Mark Tapscott

Lou Dobbs on The Kudlow Report tonight

Former CNN anchor and program host Lou Dobbs will be grilled tonight by Larry Kudlow on CNBC at 7:00 pm EST to discuss the economy, interest rates, immigration, TARP, health care reform, his recent departure from the original cable news channel and who knows what else. More details here....

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Survey finds only 43 percent would re-elect Obama now

Only 43 percent of voters surveyed by the Zogby/O'Leary Poll would vote for President Obama less than a year after he was elected, or about the same level of support President Clinton won in 1992 in a three-way race with the first President Bush and former EDS executive and national political gadfly Ross Perot. Perhaps even more worrisome for the president is that only 37 percent of independents queried in the survey said they would support Obama. That figure appears to be consistent with exit polling following the Virginia and New Jersey governorship races which indicated a seismic shift among independents away from Obama and to Republican candidates Bob McDonnell and Chris...

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Obama to weed out Bush political appointees who careered in; Establishes new political test for career jobs UPDATED!

John Berry, President Obama's director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), has issued a new directive that is clearly designed to weed out any Bush administration political appointees who "careered-into" the civil service. The directive also effectively establishes a partisan political factor in hiring for career civil service positions in the federal bureaucracy. Berry's agency oversees the federal government's 1.9 million career civil servants. The OPM was created during the Carter administration to replace the old Civil Service Commission, which was once headed by Teddy Roosevelt in his pre-White House days. The career service was intended to end the spoils...

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DeMint, Coburn, Hutchinson, Brownback introduce term limits constitutional amendment

Four Republican senators have introduced a constitutional amendment to limit senators to no more than two six-year terms in office, and representatives no more than three two-year terms. To become law, the amendment must be approved by two-thirds majorities of both the Senate and House, and by three-fourths of the states. Senators Jim DeMint, South Carolina, Tom Coburn, Oklahoma, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Texas, and Sam Brownback, Kansas, are the co-sponsors. The 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution limits presidents to no more than two terms in office. Fifteen states have term limits for various officials, as do many local governments across the country. DeMint said the amendment is...

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Pelosi was for three-day "read the bill" rule before she forgot it on Obamacare

There are two ways to view this video of a 2005 floor speech by then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, condemning Republican leaders for not allowing members three days to read "a bill of thousands of pages" before voting on it. The video is posted on Breitbart TV and is well worth watching in the aftermath of Speaker Pelosi's legislative blitzkreig of the past week to gain passage of her version of Obamacare at all costs. It was done with not even a token nod in the direction of allowing the sort of legislative transparency she promised voters during the 2006 campaign enroute to becoming House Speaker. The most obvious and immediate take on the video is disgust with...

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China's state-owned energy firm buys U.S. off-shore leases UPDATED!

Gas prices here in the U.S. are creeping back up towards the $3-per-gallon mark even as news breaks today that China's state-owned energy firm just closed a deal to buy interests in four development leases on the American Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) in the Gulf of Mexico. The deal, which requires approval of the U.S. government, is between Norway's Statoil and China National Off-Shore Oil Corporation (CNOOC). This is the same CNOOC that would have bought Unocal four years ago for $18.5 billion but for pressure from Congress, according to The New York Times, quoting an energy industry trade publication. Because it must be approved by the U.S. government, the Statoil/CNOOC deal puts...

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So you want to know why Hoffman lost to Owens in NY-23?

Former Readers Digest editor-in-chief and Corporation for Public Broadcasting board chairman Ken Tomlinson explains everything about why Conservative Party of New York congessional nominee Doug Hoffman didn't quite pull off a "Buckley" - winning a three-way race. It all goes back to Jim Buckley, Spiro T. Agnew, Charles Goodell, and Christine Jorgensen. And yes, I know I just revealed my age. Go read Tomlinson anyway, in The Weekly Standard. Actually, American Conservative Union chairman David Keene explained everything and Tomlinson provides a typically evocative report from an absolutely delightful lunch....

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Nothing purple about Virginia now

One year ago, Barack Obama did something that no Democrat had done since LBJ, carrying Virginia for Democrats in a presidential race, garnerng 53 percent of the vote in a record turnout. Democrats everywhere pointed to Virginia as the bell-weather state, moving from being solidly red to purple and on its way to being fully blue. What a difference one year makes! Or more precisely, what a difference is made by a $787 billion economic stimulus package, a complete government take-over of the one-sixth of the economy represented by the health care system, and a world apology tour in which an American president repeatedly confessed the nation's alleged international sins. Bob McDonnell...

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Obama now a 40 percent president?

It's the last frantic day before Election Day 2009 and the question on everybody's mind in the nation's capitol is simple - What will tomorrow's results indicate about the political status of President Obama and the Democratic majority in charge of Congress? Republican pollster Brad O'Leary took at a look at the latest data on the Virginia and New Jersy gubernatorial races, plus the NY-23 special congressional election in upstate New York and offered the following possibility: “New York’s 23rd is a high priority for the White House, and still the Democrats can’t top 35% in that race. And it’s looking like the Democrats’ gubernatorial candidates in Virginia...

