Obamacare unconstitutional

Federal Judge Roger Vinson issues an exhaustive 78-page ruling which states the obvious - that the ability to force American citizens to buy a product they may or may not wish to own appears nowhere among the enumerated powers granted to the federal government by the U.S. Constitution:

"'Regardless of how laudable its attempts may have been to accomplish these goals in passing the Act, Congress must operate within the bounds established by the Constitution,' the judge ruled."

And since the individual mandate to purchase insurance (the inseverable "linchpin" of this Ponzi scheme) is unlawful, the entire bill is null and void, reasons Judge Vinson.

The Obama Administration is naturally immediately appealing this ruling.  Let 'em.  The quicker this farce of a law gets up to the Supreme Court the quicker it will be struck down once and for all.


UPDATE:  pdf of full ruling is here.  On first glance, Judge Vinson makes a couple of very interesting (and accurate) observations:

"There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that --- when aggregated with similar economic decisions --- affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision that does not," 

Translation:  Just as the government can't make a person buy lots of coffee, a new TV or a bigger house in order to positively influence interstate commerce, they also can't make someone purchase health insurance, especially if pretty much the only reason for doing so is to force people to provide a benefit to others.

"It would be a radical departure from existing case law to hold that Congress can regulate inactivity under the Commerce Clause,"  (emphasis ours)

Exactly.

Even Dear Leader's own family is now beginning to question Obamacare

Dr. Milton Wolf, physician and cousin to President Obama, publicly raises the very same question we've been asking for some time now:

If Dear Leader's socialized medicine Ponzi scheme is such a great deal for everyone, then why have his closest supporters, especially unions such as the SEIU, been lining up to obtain waivers to be excused from it?

"For this administration, transparency promises last only until the teleprompter is unplugged."

Ouch.

"Our democracy cannot allow a president to exercise the unholy power of picking and choosing winners and losers, of choosing who must follow his flawed laws and who gets a free pass. If any American deserves a waiver from Obamacare, then all Americans do."

Our sentiments exactly.

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the Wildwood, New Jersey police officers who not only ticketed a man on the boardwalk there for wearing a T-shirt with the word "fuck" on it (crude and offensive to be sure, but which is in fact protected speech; see Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 [1971]) but also assaulted his companion and threatened him with arrest (along with willful destruction of his camera) for filming this farce from a respectful and non-interfering distance:



Too bad the photographer didn't stand his ground more aggressively and refuse to quit filming no matter what kind of illegal badgering he was subjected to from those wrongheaded "authorities", but we've been in that same situation and understand how nerve-racking it really is to stand up to this kind of official bullying.  He actually made it a lot longer than most people would have lasted.

It certainly appears that these cops need some serious refresher training in just what is Constitutionally-protected speech and activities (and thus perfectly legal to do) in this country.

That's all you can come up with?

"Virginia Democratic Rep. Jim Moran is blaming his party's losses last November in large part on voters who 'don't want to be governed by an African-American.'"

Moron Moran is rapidly approaching Bidenesque-levels of foot-in-mouth disease.

That statement is completely false, both here as well as everywhere else in the country save for a few blockheads leftover from the Dark Ages.  We would be ecstatic if the White House were occupied by Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Herman Cain or any other of a large group of freedom-promoting, fiscally-conservative individuals who, by the way, coincidentally happen to be black.  Our problem with the current president is solely his collectivist ideology, not his skin color.  Moran might as well accuse us of not being approving of Obama because his ears are too big.  That argument's just as silly.

"'In this case a lot of people in this country, it's my belief, don't want to be governed by an African-American, particularly one who is inclusive, who is liberal, who wants to spend money on everyone and who wants to reach out to include everyone in our society. And that's a basic philosophical clash,' Moran said." (Emphasis ours)

Well, Moran got the bold part of the quote correct in any event.  We indeed don't want Dear Leader to "spend money on everyone", mostly because it isn't his cash that he's handing out like candy in the guise of "investments" to his core supporters such as labor unions in return for votes.

Shame on the Congressman for attempting to label peoples' genuine political differences with the Democratic Party and the Obama Administration as mere race-baiting.  It does demonstrate, though, that liberals such as him have no intellectual arguments left and are thus forced to engage in such despicable behavior in a desperate attempt to salvage what's left of the tattered "Hope and Change" agenda.

Strikingly similar styles

Egypt basically shut down all Internet access to and from that country last night in an apparent last-ditch attempt to save the regime of Hosni Mubarak from being brought to an abrupt end by his long-suffering peasants.

Just four days ago, we here in America were informed of Dear Leader's wish for a similar "Internet kill switch" to be put into place for this country, one which would naturally be unconstitutionally out of the reach of any judicial oversight:

"A controversial bill handing President Obama power over privately owned computer systems during a 'national cyberemergency,' and prohibiting any review by the court system, will return this year. (Emphasis ours)

Only despots (Mubarak) or wannabe-despots (Obama) express a desire to have absolute power with no governmental check against abuse at their disposal, all because they know what's best for the rest of us.

Reading the CBS story, we learn that if this legislation passes the president could pretty much call anything he wanted a "national cyberemergency", allowing him to flip that switch and take over privately-owned communications networks with impunity without fear of sanction or repudiation from a court of law, which is pretty much dictatorial-level power.  This would leave Americans with no other recourse than to regain their electronic liberties by force.

How similar this sounds to what's going on right now in the streets of Cairo.

No wonder Joe Biden refuses to label Mubarak a dictator.  His boss aspires to have the exact same level of complete control over our country's communications in a "crisis" to be determined solely by him, with no way for citizens to legally challenge that decision.  The Vice President understandably doesn't want any of us citizens to confuse the president's agenda with that of a tinpot Third-World strongman.

Oops, too late.

Way to go again, Joe

"I would not refer to him as a dictator."

Good ol' Vice President Joe Biden, doing what he does best by running off at the mouth once again, this time about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who has autocratically ruled that country since 1981 by keeping the country in a permanent "State of Emergency" and not allowing a multiparty election until 2005, after being heavily pressured by the rest of the world to have one.

Mubarak is generally acknowledged to have fixed that election, and he definitely had the runner-up jailed for forgery after he dared to protest about the rampant vote-rigging (America complained about that, at least).  The press there is regularly muzzled, corruption is widespread and it's rumored that Mubarak's son Gamal is being groomed to take over the presidency once Hosni kicks off.  If that's not a dictatorship we'd shudder to see what a real one looks like.

Let's let Parade magazine, which regularly features Mubarak as one of the "World's Worst Dictators" (he's currently Number 20) , inform us about this man's regime from his previous mentions on that list:

"According to the U.S. State Department, Mubarak has the ability to transfer any criminal case from the civilian judicial system to a military court, and the use of torture by his officials is common.  In recent months journalists have been jailed for 'insulting the president.'" (2007 ranking)

...

"The use of torture in Egypt has been widely documented. In response to international pressure, Mubarak allowed local elections in 2008, but in 80% of the contests, his party’s candidates ran unopposed. He made it so difficult to register or campaign that turnout was estimated at only 3%." (2010 ranking)

The Egyptian people have some very real reasons to be rioting in the streets.  They want to be free.  Biden, alas, can only offer up the following mush-mouthed pap in reaction:

"Biden urged non-violence from both protesters and the government and said: 'We’re encouraging the protesters to – as they assemble, do it peacefully. And we’re encouraging the government to act responsibly and – and to try to engage in a discussion as to what the legitimate claims being made are, if they are, and try to work them out.'"

