Excuse me?
The U.S. Forestry Department just published a detailed step-by-step document on how to safely roast marshmallows.
THE GOVERNMENT PAID SOMEONE TO RESEARCH AND PUBLISH THIS KIND OF THING??! If I want a step by step guide, they should have gone and asked a Boy Scout or Girl Scout to write it down on a piece of paper for them. They wouldn’t have needed to come out with a 700-word manual on roasting marshmallows.
What is this wacko government doing??!
Harry Reid and the political double standard on racism are at it again.
Senator Reid was at the Las Vegas Asian Chamber of Commerce and used some racial slurs during his speech; he quickly offered a lame apology and everyone seems to have accepted it and forgotten about it.
What would have happened if a REPUBLICAN had used such language? There would be have been much more of a reaction, and pressure would have quickly built up among Democratic politicians and in the media for the Republican to apologize and resign.
If it’s a liberal Democrat with Harry Reid, there is an embarrassed silence. He’s a repeat offender…this double standard must end.
I’m tired of the way the media has been treating Israel in their recent air and ground offensive against Hamas. They’ve also been very reluctant to compare Hamas to the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terror group, which has seized vast amounts of Syrian and Iraqi territory.
On a side note, can you imagine what would happen if Israel were captured by Hamas? They wouldn’t offer the Israelis the opportunity to convert to Islam; they’d slaughter every last man, woman and child. It would be a slaughter, on a scale unseen since the darkest days of World War II and the concentration camps.
The media needs to get its act together and stop treating Israel and Hamas as equals.
First, a couple of definitions…
Political Crime: a violation of the law or of the public peace for political rather than private reasons; specifically : one directed against a particular government or political system (credit: Merriam-Webster Online). My perception of this term is that it’s a political act which inconveniences the other side of a political argument or debate and the other side retaliates by misusing the legal system.
Criminal offense: a REAL crime. For example, sexual harassment, rape, wire fraud, mail fraud, tax evasion, lying under oath, driving under the influence, sexual assault, murder, embezzlement, extortion, racketeering, money laundering, insurance fraud, bribery, conspiracy, lewd conduct, manslaughter, obstruction of justice, child pornography, voter fraud, perjury, theft, drug possession, contempt of court/Congress, destroying evidence, treason. (These are crimes committed by federal officials—credit to Wikipedia)
What has Governor Perry been accused of?
Abuse of power in the form of a vetoing of a budget of a Texas state government department whose department head was arrested and spent THREE MONTHS in jail for her crime. Governor Perry wanted her resignation, she said ‘no’. So when their budget came up for his signature, he vetoed it. His reason is that the head of the Public Integrity office should have some integrity. Without it, the department has no reason to continue operating.
So now, if a governor attempts to get a convict to resign from public office, he’s going to be charged with a crime? This is a political crime, not a real one.
Texas really needs to separate politics from criminal law. A political act like a veto is not a criminal action in any circumstance. The correct action for the opposition would be to try to override the veto, but they chose to abuse the legal system instead. Some sanity in the Texas legal system would be appreciated.
I’ve been watching the unfolding story coming out of Ferguson, Missouri with a growing sense of unease, due to the media’s political activism and presenting only their version of what they wish happened, instead of what actually happened. Right, CNN?
Witness after witness has stated that the “gentle giant” charged the police officer and that the cop opened fire to protect himself. They’re being called liars by protesters who don’t care about what really happened. They have their narrative and they’re sticking to it, no matter what the evidence says.
The people on TV stating that marijuana doesn’t alter how a person acts are a joke! Mind altering drugs DEFINITELY affect how a person acts. For the media to treat these people as anything other than crackpots is totally ridiculous.
How can showing the “gentle giant” robbing the store be considered to be “character assassination?” Missouri is required under their “sunshine laws” to share all evidence in the case. The Jackson/Sharpton crowd are unhappy because, again, it doesn’t fit the chosen narrative.
