TINY TOY GUN TRIGGERS MAJOR INCIDENT. These are people who are charged with teaching 'critical thinking skills'....

AMERICA AS WE KNOW IT IS ENDING, and conservatives feel fine. Well, I'd 'feel fine' if I knew for certain that the collapse of big government was assured.

An earlier post is here.

NAVIGATE THIS. Just another ObamaCare fu... screw up waiting to happen.

I wonder ... can the Democrat party be sued for professional incompetence?

OBAMACARE FAIL OF THE DAY: Most Americans want health insurance, but we're going to get health care instead. Father Obama knows best.

THIS SHOULD BE INTERESTING: Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Personally Sued in Massive Tea Party Abuse Lawsuit.

MORE NEWT GINGRICH: Pivotal Moment or Passing Scandal? It would be nice if the Republican party could make the Obama scandals into that 'pivotal moment' but the smart money is on passing scandal.

FACTS ABOUT FOOD STAMPS that everyone should know. The interesting one is the "doing what it's supposed to do" fact, and it's interesting only insofar as it illustrates how far the food stamp program has morphed (in liberal hands) from its original intent.

COMPETITION: "If a health insurance marketplace launches in the woods with exactly one insurance carrier, does it count as a marketplace at all?"

IF THERE'S SUCH A SHORTAGE of technical workers that hi-tech immigrants should be favored, why are wages falling?

KOCH-HEADS beclown themselves again.

TAKING TERRORISM SERIOUSLY: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Airbus jets will be equipped with a system to safeguard them from attack by heat-seeking missiles.

AND WATER IS WET: States With Best Economic Potential Tend To Vote Republican.

THE AMERICAN WEST: photographs from the 1870s.

LIBERALS STUNNED: Tax breaks benefit those who actually pay taxes. Had to have been those Harvard-trained economists....

SALON LOOKS AT POLITIFACT RULINGS and concludes Republicans are “the less credible party.” It must follow that the Democrats are the 'in-credible' party.

I THOUGHT OF IT FIRST: How Fox Ought to Handle Eric Holder’s Thuggish Off-the-Record Meeting on Press Freedom.

IT'S NOT BULLYING. Democrats, especially not Obama Democrats, don't bully.

GUN CONTROL: Just another home invasion gone sour.

MAKE NO MISTAKE/LET ME BE CLEAR: President Present is, ah, ... present. "In the world of rhetoric, the more 'I,' 'me,' 'my,' and 'mine' appear in the abstract, the more we suspect that the over-referenced speaker has been usually absent in the concrete."

MAINSTREAM MEDIA turning on Atty. Gen. Eric Holder (for now):

If Holder had invited the Washington bureau chiefs of the major media organizations to an off-the-record meeting to discuss DOJ guidelines concerning national security leaks before the Associated Press and Fox News investigations were reported, odds are good everyone would have attended [Holder's off-the-record briefing], and nobody outside the press would have ever learned about the event.

Now that the DOJ has been caught red-handed snooping through reporter email and phone records, and Holder himself has been, at best, less than forthcoming about his role in the investigations, the Washington press corps is less interested in playing ball.

Now that there's blood in the water, the sharks are circling.

OH, THE IRONY OF IT ALL: "According to the tongue-in-cheek PPP poll, '27% of voters said they thought hipsters should be subjected to a special tax for being so annoying'. But the reality is that Congress already passed a hipster tax. It's called Obamacare."

AIR FORCE'S X-37B secret robot space plane mission passes 5-month mark in orbit.

GREGORY KANE: Must the U.S. learn truth of Islam's cruelty the hard way?

Fix your own country first; then maybe we'll let you come here.

I'M LOVING IT: Unions having second thoughts about ObamaCare.

Just remember: as long as I'm stuck with ObamaCare, you will be too.

I'M FINE WITH THAT: Liberals’ urge to self-destruction.

SOONER OR LATER, the profusion of regulations will drown out the essential liberties enshrined in the Constitution. King George Obama seems determined to make it sooner rather than later.

IT'S INCREASING LOOKING LIKE the only thing people are going to be doing in space this next decade is either patching up the aging ISS or clinking champagne glasses on a luxury rocket with the rich and famous.

So much for thinking that studying science and mathematics could get you into outer space....

MORNING EXAMINER: Will the boom continue when the printing press stops?

Printing money has been very good to me, but I will say that for the last year, I've been hedging my bets in the stock market.

WHITE HOUSE: Sequester? What sequester?

A PET DRONE that follows you like a lost puppy.

NO HOMELESS IN MY BACK YARD. But your back yard is a different matter....

JEFF JACOBY: How far does 'marriage equality' go?

TIM CARNEY: Democrat-heavy IRS will always distrust Tea Party groups.

As long as we have a civil service workforce that leans Left, and as long as we have an income tax system that requires the IRS to police political speech, conservative groups can always expect special IRS scrutiny.

Which neatly explains why government should be smaller, leaner, and constitutionally limited to those functions that only a government can do.

LAWLESS IN OFFICE:

The problem is not the president’s men (and women). It is the president himself. He has no respect for the Constitution or for legal constraints on his power. He has presided over a scandal-ridden administration — Fast and Furious, Solyndra, the open bribery and abuse of parliamentary procedures to pass Obamacare, suing states seeking to uphold our immigration laws, enabling the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens simply if they’re accused of being “terrorists,” and now the use of government power to suppress dissent, persecute opponents, spy on the press and cover up the jihadist slaughter of Americans. Mr. Obama is a political thug masquerading as a progressive reformer.

Read it all.

More here.

JACK DUNPHY: The Right Way to Profile.

Though successful profiling focuses on behavior rather than race, we live in the real world where the threat to an El Al flight or to a soft target like the Boston Marathon is most likely from a Muslim male between 17 and 30 years of age. Officers searching for a potential terrorist from among a group of airline passengers or in a large crowd would be derelict in their duty if they failed to give a person who met that description a second look. When the statistics are added up — and you know these statistics are recorded in minute detail — the ethnic balance of those stopped and questioned will likely be out of sync with the overall population.

