This blog is mainly about the spectacular train wreck at The Sacramento Bee and its parent company, the McClatchy Company. But I also post about current events, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, politics, anything else that grabs my attention. Take a look around this blog, hope you enjoy it.
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Wednesday November 25 – Got news or an update?
If you have news or an update, leave it in comments. . . .
32 comments:
Anonymous
said...
Look at what political correctness has done to these American heroes:
Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 By Rowan Scarborough
AP/ Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.
Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.
Rationing, the Unspeakable, But Honest Solution (Washington Post)
From a trusted leftist paper, The Washington Post, that just announced today it will close six bureaus around the country.
The uproar over the on-again, off-again guidelines on when women should have mammograms is proof of the blindingly obvious: Health care reform that actually controls costs -- rather than just pretending to do so -- would be virtually impossible to achieve.
I say "would be" because none of the voluminous reform bills being shuttled around the Capitol on hand trucks even tries to address a central factor that sends costs spiraling out of control, which is that each of us wants the best shot at a long, healthy life that medical science can offer.
Just as all politics is local, all health care is personal. Skimping on somebody else's tests and procedures may be worth debating, but don't mess with mine.
Intellectually, it's simple to understand why it might make sense for women -- those who have no special risk factors for breast cancer -- to wait until they're 50, rather than 40, to start getting mammograms.
The analysis by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made the recommendation, looks sound.
According to the panel, a whopping 10 percent of mammograms result in false-positive readings that lead to unjustified worry and unneeded procedures, such as biopsies.
In a small number of cases, women are subjected to cancer treatment or even a mastectomy they didn't need.
Senate health care bill creates new marriage penalty (Proposal packed with 17 new levies) (WashingtonTimes.com)
Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more.
That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans.
"If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill...
Dems Try to Justify $300 Million Bribe to Senator Landrieu… Fail (GatewayPundit)
Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown and Jeanne Shaheen are tongue-tied when asked to justify the $300 million bribe democrats awarded Senator Mary Landrieu for her vote on Obamacare:
Via Breitbart From the video: The Washington Post reported on a provision in the health reform bill that would give the state of Louisiana – whose Senator, Mary Landrieu, is indecisive on health reform – $300 million.
“The promise of the Obama campaign is to change the way Washington works,” CNN’s John King asks Sen. Sherrod Brown. King argues that this process is “Washington as usual, is it not?”
Brown and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen were tongue-tied as to how to answer the question at first.
Is it any wonder then that independents are still fleeing the socialist party in droves?
Bowel cancer victims denied life-prolonging care that's free in Europe (UK rationing) (dailymail.co.uk) And momograms are cheap, but you dont' get them with DeathCare
Bowel cancer sufferers are to be denied a life-prolonging drug on the NHS which is available to patients across Europe and beyond.
Trials show Avastin can extend life by almost two years.
But the Government's rationing body, Nice, says it is not cost-effective.
In what has been dubbed 'passport prescribing', Britain does not allow routine use of the drug while patients in virtually all other EU countries get the drug paid for.
France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavian nations, as well as Australia and Canada, all meet the cost of treatment.
Last week Nice rejected the use of a liver cancer drug on the NHS.
Around 35,000 Britons develop bowel cancer each year, of which 4,000-5,000 with advanced cancer could benefit from the drug.
Avastin, also known as bevacizumab, costs around £18,000 for a course of ten months' treatment given as intravenous infusion with chemotherapy.
Obama Has Now Played 25 Rounds of Golf- More Than Bush’s Two Terms While Soldiers Wait for Reinforcements (GatewayPundit)
Barack Obama has now played more golf than George W. Bush did in two terms as president.
But he’s still dithering on whether or not to support the US troops in Afghanistan. The Wall Street Journal reported:
Barack Obama has now played 25 rounds of golf, a sport he picked up about a decade ago when he was an Illinois state senator.
That’s more golf than former President George W. Bush played in two terms, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential trivia.
It’s been over 3 months since the top general in Afghanistan requested more troops.
Obama has still not made his decision on whether to support the US soldiers and marines in Afghanistan.
Late last night Obama and the White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag (?) sat down with other officials to debate the Afghanistan/Pakistan policiy going forward.
The administration is suddenly concerned about the cost of the war. This is something new for a White House that just tripled the US national deficit last year and is planning on adding to that with a nationalized health care plan.
Recovery.gov won't correct job numbers On The Record w/Greta
Recovery.gov won't correct job numbers on $18 MILLION website
WH Advisor: People care about creating jobs, not counting them Greta and Steven Moore kept bouncing around ideas for why the White House won’t correct the numbers on the site.
They missed the obvious one: Because they can’t. There is no way to accurately determine “saved jobs”, and the White House either admits this or leaves the website unchanged as an $18,000,000 propaganda piece.
How About ‘Phantom’ Reporters? It’s tempting to excuse the Associated Press from that responsibility, as it already had 11 reporters busy fact-checking every page of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.