Finally, the peaceful protests are one thing. The outside agitators coming in from outside the area to riot and loot are another. If the demonstrators want to demonstrate peacefully, then they should do so during daylight hours, because the agitators own the night.
If the local prosecutor decides not to pursue the police officer who shot the kid, will all sides accept the decision? Not a chance!
Germany was quoted as saying they can’t stand idly by while the Islamic State (IS) butchers ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq.
Oh, really?
Sounds like some in the EU are drawing a political “red line” similar to President Obama’s, when he said that use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war would trigger a strong U.S. response. Chemical weapons were used in Syria, and there was no U.S. response. Russia’s President Putin saved and humiliated President Obama at the same time.
It’s become obvious that the 2014 version of Iraq will not survive in one piece. If the EU and the United States arm the Kurds heavily against the Islamic State, who is to say they won’t declare independence from Baghdad, and fight for their political and economic freedom using American and NATO arms?
And what of the Sunnis, who don’t want anything to do with the Shiites? Seems like the Islamic State is supporting them.
I can see a partition of Iraq, with Sunnis and Shiites crossing into their own territory, such as what happened when India and Pakistan were partitioned. Hopefully none of them become nuclear-armed like India and Pakistan did.
If the EU wants to take the lead, then they should lead from in front, and not behind the United States, which is engaging IS with air strikes so far.
Please, no more red lines from the West.
Israel’s stunning photos of Hamas’s underground tunnels show that Hamas is willing to hurt the Palestinian people to benefit itself at their expense. The tunnels are huge, and constructed of steel and concrete, materials that should have been used for building apartments, hospitals, schools, power plants and other similar projects that would have eased the suffering of the Palestinian people. Instead, Hamas diverted the materials and built tunnels to bring rockets and explosives across the border, and to transport terror cells under the border into Israel.
In addition, the U.N. has reported that its buildings and schools have been used as ammunition depots and launching areas for Hamas rockets; Hamas uses densely populated civilian neighborhoods to do the same thing, hoping that Israel will attempt to knock out Hamas rocket launchers that are near lots of civilians.
We already knew that Hamas couldn’t be trusted to abide by any international norms in its dealings with Israel, but the tunnels are the proof that the Palestinian people are being used as Hamas pawns, and that Hamas will continue to steal resources and lives from ordinary Gazans who just want to live out their lives in peace. Gaza really needs a civil war to throw Hamas out, so that this can happen.
Israel recently suggested that the Gaza Strip be demilitarized in exchange for a permanent cease-fire. This is a great idea, and one that Hamas will never agree to, so long as they refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist.
I see no quick end to this.
The Republicans will not impeach President Obama for his many failures, which is the smart move for the GOP to make. They are right in denouncing the impeachment talk as a Democratic ploy to create an issue for their liberal base to rally behind.
Hopefully the Republicans keep the legal heat on the Administration.
Drudge has a headline that blares “Obama Begging to Be Impeached” and a story outlining the rhetoric that has started in Washington and in the news media about all the actions that President Obama is taking or not taking in terms of the invasion along our southern border, the war between Israel and Hamas, the Ukraine crisis, and the subsequent airliner shootdown in eastern Ukraine by Russian-backed rebels.
The “trigger” for an impeachment is being reported by the media as an Executive Order granting amnesty to five million illegals.
Another news story reported that President Obama is no longer “in” the White House, that he’s mentally checked out of it.
If President Obama wants to be impeached because he wants out of the job, he should spare us the trouble and resign. But that’s not why he “wants” to be impeached.
If that’s the case, the GOP should avoid any mention of impeachment whatsoever. It’s an unwise course of action to take, and it’s a trap.
They’re better off suing over illegal Executive Orders and restoring the checks and balances system which is seriously out of whack under President Obama’s Administration. I hope the GOP focuses their energy on that instead of trying to convince the Democratic-controlled Senate to convict President Obama of impeachable offenses.