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32 years for Uncle Sam to recoup cost of job created by economic stimulus

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air did some calculating on the time required for the federal government to receive back in taxes what it cost to create each job under President Obama's economic stimulus program. Here's what he found: "At an effective tax rate of 15%, it would take 32 years and five months — almost the entire career of the person holding it. At an effective tax rate of 20%, it would take less … just 24 years, four months. "Or let’s consider the administration’s wildest claim, that of a million jobs saved or created at $159,000 per job. At the 15% effective tax rate, it would still take almost 21 years to pay back the principal; at the 20% rate,...

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All 40 GOP senators want Reid Obamacare draft posted on web

Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent a copy of the draft Obamacare bill drawn up behind closed doors in his office to the Congressional Budget Office for scoring. That sparked a letter signed by all 40 Republicans in the Senate asking that the full text of the bill be posted on the Internet for public examination. Here's the text of the letter, which was initiated by Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC: "On Monday, you announced that you had sent health care legislation to the Congressional Budget office (CBO). As you know, this legislation will have a profound impact on the lives of every American, including the next generation who will be forced to pay for it. Our national...

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Paranormal legislative activity captured on video in nation's capital

Sure, it's Halloween and weird stuff happens just in the normal course of things in Washington, D.C., but this extraordinary video of an alien concept stalking an innocent couple on Capitol Hill has to be seen to be believed. And trust me, if you watch it, you will believe....

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Newly disclosed emails link White House directly to NEA politicalization scandal

Former actor and present White House associate director of public engagement Kalpen Modi was directly involved in planning the controversial conference call hosted by a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) flack to encourage tax-supported artists to create propaganda for President Obama, according to emails obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The emails reveal that Modi worked with now-former NEA national communications director Yosif Sargant in planning the August 10 conference call that was first revealed by Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.com web site. Participants in the conference call were encouraged to use their talents to generate public...

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Which part of judge's decision does Obama White House not understand?

Last year, federal Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that the Executive Office of the President (EOP) is covered under the Privacy Act. In that decision, Lamberth tartly added that “...this court holds that under the Privacy Act, the word ‘agency’ includes the Executive Office of the President, just as the Privacy Act says.” So this year, the Obama White House comes back in the same case and asks Lamberth to grant a motion for summary dismissal, arguing that “the White House is not an agency under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and it necessarily follows that it is not an agency subject to the Privacy Act.” Amazing, but true. This exchange is the...

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Which is the bigger hoax, cap-and-trade jobs or balloon boy?

This just in - a cap-and-trade balloon carrying millions of new jobs for unemployed Americans has been sighted. Go here for the full report, produced by American Solutions for Winning the Future....

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13 new tax hikes found in 1,990 page House Obamacare text

Here's the list of tax hikes included in H.R. 3962, the revised House version of Obamacare, otherwise known as "The Affordable Health Care for America Act." The text of this bill runs to 1,990 pages, all of which can be read here in pdf format. The page number references to each of the tax hikes noted below correspond to those in the pdf. Employer Mandate Excise Tax (Page 275): If an employer does not pay 72.5 percent of a single employee’s health premium (65 percent of a family employee), the employer must pay an excise tax equal to 8 percent of average wages. Small employers (measured by payroll size) have smaller payroll tax rates of 0 percent (<$500,000), 2...

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Number of stimulus jobs created overstated. Imagine that!

Obama administration claims to have created at least 30,000 jobs as a result of the $787 billion economic stimulus program were over-stated by about 5,000 jobs, according to an analysis by the Associated Press. There was no evidence the administration purposely sought to inflate the jobs creation data, AP reported, but its own numbers suggest otherwise: AP said it "found some counts were more than 10 times as high as the actual number of jobs; some jobs credited to the stimulus program were counted two and sometimes more than four times; and other jobs were credited to stimulus spending when none was produced. "For example: · A company working with the...

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Heritage to EPA, Boxer, Kerry: Show us (and the world) the bill

There are four key players in the following scenario: * Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA, is chairman of the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee and one of the title sponsors of the Obama-Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade anti-global warming energy bill approved earlier this year by the House. * Bill Beach is director of the Center for Data Analysis at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, which does widely respected, exhaustively detailed econometric studies of proposed legislation. * Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-CA, is chairman of the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, and a name co-sponsor of the Senate version of Waxman-Markey. * Sen. John Kerry, D-MA., was the...

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Cash-for-Clunkers debacle generated few new sales

Nearly 700,000 new vehicle were sold using incentives provided by the government's $3 billion Cash-for-Clunkers program that was intended to spark the sagging fortunes of the U.S. auto industry and put legions of newer, more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles on the roads. But an analysis by Edmunds.com found that the program actually generated only about 125,000 sales that wouldn't have happened anyway in the normal course of things, meaning each new sale cost taxpayers $24,000 instead of the $3,500 to $4,500 rebates that were offered. Predictably, rather than responding to the specifics of the Edmunds.com' analysis, a spokesman for the Transportation Department,...