However, they were able to spare one reporter to fact check the recovery.gov fact-checkers.
That writer’s conclusion was that the data error “significance is overstated, and in some instances, fabricated.”
He conceded that the problems do raise questions about job-count accuracy, “but the ‘phantom congressional districts’ are being used as a phantom issue to suggest that stimulus money has been misspent.”
President Humpty Teeters Atop China's Great Wall (The Aspen Times)
In January, President Obama promised Americans his stimulus plan would “create or save” between 3 million and 4 million American jobs.
Without $787 billion in Democratic spending, our 7.2 percent unemployment rate could hit 9 percent before the end of 2009.
With it, the president promised, the unemployment rate would drop before year's end. We could track Obama's new jobs on Joe Biden's $10million website (www.recovery.gov) and, the president added, “The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries.”
These wouldn't be Bush-brand “McJobs,” Obama explained, “They'll be the kind of jobs that don't just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long term.”
The Obama stimulus was signed in Denver nine months — or, depending on how you're tracking it — 3.3 million lost jobs ago.
In July, the administration committed an additional $18 million to “update” Joe Biden's website, but it plunged through a credibility guardrail last week.
LA Weekly: Hollywood Stimulus Funds Yield 1 Job Per $1.13 Million Spent (Breitbart)
Help me out here. What’s crazier – the abysmal failure the stimulus has been in Los Angeles County (like everywhere else) or how outrageously wasteful the plan was to begin with?
Los Angeles County’s take of stimulus funds is by far the largest in California, which has received $18.5 billion in ARRA funds, intended to create 110,219.36 jobs statewide — a pricey rate of $168,264.08 per job.
But Hollywood is a different story entirely. Hollywood — the geographic Hollywood as found on Thomas Guide map page 593 — has received $23,338,327 in grants, loans and contracting.
This money has created just 20.57 jobs. That’s $1,134,580.80 per job.
And as interviews with recipients reveal, even that tiny jobs claim is clearly false, with many of the claims of newly created positions either impossible to verify or lower than reported.
Inside the numbers: How Obama has fallen (Obozo's dropping like a rock -- almost everywhere) (Washington Examiner)
We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in January.
A look inside those numbers -- Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results by demographic groups -- shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling:
Among age groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every age group of Americans except those between 18 and 29.
He's at 48 percent with people in the 30-49 range;
46 percent with people in the 50-64range;
and 42 percent with people 65 and over.
Among those 18-29, he's at 61 percent.
Among racial groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama support among white Americans has fallen below 40 percent.
He's at 39percent among whites; 91 percent among blacks, and 70 percent among Hispanics.
Among income groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every income group except those making less than $2,000 a month.
Rasmussen : Obama drops to lowest approval rating (45 %)
Give Rasmussen a lot of credit thus far in the Obama Era. They predicted his decline first, have documented his rallies, and now report on the nadir of his standing among registered voters.
In their daily tracking poll, Barack Obama dropped to a 45% approval rating, tying the lowest mark of his term thus far, and hit a new record on their “passion index”:
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal (canadafreepress.com)
Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”.
Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal.
In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.
“The files contain so much material that it is going to take some time to put it all in context,” says Ball.
“However, enough is already known to underscore their explosive nature. It is already clear the entire claims and positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on falsified manipulated material and is therefore completely compromised.
A Tale of Two Leaks: NYT Bashed Palin, But Won't Touch ClimateGate (NewsBusters)
The ClimateGate email leak has demonstrated in full force a glaring double standard in the mainstream media's coverage of leaked information.
Too often, liberal media outlets jump at the chance to damage conservative figures by publishing sensitive information, but refuse to publish such information if it discredits or hinders the left's efforts.
As Clay Waters reported yesterday, Andew Revkin, who writes for the New York Times's Dot Earth blog, refused to publish emails from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showing efforts to manipulate climate data and marginalize global warming skeptics.
Said Revkin, "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here."
Revkin is correct that the emails were never intended for the public eye, contained private communications, and were released by hackers who violated the law in obtaining them.
But apparently this standard for publication of such documents does not apply to information about Sarah Palin.
The Times's Caucus Blog reported on September 17 of last year:
Computer hackers broke into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, and posted some of her messages and a long list of contacts on the Internet.
The Web site Wikileaks posted screen shots of Ms. Palin’s inbox displaying her username, gov.palin@yahoo.com, and messages that were reportedly obtained by a group of hackers on Tuesday night.
The e-mails include an exchange between Ms. Palin and Alaska’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, as well as an associate, Amy McCorkell, who Ms. Palin appointed to a state drug and alcohol advisory board last year.
Wired Magazine reported on its Internet privacy blog, Threat Level, that it obtained confirmation from Ms. McCorkell that she did, in fact, send the message to Governor Palin.
On Wednesday, the McCain campaign acknowledged the breach in a statement from campaign manager, Rick Davis: “This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”
Governor Palin has faced criticism for reportedly using her private address to conduct government business.