It’s the GOP’s election to lose, so don’t blow it GOP.
Eric Holder says that he has a lot of sleepless nights, thinking about homegrown violent extremists among other people.
I don’t know how he sleeps at night anyways. His Justice Department has lead an assault on the Constitution in ways that will have ramifications for generations to come. Like the Clinton Administration before it, this Justice Department is being used as a political shield against the President’s enemies. So much for an independent Justice Department.
I also noticed he mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers, but forgot to mention that this was an attack by terrorists from Chechnya. They were not American citizens, and court papers seem to indicate that while the Chechens were moving in that direction, their foreign radicalization in their native lands shows that they were use the immigration process as a step in carrying out terrorist attacks on Boston and New York.
Perhaps the Democrats should take that into consideration before manufacturing this crisis on our southern border to create new Democratic voters.
OK, so we have the most powerful tax collection agency in the world, which spares no expense at getting every penny they’re owed by American taxpayers, saying that they lost a ton of emails and other data that has been subpoenaed by a Congressional committee that is looking into the targeting of conservative and other groups by the IRS.
Their claims of having “lost” emails baffles the mind. They don’t lose or misplace information, so the only logical conclusion is that the emails were deliberately deleted by political people inside the IRS who are trying to protect the Administration from another scandal.
Of all the federal agencies, this agency is well-known for its daily data backups of every digital record in its possession. The thought of anything “lost” beyond recovery at the IRS points to deliberate deletions of both the original emails, and the deletion of the data from the daily backups. Who has that kind of access at the IRS?
This is going to get a whole lot worse, especially since this is taking place in a poisoned political environment. If these emails were deleted, the responsible parties should be facing jail time. And not the poor mid-level patsy that they decide to throw under the bus to throw the bloodhounds off the scent.
And there should be criminal penalties for the IRS taking sides in political discourse, as they appear to have done. I don’t know if this behavior is already banned by law, but if it isn’t, then it should be. The IRS has no business furthering the political agenda of an Administration or a political party.
I’m not going to weigh in on the case of the American soldier who was traded for five top-tier Taliban prisoners until more facts are known. When I first heard of this story, I thought it was a promotional thing for an episode of the TV series “Homeland.” Really surprised when I read that it was not a promo.
The military needs more time to figure out if this soldier was captured, or if he deserted as members of his platoon are saying in the media. Everybody needs to settle down for a while, and stop throwing words like “traitor” around until the military figures out what the circumstances were behind the soldier’s disappearance.
I’ll wait for new developments before saying more.
Clive Bundy decided to discuss race relations following his victory against federal agents who were sent to rustle his cattle, and managed to turn many sympathetic people against him in the space of a few short minutes.
What an idiot.
I do not expect captains of stricken ships to go to the bottom of the ocean with their vessels, but they should be leaving their ships on the last lifeboats, or jumping into the water along with the passengers that they’re responsible for. In two major passenger disasters, the captain of the Costa Concordia and the captain of the recent South Korean ferry abandoned ship before all hands and passengers were safely off.
The captain of the Costa Concordia abandoned ship and refused an Italian Coast Guard order to re-board the ship and take charge of the evacuation of the rest of the passengers. He was charged with crimes by Italian authorities. The captain of the South Korean ferry left on the very first lifeboat. Authorities are seeking his arrest.
Some other examples of captains evacuating themselves before their passengers (credit to Wikipedia):
Some examples of captains going down with their ships, or choosing to stay aboard when they realized there were people still on board (credit to Wikipedia):
In the case of the USS Growler, the captain sacrificed himself to save his crew, hence his Medal of Honor. Smith of the Titanic and Walbridge of the Bounty sailing replica were heavily criticized for their command decisions prior to their ships going down, but they still stayed aboard their sinking ships.
The captains of the South Korean Sewol ferry and the Costa Concordia could have chosen to stay on board until the last minute, before jumping into the water or being rescued by local Coast Guard and military rescue crews. They chose to save their own skins.
