Internet Scofflaw

The North Carolina school that replaced a child’s home-packed lunch because it wasn’t nutritious enough has selected a scapegoat and suspended the teacher involved. I’ve skeptical; with all the conflicting official stories, it seems unlikely that the was one rogue teacher.

(Via Instapundit.)

Remember when President Obama said that health care nationalization would cost $900 billion over ten years? And remember how they Democrats collected enough accounting gimmicks to get the official cost to $940 billion?

The latest estimate is $1.76 trillion. And that’s with the official ten-year window still containing one free year. Next year when we have the ten-year accounting filled with ten actual years of costs, it will be still higher.

And that’s before the damn thing is even implemented. Once they starting running this monstrosity, that’s when the costs will really start to soar.

1939: “It is better to perish than to live as slaves.”

2012: “It is better to live as slaves than to pay for one’s own birth control.”

Coming soon to a school cafeteria near you:

Pink slime — that ammonia-treated meat in a bright Pepto-bismol shade — may have been rejected by fast food joints like McDonald’s, Taco Bell and Burger King, but is being brought in by the tons for the nation’s school lunch program.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is purchasing 7 million pounds of the “slime” for school lunches, The Daily reports. Officially termed “Lean Beef Trimmings,” the product is a ground-up combination of beef scraps, cow connective tissues and other beef trimmings that are treated with ammonium hydroxide to kill pathogens like salmonella and E. coli. It’s then blended into traditional meat products like ground beef and hamburger patties.

“We originally called it soylent pink,” microbiologist Carl Custer, who worked at the Food Safety Inspection Service for 35 years, told The Daily. “We looked at the product and we objected to it because it used connective tissues instead of muscle. It was simply not nutritionally equivalent [to ground beef]. My main objection was that it was not meat.”

What’s interesting here is that a Democratic administration is buying this stuff to serve to kids. That’s called playing against type. (Of course, I don’t believe that Democratic politicians actually care about this stuff, except as a way to accumulate more power for themselves, but usually they put on a good show.)

When you see Democrats acting publicly against their self-proclaimed principles, like nutrition for kids, you know that someone is getting paid off. It’s like when Nancy Pelosi kills a credit card regulation bill. Eventually you’ll find out that she was given a bunch of stock in Visa.

(Via Instapundit.)

A week ago I remarked at how impressive it was that the Democrats had managed to change the topic from its frontal assault on religious freedom to Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about a contraception activist.

But I’m delighted to see now that the Democrats overplayed their hand. It seems that many Americans — and in particular many women — were not diverted from the subject of religious freedom, or were offended by the Democrats’ blatant opportunism and their willful blindness toward the much-more-common misogyny from the left.

This sort of thing encourages me that America might still be capable of governing itself wisely.

UPDATE: Another encouraging sign, compared with one month ago. (Via Hot Air.)

Taking up Andrew Breitbart’s mantle. (Via Instapundit.)

Remember when President Obama pledged that, under health care nationalization, “federal conscience laws would remain in place”?

Like nearly everything else he promised about health care reform, that was a lie, notwithstanding his pose of righteous indignation. It’s a true scoundrel who lies while accusing others of lying.

POSTSCRIPT: In fact, his lies include every single word in the clip. Yes, Obamacare does include a panel empowered to ration health care for senior citizens. And, yes, it does cover illegal immigrants. And, yes, it does fund abortions.

How bad is President Obama’s employment record? This bad:

We’ve never seen anything remotely this bad since the Great Depression.

President Obama wants to bail out real-estate speculators. If there’s anyone less worthy of a bailout, I can hardly think of who it might be.

Oh, and it turns out that if Obama decides to bail someone out, he can go right ahead and do it: the bailout starts in May. It seems that we’ve gotten that whole pesky legislative branch out of the way. (Will we hear belly-aching from the left about the “unitary executive” now? Rhetorical question.)

Another blow against freedom of religion in academia, as the University of North Carolina at Greensboro has withdrawn recognition from a Christian student club. It’s excuse: it isn’t really a religious organization.

