“QUESTIONS SO STUPID only MSNBC could ask them.”

HEH: Lawsuit accuses Angie's List of manipulating customer reviews.

Link from Don Surber via Instapundit.

NOT THE ONION: 'The Gov't Employees Can't Watch Porn At Work' Legislation Passes Oversight Committee.

Actually I'm of two minds about this one: on one hand I don't like seeing my tax money wasted on these trash; on the other, the more time they spend watching porn, the less time they have to interfere in my life....

WANTED: New, 'Politically Correct' White House Fence. Best comment: "A moat would be terrible and send the wrong message. A reflecting pool all around the perimeter (with alligators) however would do the trick nicely."

Or piranhas.

YES, WE NEED MORE DEMOCRATS: U.S. signed agreement with Mexico to teach immigrants to unionize -- in the U.S.

'TRIGGER WARNINGS' for feminists.

POSTED BY SHADOW, DAISY, DIAMOND, AND RUSTY: Stand Up for Your Cats.

POWERLINE: By Its Own Criteria, the Obama Administration Is An Economic Failure.

ANOTHER REASON not to attend an Ivy League college. (Go to WalMart instead -- better selection.)

WOUNDED VETERAN'S custom-made golf clubs stolen in Virginia. Look on Air Force One....

SO IT BEGINS: The campus left begins to implode.

ZONATION: The reasons why Democrats are the party of slavery and victimization.

HUGH HEWITT: Which Republican can win the 'Putin primary'?

THIS THREAT won't work any more.

I CANNOT IMAGINE why any real man would have anything to do with Lena Dunham. Neither can the author of this column.

IF IGNORANCE TRULY WAS BLISS, you’d think progressives and the Democratic base would be among the happiest people in the world. But they're not; they're "Ist-A-Holics'.

RANDOM THOUGHTS: the problem with flying in an aircraft with an insane pilot is that you can't get out; the same problem exists in a country with an insane President.

EARLIER I WROTE that I thought boycotts were worthless but not necessarily hypocritical. But I may have been wrong; here's an example of where hypocritical may fit.

PROGRESSIVES REJOICE: Al-Qaeda also believes in global warming.

ONE DAY'S NOTES on the higher education bubble. When it finally bursts, there are going to be progressive parts scattered all over the ivy-covered towers.

OBAMA: Is his reality so warped he can't recognize his own hypocrisy? Need I answer?

AGREEMENT? We don't need no stinkin' written agreement.

INDIANA'S RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RESTORATION ACT explained.

HARRY REID: that 'elastic band' sure had a hard left.

REASON: Boycotts are both discriminatory and hypocritical. Well, they're meant to be discriminatory, but I've never thought about them being hypocritical before. Worthless, yes, but I never thought about hypocrisy.

WHAT GOES AROUND, comes around. I feel for his family, but for him, well, it was his own petard.

APPLE CRAP: The Apps You Can’t Kill. There's more than a few I'd kill if I could -- they go in the 'crapple' folder which is hidden on a page all its own.

KROGER CEO has a blunt response for people demanding they change their policy allowing open-carry. No.

REDISTRIBUTION OF FACTS: why most politicans are lawyers.

HOW COULD THAT BE?

How could it be that the more educated Democrats are, the more likely they are to believe the science on manmade climate change, yet when Republicans have more education, they are more likely to be skeptics? That is the conundrum put forward by a new Gallup poll released Thursday that showed a whopping 74% of college-educatied Republicans saying they believe global warming is “generally exaggerated.”

By contrast, only 15% of college-educated Democrats said the same. For Republicans with a high school education or less, 57% believe climate change is exaggerated, while only 27% of high school-educated or less Democrats said the same.

The answer is obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together, but first consider this. The headline to the linked column reads "The More Education Republicans Have, the More Likely They Are to Be Climate Change Skeptics" while the hyperlink contains the following: "the-more-education-republicans-have-the-more-likely-they-are-to-deny-climate-change" [Italics are mine]. So ... if you're skeptical, you're a denier?

Now on to the obvious answer. Who, Democrats or Republicans, are more likely to major in the hard sciences? Who, Democrats or Republicans, are more likely to major in the liberal arts?

Any more dumb questions?

DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP. Chuck Schumer is no improvement over Harry Reid.

Given Reid's execrable performance, that's hard to believe, but when the inmates run the asylum, choices are limited....

BECAUSE NANNIES are sooo ... ignorable. And wrong.

THE PC ROT IS SPREADING: Now it's the Virginia State Bar.

On the bright side, even the lawyers (lawyers!) are punching back.

AT PRINCETON, one janitor is smarter than the entire faculty.

DON’T WORRY; he has his phone. With the world in flames, Obama heads for the Florida links. Let's just be grateful he doesn't have his pen.

JUST ANOTHER rich green hypocrite.

EVEN IF GOD DIDN'T GIVE US THE CONSTITUTION, we should act like he did.

WHAT COULD GO WRONG?

Courtesy of the Scorekeeper.

ON 'ISTS' AND 'ISMS': It's only '----ist' or '----ism' if it's directed toward someone who isn't a progressive.

REP. TREY GOWDY: Hillary Clinton wiped her server clean after the State Department requested her emails. But that's okay because her lawyers carefully reviewed them (for incriminating evidence?) before the were erased.

(For the record, I doubt those 'personal' emails were ever truly erased; they were probably removed and carefully hidden to be found in the same dusty White House closet in which the Whitewater billing records were stored. After she's elected President, of course.)

ADDED: Instapundit comments.

THE AUDACITY OF DOPE: Obama blames GOP for ObamaCare.

BUT IT'S ONLY A PLAN, not an actual budget: Senate passes GOP budget plan.

POWERLINE ON HARRY REID'S DECISION TO RETIRE: "Reid has demonstrated an infinite capacity for disgrace, dishonesty and hypocrisy. He has made himself the true face of the Democratic Party in the Age of Obama."

SALON: If you're white, you must be racist. Best response: "The funny thing is that Salon is fully staffed by white people. Guess they're admitting that they're racists."

BUT HE GOT A GOOD TALKING-TO: DHS secretary says Mayorkas will keep his job amid immigration flap.