But none of this matters, of course, to those responsible for making security policy in America. Better to inconvenience every last passenger going through an airport, better to hoist paraplegics out of their wheelchairs so as to search them than focus attention on those who history teaches are most likely to blow up an airplane or fly it into a skyscraper. And better to let a few people get blown to bits and a few dozen others get maimed every so often than employ techniques that will prevent such horrors, albeit with the side effect of having members of the racial grievance industry get their backs up on television.

The threat of Muslim terror is not abating. How many more Americans will be killed before we get real about profiling?

KEENE, NH: where it's against the law to be a good samaritan.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION is just plain stupid. No argument from me.

'SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER' -- from the Right.

NOW I'VE HEARD EVERYTHING: Murderers, rapists, and pedophiles are black. Disparate impact, baby.

Stupidity is a better word.

CLASS ACTS: three are, two aren't. Guess which is which.

COMING TO A VIRGINIA NEAR ME: "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, third time is enemy action."

Thanks to commenter Chuck Moss for the observation.

WHAT IT REALLY MEANS to be a 'labor bigwig'.

TO THE HORROR OF GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS, global cooling is here. That damned real world keeps refusing to cooperate with the alarmists.

"GOVERNMENT is now so huge, powerful and callous that citizens risk becoming proverbial serfs without the freedoms guaranteed by the Founding Fathers."

Read it all.

CICADAS: 17-year lawn aeration specialists.



And for your added interest, an albino cicada.



I've never seen one of them before.

CALIFORNIA BANS FIRE. Just not forest fire.

NEWT GINGRICH is On The Record: the IRS scandal, government bureaucracy, big government run amok, and more. Long, but well worth watching.

RON RADOSH: Obama’s Confused and Contradictory Defense Speech.

Speech translated: We'll do nothing in every way possible.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS:

[T]he primary basis for global-warming alarmism is unfounded. The Met Office has been making false claims about the significance of climatic changes to Parliament — as well as to the government, the media, and others — claims which have seriously affected both policies and opinions. When questioned about those claims in Parliament, the Met Office did everything feasible to avoid telling the truth.

The title is explained in the text.

TO THE SLAUGHTER: British lions come up lambs in Woolwich. That's the problem with statism; the populace is encouraged -- no, coerced -- into passivism.

DIVERSITY: We are of almost every race and gender, and we think exactly alike.

Linked from PowerLine.

DOES SEAWATER cause stupidity?

A FINAL MEMORIAL DAY THOUGHT:

All those people whose sacrifices we celebrate on Memorial Day are watching us, not to mention the extraordinary Mr. Franklin, who famously challenged us after the Constitutional Convention with the words “A republic — if you can keep it.”

It’s Memorial Day. Let’s have a few burgers and beers, in the cold or the sunshine, and then get a move on. With the Benghazi lies, the blatant misuse of our Internal Revenue Service for political goals, and the chilling suppression of freedom of the press, we can do no less. In fact, we have no choice, if we want to keep it.

Courtesy of Roger L. Simon.

HO-HUM. Just another gun manufacturer leaving Connecticut.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Honoring the fallen.

SILENCE AND RESPECT. Read the comments.

OOPS! Anthony Weiner’s campaign website accidentally features the Pittsburgh skyline.

Competence. It's what Democrat campaigns are made of....

ROLLING THUNDER 2013:











Yesterday's ride seemed ... well, subdued compared to the last time we attended in 2010. While the ride certainly lasted several hours, it seemed to us that there were fewer motorcycles, and fewer riders. In 2010 it seemed that nearly every motorcycle capable of carrying two riders did carry two riders; this year, it appeared the majority of riders were solo. Pity.

It's also striking that President Obama was not here. While he was in Oklahoma witnessing the tornado disaster (a good thing), I think he had his priorities reversed.

REMINDER: It was not the Declaration of Independence that gave us freedom but the Continental Army.

JUST WHAT I NEED



Perfect for retirees. It is Monday ... isn't it?

SOME THOUGHTS for Memorial Day:

MEMORIAL DAY 2013: At Arlington National Cemetary.





Every grave in the cemetery has a U.S. flag placed on it. This photo is from section 33. The graves appear to be mostly from World War I.



Naval Construction Brigade ("Sea Bees") Memorial: "The difficult we do at once. The impossible takes a bit longer."



Civil War Memorial

"Beneath this stone repose the bones of two thousand one hundred and eleven unknown gathered after the war from the fields of Bull Run and the route to the Rappahannock. Their remains could not be identified, but their names and deaths are recorded in the archives of their country; and its grateful citizens honor them as of their noble army of martyrs. May they rest in peace. September, A.D. 1866."

And finally, a view from Arlington House looking down to the Memorial Bridge crossing the Potomac with the Lincoln Memorial at its end. Rolling Thunder motorcycles are still crossing the bridge to the Viet Nam memorial 2-1/2 hours after it began.

MEMORIAL DAY 2013:

EXCELLENT: Looks like we don’t have the votes for that immigration bill after all. But I'm still keeping the pressure on my senators.

RAHM EMANUEL appears to have done something right: Teachers union vows to oust Chicago mayor.

LOUISANA GOV. BOBBY JINDAL: Blame the liberals' Big Government philosophy:

The latest problems with the IRS witch hunt, the seizure of phone records from The Associated Press, the conflicting Benghazi stories and disastrous attempts to enforce Obamacare may all seem unrelated, but they are not.

Each of these events is the direct byproduct of two central philosophies of the Obama administration -- the massive expansion of the size and power of the federal government and a lack of trust in the American people.

