his son Edward (by Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour, who died shortly afterwards from the complications of Edward’s birth in 1536). The new church expanded through the rest of Henry’s and Edward’s reigns (Henry died in 1547, and Edward died in 1553 at the age of 15). Henry’s daughter Mary succeeded her half-brother Edward, restoring Catholicism as the faith of the land; this lasted the five years of her reign, which ended in 1558. Henry’s second daughter, Elizabeth (by Henry’s second wife, Anne Boleyn), succeeded her half-sister Mary. A year later in 1559, the Anglican Church was restored in a modified version; the faith was to be less stringent than during Henry’s and Edward’s reign, and Elizabeth was given a title as head of the church, Supreme Governor, a title still in use today. After a long and mostly prosperous 44-year reign, the unwed and childless Elizabeth was succeeded by the King of Scots James VI, who was crowned in England in 1603 as King James I. Having been raised as a Protestant in the Scottish (Presbyterian) Church, he slowly modified his own faith to conform with the Anglican Church. James maintained separate governments for each land, each of which had its own Parliament, and maintained the separate religions of each country. He was also King of Ireland, but the rule of that land remained solely in the hands of the English government, as it had been since the mid-1150s. (James was also King of France, a residual claim for English monarchs, albeit with no authority or power in France itself, that had been in place for most of the previous 300 years; the title would remain until 1801 when King George III finally dumped it.)

Born in 1600, Charles was the second son of James. Charles’ older brother Henry, Prince of Wales, was groomed to succeed James and was loved and nurtured by his parents; Charles, on the other hand, was seen by James as a disappointment and was often neglected. Here we see one aspect of Charles’ life with that of Obama’s, the neglected child who was abandoned by his father early on and later sent by his mother to live with his grandparents. Anyway, things went bad for James as the Prince of Wales died in 1612 at the age of 18, and Charles was invested as the new Prince of Wales and heir apparent. However, James never loved, encouraged, or trained Charles in any manner similar to how James worked with Henry. James more or less lingered as king for another 13 years, dying in 1625. The Prince of Wales was crowned King Charles I of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France.

A little more about James. His rule was somewhat benevolent for a 17th Century king. He promoted the Anglican faith to such a point that it drove both Catholic and non-Anglican Protestants in England (including those known as Puritans) to practice their faith in the shadows, although he didn’t do this with non-Anglican Protestants in Scotland and Ireland. But James strove for a union of his kingdoms, seeking to bring them into one fold but recognizing the differences to avoid an unnecessary confrontation. This is what he taught his eldest son Henry about ruling such disparate lands and people. But because James didn’t train Charles to rule in this manner, Charles ended up ruling with a different mindset. Uniformity and conformity were to be the hallmarks of Charles’ reign. We see this today with Obama’s attempts to tyrannically promote uniformity to his rule over 300 million people spread over an area 30 times the size of the lands Charles ruled over. As you’ll see, Charles’ incompetent tyranny led to his reign ending in miserable failure for himself and his people. Considering how Obama has ruled incompetently thus far, it’s not hard to imagine the possibility of history repeating itself, although it doesn’t have to be that way.

The first few years of Charles’ rule was one of increased conflict between the crown and Parliament, similar to what we’ve seen with Obama and Congress. Things got so bad that in 1629, Charles dissolved Parliament, with the intent of never calling it again. Obama himself has promulgated policies without a mandate from Congress, going so far as to appointing officials completely outside of what is required in the Constitution.

During the next twelve years, Charles sought to put his policy of uniformity in place. It was a disaster. In Ireland, he managed to avoid confrontation with the majority Catholic population, but upset those adherents to the Protestant Church of Ireland who were not succumbing to Charles’ attempts to replace it with the Anglican Church. Charles attempted to do the same in Scotland. But because Scotland had a separate government from the one in place for England and Ireland, the Scottish Parliament had a fit. This wasn’t a problem for Charles; he ignored it. In 1639, the Scottish Parliament had had enough and rebelled against Charles. Charles sent an army north, but it was defeated. Not learning anything, Charles repeated his mistake and invaded Scotland again a year later; his troops were beaten so badly, Scotland was able to put occupation troops in much of northern England. The subsequent treaty he signed with the Scottish Parliament in 1640 required a recall of the English Parliament to grant a subsidy to maintain those Scottish troops on English soil! A new English Parliament was installed in 1641, one that was just as hostile to the king as it had been a dozen years earlier.

In the meantime, the Irish Protestants had also begun a rebellion against Charles’ rule. But by this time, Charles was out of money and he needed Parliament to grant a new tax. Instead, Parliament called for the impeachment of most of Charles’ ministers. To counter this move, Charles attempted to have members of Parliament in the House of Lords and Commons arrested and tried for treason; this failed as the accused MPs had fled from London. Parliament raised and armed troops for a potential battle with the king; their forces were able to take London without a struggle in early 1642, and the king fled north to raise an army. Further negotiations proved futile, and the English Civil War began later that year.

Obama’s “religion” didn’t start with him, just as Henry VIII’s religion didn’t start with Charles I; the “religion” in this country was established with Roe v. Wade nearly 40 years ago, and Obama is attempting to force the people to adhere to it through Obamacare, just as Charles attempted to force his religion upon his disparate kingdoms. I have no doubt Obama doesn’t believe he is trying to provoke a civil war in this country. But his attempt to spend the taxpayers’ money into oblivion and his unconstitutional and tyrannical attempts to press for uniformity, with the people yielding to his “religion”, are leading this country down a path that wasn’t even seen in the years before the Civil War. As was the case with Charles and other tyrants, control can be illusory; if we’re lucky, Obama may learn this before it is too late. But it is good for everyone to be prepared for anything.

While not a preview, the history of the English Civil War was not a happy one for pretty much everybody. After four years, the king was soundly defeated and captured by the Parliamentary forces that were primarily led by Oliver Cromwell, a member of the House of Commons. Following the end of hostilities, negotiations were going on to figure out how to have Charles remain as king but with greatly reduced powers. Being impatient, Charles arranged in the middle of 1648 to have a Scottish army invade England and restore his rule. They did; Parliament beat them. Subsequent negotiations with Charles by Parliament were eventually ended by Cromwell, who had demanded the king be tried for treason. Cromwell won out; Charles was found guilty and beheaded in January, 1649, and Cromwell declared an end to the monarchy in England, Scotland, and Ireland. Charles’ sons Charles, Prince of Wales and heir to the throne, and James, Duke of York, fled overseas.

The attempt to rule England through a quasi-republican government was a disaster. Factions were so hostile Cromwell ended up as a near-dictator for much of the 1650s. After he died in 1658, and the rejection by Parliament to have Cromwell’s son Richard succeed him, Parliament commenced negotiations with the Prince of Wales to restore the monarchy with severely restricted powers, a constitutional monarchy. After two years, the negotiations were complete, with the Prince of Wales subsequently returning to England and being officially crowned King Charles II of England, Ireland, Scotland, and France.

To end this on a positive note, it should be said that while the republican “experiment” failed in England and was never repeated there or following 1707 with the establishment of the United Kingdom, it did succeed somewhat with one of its lands, Ireland. And, of course, republicanism succeeded spectacularly with one of England’s former colonies, the country that is now the United States of America. Let us hope the current President remembers that.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

The ruling answered three questions. The first two were answered unanimously. The first had to do with plaintiff’s standing in the case; since the state didn’t provide counsel to defend Prop. 8, its drafters did. The question was whether or not they could; the court ruled that they could. The second had to do with whether or not the District Court ruling should be vacated since the judge in the case, the now-retired Vaughan Walker, stated after he ruled that he was gay and in a long-term relationship, indicating a conflict of interest; again, the panel ruled no recusal was necessary and Walker’s judgment would stand. The third was the main part, the constitutionality of Prop. 8 itself.

This case goes back to the 2008 California Supreme Court ruling In re Marriage Cases. In 2000, a voter initiative called Proposition 22 was passed that put the one man-one woman definition of marriage in a statute in the California law code. The CSC overturned Prop. 22 and immediately created a brand new right that never existed in federal or California law, the right to same-sex marriage. As same-sex couples started getting “married”, Prop. 8 was proposed for the ballot and an injunction put in place to stop further same-sex “marriages”. Prop. 8 passed in November, 2008; immediately afterward, suits were filed to get it overturned. The California courts upheld it, and it moved on to the federal courts.

Judge Walker’s ruling was mostly a long-winded non sequiter (he included pages and pages of items he called “Findings of Facts”). To make a long story short, Walker determined that since California law granted a right to same-sex marriage, via the California Supreme Court In re Marriage Cases ruling that overturned Prop. 22, Prop. 8 was unconstitutional on Due Process and Equal Protection grounds, that it codified discrimination of same-sex couples and failed to provide marriages on an equal basis.

The panel majority pretty much affirmed Walker’s ruling on what appears to be very narrow grounds, in that it covers California and not states that have passed their own legal definitions of marriage. They relied on the Romer case, which overturned a Colorado amendment that attempted to throw out laws the people of that state determined favored homosexuals over others. Judge Smith’s dissent disagrees Romer carries any weight in this case; he then goes through a weak defense of Prop. 8 being constitutional.

Eugene Volokh provides an in-depth analysis of the 9th Circuit ruling. It mostly concerns how it affects the various marriage and civil union laws passed in the various states; in effect, any state that has separate laws for marriage and civil unions may find that those laws are discriminatory, requiring states to recognize same-sex “marriages”. In short, the law will be used against the people who want to only recognize traditional marriages but feel an obligation to provide some privileges to same-sex couples. Volokh’s last paragraph is significant as he discusses the tests used by the courts for their rulings.

The Walker and 9th Circuit rulings used the “rational basis” test to determine Prop. 8 was unconstitutional. In this test, they determined there was no plausible state interest in keeping same-sex couples from getting married, especially since it had been a right created for them before by the state court. However, the California Supreme Court used the “strict scrutiny” test in In re Marriage Cases, which required the state to produce factual evidence for claims of a legitimate government interest. According to the CSC, no evidence was provided; but when thinking about it, the CSC required proof of a negative, where evidence couldn’t be presented until Prop. 22 was overturned. If anything, the CSC should have used the “rational basis” test while the federal rulings should have used the “strict scrutiny” tests. I say this following the Obama regime’s recent HHS ruling requiring people to put aside their religious beliefs (not just the Catholic Church or its members, but all individuals, which is the real issue) when paying for items in health insurance policies under Obamacare, specifically for contraception and abortion-inducing drugs.

Except under extremely limited circumstances, the Free Exercise Clause says the state cannot pass laws that violate an individual’s religious beliefs. According to the CSC ruling, there is a distinction between religious and civil marriages. However, this is ridiculous since a traditional married couple is viewed as married regardless of what the beliefs of the two people are. On the other hand, same-sex couples would never be considered married by those who believe homosexual behavior is sinful. So the idea that there are two types of marriages has no merit.