Got that?  If any of the peasants' grievances are legitimate.  As Dan Murphy of the Monitor article opines,

"Egypt's protesters, if they're paying attention to Biden at all, will certainly be wondering which of their demands thus far have been illegitimate."

Word.

We don't care how much of a "good neighbor" in the Middle East Egypt has been for us.  The U.S. should not prop up dictators as part of its foreign policy.  Period.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 44

So that if we are brutally assaulted and robbed by a bunch of feral youth who callously film the attack on us and then post the video on YouTube (along with cutesy subtitles such as "Zzzzzzzz" over the unconscious victim) like some sort of trophy,



we will be able to have at least a fighting chance of evening the odds and successfully defending ourselves against our attackers, unlike the unfortunate innocent pedestrian in this incident.

The poster of the video (presumably one of the thugs involved) has since taken it down and deleted the associated YouTube account, no doubt in fear of being tracked through the online information, but an alert person managed to grab the footage before it disappeared.

The Richmond, Virginia Police Department is asking anyone who might have information on the identities of the assailants to please contact them immediately, in order to assist them in removing these dangerous felons from their streets.

It was only a matter of time

"White House to Push Gun Control"

We're surprised it took Dear Leader this long to announce his plan to cynically exploit the Tucson shooting to attempt to further restrict the rights of law-abiding citizens.  The time lag must be because ol' Rahm ("You never want a serious crisis to go to waste") Emanuel is no longer haunting the West Wing looking for political enemies to mail dead fish to in a infantile manner, as is his wont.

Check out the following duplicity:

"Tuesday night after the speech, Obama adviser David Plouffe said to NBC News that the president would not let the moment after the Arizona shootings pass without pushing for some change in the law, to prevent another similar incident. 'It’s a very important issue, and one I know there’s going to be debate about on the Hill.'"  (all emphases ours)

Then, in the very next paragraph:

"The White House said that to avoid being accused of capitalizing on the Arizona shootings for political gain, Obama will address the gun issue in a separate speech, likely early next month."

Newspeak at its finest.  Orwell would be either proud or horrified about his prediction coming to pass, we can't tell which. 

It's still considered "capitalizing" on a tragedy, Mr. President, if you leak to the press your intention to engage in that very "capitalizing" in the very near future, but that you're holding off for a couple of weeks so that the stupid peasants will hopefully forget and move on to who else has been kicked off American Idol.

We can't imagine that Obama's dwindling supporters in Congress will be particularly eager to engage in another political suicide charge at his behest, especially now that they are still reeling from the aftereffects of passing his massively unpopular health care Ponzi scheme, but we suppose anything's possible. 

Of one thing we have no doubt - attempting to push more ineffective gun-control legislation on law-abiding Americans will do more to enrage, organize and motivate the majority of them to redouble their efforts to ensure the president's defeat in 2012 than just about anything else, so go ahead and carry on, sir.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"FACT CHECK:  Obama and his imbalanced ledger"

The Associated Press miraculously grows a pair and adds up the proposed "investments" (the new code word for endless and fruitless stimulus spending) versus spending cuts in Dear Leader's State of the Union address. 

Wonder of all wonders, the AP's analysis concludes that "The ledger did not appear to be adding up" and "Obama offered far more examples of where he would spend than where he would cut, and some of the areas he identified for savings are not certain to yield much if anything".

It's all still a con game by this master showman, but he's quickly running out of shells under which to hide the pea.  We're especially interested in seeing if he attempts to reverse his staggering record of broken promises to Americans and keep (for once) the newest in his exhaustive list, the one to veto any legislation which contains earmarks.  It's a pretty bold vow, so don't anyone hold their breaths.

This new-found desire by the major media to properly vet Obama's flowery, but ultimately empty, prose. is mildly encouraging.  It will be interesting to see if this trend continues or if it's just a one-time sop to "balance" by the overwhelmingly liberal press. 

One thing seems to be for darn sure - the bloom is definitely off Obama's rose, and the president is now just another crafty politician whose words are fair game for criticism by mere mortals.

The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week...

... is Donna, Texas police sergeant George Novelo, for his unbelievably cruel multiple pepper-spraying of an unresisting 17-year-old boy, who was already confined in a jail cell, in apparent retaliation for the suspect doing nothing more than mouthing off to the officer.



"A probable cause affidavit shows Hidalgo County Sheriff's investigators believe Novelo had no just cause to spray Donna high school student Jonathan Morales three times while he sat in jail last week."

That's patently obvious from even a casual glance at the footage.

To make matters worse, Novelo further tortured the boy (and violated police policy) by shirking his responsibility to help wash away the irritant once a suspect is under control, according to Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Trevino, to whose office the case was referred for investigation:

"'In my opinion, that is probably one of the most egregious forms of police brutality I have ever witnessed,' the sheriff said."

"Officer" Novelo has appropriately now himself been arrested and charged with assault, oppression and violating the youth's civil rights, all misdemeanors carrying a potential sentence of one year in jail and $4,000 fine each.  We trust this will be enough to bring his career in law enforcement to an abrupt and well-deserved end.

Thanks and sincere appreciation must go to Sheriff Trevino for recognizing the seriousness of this case and investigating it promptly and thoroughly, with no whitewashing of the details just because the suspect wears a badge for a living.

A fictional war

An unfortunate recent uptick of police officers being injured or killed on the job has occurred in the last few days, and now some in law enforcement who should definitely know better are apparently attempting to further their own political agendas by cynically using these incidents (as well as the recent Tucson shooting) to try and convince the public that there's some kind of coordinated attack on police officers happening:

"A spate of shooting attacks on law enforcement officers has authorities concerned about a war on cops."

These disingenuous advocates are attempting to make this argument even though the two highest profile incidents marking this very tragic toll involved cops trying to serve high-risk arrest warrants on known dangerous felony suspects.  Not exactly the "random hunting of people who wear a badge" scenario that's being put forth as fact:

'"It's not a fluke,' said Richard Roberts, spokesman for the International Union of Police Associations", describing the fluke.

"'The bad guys are not afraid of cops,' Roberts said. 'They’re rarely rational. You get that combination, when you ID yourself as a cop, it does not scare them away; it makes it more dangerous for you.'"

Based on the above statement, it appears that Roberts believes that rational, law-abiding people by default are supposed to be afraid of cops, and the fact that the bad guys aren't humbled by their arrival is what makes them so dangerous.  Incorrect.  We are perfectly rational and law-abiding, yet we don't fear cops.  Are we somehow a threat to them?  Of course not.

Violent criminals are contemptuous of all laws and mores, including those against assault, rape and murder.  That's what makes them so dangerous to everyone, not just police officers.  The rate of crimes committed against cops, although admittedly much too high, is insignificant when compared against the rate of crimes committed against other law-abiding citizens.  Why, then, should the police rate some kind of special treatment just because of a random spike in tragedies suffered by them?

Mr. Roberts is a former Maryland police officer, which to us obviously explains his "us against them" mindset, his insistence on having the general public fear cops instead of respecting them and his probable upcoming argument about the necessity of further curbs on the lawful owning and carrying of firearms by the law-abiding public.