He was probably told to get a private email account....

ANOTHER FIRST FOR GLOBAL WARMING: it could force women into prostitution. Where are the insane asylums when you really, desperately, need them?

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, centrifugal farce edition. They're so good I had a very hard time picking my favorite:

Go and see the rest.

THEY'VE RUN OUT OF REAL RACISM, so not they're having to resort to this.

They're crazy. Absolutely, utterly, froot-loop crazy.

"CRAZY doesn't always equal dishonesty...."

OUR CHILDREN THANK YOU: Senate votes in favor of repealing death tax.

POWERLINE on the collapse of the higher education bubble: Meet Dartmouth's new radical professors.

EVERYTHING WRONG WITH WASHINGTON in one short video.



The good news is that Ms. Norton, a delegate from the District of Columbia, is a non-voting member of Congress. The bad news, if you live in the District, is that she might try parking next to you the next time you’re at Trader Joe’s.

And now you understand why (a) I'm against D.C. statehood and (b) whenever I go into D.C., I take the train.

UPDATE from Instapundit: "'The result is a car that is not parked as much as abandoned.' It’s a pretty good metaphor for government in the age of Obama."

DARK MATTER: Here be 'space dragons'.

HAS IT BEEN THAT LONG? Ammo Grrrll's one-year anniversary. May she keep going forever.

"COMPARING HER [HILLARY] to Nixon is probably unfair -- to Nixon."

Nixon was competent.

THE SECOND COMING OF THE NAKED EMPEROR: This naked emperor is also malevolent.

I guess I'm not the only one (if you interpret 'PC forces' broadly).

BETTER BATTERY ANODES can be made from packing peanuts.

Packing peanuts are excellent at protecting fragile objects but terrible for the environment. Recycling them is not cost-effective, so most end up in landfills, where they could sit around for a hundred years or more.

But the pesky little pieces of foam could be turned into anodes for lithium-ion batteries, Purdue University researchers say. The chemical engineers have found a simple, inexpensive way to convert packing peanuts into carbon nanoparticles and microsheets that perform better than the graphite anodes used in today’s batteries.

Interesting idea.

YOU MIGHT BE SEXIST if you call Hillary Clinton 'polarizing.' Or 'secretive.' Or anything else bad.

And guess who gets to define what are 'sexist codewords'? Of course....

RANDOM THOUGHTS about this week's news: Bill and Hillary are to scandals what the Energizer bunny is to batteries. They just keep going and going....

WIN: Kansas set to allow concealed carry without permit. That's what happens when progressive activists get too active....

NASA DETAILS PLANS to pluck a rock from an asteroid and bring it back to Earth orbit.

DID YOU KNOW Obama just took new executive action on immigration? Just another way to get 'future Democrats' illegally into the U.S.

THERE'S GOLD in them thar ... feces?

THE (UNINTENDED?) CONSEQUENCE OF FEMINISM: teach women not to rape. And you thought only men could be pedophiles?

ACOUSTIC CLOAKING DEVICE could protect soldiers from blast effects. It's not science fiction any more.

THE HOUSE OF DEMOCRATS: a modest proposal to improve the federal government.

I'm not sure whether this is a result of too much vodka, or too little ... but that said, I like the concept.

TOM COTTON, a tragic hero?

THE SURVIVOR CLASS: Coming to a job near you. I've seen it first-hand at the office recently; it's another reason why it's good to be (mostly) retired.

THE MANY METAPHORS used to explain Net neutrality -- and why they all stink.

SUPREME COURT grants unanimous win for common sense. And law school admission applications have dropped precipitously. Cause and effect?

OH MY. I DIDN'T KNOW THAT: Straight women in baggy clothes are appropriating lesbian culture.

WHY THEY'RE CALLED BABY BOOMERS.

MSNBC, home of the incompetent and the bigoted. On one very small point, I must disagree with John Hinderaker: their standards for incompetence and bigotry must be very high indeed for these people to make it in front of a television camera.

BEST HEADLINE EVER: "The Clap Was Barely Contained At Feminist Conference."

The organization (in England) is the National Union of Students (NUS). It should be renamed the National Union of Timorous Students (NUTS).

ER, YES. Is everybody in the Obama administration corrupt?

LIBERALS TURN ON THE FIRST AMENDMENT: "Liberals’ hostility toward free speech is merely a function of the fact that their oxen are now, on occasion, being gored."

SHORT ANSWER, NO. Is sustainability sustainable? This is a question that should be asked every time an environmental activist opens his (or her; or its) yap.

TWITTER: "Funny, I haven't seen any stories in the MSM talking about how @TedCruz would be making history as the first hispanic president… "

MITT ROMNEY (VIDEO): "Hell hath no fury like Obama scorned."

HOW THE INTERNET has ruined everything from politics to privacy. But not to worry; we've got net neutrality coming down the pike...

OF COURSE: Taxes are for little people.

IT'S NEVER MY FAULT: As relations with Israel collapse, Obama puts blame on Netanyahu.

A FEEL-GOOD MOMENT: some beautiful pictures.

THE 2016 REPUBLICAN RACE: Maybe early polls are telling us something. I think the field is much more volatile this year, but still, Scott Walker is a good choice.

VIRGINIA NEWS: our former governor was merely venal; our current governor is a crook.

So which one gets jail time?

MORE: it's not just in Virginia.

TWEET OF THE DAY: mockery ensues.

More mockery here.

FILE UNDER 'PROGRESSIVES ARE IDIOTS': In the name of science, banish the Koch brothers from philanthropy.

IMMIGRATION REFORM: It’s all about importing enough Democrat voters to take over.

YES, AND THAT'S BECAUSE I DON'T LIVE IN A BUBBLE: Can you "imagine" Ted Cruz as President?

Snot-nosed arrogance is ill-becoming, but then John Cassidy is a 'progressive', for which it is a requirement. Cue the rainbows and unicorns, stage (far) left.

THERE’S A LOT MORE to launching astronauts to the ISS than you think (video).

A SIMPLE QUESTION for which there's no answer.

HILLARY CLINTON'S new beginning with the press: You don't ask questions; I don't give answers.

