FIVE YEARS AGO, a blast from the ObamaCare past. And I maintain the last sentence will still prove correct....

LIBERALS: "You're too stupid to be entrusted with your own life."

THE FEDERALIST: The New Sins Of ‘Nonjudgmental’ Millennials.

MARINE CORPS AV-8B Harrier pilot performs no nose gear landing on USS Bataan.



Skill.

WHO'D'VE THUNK IT? Religious people have rights, too.

SANDRA FLUKE: Clueless, or lying? She's a Georgetown Law graduate; she can be both.

OBAMA’S MIDDLE EAST STRATEGY bears predictable fruit. Almost exactly what I wrote.

SHOCKING (NOT): Ethanol production causes climate change. Well, not exactly. But it does exacerbate already existing water shortages due to the 2012-2013 midwest drought.

PRESCIENCE:

Barack Obama has always been openly opposed to free speech, and has always been willing, if not eager, to use the power of the state–illegally, if need be–to punish his political opponents. We had fair warning of Obama’s corrupt and tyrannical impulses in 2008. Unfortunately, not enough voters paid attention.

John Hinderaker commenting on a blog post he had written in 2008.

BARNEY FIFE MEETS DELTA FORCE: Hypermilitarized police departments are more dangerous than whatever they fight.

SHOCKER: ObamaCare's newly insured are sicker. ObamaCare is about to become much, much more expensive for taxpayers. Death spiral, anyone?

ANTI-SEMITISM and the shame of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Strong letter follows.

FROM THE COMMENTS: "Really makes me wonder about the average I. Q. of liberals."

SHORT ANSWER, NO. Should You Get Your DNA Tested to See if You’re More Likely to Get Cancer?

It's one thing to live with uncertainty; yet another to live in fear. Life is bad enough when every time you turn on the television you're deluged with health nannies (and ambulance chasers) hawking fear at every commercial opportunity.

ANOTHER CLIMATE EMBARRASSMENT: The water levels in the Great Lakes, supposedly dropping due to 'global whatever', have suddenly risen by over a foot. Unexpectedly, of course.

I suggest that it's time for another name change: from global cooling (1970's) to global warming, to climate change, to climate disruption, to ... wait for it ... climate embarrassment. The new name has the advantage of being, well, accurate.

JOHN LOTT: What the Supreme Court still doesn't understand about guns.

Another way to think about it is that a gift is a gift only when the State approves.

OBAMA-STYLE CLIMATE AND ENERGY PROGRAMS have failed everywhere they’ve been tried. Why repeat this tragedy in America?

POWERLINE: Supreme misery for the Left.

In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court held that closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. The five center-right Justices formed the majority for that proposition.

In Harris v. Quinn, the Court, again with the five center-right Justices comprising the majority, held that individuals home health care workers cannot be required to pay dues to public employee unions, as they are not really public employees. The Court did not overrule past precedent holding that the First Amendment allows the government to condition a person’s employment in the public sector on that person’s paying fees to a union.

Almost a complete victory for the Right. My guess is that the past precedent of conditioning a person's employment in the public sector on that person's paying fees to a union will be under attack very soon.

WHEN POLITICS PRECEDES POWER, the result is weakness and war.

Chou En-lai (1898-1976), the first Premier of the People's Republic of China, recognizing the obvious, has been was quoted as saying “diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means”. In other words, without a credible threat of force to back it up, diplomacy is merely whining.

ANOTHER WIN: Supreme Court backs Hobby Lobby.

HOT DAMN! Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, has ruled that unions cannot force nonunion members to pay dues.

Now to take on the rest of the government unions....

WHY SCOTUS'S Harris v. Quinn Case has unions terrified. Later today we should know....

PELOSI: surge of illegal immigrant children an ‘opportunity’. Yes, America needs more 'guest voters'. In Red states.

POUR YOUR HEART IN IT. Just not your money; use other people's money instead.

THOUGHT PROVOKING: Is Islam's reformation overdue? Or overdone?

MEET REPUBLICAN SENATOR THAD COCHRAN'S 'get out the black (primary) vote' coordinator.

Who wants to bet she'll still be working for the Cochran campaign in November?

BLOOMBERG VIEW: What Obama hasn't said about ISIS. My take is that Obama is preparing to give the entire Mideast to the jihadis in the hope that they'll take us last.

Wasn't that the reasoning that led to the Holocaust?

HOW MUCH LONGER until your car testifies against you in a court of law?

PRESIDENT OBAMA may have a pen and a phone to sidestep the law, but citizens have apps.

OBAMACARE'S NEXT STEP: bedside rationing. What you don't know will kill you (just ask a veteran).

IMMIGRATION: None so blind as those who will not see.

Follow this link to a more sensible discussion of immigration policy. I have some disagreement with the 'who' part of the policy, but on balance it's a good discussion.

GLENN REYNOLDS: Award President Obama a second asterisk. (Pretty soon, he'll have more asterisks than Secretary of State John Kerry has Purple Hearts....)

SPEECH CODE VIOLATION: Motherhood is hard work.

BECAUSE THEY HATE NATIVE AMERICANS? Why Does the Left Hate Native American Names?

I rather suspect the names make them feel inferior.

PEEVE #317: The Politician Who Is a Son of a .... Or daughter.

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT from climate change: redefine poverty. When everyone's poor, no one's poor, and the environment will thank you.

Be sure to follow the link to the Forbes article.

HOLA, CENTRAL AMERICAN CHILDREN ... welcome, to the Democrat plantation. Sarcasm abounds, but a central truth remains.

GOING NOWHERE (I HOPE): Democrats move to ban free speech.

GIGABAY: Concept cargo aircraft.

About as close to a flying city as we'll see in my lifetime.

"AT SOME POINT YOU'VE EARNED ENOUGH MONEY": Obama's Incredible Shrinking Economy.

Why is it always my money that Obama wants to redistribute?

HILLARY DEAD BROKE:

Following in her husbands footsteps.

UNEXPECTEDLY: The Veterans Administration scandal is Bush's fault.

