Scandal

This article is by Jillian Kay Melchior in the National Review.

        A tea-party group targeted by Democrats gets attention from the IRS—and the FBI, OSHA, and the ATF.
 

We're pointing a gun at our democracy

In a CNN article
Donna Brazille - a Democratic party leader - says:

...  We're pointing a pistol at our heads. A government of, by, and for the people requires that people talk to people, that we can agree to disagree but do so in civility. If we let the politicians and those who report dictate our discourse, then our course will be dictated. ...

I agree.

Unfortunately, she then goes on a rant about how there is nothing to all of these scandals except Republican obstructionism against the program of her man, Obama.

IRS Apologizes 3

 

As I said in number 1 this speaks for itself and it is pretty bad.   Below is what I learned from PBS and one of the networks.

 

But

There are some interesting facts here.  These were not regular 501 (c) 3 tax exempts  in which neither the donor nor the receiver pays taxes on the money transferred.  These were either the  501 (c) 4 or the 527.

The second of these is a purely political committee which has taxes due and must reveal its donors.  To qualify for the first category your organization must spend most of its efforts on public service, i.e. on nonpolitical things.  These distinctions are new because of the Citizens United SCOTUS decision.

If you are in this game you want to be in the first group 501(c)4.  So people would be straining to get there.

Furthermore, since it was the year of the tea party, there were lots more right side applications than left.  They would have looked at more tea party things even if they had done it randomly.  

But

They admit that they gave extra focus to right side sounding group names.  

 

 

But (I love the next two.)

It was mostly in one office in Cincinnati.

But  

That office is the headquarters for this kind of determination.

 

 

But 

After Obama got the IG’s (inspector general) report they fired the head guy at the IRS.

But 

He wasn’t there at the time this stuff happened, he gets to stay for a week, and he was leaving in two weeks anyway?

 

 

But

Even the regular reporters are starting to ask real questions since the AP incident.

Example:  “Mr. President, when did you find out about these political IRS actions?”

But                                                                                                                      

That doesn’t mean that they are going to get answers:  In response to the last question he said: “I got the IG’s report yesterday.”  Does he think that that is cute?  I think that it shows contempt for us and the press.  He said some other stuff too, but he did not answer the question.  We have no idea how long he has been sitting on this.  If he had been seriously outraged, as he says he is, then we would have heard about it months ago when those responsible had been fired.

 

 

Am I losing confidence in this man?

 

Yes. No buts about it.

Who's minding the store?

BOB SCHIEFFER:  "This is not the Nixon administration, ... . This is more of a case, is anybody home?

I mean, just all of a sudden you have this thing with the Justice Department where they’re getting all these phone records of all the reporters. The Attorney General, well he didn’t know anything about it. You get to the IRS, they don’t seem to know anything about the Tea Party thing. You come to White House, they don’t know anything about Benghazi. Somebody’s got to grab hold of this thing.

It’s very, very disturbing what we’re seeing here. "

Caleb Johnson

Caleb Johnson Murray High School 1995, Cornell 1999, and Columbia 2008 is starting to get some recognition as a filmmaker. 
His latest short film, Root, is being shown by the prestigious SXSW and other festivals. 

  You can find out more about the film and scheduled showings at the laurel page.

IRS Apologizes 2

I think that it is very unlikely that Obama was involved in the attempt by some  IRS officials to get the Tea Party type nonprofit organizations.  I expect that it was overly enthusiastic underlings.  It reminds me of what my university department chairman told me one time:  "Its not your enemies that get you in trouble.  Its your friends.

Benghazi 4

The media has found Benghazi with a vengeance.

I noticed that the people who explained why no help was sent, talked a lot about the fact that it only lasted 7 hours and it would have taken the military longer than that to get there.

None of our illustrative reporters asked:  "Did you know at the beginning that it would only last seven hours?"

Two Vignettes

TWO  VIGNETTES AT THE RAMADA INN IN

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS,

WHICH ILLUSTRATE THE COMPLEXITY OF

MODERN LIFE

I

(1978)

Coming back from Christmas,
I and my – for lack
of a better word—lover

stop here at noon on New Year’s Day

to watch the football games.