One commenter to the article provided a compelling example of this very kind of straw-man argument being similarly used in the past to justify unilaterally taking away freedoms from those who weren't in any way responsible for the incidents that precipitated those opportunistic actions.  We felt it important enough to reprint here:

"When Hitler, upset at being forced to accept a position in a coalition government, decided that he needed to do something drastic to get the control he wanted, the Communists conveniently burned the Reichstag. Within a week, all freedoms were subject to government control and Hitler was now "Der Fuhrer". As a certain White House adviser observed, it's a crime to waste a good crisis.

Jump ahead 77 years and a US Representative gets shot by a guy so crazy that he spent the two hours before the shooting taking pics of himself posing with his gun while wearing nothing but a red G-string, and the first thing the government and media do is try to restrict the 1st Amendment, citing "political rhetoric" as the cause of the shooting. When that backfired, they predictably turned on the 2nd Amendment, as tho' the gun caused the crime. So, naturally, we should expect expanded media coverage of any gun related crime and isolated shootings suddenly become a concerted "war on the police". What can I say? We don't have a Reichstag to burn, so that's what will have to do, I suppose."

Well stated.

Facing decades of hard time for daring to record the cops in public

In an update to a story we commented on in 2009, the ACLU has lost a federal suit claiming an Illinois law is unconstitutional, and therefore two people in Chicago are going to have to face trials on felony eavesdropping charges for simply recording their interactions with police officers on a downtown street and in police headquarters, respectively, both public places with no expectation of privacy for anyone:

From a New York Times article on the developments:

"Mark Donahue, president of the [Chicago] Fraternal Order of Police, said his organization 'absolutely supports' the eavesdropping act as is and was relieved that the challenge had failed. Mr. Donahue added that allowing the audio recording of police officers while performing their duty 'can affect how an officer does his job on the street.'"

It sure can and usually does, mostly to the great benefit of those who are interacting with those street cops.  What is it the peasants are always told when they complain about the ubiquitous government surveillance cameras popping up everywhere?  "If you aren't doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to worry about".  Well, why doesn't the same standard apply as well to people who happen to wear a badge for a living?

The two defendants each face up to 15 years in prison for documenting public safety officers performing their taxpayer-funded jobs in public.  Now that hardly seems right, to say the least, but then again this is Chicago, where if you aren't "connected" in some fashion to the local Democratic political machine you are completely out of luck when it comes to fair treatment from the "authorities" there.

Your elitist, cops-are-more-important-than-everyone-else attitude towards this issue sucks, Mr. Donahue, and frankly is just another check mark on the long list of reasons for freedom-loving citizens to never visit and spend their hard-earned discretionary dollars in the corrupt cesspool of the Windy City.

You pay and then you get permission to not play, even though you wanted the game

Three locals of the SEIU (including the one from Dear Leader's power base of Chicago), whose members wanted socialized medicine so badly the union donated 28 million dollars to Obama's 2008 campaign for president, have applied for and been granted waivers from the health care Ponzi scheme:

"In September, HHS announced it would grant waivers to employers to prevent some workers from losing their benefits if the insurer could not meet new health care law’s requirements on annual limits."

In fact, of the 222 waivers granted by the Obama Administration to date, 45 (a full 20%) have been labor organizations, according to the article.

Why should these entities qualify for an exemption?  They're the ones who wanted this noxious legislation in the first place, and now they want to opt out because it's going to cost them more money, just as the opponents of Obamacare predicted?  More importantly, just what have those unlucky workers been receiving all along for their union dues besides insurance coverage crappy enough to require begging for a waiver to avoid losing even those small benefits?

Tough noogies.  Let those unions suffer the pocket-draining effects, just like everyone else has to, at least until this unconstitutional law is nullified by the Supreme Court.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Welfare Tab for Children of Illegal Immigrants Estimated At $600M in L.A. County" [Alone]

According to L.A. County Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

That figure does not include education costs, by the way, which would make the actual number even higher by another couple hundred million dollars or so.

This situation is one of the major reasons why California is utterly insolvent and is currently teetering on the unheard-of-by-a-state precipice of seeking bankruptcy protection.

The issue simply has to be promptly resolved on both the state and federal levels if any progress at all is to be made in reducing the massive debts that are being unfairly heaped upon the average citizen or legal resident.

Unbelievably special treatment for a "special" person

In another outrageous display of legal favoritism towards a person just because of what they happen to do for a living, San Antonio, Texas police officer Craig Nash has been given a single year in jail on a misdemeanor charge of "official oppression" for raping a transsexual prostitute in his custody while on duty:

"As part of a plea agreement, Nash waived an indictment last month and pleaded guilty to the misdemeanor. In exchange, prosecutors agreed not to pursue a felony charge of sexual assault by a police officer, which had a maximum sentence of life in prison."

Nauseous yet?  Hold on tight because it gets far, far worse:

"Two days after the officer's arrest, a second person came forward to say he had also been raped by the officer in 2008. As part of the plea agreement, prosecutors won't pursue the second allegation, according to court documents."

Here's an accused serial rapist with plenty enough evidence to convict him in the latest case, according to the story:

"DNA taken from a rape kit later linked Nash to the complainant, according to court records. The woman picked Nash out in a police lineup and GPS tracking of his patrol unit was consistent with what she said, documents state."

So why does "Officer" Nash get such a sweetheart deal, other than because he wore a badge at his job?  Perhaps he's got dirty pictures of someone high up there.  No, of course it's because he is was a cop. This sort of outcome happens all the time, as we've been forced to point out on multiple occasions.

This brutal thug's been coddled so much up and down the line that his boss on the force won't even summon up the guts to officially can him:

"Nash also agreed to never again seek work as a police officer in Texas. Police Chief William McManus [remember him, Minneapolis residents?  For those not in the know, he was basically run out of that town after proving his gross incompetence there as well] had indefinitely suspended Nash — the equivalent of firing him — last March and said the accusation had arrived as “a hard slap to the face” of other officers."

Suspension, however indefinite, is not the equivalent of firing, as anyone with an ounce of brains knows.  The only "hard slap" here is to the faces of the law-abiding residents of San Antonio, who no doubt would be getting a lot more punishment than a misdemeanor plea agreement had they been accused of similar crimes.

Blatant cases such as this, in which people supposedly in charge of enforcing the law get off with a relative slap on the wrist when they get caught red-handed committing serious crimes, are but one reason why the peasants are getting more and more fed up with the people who are nominally in charge of running this country, and no amount of "civil discourse" is going to change that fact.

"Nash had been a good officer and good father to six children and probation seemed appropriate, [defense attorney Alan] Brown said."

Yep, sounds like he was a fine cop.  Top of the heap.  Probably a Father of the Year candidate to boot.  It's a wonder they bothered to charge him at all.

A few of the very good ones

We regularly point out on this site when police officers and their supervisors commit wrongdoing with no official repercussions (as well as cynically abuse their authority and positions of power), so it's only fair to note when some of those same individuals do a professional and unbiased job of policing their own.

Winter Park, Florida police officer Ricardo Flores was watching detectives from that same agency unload a large amount of marijuana into the department's secured evidence area when he helped himself to a bud of the sticky icky, concealing it in his motorcycle helmet.  Another officer observed Flores's theft and reported it to Chief Gary Hester (no relation to us), who confirmed the theft with surveillance camera footage and immediately called Flores back to the station to confront him.  Flores then resigned right before Hester had him carted off to jail on burglary, theft and pot possession charges.

"Chief Hester said he wants to make sure Flores never wears a badge again.

'He forfeited that right last night,' said Hester."

Outstanding work by you and the honest and ethical officers under your command, Chief Hester (Nice name, by the way).  Thank you for providing such a stellar example that departments around the country should strive to emulate.