Unlike Vanderbilt, UNC-Greensboro is obviously a state school, so this isn’t just terrible, it’s illegal.

Frank J. Fleming says it’s high time we fix the Bill of Rights:

So the Senate has voted down the effort to undo President Obama’s quite reasonable mandate that all employers have to pay for their employees’ contraception. I was shocked that there was a dispute about this — especially because of “religious objections.” Who knew that was still a thing?

Even worse, when I dug out a copy of the revered Bill of Rights to show someone how it guarantees everyone a right to contraception, I found no mention of that right!

In fact, the Bill of Rights doesn’t guarantee anything people need — not food, shelter or even broadband internet. The only things it mentions are a few nebulous rights of absolutely no market value. It’s rather pointless, really. . .

Obviously, we’re much more sophisticated now. We aren’t like the Founding Fathers, with their primitive fear of government and thunder. We need to update this silly, archaic Bill of Rights, which puts all this emphasis on “freedom” with no mention of the much more important “free stuff.” If we don’t act, other countries will make fun of us for it — and who wants to be tittered at by Belgium?

In the UK, half of all nursing home patients are being abused, according to British regulators. I’m so glad we’ve set ourselves on the path to nationalized health care.

The EpiPen is a device to administer epinephrine to a patient suffering a severe allergic reaction. The government doesn’t want them to be readily available:

It is deliberately designed to be simple enough for even a child to use unaided . . . And the dose of epinephrine – or adrenaline – dispensed by the EpiPen is so small that, while it is enough to halt allergic reactions, the only likely side effect is a raised heartbeat.

Nevertheless, when the device went on the market a few years ago, US regulators stipulated that it could only be made available on prescription and administered to a specific patient. . . Only around 7 per cent of the people who are at risk of an allergic reaction are now thought to hold EpiPens. . .

Earlier this year a seven-year-old girl in Virginia went into shock when she ate a peanut during a school break. Although the school held EpiPens for other children, it was not allowed to administer one to her, since she was not “named” on any of the prescriptions. Tragically, the child died. And this is not an isolated case: around 1,500 people are thought to die in America each year from similar allergic reactions which could have been reversed with an EpiPen.

(Via the Corner.)

Greece has defaulted.

This is actually good news. The default (a 74% “haircut”) has been a near certainty for weeks. The only question was whether the International Swaps and Derivatives Association would weasel out of paying off on credit default swaps, and they didn’t.

One can’t help but be impressed by the rhetorical jiu-jitsu with which Democrats have turned a debate over religious freedom — should the Catholic church be forced to pay for contraceptives and abortifacients — into a debate over whether Rush Limbaugh was wrong to call a woman who claims to spend $1000 per year on contraception a “slut”.

The answer to the latter question is yes, of course. No one, Limbaugh included, denies this. But the left’s show of sanctimonious indignation is awfully hard to take, given that far worse misogynistic language is routinely tolerated on the left, provided it is directed at appropriate targets. Appropriate targets evidently include Sarah Palin, Michelle Malkin, Laura Ingraham, Carrie Prejean, Michele Bachmann, etc., and even the underage daughters of prominent Republicans. Women on the right need to expect this kind of abuse, and, when it happens, today’s self-righteous enforcers of civility will just laugh it off.

Should the Catholic church be forced to conform itself to President Obama’s policy on contraceptives and abortifacients? Of course not. If you pose the question straight, almost no one will say yes. But the Democrats gambled that if they put the issue on the table, they could divert the debate into a winning cultural offensive. I wouldn’t have thought that you could get from “we will force Catholics to violate their consciences” all the way to “Republicans are attacking women”, but they seem to have pulled it off. Impressive.

(Cartoon via Powerline.)

Washington State Wire reports:

A decision by [Washington State] Senate Democratic leaders to shut minority Republicans and moderate members of their own party out of the budget-writing process ended in an epic backfire Friday night, as three moderates bolted and threw control of the chamber to the GOP.