EPA SPENDS $1.6 million on hotel for ‘Environmental Justice’ conference. That's just the hotel bill; it doesn't include the travel costs and per diem for the bottom..., er, trough-feeders who attend.

And along the way, someone please explain to me why the Environmental 'Protection' Agency is hosting an environmental 'justice' conference....

POWERLINE'S week in pictures (video edition) is up. My favorite is this video describing the Obama administration's foreign policy:



On further reflection, I think you can safely remove the adjective 'foreign'.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Time for a Dose of Reality:

On the VA: Of Medicare-eligible patients age 66 and older who had also been enrolled in the VA for one year or more, only about three percent chose to seek in-patient hospital care from only the VA. Seventy-six percent avoided the VA completely, with 19 percent seeking care solely from Medicare, while roughly one percent sought care from both the VA and Medicare.

There's more; on Bergdahl, on Iraq, and on Democrats. Read it all.

"THIS WEEK the American people were taught a valuable lesson – never underestimate the willingness of white progressives to be offended on behalf of people who aren’t and to impose their will on those who didn’t ask for it." Derek Hunter punches back on behalf of those of us who are offended by white progressives.

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER (#7): "Global warming is more popular than the president." Heh.

PUNCHING BACK: Bill Whittle argues in favor of non-apologetic conservatism.

COLORADO GOVERNOR apologizes to sheriffs over gun control laws.

But why? If Hickenlooper was afraid of a right-wing challenge from Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo, that's now OBE; Tancredo lost in the primary to Bob 'Both Ways' Beauprez.

Now he may be stuck with the 'Both Ways' appellation himself, which surely won't help his candidacy either.

YES, SUE THE BASTARDS! Make them personally both civilly and criminally liable for their actions.

Ordinarily I'm not a fan of tort law, but in this case I'll make an exception....

MICHELLE MALKIN: Support Claudia Tenney for Congress.

LET'S TAKE cheap shots at the healing class. In the name of 'safety'.

YES.

More Non Sequitur here.

MALLARD FILLMORE has has a run on cartoons featuring feral chihuahuas lately and the comments have been interesting with the 'feral chihuahuas' being variously interpreted as Islamists, gun owners, and illegal (child) immigrants, among others.

Me, I see 'feral chihuahuas' as a descriptor for the progressive strain of liberalism.

NASA IDs potential target for asteroid mission.

More here and here.

LIBERALS FURIOUS: Constitution trumps gay-themed books in South Carolina university budget battle.

HOT AIR: DHS releasing illegal immigrant future Democrat families from Central America into U.S. — but won’t say how many.

It's safe to say that most, if not all, will never be repatriated to their home countries.

IMPRIMIS: The worldview that makes the underclass.

THE VETERANS ADMINISTRATION: Your tax-supported thugocracy at work.

EXPECTEDLY: NTSB cites over-reliance on automated systems in Asiana crash. If this surprises you, it shouldn't. For example, over-reliance on automation was cited for the Air France crash in the Atlantic ocean a few years back, and anyone who has been driving since before the mandatory 'safety' laws (i.e., seat belts, air bags, anti-lock brakes, center-mounted stoplights, etc., etc.) knows that the 'safer' the vehicle becomes the less safe the driver becomes. Here's an example coming soon to a highway near you.

INTERESTING: Technology can boost the incomes of low-wage workers, whereas increasing the minimum wage may not.

DEMOCRATS LIED ABOUT OBAMACARE. And they’re not about to “fix” it.

HIGHER 'EDUCATION': What that $1+ trillion student debt is being spent on. It ain't education. You can click on the charts to enlarge them, but what they (and some very simple math) tell me is that the numbers of and salaries of tenured or tenure-track professors has barely stayed above (<1%) inflation over the last 25 years. The rest of that 1+ trillion dollars has gone for ... well, has gone.

DEMOCRATS: oblivious to the obvious. "When you raise taxes dramatically and roll out tons of burdensome regulations, a contracting economy is only a surprise if you’re an idiot. Or a member of this Administration and the press. But I repeat myself."

RESTORATION MY ENVIRONMENT: Live your life to the fullest by paying someone else to suck up your carbon footprint.

WOULD YOU pick up this hitchhiker?

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) challenges Senate Democrats on bill to repeal First Amendment: "I have more faith in the Bill of Rights than I do any elected official."

NOTICE ANYTHING IN COMMON in these two blog posts?

Granted, correlation doesn't prove causation, but it's a great place to start.

A PHONY AND A HYPOCRITE: Sen. Harry Reid Declines Invitation to Redskins Game While Team ‘Disparages the American People’.

Dan Snyder should take Harry Reid up on his refusal and offer Reid's seat to the tribal leaders of Nevada's 27 tribes.

THE LION LYING KING:

To impeach or not to impeach?

BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID. President Obama is giving America the John Beale style of government.

WASHINGTON ASKS, “Why The Hell Is Eric Holder Still Around?” Instapundit answers: "Because no one else can be trusted to block investigations and harass enemies with such loyalty."

SCANDAL? WHAT SCANDAL? Meet the top 6 defenders of the IRS.

THE MCDANIEL CHALLENGE in Mississippi may have merit.

Here's why.

TECHNOLOGY: Introducing the vacuum transistor.

Something from nothing?

BACK TO MALAYSIAN AIRLINES FLIGHT 370: Search for missing plane shifts south after recent analysis of satellite data.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: Here's an idea; rather than abandon all those illegal immigrant children streaming across our southern border at red state bus stops, let's house them in in Harry Reid's Washington D.C. Congressional Visitor Center (unless it interferes with his anti-Koch brothers movie screenings).

Another option is the Yucca Flats nuclear repository in Nevada. It's empty; has been for years.

BREAKING NEWS:

The next Obama squirrel.

MORE ON THE DISAPPEARING EMAILS:

[T]here is a context in which crashing hard drives at IRS and EPA make perfectly logical sense. For starters, the Obama administration has given new meaning to the term "massive resistance" in its responses to congressional oversight.