NOT MUCH: What did Jeb Bush do to fight Obamacare? If it comes to that, I'll vote for him, but he's certainly not my first choice. Bush was a governor, and by all accounts a good one, but he's not a leader, and that's what America needs today.

HEH: The case for Ted Cruz.

IS IT JUST ME, OR HAVE THE PC FORCES BECOME MORE BRAZEN? University Ex-Admin Alleges She Was Pressured to File False Harassment Claim Against Faculty Critic.

It's my sense that they have, and that it began when Barack Obama claimed to have "won" the majority of the non-voters in the 2014 mid-term elections. I wonder if it's just the last dying push from those who expect to be crushed in 2016.

IT'S NOT EXACTLY WHERE I WANT TO GO, BUT IT'S A START: New Natural Resources chief looks to overhaul federal land policy.

U.S. NAVY readies a full-scale railgun for sea trials (video). Now if we could just get all the ISIS terrorists to line up in a straight line....

AARP OPPOSES Medicare bill which reduces its profits.

AARP's arguments on the Medicare bill ought to be considered on their merits. But powerful groups like AARP don't win arguments simply through pure logical force – they also leverage the authority of their name.

And whenever a group makes an argument that relies on authority, it's worth recalling how they pay their bills.

If you want to fix Medicare, follow AARP's arguments carefully -- then do the exact opposite.

DEMOCRATS SEEK to put GOP on record against popular bills(i.e., 'free stuff') in budget fight.

Punch back. The Democrats might be a little less willing if they knew the Republicans were willing to return the favor.

IT WOULD BE EASIER, CHEAPER, AND MORE EFFECTIVE TO ARM THE FLIGHT CREW:
TSA union wants armed police force for airport security.

And for added security, allow concealed carry for passengers.

OBAMA WORKS OVERTIME to raise the cost of doing business. And why not? The more businesses he can cause to fail, the more employees he can make (un)employees, the better his opportunities for control.

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: ObamaCare in one image.

Nothing has changed except the debt: from ~$50K/child in 2010 to $56K/child today.

More from March 25, 2010 here.

NOT THE FIRST: Ted Cruz is actually the 195th presidential candidate for 2016.

Go here to see the other filers. Be sure to look up Sydney Voluptous Buttocks (Independent), President Emperor Caesar (Democrat), and Ole Savior (Republican).

LASER BUG ZAPPER inches to market. The next step should be a higher-power laser terrorist zapper ... how many terrorists do you think there would be if they knew their 'privates' would be fried into congealed uselessness?

ROSETTA'S COMET is spinning down. To keep Philae from being thrown off?

TWEET OF THE DAY: Proper punctuation is important.

Otherwise people might misunderstand....

STARBUCKS. Okay, let's talk race. You're not gonna be happy with what I have to say.

PEACE IN OUR TIME, multicultural edition. Neville Chamberlain, call your office.

DEJA VU all over again.

It never fails. Every time an election result disappoints liberals, it turns out to be due to scandalous methods, underhand tactics, duplicitous charges, and fear.

Fear of what, you may ask? Nothing too serious. Fear of threats that turn out to be baseless (the Soviet Union, for instance), fear of the modern, fear of the other, fear of the new.

It's never because the liberals did anything wrong. It's always because they were made to have seemed to, by someone who tapped subconscious fears of something quite different – most often that old standby, race.

Liberals are never wrong. It's always that they didn't work hard enough. Or didn't spend enough. Mostly didn't spend enough.

EVEN THE NEW YORK TIMES is getting fed up with crybaby college students.

TOM COTTON schools Obama about Iran:



But Obama won't listen, of course, since he already knows it all....

'TAXPAYERS': a 'trigger warning' for those delicate flowers who won't share the burden.

POWERLINE: Vegans for global warming?

THE SCOREKEEPER on gaming the retirement system.

BREAKING NEWS: Spine implants are not covered by ObamaCare.

PERHAPS AMERICA should reassess its relationship with President Obama. The rest of the world, and particularly our friends, surely are.

DO TELL: ObamaCare hasn't aged well. In my estimation, without a full repeal, it can only get worse.

A PLEASANT THOUGHT: Could Liberal disgust with campus brownshirts be reaching critical mass?

DOES 'OPEN BORDERS' mean I can choose to which country I pay my taxes?

BOSTON GLOBE: Run, Liz, Run. For once, the Boston Globe and I agree; but the Liz I want running is Elizabeth Cheney.

GOP, TAKE NOTE: "If you never find yourself opposing Big Business, then maybe you don't really support free markets."

MCCAIN TO OBAMA: Stop the tantrum and focus on ISIS.

AFTER PLUTO, where will NASA's New Horizons spacecraft go?

FEDERAL AGENCIES fear bill giving greater access to hunters, fishermen will spur lawsuits.

And it probably will -- from that small minority of environmental lunatics who seem to think that our federal lands belong exclusively to them.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Keystone Kops government. Remember, these people are our betters (snicker).

EARLIER THIS MONTH I wrote about Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch aircraft. Here are more pictures.

SEN. TED CRUZ announces presidential bid.

FAIRLY UNFAIR: The top 1% receives 19% of all income, pays 49% of all income taxes.

Since in America we tend to see ourselves in one of three classes (upper, middle, lower) I tried to manipulate the data from the link above into three (roughly equal) groups; first by percent of tax returns filed (i.e., population), and second by percent of income earned.

Here are the results:

The lower third generally gets a credit back larger than the taxes paid. The upper third pays the bulk of income taxes, between 72% and 95%, depending on where the cutoff between the middle and upper classes is defined. The middle third (roughly speaking, those with incomes between $50-$125 thousand) pick up the tab for the lowest income class and then contribute (again, roughly) $200 billion of the total tax burden.

I did find two things somewhat surprising in the report, the first being the 'lowness' of the average tax rate. I am by no means in the top third of incomes as defined above, but I estimate this year that I will pay roughly 12% of my gross annual income in federal income taxes alone. And that number is consistent with previous years. So why is my actual tax rate 4 points higher than the average cited?