These scandals were bound to happen. In fact, it was inevitable, and there will be more. President Obama has grown the size, the scope, the debt and the power of the federal government to such irresponsible proportions that problems like these are an inevitable result.

Lord Acton famously noted that "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

In a pathetic attempt to defend President Obama, another noted statesman, David Axelrod, said that the president couldn't possibly know about all these scandals because "the government is so vast." Therein lies the problem. The government is so vast.

Just a few years ago, President Clinton assured us that the era of big government was over. He could not have been more wrong. Now we have not just big government, but big brother running big government.

We don't know what the president knew of these matters before they became public, and it strains credulity to suggest that his top political advisers were in the dark. But again, when you grow government this big, these kinds of scandals are inevitable, and he bears the responsibility for that.

Are these scandals the byproduct of liberalism or incompetence? I'd say the answer to that question is yes, both.

The Obama presidency, and liberalism in general, are based on not trusting the American people -- a belief that big government is better for people. The latest scandals show why liberalism and big government don't work.

The scandals cut at the core ideology of the Obama presidency. Indeed, these issues aren't just the failure of an individual, but the failure of a system in which liberals put too much trust in big government.

Look at liberalism across every issue, from healthcare to energy to spending, and one thing is crystal clear: Liberals don't believe in the dynamic and transformative power of freedom. Bigger government and more power in the hands of a few means the interests of the public will be violated.

Many are wondering aloud if these scandals will tarnish Obama's legacy or weaken his presidency or cause his popularity to drop. Some of that will probably occur, but it's not the ever-charming Obama who will suffer the most from these scandals. No, fortunately the biggest loser here will be the paternalistic big government liberalism that Obama has foisted upon us.

We need leaders who have more confidence in the American people, and more skepticism for big government. Maybe we can get Clinton to pronounce the second end of the era of big government? It's time for Big Brother to be put down.

From CNN.

THE CASE AGAINST Congressional ‘comprehensive reform’ of anything is that "the overall effect of ... legislation on the future of America has become a crap shoot."

"THE WHITE HOUSE insists President Obama is 'outraged' by the 'inappropriate' targeting and harassment of conservative groups. If true, it's a remarkable turnaround for a man who helped pioneer those tactics."

JUST ANOTHER defensive use of firearms. Move along; nothing to see here. Just move along.

BIGGER GOVERNMENT, bigger Nanny.

A MINI PERFORMANCE: Why you should buy a Mini.

NEWT GINGRICH: President Obama is the symptom, not the disease. Big government scandals are not about Obama; they are about big government.

PIN-HEADS: In New York, naturally. One more reason for a (very) part-time legislature.

ROGER AILES: "To be a Fox journalist is a high honor, not a high crime."

FROM MY EMAIL:

In the hospital where a family member lay gravely ill, the relatives gathered in the waiting room. Finally, the doctor came in looking tired and somber.

"I'm afraid I'm the bearer of bad news," he said as he surveyed the worried faces."The only hope left for your loved one at this time is a brain transplant. It's an experimental procedure, very risky, but it is the only hope. Insurance will cover the procedure, but you will have to pay for the brain."

The family members sat silent as they absorbed the news. After a time, someone asked, "How much will a brain cost?"

The doctor quickly responded, "$5,000 for a Democrat's brain; $200 for a Republican's brain.

The moment turned awkward. Some of the Democrats in the family actually had to try not to smile, avoiding eye contact with the Republicans. A man unable to control his curiosity, finally blurted out the question everyone wanted to ask, "Why is the Democrat's brain so much more than a Republican's brain?"

The doctor smiled at the childish innocence and explained to the entire group, "It's just standard pricing procedure. We have to price the Republicans' brains a lot lower because they're used."

Enjoy the moment, they only come once.

DR. BENJAMIN CARSON: It's not too late to stop ObamaCare.

A NIGHTMARE, not a dream.

EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP. In the White House?

PUNCHING BACK TWICE AS HARD: Conservative group’s lawsuit targets IRS employees personally. Let them know that their bank accounts are at risk.

UPDATE: No, it's not bullying -- it's payback.

NEXT GENERATION TELEVISION: Try it; it's free.

DOCUMENTS: Lois Lerner Was Directly Involved in Targeting Program. "Lerner relished her role as a regulator that allowed 'government to bestow things on people rather than acknowledging them as equals, based neutrally on the law.'"

PEGGY NOONAN gets it almost right.

Ronald Reagan had it exactly right: "Trust, but verify."

THE WEEK IN PICTURES. My favorite:

TIP: "If you have to have taken Race & Gender Studies 101 to understand why something is racist, it’s not racist."

NOAA: focus on weather, not climate.

REPUBLICAN REP. BOB GOODLATTE, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee: Senate immigration bill repeats mistakes of 1986.

THE HOUSE VOTED 241-175 to pass legislation that would speed up the approval process for the Keystone XL pipeline. It would bypass State Department and EPA objection obstruction, but still requires President Obama's signature.

JEFF JACOBY ON TERRORISM: "In the wake of a bloody atrocity ... the first duty of civilized people – regardless of politics or ideology -- is not to start asking why the evildoers hate us, or how they became so angry. It is to call their actions evil, and denounce them without equivocation."

SCREW UP, MOVE UP: President Obama on Thursday nominated Victoria Nuland, a State Department official involved in the editing of the administration's talking points on Benghazi, to be the next assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs.

A reward for her role in the Benghazi cover-up.

OBAMACARE: a few more benefits for a lot more money?

THE LEFT'S FIRST AMENDMENT: freedom from (politically incorrect) speech.

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Some unions now angry about health care overhaul.

Tough. That's what happens when you enthusiastically support ramming a 2,000 plus page bill through Congress in the dark of night. Either lobby to repeal the whole damn bill or suffer alongside the rest of us.

MORNING EXAMINER: Even liberals turn on Holder. But there "is little to no chance that a man as stubborn as Holder would ever offer his resignation or that a president as stubborn as Obama would ever accept. But that only means that the scandals plaguing Obama’s White House are far from over."

INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE: We'll get back to you, Congress, after the election.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Study backs farmer in pollution battle with EPA.

SO YOU THOUGHT THE IRS SCANDAL WAS A 'ROGUE' OPERATION? Think again.

NEWT GINGRICH: Eighty percent solutions & 20% investigations. The 80/20 rule is pretty common in systems engineering, but usually it's interpreted to mean that 20% do the actual work while 80% are merely along for the ride.

SOMEONE AT HOMELAND SECURITY has discovered reality. Stop him before he memos again.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Five senators who know how to control federal spending.

I'm asking my Senators to join with these five. I just wish I didn't have to ask.

MILTON WOLF: Americans must repudiate the political class.

"King George’s assault on the Americans’ natural freedoms was oppressive, intolerable and deserving of a revolution. The truth is, the intrusion, restriction and outright harassment that our government subjects us to today is far beyond what the colonists faced from their tyrannical king. If it was tyranny in 1776, then, by God, it is tyranny today.

JOBS JOBS JOBS: Avoiding an information-age welfare state.

This is Blade Runner softened by food stamps, but as in the public housing projects and other warehouses where we store “surplus” people today, the most acute form of poverty and deprivation will not be the lack of food, clothing or even shelter. It will be a lack of social connection, of independence founded on achievement, on the human dignity that comes from doing work. Bellies will be full, but lives will be empty, and with that emptiness will come ills of every kind: addiction, brutality, ugly, and stunted sexual and emotional lives for many, neglect of the young and the old.

Depressing. But this first part of Mead's post is, I would argue, the end result of our liberal political class's policies. Mead, in his second part, argues for a more optimistic future, but I still regard even the optimistic half as somewhat depressing.

MORE PLEASE: Benghazi ‘Scapegoat’ Speaks Out.

IS THIS why Gibson Guitar was raided?

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S WOMEN.

TRUE SCANDAL: A tea-party group ... gets attention from the IRS — and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF. Catherine Engelbrecht was on Huckabee last Saturday. Her story is, unfortunately, all too believable.

A RANDOM THOUGHT on political correctness from the retirement lane: you know you're politically correct if you believe it is racist to believe that our first black president is incompetent.

'SKINNY' HEALTH PLANS: using limited low-benefit health plans to avoid the costs of ObamaCare.

I hope we hear much more of this in the news in the near future. On a somewhat optimistic note, I'm wondering if such low-benefit plans could lead to insurance companies re-offering -- on the individual market -- catastrophic medical insurance outside the grasp of ObamaCare.

THE SHADOW OF THE LEADER: Partisan Obama Culture Spawned a More Abusive IRS.



What is appalling is the sheer quantity of data gathered that can will be used to attack these organizations and their supporters.

MARK STEYN: a government of thugs.

RUMOR HAS IT that these people are supposedly educated.

WE HAVEN'T LOST AMERICA YET: five signs. But just because we haven't lost yet doesn't mean we can't lose.

[Also recommended: Bolyard's evolution on guns]

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: It Can Happen Is Happening Here.

BARACK OBAMA, the world’s greatest gun salesman: “Lead is the new gold.”

NO, YOU CAN'T make appointments without Congressional approval.

NEW YORK SHERIFFS voice opposition to strict gun law, seek to join lawsuit challenging it.

It's hard to believe, but even in New York state, there are still modest numbers of people with (un)common sense.

LOIS LERNER -- a history of harassment.

But it's not harassment if it's for a 'good cause'.

OBAMA: Trust me.

Liberalism’s agenda has been constant since long before liberals, having given their name a bad name, stopped calling themselves liberals and resumed calling themselves progressives, which they will call themselves until they finish giving that name a bad name. The agenda always is: Concentrate more power in Washington, more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in agencies run by experts. Then trust the experts to be disinterested and prudent with their myriad intrusions into, and minute regulations of, Americans’ lives. Obama’s presidency may yet be, on balance, a net plus for the public good if it shatters Americans’ trust in the regulatory state’s motives.

No.

"PLEASE DETAIL the content of the members of your organization’s prayers." Instapundit's response: "In the Obama era, the question isn’t whether you’re paranoid. It’s whether you’re paranoid enough."

My thought is more along the line of this comment: "If this is institutionalized thinking it's time to clear the place out with a flame thrower."

On reflection however, the best response is probably to revise the tax code to remove the tax-exempt status from all NGOs, including churches, and reducing tax rates for all.

WILL NO ONE rid me of this turbulent group? The President is now finding out that the chickens always come home to roost.

Those who fail to learn from history are always condemned to repeat it.

FIVE WAYS Obama can restore the public's trust and rescue his presidency. Nope. There's only one way: resign and let Joe Biden try to rescue it.

WHEN OBAMACARE IS FULLY IMPLEMENTED, you'll only be 13% more likely to die. That is, if ObamaCare follows the same trajectory as Medicaid -- and it will.

THERE'S NOTHING better than pissing off gun owners. I suspect Cody Wilson (Defense Distributed) basically has it right: "We win."

CNC (computer numerical control) machines aren't that hard to come by, and a reasonably competent hobbyist can build a crude one with a little assistance from Radio Shack and Home Depot.

AIAA: Pitcairn Field #2 In Pennsylvania To Be Designated a Historic Aerospace Site.

On December 18, 1928, Arthur Rawson, a factory pilot for the Cierva Autogiro Company, and then Harold F. Pitcairn, flew a Cierva C.8W Autogiro from Building #3 at Pitcairn Field #2. The flights marked the first time a rotary-wing aircraft was successfully flown in the U.S.

The autogiro is the predecessor of the modern day helicopter.

HOLDER: We’ve Droned 4 Americans, 3 by Accident. Oops.

That number is more than the number of terrorists waterboarded by former President Bush.