Some thoughts:
--All cruise line and ferry crews should speak a common language. On too many cruise ships (all of them?), the crews can’t understand the captain or officers because they speak their own languages. In worldwide aviation, English is the spoken language. This should be a cruise line standard as well. Crews and officers need to be able to communicate with each other instantly, and not just through a translator, IF they’re fortunate to have one on board.
--Captains need far more training than they currently get. It might be better if captains have a naval background and possesses the military ethos on their responsibilities to their passengers and crew.
--Captains are not bystanders when a disaster strikes aboard their ship. They need to do their duty and save the lives of others, AND STAY ABOARD THEIR STRICKEN VESSEL to do it.
Something has to change. I hate hearing stories that captain and crew abandoned ship and left passengers behind when a disaster at sea strikes. That isn’t right, and no amount of apologizing by the dishonored captain or crew members will be sufficient to make up for their bad decision making, or for the people who die because the captain decided to save his own neck and then watch his own ship sink from the safety of a life raft.
Harry Reid is up to his eyeballs in the federal government vs. Nevada rancher situation, calling the civilian militias “domestic terrorists” and vowing that the fight “isn’t over.”
Get real, Reid, and do your job. You’re not the Nevada Emperor, and not a particularly good Senate Majority Leader either. Either do the job your Nevada constituents (including Clive Bundy) elected you to do, or retire.
This situation was created by the Obama Administration ignoring legal protocol and going over to a direct armed confrontation, which brought the armed civilian militias out in droves to stop the federal rustlers.
The Obama Administration is at fault here.
Reid needs to start acting like the Senate Majority Leader and get off his high horse, or retire. The militias are playing him like a drum.
The civilian militias are having a field day, with the latest domestic blunders by President Obama and his Senate lap-dog, Harry Reid. And the liberal media outfits aren’t covering any of it either.
The latest incident happened in Nevada, where federal officers and local police began rounding up cattle belonging to a local rancher. The feds were claiming that Clive Bundy owed over a million dollars in grazing fees and brought in two hundred armed agents to rustle Bundy’s cattle.
Out came the militias, who were, of course, armed to the teeth, and a standoff ensued, with both sides pointing guns at each other, and several highly publicized confrontations being filmed in front of (conservative) news crews, and by private citizens, who almost instantly posted their videos to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
The feds backed off, but vowed to win in federal court. That’s probably where this situation should have gone first. Again, the Obama Administration seems hell-bent on short-cutting legal procedures.
In the meantime, now they have emboldened civilian militias looking for the next fight with federal government forces. Thanks a lot, President Obama. What’s next, a civil war when a state government refuses to enforce a federal law? Sounds like a remake of Bleeding Kansas in the works.
A lot of career or long-term politicians have decided to retire at the end of the term; the gridlock that is the hallmark of several sessions of Congress is said to be the reason for the frustration and decisions of some to retire.
GOOD!
If they’re not part of the solution, then they’re part of the problem.
I don’t care if my state loses the chairperson’s position on this committee, or that committee. It’s worth losing those politicians who hold those positions, if we get someone in there who is at least willing to talk to others. Our current Congress doesn’t do enough talking; they refuse to meet with their political opponents to arrive at a deal.
As things stand, the only way that Congress can get anything done is if one party controls both houses of Congress. It shouldn’t be that way.
With recent debates on the budget and the debt ceiling, we’ve seen politicians make statements to the media about their positions on the debate, and then no meetings for weeks and months on end, until a week or two before the money is set to run out for the federal government to operate. That doesn’t include Congressional paychecks, mind you. Then there’s a flurry of meetings, like someone flipped the switch to the “Congress ON” setting. They should have been meeting weeks and months prior, and hammering out a deal.
Perhaps the next Congress should pass a law stating that their paychecks should be affected by the presence or absence of a budget agreement. No budget=no pay. After all, they force other federal employees to not get paid if there’s a shutdown. Why shouldn’t Congress play by the same rules?