When hackers posted screenshots of the then-Vice Presidential nominee on Wikileaks, the Times rushed to publish the information.
It even included a link directly to a page displaying the screenshots, disclosing private communications and making available her personal email address and contact list. This is "private information" in every sense of the term.
Guy Benson at National Review extrapolates that at the Times, "it's unacceptable to direct readers to hacked private emails that fundamentally disrupt a lefty meme-of-the-decade, but it's totally cool to direct readers to hacked private emails of the lefty bete noire-of-the-year."
Revkin's statement displays a profound double standard in the Times's reporting on leaked information. It managed, in the last sentence of the Caucus Blog post, to turn Palin's email leak into an attack.
Yet in the case of the ClimateGate emails, which were obtained in a near-identical manner and contain similarly sensitive and personal communications, the Times suddenly finds ethical misgivings in publishing the information.
The paper's reservations appear to be a veiled attempt to shield the left's global warming narrative from criticism.
"Climate Gate" Development: CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA (Paging James Hansen!!) (Am. Spectator)
Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies.
Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's East Anglia University
Obama says 'step closer' to climate deal (Breitbart)
US President Barack Obama said Tuesday the world has moved "one step closer" to a "strong operational agreement" on climate change at next month's Copenhagen summit after his talks with Indian and Chinese leaders.
Networks That Jumped at Complaints About a ‘Deniers’ ‘Conspiracy’ Now Silent About Left’s Global Warming Distortions (NewsBusters)
The broadcast networks still haven’t uttered a single word about the revelations late last week of e-mails showing scientists on the left-wing side of the global warming debate plotting to hide data and silence those on the other side in an effort prop up the notion of a “consensus” on the issue.
But when the liberal side of the debate charged that their opponents were involved in a “conspiracy” to tilt the debate in their favor, those same networks eagerly jumped on the story and castigated the evil “deniers.”
In 2007, as Brent Baker chronicled at the time in the MRC's CyberAlert, the broadcast network evening newscasts jumped to hype a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing meant to publicize a report from two far-left groups about how the Bush administration supposedly suppressed science about the dire threat of global warming — as if that view wasn’t getting plenty of play in the mainstream media.
ClimateGate Totally Ignored By TV News Outlets Except Fox (NewsBusters)
The Obama administration has another reason to hate Fox:
it appears to be the only national television news outlet in America interested in the growing ClimateGate scandal.
Despite last Friday morning's bombshell that hacked e-mail messages from a British university suggested a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists -- many with direct ties to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- to manipulate temperature data, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC through Monday evening have completely ignored the subject.
LexisNexis searches indicate that NPR appears to also be part of this news boycott.
By contrast, here are some of the stories news organizations apparently favored by the Obama adminstration have covered since ClimateGate broke:
One Of The Scandals Behind The CRU Emails(Sweetness-Light)
To get a little more context behind some of the emails that were liberated from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Great Britain, we go back to an article that appeared in the UK’s Register back in September:
Treemometers: A new scientific scandal If a peer review fails in the woods…By Andrew Orlowski A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers.
At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’s assessments.
A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia.
In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors. At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, or dendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take the ring data to create a "reconstruction" of historical temperature anomalies. But trees are a highly controversial indicator of temperature, since the rings principally record Co2, and also record humidity, rainfall, nutrient intake and other local factors.
Picking a temperature signal out of all this noise is problematic, and a dendrochronology can differ significantly from instrumented data. In dendro jargon, this disparity is called "divergence". The process of creating a raw data set also involves a selective use of samples – a choice open to a scientist’s biases.
snip
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open – and Yamal’s mystery is no more.
From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend.
Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.
In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990.
All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century.
The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.
This is what the CRU folks were fighting. They don’t want information like this to ever come out. And they have done everything in their power to prevent that.
MSM Tries to Ignore Climategate in Global Warming Stories...Readers Bring Them Back to Reality (NewsBusters)
An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal.
Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist.
Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away.
Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again.
An example is this Houston Chronicle editorial which asserts in its headline, "As a crucial climate change conference nears, more evidence of a warming globe."
And as the editorial reveals its "evidence," note what is conspicuously missing although the readers will bring it up much to the embarrassment of the Chonicle:
Furloughs Go Ahead for 'Detroit Free Press' Newsroom (Editor and Publisher)
DETROIT Detroit Free Press newsroom employees will take a five-day furlough in exchange for no job cuts through March.
Detroit Newspaper Guild members voted in favor of the plan Sunday. The unpaid days off will be scheduled in 2010.
The furloughs will include editor and publisher Paul Anger and other non-union newsroom managers. Free Press reporter M.L. Elrick says their participation helped sway his colleagues.
Rich Harshbarger, a vice president at the Detroit Media Partnership, says there would have been immediate layoffs at the Free Press without the agreement. The partnership runs the business operations at the Free Press and The Detroit News.
Lou Mleczko, president of Guild Local 22, says Detroit News newsroom employees probably will consider a similar plan.