Then there's the "in-your-face" appointment of maxed-out Obama donor Barbara Bosserman to the Justice Department's "investigation" of the IRS scandal.

Finally, there's the Koskinen smirk. Watch Rep. Trey Gowdy's devastating cross-examination of the IRS commissioner Tuesday, especially at the 3:21 mark.

The long-time Democratic fund raiser appears serenely confident that neither Gowdy nor any other House Republican can lay a hand on him or the president.

Read it all.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION is bringing back the blue screen of death. Now at the EPA: missing emails.

As Instapundit has noted with the Lois Lerner scandal, "the emails that they didn’t destroy are bad enough that the emails that they did destroy must be truly awful."

SHOVEL-READY JOB: Digging the grave of the Senate majority. (But only if the Republicans don't manage to screw up.)

A METAPHOR for what's wrong with Washington D.C.

NOT FROM THE ONION: EPA Workers ‘Told To Stop Pooping In the Hallways’. Why? They shit on everything else....

HERE'S WHAT Congress would look like without any morons.

Taken (with glee) from the comments at this post.

AND GOOD RIDDANCE: Chelsea Clinton is the perfect Millennial, which is why Hillary Clinton could lose.

YOUR IRS



and the Democrats who apologize to it....

WHY THE IRS will pay this conservative group $50,000. This looks like a victory, but it really isn't since civil penalties are (eventually) paid by the taxpayer. There need to be criminal sanctions (i.e., jail).

WOULDN'T YOU KNOW IT? Media coverage of 'selfies' is racist.

So is criticizing a liberal.

ON THE FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT: "We need criminal penalties, and civil liability for individual officials who violate the law."

WHAT'S IN YOUR WALLET?

Thanks, Mr. President.

I KNEW IT! If you feel ugly, you’re twice as likely to donate to the Occupy Movement.

BARACK OBAMA: not even a 'smidgen' of corruption at the IRS. He'd have been correct if he'd said not even a smidgen of honesty....

IT'S ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS: There Is No Republican Primary in Mississippi.

Crony capitalism at its best. (Or worst, depending on how you look at it.)

SOME THOUGHTS on the liberals' smear machine.

DEMOCRATS: Lois Lerner's computer crashed because we taxpayers didn't give the IRS enough money.

ENVIRONMENTALISM: More Greenpeace hypocrisy.

THREE KEY MOMENTS from Monday night's IRS hearing.

AN URBAN REALITY: Smart Cities. It sounds good, but I'm still reminded of Asimov's Caves of Steel, "vast city complexes covered by huge metal domes, capable of supporting tens of millions each ... extended to a point where no one ever exits to the outside world."

No, thanks.

Related: much more here if you're interested in that sort of thing. I'm not.

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE: summing up yesterday's primary elections.

GIVE US MORE FREE STUFF: Establishment Wins in Mississippi. Cochran ran as a first-class porker and Democrat trough-feeders put him over the top.

SPINELESS D.C. DENIZENS soon homeless. No, not Congress. Unfortunately.

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER (#8): the federal Department of Sheep Farts. I thought he was describing the White House.

ILLINOIS WARNS PARENTS: You are replaceable. It's not so much that bureaucrats are stupid (although there is that); it's that bureaucracies are truly mindless.

INFLATABLE MODULES COULD CHANGE SPACE EXPLORATION: The International Space Station’s upcoming non-rigid BEAM module may be the key to making the future of space more roomy and affordable.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D(umb)-NY) can't see the forest for all those damn trees.

IRS COMMISSIONER JOHN KOSKINEN enjoys the just desserts of his supercilious attitude toward the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

We start with (former prosecutor) Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC):



And next to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH):



Beautiful takedowns of a pompous, arrogant ass donkey.

THE WEEK IN DRONES: Pepper spray paintballs, celebrity selfies, and more.

Keeping up with the droneses.

ANDREW KLAVAN: I am (make-believe) outraged!

ANOTHER REASON TO OPPOSE GUN REGISTRATION: Gun control advocates push to take firearms from those accused of threatening violence.

SHOCKING DISCOVERY: Tea Party Movement Full Of Educated People.

Lede shamelessly stolen from Instapundit.

ALL YOUR LIBRARIES are belong to Hillary.

Finally, the Right appears to to be learning about 'lawfare'; the Washington Free Beacon is 'punching back'.

COMMENT OF THE DAY: "Giving citizenship to illegal immigrants is kinda like retail stores giving out discounts to shoplifters…"

'WE DID NOT KNOW': Nine times the Obama administration was blindsided. Only 9? Fox News is being generous.

TWENTY-FOUR REASONS to regret leaving Texas. Mine are numbers 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 18, and 23.

HEH: WalMart fact-checks the New York Times. The Times ought to outsource its layers upon layers of fact-checkers and editors to Walmart; they'd get a better product at much lower cost....

AN ACCURATE DESCRIPTION OF 'THE WON': A dangerous fool.

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE: the cockpit of the SR-71 Blackbird. There were none left on active duty when I was at the Skunk Works, but we had several mothballed on the tarmac.

A view of the RSO cockpit is here.

And start here for a virtual tour of the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

SCOTT OTT on the secrets to a successful move.

Hint: it involves keeping the shirt on your back and leaving everything else behind.

MORE HEALTH CARE PLANS you may like but won’t be able to keep. Insufficient opportunities for government control, graft, and other corruption regulation.

TRUESBURY: “What could be the (D)ifference?”

Linked via Instapundit.

VIDEO: Space-X tests new steerable ‘fins’ on its Falcon 9 rocket. Tom Corbett, here we come.

WHEN THE OPPORTUNITY ARISES, throw out the incumbent. Fresh blood is always better.

THANKS, OBAMA.

PRESIDENT OBAMA sends drone to Middle East.

Sunni Muslim insurgents in Iraq captured their fourth town in a little more than 24 hours late Saturday, hours before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the Middle East to try to shore up Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's faltering government.