Happy Anniversary

It was two years ago tomorrow that Dear Leader arrogantly (and very naively) made his very first official act in office the issuing of an executive order directing the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, "no later than 1 year from the date of this order".

Needless to say, Gitmo is still open for business.  

The lack of follow-through on his part on this issue is a fairly minor detail in the grand scheme of things, but it serves to clearly demonstrate the utter lack of preparedness for, and subsequent ineffectiveness of, President Obama in the White House.

Two of the things we've been taught in our secondary education training (which, after all, is learning how to lead and motivate a group of people, albeit on a very small scale) is to never promise what you can't deliver and to always follow through with your announced actions, otherwise you will very quickly lose the respect of your students, as well as any authority over them. 

These simple lessons would no doubt have proved quite handy in the Oval Office to date.

Amusing

The leftist publisher of Harper's magazine spends years extolling the virtues of unions in general (and the United Auto Workers in particular), then gets all bent out of shape when his staff signs up to join that very same UAW:

"[John "Rick"] MacArthur contested the entire staff's right to unionize, arguing that editors and assistant editors who make up about half of the editorial team were management and thus did not qualify. Staffers couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony: The staunch defender of unions, who in a 2009 Harper's piece called the UAW 'the country’s best and traditionally most honest mass labor organization,' was now on the other side of the table as the 'worst kind of factory owner,' as one staffer put it to me." 

Poetic justice indeed.

"MacArthur recently told me in an e-mail: 'I was taken by surprise and I thought it was rude that they didn't schedule a meeting to discuss it.'"

We hate to have to break this obvious news to Mr. MacArthur, but disgruntled workers don't usually "schedule meetings" with management to announce to them their upcoming plans to certify union representation.

This incident sounds uncannily like what apparently happened some years ago when the writing staff working on liberal activist (and similar champion of unions) Michael Moore's The Awful Truth television show similarly tried to obtain union representation:

"When two of the show’s young writers, who had been given the title Associate Producer, took steps to join the Writers Guild (the powerful union for movie and TV writers), Moore took them aside. 'I’m getting a lot of heat from the union to call you guys writers and pay you under the union rules,' Eric Zicklin recounted Moore’s words for MacFarquhar. 'I don’t have the budget for that,' Moore threatened them, 'But if they keep coming down on me that’ll mean I’ll only be able to afford one of you and the other one’s gotta go.'"

How quickly these hard-line socialist media barons' warm and fuzzy feelings regarding unions change once it's their own money that's threatening to be siphoned out of their deep pockets in order to finance those lucrative union benefits, pension plans and other perks.

The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week...

... is (now former) Sarasota County, Florida Sheriff's Deputy Mark Perrin, who was fired after an investigation confirmed that he indeed cursed out a misbehaving but unresisting special-needs student, flung her across a school bus and then threatened to TASER her for good measure:



"I'll snatch your ass out of that seat."

What an appropriate way to deal with handicapped students. 

The firing of this bully is a very good start, but it's clear that Perrin's abusive behavior is outrageous enough to be deserving of further legal consequences.  If the driver or aide present on that bus had similarly abused that student in front of so many neutral eyewitnesses they would have (rightly) been immediately arrested and charged with assault.

Why, then, hasn't the same happened to Deputy Mr. Perrin?

The very real problems directly caused by unchecked illegal immigration

A faithful reader calls our attention to the story of an illegal immigrant and career troublemaker (which includes hard time in Illinois and Texas for killing people) who has been deported to Mexico at least three times (but not after his manslaughter and murder convictions, oddly enough), yet somehow manages to still be here in this country causing mayhem, most recently in Minnesota for a large amount of such lovely offenses as felony assault, indecent exposure and DWI.

"Federal and local officials acknowledge that they don't know why he's been allowed to stay despite so many run-ins with the law."

(Duh, don't ask us.  We're instead far too busy busting law-abiding people for such "crimes" as haplessly ending up in New Jersey with their checked luggage [which included properly-declared firearms and ammunition] after their airline strands them there.  The traveler, Greg Revell, spent ten days in jail after simply trying to check his bags back in at the Newark airport the next morning. 

The Supreme Court has decreed that Revell may not sue the Port Authority over the incident.  Lesson learned - don't accept your luggage from baggage claim if you're not at your proper destination, but instead let the airlines handle the issue.  And stay out of New Jersey at all costs.  They don't deserve your vacation dollars.)

Anyway, back to the matter at hand.  Mario Montalban-Ramirez has now finally been federally charged with illegal entry after deportation and he faces up to 20 years in prison for his decades of thumbing his nose at American society.  Just imagine the sheer amount of nonsense that would have been avoided had he been so charged for his being here unlawfully back in 1997 and 2003, the last two times he was tossed out of the country.

We reiterate - the vast majority of illegal immigrants do not commit crimes on the level of murder, assault and serial DWI.  But this one has (and shows no signs of ever stopping) without much at all in the way of sanction, and his case illustrates that our "leaders" need to take the vexing problem of illegal immigration much more seriously than they have to date. 

Until we get a handle on our sieve-like border and identify and figure out a way to return to their home countries the people who jumped the line and are already here in violation of our laws, irritating societal warts like Montalban-Ramirez will continue to come here to prey upon and injure innocent citizens and legal residents.  Demand your representatives fix the problem.

Freudian

British Prime Minister David Cameron, discussing that country's desperate need for yet another "reform" of their bottomless pit of a socialized medicine scheme, calls the National Health Service "second rate" on a BBC radio show, then immediately tries to change his comment to "second best", as if the clarification really matters. 

We think Mr. Cameron had it pretty well nailed on his first attempt to describe the bankrupt debacle they've got going over there, .

Second best to what, by the way?  The U.S., no doubt, at least until Dear Leader's own Ponzi scheme drops us to somewhere between Romania and Papua New Guinea in quality.

PM Cameron's take on what it's going to take to fix the system, which is costing the subjects there over 158 billion dollars (U.S.) a year for the "privilege" of long waits for access and substandard care?

"'We need modernisation, on both sides of the equation. Modernisation to do something about the demand for healthcare, which is about public health.'

'And modernisation to make the supply of healthcare more efficient, which is about opening up the system, being competitive and cutting out waste and bureaucracy."  (emphasis ours)

Wouldn't the logical endpoint of such reforms be... privatization?  Which we in America already have, along with what is universally recognized as the best health care in the world.  So why should our country suffer through the exact same 60-year failed experiment that England is presumably getting ready to mercifully end?

It's not a beautiful day in the old neighborhood

Prince George's County, Maryland, where we lived until we were 25, has now had 13 homicides so far in 2011, a higher fatality rate than the 12 military casualties in Afghanistan this year to date.

To be fair, one of the county's fatalities has been ruled justified:

"A 30-year-old was shot and killed Tuesday by a homeowner while trying to break into the owner's New Carrollton residence."

Another successful firearm usage that the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center refuse to acknowledge happen on a daily basis in America, even in virulently anti-gun states such as this one.

We remind everyone that Maryland is a "may-issue" state with the State Police enjoying sole discretion over the issuance of handgun carry permits, which generally means (with rare exceptions such as documented death threats, and even then it's a complete crapshoot) that someone who applies for such a permit "may-not" have one.