Democrats fired back with delaying tactics that initially threatened to keep the Senate in session all night, but it appeared clear that Republicans had the upper hand and would be able to pass a GOP-written budget in the Legislature’s upper chamber. Democrats ultimately acknowledged defeat, and Senate continued to meet late Friday night to pass the bill.

The best part was when Democrats complained that by passing a budget in cooperation with moderate Democrats, the Republicans had spoiled the body’s spirit of bipartisanship. That’s got to be worth at least an honorable mention in any chutzpah competition.

(Via Instapundit.)

Health care nationalization isn’t due to be implemented until 2014, and its subsidy costs have already risen 30% (that’s $112 billion) in the last year. In other words, they haven’t the foggiest idea how much this thing is going to cost.

New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg continues his war on good food:

The New York Times looks today at what factors go into the scorecards that produce the letter grades that, for about a year, New York City restaurants have been forced to display in their front windows. Some of the rules—you’re not supposed to have rat droppings in the kitchen—are uncontroversial. But others are criticized by chefs and restaurateurs as needlessly costly or even interfering with the quality of food.

One has to do with holding and serving temperatures for foods. Certain foods, like terrines and cheese, should be served at room temperature for the best flavor. But this is either prohibited or, in the case of cheese, subject to onerous requirements . . .

Cheese isn’t the only problem area. Pork is supposed to be cooked to 165 degrees (twenty degrees higher than the USDA guideline!) unless the customer specifically requests otherwise. I’ll save you the trouble of investigating: a 165 degree pork chop is terrible. . .

Restaurants also aren’t allowed to let steaks come up to room temperature before cooking them—which leads to them cooking too heavily on the outside before reaching the desired internal temperature. . .

This is why I happily dine in restaurants that display B grades from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

Giving consumers more information is a good idea — provided it’s good information. This clearly isn’t.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Obama administration admits in a Congressional hearing that it has no interest in lowering gas prices.

The Washington Examiner reports:

The voting public apparently agrees that nothing in life is free, especially health care. A new Rasmussen poll finds that 51 percent oppose free universal health care and a whopping 63 percent reject it if required to change their current insurance coverage to a free government plan.

UPDATE: And 72% believe the individual mandate is unconstitutional.

Polls suggest that the union effort to recall Wisconsin governor Scott Walker will fail.

Hollywood has been making anti-war propaganda films for years, which (if their press statements are to be believed) weren’t even intended to make money. But one pro-military film hits theaters and message films are suddenly bad.

As far as I can tell, they are serious about this:

(Via the Corner.)

Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s Face the Nation:

How do you go after Barack Obama, though, right now? I mean, the stock market is up. It looks like the unemployment is going down. David Axelrod in his campaign said the other day Osama bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive. It’s going to be a tough job for you, is it now?

Oh, geez. The economy is in shambles, our debt exceeds GDP, gas prices are soaring (on purpose), Iran is going nuclear, Islamists are taking power throughout the Middle East, health care is being nationalized, the White House thinks that the government should be able to dictate ministers to churches, and Schieffer can’t see any weakness in Obama’s record?

Even Schieffer’s talking points have negatives. Bin Laden was located using human intelligence of the sort that we will never be able to get again, now that President Obama has told the enemy, in complete detail, exactly what interrogation techniques we will use. And GM was “saved” by spending nearly $100 billion of the taxpayer’s money (at least a quarter of which we will never get back), screwing GM’s creditors, and giving the new GM to Obama’s union cronies.

Europe has invented a new reason to limit free speech:

At the end of January, Viviane Reding, the European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights, and Citizenship, announced a sweeping new privacy right: the “right to be forgotten.” The proposed right would require companies like Facebook and Google to remove information that people post about themselves and later regret—even if that information has already been widely distributed. The right is designed to address a real and urgent problem in the digital age: It’s very hard to escape your past on the Internet now that every photo, status update, and tweet lives forever in the digital cloud. But the right to be forgotten takes a dangerously broad approach to solving the problem. In fact, it represents the biggest threat to Internet free speech in our time.