Sarcasm intended.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE? Louisana Gov. Bobby Jindal:

"Are we witnessing right now the most radically, extremely liberal, ideological president of our entire lifetime right here in the United States of America, or are we witnessing the most incompetent president of the United States of America in the history of our lifetimes? You know, it is a difficult question," he said. "I've thought long and hard about it. Here's the only answer I've come up with, and I'm going to quote Secretary Clinton: `What difference does it make?'"

Indeed.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Government "of the Bureaucrats, by the Bureaucrats, for the Bureaucrats.

But not for you.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES (Jihad edition) is up:

Not my favorite, but clearly the best.

INSTAPUNDIT: "Obama’s making everybody look better in retrospect. Even Jimmy Carter."

The . Worst . President . Ever.

HEH: Team Obama getting pretty tired of Hillary throwing them under the bus. I can understand. After all, they believe it's their bus.

BRICKBAT: Police State. Another firing that should but won't happen....

BYRON YORK: Why ObamaCare 'good news' applies only to the poor. The middle class gets screwed; after paying for medical care for the poor, they have nothing left for themselves.

SCIENCE DENIAL: The Left gets a pass ... again.

PUNCH BACK: Hail to the Redskins!

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Redskins' Dan Snyder should tell the PC bullies to shove it.

I have another idea. Dan Snyder should drive Harry Reid (and the PC crowd) crazy: rename the Redskins the 'Republicans' and send him season tickets to all the Republican home games....

UPDATE: Hail to the Republicans!

FROM MY EMAIL: a political variant on an old joke.

A major research institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to science. The new element has been named Pelosium. Pelosium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 223 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 311.

These particles are held together by dark forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

The symbol of Pelosium is PU.

Pelosium's mass actually increases over time, as morons randomly interact with various elements in the atmosphere and become assistant deputy neutrons within Pelosium molecules, leading to the formation of isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Pelosium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. That probably explains why the element seems to be most abundant in California and New York.

The 'moron-promotion' characteristic is, unfortunately, not part of the joke.

JESUS, REPUBLICANS AND NRA banned on school website. But not Allah, Democrats, or the Brady campaign.

PLEASE DON'T LET THIS DIE. We won't.

CURRENT REPRESENTATIVE (AND FUTURE SENATOR) TOM COTTON speaks to the Obama administration's anonymous 'sources'.

Bravo, sir. May your Senate career be long and distinguished.

LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: 'Trigger Warnings' aren't enough; opposing viewpoints 'terrorize' and must be banned.

We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” Clinton said during a live CNN town hall.

Hillary Clinton, speaking on gun control on Tuesday, June 17, 2014.

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER (#5): "A vote for Democrats is a vote for higher utlity bills."

Also #9. And #11.

A LESSON in journalistic bias.

ROBUST SYSTEM DESIGN using cockroaches as a model:



Watch to the end....

AMERICA: Imagine the world without her.

THE SECOND AMENDMENT doesn't say what you think it does. Mother Jones' Michael Waldman [thinks he] pokes holes in claims that the Constitution protects an unlimited right to guns.

No, he doesn't. At best he provides a weak argument that, if you squint your eyes just right, you can almost imagine that the Founders may possibly have intended that the 'right to bear arms' be only in the context of a yet-to-be-created National Guard.

Question: Under that theory, what right do the police (and FBI ... and Social Security Administration ... and EPA ... and Department of Education ... and ... ) have to 'keep and bear arms'?

LIBERAL VOX.COM EXPLAINS THE IRS SCANDAL: not enough taxpayer funding.

Couldn't they find a less absurd excuse?

BLUE COLLAR PERSPECTIVE: "Jail has a wonderful way of sharpening the memory banks." Yes, salt 'em away and put the jail key with the 'lost' emails.

VIA INSTAPUNDIT: "[I]f you hate bad news, vote the straight Democratic ticket. True, bad things will still happen, but instead of rubbing your nose in them day after day, the press will say as little about them as is humanly possible."

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Bad timing bedevils both Obama and Hillary Clinton. Nonsense. It's not bad timing; it's gross incompetence.

DO IT YOURSELF: How to Build a Home-Brew Radon Detector.

Satisfy your inner geek.

YES. NEXT QUESTION. Will ISIS plan a 9/11-style terror plot against the U.S.?

TWO REASONS why the IRS scandal isn't going away.

Serious jail time awaits....

POPULAR SCIENCE: Does This Grainy Image Show Japan's First Stealth Fighter?

THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF ... Hobby Lobby.

EDUCATION: 'School' is a tool of socialization primarily wielded by progressives. So why do parents think it's normal?

I've wondered about that myself.

OBAMACARE: No death panels, just bedside rationing.

One way or another, rationing is inevitable.

MISSION INCOMPREHENSIBLE: Obama's vision for the military.

SCENES OF WORLD WAR II: then and now.

THE SCOREKEEPER (#15): Homeowners Associations. For when you just aren't hassled enough by government.

NOT EVEN A SMIDGEN OF CORRUPTION: The dog ate my e-mails, for two years.

CREDIT CARDS have expiration dates. Laws should also.

The answer is for the last two weeks of every Congress to be an 'unsession' devoted to repealing unnecessary laws -- and the agencies that administer them. The Environmental 'Protection' Agency would be a great place to start, as would be the Department of 'Education'.

BENGHAZI ATTACK SUSPECT captured by American special operations forces. I hate to be so cynical, but this strikes me as another Obama Look, a squirrel! moment.

THE GUN (CONTROL) NUTS are at it again.

JUSTINA PELLETIER is coming home. I think Gov. Mike Huckabee deserves a great deal of credit for getting her from the clutches of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. Now it's time to sue the state of Massachusetts into bankruptcy. My starting offer would be $1,000,000,000 (yes, with a 'B').

OF COURSE: NY Dem Wants Illegals To Have Right To Vote. Ask yourself if he would have still introduced the bill if it were a given that illegals would vote Republican....

SCOTT OTT: "I carved my niche on the internet writing news satire, but I have met my match." Seriously.