This tightfisted policy of always saying "no" to permit applicants ensures that it's certainly not law-abiding citizens who are running around shooting each other but rather criminals, gangbangers and other thugs, all lawbreakers who by definition would have gone right ahead and obtained firearms by any available means despite the many, many laws in place to supposedly prevent them from doing so.  Remind us again just how those draconian laws keeping guns out of the hands of decent people are helping to reduce crime, Maryland pols?

The situation has gotten so bad there that panicked PG County officials have now requested "help" from federal agencies and other local departments and have begun highly-visible saturation patrols as a show of force, with the following infuriating (and sadly all-too-predictable) results:

"Some residents tell 9NEWS NOW that the increased police patrols following the murder spike in Prince George's County has led to some questionable activity. 

'The yanked me out of the car, put a knee on my back, and checked my rectum several times,' said a 20 year old man who did not want to use his name."

...

"State's Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said, 'In these cases, sometimes these things happen even if we don't want them to happen and it might be a matter of training.'"

Because, you know, cops need to be taught that it's not good police technique to (allegedly) perform multiple cavity searches on a suspect (whom the story doesn't report ever being charged with a crime) right on the side of the road.

Good luck stemming the current tidal wave of crime, Maryland and especially P.G. County.  We long ago left your high taxes, Nanny-state policies and freedom-choking gun laws behind to avoid this exact scenario.  We're truly sorry to observe that what we saw coming almost two decades ago has finally come to pass, and that a small minority of career troublemakers now has the rest of the sheep-like populace trembling with fear and begging the authorities, who have lost complete control of the situation, to make it stop. 

We wouldn't move back to that county for any reason on Earth.

They doth protest too much

Markos Krugman has started up a blog devoted to collecting and displaying the voluminous evidence that it's the left side of the political aisle which is in fact guilty of creating the "climate of hate" they've been screeching about for over a week now. 

We can see right now we're going to be regular visitors to the site.

(thanks to Billy Beck for the heads-up)

Free speech must be curbed to protect free speech

UK Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins, writing about Dear Leader's speech on the Tucson tragedy, deplores the fact that Americans have and regularly use their natural right of free speech mostly unconstrained by government regulation (what this has to do with a paranoid schizophrenic finally erupting at a perceived enemy we have no clue at all, since there's not an ounce of proof that Loughner was influenced even a little by political speech from either side) and begs "the handsome one" (oh, please) to do something about it.  He then hypocritically dives right ahead and gets in a little printed-word bashing of his own:


"Foreigners are always surprised by the US's capacity to speak right but somehow not do it"



Americans are always the clueless idiots of the world, aren't we, at least until the elite nations that are always putting us down once again need bailing out or rescuing.


"Washington must contain more wisdom and talent than anywhere on earth"


That statement right there proves without a doubt that Jenkins knows absolutely nothing about the United States.

Mr. Jenkins goes on to accomplish the impressive feat of  reversing the course of his argument in the middle of a column by complaining that Britain's 2003 Communications Act as well as the BBC code of practice on balance are too "authoritarian" for his sensibilities.  He then immediately doubles right back and somehow wants us to swallow such nonsensical bromides as "Freedom can only flourish in a climate of discipline" and "Free speech cannot exist without chains". 

Maybe for you, pal, but we'll take our natural rights such as free speech and self-defense unrestricted by meddling autocrats, thank you very much.  We've seen what happens all too often when those in charge decide that the peasants are grumbling just a little too loudly about the policies being put into place for their supposed "benefit".

We suppose we shouldn't be particularly surprised at Mr. Jenkins's position, though, since his ridiculous statements are coming from a subject, not a free citizen.  Judging from the many dissenting comments his piece has garnered from fellow Brits, though, we have hope that the common peasants there are finally starting to realize just how many of their rights and freedoms they have given up over the past five decades or so, and are beginning to want them restored.




UPDATE:  The winning comment on the Guardian's site comes from reader SpeaksForBoskone:

"One cannot shout fire in a crowded theatre"

You should, if there's a fire. And there is.

Amen.

It's far too complex an issue for him to wrap his talking head around

Former news "icon" Tom Brokaw displays his elite liberal bias while cluelessly expounding upon a topic about which he apparently knows absolutely nothing:

"Gun control is too simple a phrase to define all the complications and nuances of it, frankly. In Arizona they have a wide open system. I would be nervous about going into a bar or restaurant in Arizona on a Saturday night where people can carry concealed without permits"

Mr. Brokaw presumably wouldn't bat an eye about going into the bar at a fancy ski resort in tony Vermont, which has the exact same "wide open system" and always has.

We imagine he would also quite look forward to a relaxing evening in a restaurant after a day of his beloved fly-fishing in, say, Alaska, which has the exact same "wide open system".

It certainly can be quite the arduous ordeal to take all of ten minutes to grasp the "complications and nuances" of this particular subject, so we certainly understand why this supposedly competent professional newsman doesn't even bother to try.

Big Brother North decides (after 30 years) that a hit song is now unacceptable

The same sort of moral police who are currently rewriting Huckleberry Finn to avoid traumatizing any of America's precious little snowflakes have also been quite busy in the the junior Nanny state to our immediate north.

The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (based on the complaint of one listener) has declared "Money for Nothing", the hit song by the British band Dire Straits, to be offensive because of three uses of the word "faggot" (in a sarcastic and ironic manner, not a demeaning one) and the tune will henceforth be banned from radioplay in Canada.

(The song came out in 1985, by the way, and was a  #1 hit in Canada at the time.  Where was the CBSC then?)

To their credit, several radio stations there are planning to play the tune non-stop in protest.

Remember back in the mid-80's when this song came out?  Tipper Gore and her shameful gaggle of Washington wives who were bored of tennis and long lunches were at that time attempting to similarly censor music lyrics in this country.  Ah, good times, good times.  

Reason and logic win the debate, as they always do

Our very good friend and fellow gun-rights activist Andrew Rothman was a featured guest on a Twin Cities newscast last night, and he did a fantastic job of taking the head of a local gun-control advocacy organization to school:

Who Needs a Glock and 33-Round Magazine?: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

True story from back in the day, we were there - Andrew participated in a debate with Ms. Martens on the campus of the University of Minnesota in 2006.  Upwards of 40 armed carry permit holders besides ourselves were in the audience, no doubt making the venue the safest college classroom in America that evening.

Heather, despite her oft-professed irrational fear of being in a room with icky and swoon-inducingly dangerous publicly-carried loaded firearms, saw no problem with having her husband and three-year-old daughter present in that very same audience.

One of two things must have been true that night - either she simply didn't give a fig about her family's safety (vanishingly unlikely) or she knew full well that she and her loved ones had nothing whatsoever to fear from those law-abiding citizens. 

"When someone comes with malice in their heart and evil in their heart, to do that evil the tool isn't really relevant."

Well said, Andrew.  Very well said indeed.

A very keen observation

Rob Doar points out that the media's gotten some facts completely wrong (no doubt a first for them) and that accused Tucson shooter Jared Loughner did not legally purchase his pistol.  In fact, Loughner became a felon the second he lied on his firearm purchase form about not being a user of unlawful drugs, the very thing that had disqualified him from military service when he admitted that use to recruiters.

Criminals and the mentally ill don't obey laws.  Passing wheelbarrows full of more and more legislation won't make a bit of difference to them, but will only serve to further hinder the freedoms of law-abiding people.

Can't get much clearer than that.