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Surprise! Tax-supported press covers government corruption less often

Wow! Can you believe? A new multiple regression analysis-based study of four Argentine newspapers found journalists there provided less coverage of government corruption as their newsrooms received more government support in the form of official advertising and other forms of public revenue, according to the Nieman Journalism Lab. The study was conducted by Harvard’s Rafael Di Tella and Northwestern’s Ignacio Franceschelli. "Their analysis found a 'huge correlation' between, in any given month, how much money went to a newspaper and how much corruption coverage appeared on its front page. For example, if the government ad revenue in a month increased by one...

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House panel makes ACORN eligible to share regulatory authority

Besides giving advice on avoiding taxes and fraudulently getting home loans for brothels featuring 13-year-old Salvadoran girls illegally smuggled into this country, ACORN officials could soon be helping regulate your local bank, thanks to an amendment adopted by Rep. Barney Frank's House Financial Services Committee. The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, and provided that five slots on the oversight board for the proposed new Consumer Financial Protection Agency be reserved for representatives of "consumer protection, fair lending and civil rights, representatives of depository institutions that primarily serve underserved communities, or representatives of...

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FEMA says it can't show return on $29 billion in spending

Federal Emergency Management Agency deputy administrator Timothy Manning told a congressional panel today that his organization had spent $5 million during the last 18 months reviewing how it spent $29 billion since 2002, but still doesn't know what it got for the money. Testifying before the House Homeland Security Emergency Communications subcommittee, Manning said he is confident the $29 billion was well-spent but "existing data tells us very little about the return on investment." In response, subcommittee chairman Rep. Henry Ceullar, D-TX said: "Free advice: For $5 million, I think we can do better," according to Congress Daily's Terry...

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China, Iran steal U.S. technology most often, documents show

China and Iran are the most frequent international thieves getting their hands on classified U.S. military technology, according to documents obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). "In October 2008, the Department of Justice announced that criminal charges had been issued against more than 145 defendants in the previous fiscal year. Approximately 43% of these cases involved munitions or other restricted technology bound for Iran or China," Judicial Watch said....

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What a difference five years makes on flu vaccine shortage

Hardly a negative word has been uttered in the mainstream media this week about President Obama and the shortage of swine flu vaccine shots, despite assurances from his administration in September that an "ample supply" would be available by "mid-October." But five years ago when it was George W. Bush in the White House and sufficient supplies of flu vaccine were not available in a timely manner, folks in the media were jumping all over the administration. Earlier today, a friend pointed me to a bunch of examples of such coverage, including these two: “While many Americans search in vain for flu shots, members and employees of Congress are able to obtain them...

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New survey has Hoffman leading in NY-23

It has a small sample of only 300 likely voters, but a new survey finds Conservative Party of New York congressional candidate Doug Hoffman leading for the first time over his Democrat and Republican rivals in the special election to fill the 23rd district congressional seat vacated by Rep. John McHugh, R-NY. The survey was conducted by Basswood Research pollster Jon Lerner and has a margin of error of 5.66 percent, which is rather wide. Even so, the results are consistent in terms of overall trend with recent surveys by other pollsters that showed Hoffman's support heading upwards. Basswood's results show Hoffman leading with 31.3 percent, while Democrat Bill Owens is second at 27...

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Prosecutors subpoena journalism students' grades

Chicago prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades and other material regarding the classroom performance of Northwestern University journalism students, according to The New York Times. Seems the prosecutors are tired of being second-guessed by the J-students, who are participants in The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an effort by Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to provide students with real-life experience in scrutinizing the actions of police and prosecutors in old cases. Their work has led to the release of at least 11 inmates who were shown to have been wrongly convicted. It's that success rate that has the local DAs filing motions with little precedent,...

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Ghost Sighting! Bob Michel - Voice from GOP's losing past UPDATED!

Former House Minority Leader Bob Michel of Illinois never led a Republican majority during his years as the top GOPer in the House from the 97th through the 103rd Congress. But he did get be House Speaker Tip O'Neill's golf partner occasionally, and he was properly grateful to receive a few other crumbs from the Democrats who ran things with an iron hand. He retired just as Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America generation swept aside the 40-year Democratic reign and took control of both the House and Senate in the 1994 elections. They did so by completely ignoring Michel's guiding political strategy - be moderate, always compromise with the Democrats, seek accommodation no...

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Palin endorses Hoffman in hot NY-23 congressional special election

Former Republican vice-presidential nominee and Alaska governor Sarah Palin has endorsed Doug Hoffman, the fast-rising Conservative Party of New York nominee for the congressional seat of former Rep. John McHugh in upstate New York. Palin confirmed her decision to endorse and make a maximum contribution to Hoffman in a message to The Weekly Standard: "The people of the 23rd Congressional District of New York are ready to shake things up, and Doug Hoffman is coming on strong as Election Day approaches! He needs our help now. "The votes of every member of Congress affect every American, so it's important for all of us to pay attention to this important Congressional campaign in...