GETTING NOWHERE FAST: California Lawmakers Approve Bullet Train Budget To Oblivion.

HEH: Stand clear and sneer.

A POX ON both all their houses. The solution, I think, is to essentially 'fence off' the entire Islamo-facist world, rigidly enforce a no-emigration, no-commerce policy and let them kill each other off.

The other option, and one that is looking increasingly likely, is simply to make rubble of the entire Mideast.

POTEMKIN VILLAGE: Fake President has fake Twitter account populated with fake followers. So what's new?

PARODY, fortunately, is still legal. How much longer is an open question.

Linked from Instapundit.

AMERICA, The Headless Horseman. I lean toward picturing President Obama as the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, but the Scarecrow, despite having no brain, had both common sense and a certificate. Obama, on the other hand, has proven he has no common sense and we're not even certain that he has a certificate.

IT’S FATHER’S DAY ... Now go buy a gun. Well, I could use a shotgun....

DID THE IRS really lose Lois Lerner’s emails? Why there won't be an investigation:

[I]t wasn’t an accident; and Eric Holder’s job is scandal-goalie, so he won’t appoint a Special Prosecutor unless the pressure becomes overwhelming — and, if he does, he will appoint a loyal apparatchik who will run out the clock.

Until 2017, or after the impeachment, whichever comes first.

UPDATE: More from PowerLine.

THE NIGHTMARE on Connected Home Street. In a dark way, I find this almost reassuring.

PUNCHING BACK: Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX) asked the National Security Agency to turn over all the metadata it has collected on the email accounts of former IRS official Lois Lerner from January 2009 to April 2011.

Nothing will come of it, of course, but it is a clever PR move on the part of Republicans.

EVEN WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT:

Even those of us who were highly critical of Mr. Obama early on, who twice voted against him and worked in campaigns to defeat him, could not envision how epically incompetent he would be.

The harm this man has done is immeasurable.

No argument from me.

NO, IT'S HEALTH NANNIES: “For decades, [fat] has been the most vilified nutrient in the American diet. But new science reveals fat isn’t what’s hurting our health.”

Now let's do the right thing, the healthy thing: vilify health nannies.

DEMOCRATS: Math is not your friend. Here's more detail on George Will's lesson for math-impaired Democrat legislators.

Linked from Instapundit, who clearly understands that the Democrats learned their [fuzzy] math in Government schools....

REALLY? Lois Lerner's 'Lost' Emails?

UPDATE from inside the Department of Justice:

I’m a DOJ lawyer, so you obviously cannot use my name or any identifying information. But the idea that a “hard drive crash” somehow destroyed all of Ms. Lerner’s intra-government email correspondence during the period in question [2009-2011] is laughable. Government email servers are backed up every night. So if she actually had a hard drive fail, her emails would be recoverable from the backup. If the backup was somehow also compromised, then we are talking about a conspiracy.

Ways and Means committee hearings should be starting soon. Stay tuned.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: The absurdity of electing Kevin McCarthy to replace Eric Cantor as House majority leader.

But now McCarthy has a challenger.

MACKUBIN THOMAS OWENS: on a novel, The Camp of the Saints, that may soon become reality:

[T]he central issue of the novel is not race but culture and political principles. The United States has always welcomed immigrants, but until recently, it has expected them to assimilate — in other words, to become “Americans.” The traditional focus of American society has been the individual. Instead, multiculturalism has spawned a balkanized society of resentful members of various groups that seek favors for themselves, often at the expense of other groups — identity politics at its worst.

And that is the real danger today — that the American political system will be swamped by people who seek material goods but who disdain the American achievement in creating a government that protects the individual rights of all, without regard to membership in a favored group.

Linked via PowerLine.

MICHAEL BARONE: Eric Cantor was defeated for breaking one old rule and two newer ones.

The third lesson of Cantor’s defeat is that campaigning against “the entire crony corporate lobby” wins votes....

There's a strong case ... that crony capitalism violates the principles of both free-market conservatives and redistributionist liberals, as well as the principles of democratic fairness.

Republicans should keep that in mind, both is this year's midterms and in the runup to the 2016 election. The Tea Party will approve.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, destitute liberals edition, is up. Here's my favorite:

A flavor I will enjoy to the max.

AMMO GRRRLL ON DIVERSITY: "Who's Turn is It Next?"

FROM THE SCOREKEEPER: West Virginia may ban whales (#9). Why? Do they take up too much room in the pool?

REMEMBER WHEN Republican President FDR commemorated the 1963 moon landing by declaring ‘Peace In Our Time?’. Neither do I, but the Democrats do.

#RemedialHistoryFail.

ONE BROKE GIRL: It's hard getting by on $200,000 speaking fees. (Especially when you don't have anything to say....)

NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH spent $480,500 to text message drunks. The federal government is $17 trillion in debt, and it wastes money on this?

It is long, long past time for a large (20% or more) cut in the federal budget. All of it. Making it really hurt may be the only way to curtail tax abuses such as these.

IRAQ 2014: Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it.

Michael Ramirez editorial cartoons can be found here.

ANDREW KLAVAN: The Unbearable Smallness of Obama's Vision.

Obama is a president without vision, or with a vision so puny it’s hardly worth the name. All those big windy words — that hopey-changey stuff? Forget about it. Vision-wise? Look around you. The guy’s got nothing.

Read it all; Klavan's bluntness is refreshing.

THE BETTER TO CONTROL YOU? Medtronic wants to implant sensors in everyone.

TRAGEDY STRIKES IN SOUTH DAKOTA: Beer truck overturns on I-29.

HOOVER INSTITUTION: Hot Air on Climate Change.

JANINE TURNER: ObamaCare can be deadly. It was for my father.

AUSTIN BAY: Making Sense of the Meltdown in Iraq.

WE'RE FROM THE GOVERNMENT AND WE'RE HERE TO HELP YOU OUT: 900,000 Medi-Cal Applicants Stuck in California Healthcare Backlog Purgatory.

Which way did you come in?