'Toronto Star' to Cut One-Fifth of Newsroom Staff (Editor and Publisher)
CHICAGO The Toronto Star, Canada's biggest newspaper, is outsourcing its copy editing to Pagemasters North America, eliminating 78 editing jobs in a move it says will save US$3.8 million annually.
The reductions, amounting to about one-fifth of the staff, was outlined in a memo to employees by Star Editor in Chief Michael Cooke that was first reported by Joe Schneider of Bloomberg.
"At a time of unprecedented business nightmares facing the Star and our industry, and despite the many operational challenges associated with outsourcing, we believe there are sound business reasons for this proposal," Cooke wrote in the memo.
News of the outsourcing comes as the Star is offering buyouts and early retirement packages to all employees. In the memo, Cooke said the paper will have a better idea of staffing levels, and the need for layoffs, when the so-called voluntary separation plan is complete.
The union representing newsroom employees, the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild, has 30 days to propose alternatives to the outsourcing, Cooke said.
"I realize what deskers especially, and all of you, want and need most is clarity," Cooke said in the memo. "This note is to share with you information about what has happened and what might happen." He added no layoffs will occur until January at the earliest.
Hindu Animal Slaughter Bad, Muslim Good (Sweetness-Light) Paging PETA (But we only hate America)
From those defenders of the faith at the Associated Press:
Festival of mass animal sacrifice begins in Nepal
BARIYAPUR, Nepal – The ceremony began with prayers in a temple by tens of thousands of Hindus before dawn Tuesday. Then it shifted to a nearby corral, where in the cold morning mist, scores of butchers wielding curved swords began slaughtering buffalo calves by hacking off their heads.
Over two days, 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons will be killed as part of a blood-soaked festival held every five years to honor Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.
While cows are sacred and protected by law in Nepal, animal sacrifice has a long history in this overwhelmingly Hindu country and parts of neighboring India.
The Bariyapur festival has become so big, in part, because such ceremonies have been banned in many areas in the neighboring Indian state of Bihar.
And while it is criticized by animal-rights protesters, the festival is defended as a centuries-old tradition...
Animal rights groups don’t have much power in Nepal, but they have staged repeated protests in recent weeks. Local news reports say some activists set up stands in towns on the way to the Bariyapur temple, offering Hindu pilgrims coconuts and other fruits to sacrifice instead of animals.
There was no sign of them Tuesday. "We were unable to stop the animal sacrifices this year but we will continue our campaign to stop killings during this festival," said Pramada Shah of the group Animals Nepal...
Experts say it will take many more years before there are changes in these deeply rooted traditions.
"They continue these animal sacrifice rituals because they believe it is a tradition that can’t be broken," said Ram Bahadur Chetri, an anthropology professor at Katmandu’s Tribhuwan University.
"The people who follow these traditions believe that if they discontinue, then the gods will get angry and there could be catastrophe in the country."
Buffaloes, goats, chicken and ducks are sacrificed at most Hindu homes in Nepal during the Dasain festivals, which fell in September this year.
As we have mentioned several times before, we hold no brief for the ritual slaughter of animals.
(That is, where their throats are cut and they are left to slowly die as their blood runs out.)
But this Hindu festival only happens every five years. Surely more than 200,000 animals are cruelly ritually slaughtered during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha year in and year out all around the Moslem world.
Have the animal-rights protesters ever protested Eid al-Adha? We’ve never seen them.
Oversight: After an unjust firing and campaign of character assassination, the former AmeriCorps inspector general has been cleared of acting improperly. Now where does he go to get his job and reputation back?
On June 10, Gerald Walpin was fired with one hour's notice as the watchdog of AmeriCorps in violation of a federal law requiring Congress to be given a heads-up 30 days in advance.
He then fell victim to a campaign of character assassination.
When pressed for a reason for the sudden and improper dismissal of a federal watchdog, the White House responded with a letter to Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, respectively the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, from Norm Eisen, special counsel to President Obama.
The letter said Walpin's firing was at the unanimous request of the AmeriCorps board of directors. It described a May 20, 2009, board meeting where the 77-year-old Walpin "was confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions and exhibited behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve."
Had this occurred in private industry, no doubt the administration's EEOC would have filed an age discrimination suit.
Walpin was fully competent and a congressional hearing with Walpin testifying would have shown that.
He wasn't guilty of exceeding his authority either. Something else was afoot.
It seems that Walpin did a very bad thing — his job.
He followed the money and discovered that part of hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal AmeriCorps funds given to St. Hope Academy in Sacramento, Calif., had been misspent on questionable activities.
ACORN Document Dump: Why Did ACORN Spend $9,000 at Fertility Clinic? (Breitbart)
Big Government’s first post about the San Diego Document Dump showed a bank authorization to automatically pay monthly membership dues.
That particular individual committed to paying ACORN $10 a month. Thousands of California residents have made similar commitments, adding up to substantial monthly revenue for ACORN.