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Devastating drop in job approval numbers for Obama in new Gallup survey

President Obama's push for health care reform during the third quarter of 2009 has seriously damaged his public standing, according to new data from the Gallup Daily tracking poll. His job approval rating dropped nine points from the second to the third quarter, from 62 percent to 53 percent. The nine-point second-to-third quarter drop is the highest Gallup has ever measured for an incumbent president during his first year in office, and among the highest quarter-to-quarter drops measured for any president at any point: "Obama's 9-point slide between quarters ranks as one of the steepest for a president at any point in his first year in office. The highest is Truman's 19-point...

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President Obama has something important in common with Edward I, aka "Longshanks"

It has received far less notice than it deserves, but last week the United States joined with Egypt in sponsoring a resolution appoved by the UN Human Rights Council that could blow a gaping hole in the First Amendment's protection of freedom of speech and other civil liberties most of us take for granted. The resolution encourages member nations to define as criminal "any advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence." Who defines what constitutes "national, racial or religious hatred?" Why, the government, of course. Who decides whether any given statement "constitutes incitement?"...

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Another Obama administration czar agrees - 'kind of' - with Mao

First, it was White House communications chief Anita Dunn telling a high school commencement audience that the murderous Chairman Mao was one of her "two favorite philosophers." Now, it's manufacturing czar Ron Bloom who it turns out "kinda" agrees with modern history's most prolific genocidal murderer that "power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Leave it to the irrepressible Glenn Beck to dig up the video of Bloom speaking to a labor audience in 2008 and explaining what they had learned in the recent past. Here's the relevant passage: "Generally speaking we get the joke. We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to...

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Energy Secretary Steven Chu, meet Interior Secretary Ken Salazar UPDATED!

Rising oil prices are always followed by more expensive gasoline at the pump, so Energy Secretary Steven Chu is worried, according to Reuters: "The rising cost of oil could damage the world economy just as it begins to rebound, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said on Tuesday. Wide swings in oil prices are difficult for industries to manage and the U.S. government is concerned about another price spike, Chu said. ‘Even $80 is making me nervous,' he told the Reuters Washington Summit.” Reading the Reuters account of Chu's concern reminded Emily Lawrimore, who flaks for the minority on the House Natural Resources Committee, of an AP account of something Secretary of the...

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Jake Tapper challenges Obama White House to justify Fox News gambit

This from today's face-off with Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs is what White House reporters - no, make that all journalists - are supposed to do all the time - Ask those in power, regardless of who is in power, the tough questions they don't want to answer: "Tapper: It’s escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations “not a news organization” and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news organization. Can you explain why it’s appropriate for the White House to decide that a news organization is not one – (Crosstalk) "Gibbs: Jake, we render, we...

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Sir Christopher Monckton: Copenhagen treaty eviscerates U.S. sovereignity

Sir Christopher Monckton is a global warming skeptic. Former Vice President and Nobel Prize winner Al Gore has for years refused to accept Monckton's repeated challenge to a public debate on global warming. He's also a very close reader of the proposed UN Climate Change Treaty President Obama is expected to sign along with other world leaders in Copenhagen in a few weeks. Monckton says that 200-page treaty cedes U.S. sovereignity to the UN, mandates a massive transfer of wealth from the U.S. and Europe to pay our "Climate Debt" to the Third World, and creates a new enforcement mechanism to make it all happen. Is Monckton right? I don't know because I haven't yet read the...

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Can we see White House visitor logs? Who is asking?

Judicial Watch's request for copies of White House visitor logs has been denied by the U.S. Secret Service, which claimed the documents are covered by the Presidential Records Act and thus are subject to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Craig Ulmer, the Secret Service's FOIA officer, helpfully pointed out to Judicial Watch, however, that the Presidential Records Act gives the White House discretion to release such documents as it thinks proper. In other words, whether we get to know who is meeting with the President and Vice-President during the Obama administration is strictly up to them. Stay tuned. Judicial Watch rarely gives up without a fight....

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Coburn: 'What is it we don't want the American people to see?'

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, stopped the Senate dead in its tracks yesterday and posed a question that made many of his colleagues squirm in their seats: "What is it we don't want the American people to see?" The Oklahoma Republican was referring to a Senate-House conference committee's decision to drop from the $33.5 billion energy and water appropriations bill, a Coburn-backed provision approved unanimously by the Senate in July. The dropped provision represented what AP reporter Andrew Taylor perjoratively described as one of Coburn's "pet ideas." Usually, a senator's "pet idea" involves some kind of special favor for a campaign contributor, or an earmark to...

