Internet Scofflaw

Frank J Fleming’s latest column is one of his best:

Like many of my fellow Americans, I’m getting pretty concerned about a fringe group in our country that’s growing increasingly isolated and paranoid. Worse, we now have indications that this group is lashing out in ignorance and fear.

It’s time that we finally confront the problem of federal workers’ growing anti-citizen extremism.

The feds have shown warning signs for years, becoming increasingly withdrawn, hunkered down in their bunkers in DC. They’re disconnected from what’s going on in the rest of the country, getting their news only from extremist sources like Media Matters, MSNBC and The New York Times.

And in their fear and isolation, federal workers seem willing to believe almost any crazy conspiracy theory about the American public — such as that everyone is secretly racist against the president and that people are going to form militias to fight the government.

And now we know they’ve started attacking those they fear, with IRS workers targeting right-wing groups and Justice Department employees going after journalists. Others are apparently engaged in some massive spying operation on anyone who’s ever put a cat photo on Facebook. (To be fair, these last may really just be trying to spy on their ex-girlfriends.)

Now, citizen have plenty to worry about with the feds lashing out. After all, for years the government has stockpiled dangerous weapons like assault rifles, nuclear weapons and audit forms.

It hasn’t started blowing up US citizens in drone strikes (other than the four), but who knows what the feds will do if their paranoia is allowed to grow?

So what can be done? Well, we can’t do much as average citizens, as, of course, the government never listens to us. But certain people hold a lot of sway over it, and maybe they should start to watch what they say, considering that excitable, easily influenced groups like federal workers are out there listening.

Now, I’m all for freedom of speech — along with the iPad, it’s one of the modern conveniences I use the most — but some people need to be more careful with what they say about the citizenry, so they don’t feed federal workers’ paranoia.

I’m thinking especially of President Obama, as people in the federal government tend to listen to him. When Obama and his colleagues talk about how dangerous the Tea Party and other conservatives are, with their dislike of taxes and spending, most folks are discerning enough to dismiss that as partisan rhetoric. But impressionable people not known for independent thinking — bureaucrats — will hear talk of the “dangers” these groups pose and act as if the dangers are real.

I’ll bet when the IRS went after Tea Party groups and Eric Holder signed warrants to investigate reporters, these people ignorantly thought they were helping Obama and that he’d be happy with them.

I’m not trying to say this is Obama’s fault — it’s not like it’s his job to know what goes on in the federal government — but if he were more careful with what he says, he could probably end a lot of federal workers’ paranoia about our citizens right now. He could instead explain to the people in the government that there is nothing to fear from ordinary Americans — that, in fact, a healthy country needs not only a flourishing government, but also a strong, powerful citizenry.

And once the feds have calmed down and are no longer scared of the people, we need someone to finally keep an eye on it so it doesn’t do crazy things out of fear again. In fact, I thought there were already people who are supposed to do that.

After the Fast & Furious mess, we should have known someone like Eric Holder can’t be responsible for himself, but we need to have a long talk with whoever his supervisor is.

(I’ve corrected a few typos that somehow got past the Post’s editors.)

When Glenn Reynolds said that lefty blogger (and Obama favorite) Josh Marshall would call any scrutiny of Obama’s travel costs racist, I assumed he was humorously extrapolating from Marshall’s previous work. I mean, who would actually say such a thing?

As it turns out, Josh Marshall would. You cannot parody these guys.

Pew has an interesting poll on public opinion toward NSA surveillance in 2006 and today:

Now, to some extent this is just showing partisan differences, with both Republicans and Democrats sticking up for their guy. What I think is interesting is that the two NSA programs in question are very different.

In the 2006 program, the government was spying on specific foreign terrorists. In the 2013 program, the government is spying on all Americans (no one believes that the program is really limited to Verizon, do they?). Moreover, the current program actually excludes foreigners.

So when 75% of Republicans were okay with spying on foreign terrorists, but only 52% are okay with spying on all Americans, there’s a logic to that. (Indeed, I would have expected the first number to be higher and the second lower.)

But the apparent Democratic position — foreign terrorists deserve privacy but not American citizens — makes no sense on the merits. It has to be blind partisanship.

POSTSCRIPT: What about the independents, who are hovering right around a lukewarm 50% but are somewhat more comfortable now than then? I think they are responding to a partisan media. Not that the media is so keen on NSA surveillance now, but their opposition is muted. If you recall the media in 2006, you would have thought that spying on foreign terrorists was the end of the republic.

(Previous post.)

President Obama says that Republicans aren’t treating his judicial nominees fairly:

My judicial nominees have waited three times longer to receive confirmation votes than those of my Republican predecessor. Let me repeat that: My nominees have taken three times longer to receive confirmation votes than those of my Republican predecessor.