OBAMACARE: now even the health insurers are opting out.

REPORT: ‘Rogue’ IRS Workers Were Following Orders. And I suspect we're about to find out whose orders....

FOX NEWS CONFIRMS IRS official Lois Lerner placed on administrative leave. I wonder how she likes it under Obama's bus. And will she keep silent? If Republicans are smart, she won't.

Update: with pay, apparently.

TRITON TAKES FLIGHT: Navy's Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program is underway.

JUST BECAUSE the jackboots are high heels doesn't make them less painful.

More on HHS intimidation here.

DUMPSTER DIVING FOR DIRT: business as usual for Democrats.

THE POWER OF DRUDGE: A Little Civics Lesson For Janet Napolitano And Barack Obama.

DEFINE AND CONQUER. This is why there can be no accomodation with this presidential administration.

NO, NO ... the IRS doesn't have a political agenda.

JOHN MCCAIN wants to lower your cable bill. Lowering my cable bill would be nice, but what I really want is to get rid of those hundreds of channels that only exist because of government-mandated bundling.

I can do without my life being 'improved' by government mandate....

THE OREGON MEDICAID STUDY: a reason the rethink health care, not rethink ObamaCare. Cohn's half-right; it's reason to rethink health care -- and Obamacare.

I think Cohn is stretching to find support for ObamaCare in the Oregon data. It seems to me that what the Oregon study really tells us is that 'healthcare' is a liberal chimera.

DOES THE SECOND AMENDMENT protect armed drones?

A COALITION OF INFLUENTIAL CONSERVATIVE LEADERS have published an open letter announcing their strong opposition to the 800-plus-page Senate immigration reform bill. The fact that the bill is 800 pages long should alone be more than sufficient reason to oppose it. Remember ObamaCare?

THE TEA PARTY held rallies at IRS offices around the nation at noon yesterday. Here are some posts/pictures from around the nation.

Norfolk, Virginia.

Washington DC (video).

Cincinnati, Ohio.

Atlanta, Kansas City, St. Louis, Orlando, Austin, Denver, Lansing, Charleston, Albuquerque, Nashville, Houston, San Jose, Tacoma, Bloomington, Boston, Fresno, and San Diego.

More from Cincinnati.

More from around the U.S., with this amusing comment: "What is the difference between the Tea Party protestors and the IRS employees? The people protesting outside probably owe less in back taxes than the people working inside the IRS offices."

The Democrat strongholds of San Francisco and NYC were unrepresented.

SURE, your electronic health records are safe with us.

WASHINGTON POST: Obama’s rating steady in face of controversies, likely buoyed by rising economic hopes.



Oh? (from Rasmussen Reports)

POPULAR SCIENCE: Octo-copter used to search for oil reserves.

NEXT STOP: a full arrested landing.



I posted about the X-47B's first carrier launch here.

FINALLY. A Constitutional amendment the Obama administration can support.

COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Dumb, lazy American voters…

…but we ALL get the government the LEFT deserves.

Lucky us.

Taken from this post.

DAMNED RIGHT: Let's exploit liberal hypocrisy.

I HOPE THE EPA BUREAUCRATS who decided to 'regulate' a spillproof gasoline can are condemned to an eternity in Hell filling one pint capacity lawn mower tanks from a full 5-gallon spillproof container.

An ominous regulatory announcement from the EPA came in 2007: “Starting with containers manufactured in 2009… it is expected that the new cans will be built with a simple and inexpensive permeation barrier and new spouts that close automatically.”

The government never said “no vents.” It abolished them de facto with new standards that every state had to adopt by 2009. So for the last three years, you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically. There are other silly things now, too, but the biggest problem is that they do not do well what cans are supposed to do.

And don’t tell me about spillage. It is far more likely to spill when the gas is gurgling out in various uneven ways, when one spout has to both pour and suck in air. That’s when the lawn mower tank becomes suddenly full without warning, when you are shifting the can this way and that just to get the stuff out.

I wrote here about my irritation with the new 5-gallon gas can I bought to feed my new emergency generator. Luckily, the generator gas cap's 'safety' functionality was easily removed, and so I was able to fill the generator tank (and empty it for storage) with minimal spillage from the ultra-safe 'spillproof' 5-gallon can.

Then yesterday it came time to fill the lawn tractor and trim mower....

I have an old beat-up unsafe vented 2-gallon gas can that I normally use for the lawn equipment. It was empty, so I decided to use the nearly full ultra-safe spillproof 5-gallon can to refill the lawn equipment and the 2-gallon can I normally use. The result?

Five minutes and a bruised knuckle to get the spout on the 'safe' can open and unlocked; another two minutes and an ounce or two spill to fill the 12-oz. or so tank on the small lawn mower. Then another 3-5 minutes, more spillage, and a now-bleeding bruised knuckle to fill the 1-1/2 gallon tank on the lawn tractor. Finally another five minutes and much more spillage this time to refill the unsafe vented 2 gallon can I normally use.

So I took the so-called spillproof can down to my basement workshop and spent another 15 minutes ripping the valves, springs, seals, and other assorted hardware out of the can's spout. I now have an unsafe, but reasonably spill resistant 5-gallon gas can that is finally usable.

ONLY LIBERALS can be fair, balanced, and ... unafraid?

YOU KNOW you're doing something right when 1,200 Harvard students oppose you.

Note: 'edited for clarity' means edited for political correctness.

OBAMACARE: Four possible futures.

MANNED V. UNMANNED: I admit -- I'm somewhat surprised.

When I retired from Lockheed Martin 13 years ago, it was looking as if manned surveillance aircraft (e.g., the U-2 and others) were going the way of the dodo.

GLOBAL WARMING CLIMATE CHANGE NEWS: International Airline Emissions Deal Appears To Be On The Rocks.

NEVER LET A CRISIS GO TO WASTE: Liberals Claim IRS Went After Them Too.