THE SURPRISING WINNERS of Obama's student loan forgiveness program. Hint: it's not the poorer students.

Think of it as a "taxpayers' wealth to Obama lackeys" program.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME: Asteroids mined for fuel could generate a trillion dollar market.

KIT CARSON PARK in New Mexico has been renamed over American Indian Native American 'concerns'. There, fixed.

Now it's time to start pushing back with a little 'insensivity training' for the hypersensitive twits who have had their feelings hurt.

THE INFERNAL INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE has 'lost' Lois Lerner's emails:

Washington, DC – Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) issued the following statement regarding the Internal Revenue Service informing the Committee that they have lost Lois Lerner emails from a period of January 2009 – April 2011. Due to a supposed computer crash, the agency only has Lerner emails to and from other IRS employees during this time frame. The IRS claims it cannot produce emails written only to or from Lerner and outside agencies or groups, such as the White House, Treasury, Department of Justice, FEC, or Democrat offices.

“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to Congressional inquiries. There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.

“Just a short time ago, Commissioner Koskinen promised to produce all Lerner documents. It appears now that was an empty promise. Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies. Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone. This failure of the IRS requires the White House, which promised to get to the bottom of this, to do an Administration-wide search and production of any emails to or from Lois Lerner. The Administration has repeatedly referred us back to the IRS for production of materials. It is clear that is wholly insufficient when it comes to determining the full scope of the violation of taxpayer rights.”

Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany Jr., M.D. (R-LA) added, "In the course of the Committee's investigation, the Administration repeatedly claimed we were getting access to all relevant IRS documents. Only now - thirteen months into the investigation - the IRS reveals that key emails from the time of the targeting have been lost. And they bury that fact deep in an unrelated letter on a Friday afternoon. In that same letter, they urge Congress to end the investigations into IRS wrongdoing. This is not the transparency promised to the American people. If there is no smidgeon of corruption what is the Administration hiding?"

Instapundit comments: "So this means the contents were devastating for the White House, I guess."

Best comment at Instapundit: "Can't they just ask the NSA?"

POWERLINE: three crises of competence. More precisely, of glaring incompetence.

REMY: God Bless the USA Government (VA Scandal Edition):

OBAMA ASSURES NATION of his political commitment to inaction. Instapundit translates: "We’ll do something, as soon as we decide what to do, but whatever it is it won’t be anything decisive. And this is all the Iraqis’ fault, and probably Bush’s."

PLEASE ... bring the metrosexual back.

A REMINDER TO THE LEFT that the judicial sword cuts both ways....

[Related] So does the 'social justice' sword.

Punching back.

U.S. CONSIDERS OPTIONS as militants push closer to Baghdad. The Obama administration will continue 'mulling options' until the jihadis overrun Baghdad. Then they'll claim it's Bush's fault.

[UPDATE] It begins. The Obama administration delivered this message Friday to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki: "Make nice to the jihadis."

How long must this go on before Americans come to realize these 'idiot'-logues can no longer be allowed to participate in any form of government, to include kindergarten student councils.

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE H. W. BUSH marks 90th birthday with parachute jump.

Here's the video of the entire 6-minute jump. [Warning: annoying commercial to begin.]

[Update & bump] The Left continues to remain classy. Morons have no shame.

MITT ROMNEY WAS RIGHT: Again.

OUT OF WEAPONS-GRADE HASHTAGS? No problem; fire off a few Power tweets.

ONE DEAD, ONE HOSPITALIZED as husband and wife foil armed home invasion.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:

Courtesy of PowerLine.

THOMAS SOWELL: The danger of choosing a symbol to be president.

People who are disappointed with Mr. Obama have no right to be. It is they whom others have a right to be disappointed with. Instead of taking their role as citizens seriously, they chose to vote on the basis of racial symbolism, glib rhetoric and wishful thinking.

Moreover, many are already talking about choosing the next president of the United States on the basis of demographic symbolism — to have “the first female president.” If she is elected on that basis, will any criticism of what she does in the White House be denounced as based on anti-woman bias, as criticisms of Mr. Obama have been repeatedly denounced as racism?

What if we have the first Hispanic president and then the first Jewish president? Will any criticism of their actions in the White House be silenced by accusations of prejudice?

We may yet become the first nation to die from a terminal case of frivolity. Other great nations in history have been threatened by barbarians at the gates. We may be the first to be threatened by self-indulgent silliness inside the gates.

What really worries me is this:

Many wise and decent people assume automatically that Mr. Obama was trying to serve the interests of America. From that standpoint, he has failed abysmally, both at home and abroad. That should legitimately call his competence into question.

What if his vision of the world is one in which the wealth and power of those at the top, whether at home or internationally, are deeply resented, and have been throughout his life, under the tutelage of a whole series of resenters? And what if his goal is to redress that imbalance?

I believe Mr. Obama is merely incompetent, but what I fear is that mere incompetence may be sufficient to succeed at his larger goal.

MORE ON THE U.S.S. OBAMA: A Sudden Realization.

The cornerstone of liberal of the liberal self image is the belief that they can sup with the devil and hold their own. They say ”I’m not stupid. I know when to stop.”

[snip]

They’re a bunch of authentic geniuses on a runaway train wondering what went wrong. The blindspot that fooled them was basic. They took the terms of the train journey at face value. That made them highly vulnerable to the one man who boards the train for whom ... agreement means nothing at all....

[snip]

And so the train thunders down the track. Conservatives by themselves can’t put the brakes on a runaway. To accomplish this they need a coalition with elements of the left; to make common cause among intelligent liberals.

But it won’t happen yet — won’t happen for a long time — despite the evidence of their senses, because they have an almost religious attachment to the Cause. The Left is a religion. It looks away from the obvious sins of its leaders the way earlier generations of churchgoers sometimes averted their gaze from the misdeeds of their own.

It is so central to them that life without it would be meaningless. Leaving the Left is like being a man without a country.... The reason people on the Left can’t rebel isn’t because they cannot bring themselves to doubt Obama. It’s because they can’t bring themselves to stop going to cocktail parties.