The second surprise required downloading the 'Fairness and Tax Policy' pdf, where I found projections for mean and median income (page 18):

The staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that, in 2015, the mean income of all tax returns ... is projected to be $77,821. The mean taxable income of all returns is projected to be $42,268. The median income of all tax returns is projected to be $43,930; the median taxable income of all tax returns is projected to be $11,034.

The difference between mean and median is explainable by the simple fact that the minimum income is zero, while the maximum income is ... whatever Mark Zuckerberg makes. Still, the skew is more than I would have expected.

But what I find surprising is the difference between income and taxable income. For mean income, taxable income is 54% of total income; for median income, it is 26%. For me, the ratio of taxable to total is consistently about 78%. So, again, what am I doing wrong?

AGREED. It’s Election ‘Day’ for a reason. And voting should be limited to those who care enough to understand the consequences.

YEMEN: I don't think we can stand any more of Obama's "success stories."

STARBUCKS: Where Only The Coffee Is Black! More mockery.

FRANK J: You, too, can be a sociapath.

TWEET OF THE DAY: "Get @instapundit to hook you up with a good lawyer. You have a great case for getting a refund from Duke."

This is what happens when civics is dropped from the curriculum.

RICHARD NIXON FOUNDATION: The 40TH anniversary reunion of the release of the Vietnam prisoners of war. The anniversary was in 2013, but it’s still worth watching.

SOON THERE WILL BE MORE REPUBLICANS: Half of Americans unaware of ObamaCare penalty.

At least hopefully. Given the fact that nearly half of Americans vote consistently for Democrats, it’ll be interesting when they find out that ‘free stuff’ costs them real money....

MANDATORY VOTING guarantees ignorant votes: "Let Make the dart-throwers stay home."

GOTHAM 'GUN SHOP' appears as ruse to preach anti-firearm message. It lasted two whole days.

Officials for SUPGV local New York office say that the stunt was cleared with the city, through the office of Mayor Bill de Blasio, and that they applied for filming permits. All the guns within the shop were props and no ammunition was on hand.

The lengths the gun-control fascists will go to may include breaking the law. But that's okay, because it's about 'speaking truth to power'.

FROM THE RADIO, a definition of MSM'S political journalists: "starving jackals on crystal meth."

RUINOUS COMPASSION: Thomas Sowell on the minimum wage:

Go to your local public library and pick up a copy of the distinguished British magazine "The Economist."

Whether it is the current issue or a back issue doesn't matter. Spain, Greece and South Africa will be easy to locate in the table near the back, which lists data for various countries. Just look down the unemployment column for countries with unemployment rates around 25 percent. Spain, Greece and South Africa are always there, whether or not there is a recession. Why? Because they have very generous minimum wage laws.

While you are there, you can look up the unemployment rate for Switzerland, which has no minimum wage law at all. Over the years, I have never seen the unemployment rate in Switzerland reach as high as 4 percent. Back in 2003, "The Economist" magazine reported: "Switzerland's unemployment neared a five-year high of 3.9% in February."

But they’re compassionate. They fight unemployment with welfare programs using your tax money.

BLOOMBERG: Stand down the sky police (air marshals). And allow concealed carry on every domestic flight in America.

MEET AL GORE'S heir apparent.

DID I DO THAT? Democrat Senators claim they didn’t know what they were voting for.

Remember ObamaCare? When they (claimed they) did know what they were voting for? Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, so to speak, and it’s their ox being gored, they’re all a-twitter and demanding a recount.

In the future every Senator and Representative voting in favor of a bill should be required to certify, on pain of expulsion, that they have read and understand every element of the entire bill.

YES, FOOTBALL PLAYERS ARE STUPID:

John Urschel, an offensive lineman for the Baltimore Ravens, recently co-authored a paper in the Journal of Computational Mathematics titled "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians” ....

And yes, that’s out of my league. Well out of my league.

STARBUCKS FAIL: We want coffee, not lectures discussion.

Well, maybe with one exception....

More mockery here.

FORMER REP. FRANK WOLF (R-VA): "[Obama] has the worst record of any president in modern times on religious freedom — this administration has been a disaster."

Let's hope this record isn't broken for another 224 years

CONGRATULATE ME: I earned a 'feminist' trigger warning.

OBAMA: Let’s make voting mandatory.

It’s much cheaper for the Democrats than raiding cemetaries and buying votes....

My preference is to make voting harder.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: the rising cost of medical care.

WHY ASTRONAUTS should not eat beans.

LAW SCHOOL APPLICATIONS hit 15-year low. And why not? With government by executive fiat, who needs lawyers?

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION is ready to enlist foreign governments to work against the nearly unanimous will of the American people, whose elected representatives, who are wholeheartedly backing continued sanctions against Iran.

Actually Obama's overreach may not be such a bad idea. as it would almost certainly ensure that the next (Republican) President would withdraw from the United Nations and kick those roaches out of Turtle Bay.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has already started that ball rolling.

ARE HUMANS really headed to mars anytime soon? Probably not in the near future, but yes, they will go. I’m just hoping to still be around when the first landing takes place.

And Space-X appears to be planning to provide transportation.

YESTERDAY IS HERE FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: Remember yesterday’s post about the ‘diet choker’ to monitor your eating habits? Well, dial the wayback machine to 5 years ago today. The differences are merely cosmetic.

IF YOU'RE FOR THE LITTLE GUY, you should be a conservative.

THOMAS SOWELL with two warnings for the Obama administration ... called World Wars I and II.

EPA: regulate this!

How many miles (feet? inches?) does an EPA official have to fly to equal the emissions of one barbeque grill?

ENVIRONMENTAL ‘PROTECTION’ AGENCY: We can will have pristine skies by driving the economy into the ground.

More here and here.

AN INTERVIEW WITH CAMILLE PAGLIA:



Long (an hour), but very interesting. A short lede discussing Hillary is here.

TAKE A TOUR OF SKID ROW where the Los Angeles police shot a homeless man. I’d recommend going armed. Or take the Google tour ... it’s safer.

STARBUCKS WORKING (NOT SO) DILIGENTLY to protect the planet from threat posed by whipped cream.

They’ve identified the problem and made it yours....

TOWNHALL: Black lives lies matter.

