Monthly Archives: November 2009
Massive, Marxist Obamacare Bill Would Take A Day And A Half To Read Aloud
Health Bill Could Get 34-Hour Reading In Senate – Washington Times
The 2,074-page Senate health care bill would take 34 hours to read cover to cover — and that’s just what Sen. Tom Coburn wants done on the Senate floor.
The Oklahoma Republican has threatened to invoke parliamentary rules to force the Senate clerk (or more likely, a team of clerks) to read the massive bill before the full Senate begins formal debate on the legislation.
The move is strictly according to Senate rules, which say any senator can demand a bill be read in its entirety before debate begins. While Democrats could, if they wish, repeatedly make motions to end the soliloquy, Republicans on the floor could object, and the reading would continue.
Blog of the day 11-19-09
Bob Belevedere’s Camp of the Saints linked me several tmes today, and I appreciate it. So, I am naming his fine blog the Blog of the Day!
Go, read it, fine stuff over there!
When I first read this headline….
I naturally thought Paco was talking about something on this blog when he wrote “More Awesome Smartness Than We’ve Ever Seen Before” But, alas, he was just pointing out how wrong those “Obama is the smartest guy in the room” statements are!
And, if we’re lucky, than we’ll ever see again. According to Andy McCarthy at NRO, President Wile E. Obama – Super Genius – has already bollixed up the criminal trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed & Co.
It happens every time!
I am preparing a serious, hard-hitting politically astute post, and then I visit Theo Spark and well, ah, what was I saying?
Oh well, I got my Daley Babe out of it ayway
Your Marxist Moron of the Day
Well, for the first time a state has won this award. I had to think about my rules for eligibility, before handing this out. Could a state win? Yes, if that state is California, er Marxifornia, and if said state did something as assbackwards as this!
Power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators adopted a first-in-the nation mandate to lower electricity demand.
On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard.
Is Andrew Sullivan fantasizing about Levi Johnston?
Why do I get the idea that Little Andy is blogging this crap with his pants off?
This is either one hell of a 19-year old self-described redneck or someone who has the serene confidence of knowing that the truth is on his side. Here’s the transcript of his real time reaction to the Oprah interview:
Apparently Andy has a fever for douchebag rednecks.
UPDATE!! It is worse than I thought Looks like Andy has broken out the heels to woo Levi!
Media Matters defends Palin? Stalin must be ice skating today
Another Black Conservative, YES there are more than one you know, points out that Stalin might be hitting the ice
Now here is something I thought I would never see. The leftwing Media Matters, that is well know for spreading some falsehoods about Sarah Palin, has come to her aid and is calling out Newsweek for its sexist treatment of Palin.
From Media Matters:
There are a lot of legitimate reasons Newsweek‘s November 23 issue, however, does just that by publishing on its cover a photo of Palin in short running shorts and a fitted top, leaning against the American flag. Making matters worse is the equally offensive headline Newsweek editors chose to run alongside the photo — “How Do You Solve a Problem like Sarah?” — presumably a reference to the Sound of Music song, “Maria,” in which nuns fret about “how” to “solve a problem like Maria,” a “girl” who “climbs trees” and whose “dress has a tear.” to criticize Sarah Palin, her new book, and her policies, but you don’t have to stoop to sexism to do it. MORE
Wow, miracles can happen
Your founding quote of the day
Cross posted at my group blog What Would the Founding Fathers Do?
Consider the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin. If there is one thing sorely lacking in out politicians today, it is wisdom. We all understand that freedom of speech, and of thought are on the hit list of the Left. Franklin, understood that liberty needs freedom of thought and of speech, if it is to endure. The Left today, understands that to implement their Marxist- Utopian standards, they must first crush these precious liberties. As you read this quote, understand that the warning Franklin gave us must be heeded.
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.
Friends, the left is working to cease thinking and to silence speech they disagree with. They desire ignorant, silent subjects, not liberty-loving Americans. Those who think, become wise, and will never embrace the evil ends of Marxist ideology. Nor will they be silent, or will they submit, or sacrifice their liberties. This is why the Left so desperately wishes to crush our dissent. What is at stake is our liberty, the liberty the Lord blessed us with. To reject that liberty, or to seek to deprive us of it are evil ends, and must never be tolerated!