How an organization chooses to spend its members money says alot about that organization. Below is a monthly credit card statement for ACORN employee David Lagstein’s corporate credit card:
We’re not entirely certain what the “Fertility Specialist Medical Group” or the “San Diego Reproductive Surgery Center” does, but we know that, in June, ACORN paid them more than $9,000.
We also know that ACORN dumped the credit card statement detailing the charge into a public dumpster just days before the Attorney’s General office was scheduled to visit.
No doubt, Mr. Lagstein has a good reason for this purchase. Or, at least, an explanation for how payments to a fertility clinic further the hopes and dreams of the poor and low-income families who have turned to ACORN for help.
We’ll be waiting along with the rest of you for the answer.
“Obozo's dropping like a rock” Now that would be hilarious if it wasn’t wreaking our country. Didn’t we try to tell these fools Obama was a snake oil salesman? Now, the snakes have come home to roost. That doesn’t sound Wright!
"It’s not often that one runs across a column quite so clueless as this one by Leonard Pitts and published by McClatchy. Maybe Pitts should take a little time to learn about history and current law before opining on this topic again."
32 comments:
Look at what political correctness has done to these American heroes:
Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
By Rowan Scarborough
AP/
Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.
The three, all members of the Navy's elite commando unit, have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and have requested a trial by court-martial.
Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it.
Now, instead of being lauded for bringing to justice a high-value target, three of the SEAL commandos, all enlisted, face assault charges and have retained lawyers.
Agree it's beyond sick, and a leftist dream
Rationing, the Unspeakable, But Honest Solution (Washington Post)
From a trusted leftist paper, The Washington Post, that just announced today it will close six bureaus around the country.
The uproar over the on-again, off-again guidelines on when women should have mammograms is proof of the blindingly obvious: Health care reform that actually controls costs -- rather than just pretending to do so -- would be virtually impossible to achieve.
I say "would be" because none of the voluminous reform bills being shuttled around the Capitol on hand trucks even tries to address a central factor that sends costs spiraling out of control, which is that each of us wants the best shot at a long, healthy life that medical science can offer.
Just as all politics is local, all health care is personal. Skimping on somebody else's tests and procedures may be worth debating, but don't mess with mine.
Intellectually, it's simple to understand why it might make sense for women -- those who have no special risk factors for breast cancer -- to wait until they're 50, rather than 40, to start getting mammograms.
The analysis by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, which made the recommendation, looks sound.
According to the panel, a whopping 10 percent of mammograms result in false-positive readings that lead to unjustified worry and unneeded procedures, such as biopsies.
In a small number of cases, women are subjected to cancer treatment or even a mastectomy they didn't need.
Senate health care bill creates new marriage penalty (Proposal packed with 17 new levies) (WashingtonTimes.com)
Senate Democrats' health care bill would create a new marriage penalty by imposing a tax on individuals who make $200,000 annually but hitting married couples making just $50,000 more.
That's one of 17 new taxes imposed by the bill, which also creates a levy on elective plastic surgery - some call it "botax" - and places a 40 percent excise tax on those who have generous health care plans.
"If you have insurance, you get taxed. If you don't have insurance, you get taxed. If you need a life-saving medical device, you get taxed. If you need prescription medicines, you get taxed," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican, who is leading the fight against the bill...
Dems Try to Justify $300 Million Bribe to Senator Landrieu… Fail (GatewayPundit)
Democratic Senators Sherrod Brown and Jeanne Shaheen are tongue-tied when asked to justify the $300 million bribe democrats awarded Senator Mary Landrieu for her vote on Obamacare:
Via Breitbart From the video: The Washington Post reported on a provision in the health reform bill that would give the state of Louisiana – whose Senator, Mary Landrieu, is indecisive on health reform – $300 million.
“The promise of the Obama campaign is to change the way Washington works,” CNN’s John King asks Sen. Sherrod Brown. King argues that this process is “Washington as usual, is it not?”
Brown and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen were tongue-tied as to how to answer the question at first.
Is it any wonder then that independents are still fleeing the socialist party in droves?
Bowel cancer victims denied life-prolonging care that's free in Europe (UK rationing) (dailymail.co.uk) And momograms are cheap, but you dont' get them with DeathCare
Bowel cancer sufferers are to be denied a life-prolonging drug on the NHS which is available to patients across Europe and beyond.
Trials show Avastin can extend life by almost two years.
But the Government's rationing body, Nice, says it is not cost-effective.
In what has been dubbed 'passport prescribing', Britain does not allow routine use of the drug while patients in virtually all other EU countries get the drug paid for.
France, Germany, Italy and Scandinavian nations, as well as Australia and Canada, all meet the cost of treatment.
Last week Nice rejected the use of a liver cancer drug on the NHS.
Around 35,000 Britons develop bowel cancer each year, of which 4,000-5,000 with advanced cancer could benefit from the drug.
Avastin, also known as bevacizumab, costs around £18,000 for a course of ten months' treatment given as intravenous infusion with chemotherapy.