The CSC also said this:

Finally, affording same-sex couples the opportunity to obtain the designation of marriage will not impinge upon the religious freedom of any religious…organization, official, or any other person; no religion will be required to change its religious policies or practices with regard to same-sex couples, and no religious officiant will be required to solemnize a marriage in contravention of his or her religious beliefs.

As it turns out, that isn’t true. Following the ruling, some county clerk employees refused to provide same-sex couples with marriage licenses; many were threatened with termination before the injunction to stop new same-sex “marriages” went through. A recent New York law put in anti-discrimination language in its same-sex “marriage” law to prevent retaliation against county clerk employees there who had the same beliefs, but there is still an outcry from the gay lobby to disallow people with these beliefs from being employed in these capacities. Then there is the case in Massachusetts where the Catholic Church got out of the adoption business there in order to keep from being sued by the state for discrimination, and having to pay enormous court fees to defend itself; Catholic Charities had decided it wouldn’t place children with same-sex couples and Massachusetts said this was discrimination.

Since there was no prior evidence of harm, the use of the “strict scrutiny” test by the CSC was without merit since there was a legitimate state interest under the “rational basis” test to protect the people’s rights under the Free Exercise Clause.

Following the In re Marriage Cases ruling, there was plenty of evidence for the federal courts to use the “strict scrutiny” test to show a legitimate state interest to protect religious rights. Yet, as mentioned earlier, the federal courts didn’t, using the “rational basis” test instead. This allowed Judge Walker to completely ignore the Free Exercise Clause, as he did in his “Findings of Facts” No. 77 on page 101:

Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians.

As with the Obama regime, Walker completely throws out the Free Exercise Clause; it isn’t for him or any other public official to decide that an individual’s religious beliefs conform to the dictates of the state. This was proven by the recent unanimous Hosanna Tabor ruling in the Supreme Court. Here, Walker perfunctorily allows those with such religious beliefs to be discriminated against, contrary to every law and constitution in the United States. And the 9th Circuit went along with it. Worse, almost no analysis from legal scholars address this at all, including Volokh. Yet it is the key to this ruling. There is evidence showing there is a compelling state interest in upholding the right to an individual’s religious beliefs. Therefore, the “strict scrutiny” test is absolutely required to decide these cases, which would compel the courts to throw out any challenges to states that only recognize traditional marriages. Conversely, if a state does recognize same-sex marriage in a statute or constitutional amendment, “strict scrutiny” applies if there aren’t provisions in place to uphold the religious rights of those who only believe in traditional marriage.

There are two other troubling aspects here. In the 2003 majority opinion written by Justice Kennedy in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned Texas’ sodomy law, the idea that there was a “slippery slope” that recognizing a right to commit sodomy would lead to same-sex “marriage” was essentially ludicrous. Justice Scalia’s dissent in that case laughed at this notion understanding that since Griswold in 1965, the “slippery slope” did exist and was pushing ever forward. The probability that the Supreme Court will hear the Perry case bears this out. Of course, how the ruling could go is a mystery that I don’t wish to entertain here.

The other troubling aspect has to do with how gay activists have turned every discussion into an assault solely upon gay people, and we have idiot judges and Justices buying into it, along with many others. This is ridiculous on its face. In Arkansas, a recent state ballot initiative restricted adoptions to traditional married couples; yet, a judge at the lowest court overturned it because even though adoptions by unmarried heterosexual couples were affected, the law somehow only targeted same-sex couples. Both Prop. 22 and Prop. 8 were passed not only to define marriage in the traditional sense (one man, one woman), but also did not recognize bigamy, polygamy, or same-sex “marriages”; yet, gay activists convinced the courts they were only targeted. The same goes for the Texas sodomy law overturned in Lawrence. It was a stupid law, but it didn’t target gay couples only; it just so happens a gay couple happened to be caught, although the law itself wasn’t specific regarding the sexual orientation of the couple involved in sodomy. As can be seen, gay activists have been pushing for special rights based on their sexual orientation, while completely ignoring established rights that the government is required to protect. For this reason alone, the idea that it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to allow a same-sex couple to get “married” falls flat on its face.

I have no doubt that as rulings like this continue, and despite the above quote I used from the In re Marriage Cases ruling, there will come a time when the courts will declare that a church or religion who denies a marriage ceremony for same-sex couples will be declared guilty of discriminating against the couple. There are too many public officials, all the way up to President Obama, who have a stake in imposing their personal beliefs over those rights they are supposed to be protecting. To them, the Constitution be damned.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

The chairman of the CBC is Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO). He recently appeared at a forum held be Rep. West, and was asked some pointed questions by The Daily Caller’s Nicholas Ballasy (there is a video at the link as well). Cleaver’s answers are illuminating.

For Cleaver, some people are more equal than others:

“The point I was making is that black people hold the president in such high esteem, that they would not dare march on the White House even though unemployment is at 15 percent and higher and if there was a white president we would do that because we’ve had white presidents since George Washington.”

Translation: he would call for a march on the White House if the economy still sucked for blacks and if there was a white President in the White House, even if Cleaver held that white President in high esteem. So for Cleaver, it really isn’t about the esteem he holds for President Food Stamp, it’s that Obama is black and a Democrat and Cleaver won’t call for a march for those reasons. The rest of Ballasy’s piece contains more of the same ugliness from Cleaver the racist.

The indecent Democrats in the CBC are the black equivalent of the KKK, and should be treated as such. Even as they whine in faux outrage over equality, the hate-mongers that make up all of the CBC’s Democrats continue to demand that their black constituents worship Obama, to do so only because of the color of Obama’s skin. Naturally, the CBC Democrats require the obedience from their black constituents, an obedience that can only be fulfilled by re-electing the CBC Democrats. Yes, my fellow Americans, racism is alive and well in this country. It’s on display on a daily basis from these preachers of hate that make up the Democrats in the CBC.

Along with the CBC, President Food Stamp willfully associated with other like-minded racists to pursue his run to the White House. Obama talks about being the President for all Americans. I don’t think so. Worse, he and his fellow black Democrat politicians have suckered their black constituents into perpetuating not only the misery of black Americans, but to keep them economically worse off than any other American, worse off than before President Food Stamp took office. In this, the KKK would be extremely proud.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Barack Obama’s State of the Union is all about letting you know that government is going to do everything for you and when it can’t keep its promises, it will take from the successful and give to you.

But it was more than that, in my opinion. Much more than that. And the White House inviting Warren Buffett’s secretary to sit next to the First Lady is an expression of what that more is.

Barack Obama believes the American people are stupid. That’s the bottom line. Worse, Obama wants the American people to be envious, to violate the 10th Commandment and covet what others have; Obama and his Democrats are willing to satisfy this covetousness and make a claim that doing so is a virtue. This is their marketing pitch in order to sell snake oil to the gullible and gain further power over the people, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

What is truly fascinating is how Obama inviting Buffett’s secretary is a transparently cynical ploy, especially when President Food Stamp said this in the speech:

Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.

At the same time, President Food Stamp killed new jobs by cancelling (yes, that’s the word) the Keystone XL pipeline (as far as Obama is concerned, it’s dead), a project that would employ thousands of workers directly and thousands upon thousands more indirectly. And who benefits? Why Obama’s crony capitalism buddy, good ol’ Warren Buffett, who won’t pay a single dollar in taxes on his new windfall (Buffett’s tax people will make sure of that), even if Obama’s “Buffett Rule” is implemented. Obama’s “education” lackeys in the Democrat media will make sure to tell the people something other than the reality of this situation. Because Obama wants to make sure the American people remain stupid and to only rely on The Won for everything.

President Food Stamp himself never takes the blame for anything; with him, the “buck” stops somewhere else, either at the American people, Congress (Republicans only), or inconvenient elements within his administration (and on the latter, often there is no “buck” stopped). As has been typical, he falsely lays sole blame for the financial conditions on private sector banks. After three years in office, neither Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac have been included in any reform, both continue to suck taxpayer dollars into the maw of its abyss, and the failures running them have gotten millions of taxpayer dollars in bonuses. There is no mention from Obama about the SEC lawsuit showing how both Fannie and Freddie, in conjunction with the Carter-era Community Reinvestment Act and Clinton-era regulations, were the primary movers of the financial crisis the U.S. is still in. There is no mention from Obama of how his economic “adviser” and MF Global head Jon Corzine used his influence to press the SEC from implementing a rule that would have prevented MF Global from carrying out some of its ethically-challenged practices, or that Corzine and other MF Global executives seem to have violated Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) by not knowing where the company’s money was.

Plus, Obama would still have us believe he knows how to invest our taxpayer dollars. He’s a proven failure. From the government’s investment in “green jobs” and takeover of GM, it’s obvious Obama remains ignorant of the basics of the free market. In addition, Obama hasn’t done anything to demand GM pay back what it owes to the American people, nor are we likely ever to see the repayment. He made sure the UAW can launder it’s members’ dues into President Food Stamp’s campaign war chest.

Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN) gave the Republican response (for some reason, I can’t embed the video here on RedState; the link to it is here, and the transcript is here). It’s an excellent speech, but at about the 9:30 mark, it really takes off, and includes a warning to some Republicans:

“You know, the most troubling contention in our national life these days isn’t about economics, or policy at all. It’s about us, as a free people. In two alarming ways, that contention is that we Americans just can’t cut it anymore.

“In word and deed, the President and his allies tell us that we just cannot handle ourselves in this complex, perilous world without their benevolent protection. Left to ourselves, we might pick the wrong health insurance, the wrong mortgage, the wrong school for our kids; why, unless they stop us, we might pick the wrong light bulb!

“A second view, which I admit some Republicans also seem to hold, is that we Americans are no longer up to the job of self-government. We can’t do the simple math that proves the unaffordability of today’s safety net programs, or all the government we now have. We will fall for the con job that says we can just plow ahead and someone else will pick up the tab. We will allow ourselves to be pitted one against the other, blaming our neighbor for troubles worldwide trends or our own government has caused.["]

Daniels follows it up with a message of freedom all Republicans need to shout:

“2012 must be the year we prove the doubters wrong. The year we strike out boldly not merely to avert national bankruptcy but to say to a new generation that America is still the world’s premier land of opportunity. Republicans will speak for those who believe in the dignity and capacity of the individual citizen; who believe that government is meant to serve the people rather than supervise them; who trust Americans enough to tell them the plain truth about the fix we are in, and to lay before them a specific, credible program of change big enough to meet the emergency we are facing.["]

Herman Cain gave what is called the Tea Party response (again, I can’t embed the video here on RedState; the link to it is here; there is no transcript). It’s an excellent speech as well, highlighted by Cain saying what I’m saying, that President Food Stamp believes the American people are stupid.