Drunk Man Throws Darts At Bar Patrons, Poops In Parking Lot
Man At Port St. Lucie Bar Throws Darts At Other Patrons, Is Arrested, Police Say – TCPalm
A 44-year-old man who threw darts at patrons of Mickey Finns bar and returned to the establishment after being kicked out was arrested, according to a recently released affidavit.
The bartender “cut off” serving drinks to Scott D. Leonard, of the 100 block of Southeast Todd Avenue, late Sunday or early Monday “due to Mr. Leonard’s behavior as he was throwing darts at other patrons.”
A bouncer “escorted” him out the rear entrance of the establishment in the 200 block of Southwest Port St. Lucie Boulevard.
“Mr. Leonard was angered with this and proceeded to pull down his pants and underwear and defecated onto the rear parking lot,” the affidavit states.
Police spoke to several patrons at whom Leonard threw darts and none wished to press charges. The owner didn’t either. An officer called for a cab and watched Leonard get in and leave.
Not long after that, the officer again was dispatched to Mickey Finns, and a worker said the cab dropped off Leonard and that Leonard wanted to drive his own vehicle home.
A worker told police that Leonard started his vehicle and moved it a short distance. Leonard has a restricted, business-purposes-only drivers license, the affidavit stated. The worker grabbed the keys, and Leonard started to cause a ruckus, the affidavit stated.
Leonard was arrested on a misdemeanor disorderly intoxication charge and taken to the St. Lucie County jail.
More Hopey-Changey Economic News
Housing Starts, Permits Fall Sharply In October – Washington Post
New U.S. housing starts in October unexpectedly fell to their lowest level in six months, weighed down by a sharp decline in construction activity for both single-family and multi-family dwellings, a government report showed on Wednesday.
The Commerce Department said housing starts dropped 10.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000 units, the lowest level since April and the percentage drop was the biggest since January. Analysts polled by Reuters had expected housing starts to rise to 600,000 units. September’s housing starts were revised upwards to 592,000 units from the previously reported 590,000 units.
Groundbreaking for single-family homes fell 6.8 percent last month to an annual rate of 476,000 units, the lowest since May. Starts for the volatile multifamily segment tumbled 34.6 percent to a 53,000 annual pace, extending the previous month’s slump.
Compared to October last year, housing starts dropped 30.7 percent.
Illegal Alien Receives Probation For 10th Violation – Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Tuesday sentenced an illegal alien to time served in jail for his 10th illegal entry into the country.
Uziel Jesus Lopez-Jiminez, 28, of Mexico has been deported nine other times between 1998 and 2007, prosecutors said. He was last deported in March, re-entered the country in May or June and was arrested in Beaver County on Aug. 16.
U.S. District Judge David Cercone sentenced Lopez-Jiminez to one year probation.
Jane Fonda: Obama Funder Jodie Evans Met With Taliban; Code Pink Gives Terrorists Direct Line To Obama – Big Government
Top Obama donor and fundraiser Jodie Evans met with the Taliban in Afghanistan on a recent trip there, according to a report by Jane Fonda of a discussion she had with Evans last month. The meeting with the Taliban took place just weeks before Evans was videotaped directly handing to President Barack Obama a package of information about her trip to Afghanistan at a high dollar fundraiser in San Francisco.
The meeting with the Taliban was kept secret by Evans and her group Code Pink in reports she and the group posted from Kabul and in interviews with the media and bloggers about the trip. Fonda, a close friend of Evans, let the secret meeting slip in an account of her dinner with Evans at a fundraiser for the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles:
Last Saturday, My dear friends Jodie Evans and Max Palevsky, invited Richard and me to join them at their table at a fundraiser at the Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood. It was a good evening for lots of reasons. I had never been to the museum and definitely want to go back. Clearly it is a courageous place, very cutting edge. Then, too, I saw lots of friends I hadn’t seen in a long time and I sat next to Jodie who told me a little about her recent trip to Afghanistan with an American delegation that included a retired colonel, and member the State Department (Army Reserves Col. (Ret.) and ex-diplomat Ann Wright). While there, she met with people ranging from the brother of President Karzai, Afghan members of Parliament, activists, to warlords and members of the Taliban (emphasis added.) Jodie is co-founder of the peace organization, Code Pink, and always willing to go to any lengths to try and find out what’s really going on. Bottom line: everyone she met with wants the U.S. Military out of their country. They feel our presence there has brought more violence rather than security. Please read a short article she wrote about the trip which is on the Women’s Media Center website.