The place to get off a runaway train is before it leaves the station ... or better yet, never get on.

BUT OF COURSE IT WAS STRICTLY LEGAL AND ABOVEBOARD: IRS gave FBI 1.1 million pages of taxpayer data to encourage prosecution of conservatives.

COLLECTIVIST DATA-MONGERS: keep your hands off my womb. But, but ... you don't understand. It takes a village government to raise a child.

WHY ISN'T OBAMA BEING IMPEACHED? Americans being evacuated from Iraqi air base.

Arrogance, narcissism, and stupidity aren't impeachable offenses -- but the consequences of arrogance, narcissism, and stupidity should be.

NOEMIE EMERY: Obama's being pretty stupid for a smart guy.

[...] "stupid" has been the byword of his administration thus far. It was stupid to push health care through Congress on a party-line vote and a loophole in the teeth of fierce public resistance, stupid to announce a surge in Afghanistan and then say he'd be leaving, stupid to leave Iraq without an American presence, stupid to draw a red line and let Syrian President Bashar Assad cross it, stupid to blunder into and then out of Libya, and stupid to pull missiles out of Eastern Europe just as Russia, in spite of his "reset," was beginning to stir.

It was stupid to push mandates and job-killing measures in the face of serious underemployment. The one thing he’s done that showed any brains was to time the most odious parts of his health care fiasco to detonate after he won re-election. In fact, it’s hard to think of anything he’s done that hasn’t been stupid....

Where did this 'smart guy' meme get started, anyway? All the objective evidence accumulated over at least the last 5-1/2 years suggests that Obama is dumber than dirt and more arrogant than Ivory Snow is pure.

GOVERNMENT UNION wants 'Duck Dynasty' fans fired.

Another reason to shut down government unions.

AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY: Will robot cars find their way with laser eyes? Citing the complexity of robotic guidance, there's this:

Today's robotic cars depend on a lot of overlapping sensors—lasers, radar, ultrasound, standard cameras, stereocameras, GPS, inertial guidance, even WiFi.

Which leads me to this more interesting question: with all the radiation endemic to modern life, how much longer will it be until cities become health hazards?

CHRIS MATTHEWS SCOLDS: Liberals need to stop looking down on tea partiers.

Read the comments. The general consensus seems to be that either (a) his meds are finally working, or (b) he's preparing himself to search for a real job.

TO DEMOCRATS, Republicans are ‘terrorists,’ but the Taliban is legitimate. Is there anyone left in the Democrat party who isn't a bat-shit crazy moron?

HEH: Works for me.

Linked from Patterico.

GUN CONTROL: "Intentions ... are the only things that matter in liberal ideology." Effectiveness is irrelevant.

RELATED: When intentions aren't enough, lie. Linked from Instapundit.

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Bye-Bye To The Home Of A Favorite Internet Conspiracy Theory. Without HAARP, what will the conspiracy theorists do with their tinfoil hats?

YES. NEXT QUESTION. Will the Obama White House use the Las Vegas cop-killers as a pretext for new civil liberties abuse?

More here.

ANOTHER POLITICIAN demands equal pay for other women.

Just to add a little bit of snark, I wonder if Hillary is paid $500K for a speaking engagement as was Bill.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Suing universities can be lucrative. 'Progressive' bureaucracies are where the money is....

ARIZONA MAN arrested for shooting at the moon. He missed.

TECHNOLOGY: turning paper airplanes into drones. Which leads to an interesting regulatory question: if the FAA regulates "the airspace from the ground up" do people using trampolines have to wear parachutes?

NOT REALLY A SURPRISE: Obama admits that he wants to confiscate your guns.

It ain't gonna happen....

FLYING MONKEYS abound at the Scorekeeper's blog today. Go visit.

WHITE HOUSE ON BERGDAHL SWAP: It was Defense Secretary Hagel's call.

See how easy it is to stab someone in the back when you're leading from behind?

WALL STREET JOURNAL: "The federal workforce nEeds fresh blood." No it doesn't; it needs less blood.

DON'T GIVE THEM MONEY. They're on our plantation.

IT'S A GOOD QUESTION: Are the rats deserting the sinking U.S.S. Obama, or has the captain already abandoned ship?

This is what happens when a weak boss insists on hiring people who aren't as smart as he (thinks he) is....

ALLEN WEST on President Obama's leadership:

When America’s President sits in a room with Russia, China or Iran’s leaders as America’s commander in chief, West wishes America had the “big dog.” Instead, “we don’t even have a beta dog. We have a delta dog. It’s shameful. So, that’s why you see our foreign policy where we’re disrespected and dismissed.”

Big dogs bite; delta dogs whine....

CLIMATE CHANGE: Is there anything it can’t do? Environmentalism is just a synonym for bat-shit crazy. Read the rest of the comments.

BREAK OUT MORE WEAPONS-GRADE HASHTAGS! Boko Haram just kidnapped more girls.

POWERLINE: Charles Blow does indeed blow.

Yes, he was named appropriately.

GOVERNMENT REGULATION: providing more opportunity for graft and corruption. It's not just for politicians any more....

IF GRAFFITI IS NOW 'STREET ART', what is 'street sculpture'?

THE CLIMATE IS CHANGING! The climate is changing ... oh, never mind. Just some more Emily Litella moments for the environmental movement.

HILLARY: It's really hard to live on an $8M income.

CARRYING OBAMA'S WATER: "The New York Times has been working overtime to discredit members of Bowe Bergdahl’s platoon who, with seeming unanimity, believe he deserted."

And they're failing.

FROM THE ANNALS OF THE 0.1%: About that 'hate crime' I committed.

If you attempt to read the linked post, you'll begin to understand why the 'liberal arts' academia has become a laughingstock. And you'll need this dictionary to guide you through the bull hockey.

WHEN I first saw this, my immediate reaction was the Onion. But no, they're serious. [And I just saw my first blog ad for this 'program' today.]

Be sure to read the comments.