Republicans need to be bold this year, and throw off the “yoke” of doing things that render the GOP as being known as the “stupid party.” Obama shouldn’t just be defeated in November; he has to be crushed. The Republicans should not only gain a majority in the U.S. Senate, they should gain a super-majority. The record by Obama and the Democrats show they are a joke. No American should stand for the things done to them by President Food Stamp and his Democrat lackeys, who only rely on those who are too stupid to vote for them; Obama’s and the Democrats’ message is one only stupid people will believe. And while there are too many of those (and we’ll know how many in November), most Americans shouldn’t be fooled into thinking the country can stand another four years of President Food Stamp.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

The German government subsidies for solar electricity have moved past the €100 billion mark. This is what they get:

For weeks now, the 1.1 million solar power systems in Germany have generated almost no electricity. The days are short, the weather is bad and the sky is overcast.

As is so often the case in winter, all solar panels more or less stopped generating electricity at the same time. To avert power shortages, Germany currently has to import large amounts of electricity generated at nuclear power plants in France and the Czech Republic. To offset the temporary loss of solar power, grid operator Tennet resorted to an emergency backup plan, powering up an old oil-fired plant in the Austrian city of Graz.

Solar energy has gone from being the great white hope, to an impediment, to a reliable energy supply. Solar farm operators and homeowners with solar panels on their roofs collected more than €8 billion ($10.2 billion) in subsidies in 2011, but the electricity they generated made up only about 3 percent of the total power supply, and that at unpredictable times.

The German government would have us believe they know of the real reason why this bubble is bursting. China:

This week, he [ed. note - Environment Minister Norbert Röttgen] will meet with representatives of the solar industry, which faces tough economic times as a result of competition from China…

Chinese competitors offer systems of equivalent quality at significantly lower prices.

That’s nothing but a smokescreen. There are two other real reasons. First [emphasis mine]:

It appears that the subsidies have made the German manufacturers lethargic. They invest only 2 to 3 percent of revenues in research and development, compared with an average of 6 percent in the auto industry and about 30 percent in biomedicine.

If I were an OWS-type person, I might think that these solar corporations use the subsidies to line the pockets of the wealthy. However, it appears the subsidies are used just to maintain the solar companies’ extremely expensive systems.

The No. 2 real reason why this bubble is bursting:

The distribution networks are not designed to allow tens of thousands of solar panel owners to switch at will between drawing electricity from the grid and feeding power into it. Because there are almost no storage options, the excess energy has to be destroyed at substantial cost.

In other words, mass commercialization of solar power isn’t ready for prime time.

So how did they get into this mess?

Solar lobbyists like to dazzle the public with impressive figures on the capability of solar energy. For example, they say that all installed systems together could generate a nominal output of more than 20 gigawatts, or twice as much energy as is currently being produced by the remaining German nuclear power plants.

But this is pure theory. The solar energy systems can only operate at this peak capacity when optimally exposed to the sun’s rays… — in other words, under conditions that hardly ever exist outside a laboratory.

They were hornswoggled:

In fact, all German solar energy systems combined produce less electricity than two nuclear power plants. And even that number is sugarcoated, because solar energy in a relatively cloudy country like Germany has to be backed up with reserve power plants. This leads to a costly, and basically unnecessary, dual structure.

Certain lefties say Communism looked great on paper, too. Except that it really wasn’t since its authors never factored in the human response to it. And its obvious German politicians were taken in by the solar lobbyists’ razzle-dazzle. What’s truly fascinating is how influential German scientists could have warned the politicians of the snake oil being marketed. Instead, many scientists who have a voice in their governments, those who say “the science is settled” regarding man-made global warming, demanded the German government fund their worship of the religion of Anthropogenic Climatism; it is these flat-earth, no-growth Marxists who are heavily to blame for this.

While it is true that there is competition from China, it remains to be seen how long China can continue subsidizing its solar power industry on slave labor considering their products are cheaper, but not better or more technologically advanced. Even taking out the China equation, I don’t see how German solar companies could remain competitive for any length of time with a product that is not ready for mass commercialization.

There’s more in the piece and I encourage it be read in its entirety. Considering Germany is bankrolling the EU, getting out of subsidizing solar power has to be considered a requirement if the Germans hope to retain any semblance of an economy.

As for the U.S., unfortunately, we still have the unchanging Barack Obama and his sycophants who still practice the false religion of Anthropogenic Climatism.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

The wife of retiring U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey was text-messaging and at nearly twice the legal limit for driving drunk when she rear-ended a car Wednesday night on Lark Street, according to a police report.

“I was texting,” Allison Lee-Hinchey, 49, of Hurley told a police officer as he questioned her about the 9:12 p.m. crash, according to the report filed in City Court. Asked if she had been drinking alcohol, she allegedly said, “I had a glass of wine” at a work function.

Perhaps Ms. Lee-Hinchey didn’t get the news that New York state banned texting while driving last year. Maybe she believes her connections might allow her to weasel her way out of it, at least until her hubby retires.

For work, Ms. Lee-Hinchey is a lobbyist. Something tells me she should join her husband in retirement. Based on her less-than-stellar driving record (an understatement), which is noted in the link, she should never, ever drive a car again.

One other thing is stupid. A federal ban on texting while driving. After all, there isn’t, and should never be, a federal drunk driving law.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Big mouth Texas Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee insists Gingrich is using “code words” like food stamps to mask the racism Republicans use to divide the nation along racial lines. Also according to the “eminent” Democrat:

To say children in New York should “pick up a broom and work…is a code word to, if you will, portray poor children and poor school districts that they have seen no one work legitimately,” she said.

So to Sheila Jackson Lee, “work” is another “code word” for racism. I see. Well, I for one am glad she explained it. Although I have to wonder about that since I see all kinds of people from various ethnic backgrounds who…you know…work. Silly me; I should have realized the truth of Sheila Jackson Lee’s community-based reality.

But here is where I get confused, being a troglodytic Neanderthal all of us conservatives are, not able to see the nuance in the world. According to MSLSD’s Lawrence O’Donnell, it’s not that we’re racists; it’s that the evil genius Gingrich is playing us for fools:

There’s a tremendous amount of cynicism in Gingrich’s use of food stamps because of what he actually know that his Republican debate audiences do not know. His Republican audiences do not know that most people on food stamps are white. His Republican audiences don’t know that most people use it temporarily, and, most importantly, his Republican audiences don’t know what Newt does know which is there would be no food stamps in America were it not for Republican Senator Bob Dole who held the key to making the food stamp program happen.

Oh boy is my tiny, unnuanced brain about to explode. Democrats tell us that Americans who are black need and want food stamps because those Americans don’t have the opportunity to get jobs to earn the money needed to buy basic foodstuffs, as is the case with all Americans who are white and the other colors of the rainbow. But when Republicans mention to Americans who are black that they shouldn’t be demanding food stamps, Democrats say that’s racist, even though Democrats have told us that Americans who are black do demand food stamps. When mean Republicans want the federal government to reduce food stamps, Democrats say that’s also racist. Yet, it turns out more Americans who are white receive food stamps than American who are black. Supposedly, Gingrich supporters don’t know this; therefore, da-deep, da-deep, da-deep, da-deep, blah, blah, blah…

See what I mean?

All of this was meant to highlight another blatant example of how Democrats in the media and in Washington will shamelessly throw out the race card on a whim. We know why, and they know why. Barack Obama is an utter failure as President, while Democrats in Congress are utter failures at governing. They have nothing. In fact, all they have is less than nothing since that’s what their race card is.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

We’ve been told by gleeful economists who support Obama and Reid about how revenues must be increased by the taxation of the wealthy to solve the government’s debt problems and reignite the stagnant economy. And they do this knowing there is evidence proving the contrary; dissuaded they are not. Fortunately, real world object lessons continue to be produced. But will there be learning by this education? Time will tell.

Today, the teachers are the credit ratings agencies, most prominently Standard & Poors (S&P) and Moody’s.

As everyone is aware, the European Union is in shambles as one spend-crazy country after another takes them all down. Only the mighty German economy holds it all together. S&P, which did the unthinkable and cut the U.S. credit rating back in August, nailed the EU’s No. 2 economy France and eight others, along with the European Financial Stability Facility, the EU’s version of TARP. Worse, S&P’s outlook for France is negative and it is very likely France’s credit rating will have to be lowered again. The minutiae of the details of why this occurred need not be discussed here, other than to note that the high taxation practiced by EU countries has not garnered the desired benefits during this global economic downturn.

As with the EU, the leaders of many of the several states have also held to their beliefs, the misconception of higher taxation to solve their states’ economic ills. Two in particular, Connecticut and Illinois, are now reaping what they have sown: a downgrade.

As noted by Bloomberg (H/T: LauraW. at AoSHQ), Gov. Dannel Malloy (D-CT) raised record-setting income tax levels in his state last year. I’ll let Bloomberg take it from here:

Governor Dannel Malloy…said this week that receipts haven’t met estimates, leading to a $94.9 million revenue shortfall this fiscal year.

Somehow, the following words of this eminent, albeit fictional, soldier-philosopher do not ring hollow to my ears:

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!!

As a result, the credit rating agency Moody’s downgraded Connecticut. A wailing and gnashing of teeth burst forth from Gov. Malloy and his office, as is natural when someone’s incompetence is put on display. So of course, Malloy deflected what happened to him on to nearby states whose taxation policies mirror his.

In actuality, Malloy could have easily deflected the results of his incompetence further west. Via Ed Morrissey, the Wall Street Journal proclaims the news from afar:

Only a year ago, Governor Pat Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised individual income taxes by 67% and the corporate tax rate by 46%. They did it to raise $7 billion in revenue, as the Governor put it, to “get Illinois back on fiscal sound footing” and improve the state’s credit rating.

As went Connecticut, so went Illinois:

Though too few noticed, this month Moody’s downgraded Illinois state debt to A2 from A1, the lowest among the 50 states. That’s worse even than California. The state’s cost of borrowing for $800 million of new 10-year general obligation bonds rose to 3.1%—which is 110 basis points higher than the 2% on top-rated 10-year bonds of more financially secure states.

This wasn’t supposed to happen…

In its downgrade statement, Moody’s panned Illinois lawmakers for “a legislative session in which the state took no steps to implement lasting solutions to its severe pension underfunding or to its chronic bill payment delays.” An analysis by Bloomberg finds that the assets in the pension fund will only cover “45% of projected liabilities, the least of any state.” And—no surprise—in part because the tax increases have caused companies to leave Illinois, the state budget office confesses that as of this month the state still has $6.8 billion in unpaid bills and unaddressed obligations.