UPDATE:  Oleg Volk, photographer extraordinaire, weighs in with much the same sentiment:

"Why bans on weapons cannot stop psychopaths.
During the Clinton ban of 1994-2004, magazines holding over 10 rounds became quite expensive. A jump from $15 to $120 wasn't unusual. Imagine a ban so sweeping that every gun, magazine and cartridge costs 20 times more than before. Who would be able to afford that?

The law-abiding people will not, as they also have to pay for food, shelter and other normal expenses. The criminals can, with difficulty, as they can treat arming up as a business expense -- and won't need quite as much weaponry to dominate the disarmed public. The deranged, murderous psychopaths will be able to afford the arms and ammo easily -- precisely because they are deranged. A person who expects to murder dozens and to die in the process or be imprisoned thereafter or -- more than likely has not even given a thought to the outcome at all -- doesn't worry about the credit card bill that will come due after the massacre. The mass murder episode is literally the last thing they plan to do in life and cost is no object.

A psycho murderer can devote all his resources -- and all his credit -- to the task of arming up. The price of ammunition is not a concern for such people. If the guns aren't merely expensive but also illegal -- again, in for a penny, in for a pound. A person who intends to murder is hardly worried about liability for statutory transgressions. His law-abiding victims on the other hand are very concerned about breaking the law and so remain unarmed and vulnerable...more vulnerable than if they could arm themselves for self-protection."


Oleg's one of the best visual artists we've ever seen , and his work is the living embodiment of "a picture is worth a thousand words".  Visit his website to view all manner of awesome photos.

Our border sure is secure with people like this on the job

Here's about when everyone should pretty much throw up their hands in frustration:

"Investigators who searched the Imperial Beach home of a U.S. Border Patrol agent said they found an undocumented man in a hidden room along with evidence of drug dealing."

We don't pretend to know what the answer to the border morass is, but we're pretty sure what's in place right now isn't it.

On a side note to the story,

"'It looked like a movie. It was a big scene,' said neighbor Daniel Lazo. 'Seems impossible. They were everywhere.' 

"'They went inside every house,' Lazo said. 'We couldn't get out. It was crazy.'"  (Emphasis ours)

The Feds on those crack SWAT teams better had had search warrants for every one of the private residences they so cavalierly "went inside" or else they need to be hauled up on charges for unlawfully detaining and searching those innocent neighbors' properties and persons.

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 43

So that if we're innocently minding our own business while jogging down the street we are attacked by a feral youth we will be able to successfully defend ourselves, just like Tampa, Florida resident Thomas Baker did last November.

Baker's shooting of Carlos Mustelier, 18, has been ruled justified by local prosecutors:

"Prosecutors say Florida's "stand-your-ground" law was a factor in their decision. The law, passed in 2005, gives people the right to use deadly force as long as they "reasonably believe" it is necessary to stop another person from hurting them.

Baker told police he reached for his gun when the teen punched him in the face. Baker has a concealed weapons permit."

We would certainly agree with the concept that being randomly slugged in the kisser constitutes a reasonable belief that one is going to experience death or great bodily harm.  This is the proper call by the DA's office.

This is just one more example of the saving of lives and/or prevention of violent crime that happens on a daily basis by the successful use or display of firearms, even though the Fantasyland inhabitants of the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center keep insisting these sorts of incidents never ever happen.  

They mustn't get out much.

A very reasonable court ruling

Lee Paige, the DEA agent who in 2004 arrogantly informed a classroom full of schoolchildren that he was the "only one in the room professional enough" to handle his Glock 22 service pistol and then promptly shot himself in the leg, has lost his lawsuit against the agency alleging "emotional and mental pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, loss of reputation, loss of opportunity, loss of money, embarrassment, humiliation and anxiety" from the video's apparently being posted to YouTube by someone else in that organization.



Because, you see, making that decision to pull his Glock's trigger in public was all the DEA's fault, not his alone.

The good people at the MN Carry Forum have been having a grand old time dissecting Paige's apparently self-prepared lawsuit and have brought up several very good points.  We found a couple more to add as well:

1.  "Paige claimed DEA officials made him a "target of jokes, derision, ridicule, and disparaging comments," ruining his career as an undercover agent and motivational speaker,"

How can one simultaneously pursue both careers?  They would seem to be completely incongruous with each other.

2.  "For example, Mr. Paige spent a substantial part of his career at the DEA working in an undercover capacity and was once regarded as one of the best undercover agents, if not the best, in the DEA. On at least seven occasions he was subjected to armed confrontations and had to be rescued by other agents on two of these occasions."

Having to be bailed out by one's coworkers on mulitple occasions wouldn't seem to be the most direct path to fame and fortune as a federal agent, but what do we know?

3.  "He also served as a member of the Bahamas National Drug Council/Coalition for a drug-free Bahamas with whom he organized numerous drug-prevention prog [sic]"

"Jimmy Kimbel [sic] Live"

You might want to utilize the spell-checker before you file documents with the court, Mr. Paige.  We certainly hope your applications for search warrants were proofread a little better than this.

4.  "Seconds after Mr. Paige warned the children that he was the only person that he knew of in the room professional enough of to carry the firearm, the firearm accidentally discharged, wounding Mr.Paige."

Yes, that nasty headstrong firearm discharged all by itself.  Must have been static electricity in the humid Florida air.  That wasn't an "accidental" discharge, Mr. Paige.  It was a "negligent" one. 

5.  "Shortly after the accidental discharge, the videotape, which was the only video and audio recording of the accidental discharge, was turned over to the DEA. Later, the videotape was returned to the person who had made the videotape, but the video and audio portions of the accidental discharge had been removed from the videotape by the DEA."

Why did the agency do that?  Wouldn't the erasure of data from a person's private property constitute either evidence-tampering or unlawful destruction?  The DEA presumably had no right to censor the footage, as they can't credibly claim that Mr. Paige was engaged in undercover activities at the time of his boo-boo.  The DEA T-shirt and tactical leg holster kind of give him away.

6.  "Typically, the videotape of the accidental discharge has been broadcast, presented or disclosed to others for purposes of amusement and to demean and to ridicule Mr. Paige, especially in light of the accidental discharge occurring at virtually the same time that Mr. Paige told his audience that he was the only person in the room sufficiently professional enough to carry the firearm."

That sounds pretty accurate to us.  What's your point, Mr. Paige?

7.  "As a result of the notoriety arising from the disclosure of the videotape, Mr. Paige is no longer permitted or able to give educational motivational speeches and presentations."

Because parents don't want their kids to be shot by an incompetent boob.  We would certainly clear the area if we saw you standing there with a pistol in your hand.


Mr. Paige is now free to concentrate on his public service career, which now hopefully consists of a desk job in order to minimize his opportunities to endanger the public.

The exploiting ghouls are coming out in force

Never let a crisis go to waste, as Democratic hack Rahm Emanuel is so fond of saying.


1.  U.S. Representative Carolyn McCarthy, D (ancing with glee among the still-warm bodies)-NY, announced barely 24 hours after the tragedy in Tucson that she will be introducing new gun control legislation as early as today which is designed to ban high-capacity firearm magazines.

Since legislation usually takes, you know, time to prepare, it's obvious that McCarthy had already drawn up her dream law and was just waiting for a convenient tragedy such as this to heartlessly exploit.

As always, whenever we discuss Ms. McCarthy's actions we have to display the video clip in which Tucker Carlson asks a simple question that lets her self-demonstrate that she has absolutely no clue about what she wishes to make illegal, which are mostly cosmetic firearm features she apparently wishes to outlaw merely because they offend her sensibilities:



You make us sick, ma'am.  Oh, we're sorry, is that "hate speech" because it's unflattering to you?  Tough.