Despite the specific detail (Obama knows that specifics like “three times longer” are key to making a story sound believable), his claim isn’t remotely true:

Obama’s claim seemed heartfelt, but it wasn’t anywhere near true. As it happens, the Congressional Research Service has just done a study comparing judicial nominations in the first terms of several recent presidents. Among other things, the study noted how long each president’s nominees waited from the day they were nominated to the day they were confirmed. . .

The CRS study found that Bush’s first-term nominees waited an average of 277 days for confirmation, while Obama’s waited 240 days. So not only did Obama’s nominees not wait three times longer than Bush’s, they actually made it to the bench faster.

As for the U.S. district courts, which have far more seats than the circuit courts, the study found that Obama’s nominees have waited an average of 222 days, while Bush’s waited 156. So Obama’s picks have waited longer before confirmation — but nowhere near three times as long.

But what about the final results? As it turns out, Obama has had a higher percentage of his circuit court nominees confirmed during his first term than Bush did. The CRS report notes that 71.4 percent of Obama’s circuit court nominees were confirmed in his first term, compared with 67.3 percent in Bush’s first term.

Obama’s complaint is also amazingly hypocritical, given his own record of stalling judicial nominees when he was in the Senate.

CNN reports:

President Barack Obama’s push back to criticism of the National Security Agency surveillance programs is that he has increased checks and balances, bringing the foreign surveillance courts into the process, for instance, and – he insists – looping in Congress.

“When it comes to telephone calls, every member of Congress has been briefed on this program,” the president said Friday.

Here’s the problem with that: It is not true – every member of Congress has not been briefed on the phone data program.

I’m sure this guy must tell the truth sometimes, but I can’t remember the last time.

(Previous post.)

The Washington Examiner reports:

Vermont’s insurance commissioner denied a license to a new statewide Obamacare health care cooperative because it is “fatally flawed” and likely to be insolvent within three years, The Washington Examiner has learned.

Commissioner Susan L. Donegan of the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation also criticized Vermont Health CO-OP’s business practices, especially an “illegal” contract that would generate as much as $500,000 in income for a company owned by its president.

Donegan further criticized what she described as the co-op’s “deceptive” consumer advertising. . .

She predicted the health co-op would lose money each year, attract too few customers and face insolvency in only three years.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line has an interesting piece on Obamacare “navigators”, the legions of government advisers recruited to fan out and help people make health insurance decisions. A few of the problems Mirengoff identifies are:

• The navigators are specifically barred from giving complete advice. Specifically, they will not volunteer the fact that purchasing insurance may be more expensive than the Obamacare penalty.
• The navigators will be given access to a wealth of personal information, but will undergo no background check, even to exclude known felons and identity thieves.
• The federal government is paying for the navigators, despite being barred by law from doing so.

It’s sad that I don’t even find this surprising:

Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL) questioned Attorney General Eric Holder last Thursday at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing about whether the NSA spied on members of Congress.
“Mr. Attorney General, I want to take you to the Verizon scandal and — which I understand takes us to possibly monitoring up to 120 million calls. You know, when government bureaucrats are sloppy, they’re usually really sloppy. Want to just ask, could you assure to us that no phone inside the Capitol were monitored of members of Congress that would give a future executive branch, if they started pulling this kind of thing off, would give them unique leverage over the legislature?” he asked.

Holder responded, “With all due respect, Senator, I don’t think this is an appropriate setting for me to discuss that issue. I’d be more than glad to come back in a — in an appropriate setting to discuss the issues that you have raised.”

Kirk, a Naval intelligence officer, pressed Holder remarking, “I would interrupt you and say the correct answer would be say no, we stayed within our lane, and I’m assuring you we did not spy on members of Congress.”

If Holder won’t say it didn’t happen (which he usually has no qualms about saying, even when it’s not true), then we may assume it did.

(Previous post.)

We are at a uniquely dangerous point in American history. When Richard Nixon tried to use the IRS to target his enemies, the agency told him to take a hike. Today, the agency is happy to target the president’s enemies. In fact, if the White House is telling the truth (a big if, I know), they don’t even have to be asked to do it! As Mark Steyn puts it:

Indeed, let’s take the president at his word that the existence of this shadowy IRS entity working deep within the even shadowier U.S. Treasury planted in deep cover within the shadowiest conspiracy of them all, this murky hitherto unknown organization called “the executive branch,” that all this was news to him.

What that means then is not that this or that elected politician is corrupt but that the government of the United States is corrupt.