Obama Bows Before Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao...DRUDGE
http://d.yimg.com/a/p/rids/20091118/i/r3100408959.jpg?x=400&y=280&q=85&sig=D34F4tkrlJgAMShzwJxVNA--
Obama Departs White House With Favorite Reading Material (JamieWearingFool)
I caught this photo in today's print edition of the New York Post, where they note the president is bringing along his favorite reading material:
A recent GQ magazine with himself on the cover. Nothing like stroking your ego on the way to the golf course.
Guess reading about himself is more important than perusing the monstrous 2074-page healthcare bill from the Senate.
And what's the deal with the socks and sandals?
Obama Has Now Played 25 Rounds of Golf- More Than Bush’s Two Terms While Soldiers Wait for Reinforcements (GatewayPundit)
Barack Obama has now played more golf than George W. Bush did in two terms as president.
But he’s still dithering on whether or not to support the US troops in Afghanistan.
The Wall Street Journal reported:
Barack Obama has now played 25 rounds of golf, a sport he picked up about a decade ago when he was an Illinois state senator.
That’s more golf than former President George W. Bush played in two terms, according to CBS White House correspondent Mark Knoller, who tracks presidential trivia.
It’s been over 3 months since the top general in Afghanistan requested more troops.
Obama has still not made his decision on whether to support the US soldiers and marines in Afghanistan.
Late last night Obama and the White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag (?) sat down with other officials to debate the Afghanistan/Pakistan policiy going forward.
The administration is suddenly concerned about the cost of the war. This is something new for a White House that just tripled the US national deficit last year and is planning on adding to that with a nationalized health care plan.
Recovery.gov won't correct job numbers On The Record w/Greta
Recovery.gov won't correct job numbers on $18 MILLION website
WH Advisor: People care about creating jobs, not counting them
Greta and Steven Moore kept bouncing around ideas for why the White House won’t correct the numbers on the site.
They missed the obvious one: Because they can’t. There is no way to accurately determine “saved jobs”, and the White House either admits this or leaves the website unchanged as an $18,000,000 propaganda piece.
How About ‘Phantom’ Reporters?
It’s tempting to excuse the Associated Press from that responsibility, as it already had 11 reporters busy fact-checking every page of Sarah Palin’s autobiography.
However, they were able to spare one reporter to fact check the recovery.gov fact-checkers.
That writer’s conclusion was that the data error “significance is overstated, and in some instances, fabricated.”
He conceded that the problems do raise questions about job-count accuracy, “but the ‘phantom congressional districts’ are being used as a phantom issue to suggest that stimulus money has been misspent.”
President Humpty Teeters Atop China's Great Wall (The Aspen Times)
In January, President Obama promised Americans his stimulus plan would “create or save” between 3 million and 4 million American jobs.
Without $787 billion in Democratic spending, our 7.2 percent unemployment rate could hit 9 percent before the end of 2009.
With it, the president promised, the unemployment rate would drop before year's end. We could track Obama's new jobs on Joe Biden's $10million website (www.recovery.gov) and, the president added, “The jobs we create will be in businesses large and small across a wide range of industries.”
These wouldn't be Bush-brand “McJobs,” Obama explained, “They'll be the kind of jobs that don't just put people to work in the short term, but position our economy to lead the world in the long term.”
The Obama stimulus was signed in Denver nine months — or, depending on how you're tracking it — 3.3 million lost jobs ago.
In July, the administration committed an additional $18 million to “update” Joe Biden's website, but it plunged through a credibility guardrail last week.
LA Weekly: Hollywood Stimulus Funds Yield 1 Job Per $1.13 Million Spent (Breitbart)
Help me out here. What’s crazier – the abysmal failure the stimulus has been in Los Angeles County (like everywhere else) or how outrageously wasteful the plan was to begin with?
Los Angeles County’s take of stimulus funds is by far the largest in California, which has received $18.5 billion in ARRA funds, intended to create 110,219.36 jobs statewide — a pricey rate of $168,264.08 per job.
But Hollywood is a different story entirely. Hollywood — the geographic Hollywood as found on Thomas Guide map page 593 — has received $23,338,327 in grants, loans and contracting.
This money has created just 20.57 jobs. That’s $1,134,580.80 per job.
And as interviews with recipients reveal, even that tiny jobs claim is clearly false, with many of the claims of newly created positions either impossible to verify or lower than reported.
Inside the numbers: How Obama has fallen (Obozo's dropping like a rock -- almost everywhere) (Washington Examiner)
We've all seen reports that Barack Obama's job approval rating has recently fallen below 50 percent in the Gallup poll for the first time since the president took office in January.
A look inside those numbers -- Gallup publishes a weekly breakdown of its results by demographic groups -- shows that there are a lot of other firsts in the polling:
Among age groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every age group of Americans except those between 18 and 29.
He's at 48 percent with people in the 30-49 range;
46 percent with people in the 50-64range;
and 42 percent with people 65 and over.