UPDATE:  The Violence Policy Center, one of the odious gun-banning organizations salivating over the opportunity to capitalize on this horrific event, comes right out and admits that timing is everything when it comes to ramming through overreacting, freedom-killing legislation before the victims are even buried:

"'In the wake of these kind of incidents, the trick is to move quickly,' said Kristen Rand, legislative director of the Violence Policy Center, one of the gun control groups working with McCarthy's office."

We don't know how you live with yourself, Ms. Rand.  You are a truly pathetic example of humanity.


2.  McCarthy's House colleague, Rep. Robert Brady, D-PA, has also vowed that he is going to sponsor a law "that would make it a crime for anyone to use language or symbols that could be seen as threatening or violent against a federal official, including a member of Congress".

Putting aside the First Amendment implications for a moment (this law would apparently criminalize someone innocently saying that a politician "needs to be taken out in the next election") this law would create a special protected class of people who would rate extra-special treatment, which completely flies in the face of our nation's concept of equal treatment under the law.

Besides, four of the six victims of the Tucson madman weren't "Federal officials" and one of the two who was seemingly wasn't targeted and unfortunately was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  So why is this incident such a clear example of the need to somehow further give government officials a special exalted status that differs markedly from the peasants they purport to represent?


3.  Some liberal "movement" calling itself Credo Action is presuming to lecture Sarah Palin that "violent actions have consequences", even though they admit right up front in their little manifesto that "We do not know why the shooter targeted Rep. Giffords. Sarah Palin did not arm him or pull the trigger. We do not know if the shooter admired, loathed or ignored Sarah Palin."

Well, until they do know and actually have some facts with to smear Palin, we politely suggest that these activists shut their annoying pie-holes.

We didn't hear groups such as these emotionally decrying the "violent actions" of the LEFT when, say, a figure representing Ms. Palin was hung in effigy from a noose in West Hollywood on Halloween 2008.  Nope, speech is apparently only hateful when it comes from the right (or can somehow be accused of coming from the right even without a shred of proof, as in this example).

These sorts of cretins, both elected officials and activists, who immediately attempt to turn a genuine tragedy into a vehicle to further their own plans should be mortally ashamed of themselves.  They won't be, though, because these cynical opportunists are so thoroughly convinced of their moral superiority that they can justify to themselves using any means, even the deaths of innocents, to further their political agendas.

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

"Polygamist Pummeled by Wives for Planning Fifth Marriage"

This is one reason why we have always considered the optimum number of wives to be either one or none.

The Jack-Booted Thug(s) of the Week...

... are the Gatineau, Quebec Police Department, for conducting a dangerous guns-drawn drug raid on the home of local resident Oliver MacQuat based on no evidence whatsoever other than the cops becoming aware of some kind of vague odor at the address, which the officers apparently thought was from a marijuana grow operation but instead turned out to be emanating from a skunk that lives under the house's front porch: 

"Gatineau police refused to call the raid a mistake Friday, telling CBC News they had reasonable grounds to conduct a search."

Of course they won't apologize.  Some police departments are convinced that they never make mistakes.

This ludicrous situation would be laughable if so many innocent people weren't killed every year when sloppy, lazy or power-abusing cops make such mistaken "no-knock" raids in the failed War on Drugs.

By the way, a justifiably furious Mr. MacQuat is still waiting for those "reasonable grounds" to be presented to him, officers.

Quit reflexively blaming people with whom you don't agree for events they had nothing to do with

Fantasy writer Larry Correia (full disclosure: we are Facebook friends with him and often correspond back and forth, especially on firearm-related topics) pretty much says it all when it comes to the shameless hypocrisy of the opportunists (Jane Fonda, for one execrable example, but lots of people in the liberal-dominated major media are currently piling on as well) who immediately tried to politicize yesterday's tragic shooting in Tucson by attempting to blame such diverse uninvolved people as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Tea Party activists for somehow mysteriously influencing the alleged shooter, a person described as a disturbed leftist druggie by one of his high-school friends, a self-labeled liberal herself:

"It is time to help out my racist/hick/red-state/hate-monger readership again. Some of you have been confused by the media coverage of yesterday’s tragic shooting. As a “wise Latino” who understands the media, let me help you:

A left-wing, Communist Manifesto reading, schizophrenic, nut-bar, dirt bag that posts obviously deranged YouTube videos about mind control, who has no association with the Tea Party, shoots a congresswoman = SARAH PALIN IS EVIL

Yes, that can be confusing. I know. Bear with me. Remember the last time we went over this kind of thing:

A Muslim in the US Army, after preaching Jihad and corresponding with Al Queda in Yemen, goes on a shooting rampage while screaming “Allah Akbar” = NOT TERRORISM

Clear?"

Please go read Correia's entire post.  It's an absolute masterpiece, and we can't think of a single thing to add to it.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"White House defends Obama's Senate vote against Raising Debt Ceiling But Warns of Catastrophe if GOP Doesn't Raise Debt Ceiling"

CNSNews wryly chronicles that Dear Leader had a very different take on such a dumb financial strategy when he was a minor backbencher Senator a few years ago, which of course was before his administration and his Democrat minions who ran the last Congress saddled the country with more debt (3.22 trillion dollars) in the last two years than all of the other Presidents and Congresses combined: 

'"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,' Obama said on March 16, 2006. 'Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit.'"

So it was not OK then, but perfectly fine now, to burden future generations in such a manner?  Do as I say, not as I do, huh?

Heck of a "leadership" style there, sir.  What wealth of experience prepared you to do such a bang-up job of being Chief Executive again?  Oh, that's right, nothing.

And that utter lack of preparedness sure is showing these days, to our nation's ultimate detriment.

Begging the Nanny State for permission to serve their customers

The British government is graciously changing one of the many ridiculous rules controlling the subjects over there, and to that end will now begin "allowing" pubs to sell beer in quantities other than strictly pints and half-pints:

"At the moment, pubs and restaurants are limited to selling alcoholic drinks in certain measures, but the government wants to introduce a new range in response to changing trade practices and consumer tastes."

Instead of just letting the marketplace decide, which is what it would have done long ago if not for the Crown's irritating meddling.  Why is it that government's business if a customer wants to buy, and a bar wishes to sell, beer in schooners (2/3 of a pint, the amount being considered), or martini glasses, or even eyedroppers for that matter?

"'We have listened to consumers and businesses. They have called for fixed quantities to be kept but with greater flexibility. That is what this change will deliver,' Science minister David Willetts said in a statement.

'We are freeing businesses so they can innovate and create new products to meet the demands of their customers.'"

Imagine that.  A bureaucracy getting out of the way and allowing a free and open marketplace, instead of artificially hamstringing such endeavors.  There may be hope for those Limeys yet.

And how does being a "Science Minister" qualify one to make decisions about selling booze, anyway?

That can't be good

The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department has asked the FBI to assist with a criminal investigation of its SCORE Unit, which is that agency's version of the masked tactical ninja squad:

"Police Chief Rick Armstrong initiated the investigation and, in addition to the FBI, requested help from the Wyandotte County district attorney’s office and the U.S. attorney’s office."

Good for Chief Armstrong for being so proactive in rooting out and quickly dealing with the bad apples in his department.