Combined with this historically unusual affinity for misconduct, the government also has unprecedented capabilities to abuse. Again, Mark Steyn:

Perhaps this is just the way it is in the panopticon state. Tocqueville foresaw this, as he did most things. Although absolute monarchy “clothed kings with a power almost without limits” in practice “the details of social life and of individual existence ordinarily escaped his control.” What would happen, Tocqueville wondered, if administrative capability were to evolve to bring “the details of social life and of individual existence” within the King’s oversight? Eric Holder and Lois Lerner now have that power. . .

When the state has the power to know everything about everyone, the integrity of the civil service is the only bulwark against men like Holder. Instead, the ruling party and the non-partisan bureaucracy seem to be converging. In August 2010, President Obama began railing publicly against “groups with harmless-sounding names like Americans for Prosperity” (August 9th, a speech in Texas) and “shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names” (August 21st, radio address). And whaddayaknow, that self-same month the IRS obligingly issued its first BOLO (Be On the Look-Out) for groups with harmless-sounding names, like “tea party,” “patriot,” and “constitution.”

It may be that the strange synchronicity between the president and the permanent bureaucracy is mere happenstance and not, as it might sound to the casual ear, the sinister merging of party and state. Either way, they need to be pried apart. When the state has the capability to know everything except the difference between right and wrong, it won’t end well.

The danger here isn’t Barack Obama. This is not the first corrupt administration and it won’t be the last. The danger here is the government. It must be scaled back.

We should not attack Obama primarily for being personally responsible for the scandals. For most of them he probably isn’t. We should attack Obama primarily for refusing to do anything about them, and for thwarting Congress’s efforts. (No, he hasn’t thwarted Congress’s efforts to clean house yet — other than by stonewalling investigations — but is there any doubt that he will?) And, since nothing can be done while Obama is still in office, we must remember. Unfortunately, remembering is something that the American people seem to be very bad at.

The EPA “accidentally” gave personal information on 80 thousand farmers and ranchers to radical environmentalists.

Barack Obama, 2007:

This [Bush] Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand.

Barack Obama, 2013:

“You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. We’re going to have to make some choices as a society,” Obama said.

He’s right now, and was demagoguing then. That doesn’t mean he’s making the right choices, just that he’s belatedly recognized the need to make them.

(Previous post.)

So many top Obama officials have lied to Congress that it’s hardly even a thing any more, but you can add James Clapper to the list:

Weeks before the National Security Agency (NSA) began a massive phone sweeping operation on U.S. cellular provider Verizon, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Congress the agency does not conduct intelligence on American citizens. . .

“Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?” committee member Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked Clapper during the March 12 hearing.

In response, Clapper replied quickly: “No, sir.”

As we know now, that wasn’t even remotely true. I’m sure the administration will put forward some argument why this wasn’t wasn’t a lie, but I can’t imagine what it will be. It will also be interesting to find out whether Clapper was under oath.

(Previous post.)

Democrats are now trying to argue that it’s actually a good thing that Obamacare will double health insurance premiums. The argument, if I understand it, is that inexpensive policies only exist because they either exclude poor insurance risks or charge them more (well, yes), and thus they are unfair and shouldn’t exist.

The idea that using actuarial tables to set insurance premiums is somehow wrong certainly lies at the heart of socialized medicine, but it’s a very long way from the promise that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it”.

(Via Instapundit.)

When the IRS isn’t targeting conservative, christian, and pro-Israel groups for special scrutiny, it’s giving special treatment to groups with ties to President Obama:

Lois Lerner, the senior IRS official at the center of the decision to target tea party groups for burdensome tax scrutiny, signed paperwork granting tax-exempt status to the Barack H. Obama Foundation, a shady charity headed by the president’s half-brother that operated illegally for years.

According to the organization’s filings, Lerner approved the foundation’s tax status within a month of filing, an unprecedented timeline that stands in stark contrast to conservative organizations that have been waiting for more than three years, in some cases, for approval.

Lerner also appears to have broken with the norms of tax-exemption approval by granting retroactive tax-exempt status to Malik Obama’s organization.

Never mind the reported shadiness of the organization, which the article goes into but is really beside the point. The point is Obama’s brother gets the fast track, and — beyond that — is improperly back-dated, while groups the left doesn’t like get the shaft.

(Previous post.)

The EPA isn’t deadly just to our economy:

A U.S. EPA-mandated device meant to reduce diesel emissions may have shut down an ambulance carrying a suspect who had been shot by police in Washington, D.C.

While medics yesterday were transporting the injured man, who was suspected of shooting at officers, to the hospital, the emergency vehicle shut down. Another ambulance took the man to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

D.C. fire officials said the shutdown likely occurred because of a device designed to burn diesel toxins. When the device isn’t working, warning lights go off in the vehicle and it eventually loses power. . .

Per EPA regulations, the device is required on all newer models of diesel vehicles. Critics of the mandate have previously called for an exemption for emergency vehicles.