While it pains me to do so, a focus on the mathematics must be included. Gov. Quinn and his fellow Democrats raised tax rates in order to raise $7 billion in revenues and balance the budget as is required by law; yet, the state is still $6.8 billion in the hole after the tax rate increase. So by raising the individual rate 60% and the corporate rate 46%, the state exacted $200 million from its residents, 97% less than what the eminent Gov. Quinn and his Democrats figured.

Yet again, words proceed unbroken to the fore:

SURPRISE, SURPRISE, SURPRISE!!!

Back in the day, Gov. Jim Doyle (D-WI) and his fellow Democrats also raised some of his state’s tax levels in order to raise revenues and maintain a balanced budget as required by law. But a miracle occurred: Doyle was replaced by Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) and many of Doyle’s loyal Democrats in the legislature became unemployed with their positions taken up by a Republican majority in both of Wisconsin’s state houses. Immediately, Walker set to work as Doyle had left Wisconsin in as perilous a state as the one directly below him, work with which Moody’s took notice:

In contrast to the Illinois downgrade, Moody’s has praised Mr. Walker’s budget as “credit positive for Wisconsin,” adding that the money-saving reforms bring “the state’s finances closer to a structural budgetary balance.” As a result, Wisconsin jumped in Chief Executive magazine’s 2011 ranking of each state’s business climate—moving to 17th from 41st. Illinois dropped to 48th from 45th as ranked by the nation’s top CEOs.

For committing the heinous sin of competency and of having understanding the response to taxation, Gov. Walker and several Republicans find themselves under the tremendous wrath of Wisconsin Democrats, who have proceeded apace and with little haste in a dishonorable attempt to subvert the will of the people of Wisconsin who voted for those presently representing them in Madison.

Lessons learned in Wisconsin may very well garner rewards earned for the people (as well as Gov. Walker and the Republicans), while permitting others to witness the gospel of what works. However, it remains to be seen if Obama and his Democrats will take pause to accept this education, freely available to anyone willing to open their minds, or continue to proselytize his false “Gospel” to bring forth another sinful perpetration of higher taxes on the wealthy.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Following the debate, I turned on Greta Van Susteren. She played the entire debate-opening exchange between King and Newt Gingrich, which allowed Fox News to highlight the embarrassing hypocrisy of its major cable news competitor. Greta deserves a bonus from her bosses for that.

To me, King seemed to try to direct the questioning during the debate in such a way as to allow Mitt Romney to come across as the nominee, letting Gingrich and Rick Santorum have at it with each other, and bringing in Ron Paul once in awhile when necessary. Surber had mentioned that CNN needed to regain its credibility and blew it; in the process, they very well may have given Gingrich the nomination.

I’m not so sure that’s the case, although I’ve no doubt Gingrich helped himself. It was quite a lively debate after, albeit one overshadowed by the opening.

I believe all of the candidates did rather well, although each exhibited weaknesses that have to be corrected.

Gingrich’s fiery retort to King correctly highlighted the Democrat media’s attempts to protect God-King Barack. On most of the questions directed at him, Gingrich again displayed how he really is the smartest guy in the room and ready to engage Obama and put a wrecking ball to the Obama regime. He, as did everyone else, reiterated his policy positions on the various topics, which included how Gingrich wants to handle illegal aliens (and no, he doesn’t support amnesty). He also differed from the others with an excellent point indicating he would work with Republicans in this Congress to put forth a policy agenda to not only get him in the White House, but to get a Republican majority in both Houses. Gingrich did well to note what he believes is the responsibility the federal government has for all veterans, especially those returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. He defended himself well against the various attacks against him from the other candidates. Most of the time, he didn’t do a bad job hitting the others with relevant attacks. However, Gingrich still exhibited shades of “evil Newt” early on when he tried to nail Romney on Bain again. My advice, SHUT UP! But all in all, Gingrich did well, and his opening Newt-lear strike should benefit him greatly.

Mitt Romney did an excellent job in promoting his work in the free market, deftly ignoring the previously-mentioned pointless challenge from Gingrich. In addition, Romney was the first one up on the stage who attacked President Obama over the latter’s idiotic cancellation of the Keystone pipeline (and yes, it was a cancellation; Clinton’s stupid State Department has stated it will most likely force the Keystone builders to start the whole bureaucratic nightmare from scratch). He highlighted a major difference between himself and Ron Paul, saying a freer market economy will allow the U.S. to maintain a military that no miscreant will want to challenge. Romney also highlighted how much more of a Washington outsider he is as compared with the other three, and successfully attacked Gingrich (IMO) for being too Washington-centric when it comes to jobs (I will note that Gingrich defended himself fairly well here, but a half-point goes to Romney). But, he defended Romneycare again. As with Gingrich, my advice to Romney, SHUT UP! More so than anything regarding Gingrich, Romneycare is going to be a boat anchor the size of the Titanic around Romney’s neck. He better be praying regularly for the Supreme Court to overturn all or part of it. Romney really hammered Obama, and I think now it’s possible he could debate Obama forcefully and successfully. He has to keep this up.

Santorum did well tonight as well, especially since he was able to open with a reminder that he won Iowa; however, Santorum showed mild exasperation at times towards his fellow candidates when it wasn’t necessary. He got in a stinging rebuke of Paul’s conservative rating, and really hit Romneycare hard. Santorum also leveled some blows at Gingrich for the latter’s leadership issues, along with defending himself against Gingrich’s ridiculous attempt to encourage an end to Santorum’s campaign.

I want to interject something here. Gingrich mentioned that the Democrat media has already taken their shots at himself and Romney and that they would eventually get around to smearing Santorum and Paul. With regards to Santorum, Gingrich is a little late. A few days ago, one of Tina Brown’s fellow harridans at The Daily Beast/Newsweek (no, it wasn’t Andrew Sullivan) wrote a sadistic, ugly, and pointless story about Santorum’s wife Karen in order to smear them for supposedly being pro-life hypocrites. I won’t link to it here as it is utter trash and just as disgraceful as the ABC and CNN hit on Gingrich. But if you really want to read it, Google newsweek+tom+allen and it should be first on the list. Make sure you are sitting down and completely composed before reading it or you will need to buy new hardware.

Even Ron Paul did ok tonight, avoiding the blame-America issues that I believe will ultimately keep him from getting the nomination; and if he does, Obama will crush him. He was good at using his economic positions to fix much of what is wrong with the country. He was great at pointing out the responsibility the federal government owes its veterans (I think he topped Gingrich’s response). But things came out that showed me he isn’t as much of a small-government conservative as people claim he is. Yes, he rightly wants to cut a trillion dollars out of the budget in the first year. Yet, he didn’t get into many details about how he would reform entitlements, other than Medicaid. In fact, I believe he is too fixated on his weak foreign policy as a means to resolve the U.S. entitlement problems. Plus, his foreign policy is a conundrum; Paul says he supports foreign trade, yet he wants weaken the conditions that allow the foreign trade to take place. While I would vote for Paul over Obama if the former is the Republican nominee, my vote would be an anti-Obama vote more than anything else; with all of the other candidates, it would be a vote for them.

John King and CNN should accept the fact they humiliated themselves with how the debate began. And, they may have to resign themselves for potentially handing Newt Gingrich the Republican nomination.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Right on cue, Democrats threw their predictable hissy fit over Newt Gingrich’s sparring match with Fox News’ Juan Williams. But do Democrats have at least an inkling of a point? Or is it that within Gingrich there exists true conservatism*?

Over at Tina Brown’s failed The Daily Beast/Newsweek, Peter Beinart attempts to paint Gingrich as clueless and ignorant regarding Americans who are black. Here’s how he opens:

If you want to understand why the GOP is so ill prepared to compete in an increasingly nonwhite America, just look at the exchange between Fox News questioner Juan Williams and Newt Gingrich halfway through last night’s Republican presidential debate.

Beinart then goes through the first part of the Gingrich-Williams exchange, admitting Gingrich didn’t bite on Williams’ initial racially-tinged question. Then, Beinart throws the race card [emphasis mine]:

Then Williams tried again, mentioning a black woman who had taken Gingrich to task for calling Barack Obama a “food stamp” president. By this point, the overwhelmingly white crowd had begun to boo the only African-American on stage.

Even with this, Beinart had to follow with the fact that Gingrich, again, didn’t bite on Williams’ attempt to make the exchange about race.

So after throwing the race card, Beinart then creates a soliloquy about why he believes Gingrich is not a racist. And yet, Beinart throws the race card again [emphasis mine]:

The fascinating thing about the exchange is that Gingrich is not a racist. I suspect he genuinely cares about the African-American poor. In fact, he’s convinced himself that his willingness to say things that many African-Americans consider insulting is an expression of that concern; that only he cares enough about African-Americans to speak the “politically incorrect” truths that black leaders won’t.

Note to Beinart: Gingrich was slamming all Democrat politicians. If anything, it would be more accurate if Beinart had tied the “black leaders” reference to statements made by Juan Williams, who has made it a point to be “politically incorrect” when discussing how “black leaders” have failed Americans who are black. It was Williams escaping the Democrat “plantation” of Democrat political correctness that got him chased out of the Democrats’ NPR.

At this point, Beinart has thrown out the race card several times to attack Gingrich while trying to claim he doesn’t believe Gingrich is a racist, saying Gingrich is merely ignorant. And yet, Beinart actually does try to imply Gingrich is a racist by deliberately misleading Gingrich’s point:

Only someone profoundly ignorant of African-American politics would suggest that black Americans have spent the past few decades seeking food stamps, not jobs.

That is completely untrue. What is true, and what Gingrich said, is that Democrats of all persuasions have spent the last few decades getting Americans who are black tied to the government, saying they can’t live, breathe, work, or anything else without the beneficent hand of government to lead them. Beinart himself proves my point [emphasis mine]:

If you look at the budgets proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus over the years, you’ll see that they often include huge, FDR-style government jobs programs. Gingrich may not think that’s the best way to go about providing jobs, but to suggest that African-Americans and their leaders don’t consider jobs important just reveals how shut off from Africa-American politics he actually is.

What a ridiculous statement by Beinart. First, huge, FDR-style jobs programs are a thing of the past thanks to the federal regulatory and judicial regime that has been installed over the last several decades. Democrats know this, even those in the CBC; these proposals are for show, nothing else. After all, Democrats had control of Congress for four years and the entire federal government for two of those years, and didn’t pass one single huge, FDR-style jobs program for anyone, especially Americans who are black; Porkulus is proof of that. Second, the kind of jobs Beinart refers to would be jobs that pay Americans who are black to do the equivalent of digging holes and filling them in again. These are the kinds of jobs Democrats, including Democrat “black leaders”, believe Americans who are black are only capable of doing? Menial, meaningless tasks? I leave it to you: who is practicing racism?