"According to KCTV 5 reporter Jeanene Kiesling, several members of that unit were being questioned after conducting a search of a home in Kansas City, Kan., on Tuesday. As many as six officers were taken into custody, the station reported."

Members of these sorts of units are usually touted as being "cream of the crop" officers, which is why they are touted as the only ones "professional" enough to be equipped with weapons that ordinary peasants are barred from owning.  Gee, what a surprise to find out they're no better or worse than the rest of us.

It'll be very interesting to find out just what these particular cops were up to that necessitated such drastic action on the part of the chief.

Off topic but interesting, at least to me

Check out the obituary of Nathalia Bucan and marvel at what an amazing life she led in her 100 years.

Now that was a woman.

The Jack-Booted Thug of the Week...

... is off-duty (but working a side security job at a gas station in full uniform, so this counts) St. Louis, Missouri police officer Dustin Ries, who was caught on video giving a little "tune-up", a minor "attitude adjustment" if you will, to an allegedly drunk person who apparently rudely told the cop to "shut up" (warning - foul language):



Beaten with a baton seven times and pepper-sprayed to boot, all for the horrendous crimes of being drunk and mouthy.  All Ries needed to do was TASER the man as well and the uniformed thug would have completed the brutality trifecta.  And shame on those eyewitnesses for standing around and doing nothing while this was going on.  The victim may be a foul-mouthed jerk worthy of arrest but he surely didn't deserve that kind of beating.

Interestingly, the above video has already been deleted once from YouTube because someone made a claim to the service that the footage "violated the company's policy of showing 'shocking and disgusting content'".  We wonder who put in that little complaint *cough cough St. Louis Police brass cough*.  Now that it has gone viral, though, we are confident it won't be disappearing again anytime soon.

This isn't the first time "Officer" Ries has been caught abusing the peasants with his little toys, either:

"Ries has previously been named in two lawsuits accusing him of excessive force.

A 2008 federal suit alleged that Ries assaulted two men with his police baton and pepper spray while he was working off-duty at the Big Bang piano bar on Laclede's Landing in April 2006.  Al Johnson,a Clayton attorney for the plaintiffs, said his clients were initially charged with assault but the charges were later dropped.  The lawsuit was settled out of court, and Johnson said he was barred from disclosing the amount.

'I'm glad he got caught this time, maybe enough to where the police department can fire him,' Johnson said of Ries.

A 2005 civil suit in St. Louis alleged that Ries struck a man on the head with his baton and sprayed him with pepper spray in an on-duty traffic stop on North Grand Boulevard in September 2004.  Records show that case was dismissed; it was unclear Tuesday whether a settlement was reached."

Ries has now been yanked off the streets and an internal investigation has been launched, according to the above Post-Dispatch article.  We echo lawyer Johnson's sentiments - hopefully now that Ries's abusive ways have been indelibly caught on film he will finally be cashiered from the force and barred from ever holding a position of authority again, since he has such a clear record of abusing such power.


And people wonder why photography activists like Carlos Miller fight so hard to uphold and ensure their right to film law-enforcement officers going about their duties in public.

A must read

Victor Davis Hanson takes a multi-week field trip to observe firsthand the wreckage of his once-great home state of California, and the journey leaves him with several insightful (and poignant) observations.  Here's just one of them:

"Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program’s sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth? "

If you read nothing else this week at least check out Hanson's entire piece.

The old saying goes something like "As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation".  If that maxim is indeed true then we as a country are in big trouble indeed.

They must have slept through literature class in high school

Bike Bubba has the best take we've seen on the meddling doofuses who have taken it upon themselves to censor all the "offensive" words out of an upcoming edition of Huckleberry Finn.  Words that are crucial, by the way, to the book's central theme of Huck coming to understand and appreciate the humanity of the put-upon Jim, as well as being an indicative history of the racial strife of that period.

How are people supposed to learn from (as well as not repeat) the mistakes of the past once they've been whitewashed (pun intended) out of existence?

Are we going to see these self-appointed guardians of America's precious little snowflakes call out Alex Haley's Roots as next in line for evisceration, since after all that Pulitzer Prize-winning tome contains the exact same words (and on many more occasions, as well as graphic depictions of racism and slavery)?  Or are these moral arbiters of free speech going to state with a straight face that it's perfectly OK to use those words in the latter instance because Roots was written by a black man?

Why I carry a handgun for protection, Vol. 42

So that if a drunken career criminal breaks into our home and threatens us and our loved ones we will be able to successfully defend ourselves against the threat, just like a Minnesota judge did early on New Year's Day in yet another one of those nonexistent cases that the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center insist just never happen. 

"Sixth Judicial District Judge Shaun Floerke intercepted a 26-year-old Duluth man who entered his home by breaking a window about 3 a.m. Saturday."

A 26-year-old man who already has had more than 20 brushes with the law, according to the story.  His extensive criminal record appears to be unrelated in any way to Judge Floerke which means, scarily, that this apparently was a random home invasion that could have happened to anyone in that neighborhood. 

Kudos to His Honor for taking such prompt action to protect himself, his wife and their five minor children, all of whom were sleeping in the home at the time.  Judge Floerke also showed admirable restraint in merely detaining the suspect for the police instead of using deadly force, which in a majority of states he most likely had the legal right to employ.

A word to the wise, anti-gun activists - if this sort of random street crime can happen to no less than a judge then it can happen to anyone else, you included.  Quit bleating about how rare this sort of invasion is; we now know at least one jurist who will beg to disagree.

Setting new records for glibness

The New York Times is reporting that Dear Leader's legal minions are actually weighing whether or not to recommend that he issue a "signing statement" asserting that he doesn't have to abide by the terms of a just-passed (by a Democratic-controlled Congress, mind you) defense bill, at least when it comes to restricting the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay.

This is an amazing about-face from a person who (very justifiably, in our view) complained so vociferously during his 2008 campaign about President George W. Bush's excessive use of those very same signing statements, and who unequivocally vowed not to use them himself for any reason.  Let's fire up the wayback machine and let the man definitively tell you so himself:


 

How, then, can that course of action be on the table enough to justify even having such an internal debate?

The President's demonstrated ability to completely ignore so many of the flowery promises he so clearly stated barely two years ago is nothing short of astounding. 

Regulation Whack-a-Mole

Jeffrey Anderson of The Weekly Standard reported the other week on a new rule concerning Obamacare (a 347-page, 118,072-word "rule".  That's one heck of a regulation)  that had been posted online for a comment period, as required by law. 

As soon as he did, though, the link went dead and Anderson could no longer find mention of the rule anywhere online.  Coincidence?  Possibly.  Switching Internet locations willy-nilly without leaving a forwarding link surely isn't "transparency", though.

Well, the mysterious vanishing document has finally reappeared here.  Just try to wade through it.  We guarantee your eyes will cross inside of 5 minutes. 

Bureaucratic legalese measured by the pound such as this undecipherable "rule", which Anderson points out by itself is 15 times longer than the Constitution, is but one example of how your health care is going to be run under the auspices of Dear Leader's minions. 

Don't get sick.

From the Department of Glaringly Obvious Headlines

"Greece plans border fence to keep out illegal immigrants"

Mostly people of Middle Eastern origin trying to enter E.U. nations via Greece's border with Turkey.

Does this necessary step (we've been to Greece and seen firsthand the illegal immigration problem that exists in that country, mainly in Athens) mean Europeans are now going to label themselves "racists" for taking the necessary steps to protect their sovereign borders?