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'High fliers' probe finds widespread abuse of government preferences

Governments at all levels award contracts for billions of tax dollars every year using Affirmative Action preferences for businesses and individuals based on their ethnicity, gender, income status, or other characteristics having nothing do with the skills or services being provided. Affirmative Action opponents have long claimed that, besides being unconstitutional forms of discrimination, such preferences are also open invitations to every sort of official corruption, influence-peddling and conflicts of interest because they replace competition and merit with access to political insiders. But critical reporting to determine who is right - defenders of government-sanctioned...

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Why no celebration of 1989, the most liberating year in two milleniums of human history?

Reason Magazine editor Matt Welch poses the arresting question in the headline above in the November number of his rightly esteemed publication. It is a timely and important essay entitled "The Unknown War," which bookends perfectly with the Weekly Standard piece by Charles Krauthammer, "Decline is a choice." It was an eleven-week period in 1989 in which a sequence of events that started with the Communist Party of Hungary's decision to stop policing its border with the Free World culminated in the incredible spectacle of East and West Berliners jointly bringing down the wall that so coldly symbolized communist repression. For those involved in recent decades in the...

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'Jobless recovery' means another year of bad unemployment news

If past is prologue - as it surely is - then we can expect discouraging unemployment numbers for at least another year and no official announcement from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) that the recession ended this summer until 2011. That's according to Mark J. Perry, writing on Enterprise, the AEI blog. Perry reached his conclusions by looking at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for the two previous 'jobless recoveries' in 1990-91 and 2001. There he found that unemployment in the first of those recessions continued to go up for 15 months to a peak of 7.8 percent in June 1992. The unemployment numbers remained pointed north for 19 months in the 2001 slowdown,...

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Citizens group files FOIA on HHS health care gag order

A federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has been filed by a citizens activist group seeking the rest of the story behind the recent gag order issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services against health insurance companies to prevent them from providing customers with information about Obamacare. Let Freedom Ring has posted the text of its FOIA request on its web site. The key graph reads: "Pursuant to the Federal Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, I request access to and copies of all correspondence, notes, emails, faxes, telephone logs, office visit logs, records of meetings and related documents exchanged between United States Senator Max...

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McConnell: Reid, Democrats will write real health care bill behind closed doors

That much-ballyhooed Baucus version of Obamacare is irrelevant, according to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will write the real Senate version of Obamacare and he will do it in secret. “This partisan Finance Committee proposal will never see the Senate floor since the real bill will be written by Democrat leaders in a closed-to-the-public conference room somewhere in the Capitol,” McConnell said. He pointed to a Politico story yesterday and a New York Times story last week in which Reid's top aides began drafting the text that will actually be sent to the Senate floor, perhaps as early as next week. Only a select group is...

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Boehner to Dems: Stop changing bills in secret UPDATED!

Democrats in the Senate are secretly adding amendments they favor and removing those they oppose, even after congressional committees have voted on them, according to House Minority Leader John Boehner, who plans to introduce an amendment requiring the full text of all committee-approved legislation to be posted on the Internet within 24 hours of being adopted. Boehner said more than 70 changes were made in a health care reform bill approved by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee after it was approved. The changes were made without informing the GOP members of the committee, according to Boehner. For the full Boehner statement, go here. We've asked for...

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Mark Tapscott: Somebody should explain ACORN to Pete Sessions

Just when it seems congressional Republicans have finally gotten the message about standing on principle before grasping for power, they go and pull a Dede Scozzafava. Scozzafava is the "Republican" New York assemblywoman selected by the GOP establishment as their candidate in the upcoming special election to succeed Rep. John McHugh. He recently resigned from his seat representing the Empire State's 23rd Congressional District on Capitol Hill to become President Obama's secretary of the Army. Incredibly, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, is throwing its money and resources behind Scozzafava. And what kind of Republican is...

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Post comedy 'critic' clumsily reviews charity standup event UPDATED: With video!

Among the first things journalists once learned was the Chicago News Bureau maxim that "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." Dan Zak of The Washington Post must have missed that lesson in j-school, judging by his review of last night's D.C.'s Funniest Celebrities charity event at the Improv. I was honored - and terrified, quite frankly - to have the opportunity to be among 11 contestants invited to do a three or four minute routine on the famous stage. Among the other contestants were repeat performers like former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, and Americans for Tax Reform honcho Grover Norquist, who graciously invited me. You might think that doing a...

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Obama appointee lauded NAMBLA figure

Kevin Jennings, President Obama's Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug FreeSchools at the U.S. Department of Education, is in hot water this week for having failed to report that a 15-year-old sophomore student in his school had told him of having sex with an older man. But failure to report what appeared to be a case of statuatory rape of a child may be the least of Jennings' worries. Lori Roman of Regular Folks United points to statements by Jennings a decade or more ago when he praised Harry Hay of the North American Association for Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which promotes the legalization of sexual abuse of young boys by older men. Roman provides...