There is precedent to suspect that Evans is acting as a conduit for the Taliban to Obama. In June, her fellow Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin hand carried a letter out of Gaza from the terrorist group Hamas addressed to Obama.
Over the seven years of its existence, Code Pink has acted as propaganda shills for the anti-American governments of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales, Cuba’s Castro brothers and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, as well as Middle Eastern terrorist groups.
Justice Delayed – Andrew C. McCarthy
Holder’s friends in the al-Qaeda bar caused the trial delays he now criticizes.
Of all the infuriating aspects of the decision to transfer five 9/11 war criminals to civilian federal court, the one that grates most is the contention that the Obama administration is finally moving forward after “eight years of delay” — as Attorney General Eric Holder put it at his Friday press conference — during which the Bush administration managed to complete only three military-commission trials.
This is chutzpah writ large. The principal reason there were so few military trials is the tireless campaign conducted by leftist lawyers to derail military tribunals by challenging them in the courts. Many of those lawyers are now working for the Obama Justice Department. That includes Holder, whose firm, Covington & Burling, volunteered its services to at least 18 of America’s enemies in lawsuits they brought against the American people. (During 2007 alone, Covington contributed more than 3,000 hours of free, top-flight legal assistance to our enemy detainees.)
Almost from the moment President Bush authorized military commissions in 2001, this legion of litigators flooded the courts with habeas corpus petitions, contending that military detention and trials violated the Constitution, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and the Geneva Conventions. In 2004, the al-Qaeda bar induced the Supreme Court, in Rasul v. Bush, to grant enemies a statutory habeas corpus right to challenge their military detention in civilian court. Congress tried to stop them by amending the habeas statute to divest the lower federal courts of jurisdiction in these lawsuits, but the al-Qaeda bar later persuaded the liberal bloc on the Court to ignore that amendment.
In 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, our enemies’ lawyers persuaded the Court’s liberal bloc to invalidate the military commissions on the ground that they had been prescribed by the president rather than by Congress. This rationale was (a) disingenuous, because Congress had implicitly approved military tribunals in the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, (b) legally untenable, inasmuch as presidentially authorized commissions have a long history in the United States, and (c) practically pointless: Since Congress already had implicitly approved the commissions, it was no surprise when it then explicitly approved the commissions in the 2006 Military Commissions Act. In terms of delay, however, the damage was done. The military commissions that had been convened up to that point — and delayed by continuous litigation — had to be started all over again under the new congressionally authorized system.
As night follows day, the al-Qaeda bar immediately went to work attacking the new commission system. Simultaneously, the terrorists’ volunteer lawyers worked to undermine Congress’s narrowing of their statutory habeas corpus rights by claiming the combatants had a constitutional right to seek civilian federal court review of their military detention. In the disastrous 2008 Boumediene v. Bush decision, the Supreme Court’s liberal bloc again went along with the leftist lawyers for the enemy. Armed with that victory, the lawyers redoubled their efforts, using the new Boumediene ruling (which only applied to detention, not to commission trials) as a basis to argue, again, that the military-commission system was invalid.
It was well into 2008 when the lower courts finally ruled that Boumediene did not invalidate the commissions. At that point, in the eleventh hour of its second term, the Bush administration was able to push ahead and get some commissions done. In the interim, however, Boumediene meant that more than 200 detainee cases were dumped on the lower federal courts with no guidance about how to proceed.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey pleaded with Congress to enact rules to make the process more orderly, but Democrats turned a deaf ear. Like the al-Qaeda bar, they wanted to maximize due-process rights for the enemy but didn’t want to be held politically responsible for doing so. What better way to thread that needle than to sit on their hands while federal judges — who are insulated from voters — made up procedural rules as they went along? At the urging of the enemies’ lawyers, those judges are treating combatant-detention hearings as if they were full-blown trials and ordering the release of trained terrorists who should be detained.
It is mind-boggling that the delay in completing commission trials would be derided by Eric Holder, a lawyer whose firm is among those responsible for the litigation-driven delay that became a lawfare triumph for al-Qaeda. Holder and his comrades did everything they could do to undermine the commission system, both in legal motions and in public appearances accusing the Bush administration of torture, war crimes, and disregard for the legal rights of terrorists.