Here’s the other thing. The federal government is extremely limited in assisting real job creation. It truly is up to local government to provide the environment where this can be done. But for the poor, the politicians who represent them seem to make it a point to avoid this work, directing their constituents to blame someone else. I can illustrate this with a part of Elizabeth Warren’s recent diatribe on the rich since it actually applies to Democrats who represent poor areas:

You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory.

Do Democrats who represent the poor make sure roads are built and maintained? No. Do Democrats who represent the poor support good schools to educate poor children? No. Do Democrats who represent the poor support the work done by police and fire forces? No. Do Democrats who represent the poor make sure marauding bands don’t overrun poor areas? No. No, no, no, and no. And you know what happens when all these noes are added up? No factory, no jobs, no taxes to pay for all these things since nobody is working, a rotting public education, a lot of crime, and a lot of blight. And it isn’t just Democrats who represent the poor that are the problem. It’s all Democrat politicians; the only “work” they do is expanding their list of who to blame for the various ills they bring up and making sure their constituents are given enough scraps to prove how “good” Democrat politicians are.

Going back to Beinart, he then goes and gets silly and stupid:

I’m sure Gingrich also sees nothing offensive in calling Obama the “food stamp” president. After all, under Obama the number of people using food stamps has gone up! So because Alan Greenspan presided over predatory lending policies by banks, perhaps we should have called him the “Shylock” chairman of the Federal Reserve. And if child molestations by priests rise on this administration’s watch, perhaps we should call Joseph Biden the “pedophilia” vice president.

The food stamp program is run by the federal government currently being led by President Barack Obama. And because food stamp usage has increased under Obama, the only people Gingrich supposedly “offended” for a statement even Beinart admits is true would be Obama, nobody else. But Beinart pulls out the race card yet again to be deliberately misleading. Attempting to use a Jewish slur on Greenspan has no merit since the former Fed chairman didn’t run the banks Beinart accuses of having predatory lending policies. And Beinart’s attack on the Catholic Church is utterly ridiculous, a complete non sequiter; the last I checked, Biden is the Vice President of the United States, not the Pope. (You know, it’s amazing how Democrats like Beinart keep dredging up the priest molestation scandal to make the scandal representative of the entire Catholic Church and its adherents, yet say absolutely nothing about the pedophiles in the public school system, many who remain employed because union rules require it. But that is an item for another day.)

Now, contrast the repugnant Beinart piece with Rush Limbaugh’s take on the Gingrich/Williams event (H/T: Hot Air). My words above pale by comparison to Rush, although he does have the advantage of speaking, using his voice to great effect. But do click on the link to hear it and find out what Right Scoop says about it. Then come back for a quickie point I want to make.

*I’m going to take Gingrich to task. At one point, Gingrich said this when answering Williams:

They’d [ed. note - poor kids] be getting money, which is a good thing if your poor. Only the elites despise earning money.

Up until that moment, for the last couple of weeks Gingrich had been acting like one of those elites who despise certain people earning money in order to attack Mitt Romney. These attacks were disgusting and will probably keep Gingrich from being the Republican nominee. And it is a shame because Gingrich is probably the one guy who could eat Obama for lunch in a debate without a whole lot of effort or even breaking a sweat, regardless of any baggage he may have, and presenting the best and most believable case of conservatism to the people.

If Romney is the nominee, he needs to bring in Gingrich to assist with the debates against Obama. Romney has his own baggage and some bad habits he has to expunge, and he needs to learn from Gingrich how to turn Obama’s arguments against the President while also making a case for conservatism.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Further, ATF did not act arbitrarily or capriciously because
the reporting requirement set forth in the Demand Letter was based on relevant factors.

Apparently, when the ATF demands legal firearms dealers to sell weapons to "straw purchasers" who then sell them to Mexican gangsters, deliberately avoids tracking those weapons, and does this to implement a rule that violates the 2nd Amendment, somehow we are to believe the ATF didn't act "arbitrarily or capriciously." Something really smells. Bad.

The ruling is for the case National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc. v. B. Todd Jones (NSSF v. Jones; the original defendant was ATF Acting Director Kenneth Melson, who has since been "reassigned" and was replaced by Acting Director of the ATF Jones). I have no idea who the NSSF's legal eagles were on this case; the only information I have seems to be the original complaint filed back in August, 2011. Most of the information having to do with the cover up by Attorney General Eric Holder and his Justice Department (which includes the ATF) minions came out after the complaint was filed; it's possible that the NSSF never amended the complaint with the new evidence that has since come to light, but I don't have access to know if any further information was filed before the ruling came out. What is known is the NSSF has appealed; I'm assuming any and all evidence showing Holder's cover up will be presented.

As was shown by the intrepid reporting by Sharyl Atkisson of CBS, the DoJ did a "document dump" of all kinds of information related to Operation Fast & Furious back in early December, 2011. I know it's been presented before, but I believe a review of what was dumped will be helpful:

• As early as April, 2010, gun dealers were actively assisting the ATF, although they were worried the ATF would make it appear the dealers were selling guns to criminals. Various gun dealers sent further emails to register their concerns over the next few months.
• In July, 2010, the ATF was looking to use the sales they authorized to justify more regulations.
• In December, 2010, U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry was murdered by a weapon sold via OF&F. The latter fact wouldn't be made public until two months later.
• In January, 2011, ATF announced a bunch of arrests as a result of OF&F. Further ATF emails show they were attempting to use these arrests to further their case for more regulations.
• In February, 2011, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer lied to Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) in a letter, saying the ATF did not knowingly allow "straw purchasers" to purchase weapons that were later sold to Mexican gangsters. Ten months later, Breuer admitted he knew of OF&F. The DoJ ended up withdrawing the letter, something nearly unprecedented.
• Also in February, 2011, anonymous members of the ATF blew the whistle on Operation Fast & Furious (although not by name), admitting that the ATF was letting these guns get into the hands of Mexican gangsters, and without tracking them. It also came out that Agent Terry was murdered by one of these weapons. Less than a month later, one of the ATF whistleblowers came forth by name, Agent John Dodson, who provided the name of the operation, Fast & Furious.
• In April, 2011, the Justice Department announced plans to issue a new rule demanding gun dealers from the four border states to report to the ATF all multiple long gun purchases. The rule was implemented on July 11, 2011. A month later, the NSSF filed suit.

The evidence shows the ATF and the Justice Department not only acted arbitrarily and capriciously, but criminally with the cover up. However, Judge Collyer’s ruling doesn’t show any of the information that has come out since the NSSF filed its complaint the past August, so it’s entirely possible, as I stated earlier, that the NSSF didn’t present any new evidence for Judge Collyer to review. It also appears there wasn’t evidence presented of something else, how the State Department sold tens of thousands of weapons to the Mexican government, many of which have probably also ended up in the hands of Mexican gangsters.

I have no doubt that the appeal will contain all of the information that has since come to light over the last few months. If anything, it should be used to slap an injunction on the rule to prevent it from being enforced. The criminality by Holder and his corrupt “associates” at the Justice Department will eventually come to light one way or another. It’s a shame this case lets him off for now.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

I really liked Rick Perry initially, but moved on to Herman Cain after Perry faltered badly early on. Even before Cain’s so-called scandals, I had looked at Newt Gingrich and thought, this guy would crush Obama, provided he didn’t go crazy. As far as Mitt Romney, I always felt he was a decent enough candidate and just conservative enough to be able to beat Obama, and I’d vote for him if he was the nominee (I voted for Romney over McCain in the 2008 Illinois primary). In fact, save Ron Paul, I believed all of the candidates were strong enough to beat Obama and I’d be happy to vote for any of them.

Then, seemingly all of a sudden, and as Romney really began leading by larger amounts in the polls, I saw Republicans acting like Democrats, attacking free enterprise. Worse, I saw Romney being nice about Barack Obama. And on top of that, Romney somewhat equated what he did at Bain in the private sector with what Obama did to Government Motors. Now, I’m worried. Very worried. Here is my vent (please excuse the length, but I have a lot to say).

Back in 2008, I knew Barack Obama was a corrupt, no-good radical. Four years later, Barack Obama is still a corrupt, no-good radical, who now happens to be President. He’s also become tyrannical as his term in office has gone on; his recent illegal appointments to the CFPB and NLRB prove that. Despite Obama deciding to run against the obstruction of Republicans in Congress, he is known not to work well with anyone but a select few sycophants within his administration, his toadies. Along with Republicans in Congress complaining about this, Cabinet secretaries have complained he doesn’t meet with them, and Democrats in Congress have complained about the same thing; nor does Obama appear to listen to any of these people. Again, except for a select few. Although I have no evidence, it seems that Bill Daley left as Obama’s chief of staff for these reasons.

As far as Obama’s record, the only thing he’s done well is kill terrorists. That’s it. His domestic policy is a combination of Marx and Mussolini. His foreign policy is a joke. His military policy, when married with his foreign policy, will leave this country vulnerable, just as Carter’s and Clinton’s did. Obama’s Justice Department, with the exception (for the most part) of the FBI, seems to have violating the Constitution as their primary mission; not only do they not treat Americans equally, as required by law, the members of the DoJ appointed by Obama are thoroughly corrupt (just look at Operation Fast & Furious).

And then there is Obama’s so-called economic policy, again a combination of Marx and Mussolini, and an utter failure. I remember back in 2007, after the Democrats took Congress and President Bush was pushing the “surge” in Iraq, how Democrats, including Obama (and Biden), kept saying how Bush needed to “change course”; this meant withdraw completely from Iraq, but they couldn’t say that directly lest people discover Democrat cowardice. Has anyone noticed how a) Obama hasn’t “changed course” in regards to his domestic and economic policy (in fact, he keeps doubling-down on them), and b) Republicans aren’t screaming for Obama to “change course” in every other sentence?

So what we have as President is an incompetent tyrant, one who should be easy to kick out this November. Obama has moved below Andrew Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Richard Nixon on my unofficial “Rate-the-Presidents” list and is approaching the nadir where Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan reside. Democrats have to contest 23 U.S. Senate seats, a large number of which will be open due to Democrat retirements. Even with the vast majority of the media in the tank for the Democrats and Obama, Republicans should be able to sweep these elections, even gaining a supermajority in the Senate.

But they don’t call the Republican Party the Stupid Party for nothing. I don’t believe Republicans will lose the House, but now I hope they can just take the Senate with a simple majority. The only good thing about that is a simple Republican majority can use Harry Reid’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader as precedent, run with it, and tell any whiny Democrats to shut the hell up. And as far as the Presidency, an easy win is now up for grabs. Republicans are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Romney is our front-runner. But look what he’s doing. He still pays deference to Obama, probably out of respect for the office; but the problem is, Obama has no respect for his office and therefore doesn’t deserve any kind of “nice” treatment from Romney. I have no doubt Obama won’t reciprocate in kind since he’s never done it before. I firmly believe Perry, Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann, and Cain, if any were the nominee, would not be so “nice” to Obama, nor should they be. Nor should any Republican to any Democrat, especially after the harpy running the DNC opened her big, fat, lying maw about Tucson. She won’t suffer any consequences for her sliminess; in fact, the Democrat media will barely mention it or if they do, won’t criticize her and may cheer her on. So why is Romney being “nice” to Obama now?