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ACORN's 'Power Plan" found in documents group left behind in Oklahoma City

A five-year ACORN plan to "make Oklahoma a progressive state in the way it was 100 years ago" was found amid thousands of documents left behind last year in an abandoned office formerly used by the Oklahoma City branch of the controversial leftist community organizing outfit. The tax-exempt non-profit is required by federal law to avoid partisan politics but the heart of the "Power Plan" makes clear the organization's goal of transforming the Sooner State from one of the nation's most consistently red states to the blue side of the spectrum, like California and New York: "Therefore, the route to power is twofold: First, build powerful city organizations in...

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Who are the Branch Carbonians?

Are radical environmentalists members of a political movement or more like the devotees of a religious cult, one that might dubbed the Branch Carbonians? Truespeak.org’s Jim Guirardi suggests the label and offers an illuminating case for the latter in this post from the American Thinker. There is much more to Guirardi’s piece, but as a sample, here are his 10 reasons these fanatical devotees qualify as participants in a cult. If these sound somehow familiar, they are based on the criteria elaborated upon in the 2003 book, “Kingdom of the Cults,” by Walter Martin and Ravi Zacharia: 1. Leadership by a self-glorifying, manipulative New Age Prophet -- in this...

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"Architects of Ruin" hints of why Obama disses medical malpractice caps

Hoover Institution research fellow Peter Schweizer has a potential blockbuster of a new book hitting the shelves Oct. 6 entitled "Architects of Ruin: How Big Government liberals wrecked the global economy and how they will do it again if no one stops them." Whew, is that a mouthful of a title or what? Anyway, Schweizer - whose past books include the superb "Reagan's War," as well as "The Bushes," "Makers and Takers," and "Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy" - documents in grinding detail how progressive and Democratic politicians and radical activists used the federal government to force lending institutions to give...

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Obama energy secretary to Americans: Stop acting like teenagers!

When Secretary of Energy Steven Chu thinks of the American people, he apparently sees a bunch of unruly teenagers who need to be told how to act. Asked at a seminar on reconstructing America's electrical grid about the Obama administration's efforts to persuade people to conserve energy, Chu said “the American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act. The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is,” according to The Wall Street Journal. And, notes the Journal's Ian Talley, the Obama administration is spending big to tell us what we should be doing on the energy issues: "The...

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Rasmussen Reports wraps up the week's poll results

Every week, Rasmussen Reports posts a comprehensive and extremely useful summary of the week's most important survey results on major national issues, officials, and political campaigns. Here's the top of this week's report, noting that President Obama's "game-changer" address to a joint session of Congress on health care reform produced a modest and quite temporary popularity bounce, followed by a return to majority opposition to Obamacare: "Actions have consequences, politically speaking. Just check the first set of Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 surveys. "First, it looked like the controversial health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and...

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Obama's top five tax fibs in Wednesday evening speech

This is according to the Americans for Tax Reform (ATR): 1. Middle class tax hikes: “The middle class will realize greater [health] security, not higher taxes.” FACT: This would be a big departure from the House bill and the Baucus draft. The House bill has four tax increases on families making less than $250,000. President Obama himself endorsed another when he called for an individual mandate with a tax penalty. Earlier this week, he floated the idea of a “soda tax.” The Baucus draft, like the House bill, contains a new tax on over-the-counter medicines purchased with an FSA or HSA 2. Individual mandate tax: “Under my plan, individuals will...

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Congress has already exempted itself from Public Option

One of the clearest messages from the Town Hall forums during the August congressional recess was that people want Congress to be covered by the same health care reform plan they impose on the rest of us. Members of Congress presently get health insurance coverage through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), which offers enrollees nearly 300 choices among a variety of plans, coverages and costs. The FEHBP covers federal employees and retirees, as well as Members of Congress, though the latter have additional perks of office that make their health coverage far better than that available - or affordable - for the vast majority of working Americans. Public anger may...

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More AARP evasions, spin doctoring on Obamacare

A key AARP official went on Hugh Hewitt's nationally syndicated talk radio program yesterday and demonstrated yet again what a disaster Obamacare has become for the credibility of the 40 million-member seniors organization. Hewitt, whose weekly column appears in The Washington Examiner on Mondays, asked all the right questions, but AARP legislative policy director David Certner had few credible answers.I strongly encourage you to read the entire transcript of the interview, then come back to this post. Okay, did you notice how, on question after question, Certner hemmed and hawed, providing in the process a classic illustration of the Washington insider spinning facts to conceal the...

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Joe Kennedy for Senate? Are you kidding me? UPDATED: New Republic's kIrchick nails the Chavez link

Predictably, the push has begun to get a Kennedy into the Senate seat held for lo those many years by Ted Kennedy. The Kennedys favorite newspaper - the Boston Globe - all but annointed Joe in a news story by Frank Phillips that also handily reminded everybody that the seat is, after all, the permanent property of the Kennedy family. Said Philips: "With Massachusetts having paid its final respects to Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the politics of succession begins in earnest this week - candidates will emerge, a race will take shape, and the Kennedy clan will have to reveal whether it wants to keep the seat in the family. "All eyes now are on Joseph P. Kennedy II, the former...