We are quarreling over something

I can no longer remember.

We will be back to back

before the Orange Bowl is over.

(Before spring,

it will all be over,

both of us defeated

in a game no one’s made the rules for:

living two thousand miles apart

in places we can’t leave.

Distance does us in.)

II

(1983)

For reasons too complicated to explain,

my ex-husband is driving me back to Texas

after Christmas in Tennessee.

We hit Little Rock with not much time to spare:

I rush in to register; he peels off for junk food.

We settle in just as the Cowboys kick off.

On the trip we have speculated

about whom the Democrats will run in ’84,

have argued over whether we should have built the bomb

once we knew Germany didn’t have it after all,

and I have learned that driving a stick shift

is not like riding a bicycle.

We are almost twenty years from the wedding,

some thirteen from the divorce.

But marriage is not the only tie that binds.

(Later, at home, someone will ask,

“But didn’t his wife mind at all?”

and I realize that’s the first time

the idea has occurred to any of the three of us,

and so I say, “No, I expect she was glad

to have the house to herself for a while.”)

Honoria, a local Murray poet

IRS Apologizes

I think I'll just let this one speak for itself.

IRS Apologizes for Targeting Conservative Groups

ex patriots

If you come from Murray - Calloway County let us know what you are up to with a small post here.  If you'd rather you can send it to me at wcbell@murray-ky.net and I'll put it up.

Benghazi 3 - media

Apparently, the nonFox media is finally starting to cover the Benghazi affair.  It occupied a major portion of last Sunday's Face the Nation show on CBS.  Until recently I had seen it only on Fox.

Oct 21 I said here:  "I believe the President was concerned that the terrorist attack on Benghazi would be seen a harbinger of the collapse of his middle eastern foreign policy.  That is why for two weeks his administration conducted a media campaign to convince us that it was a demonstration that got out of hand and not an organized activity." 

 

In the comments there it was noted that:  "... the response by the administration was the standard damage control that we see from our institutions from time to time when events threaten to damage their brand."  That is, of course, frequently true. That is why we need a independent media.  That brings us to the real and double tragedy here. Our mainline media will not only not cover this important story, it assures us that those who do cover it are unreliable.  The majority of  our media apparently sees its role as supporting the administration's (mis?)representation of those events.

Recall how the media handled Bush's claims about African yellowcake?  I have a friend who went on interminably about how the Bush people "outed a CIA agent" (Valerie Plame, author of the subsequent book - Fair Game).  That friend has not been at all concerned about the idea that perhaps this administration left an ambassador (Chris Stevens) and others out to die.  I told her that, contrary to Obama's claims, the Libyan President said (in September) that it was clearly a preplanned attack and she asked, "Libya has a President?" 

I would argue that the blame for my friend's indifference lies not with her, but with the media and its selective reporting. 

By way of comparison the reader should note that Ambassador Stevens will not be writing a book about the treatment that he received from his administration.
 

Curris and Dunn

 

For those interested  in local Murray News:

An article in the Murray State News on Thursday last compares the moves against President Curris in the eighties and the current nonrenewal of President Dunn's contract.

The following comment was appended:

While there are some similarities in the cases of Presidents Curris and Dunn there is a very large difference that the author of this article passes over lightly and there is a timeline question about the actions against Dr. Curris.

The current action by the board is one of not extending Dunn’s contract beyond its current end which I believe is on June 30, 2014.  However, there were two occasions on which the board moved to end Curris’s time as president.  If the second one (in 1982) were the only attempt, then that case would, as you have suggested, be similar to this one because the board decided to replace Curris at the end of his contract on June 30, 1983.

However, in this article, there seems to be some confusion between the second move against Curris (1982) with the first, which occurred in February of 1981.   It was on that first occasion that the charges were brought and the courts became involved.  In the 1981 action, the board was not simply trying to let a contract run out.  Their objective was to break Curris’s contract, which had almost 2 ½ years remaining, and remove him immediately.  That is quite a different thing than letting a contract run out.  That is why the action required charges and that is why it resulted in such a huge fight.  Curris won that stage of the fight. 

