Internet Scofflaw

While Barney Frank was protecting Fannie Mae from government scrutiny during the housing bubble, he arranged to get his partner a job there.

The Wikileaks gang styles themselves as transparency crusaders, but this story (especially when combined with Wikileaks’s recent efforts to stop leaks) shows that they are just vandals putting on airs.

President Obama has signed a bill extending the Patriot Act.

Good grief. Rarely is the hypocrisy so blatant as Democrats calling for the “nuclear option” to put an end to filibusters in light of the defeat of a judicial appointment.

Some are trying to allege that the Republicans are being hypocritical for defending the filibuster now that they are in the minority. That’s frankly dishonest. It’s one thing for the side that lost (the Republicans) to play by the rules they were unable to change. It’s quite another for the side that won (the Democrats) to change the rules they previously insisted upon, because those rules have since become inconvenient to them.

Interesting how demagoguery and hypocrisy tend to go hand-in-hand:

The new chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee was criticizing Republicans who opposed President Obama’s bailout of the American automakers union, oh, no, make that American automakers.

“If it were up to the candidates for president on the Republican side,” said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, “we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the auto industry in America go down the tubes.”

So Michael O’Brien of The Hill newspaper went and checked what kind of automobile loyal-American-car-supporter Debbie Wasserman Schultz owns.

Yup, you guessed it — Japanese.

(Via Instapundit.)

The White House has a new rapid propaganda czar (“Director of Progressive Media & Online Response”). Jesse Lee’s job will be to respond to critical stories online, and encourage favorable stories in the “progressive media”. This sort of activity is ordinarily paid for by political parties, but now it will be paid for by our tax dollars.

Who is this guy? David Steinberg at the PJ Tatler took a look. The most interesting thing he found is that Lee’s wife was connected with (and, although we can’t be sure, was probably responsible for) MoveOn’s infamous “General Betray Us” ad.

Despite being a small and shrinking portion of the workforce, unions have received over half the Obamacare waivers. What standards the administration is using to award waivers? They don’t have a consistent answer to that question.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

Marc Thiessen writes in the Washington Post:

In a television interview last October, President Obama accidentally let slip a key element of his political philosophy: “We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.” . . .

This incident is worth remembering as the president prepares to issue a far-reaching executive order that would require the government to collect detailed information about the political activities of anyone applying for a federal contract. . .

Why is this a bad idea? Recall that in August 1971, Richard Nixon’s White House counsel John Dean penned a confidential memorandum in which he proposed creating a list of “our political enemies.” The purpose of the exercise, according to Dean, was to “determine what sorts of dealings these individuals have with the Federal Government and how we can best screw them (e.g., grant availability, federal contracts.. . . etc.)” Since then, enormous steps have been taken to clean up the federal contracting process and ensure that government contracts are granted solely on the basis of merit. Obama’s proposed executive order would undermine that progress, reverse years of effort to remove politics from contracting decisions and create incentives for impropriety.

Let’s not forget, this bunch is from Chicago. To them, increasing the importance of politics and graft in government contracting is a feature, not a bug.

(Via Instapundit.)

Seattle contemplates a ban on paper cups.

Don’t think it can’t happen either. This is the same town that has been known to close streets for the sole purpose of making driving less convenient.

There is a lot to like about Herman Cain, but you can’t be taken seriously as a presidential candidate without a familiarity with basic foreign policy issues. That includes the issue of right-to-return in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, which Cain seems not to understand.

POSTSCRIPT: Judging by the question, Chris Wallace doesn’t entirely understand the issue either, as he spoke of Palestinians having been kicked out of Israel in 1948. A man ready to be president would be able to correct him.

(Via Michael Barone.)

Could New Hampshire become a right-to-work state? That would give them a huge competitive advantage in the northeast.

Cynthia McKinney does what Cynthia McKinney does:

A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the “last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war.”

The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.

So she gives aid and comfort to the enemy during Democratic administrations as well as Republican ones. At least she’s consistent.

Reports the New York Post.

President Obama, at a fundraiser in Austin:

Internationally, we’ve gone through a Teutonic [sic] shift in the Middle East that could have enormous ramifications for years to come.

(Emphasis mine.)

It’s amusing to picture what a Teutonic shift might look like.

Mitch Daniels is out.

AP reports:

A proposal to ban the circumcision of male children in San Francisco has been cleared to appear on the November ballot, setting the stage for the nation’s first public vote on what has long been considered a private family matter.

But even in a city with a long-held reputation for pushing boundaries, the measure is drawing heavy fire. Opponents are lining up against it, saying a ban on a religious rite considered sacred by Jews and Muslims is a blatant violation of constitutional rights. . .

If the measure passes, circumcision would be prohibited among males under the age of 18. The practice would become a misdemeanor offense punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or up to one year in jail. There would be no religious exemptions.

The mere fact that the measure could make the ballot tells us a lot about what “tolerance” really means in San Francisco. It will be very interesting to see if it passes.

President Obama says he is still working on gun control, “under the radar”, says Sarah Brady. Fortunately, I don’t think “under the radar” will work. The gun-rights community is paying close attention, and whatever Obama tries to sneak in by regulation will end up as a political issue.

(Via Instapundit.)

Medicare and Social Security are in even worse shape than we thought.

An AFL-CIO official boasts of intercepting their opponents’ emails.

If their opponents were foreign terrorists, this would be a scandal. Since they are not, it’s not even a story.

Of the latest batch of Obamacare waivers, 1 in 5 went to Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional district. With 435 Congressional districts (not counting DC), it seems hard to explain this by chance alone.

What do we, the public, know about the decision process for waivers? Anything at all?

Run an op-ed the White House disapproves of, and get yourself kicked out of the White House press pool.