OH, MY: Even the government's own immigration enforcement union opposes the Senate immigration bill. An 'insurmountable bureaucracy'.

IT'S NOT WISE to poke at a sleeping bear. Bears have teeth, claws, and a nasty temper when rudely awakened.

OBAMACARE: Insurers predict 100% to 400% Obamacare rate explosion. Owners of so-called 'Cadillac plans' appear to be the least affected (our premium went up by only 5%) since coverage already exceeds the Obama mandate, but those with lesser coverages (e.g., small businesses and individuals) are going to hurt badly.

Our family will take it in the shorts next year, when my wife retires and we're forced into Medicare. My plan is roughly the same as the young are expected to do -- not insure, pay the penalty if forced to, and only enroll when a catastrophic event occurs.

NEW YORK TIMES: ‘Climate Warnings Growing Louder’ as CO2 emissions fall. It would be cognitive dissonance at the Times except that cognitive dissonance requires cognition.

THE CICADAS ARE BACK IN TOWN. Here's one on the lamp post at the end of the driveway. The block it's perched on is 1" thick.



The last appearance, if I remember correctly, was in 2007 so this is Brood II of the 17-year cycle pests. They're beginning to show up everywhere, but haven't peaked yet. Outside it sounds like a diesel engine idling in the background. Right now, the engine sounds about two blocks away; before it's over, it'll be right outside the door.

SHOULD DOCTORS be allowed to choose not to treat fat people?

If ObamaCare finally comes to pass, I think the question will be "Will doctors be allowed to treat fat people?"

THE IDEA of impeaching Obama is industrial-strength insane. Or so says Michael Tomasky.

Tomasky needs to be forcibly yanked from his nutso Left industrial-strength beltway bubble for a short visit with the rational Right in the world as it actually exists. It's been a few days since Tomasky's screed was published and it's become abundantly clear that Obama's 'leadership' is indeed culpable.

MY EXPERIENCE AS WELL: Want to be happy? Get to work.

SECURE THE BORDER? It's been done. Jeff Jacoby offers an alternate view of what the US has done. But Byron York has a different view.

I agree with Byron York this time. The immigration problem that has to be correctly addressed is border control, not border crossing as Jacoby seems to suggest.

AMUSING, IF NOT HOPEFUL: Seven House-Passed Bills President Obama Signed that Repeal or Defund Parts of His Health Care Law.

OBAMA, THE BETRAYER. Is it time to throw him under his own bus?

GUN CONTROL: require chocolate bullets. For further amusement, read the comments.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT: build more cities. Here's an obvious question: if cities are so much more efficient places to live, why are they so much more expensive places to live?

Also left unmentioned is the fact that people are much easier to control when they've given up their independence to live in a city.

ONE SENTENCE that could save immigration reform.

Well, maybe. But immigration reform can't happen until the borders -- all borders -- are controlled. Actually controlled. Verifiably controlled, not 'declared secure' by some Homeland Security factotum.

HUCKABEE: Well, what do you know?

GET YOUR PRINTABLE GUN HERE.

BEGGING, OR BULLYING? Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is hitting up health executives for help financing ObamaCare. My bet is on bullying. The Obama administration doesn't beg (well, except in foreign affairs).

THE MOOD OF AMERICA:



Priceless.

WE'VE KNOWN FOR YEARS that California was sinking, but literally?

REIHAN SALAM: the debate about immigration and IQ.

One conceptual question for those of us with a humanitarian interest in bettering the lives of the global poor is this: should we try to rescue some trivial share of the global poor by allowing them to work and settle in the U.S., and accept that they will tend to cluster in the bottom fifth of the U.S. socioeconomic distribution while spending a significant sum of money to help them lead dignified lives in a high-cost country? Or should we devote this significant sum — or some much larger or even much smaller sum — to interventions that might benefit a much larger share of the global poor, e.g., by making investments in mitigating various environmental health risks? I can see the sentimental case for rescuing a trivial share of the global poor by allowing them to become U.S. service workers. It’s not clear, however, that this is the best strategy in terms of bang-for-the-buck....

I would ask this question: Aren't you further impoverishing the poor country by taking only its most skilled as immigrants?

CAN AVATARS help close the doctor-patient communication gap?

Frankly, I doubt it. From my experience, much of the 'doctor-patient communication gap' is that much, if not most, of what the doctor 'knows' about the patient is wrong. I know more about myself than any doctor, and I expect that's true of most people as well.

DARWIN AWARD CANDIDATE: New Colorado gun owner accidentally killed with her recently purchased assault rifle.

Let's see: she was drinking; the weapon had a loaded magazine inserted; there was a bullet in the chamber; the safety was off; and she handed off the weapon butt first.

And those were only the obvious safety violations....

IF BRAS ARE A FIRE HAZARD, why do women wear them?

HEH. "One thing we have learned from the IRS scandal is that sports journalists are morally superior to political journalists."

Even Keith Olbermann?

RELATED: “What do the Benghazi cover-up and the IRS scandal have in common? They were both about winning elections, under false pretenses.”

MY THOUGHT EXACTLY:


More here.

AEROSTATS LOST: weather, mishaps take heavy toll on dirigibles. They are incredibly valuable, however; both times I was in Iraq there was at least one flying 24/7 above the camp.

IT NEVER OCCURRED TO HIM that do-gooders gravitate toward extremism.

RIGHT ON: Sue the bastards!

WORSHIP ME INSTEAD: Michelle Obama criticizes the worship of celebrities, sports stars.

ANOTHER WEEK IN PICTURES, scandalpalooza edition. The Bush one must hurt.

BERETTA TO LEAVE MARYLAND: "The idea now of investing additional funds in Maryland and thus rewarding a Government that has insulted our customers and our products is offensive to us so we will take steps to evaluate such investments in other States."

The full statement is here.

ENVY -- the definition of progressivism.