And if Romney is so damn smart, what the hell is he doing equating his private sector experience with how Obama is doing things? How does that help him or an America that needs to get out of the Obama yoke? From the limited information I’ve seen, Romney’s time at Bain was more about success than failure, whereas Obama is a miserable incompetent, only succeeding at winning elections and killing terrorists.

Nor has Romney disavowed Romneycare, the forerunner of Obamacare. At minimum, Romney could take smacks at his Democrat successor for what Gov. Patrick has done with the program. But no. Romney is all set to take Obamacare off the table as an issue. He could use a health care argument similar to an argument Perry used effectively regarding immigration; pre-Obamacare federal government health care requirements were bankrupting Massachusetts, and Romneycare was a way to comply and avoid breaking the Massachusetts treasury. First, he could prove this argument is true, and second, he could then attack Obamacare for making things worse. Instead, he weakly throws around how it was something he could do as a governor but not for Obama to do as President, but Obama would be able to nuance this to his advantage. About the only thing Romney needs to pray for is to have the Supreme Court render unconstitutional either the mandate or the whole Obamacare travesty, which is in doubt as it is (for the record and as far as I’m concerned, even if a majority of the Supreme Court finds the mandate Constitutional, it won’t be due to what’s in the actual Constitution). Romney could then bludgeon Obama if at least part of Obamacare is overturned.

So right off the bat, the Republican front-runner is being confirmed as the leader of the Stupid Party. And the other Republicans are doing no better. You have Gingrich, who had a great record as Speaker of the House. Perry is an excellent governor. And as well as they have been about rightly attacking Obama, they attack the free enterprise system when attacking Romney, instead of attacking Romney’s government record, which is fair game. Are they nuts? It has been noted by many that Gingrich has a bad habit of running off at the mouth; now he’s done it. At least Rick Santorum and Ron Paul haven’t done so. But neither Santorum or Paul are close to my ideal of a Republican President. Santorum seems to me to want a rebirth of the failed “compassionate conservatism”, which should have died with the Bush administration. And Paul? Oy. Yet, I’m even considering supporting Paul if he is the nominee, only to make sure the tyrant is gone. That’s how worried I am. And my biggest worry with Paul is not that he’s nuts but that he gets a lot of support from the so-called “antiwar” crowd; I have a bad feeling that these “antiwar” “supporters” are actually Obama Democrats who will turn against Paul on a dime to see their Dear Leader God-King re-installed as President.

Worse, none of the remaining Republican candidates or Republicans in Congress are framing the upcoming election correctly. More than anything else, Republicans need to be framing their campaigns as a true freedom campaign against the corrupt and incompetent tyranny being perpetrated by Obama and the Democrats. They have plenty of ammunition with which to choose from: Porkulus; the illegal GM and Chrysler takeovers, which harmed bondholders who were everyday Americans, along with non-union pensioners; the ongoing bailouts of Fannie and Freddie, including Obama paying bonuses to the failures running them and the SEC lawsuit against both (which can be used by Republicans to tie the two to for the reason for our economic mess); the thoroughly corrupt method Obamacare passed Congress; over-regulation by the various agencies, especially the EPA; the illegal collusion of the NLRB with the IAM union against Boeing and its workers, along with illegally supporting union workers over non-union workers; Operation Fast & Furious; Obama’s unconstitutional attempt to have his administration determine who are the clergy in the various religions; the unethical Gulf drilling moratorium; Obama’s use of the corrupt Democrat Jon Corzine as an economic adviser Obama sought out, and include how the Obama administration allowed Corzine to “lose” over a billion customer dollars while at MF Global (Corzine got the SEC to delay the implementation of a rule, a rule that would have prevented some of the things Corzine and MF Global did); and, of course, Obama’s recent illegal appointments to the CFPB and the NLRB. This is an election that determines whether Americans remain a free people or serfs under the control of Obama and Democrat bureaucrats.

You know, there is something Obama has never figured out in his political life: Americans love, with an almost irrational passion (and I mean that in a good way), their freedom. It’s why they hate Obamacare. They hate it. They hated it with the corrupt method used by the Democrats to pass it. They hate it with the way Obama and his minions are administering it, especially with the politically-motivated waivers given to select campaign contributors. Republicans can espouse their support for Americans’ freedom, back it up and expose Obama as a freedom-hating tyrant (which is true), and coast to a sweep. The 2010 election should have been a precursor and a wake-up call to Republicans on how to win. There are nearly 10 months before the election, so there is time for Republicans to get out of being stuck-on-stupid and really take it to Obama and the Democrats.

One other thing. I’m not a big fan of Sean Hannity’s radio or TV show, although I don’t doubt his conservatism. I’m also not a fan of a frequent guest of his, pollster Frank Luntz. But Luntz said something the other day that I believe was right on the mark. Republicans really should get away from using the word “capitalism” when discussing the economy and economics. It’s not that capitalism is a bad thing, or that it shouldn’t be promoted, especially market-based capitalism. Luntz believed, and I think he’s right, there are too many people who have, rightly or wrongly, a dim view of capitalism. What needs to be promoted is free enterprise. I believe this is correct for several reasons (these are mine, not anything I got directly from Luntz). First, free enterprise is an apt synonym for market-based capitalism (if you hadn’t noticed, I haven’t used the word “capitalism” anywhere prior to this paragraph). Second, it could be shown that the Obama regulatory regime is a severe threat to free enterprise, which it truly is. Third, free enterprise takes away the invalid class war rhetoric used by the Democrats. And lastly, use of the phrase “free enterprise” promotes what the Republicans need to promote, freedom. I mean, that’s the point, ain’t it?

I just hope there is time to turn this whole thing around. There is no reason why Obama and the Democrats shouldn’t only lose the upcoming election, but lose big. So Republicans still have a chance to change their course and their narrative to take it all. As I had said above, Republicans in Congress should throw the words “change course” right back at Obama. They can hold the conservative line by saying they are doing so in the name of freedom, and that the recalcitrant do-nothing Democrats in the Senate are promoting Obama’s incompetent and unconstitutional anti-freedom policies. Doing these things will show us and America that Republicans mean business. And while the primaries are still going on, Republican Presidential candidates need to get smarter on their attacks to each other, all the while remembering they need to promote freedom and free enterprise. Because that is how the Republican nominee can beat Obama.

P.S.: I believe it would be a HUGE mistake for Republicans to attempt an impeachment of Obama right now. The degenerate Bill Clinton was able to garner a lot of sympathy when it happened to him, to the point where he is now respectable instead of disgraced. Obama would easily be able to portray himself as David against the Republican Goliath, and get away with it. Republicans should be calling Obama tyrannical every chance they can, and they should hold Obama’s illegal appointments over everything Obama and Senate Democrats bring forth, especially nominations to various positions (possibly even potential Supreme Court nominations). But that’s as far as they can take it. Any work done by the CFPB and the NLRB needs to be handled in the courts through private sector lawsuits; there is an excellent chance the courts would slap injunction after injunction on these agencies, thus shutting them down completely (see New Process Steel v. NLRB).

If, however, Obama is re-elected to a last term, and provided Republicans retain the majority in the House, then impeachment resolutions against Obama, Holder, Chu, the CFPB’s Richard Cordray if he enacts any rule, the three illegal NLRB appointees if they enact any rule, and I’m sure others, should come out fast and frequently. It doesn’t matter if there aren’t any convictions in the Senate; the criminal and tyrannical behavior of the Obama administration needs to be exposed.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

This is what happened yesterday. Obama’s EEOC has been attempting to tell the various religions that the administration has the power to determine the qualifications of any faith’s clergy. In a stunning unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC (Hosanna-Tabor was a Lutheran school), the Supreme Court put the brakes on that notion. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the opinion that was joined by all of the other Justices, Justice Thomas wrote a separate (and succinct) concurring opinion, and Justice Alito wrote a separate concurring opinion, which was joined (shock! amazement!) by Obama’s own Justice Kagan. It was not only an epic smackdown of Obama’s EEOC shysters, but it also stomped on the 6th Circuit that had wrongly overturned the District Court decision that favored the school (the 6th Circuit panel decision went 3-0, with a Clinton appointee writing that opinion and an Obama appointee writing a concurring opinion).

There is no doubt God-King Barack wants the government to meddle in every little thing we do. It doesn’t matter if the Constitution has said this isn’t allowed; he’s going to do it anyway. The other day, Obama addressed his bureaucrats in a “pep talk”:

“I want to say thank you to each and every one of you, because the EPA touches on the lives of every single American every single day.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the EPA to touch me any day. And I sure as hell don’t want the Obama administration to have the power to dictate who is valid as a member of the clergy in any of the various religions (yes, even Islam).

The Anchoress recounts a portion of the oral arguments for the Hosanna-Tabor case presented to the court:

President Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed during oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court last week that it can order a church to restore a fired minister to a teaching position.

But that was a claim not even the president’s handpicked appointee, the very liberal Justice Elena Kagan, could accept as she and her colleagues considered Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC. [...] The justices then rejected the argument of Leondra Kruger, Obama’s lawyer for the EEOC, who argued that there’s no ministerial exception in the Constitution, only the same rights that secular organizations possess to choose their own affiliations.

At this, Scalia exploded. “That’s extraordinary! There, black on white in the text of the Constitution, are special protections for religion. And you say it makes no difference?”

Kagan agreed with Scalia’s rejection of the argument that the First Amendment doesn’t protect churches from government ordering who they should hire as pastor or priest.

Even Kagan gets it, as apparently do Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor.

In an amusing turn, the hypocritical Americans United for Separation of Church and State had not only filed an amicus brief supporting the EEOC, they issued a press release yesterday denouncing the Court’s decision. In a nutshell, a major advocate that claims to educate “Americans about the importance of church-state separation in safeguarding religious freedom” wants the government to meddle in religious affairs. Utterly shameful hypocrites.

Fox News has a good round-up of this case, as does Allah.

As with Obama’s illegal appointments, Republican candidates and members of Congress should proclaim loud and long how the administration is eschewing the separation of powers and the Constitution itself. Other than die-hard Democrats who would vote for Obama regardless of what he does, a great majority of the American people are not stupid and will recognize Obama’s attempt at tyranny.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

Instead of playing politics, President Obama needs to man up and put aside his and his party’s politics. The Constitution says he has the power to do so.