The article is hard to summarize, but basically the new rights takes three forms, listed in order of increasing danger to free speech:

1. The right to delete material that you posted yourself.
2. The right to demand the deletion of material that you posted yourself and others have subsequently copied elsewhere.
3. The right to demand the deletion of material that others have posted about you.

(Via Althouse.)

The bankruptcy of Solyndra, the Obama administration’s pet green-energy company, has left behind drums of improperly stored toxic waste.

(Previous post.)

Growth of our economy versus growth of our debt:

This simply cannot work.

(Via Instapundit.)

The UK’s new 50% tax rate for incomes over £150k has reduced tax revenues.

The amazing thing is that anyone is surprised by this. The existence of a Laffer curve is unarguable (one cannot contest the simple observation that the government will receive no revenue at a tax rate of 0% or 100%), the only dispute is where the curve peaks. All the evidence shows that curve peaks much lower than 50%.

Of course, there are those who support counterproductive tax rates even knowing they are counterproductive, out of sheer spite.

Heh. Good thing the smart guys are running the country now. (Via Instapundit.)

Canada is close to repealing the “hate speech” section of its Human Rights Act, which is commonly used to suppress free speech. (And I mean that in the not at all hypothetical sense.) Better late than never.

POSTSCRIPT: I’m a little puzzled though, because I thought Section 13 was found unconstitutional years ago. I guess that decision must have been overturned.

(Via Instapundit.)

At the Daily Caller: The IRS is persecuting Tea Party groups.

Via Glenn Reynolds, who adds:

Well, when the President jokes about auditing his enemies, you can expect the worker-bees to pick up on the message. I warned at the time that the President’s thuggish “joke” would cause a loss of faith in the IRS.

The Canadian long-gun registry, now abolished, never solved a single crime. What’s $2.7 billion divided by zero?

As the old joke goes, how do you know that an Obama flack is lying? His lips are moving.

Here’s White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew on the contraception mandate “compromise”:

That’s why he got the support of a range of groups, from the Catholic health association and Catholic charities, to Planned Parenthood.

White House spokesman Jack Carney:

And the organizations that will be most affected by this — Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association — have expressed their support for this policy, and we obviously appreciate that.

Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), chairman of the House Democratic Campaign Committee:

And that’s why groups like Catholic Charities, the Catholic hospitals associations have said this is a fair compromise, that it accomplishes the goal of both women’s health as well as religious freedom.

Finally, here’s Catholic Charities:

In response to a great number of mischaracterizations in the media, Catholic Charities USA wants to make two things very clear:

1.  We have not endorsed the accommodation to the HHS mandate that was announced by the Administration last Friday.

2. We unequivocally share the goal of the US Catholic bishops to uphold religious liberty and will continue to work with the USCCB towards that goal.

Any representation to the contrary is false.

This broad attack on a single talking-point doesn’t happen by accident. Clearly, the Obama administration has decided that it serves their purposes to promulgate this lie.

(Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: Let’s not forget that the compromise itself is a lie. After announcing it, the administration went ahead and put the old, pre-compromise regulation into effect.

The New York Post reports:

On Dec. 6, nearly 300 members of the Occupy Wall Street movement flooded into East New York to begin what they considered phase two of their efforts. . . The group would take over an empty house, foreclosed on by a bank, fix it up and provide shelter to a homeless family. . .

Last week,Wise Ahadzi opened the door to the house he still owns, 702 Vermont Street in East New York. Inside is a war zone. The walls are torn down, the plumbing is ripped out and the carpeting has been plucked from the floor. It’s like walking through a ribcage.

Garbage, open food containers and Ahadzi’s possessions are tossed haphazardly around the house.
“This is where my kitchen was,” Ahadzi says. There is no sink, no refrigerator and no counter space. Instead there are dirty dishes piled high waiting for a dip in three large buckets of putrid water that serve as the dishwashing system. In a first-floor bathroom, Christmas lights dangle from a shower curtain rod. The only thing separating a toilet from the elements outside is a thin veil of paper. . .