HEH: Colorado sheriffs upset with gun restrictions adopted in the aftermath of last year's mass shootings filed a federal lawsuit challenging the regulations as unconstitutional. The lawsuit involves sheriffs from 54 of Colorado's 64 counties....

BARACK OBAMA: The Lion Lyin' King. "... in God we Trust but of Obama we can expect nothing but lies ..."

WOMEN NOW FREE to go topless in public in NYC -- but only if they're not carrying a 32-ounce soda.

PEGGY NOONAN: This Is No Ordinary Scandal.

The leader casts a long shadow - remember 2009?

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "You may be paranoid. But are you paranoid enough?"

MORNING EXAMINER: Accountability, Obama style. "[N]o wonder public trust in the federal government has plummeted since Obama became president."

GOOGLE announced that it is investing $10.7 million in a company, Airware, that builds autopilots for unmanned aerial systems. I'm pretty sure I'm not ready to fly in a Google-powered aircraft....

RELATED: Drones causing an increase in 911 calls to report UFOs.

A FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD and



the IRS did exactly what President Obama told them to do.

MORE: A Culture of Intimidation.

GANG OF EIGHT: We trust the Obama administration to faithfully execute the proposed immigration laws. They may; I don't.

WHITE HOUSE: the lights are on, but nobody's home.

AMERICA WOULD LIKE TO KNOW: Questions for the President.

Mr. President, on Wednesday you gave a brief statement on the IRS abuse scandal, in which you said that acting commissioner Steven Miller had been asked for and had handed in his resignation. You suggested that this was the beginning of accountability in the IRS abuse scandal. But an hour later, Miller told IRS staff that he was merely ending his term a couple of weeks early, and that he expected an “orderly transition” to the next commissioner. In light of Miller’s remarks, Americans are wondering if you, Mr. President, really held Mr. Miller accountability for anything, or if you allowed him to depart on his own terms. Is Mr. Miller’s account accurate? Do you believe that he has undermined your effort to hold the agency accountable? Related to that, this morning America woke to the news that Ambassador Susan Rice is in line for a promotion to become your next National Security Adviser. Mr. President, do you think she deserves a promotion, after misleading the American people about the origins and nature of the terrorist attack in Benghazi that left four Americans dead? And related to that, your spokesman, Jay Carney, has insisted that the White House only made “stylistic” changes to the Benghazi talking points. But the emails released last night show much more involvement, and that changes were made at a deputies meeting conducted inside the White House. Carney’s statements clearly were not accurate, and he speaks on your behalf. Looking at these three cases, what conclusion should Americans reach about your view of holding your subordinates accountable for their actions?

I can give you my conclusion -- and it ain't pretty.

CAPTAIN OF CDMA: Qualcomm cofounder Irwin M. Jacobs wins the 2013 IEEE Medal of Honor for his pioneering work in digital communications.

Before there was Qualcomm, there was Linkabit, and before that there was the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Deep Space Network, where I was introduced (through Jacobs, Viterbi, Gilhousen, et.al.) to digital communication theory.

As a side note, CDMA (code division multiple access) is an outgrowth of direct-sequence spread spectrum, widely used by the military for 'stealth' communication systems.

IF YOU BIKE TO WORK, just don't be a jerk about it.

HOUSE VOTES to repeal ObamaCare in 229-125 vote. They're within striking distance of a veto-proof margin. Next stop is to win the Senate in the mid-terms.

IT GETS WORSE.

The IRS official who led the tax-exempt organizations unit when Tea Party groups were targeted is now in charge of the IRS office responsible for ObamaCare.

And

The Justice Department temporarily lost track of two known or suspected terrorists who were in the witness protection program -- and allowed others on the no-fly list to board commercial flights.

Is grossly incompetent too strong?

TECHWISE CONVERSATION: The future of the 'disassembly' line.

OH, YES, the IRS is clearly nonpartisan.

MORNING EXAMINER: The White House strikes back out. There. Fixed.

A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER explains the hard facts of Obamacare to employees. A smart small-business owner.

NEWT GINGRICH: Four Scandals. Whether Obama knew or not (and I believe he did) is irrelevant; the issue is the 'Shadow of the Leader', the fact that the culture of a bureacracy takes on the attributes of its leadership. If the leader believes the ends justify the means, as Obama evidently does, the bureaucracy acts on that belief.

ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Does Antimatter Fall Up?

YOU DON'T SAY: IRS scandal raises fears about enforcing Obamacare.

"Why would you trust the bureaucracy with your health if you can't trust the bureaucracy with your politics?"

Why would you trust the bureaucracy at all?

CONN CARROLL: Let's not forget about HHS’ Obamacare shakedown.

Remember, though, it's not thuggery if the Obama administration does it.

THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA: "They were happy to be tools, until they found themselves treated with the respect that people who are happy to be tools tend to get."

POWERLINE'S mid-week in pictures.

THOMAS PEREZ, assistant attorney general for civil rights, snubs the Congress he wants to confirm him as secretary of labor.

One question the senators might want to ask before they vote: Why is Perez ignoring a congressional subpoena?

Supoenas, like laws, are for little people.

UH-OH: Global warming is changing the location of Earth’s geographic poles. At the current rate, they'll move about a mile in 72,000 years.

HEH: Panic Time. Well deserved.

GALLUP: Forty-eight percent of U.S. small-business owners say the 2010 Affordable Care Act (ACA) is going to be bad for their business, compared with 9% who say it is going to be good, and 39% who expect no impact.

Only 48%?

AUTONOMOUS X-47B UAV makes historic first launch from an aircraft carrier. Still to come is the first arrested landing, expected this summer.

CYNICISM: It's not just Rush Limbaugh any more.

IRAN UNVEILS new stealth drone. Keep your eyes closed and you won't be able to see it.

A BEN & JERRY'S flavor we'll soon be seeing.