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Chevron reveals video of $3 million Ecuadorian bribery scheme UPDATED: Plaintiffs claim Chevron may have faked it

Chevron Corp. officials have just posted video that they allege "reveal a $3 million bribery scheme implicating the judge presiding over the environmental lawsuit currently pending against the company and individuals who identify themselves as representatives of the Ecuadorian government and its ruling party." According to Chevron, the videos shows the judge in the case confirming "that he will rule against Chevron and that appeals by the energy company will be denied – even though the trial is ongoing and evidence is still being received. A purported party official also states that lawyers from the executive branch have been sent to assist the judge in writing the...

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Memo to suburbanites: Government doesn't want you to live there any more

If you like living in the suburbs, having your own little piece of God's green Earth, and being part of the community schools, churches and civic groups, well, too bad because the "Smart Growth" progressives in Congress and the National Reseach Council have a new report that shows how much better things would be if instead you and your family lived in an urban high rise. According to a news alert from the NRC, the report examines "how suburbanization -- made possible largely due to the prevalence of automobiles and the extensive U.S. highway system -- impacts the number of miles we drive, our reliance on petroleum fuel, and the percent of greenhouse gas emissions from...

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Dean says Obamacare authors don't want to challenge trial lawyers

Whatever else he said Wednesday evening at the town hall hosted by Rep. Jim Moran, D-VA, former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean let something incredibly candid slip out about President Obama's health-care reform bill in Congress. Asked by an audience member why the legislation does nothing to cap medical malpractice class-action lawsuits against doctors and medical institutions (aka "Tort reform"), Dean responded by saying: “The reason tort reform is not in the [health care] bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on. And that’s the...

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Obamacare won't cover illegal immigrants? Yes it will, says Congressional Research Service

Among the many claims being made durng the August recess by Democrats from President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, to the lowliest back-bencher is that Obamacare absolutely, positively, cannot possibly ever in a million, zillion years provide coverage to illegal immigrants. Just this past weekend during his regular Saturday address - devoted to addressing what he called "false claims about reform" - Obama said he wants "an honest debate" on health care reform, "not one dominated by willful misrepresentations and outright distortions." In what he called the "first myth" being spread by...

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Obama's 09 deficit exceeds all eight years of Bush red ink

How much is President Obama boosting federal spending? The Heritage Foundation's Brian Riedl puts a little perspective on the numbers made public today: · This year, Washington will spend $30,958 per household, tax $17,576 per household, and borrow $13,392 per household. This spending is not just temporary: President Obama would permanently keep annual spending between $5,000 and $8,000 per household higher than it had been under President Bush. · The 22 percent spending increase projected for 2009 represents the largest government expansion since the 1952 height of the Korean War (adjusted for inflation). Federal spending is up 57 percent since 2001. · The 2009...

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Reagan and Obama: One view of the basic difference UPDATED: My mistake

A few weeks after his innauguration, I wrote a column predicting that President Obama would be a one-term chief executive if he stayed with the policy course with which he launched his presidency. A litte past the six-month mark of his first year in the Oval Office and things are going pretty much as I expected. Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit offers an interesting comparison between the charisma of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Both men are superb communicators, but Allahpundit points to the factor that most separates them: “The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan’s view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no...

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CBS News, AP report AARP losing thousands of members protesting group's Obamacare support

Earlier this month, I reported that a revolt was breaking out among AARP's 40-million members in response to the enthusiastic and extensive lobbying by the group's Washington leadership on behalf of Obamacare. Now, other media are beginning to notice and we are starting to get a trickle of numbers that hint at the magnitude of the outrage among AARP's members. CBS News reported Monday that a top AARP official admits the organization has lost at least 60,000 members who specifically cited the Obamacare issue as their reason for leaving. And the CBS report also noted a spike in new membership at a conservative rival to the AARP, the American Seniors Association. And today AP follows...

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Palin responds to Obama on 'Death Panels'

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has responded to comments yesterday by President Obama concerning her observation last week that Obamacare will lead to "death panels" making decisions about who lives and dies, to the disadvantage of seniors, the terminally ill and the handicapped. Palin's response is posted on her Facebook page. It's a bit long, but I think it removes all doubt that, at the very least, Palin is making a case that is absolutely reasonable, given the language of the current legislation in Congress, and that others on the Left have essentially agreed with recently. Here's the top of Palin's response to the president: "Yesterday President Obama responded to...

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ALG's Wilson demands Napolitano resignation for using 'kook website'

Bill Wilson is steamed at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, so much so that he is demanding her resignation in the wake of revelations of a "kook website" as a major source for that controversial "threat assessment" issued earlier this year warning of an allegedly growing threat of terrorism by RIght-wing extremist. "Janet Napolitano must resign immediately from her post at Homeland Security over this outrage," Wilson said earlier today. Wilson is chairman of Americans for Limited Government, a conservative activist non-profit. "The Department of Homeland Security used a kook website to indict the American people in...