WHAT THE ‘pre-recession peak’ job numbers really mean. Here's the chart, with Obama's tenure in office shown at the top.

It looks pretty good until you realize that after nearly six years the economy has almost improved to the point where it was when I lost my job....

IT'S TIME to punch back against the Left's plan for how we should live.

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE between a politician and a rat?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON explains the Obama administration: Truth is what we say it is.

RANDOM THOUGHTS on the inane public "service" ads we're increasingly subjected to on the radio and television: the health and safety nannies who author these ads don't give a tinker's damn about our health and safety; all they're interested in is creating a group of dependent victims to assure themselves an increasing income stream

NEW YORK TIMES: Let’s Give Guns to Violent Felons! This story doesn't merit a 'punch back twice as hard' response; it's more of a 'look at the fools and laugh at them' kind of story.

MORE EVIDENCE of cultural infantilization.

OBAMA'S POST-PRESIDENCY has already begun. Instapundit comments: "It’s sad that we haven’t lived up to his rosy expectations of 2008."

The only reason he hasn't already stepped down is those free golf outings and vacations.

THANK YOU, but I think not.

PAUL GREENBERG: Another Time, Another Scandal. No baloney.

KOCH BROTHERS support United Negro College Fund. Harry Reid has nothing to say.

The position of Senate Majority Leader is such a terrible thing to waste. Replace him.

OOPS! Polar bears are not climate controlled.

HEH: Blue State Policies Increase Income Inequality.

It's "settled science".

IN A POST about the higher education bubble (which you should read), Instapundit dredged up this Heinlein quote about 'hippiedom' which I had forgotten:

Hippydom is not itself a culture (as the hippies seem to think) as it has no economic foundation; it can exist only as a parasitic excrescence to the ‘square’ culture.

That quote to me perfectly describes the current state of liberalism.

TWO OBSERVATIONS about a clueless, incompetent, narcissistic President.

AFGHANISTAN ELECTION: Will the country ‘turn the page,’ or descend into chaos? Without American leadership, chaos is the way to bet.

TEAM OBAMA: fragging Sgt. Bergdahl's squad mates. That makes about as much sense as pissing up a rope. And with about the same consequences.

THAT NEW $15 MINIMUM WAGE is really working out well, isn't it?

Isn't it?

FRONT-RUNNER NOMINEE to head the Veterans Administration predicts ObamaCare will lead to a single-payer healthcare system.

Except that Dr. Cosgrove has now backed away.

My sense is that there's a general unwillingness to work for/with a clearly incompetent, narcissistic President who's shown every indication of a willingness to shoot his people in the back while leading from behind.

REPARATIONS FOR SLAVERY: Good idea or bad, it can't work. It's a horrible idea that I thought had died long ago, but apparently not. Maybe this will finally kill it.

POWERLINE: A pardon for Bowe Bergdahl?

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS announces a trigger warning contest:

This spring, students at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Rutgers, Oberlin, and George Washington University have called for “trigger warnings” on syllabi and in courses that deal with potentially “triggering” material, the New York Times reports.

A trigger warning is an alert that what follows may activate trauma. The Times mentions that some people have suggested that classic books could benefit from trigger warnings, including “Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (contains anti-Semitism) and Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs. Dalloway’ (addresses suicide).” A Rutgers student recommends that The Great Gatsby be tagged as possessing “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence.”

Lest the lack of accompanying trigger warnings discourage people from such reading, we are building a collection. But we need your help. Of what should readers be warned before reading, say, Hamlet, The Republic, Anne of Green Gables, or The Wind in the Willows?

We invite readers young and old to submit trigger warnings for well-loved books.

And now for the winners.

THE FRUITS OF SOCIALISM: Venezuela runs out of ... drinking water.

So ... you can't shit (no toilet paper) and you can't pee (no drinking water), but other than that life is wonderful in paradise....

UNEXPECTEDLY, OF COURSE: More patients flocking to ERs under ObamaCare.

POWERLINE: Why CNN is going nowhere.

I see no point in CNN trying to race MSNBC to the bottom; when it comes to total incompetence, MSNBC has cornered the market.

DONNA BRAZILE: It's the Republicans' fault that Sgt. Bergdahl's squadmates think he's a deserter.

OBAMACARE now infecting what's left of Medicare Part C. Pity the poor seniors (like me) who once thought they had a way out of single-payer healthcare....

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES: Burger King is leaving military bases in response to Obama's minimum wage hike for federal contractors.

For the new regressives (see this post), the blindingly obvious isn't.

INTERIOR SECRETARY SALLY JEWELL: Jamestown at risk from rising seas.

Uh, huh. Nothing else is working, so let's pivot back to global warming climate change climate disruption and try that card again....

MICHAEL BARONE: The stage could be set for a large electoral repudiation of liberal policies.

His nightmare scenario for Republicans is here.

YES! YES, Yes, yes! There goes Virginia Democrats’ state Senate majority.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The New Regressives.

In the spirit of changing words to reflect reality, I suggest that we call today’s liberals “regressives” — fundamentalists who are wedded to self-serving deductive doctrines that cannot sustain empirical scrutiny and exist mostly as fossilized theologies of the 1960s.

An apt term, indeed.

DEAR KITTEN: We interrupt this blog to bring you this cat video....

ATTENTION GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES: Even Elliot Rodger believed guns would have deterred him.

“WHAT HAPPENS when the world’s greatest spin doctor commits malpractice — on himself?”

I think it depends on just how stupid the average 'open-minded' low information voter really is, and on that point I'm not optimistic.

MALLARD FILLMORE on the VA hospitals -- and by implication the future of ObamaCare. Read the comments as well. The gist seems to me that the medical care is decent; gaining access to it is abysmal.

IN AN EARLIER POST I noted that Judge Jeanine Pirro called for President Obama to be impeached.

Here's that video.

THE LAW REQUIRES.... Unless you're the President, and then it only recommends.

THE STATE OF POLITICS, 2014: We're at (have passed?) the tipping point.

I'm reminded of The Marching Morons by Cyril Kornbluth.