Obama wasted several months trying to get Congress to pass a “jobs” bill that was nothing more than having taxpayers fund Democratic campaign coffers via unionized public sector jobs, and demanding that “the rich” pay for it. At the same time, President “Present” decided to punt on a decision to allow the U.S. portion of the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada to begin being built; with this, he kept his own campaign “pipeline” funded by the eco-Nazis who are against the Keystone project and the unions who are for it.

Everything shifted as the payroll tax cut was due to expire at the end of the year, along with the federal government’s temporary budget; again, Senate Democrats wasted time trying to have “the rich” pay for all this with a surtax.

House Republicans came up with an extraordinary solution; require Obama to make a decision on the Keystone pipeline, saying that if it gets built, then the revenues entitled to the federal government from the oil would fund these measures, especially the year-long extension of the current payroll tax rate. In addition:

…the House bill is paid for by, among other things, extending the federal pay freeze, reforming government-employee pensions, introducing modest means-testing to Medicare, and stepping up (sadly necessary) efforts to prevent millionaires and illegal immigrants from improperly receiving government checks.

Yet, Senate Republicans and Democrats only agreed to a 60-day extension of the rate and to have it offset by “increased fees on Fannie and Freddie.” The House said forget it. Since nothing was accomplished, Congress is on its way home.

I have no idea why Senate Republicans seem to have decided, with what I’ve seen, to chastise their Republican counterparts in the House. Worse, some are doubling-down on their stance (notably McCain and Brown). This stance is even more egregious for two reasons: 1) the Senate version creates a huge payroll nightmare on just about every U.S. business; and 2) it is Democrat Reid who refuses to set up a conference to resolve the differences between the two versions.

Plus, there is nothing stopping House and Senate Republicans demanding Obama to use his powers to get all this resolved. After all, Obama hasn’t had a problem usurping Congress’ authority in other areas, or bypassing them in the case of Libya. This is the narrative Republicans have to push since it is not only beneficial, it is the right one for the country. Republicans have called on Congressional Democrats to sit down and work things out. It’s time they demand the President put aside his politics and do the same.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

But on the front page is this story: “Junkyard Gives Up Secret Accounts of Massacre.” Here’s the lede:

One by one, the Marines sat down, swore to tell the truth and began to give secret interviews discussing one of the most horrific episodes of America’s time in Iraq: the 2005 massacre by Marines of Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha.

The rest of the piece…let me put it this way…is something the late unindicted ABSCAM conspirator and corrupt Democrat congresscritter Jack Murtha would approve of as it could have been written by his former congressional staff. The article is a blatant hit job intended to disgrace our troops as they are leaving Iraq, even as the Times reports on the President’s praise of our warriors…19 pages later. Even with all that, the piece notes that of the eight individuals that were charged for committing this “massacre”, six had their charges dropped, one was acquitted, and one (Sgt. Frank Wuterich; his name is not mentioned in the piece) who is still awaiting trial (after six years).

The Times provides a 20-page PDF of some of the interviews (many are incomplete). The Times uses some scattered parts of several interviews to paint how our troops were just inhuman monsters with a lot of anecdotal information about other incidents outside of what happened at Haditha. For what happened at Haditha itself, this short summary is provided in the middle of the piece:

That morning, a military convoy of four vehicles was heading to an outpost in Haditha when one of the vehicles was hit by a roadside bomb.

Several Marines got out to attend to the wounded, including one who eventually died, while others looked for insurgents who might have set off the bomb. Within a few hours 24 Iraqis — including a 76-year-old man and children between the ages of 3 and 15 — were killed, many inside their homes.

Townspeople contended that the Marines overreacted to the attack and shot civilians, only one of whom was armed. The Marines said they thought they were under attack.

That’s it. No new facts about what happened during the encounter. And despite quotes from several interviews, they didn’t bother pulling quotes from this key interview of one Col. Davis on pages 13 and 14 of the PDF:

Q. But here you’ve got specific allegations, whatever the source, however suspect–however suspicious you are of the source, that your Marines killed guys in ways that they shouldn’t have killed them.

A. I asked my, my Judge Advocate, my PAO, “Okay, what do we have here? All right. Let’s go back and review the story boards.” We reviewed the story boards, talked to Chessani, there is no meat here. If I am not mistaken, McGirk’s [ed. note - Time magazine's Tim McGirk, who wrote the first hit piece on Haditha] allegations are that he had been contacted by the Mayor of Haditha, that the Americans had slaughtered people and that there was a video of that. Now I have never seen this video but I’ve been told it’s films of the deceased in a morgue or something along that line. Haditha is a special place for the insurgents. It was the center of their information operations, operations. When we did Operation River Gate we overran a facility, captured it, ten stack computers, each one capable of producing ten CD’s simultaneously. So if you have a beheading, and IED incident, within ten minutes you get 100 CDs out in the sukes. And this is all part of the murder intimidation campaign. We to this day don’t know why, outside of the obvious strategic nature of Haditha, why Haditha is so important to the enemy. I mean, it figures
greatly in their history, the revolt against the British of 1920. Quite clearly, it is very strategic terrain for them for other than just the geographic reasons. They don’t want us in that town. We are well aware of that. The Mayor, if he is not an insurgent himself, he is clearly an insurgent sympathizer, which Colonel Chessani dealt with routinely through out that time. In my mind this was all part of a play. They could not get what they wanted through Chessani, this was never hidden, this was never covered up, so they go outside to let the press come in and try to work it as an angle to move us out of there.

Q. Yeah, and again, to tag along on that thought, just common sense tells me that, you know, I am very suspicious of these allegations based on the source of the allegations. But, my first response would be, “Okay, we need to know, no kidding, what happened down there so that we can respond.”

A. I never felt that we didn’t know what happened down there.

The remainder of the interview with Col. Davis has to do with a report he hadn’t yet read, and then the rest of the interview is cut off.

What’s striking is how the Times piece avoids mentioning how the Marines on the ground knew Haditha was a hotbed of terrorist activity, with even the mayor of the town being referred to as, at best, a sympathizer. Yet reading the account in today’s piece, it’s as if the Marines were engaging in some kind of serious police matter instead of a battle with terrorists that started with an IED explosion that killed one Marine and wounded several others, as this 2007 CNN story confirms.

The reporter does manage to get this in a few paragraphs later, to continue their portrayal of how bloodthirsty the Marines were:

When Marines arrived on the scene to assess the number of dead bodies, at least one Marine thought it would be a good time to take pictures for his own keeping.

“I know I had one Marine who was taking pictures just to take pictures and I told him to delete all those pictures,” testified a first lieutenant identified as M. D. Frank.

This is how the New York Times wants people to remember the war in Iraq, with smears and deliberately misleading information.

As far as I’m concerned, Barack Obama did much to undermine the war effort while he was a U.S. Senator from Illinois. Via Jim Hoft in 2006, then-Senator Obama backed up Murtha’s slandering of the Marines regarding Haditha. Since I’ve never been a soldier, I can’t tell how his remarks from yesterday will be taken by those who have served. From the point of view of this non-soldier, there just seems to be something wrong with the whole situation.

Reading through his speech, there was no mention of President Bush or all those Democrats, or anyone else in Congress, who voted to send the troops. There was a slight reference to Saddam Hussein, but not even by name. Obama’s speech hit all the right notes, was respectful of the troops and their bravery; but, like I said, it just seemed wrong. I don’t know how else to put it.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

Yesterday, near the end of his day-long testimony, AG Eric Holder was asked if he was going to fire anyone, especially the political appointees, over OF&F. The belligerent Holder said no; he qualified that he was awaiting the report from the Inspector General which would give him the “facts” to help him determine what more he had to do. Excuse me? If you looked at Holder’s countenance throughout much of the day, he basked in the glory of those Democrats who were literally fawning all over him, while at the same time giving the impression of someone who couldn’t understand why Republicans are daring to question how he, AG Holder, has handled this whole OF&F situation, along with demanding more power, power the anti-Constitution Democrats are ready to give the AG. Here’s what I think: there are enough facts out there already showing that Holder’s actions and statements regarding OF&F are those of a political hack, not of the premier law enforcement official he is supposed to be.

So let’s look at some of the facts.

Just like his boss, Holder likes to fudge statistics. In his testimony and in past statements, he has maintained that over 64,000 guns recovered by Mexican authorities were traced to America. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) fabulously debunks Holder’s ongoing mendacity.

Holder deliberately leaves other information out. CBS’ outstanding reporter Sharyl Attkisson issued a report on Tuesday showing how the federal government has been legally supplying the Mexican authorities with U.S.-made weapons by the thousands, weapons that end up being diverted by Mexican officials into the hands of the cartels:

The problem of weapons legally sold to Mexico – then diverted to violent cartels – is becoming more urgent. That’s because the U.S. has quietly authorized a massive escalation in the number of guns sold to Mexico through “direct commercial sales.” It’s a way foreign countries can acquire firearms faster and with less disclosure than going through the Pentagon.

Here’s how it works: A foreign government fills out an application to buy weapons from private gun manufacturers in the U.S. Then the State Department decides whether to approve.

And it did approve 2,476 guns to be sold to Mexico in 2006. In 2009, that number was up nearly 10 times, to 18,709.

I’ll bet if someone did a bit of snooping, we’d find out the vast majority of the weapons that end up in the hands of Mexican gangsters are those that were sold via the State Department. And even here, there seems to be a cover-up going on:

The State Department has since stopped disclosing numbers of guns it approves, and wouldn’t give CBS News figures for 2010 or 2011.

As of this time, nobody seems to be demanding Sec. of State Hillary Clinton explain this. Nor have they asked Holder if either the ATF or the FBI has investigated how many of the “64,000″ seized guns came from these State Department sales.

Then in December, 2010, American Border Control agent Brian Terry was murdered by a member of one of the Mexican cartels; one of the weapons used was traced to a gun sold by an American gun dealer. Not long after, an ATF whistleblower contacted Sen. Grassley that the gun used was actually part of the Operation Fast & Furious fiasco whereby the gun was actually sold at the direction of the ATF, along with a couple of thousand others. After Grassley began demanding answers, officials in the ATF and the DoJ immediately began pushing back; in February of this year, a letter came out saying the weapon used to kill Agent Terry was not part of any gunwalking, even before any investigation into Terry’s murder was complete:

…a document dump last Friday [Dec. 2, 2011] showed Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer submitted false information in a letter to his office denying knowledge of gunwalking prior to the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in February 2011. In November 2011, Breuer testified that he actually knew about gun walking tactics as early as April 2010.

This is how this cover-up began. It continued after Holder told the DoJ’s Inspector General to investigate OF&F; Holder has used this investigation to keep from having to fire anybody, especially the Obama political appointees, involved with OF&F. The cover-up is still continuing as the Obama administration recently sealed the Terry murder records, an action that occurred 50 weeks after the agent’s killing. In the meantime, ICE Agent Jaime Zapata was murdered in Mexico with another OF&F-related weapon.