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Astro-turfing? Let's talk about Craigslist, paid Leftists and Obamacare

Amazing what can be found these days on the Internet. Caleb Howe at Red State, for example, went looking for paying jobs promoting grassroots activism on behalf of Obamacare - doing things like attending Democratic congressional town halls - and lo and behold, old Caleb found a gold mine! Looks like there are beaucoup paying jobs out there if you want to help generate grassroots support for government-run health care. Go here for the full report on Red State....

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Angry Mobs Department: That was then, this is now

Democrats screaming to high heaven about those disrupted town hall meetings could use a little refresher on recent history concerning their partisans' conduct in 2005 in response to President George W. Bush's attempt to get Congress to move on a genuine Social Security reform. My friend Jon Henke at The Next Right offers these tidbits: · NW Progressive Institute, March 2005: "a boisterous crowd which frequently interrupted the discussion with shouts and hard nosed questions. ... Democrats in the audience who were interrupting the panel.... the crowd erupted in anger... Democrats in the audience started shouting him down again." · Savannah Morning News,...

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BBC reports Russia set to drill for oil in Gulf of Mexico

American energy experts have been warning with increasing urgency in recent years that other nations are moving rapidly to exploit the Gulf of Mexico's rich reserves of oil and natural gas, even as the U.S. hobbles itself by refusing to give the go-ahead to develop its own easily accessible areas that contain billions of barrels of petroleum and trillions of feet of natural gas. The BBC reports Russia is moving ahead with its plans to drill in the Gulf off the Cuban coast: "Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin signed four contracts securing exploration rights in Cuba's economic zone in the Gulf. Havana says there may be some 20 billion barrels of oil of its coast but the...

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Group calls on Obama to remove GE's Immelt after firm agrees to $50 million SEC fraud fine

President Obama should remove General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt from the chief executive's Economic Recovery Advisory Board after the firm agreed to pay a $50 million fine for what the SEC described as bending "the accounting rules beyond the breaking point," according to the National Center for Public Policy Research's Dr. Tom Borelli. "It's outrageous for President Obama to keep Immelt as an advisor when the SEC charged that GE engaged in a series of efforts to manipulate earnings to mislead investors," Borelli said. "The pattern of corruption raised by the SEC is deeply concerning and during a time of economic crisis, the last thing America needs is a Bernie...

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GAO: Bridges, roads rot while Highway Trust Fund billions go to everything but bridges, roads

Want to know the two senators least likely to be elected Most Popular With Colleages? Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, and Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC. are the first two names that come instantly to mind. And taxpayers should thank them for putting the truth ahead of popularity because no other pair of senators does as much to highlight waste, fraud, abuse, hypocrisy and apathy in government. They recently asked the Government Accounting Office (GAO) to see how much money from the federal Highway Trust Fund goes to pay for projects other than road and bridge maintenance. They just got the response back from GAO. Here's a small selection of the $87 billion GAO found that should have been spent to keep...

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Obama’s transparency is clear as mud

Other than the blinding speed with which he abandoned the moderate image so crucial to his winning the White House, President Obama has done little since Jan. 20 to surprise anybody who listened closely to what he said on the 2008 campaign trail. But Obama’s actions in one area are surprising and disappointing. He promised the most transparent government ever, yet in a mere 100 days, he’s made it extraordinarily difficult to find basic information about economic recovery spending. How can this be, considering the landmark Federal Financial Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 was more commonly known as “Coburn-Obama,” after Obama and Tom Coburn, the...

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Not a Christian nation, Mr. President?

President Obama told a news conference in Turkey last week that America “is not a Christian nation,” thus demonstrating that it is indeed possible for a Harvard Law graduate to be correct strictly as a matter of law and otherwise completely out to lunch on the facts of history. Here’s how our chief executive put it: “Although…we have a large Christian population, we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation, or a Jewish nation, or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” Technically, Obama was right. America’s government provides no official support for any particular...

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Congress may give Obama power to shut down the Internet, ignore privacy laws

Civil libertarians were aghast when news leaked in 2002 of a Pentagon research program designed to give national security officials advance warning of terrorists attacks by analyzing trillions of bytes of computer data in search of tell-tale activities in everyday life. Known initially as the Total Information Awareness (TIA) program in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the name was subsequently changed to Terrorism Information Awareness in a bid to blunt the explosion of negative publicity occasioned by TIA’s exposure. People feared civil liberties abuses would inevitably follow giving government security bureaucrats unlimited access to supposedly private...

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Too late to save Detroit from the Washington wink-winks

Puzzled by politics these days? No need to be. Just follow the wink-winks and the click-clicks, and keep in mind that modern politics is a legalized con game in which politicians and bureaucrats are the scammers and we taxpayers are the marks. Click-clicks are heard more frequently these days, especially if you drive in the District of Columbia or Maryland, thanks to the red light and speed cameras that are proliferating like rabbits because politicians smell easy cash to be had. These cameras automatically photograph vehicles running red lights or exceeding speed limits, then issue tickets to the owners. Guilt is presumed, not because the owners were actually driving, but because their...

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