Sincerely,

Wayne C. Bell, Faculty Senate President, 1982-83

 For more on this subject see: My Tenure Biennium

Obama's "game changer"

On April 30, in the light of recent evidence indicating the use of Sarin gas in Syria, Jon Stewart roasted the President (for game changer remarks and subsequent inaction about the use of such gas) and some Republicans (for their response).

Three things:

1.  I'm not real sure that he was justified in his complaint with the Rs (that they want to do something but don't want "boots on the ground").  There are in fact some substantial things that one can do that do not involve "boots".  Construct a no-fly zone over Syria or persuade the Russians to quit supplying Assad.

2.  I agree with what I will call Jon's first criticism of Obama.  When Obama first trotted out the red line gamechanger talk he left it completely open as to what the response would be.  He should have been clearer at the outset that there would still be a variety of responses that we could make in the event that the "game changing" use of WMD actually occurred.  (It also wouldn't have hurt if he had made a distinction on what our response would be based on who used the WMD.)  Instead he gave the impression that if any WMD appears in Syria we were going to jump right in with both feet.

 3.  I strongly disagree with the complaint about the second criticism of Obama in this case.  That is that he said we were going to do something and we should now be going gung ho into action.  You may or may not have supported Bush 43's actions vis a vis the existence of WMD in Iraq.  However, the lack of supporting evidence in that case makes it absolutely essential that any action by Obama vis a vis the use of WMD in Syria is based on rock solid evidence.  There is no room for a margin of error here.

Cable news

Does the YA community get much news from MSNBC, CNN, or FOX?

Who are some of the pundits you listen to?

I read most of my news, but also like to watch clips from various cable news shows to see what it is that they are all saying on a given day.

I'm curious - for example, in the past I have generally liked listening to Charles Krauthammer but has been annoying me recently. He seems more and more like a partisan hack than a weighty conservative thinker.

Enemy Combatants

So should the Boston bombers be classified as enemy combatants?

First of all what difference does that make? 

I believe that the difference is, basically, if you are an enemy combatant then you may be handled under military law and you do not have some of the procedural safeguards that are afforded to persons who are accused in accordance with civil law. 

Just a couple of side points here about who gets what?

No one “gives” you your Miranda rights (against being required to incriminate yourself.) when you are arrested.  The rights are given to you by the Constitution.  Officials “read” them to you so that the court can be sure that you are aware of them.  Not only that, if they fail to read them to you that doesn’t mean you get off, it just means that what they learn after not reading them cannot (normally) be used against you.

It sounds like some of the TV guys think that these civilian rights apply only to citizens.  Your constitution uses the expression “person”  as in “no person shall be twice put in jeopardy…  .”  It does not say no “citizen” … .

So should they be classified as enemy combatants?  It seems like first you should decide on who the enemy is first. That means recognize that we have a new situation and it is not a question of simply “figuring out what they are” and that what we need a general definition of enemy here.    

I would say the place to start would be with the list of terror organizations that the government keeps, they are among the enemy. Also any organization that declares itself to be at war with the U S is an enemy.  Anyone who is a member of or fights for such a group is an EC (enemy combatant).

It does not appear that these guys had a group.  So they are common criminals.

Bob Dylan concert

I got out to see Dylan at his concert in Murray, KY on April 27.

Now, I knew that he was not going to be singing "The times they are a changin' ".  After all, like Joan Baez said, "The sixties are over so set him free."

 The first song lasted for about an hour.  At least the same beat went on for that long.  I'm not sure about the words which he sort of spit out so that I only understood about 5-7% of them.  I assumed that this was his current genre and there clearly was an audience for it.

They played for an hour and a half and then, mercifully, quit.

But it was Bob Dylan.

Bush 43's legacy

The opening of the Bush 43 library has brought him back into the spotlight.  George W. Bush says that he is satisfied to have his presidency be judged by history.  (Not that he has any choice in the matter.)