MARCO RUBIO responds to Obama on Israel:



About 15 minutes long.

NOW WE’RE BEGINNING TO GET SOMEWHERE: “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is throwing down the gauntlet, warning the White House he’ll move to cut funding to the United Nations if the administration turns to the international body to lift sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal.”

Forget Iran; just cut funding.

POWERLINE: Our Supreme Leader is a Supreme Fool. I’d phrase it somewhat differently: “Our Supreme Fool thinks he’s a leader.”

EVERY FRIDAY the Washington Times posts a quiz about the news of the week. How well did you follow the news last week?

NEIL CAVUTO: The White House is consistently inconsistent.

And wrong.

LOS ANGELES BANNED FAST FOOD; Angelinos gained weight.

And lost jobs....

MSNBC: [C]ontemporary liberalism in a nutshell -- dour and angry, yet arrogant and self-satisfied. Is it any wonder that their viewership is in free-fall?

POWERLINE’S Week in Pictures (BiBi gun edition) is up. My favorite:

The “Voting is Mandatory” cartoon is good as well, but the Democrats already have the dead vote locked up.

“IT” WORKS FOR ME: “Why we need transgender pronouns”.

A PEEK into the secret world of the liberal elite. It isn’t pretty.

TRUESBURY: Get yer race conversation right here.

PowerLine describes the desired ‘conversation’.

BUT GORACLE, you are our only hope.

If Gore had a conscience and is honest about his convictions, as Klein suggests, he would recognize his responsibility to posterity and to the nation’s most fringe progressives to mount a primary challenge to Hillary Clinton. Unfortunately for Klein, Gore’s allies indicated today that he lacks an appreciation for his place in history, although he maintains an abiding respect for his speaking fees.

Heh.

SURPRISED? San Francisco metro area ranks highest in LGBT percentage.

Me neither.

IF THERE WAS A Republican legislator anywhere along the West Coast, this silly idea would have been aborted before it was birthed.

But then I read the comments.

IT’S NOT ABOUT SAFETY, IT’S ABOUT CONTROL: Is watching drone videos good use of FAA inspector time?

MICHELLE MALKIN: ObamaCare’s Form 1095-A nightmare.

[A]fter being bounced around by the state government health exchange to various voicemail dead ends and back, with hours of migraine-inducing, on-hold music in between, we were told there’s absolutely nothing wrong with the 1095-A form — which shows payment of premiums we didn’t pay to an Obamacare plan we never enrolled in and didn’t want in the first place!

PowerLine piles on.

FEDS SPENT $148,379 to create ‘diet choker’ that monitors eating habits.

Next step: a smart phone app that calls the food police if you eat too much, or worse, something unapproved.

TECHNICAL TALK: Here’s an interesting article on net neutrality from a purely technical perspective.

From a political perspective, PowerLine’s been all over it, starting way back in 2011:

REGULATE THE INTERNET? WHY? (14 Jun 2011)

NET NEUTER-TRALITY (12 Feb 2015)

DON’T LET THE GOVERNMENT TAKE OVER THE INTERNET (13 Feb 2015)

THE NET NEUTRALITY CRACK-UP (1 March 2015)

KEEP THE INTERNET FREE (2 Mar 2015)

Regulating the internet was, is, and always will be a bad idea. Hope that the next election will bring back some sanity to the FCC, or be prepared to return to dial-up.

WILL SELF-DRIVING CARS crash the insurance industry? Crash? No. Change? Yes. Remain profitable? Yes.

ANOTHER NEWS QUIZ: How much do you know about the scandals swirling around Bill and Hillary Clinton? (Obviously not enough; I only got one right.)

SO HOW FAR WILL 20 TRILLION REACH? The national debt is moving toward the 20 trillion mark, and ought to reach there by the end of Obama’s term in office in 2017. Since the U.S. population is roughly 320 million, that means every man, woman, and child will owe about $62,500. Are you saving enough?

It’s not pocket change ... the height of a stack of 67,500 dollar bills is about 290 inches (24 feet). More interesting dollar comparisons can be found here.

POWER TIRES generate electricity when the rubber meets the road.

By way of and analogy, you can think of it as sort of a heat pump, sucking heat from the highway and turning it into electricity. With enough such tires on the road, we could potentially reverse global warming....

Win, win.

THE DEBATE HAS ENDED: It’s over.

SENATE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN JIM INHOFE will ignore a politically-motivated "witch hunt" targeting climate scientists who are skeptical of global warming.

Good idea. When the Democrats are busy self-imploding, it’s best to stand aside and let them finish the job....

SO GOD MADE A LIBERAL:



Courtesy of SooperMexican.

UMM ... THE WHITE HOUSE? Can you guess where the world’s first ‘adult preschool’ is located?

STARTING SUNDAY, if you’re on the highway between San Francisco and New York City, look out: a self-driving car is planning its first cross-country road trip.

GAS BAG-IN-CHIEF signs order for government to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

For once I agree with the President. Fire nannycrats bureaucrats. Close whole departments (start with the EPA and Department of Education). And shut up.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: We can play the race card, too.

Punch.back.twice.as.hard.

MQ-9 REAPER FLEET achieves one million flight hours.

Food for thought. Reaper is the larger, armed variant of the MQ-1 Predator surveillance drone.

IS DRUNKENESS a real problem with the Secret Service?

If your job was to take a bullet for that worthless narcissist we had the misfortune to elect President, wouldn’t you drink? My memory ain’t all that great, but I don’t recall such Secret Service problems with Bush II/Clinton/Bush I administrations.

UNDERSECRETARY OF DEFENSE FRANK KENDALL: U.S. military is losing its comparative edge in military capabilities, and space capacity is taking the largest hit.

GENDER ALERT: MALE UAV studies to launch at the Paris Air Show.

WTF? There are no FEMALE UAV studies?

DO THINK TANKS REALLY THINK? Or do we just think that they think?

Mostly they just turn concrete into gibberish.

WHAT YOUR ObamaCare tax dollars have bought you: ObamaCake.

SCOREKEEPER POLL: Why was Hillary inducted into the American Irish Hall of Fame?

DEREK HUNTER: California stupid.