Ahadzi thought about calling the police, until the embarrassed Occupy movement promised him that they’d repair the house and leave. Two weeks have already gone by since without any progress. Occupy hasn’t even offered to pay him for the damages.

Before and after:

The mistake here was expecting constructive action from socialist malcontents in the first place. (See also topic two here.)

(Via Instapundit.)

Mark Twain once (reportedly) said “No man’s life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.” As true as that was in the 19th century, matters are far worse in today’s administrative state. Today’s regulators can do whatever they want, and they are always in session.

Case in point: federal regulators are looking to ban all use of electronic devices while driving. And if that’s not bad enough, some even want to ban them for passengers as well.

(Via Instapundit.)

POSTSCRIPT: A few years ago I took a look at what the research of cell phone use while driving actually says. It’ was much more nuanced than media reports would have you believe.

I also noted last December that the NTSB isn’t telling the truth about how many cell-phone-related accidents occur. It’s bad when regulators lie to support their position, for two reasons: it’s bad for them to lie, but also it suggests that they’ve decided what they are going to do, regardless of the facts.

Administration officials were warning about Solyndra as early as March 2010, but that didn’t stop the illegal bailout nearly a year later.

(Previous post.)

A group of CMU researchers have found that barely half of off-shore wind turbines will likely survive their full design life:

The US Department of Energy set a goal for the country to generate 20 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2030. One-sixth is to come from shallow offshore turbines that sit in the path of hurricanes.

Stephen Rose and colleagues from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, modelled the risk hurricanes might pose to turbines at four proposed wind farm sites. They found that nearly half of the planned turbines are likely to be destroyed over the 20-year life of the farms. Turbines shut down in high winds, but hurricane-force winds can topple them.

(Via Instapundit.)

David Brock’s gun-control hypocrisy is raising eyebrows:

The recent revelation that the head of Media Matters walked the streets of Washington with a Glock-toting personal assistant acting as a bodyguard may make it a little awkward for the group the next time it seeks a donation from a gun control advocacy group. Media Matters reportedly took more than $400,000 from the Joyce Foundation specifically earmarked to promote a $600,000 initiative on “gun and public safety issues.” At the same time, Media Matters’ gun-guarded boss David Brock reportedly obsessed over his own security. . .

“He had more security than a Third World dictator,” one Media Matters employee told The Daily Caller.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’ve noticed that this sort of hypocrisy is very widespread, and not just with guns either. There is a general phenomenon on the left of people believing that basic necessities not only should be provided by the government, but that they should be provided only by the government. Such people turn out to be hypocrites when it comes to their own consumption of those basic needs.

Those who believe that the government should be sole provider of protection from violence (i.e., gun control advocates) nevertheless carry guns or hire bodyguards who do. Those who believe that the government should be the sole provider of health care (e.g., many Canadians) nevertheless cross the border to obtain treatment for themselves. Those who believe that the government should be the sole provider of education (e.g., President Obama) nevertheless enroll their children in private schools. If the left ever succeeds in nationalizing food, the same bunch will be lined up at black-market groceries.

In the case of the North Carolina school that replaced a child’s home-packed lunch because it wasn’t nutritious enough, the school says they know nothing about the incident:

Reached again, a different representative said they had “no information at this time” about the situation. A West Hoke Elementary official similarly denied any knowledge and referred all questions to the school district.

The school district says it was just a misunderstanding:

Bob Barnes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, told the McClatchy News Service Thursday that the first preschooler to make headlines just misunderstood her teacher when she thought she was told to ditch her homemade lunch for one from the cafeteria . . .

“We are not the lunch bag police,” Barnes told McClatchy. “We would never put a child in any type of embarrassing situation. . .”

Barnes confirmed there was an agent from Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education at the school Jan. 30 who examined six student lunches and determined one did not make the nutritional cut — presumably the first little girl whose story made news.