About the only positive, and unprecedented, development that occurred was that the DoJ withdrew their February letter because it was so bereft of “facts.” But Holder won’t fire anyone until he gets more “facts” from the IG.

Throughout the year, Holder and Democrats have attempted to tie OF&F to the Bush administration’s Project Gunrunner (begun in 2005 or 2006), even though OF&F itself didn’t begin until late 2009, months after the Obama administration was in charge. The Bush-era Operation Wide Receiver did allow a few hundred guns to get into the hands of the cartels; but that operation, with the assistance of the Mexican government, did attempt to interdict weapons as they crossed the border and before they could be used. Sen. Grassley was able to get Holder to admit OF&F had nothing to do with Bush.

Those running OF&F, on the other hand, not only avoided any involvement of the Mexican government, they didn’t even bother telling ATF personnel in Mexico about the operation for fear the game would be given away to the Mexican authorities or the State Department (per the report, U.S. authorities did provide a reason why the Mexicans were kept out of it; yet, the State Department was still shipping weapons to Mexico by the thousands). It wasn’t until January of this year that Mexico was told of the operation, even though at least 200 Mexicans had been murdered with OF&F guns. Even with all this, Holder’s Mexican counterpart had still not yet been briefed on the details about OF&F by the U.S. government as of this past September.

Also this week, another bomb was dropped on another agency run by Holder’s DoJ [emphasis mine]:

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) reported on the probe in a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The lawmaker cited a story in The New York Times that reported that the Drug Enforcement Administration used tactics similar to those of “Operation Fast and Furious,” a U.S. operation that allowed thousands of firearms to be smuggled into Mexico in an effort to trace the weapons to cartel bosses…

Based on the Times’ story, Issa said it appears that DEA agents may have laundered “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

As I mentioned earlier, Holder won’t fire anyone over OF&F because he doesn’t have all the “facts” with which to do so. Reality shows otherwise: the ATF encouraged, and even demanded, gun store owners to sell weapons that were going to go to the cartels; hundreds of Mexicans and two federal agents were killed with these guns; neither the Mexican government nor U.S. officials in Mexico were involved with OF&F, nor given any details of the operation; the DoJ began covering up the operation in February of this year, with recent assistance from the Obama administration; Holder has used the IG investigation to avoid firing any political appointees; Holder has used OF&F and other operations to increase the government’s power over gun sales, although Congress blocked funding to keep Holder from using this authority, which was shown in several emails between various DoJ officials and which may have been an attempt to subvert the 2nd Amendment; and now, Holder’s DEA may have been involved in money laundering operations for the cartels.

So far, only former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke, an Obama appointee, has resigned over OF&F. Based on my understanding of how the DoJ works, it was Burke who helped lead the OF&F effort. During the cover-up this year, Burke leaked a memo in an attempt to smear ATF whistleblower John Dodson, which Burke admitted doing last month. When Burke resigned in August, Holder said nothing of Burke’s involvement with OF&F. It was only when pressed by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that Holder flip-flopped and told the truth.

Per Frank Miniter, here’s what has happened to the other DoJ personnel involved with OF&F:

Former Acting ATF Chief Ken Melson, after refusing to be a scapegoat for this operation, became an adviser in the Office of Legal Affairs in Washington, D.C.

Acting Deputy Director Billy Hoover is now the special agent in charge of the D.C. office.

Deputy Director for Field Operations William McMahon—he’d received detailed briefings Fast and Furious—is now at the ATF’s Office of Internal Affairs.

Former Special Agent in Charge of Phoenix William Newell—he oversaw Fast and Furious and lied by saying guns hadn’t been allowed to go south of the border—is now at the Office of Management in Washington, D.C.

Phoenix Deputy Chief George Gillette is now in to Washington, D.C., as ATF’s liaison to the U.S. Marshal’s Service.

ATF Group Supervisor David Voth—he managed Fast and Furious out of the Phoenix office—is now in a management position in Washington, D.C.

Agent Hope McCallister—she had management duties on the team that ran Fast and Furious—was given a “Lifesaving Award” after it came to light she’d ordered agents to stop tailing suspects who the ATF had allowed to buy guns.

In addition, Assistant AG Ronald Weich is still in his job (he was involved with the February, 2011 letter). Assistant AG Lanny Breuer is still in his job. Former Deputy Attorney General Gary Grindler, who was given details about OF&F in March, 2010, has been Holder’s chief of staff since January of this year.

Remember also, Holder’s DoJ was trying to pass a rule whereby it would be allowed, under the law, to lie in response to FOIA requests. Even the ACLU threw a fit over this and DoJ backed down.

Also yesterday, Jon Corzine testified to Congress over what happened to $1.2 billion in customer’s money after the company he ran, MF Global, went bankrupt. He said he didn’t know where the money went. Being the CEO of a publicly held corporation, he is required under Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) to have signed off on documentation that shows he better bloody well know where the money went to or he faces all kinds of problems. So while Corzine may be in trouble over a variety of SOX violations, there is no equivalent to hold Holder accountable for his complete mismanagement of the DoJ, other than to keep hauling his sorry proktos up before Congress to squeeze more information out of him, information he has no business holding back.

It doesn’t really matter anymore, at least not to me, who knew what and when about OF&F; the cover-up is enough, and there has been a cover-up. Beginning with Holder, and minimally the ones Miniter mentions that are still at DoJ, along with Weich, Breuer, and Grindler, need to go. There also needs to be more information from the State Department on the guns they legally sold to Mexico.

Here’s what Miniter has to say about the whistleblowers:

Agent John Dodson, after nearly a year of harassment, including being given menial assignments and being barred from areas of the ATF building in Phoenix, is in the process of trying to sell his home in Arizona so he can transfer to South Carolina.

Agent Larry Alt transferred to Florida. He still has unresolved legal claims against the ATF.

Agent Pete Forcelli was demoted to a desk job after he testified before Congress. He has requested an internal investigation to address retaliation targeting him.

Agent James Casa took a transfer to Florida.

Agent Carlos Canino, who was a deputy attache in Mexico City, was moved to Tucson.

The only thing I can add is that if Holder and the other of his miscreants stay where they are, and if Obama allows them all to remain in his administration, Republicans in Congress need to keep dragging their sorry behinds up before Congress and railing against them every day Congress is in session. And the Republican Presidential candidates need to keep hammering home the willful abandonment of the rule of law by the Obama administration to the press, and especially in the debates. While this wouldn’t provide all the justice due to Agents Terry and Zapata, nor their families, nor the families of those Mexicans murdered, it is a start.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

P.S.: I would be remiss to not only re-mention the great work done by Sharyl Attkinsson of CBS, but also the outstanding reporting by Townhall’s Katie Pavlich and The Daily Caller’s Matthew Boyle.

Last week, our administration launched a major new effort to break the backs of the cartels. My department is committing 100 new ATF personnel to the Southwest border in the next 100 days to supplement our ongoing Project Gunrunner, DEA is adding 16 new positions on the border, as well as mobile enforcement teams, and the FBI is creating a new intelligence group focusing on kidnapping and extortion. DHS is making similar commitments, as Secretary Napolitano will detail.

But as today’s conference has emphasized, the problem of arms trafficking will not be stopped at the border alone. Rather, as our experts emphasized, this is a problem that must be met as part of a comprehensive attack against the cartels – an attack in depth, on both sides of the border, that focuses on the leadership and assets of the cartel.

The bold emphasis is mine.

Obviously, Holder knew about Project Gunrunner since he became AG. What isn’t sure, and it doesn’t show up here, is when exactly he knew about OF&F. At the time the speech was given, the operation hadn’t been implemented yet, and it doesn’t say how much involvement Holder had in conceiving it (it’s doubtful he had any involvement here, even with the operation’s authorization, as these would be functions done locally and at lower levels of the ATF and the Phoenix U.S. Attorney’s office). Sharyl Attkisson reported nearly two months ago that Holder had been briefed several times in 2010 about OF&F, although the unredacted parts of the memos provided don’t show the details of how the operation worked or that it was the ATF who allowed the guns to “walk” into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

But since Sharyl Atkkisson broke the story of Operation Fast & Furious, it would be inconceivable for Holder to not have known about it. After all, the DoJ fired at least one whistleblower, threatened at least one more (possibly two), and allowed Phoenix-based U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke to resign after he tried to smear one of the whistleblowers. Yet even by September of this year, the Mexican government still had not been given details of what OF&F was about (H/T: The Daily Caller), despite hundreds of Mexicans having been murdered by guns allowed to “walk”, along with two federal law enforcement agents. None of the higher-ups in the ATF have been fired, nor have any other DoJ officials who were involved with OF&F. He has spent most of the time either giving conflicting testimony to Congress (usually by feigning ignorance) and trying to cover up everything related to OF&F.

As a topper, the Obama administration has just sealed the records of murdered Border Patrol agent Brian Terry.

There’s no evidence showing Holder knew anything about the details of OF&F prior to Attkisson’s initial report from February of this year. That may change going forward, but the evidence isn’t there now. However, he’s done everything to contribute to what can only be described as a classic cover up. Especially as he stood there with Mexican officials in 2009 touting all kinds of cross-border cooperation that was going to occur to stop the drug cartels, cooperation which never took place. Holder’s actions have been unconscionable.

The intrepid Matthew Boyle of The Daily Caller (the guy who Holder got testy with) has followed up with administration officials on whether Obama’s criticisms of former Bush administration AG Alberto Gonzales apply to Holder. Here are some of the criticisms highlighted by Boyle:

In addition to politically-motivated firings of U.S. Attorneys, Obama said Gonzales needed to resign because of a “lack of oversight” during one particular law enforcement program.

“You’ve got a situation in terms of the FBI where the procedures used for issuing national security letters seemed to have been completely sloppy and based on erroneous fact — there doesn’t seem to be any oversight there,” Obama said…

Obama also criticized Gonzales’ loyalty to President George W. Bush. “What you get a sense of is an Attorney General who saw himself as an enabler of the administration as opposed to somebody who was actually trying to look out for the American people’s interests,” Obama said of Gonzales.

Boyle asked these Obama administration officials questions about Obama and Holder related to the above statements; none answered.

But by sealing the records of Agent Terry’s death, the administration seems to be saying a lot. The cover up continues and Holder is still AG.

Cross-posted at Scipio the Metalcon.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I moved out of the Chicago suburbs into Northwest Arkansas, smack dab in the middle of the Ozark Mountains. Best decision I believe we ever made. So for that, I am first thankful for having the privilege of being married to her. I am thankful for having a loving family, on both my side and her side. I am thankful for all the friends we have and how welcoming they are. And finally, I am thankful for having been born in the United States. I mean, you can move from the city, to the suburbs, to the country, to wherever life leads you. That is a gift.

So to everyone, a very Happy Thanksgiving to you!!!