Now is the time: punch back. Punch back twice as hard. It's the only way they'll ever learn.

NOTHING MUCH, APPARENTLY: What might happen if an airliner hit a small drone?

Well, except to the drone....

GANYMEDE may have more water under its surface than Earth: “The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place....”

COLLEGE PROFESSORS: the U.S. flag symbolizes racism and should not be displayed on campus.

Megyn Kelly comments. She’s being polite.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX) ACCUSES NASA of losing its “core mission” with earth science research.

Cruz thought that NASA was spending too much “of its limited resources” on Earth science missions, when it should be focusing on getting astronauts to Mars, a sentiment that was reiterated by Sen. Cory Gardner. In response, Bolden told the panel how the two are “interconnected,” saying, “We can’t go anywhere if the Kennedy Space Center (in Florida) goes underwater and we don’t know it. ... It is absolutely critical that we understand Earth’s environment because this is the only place we have to live.”

I'm rather inclined to believe that we'd know if KSC goes underwater....

The Obama administration views NASA in a purely political context: Environmental activism; Muslim outreach (remember that?);etc. Sometimes I think that Obama believes ISIS is the International Space Station.

DCMATIC:



The new Hillary-approved email protection system.

MARK STEYN: "Ignore the noise - Clinton will win in 2016."

Some percentage of Americans, likely a large one, would like to cast a historic vote. When polling points to Americans wanting "change," what bigger change than a woman as president?

Yeah, well some years ago they cast a 'historic vote' for America's first black President. How's that working out?

SPACE TECHNOLOGY: Lockheed Martin proposes building ISS cargo ship for NASA.

ONLY DEMOCRAT SPEECH is not political speech.

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION doesn't trust Hillary. On that single point I agree with the Obama administration.

OBAMA'S POLITICS leave Democrats with weak candidates in 2016.

HILLARY'S EMAIL SCANDAL is about privilege.

BIG GOVERNMENT is not a victimless crime.

POWERLINE'S WEEK IN PICTURES, Hillary edition, is up. There are many good political cartoons, but this is still my favorite:

Oops!

HILLARY’S PRESIDENTIAL HOPES:

MEN WHO hold doors open for women are probably sexist. Gee, and I thought it was just (un)common courtesy.

If I owned a store selling ‘fainting couches’ I’d be a billionaire....

ADDED: Instapundit has an apropos comment.

IS HILLARY blundering her way to a more mainstream Democrat party? Not that I think Jim Webb is a particularly good candidate, but he certainly does represent the more moderate wing of the party.

BARACK OBAMA: A man for the ages. The 'enlightened' (heh) ages....

SUBPOENA HILLARY’S SERVER: Hillary’s server? Unless they can show receipts proving the Clintons themselves paid for the server, installation, maintenance, etc., I think we have to assume the government footed the bill. That means the server is government property, not Hillary’s. Simply have the Secret Service go to NY and take it back.

And supply them with a NSA-certified (heh) server.

FEMINIST NARCISSISM: aggressive feminist narcissism.

ORGANIZING FOR ACTION (OFA) posts the opinions of their intellectul equals. Or betters....

YES, Elizabeth Warren should run for President.

DUMBASSES: Democrats threaten to block their own bill after finding abortion language.

FROM MY EMAIL: Thoughts on ‘EmailGate’.

On Hillary's statement that (most of) her official emails were sent to .gov accounts and were therefore properly retained, how does someone/organization do a FOIA request? Would you have to FOIA everyone who might have received an email from her? How would you know if you missed some?

Also, since at least some of her staff used email accounts on the same server, what are the odds that all of those were turned over? I would think that a great many emails would be to people within her own staff, especially concerning policies, talking points and various affairs of state.

Finally, wasn't everything (yeah, right) turned over in hard copy form? Fifty-five thousand pages to be scanned before they can be searched and collated.

AND SOME SNARK: “Didn't Valerie Jarrett say that she and no one she knew received any emails from Hillary? Doesn't she know Obama? It's been reported that he received some. Maybe she just meant no one important.”

ENOUGH ALREADY: Dump Daylight Savings Time.

GOT HEALTHCARE? Don’t worry; we’ll enroll you in ObamaCare anyway.

BECAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE: Ancient mummies turn into ‘black ooze’.

NYC TO STUDY — and correct? — diversity of audiences at cultural events.

THAT’S MY STORY, and I’m sticking to it.

THE TRUTH ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE: "Climate policy has almost nothing to do anymore with environmental protection. ... The next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world's resources will be negotiated."

FROM THE ‘MATH IS HARD’ SCHOOL OF POLITICAL THOUGHT: Pennsylvania governor proposes new taxes on natural gas.

The cost of natural gas – as well as the profits from same – is at historic lows right now, and Pennsylvania’s drillers have to look long and hard at the bottom line before drilling a new well.

Now here’s a question for the Governor… if the energy company is barely making a profit and you drive up their production costs by 5% at the wellhead, what do you think happens next? The answer is… nothing. As in they don’t drill a new well. Now, let’s move on to the bonus round, Governor. Feel free to take out your calculator because I wouldn’t want to strain your gray matter with the harder forms of math. How much revenue do you think the state will bring in from a well that never gets drilled?

Contrary to the liberal view of mathematics, 5% of nothing is still nothing.

HIS OWN WORST ENEMY: Obama's unilateral actions could doom Iran deal.

THREE MILLION, SIX HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT DOLLARS AND SIXTY CENTS. Your money, well spent on President Obama’s Christmas vacation.

To put a little bright-side spin on the number, that’s equal to about a 2-1/2 minute increase in the national debt. Not the national debt itself; the increase in the national debt.

Who’s not willing to grant the President 2-1/2 minutes of national debt increase for his annual vacation?

Oh, by the way, each of us mere citizens spent an average of 169 milliseconds of the increase. (For the record, I’m cheap; I only spent about 25 milliseconds.)

WELL, ... YES: Is President Obama Really as Clueless as He Claims?

THE SCOREKEEPER nails it: “Hillary Clinton held a press conference to say she didn’t mean to be caught being devious, deceptive, and disingenuous....”

There’s more here.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA: belaboring the obvious for the ‘benefit’ of the oblivious.