And the state says they aren’t doing any such inspections:

In a statement to The Blaze, the Division of Child Development and Early Education said it is investigating what happened but flatly denied any of its employees or contractors “instructed any child to replace or remove any meal items.” The division issued a similar statement to McClatchy even after Barnes said it was one of their agents who examined the lunches.

“It is not DHHS’ policy to inspect, go through or question any child about food items brought from home. The facts we have gathered confirm that no DHHS employee or contractor did this,” the statement said.

These stories contradict each other, so they can’t all be true. Most likely, none of them are, because we a second incident has now come to light:

Now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter. . .When [Diane] Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria.

The lunch Zambrano packed for her daughter? A cheese and salami sandwich on a wheat bun with apple juice. The lunch she got in the cafeteria? Chicken nuggets, a sweet potato, bread and milk.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

Nancy Pelosi and MoveOn.org are pushing a completely bogus graphic, purporting to show that, deficit wise, Barack Obama is the most responsible president in years, and Reagan was the least.

(Via Instapundit.)

Carolina Journal reports:

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs – including in-home day care centers – to meet USDA guidelines. . .

When the girl came home with her lunch untouched, her mother wanted to know what she ate instead. Three chicken nuggets, the girl answered. Everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste.

The school also told the child that her mother wasn’t packing her lunch properly, and billed the mother for the replacement lunch.

I’m tempted to quip that I’m glad North Carolina has solved every real problem facing the state and can afford to waste money on lunch inspectors. But, in truth, this would be an outrage if it cost nothing at all.

POSTSCRIPT: The governor of North Carolina is Bev Perdue (D, of course), of we-should-suspend-elections-for-two-years fame.

David French has an interesting post at NRO on how Governor Romney fought to protect freedom of conscience in Massachusetts. Your mileage may vary, but I find it persuasive.

Jack Lew, who was President Obama’s budget director before becoming chief of staff, pretends he doesn’t understand how the budgeting process works.

UPDATE: Glenn Kessler:

We might be tempted to think Lew misspoke, except that he said virtually the same thing, on two different shows, when he was specifically asked about the failure of Senate Democrats to pass a budget resolution. He even prefaced his comment on CNN by citing the “need to be honest.”

He could have tried to argue, as some Democrats do, that the debt-ceiling deal last year in effect was a budget resolution. Or he could have spoken more broadly about gridlock in the Senate, after acknowledging a traditional budget resolution had not been passed. Instead, the former budget director twice choose to use highly misleading language that blamed Republicans for the failure of the Democratic leadership.

I missed this one in January:

I’ve never gone ad hominem on [my critics].

Oh my.

On the very first day in an introductory economics course, one learns that price caps lead to shortages. Case in point: price controls on prescription drugs lead to shortages. Good thing we’re extending price controls to all medical care. . .

President Obama’s compromise on the contraception mandate is a complete fraud. Instead of requiring Catholic organizations to offer contraception, they require insurance companies to provide the contraception “free of charge”. Of course, “free of charge” means that the insurer will pass the cost on the payer (the aforementioned Catholic organizations), but it’s okay (we are told), because the insurer won’t be allowed to list contraception as a specific line item. Instead, the insurer will have to spread the cost throughout.

In short, this “compromise” doesn’t change anything whatsoever. It’s true, this sort of shell game often fools those who wish to be fooled, but so far the Catholic bishops don’t seem to be buying it.

But wait, it’s worse than that. The whole thing is a lie. The administration isn’t even implementing the supposed compromise. The final regulation was promulgated Friday. After 17 pages of smokescreen, it contained the actual legal language, of which the very last paragraph reads:

Accordingly, the amendment to the interim final rule with comment period amending 45 CFR 147.130(a)(1)(iv) which was published in the Federal Register at 76 FR 46621-46626 on August 3, 2011, is adopted as a final rule without change.

(Emphasis mine.)

UPDATE: Greg Mankiw puts it nicely:

Consider these two policies:

A. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance that covers birth control.

B. An employer is required to provide its employees health insurance. The health insurance company is required to cover birth control.