And exactly when would Holder have had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed be tried? We did not gain custody of him until his capture by the Pakstanis in 2003. After that, years were taken to break him in our attempt to extract the full breadth of his knowledge of al-Qaeda’s players and plans, and to exploit that intelligence to save lives. KSM was submitted to a military commission in 2006 — shortly after Holder’s colleagues in the al-Qaeda bar got the commission system invalidated in Hamdan.
Yet, within two years (i.e., in less time than most civilian terrorism cases), KSM and four fellow war criminals stood ready to plead guilty and proceed to execution. But then the Obama administration blew into Washington. Want to talk about delay? Obama shut down the commission despite the jihadists’ efforts to conclude it by pleading guilty. Obama’s team permitted no movement on the case for eleven months and now has torpedoed a perfectly valid commission case — despite keeping the commission system for other cases — so that we can instead endure an incredibly expensive and burdensome civilian trial that will take years to complete.
How many years? Terrorists bombed the U.S. embassies in 1998. It took three years to bring four of them to trial. (There would have been a fifth, but the civilian system failed to detain him securely: He maimed a prison guard during an escape attempt and was never brought to trial for the bombings.) The embassy-bombing trial took seven months to complete and failed to result in death sentences for the two capital defendants. Guess when the appeal was decided? Just a few months ago — eleven years after the attacks and eight years after the trial. The convictions were upheld by the appellate court, so now we move on to the Supreme Court. Once that’s done, they’ll have a couple of years to relitigate their trial and sentences by filing habeas corpus motions.
But it’s good to hear we’re finally ending all this unseemly delay.
Oh goody! Chris Dodd has another inane idea
Senator Chris Dodd wants the Senate to overstep its Constitutional authority again. But since when did the Constitution matter to Dodd? Pundit & Pundette have the story
A bill proposed by Democratic Senator Chris Dodd would require U.S. employers to provide paid sick leave, helping workers like Rosado and hopefully slowing the spread of swine flu.
“When I don’t get paid, it wreaks havoc on our family budget,” Rosado, an education assistant from Groton, Connecticut, told a Senate subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. “Sometimes we end up having to borrow from our rent money that we set aside.
The very last thing we need is another attempt by the federal government to fix every ill, and try to ease every burden. Sorry, but this type of thing is not the proper, constitutional role of government!
Robert Stacy McCain should run Sarah Palin’s 2012 presidential campaign!
Why? Well, because advice like this is exactly what Sarah needs! Advising Palin on how to respond to the Newsweek cover showing her in shorts, McCain suggests this retort.
That this is “sexist,” OK. Gotcha. But does Sarah Palin want to assume a feminist victimhood posture, to say that she is being oppressed by the patriarchy?No, I think not. Excuse me for suggesting that the way for Palin to leverage this — to “re-brand” herself as they say — is to lean into the curve. The better response would be along the lines of:
“Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I have legs. And, yes, I’ve been told they’re very nice legs. Exactly why the editors of Newsweek decided that showing me in shorts was appropriate for the cover of their magazine is for them to explain — and good luck with that. I guess I’m trying to figure out what side of the double-standard applies here. Levi can get naked for Playgirl and still be taken seriously, but Newsweek thinks it’s something scandalous to show me in running shorts? Just wait until I grant my first in-depth foreign-policy interview to Maxim!”
Or something to that effect. The governor signifies her self-awareness that she is something of a political and cultural novelty — a conservative woman who is a viable presidential prospect. She is aware that her good looks are both an asset and a potential liability, and that liberals want to portray her as a trailer-trash airhead, the “Caribou Barbie,” etc.
She gets the joke, and she turns it back against them. Nothing disarms an attack so well as self-deprecating humor. It’s like the way Reagan joked about his own extremist reputation: “The Republican Party needs both its right wing and its far-right wing.”
To use the word “sexist” against Newsweek is to accuse enlightened liberal elitists of violating their own egalitarian standards — which is all fine and good. But “sexist” also sounds like one of those grim, humorless Women’s Studies professors ranting at a campus “Take Back the Night” rally.
Ick. Don’t go there, governor. You are a happily married Christian conservative pro-life woman who — oh, glorious coincidence! — looks good in shorts. Your husband is a certified USDA prime slice of hunkalicious beef, your son is a soldier in Bravo Company, and your daughter is a single mom with a selfish douchebag ex-boyfriend.
I like that! Unconventional, real not scrpited. So, yes, McCain for Palin campaign manager in 2012! Isn’t it about time we had a McCain who knew how to run a campaign?
Gatordoug
darcprynce
Dave C