HEH: The Democrats’ House of No Cards.

Politicians do the darnedest things. Every so often a top politician — and often one described by his fans as a really great intellect — will blow up his career with an unforced error so egregiously stupid that your houseplant would dismiss it as completely moronic, if only your houseplant could think.

Think Hillary.

TECHNOLOGY: A drone with bug vision.

HEH:

THOMAS SOWELL: The “Disparate Impact’ Racket.

STONEWALLING CONGRESS is not a good idea.

LETTER FROM AN OLD FOGEY:

Indulge me please, for I am a doddering old fogey who was taught in civics class in the 1950s that our Supreme Court determined the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress. The court, we were taught, did this by applying constitutional tenets to the particular law in question. Pretty easy stuff, I thought back in those simpler days before emanations, penumbras and psychic-like determinations of legislative intent entered the fray and politicized the process (“Supreme Court tries to make sense of poorly drafted Obamacare language,” Web, March 4).

The Affordable Care Act clearly states that subsidies for health care premiums are limited to those policies that originate in state-created exchanges. This was the intent of those who drafted the act and was not, as some would have us believe now, that unintended consequences of too-clever-by-half reasoning have rendered that part of the law a problem, a drafting error.

Either a law means what it says in plain English or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t and our leader can manipulate it at will, then our republic can exchange the bald eagle for a banana.

Published in the Washington Times on Monday, March 9, 2015.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON is not happy with Hillary Clinton.

BERNIE GOLDBERG: I’ll stay home if Ben Carson is the GOP nominee. Not me; I’ll vote for the proverbial ‘sack of hammers’ before I’ll vote for Hillary.

2014 IEEE GLOBAL MEMBERSHIP STATISTICS show a mixed picture. U.S. student memberships down; globally, up. Not a good trend for the soon-to-be-formerly greatest nation on Earth.

“THE NEW YORK TIMES [is] waking up to our president’s besetting character flaw — he doesn’t really give a damn about anyone but himself.”

SITUATIONAL ETHICS: a thought about Sen. Tom Cotton’s letter to Iran.

ADDED: Some history.

IT’S A LITTLE LATE NOW, but yesterday odds were 2:1 that Hillary would blame her email troubles on climate change.

PRUDEN ON POLITICS: Hillary Clinton’s Nixon moment.

Hillary’s emails, which last week were an irritant, have become an annoyance that threatens to become a problem that could become catastrophe. Her allies on Capitol Hill and her friends in the media haven’t bailed, not yet, but suddenly the allies have a case of the nerves, like a man in the theater who gets a whiff of what he thinks may be smoke and starts looking to locate the exits.

I suspect the ‘distancing’ is from fear – fear that they too will be exposed....

UPDATE: Hillary ‘one-upped’ Nixon: It’s my server and no, you can’t see it.

KEEP THE WARTHOG: These planes could someday replace the A-10.

IEEE INSTITUTE: A history of hacking.

In the early 1900s, Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi developed a wireless telegraph that could broadcast radio-telegraphic messages on a specific wavelength to establish private communications channels.

Marconi’s invention posed a threat to the wired-telegraph industry. In response, the Eastern Telegraph Co. hired John Nevil Maskelyne [see photo, above right], a British magician and inventor who had experimented with wireless technologies, to monitor Marconi’s work. According to an article in New Scientist, Maskelyne was able to build broadband receivers capable of intercepting Marconi’s so-called secure transmissions without knowing their frequencies.

In June 1903 Marconi held a public demonstration in London to show how his device could receive a message from a station nearly 500 kilometers away. But before he could receive the message, an intruder delivered this to Marconi’s receiver:

Rats rats rats rats.
There was a young fellow of Italy,
who diddled the public quite prettily.

The message went on to further mock and insult Marconi.

And you thought hacking was a new phenomenon.

JESSE JACKSON backs Garcia over Emanuel for Chicago mayor. If Rahm loses, I understand Hillary is in need of a ‘fixer’.

That said, though, I’m not sure the Jackson endorsement is bad for Emanuel....

Linked from this post: Apocalypse Newark.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY: Draw biosensors on your skin.

OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Standing up for Congressional prerogatives is ‘offensive’. I’m somewhat surprised it isn’t racist hate speech as well.

A SPORTS ANALOGY for the Obama administration.

A WAR of Obama’s making losing.

ASSAULT A POLICE OFFICER, get shot.

Original post here.

TOUGH CHOICE: the Evil party or the Stupid party. “I’m with Stupid” is not exactly my bumper sticker of choice....

FLOPEROO: ‘Cover Oregon’ ObamaCare exchange officially goes belly up.

WE SHUT DOWN KEYSTONE XL; now let’s shut down rail transportation.

They’re pissants, but very creative pissants. Have you noticed how gun control morphed into bullet control?

SLOW LEARNERS CAN LEARN: Even a plurality of Democrats want to move on from Obama.

HEALTH CARE: King v. Burwell's very existence says a lot about ObamaCare.

DAWN ARRIVES: first spacecraft to orbit the asteroid Ceres. New Horizons, another NASA spacecraft is scheduled to orbit Pluto this summer

MALAYSIA FLIGHT 370 did not disappear. An excellent summary of the progress, or lack of it, to date.

ATF MISFIRE? Guide indicates bullets at center of firestorm already banned; agency blames 'error'.

It would be useful if in the video they actually showed the bullets being banned – mistaking a .22 caliber rimfire rifle/handgun cartridge for a .223 caliber center-fire rifle cartridge is a pretty egregious error.

HINT: a .22 caliber cartridge would damn near slide out the barrel of my .223 caliber AR-15 if it were to be pointed downward.

LET THE RIOTS BEGIN: Another ‘unarmed’ black teen killed by police.

NI CON MUCHO: Peak millennial narcissism reached?

FIREWALL: Madly insane, gun obsessed, murderously maniacal, armed-to-the-teeth, number one with a bullet, U.S. citizens.



Oops.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Democrats are the party of Big Labor and Big Law; Republicans are the party of Big Pizza.

Krugman has become such a liberal hack it's almost impossible not to mock him.