Among those 18-29, he's at 61 percent.
Among racial groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama support among white Americans has fallen below 40 percent.
He's at 39percent among whites; 91 percent among blacks, and 70 percent among Hispanics.
Among income groups: For the first time in the White House, Obama is below 50 percent with every income group except those making less than $2,000 a month.
Rasmussen : Obama drops to lowest approval rating (45 %)
Give Rasmussen a lot of credit thus far in the Obama Era. They predicted his decline first, have documented his rallies, and now report on the nadir of his standing among registered voters.
In their daily tracking poll, Barack Obama dropped to a 45% approval rating, tying the lowest mark of his term thus far, and hit a new record on their “passion index”:
Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren involved in unwinding “Climategate” scandal (canadafreepress.com)
Lift up a rock and another snake comes slithering out from the ongoing University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU) scandal, now riding as “Climategate”.
Obama Science Czar John Holdren is directly involved in CRU’s unfolding Climategate scandal.
In fact, according to files released by a CEU hacker or whistleblower, Holdren is involved in what Canada Free Press (CFP) columnist Canadian climatologist Dr. Tim Ball terms “a truculent and nasty manner that provides a brief demonstration of his lack of understanding, commitment on faith and willingness to ridicule and bully people”.
“The files contain so much material that it is going to take some time to put it all in context,” says Ball.
“However, enough is already known to underscore their explosive nature. It is already clear the entire claims and positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are based on falsified manipulated material and is therefore completely compromised.
A Tale of Two Leaks: NYT Bashed Palin, But Won't Touch ClimateGate (NewsBusters)
The ClimateGate email leak has demonstrated in full force a glaring double standard in the mainstream media's coverage of leaked information.
Too often, liberal media outlets jump at the chance to damage conservative figures by publishing sensitive information, but refuse to publish such information if it discredits or hinders the left's efforts.
As Clay Waters reported yesterday, Andew Revkin, who writes for the New York Times's Dot Earth blog, refused to publish emails from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showing efforts to manipulate climate data and marginalize global warming skeptics.
Said Revkin, "The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here."
Revkin is correct that the emails were never intended for the public eye, contained private communications, and were released by hackers who violated the law in obtaining them.
But apparently this standard for publication of such documents does not apply to information about Sarah Palin.
The Times's Caucus Blog reported on September 17 of last year:
Computer hackers broke into the private Yahoo e-mail account of Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential candidate, and posted some of her messages and a long list of contacts on the Internet.
The Web site Wikileaks posted screen shots of Ms. Palin’s inbox displaying her username, gov.palin@yahoo.com, and messages that were reportedly obtained by a group of hackers on Tuesday night.
The e-mails include an exchange between Ms. Palin and Alaska’s lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, as well as an associate, Amy McCorkell, who Ms. Palin appointed to a state drug and alcohol advisory board last year.
Wired Magazine reported on its Internet privacy blog, Threat Level, that it obtained confirmation from Ms. McCorkell that she did, in fact, send the message to Governor Palin.
On Wednesday, the McCain campaign acknowledged the breach in a statement from campaign manager, Rick Davis: “This is a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law. The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them. We will have no further comment.”
Governor Palin has faced criticism for reportedly using her private address to conduct government business.
When hackers posted screenshots of the then-Vice Presidential nominee on Wikileaks, the Times rushed to publish the information.
It even included a link directly to a page displaying the screenshots, disclosing private communications and making available her personal email address and contact list. This is "private information" in every sense of the term.
Guy Benson at National Review extrapolates that at the Times, "it's unacceptable to direct readers to hacked private emails that fundamentally disrupt a lefty meme-of-the-decade, but it's totally cool to direct readers to hacked private emails of the lefty bete noire-of-the-year."
Revkin's statement displays a profound double standard in the Times's reporting on leaked information. It managed, in the last sentence of the Caucus Blog post, to turn Palin's email leak into an attack.
Yet in the case of the ClimateGate emails, which were obtained in a near-identical manner and contain similarly sensitive and personal communications, the Times suddenly finds ethical misgivings in publishing the information.
The paper's reservations appear to be a veiled attempt to shield the left's global warming narrative from criticism.
"Climate Gate" Development: CEI Files Notice of Intent to Sue NASA (Paging James Hansen!!) (Am. Spectator)
Today, on behalf of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, I filed three Notices of Intent to File Suit against NASA and its Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), for those bodies' refusal - for nearly three years - to provide documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act.
The information sought is directly relevant to the exploding "ClimateGate" scandal revealing document destruction, coordinated efforts in the U.S. and UK to avoid complying with both countries' freedom of information laws, and apparent and widespread intent to defraud at the highest levels of international climate science bodies.
Numerous informed commenters had alleged such behavior for years, all of which appears to be affirmed by leaked emails, computer codes and other data from the Climatic Research Unit of the UK's East Anglia University
Obama says 'step closer' to climate deal (Breitbart)
US President Barack Obama said Tuesday the world has moved "one step closer" to a "strong operational agreement" on climate change at next month's Copenhagen summit after his talks with Indian and Chinese leaders.