I like the flavor, but I doubt it'll be Ben & Jerry's.

WHAT? Immigrating to America is not an entitlement? Well, unless you're planning to vote Democrat....

YOU DON'T SAY: Team Obama is both corrupt and incompetent.

DID THE WHITE HOUSE try to get a conservative columnist canned? And audited by the IRS.

ME, TOO.

BUT WAIT, there's more.

AND IN A RELATED ITEM, it's not just about taxes.

DANA MILBANK? “President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.”

The Obama administration is in real trouble when one of the Washington Post's chief apologists fails to rise to the occasion.

“IS THERE A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS on this [Benghazi] investigation, or does it end in January 22nd, 2016, or something?”

COLLEGE STUDENTS make first-ever successful flight and landing of a concrete airplane.

When I was in college (back in the dark ages) the Civil Engineering departments in engineering schools always had an annual 'concrete canoe' race. I'm looking forward to seeing the Civil & Mechanical Engineering departments teaming up to have annual 'concrete airplane' races.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Watergate II. Once in a lifetime should be enough....

HOW GOVERNMENT wrecked the gas can.

Soap doesn’t work. Toilets don’t flush. Clothes washers don’t clean. Light bulbs don’t illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked. It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice.

I tried to buy a decent 5-gallon gas can when I bought my emergency generator -- they're not available. What's even more frustrating is that the generator itself has a 'safe' gas inlet which is incompatible with the gas can. I can't fill the generator without spilling at least some gasoline.

Almost every time I buy a new consumer item I wind up spending several hours disrupting the safety and 'help me' features to get the item to working reasonably well. Mostly I'm successful, but sometimes the safety fanatics are too damned ingenious.

You may thank the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible.

INCEST OR NEPOTISM? I choose incest....

RACISM AND GUN CONTROL: Remember the 'Saturday Night Special'?

PAUL GREENBERG: The Cover-Up Unravels.

A NOTE TO PROGRESSIVES: To play the 'moral superiority' card requires that, you know, you be perceived as being morally superior.

Laughingstock isn't it.

WE CAN "TRUST" BIG GOVERNMENT. "We can trust it to make a mess every time ... that it goes screechingly out of control."

DO TELL ... Scandals undermine government credibility at bad time for Obama’s presidency.

And the third scandal is just beginning.

I'd hazard a guess that -- with the possible exception of MSNBC -- the fawning mainstream media is about to quit fawning.

MICHAEL BARONE: Did Clinton and Obama Believe Their Benghazi Baloney? If I had to choose between incompetent and liar, I'd choose both.

IT'S NOT ABOUT GUNS. It was never about guns. It's about control.

A thought for Democrats: it's not wise to take moral superiority to a gunfight. You'll lose.

DON'T LAUGH: laughing at them makes them feel bad.

FEWER GUNS, more killing. Best comment: "The left uses every tragic killing as an excuse to take guns away from the people who didn't do it."

Second best were the multiple comments by 'RikOShea', who correctly pointed out -- and ably defended -- the obvious correletion/causation conundrum. The problem, of course, is the second half of the 'correlation does not imply causation' argument: it does give you a place to start looking.

That there is more to gun violence than the red/blue divide is obvious, but the divide does give you a place to start looking for and weighing the other (probably cultural) factors that do impact gun violence.

YOU DON'T SAY: "Public opinion polls show [Obama’s] also having a hard time convincing the American people he’s sincere."

PAUL KRUGMAN: “Fire insurance is worthless! After all, there’s no evidence that it prevents fires.” Which, I think, is exactly the point. Fire insurance is not supposed to prevent fires; its purpose is to mitigate the economic consequences of a catastrophic fire, not pay for routine maintenance.

The same should be true of health insurance. It should not be for routine maintenance (health care); it should be for mitigating the economic consequences of catastrophic illness.

TAX POLICY: Why pull the wagon when you can ride in it?

Mitchell is writing about the government's proposal to limit retirement savings, but the government entitlement mentality (you aren't entitled to your money) is a staple of big government and liberalism progressivism.

A SIMPLER WAY to think about amnesty’s impact on Social Security. Too simplistic for me. I don't think history supports this thesis, beyond the fact that the liberals' welfare society has increased benefits beyond the earning capacity of poorer immigrants. And that isn't an immigration problem; it's a 'welfare state' problem.

SUNBURN IS BACK IN STYLE ... the more things change, the more they stay the same.

GOING GALT: More Americans Vote with their Feet against Obama. Giving up U.S. citizenship is a serious, committed act; that so many are doing it is significant.

I've given thought to becoming an ex-pat, but not to actually giving up my citizenship.

MARITA NOON: Americans Fighting Their Own Government For Economic Survival. And what's particularly frustrating is that the environmentalist NGOs demanding the government intervene are funded, at least in part, by the very same government intervening on their behalf.

WHAT THE HELL is a 'progracist'?

Appropriate terminology.

GET YOUR AMMO HERE. It's still at a premium, about 25%-30% more than I pay at my local gun range (when it's available), but with the exception of .22LR there is now more than adequate selection.

THE TAXMAN versus the Tea Party.

More here.

Linked from Instapundit.

COVER-UP? What cover-up?

MARK BAISLEY: Benghazi for Dummies.

CHALKBOARD REBELLION in the Golden State.

NIGHTWATCH UPDATE: North Korea Caves; Puts Missiles in Storage.

100,000 DOWNLOADS: We win. He's right; these worms aren't going back in the can.

CRUZ ON OBAMA’S TEXAS VISIT: Hey, perhaps he’ll learn to create some jobs from the folks who know how. Fat chance. He went to lecture, not to learn.

FEWER BAD MARRIAGES: another reason to love ObamaCare.

Terminal stupidity must be a requirement to be elected to Congress as a Democrat.

IF IT WEREN'T FOR FOX NEWS, there'd be no news at all. Where are the real journalists?