“WHAT’S THE HARM in going down to Cuba and having a good time?”

COMMENT OF THE DAY on academia: “[T]heir 'education' has made the worst aspects of being young and stupid something to be proud of.”

NOW THAT YOU CAUGHT US, we really didn’t mean it: ATF calls stripping the exemption for AR-15 green tip ammunition a “publishing mistake”. It was just a typo thingy that whole paragraphs got stripped from the revised regulation.

Ri-i-ight.

POWERLINE: Get your Hillary Clinton action figure now! I’d get one if I could be assured that her campaign would blow up as the action figure did.

SURELY NOT FOX NEWS: Obama says he learned of Clinton using private email through news reports.

For those of you old enough to remember the comedy series Get Smart, I must say that the Obama administration has not significantly improved the Cone (now Bubble) of Silence.

NO, THEY RAN OUT OF PINOCCHIOS: Does anyone fact-check the President?

IT MUST BE RATINGS MONTH:

They're going for (30 Rock) bottom.

MICHAEL WALSH: What the Left Doesn’t Get About Robert A. Heinlein.

MATT BAI: Biden should run. After six years, one thing I think we know for certain is that Biden is a better man than the current President, and I suspect would be a stronger candidate than Hillary.

NORTHROP AND BOEING could lose their last chance at staying in the fighter market. 'Staying in the market' has been a problem throughout the defense industry ever since the acquisition ‘reforms’ of the early 1980s.

ENVIRONMENTAL ‘PROTECTION’ AGENCY: transparency is only for air and water.

SHE’S IMPRESSIVE: An interview with Carly Fiorina.

MEDICAL TECHNOLOGY: Magnetic nanoparticles show promise to prevent strokes and heart attacks.

FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE DAY: Young Blackhawks fan skates for the first time – and scores a goal!

IS SCOTT WALKER THE ANTICHRIST? See the evidence.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The audacity of weakness. I would have titled it ‘The audacity of a dope’.

AND I THOUGHT IT WAS FOX NEWS: ISIS may have roots in climate change.

WHAT? There are adults in academia? Apparently so. (A few, at least.)

MORE JOBS FOR JIHADIS:

Their applications can be found here.

SPACE TOURISM STARTUP World View’s parafoil flies to record altitude of 102,000 feet. Even for the view, I’m not sure I’m ready for a parachute reentry.

THE CLIMATE BECLOWNING CONTINUES: Greenpeace gets center ring.

OBAMA: the smartest man in an otherwise empty room.

AMMO GRRRLL: Did’ja ever notice? Laughter is the best medicine, but mockery is just as good.

POWERLINE’S WEEK IN PICTURES: Netanyahu edition.

Go and see the rest.

CALIFORNIA (AGAIN): Students at UC Irvine vote to ban American flag.

The resolution passed 6-4. Two people abstained. Let me break down the vote for you -- six unAmerican students, four patriots and two individuals who could have a career in House Republican leadership.

[Matthew] Guevara’s resolution, which was in dire need of an edit, rambled on about “paradigms of conformity” and “homogenized standards” and blah, blah, blah.

It sounds like Mr. Guevara could have a future career in community organizing or the Democratic party.

If he really believed in ‘inclusion’ he could voluntarily include himself as an American.

KOCH INDUSTRIES to Democratic Smearators Senators: “Sod off”.

PEEKING BEHIND THE CURTAIN: Looking for answers to the Navy’s UCLASS mystery.

SLATE: a visit to the feminist whinery.

ENERGY SENSE from an unlikely source -- the Daily Kos.

Now if only one of the Daily Kos’s social security defenders was equally sensible. (But they’re not.)

WALTER CRONKITE on climate change.



Don’t worry; global cooling will soon be back in style. It takes about 3 generations to go full circle.

IT’S NOT NICE TO GO AGAINST YOUR PARTY CHIEF: DOJ reportedly preparing criminal charges against Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Get Washington out of the education business. Completely out.

BUT, BUT ... HE’S AN ISRAELI. AND A JEW. Feminists fail to notice Netanyahu’s stand for Muslim women.

And Muslim women aren’t feminists....

POWERLINE: Why Hillary won’t make it. Well, we’ve got a narcissistic black egomaniac in office now; why not try a narcissistic female alcoholic?

Another reason.

DON’T WANT TO BE LOCATED? Don’t carry a cell phone.

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN announces bid for Maryland Senate seat of Barbara Mikulski. Good. He’ll give up his seat (and seniority) in the House and hopefully lose to whomever the Republicans choose for the seat.

MARS ONE DEBATE: pro and con.

I go with the pros.

WHITE HOUSE says ammunition ban will save police lives. Except that there is no known case of that ammunition ever having been used in a police shooting.

What’s even more interesting is that M855 ammunition is being replaced in military inventories because it’s not lethal enough.

CHOICES FOR THE AGING: gout or Alzheimer’s.

OBAMACARE: calling George Orwell.

INCOME TAX. Illustrated by cats. Cats are smart.

THOMAS SOWELL: Random thoughts. I like his inference that the Department of State should be renamed the Department of National Stupidity.

3D PRINTER MAKER refuses to sell to Defense Distributed, the 3D-gun-printing design shop.

Best comment: “They should say that they are gay, and sue for discrimination. If it goes for wedding photographers, why not printer manufacturers?”

Yes, where is Eric Holder’s Civil Rights Division?

WILL YOU NEED a new license to operate a self-driving car?

Better question: Will self-driving cars need licenses to drive humans?

REMEMBER THAT 1992 PROMISE OF ‘TWO CLINTONS FOR THE PRICE OF ONE’? Well, they’re back.

LEFT-WING COLLEGE INSTITUTES are joining the ash heap of history. Now perhaps these self-styled ‘academics’ will get real jobs.

They’ve got no chance at Home Depot, but I understand Starbucks is hiring ....

ROSETTA SPACECRAFT sees its own shadow on Comet 67P. Hopefully it doesn’t mean 6 more weeks of winter here on Earth....

By the way, the pictures are exquisite.

BIDEN TO CENTRAL AMERICA: Raise your taxes to slow illegal immigration to the United States.

Yep. Make your people so poor they can’t flee.