I have noticed an interesting characteristic from some people on TV and from personal friends in the liberal reaction to Bush's attitude.  They find it amusing and irritating.

They find it amusing because they know that history's judgment is going to be negative and they find it odd that he seems to believe that it might be more positive than the present judgment. That I don't mind.  It is a difference of opinion.

But they also find it irritating.  I think that it is because they are so certain that they are right that they actually expect him to agree with them!  After all everybody they talk to thinks that Bush 43 was a disaster, how can he not know that that is what he was?  How can he have the temerity to disagree when they have told him what history's judgment is going to be.  It's insulting.

I think that you ought to cut a little slack to the people who are the first to deal with a new situation.  This whole terrorism thing is new.  The best way to deal with it is not yet clear even during the term of our second guy to deal with it.  Obama's targeted assasinations might eventually raise as many eyebrows as Bush's waterboarding has. There are some very large open questions out there about how to deal with this thing.  I believe that those who think that they already know what the final judgment is going to be are about as stupid as they claim that they think George Bush is.

George Jones, Sept 12, 1931 - April 26, 2013

"He stopped loving her today." - his most famous song.

I have listened to and liked the music of George Jones for over half a century.
Most of that time it was good and simple country music.

 A sample line:
"Oh the ways of the world and wants of a woman,
If I figured them all out, would take many yeeaaars."

My opinion of him went up dramatically a few years ago when he parted company with all of those wallow in blaming other people for their troubles.  His response to his drinking problem, which almost killed him on more than one occasion, was one of acceptance of responsibility.

and he sang it:

Choices  listen to it here

"I've had choices, since the day that I was born.
There were voices, that told me right from wrong.
If I had listened, no I wouldn't be here today.
Living and dying with the choices I've made."

Surveillance Cameras

In a recent comment concerning privacy rights and the use of surveillance cameras in public places Mayor Bloomberg said that present circumstances require us to “change our interpretation of the constitution”.

1.  I have no issues with the prolific use of surveillance cameras in public places.
2.   I have no issues with changing the Constitution using the change mechanisms defined in the constitution.
3.  I am (to be dramatic) horrified at the suggestion we should change our “interpretation” based on an agenda.

I sincerely hope that Mayor Bloomberg simply misspoke and does not truly believe what he actually said.

The Immigration Proposal

This is a variation the post "Immigration 2" on 7-6-10.

Contrary to what most people would prefer I think that the first thing to do about the immigration problem is to deal with the source of the problem. The IIUWs (illegal immigrants - undocumented workers) do not come here because it is fun to risk their lives crossing the border. They come for work. Therefore the focus should be on employment not the border. (The border should be secured, but that should be done because of drugs and terrorists not IIUWs.)

This proposal includes "Universal E-verify" which means that unless you are registered with the government as having legal status you cannot work.  To require employers to confirm the legal status of new employees means that the government has to  maintain a system which is universal and easily used by employers (since they will face the penalty for violations). This requires only  that new employees prove their legal status when they take a job. It does not require that they carry “papers please” or any of the silly claptrap that we have heard from Rachel Maddow et al. More importantly new IIUWs will not have any reason to come.

Step two involves taking down those two signs that we have on the border: “help wanted” and “no trespassing”. Replace them with one sign that says “help wanted apply at the front door”. In addition to regular legal immigration (expanded  to include more highly skilled immigrants), the proposal will establish an expanded and accessible “work visa” program. Apply, pass a background check similar to what is done for immigrants and receive a work visa.

With those two things you have dealt with the essence of the long term problem.

Now for the folks who are already here illegally. Currently they may go home and stay for 10 years and then apply for immigration.  This proposal will allow them to stay here with legal status including the right to work.  On the grounds that getting citizenship after you have come into the country illegally should be harder than getting it after you come in legally, the proposal includes a very difficult path from "legal status" to "green card".  It is harder than I would prefer, but it does not seem outrageously tough.

Of course we could just continue what we are doing now and let their employers use these folks to keep wages low and our politicians use their situation to incite our Hispanic citizenry.