I can understand someone endorsing both A and B, and I can understand someone rejecting both A and B. But I cannot understand someone rejecting A and embracing B, because they are effectively the same policy.

Of course, the fact also remains that the policy is actually staying at A.

UPDATE: The Obama administration didn’t even consult with the Catholic church in determining its “compromise”.

UPDATE: More on how the “compromise” hasn’t even been implemented. (Via Instapundit.)

Bill Maher is projecting:

Honestly, if Sarah Palin were president and terrorists struck New York again she would say two things. First, is Mount Rushmore okay? And two, well at least they didn’t hit the “real America.” Democrats don’t do this. Jerry Brown doesn’t stand under the Hollywood sign and say “Now, I don’t know if this will play in Texas or down on the farms where they have no values and f*** chickens. But you here in Hollywood are the real Americans.” It never happens.

We needn’t speculate, since 9/11 did happen. No prominent Republican, Sarah Palin included, said anything like that. It’s hard to imagine that a Republican would, since conservatives still believe that politics ends at the water’s edge. But one prominent Democrat did. Michael Moore’s lament was that the terrorists hit the wrong target:

They did not deserve to die. If someone did this to get back at Bush, then they did so by killing thousands of people who DID NOT VOTE for him! Boston, New York, DC and the plane’s destination of California – these were places that voted AGAINST Bush!

(Via the Corner.)

Labor unions are paying people $60 a head to join Occupy DC’s protest of the CPAC conference.

Eric Holder has already changed his story about when he learned of the Fast and Furious operation:

During a May 3 House Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder told Congressional investigators at least twice that he had only learned of the controversial Operation Fast and Furious gun-walking program a “few weeks” beforehand. But testifying Tuesday, Holder’s timeline changed. . .

“I did say a ‘few weeks,’” Holder clarified Tuesday, responding to questions from Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I probably could’ve said ‘a couple of months.’ I didn’t think the term I said, ‘few weeks,’ was inaccurate based on what happened.”

Now his story has to change again. However bad “[a] few weeks” is as a description of  a six-week period, it’s even worse as a description of a five-month period:

Attorney General Eric Holder’s Department of Justice dumped documents related to Operation Fast and Furious on congressional officials late Friday night. Central to this document dump is a series of emails showing Holder was informed of slain Border Patrol agent Brian Terry’s murder on the day it happened – December 15, 2010.

Holder’s office was notified of Fast and Furious on the very day Agent Terry was murdered. Five months later he told Congress that he had just learned of it. That’s perjury.

We still don’t know when Holder first learned of Fast and Furious. Holder said it was shortly before May 3, 2011. We later learned it was by March 2011, then January 2011, and now December 2010. This could be the end of the walkbacks, but that’s not the way to bet.

(Previous post.) (Via Hot Air.)

I’m pretty sure that if Elizabeth Warren were a Republican, this would be a big deal:

One of the Harvard professor’s many well-compensated part-time gigs included consulting for Travelers Insurance. I know that it is hard to believe that on one hand, Democrats would be bashing an industry, and on the other hand they are making money from it. To be a Democrat is to be a hypocrite.

What did Lizzy do to earn $44,000 in compensation from the insurance company? She made it harder for claimants to collect. Warren helped establish the bankruptcy strategy for companies to avoid crushing lawsuits. In short, go bankrupt to avoid paying victims.

More here.

The American takes a look at Mitt Romney’s job-creation record at Bain Capital, and finds: “The companies Bain Capital funded under Romney have created tens of thousands of jobs using any measure.” Read the whole thing.

Of course (as Glenn Reynolds remarks) even creating one job (heck, even destroying just a few million) would be a big improvement over President Obama’s record.

POSTSCRIPT: For readers with an Economist subscription, the Economist also has an informative column about Romney and Bain.

Warren Buffett, President Obama’s pet billionaire, will profit handsomely from Obama’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The Solyndra phenomenon isn’t just a federal problem, green energy subsidies are running into trouble at the state level as well. (Via Instapundit.)

Several other ventures in President Obama’s green energy program are also in distress.