That’ll get them motivated to reach a budget deal much quicker, instead of shutting the government down.
So, to the Representatives and Senators who are retiring because they’re “frustrated,” bye bye.
A dating service called OKCupid recently asked Firefox users not to use the browser to access their site because of Mozilla’s CEO donating money to an anti-gay marriage proposal in California. It started a firestorm, which lead to the CEO of Mozilla stepping down (?) to defuse the situation.
Mozilla did not stand their ground for freedom of expression and their CEO was shown the door.
I do not support Mozilla’s spinelessness and hypocrisy on their statement of freedom of speech and equality. Mozilla has shown that their statement only extends to certain individuals, and not all individuals, such as their ex-CEO.
I don’t care about the ex-CEO’s politics or if he supported this or that or the other thing. He can support whatever cause or political agenda he wants, with his vote or with his money, the same as anybody else, and the same as those who were opposed to Proposal 8.
I’m rethinking my use of Mozilla products over this situation. If I can find a viable alternative that I like for Firefox and for Thunderbird, I may well take them. That’s very unfortunate because I really like both products and Mozilla as a whole, until this scandal hit.
I’m very unhappy with Mozilla. They should amend their statement to be not as inclusive as it currently is. They’ve demonstrated that they will not support some legitimate forms of speech, such as monetary donations to anti-gay marriage proposals in the state of California.
I also think that the decision of the California state government to publish the names of donors to Proposal 8 is an obscenity. If I want to support a particular party or proposal as a private citizen, it’s my right to do so, privately and free of threats of retaliation and harassment from any village idiots. There’s at least one web site in California that has posted locations on maps of people who supported Prop 8, and harm has come to some of them.
Mozilla needs to decide which side it’s on, and California needs to stop the voter and donor intimidation.
President Obama made a major mistake in giving up control of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which controls how users can access websites all over the world.
It’s not too late to reverse this decision. Until every nation on the planet guarantees freedom of speech to their citizens, and establishes a history of respecting those rights, AND stops locking up those same citizens for daring to disagree with their governments, we have no business surrendering control of it to any international body.
American ingenuity and treasure was spent on creating the Internet, and it should rest permanently with the same department in the United States government that it has been with so far.
The Democrats talk about having an Internet free of government control, and that’s fine and dandy if all world governments agree to the same thing in a legally binding contract. I don’t see us agreeing with Russia, Iran, China, or other regimes that have poor records on free speech.
Congress needs to reverse this decision before it’s too late. The last thing we need is Vladimir Putin or one of a dozen despots around the world to decide that they want to shut down sites that report on what they’re doing. Information is power, and these leaders who desperately want control of the web know it, and fear it.
That’s reason enough to keep the controls under U.S. jurisdiction permanently.
Wow.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went after a customer list of people who bought parts to manufacture AR-15s from several gun store locations in San Diego. At the heart of the dispute is one piece of the construct that is being reviewed by a San Diego court, and who had issued a restraining order against the ATF to hold off raiding the store until matters were settled in federal court first.
For whatever reason, the ATF violated the restraining order and went after the parts, the customer lists, and whatever else they felt like grabbing.
The U.S. district attorney for San Diego is said to be in possession of the customer lists; 5,000 people are said to be on the list.
Lots of questions on this story:
Did the ATF go to court to get the restraining order lifted? If they didn’t, isn’t this search and seizure illegal, and all information gleaned from the confiscated computers and lists considered to be fruit from the poisonous tree?
Is the ATF in contempt of court?
Who issued the order for the ATF to ignore the court order?
Did the ATF search warrant come from a higher federal court than the one who issued the restraining order? How does this work?
It look an awful lot like the ATF royally screwed up an open-and-shut case and violated a whole slew of federal laws related to the Second Amendment in the process. This will be an interesting story to follow.