Networks That Jumped at Complaints About a ‘Deniers’ ‘Conspiracy’ Now Silent About Left’s Global Warming Distortions (NewsBusters)
The broadcast networks still haven’t uttered a single word about the revelations late last week of e-mails showing scientists on the left-wing side of the global warming debate plotting to hide data and silence those on the other side in an effort prop up the notion of a “consensus” on the issue.
But when the liberal side of the debate charged that their opponents were involved in a “conspiracy” to tilt the debate in their favor, those same networks eagerly jumped on the story and castigated the evil “deniers.”
In 2007, as Brent Baker chronicled at the time in the MRC's CyberAlert, the broadcast network evening newscasts jumped to hype a House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing meant to publicize a report from two far-left groups about how the Bush administration supposedly suppressed science about the dire threat of global warming — as if that view wasn’t getting plenty of play in the mainstream media.
ClimateGate Totally Ignored By TV News Outlets Except Fox (NewsBusters)
The Obama administration has another reason to hate Fox:
it appears to be the only national television news outlet in America interested in the growing ClimateGate scandal.
Despite last Friday morning's bombshell that hacked e-mail messages from a British university suggested a conspiracy by some of the world's leading global warming alarmists -- many with direct ties to the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- to manipulate temperature data, ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and NBC through Monday evening have completely ignored the subject.
LexisNexis searches indicate that NPR appears to also be part of this news boycott.
By contrast, here are some of the stories news organizations apparently favored by the Obama adminstration have covered since ClimateGate broke:
One Of The Scandals Behind The CRU Emails(Sweetness-Light)
To get a little more context behind some of the emails that were liberated from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University in Great Britain, we go back to an article that appeared in the UK’s Register back in September:
Treemometers: A new scientific scandal If a peer review fails in the woods…By Andrew Orlowski
A scientific scandal is casting a shadow over a number of recent peer-reviewed climate papers.
At least eight papers purporting to reconstruct the historical temperature record times may need to be revisited, with significant implications for contemporary climate studies, the basis of the IPCC’s assessments.
A number of these involve senior climatologists at the British climate research centre CRU at the University East Anglia.
In every case, peer review failed to pick up the errors. At issue is the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy, or dendrochronology. Using statistical techniques, researchers take the ring data to create a "reconstruction" of historical temperature anomalies. But trees are a highly controversial indicator of temperature, since the rings principally record Co2, and also record humidity, rainfall, nutrient intake and other local factors.
Picking a temperature signal out of all this noise is problematic, and a dendrochronology can differ significantly from instrumented data. In dendro jargon, this disparity is called "divergence". The process of creating a raw data set also involves a selective use of samples – a choice open to a scientist’s biases.
snip
At the insistence of editors of the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions B the data has leaked into the open – and Yamal’s mystery is no more.
From this we know that the Yamal data set uses just 12 trees from a larger set to produce its dramatic recent trend.
Yet many more were cored, and a larger data set (of 34) from the vicinity shows no dramatic recent warming, and warmer temperatures in the middle ages.
In all there are 252 cores in the CRU Yamal data set, of which ten were alive 1990.
All 12 cores selected show strong growth since the mid-19th century.
The implication is clear: the dozen were cherry-picked.
This is what the CRU folks were fighting. They don’t want information like this to ever come out. And they have done everything in their power to prevent that.
MSM Tries to Ignore Climategate in Global Warming Stories...Readers Bring Them Back to Reality (NewsBusters)
An hilariously bizarre situation is happening in the wake of the growing Climategate scandal.
Many of the mainstream media stories about global warming are simply pretending it doesn't exist.
Perhaps they feel that by ignoring Climategate entirely that it will just go away.
Unfortunately for them, the readers of these global warming stories keep bringing up the inconvenient truth of Climategate by mentioning the scandal in the comments section over and over and over again.
An example is this Houston Chronicle editorial which asserts in its headline, "As a crucial climate change conference nears, more evidence of a warming globe."
And as the editorial reveals its "evidence," note what is conspicuously missing although the readers will bring it up much to the embarrassment of the Chonicle:
Furloughs Go Ahead for 'Detroit Free Press' Newsroom (Editor and Publisher)
DETROIT Detroit Free Press newsroom employees will take a five-day furlough in exchange for no job cuts through March.
Detroit Newspaper Guild members voted in favor of the plan Sunday. The unpaid days off will be scheduled in 2010.
The furloughs will include editor and publisher Paul Anger and other non-union newsroom managers. Free Press reporter M.L. Elrick says their participation helped sway his colleagues.
Rich Harshbarger, a vice president at the Detroit Media Partnership, says there would have been immediate layoffs at the Free Press without the agreement. The partnership runs the business operations at the Free Press and The Detroit News.
Lou Mleczko, president of Guild Local 22, says Detroit News newsroom employees probably will consider a similar plan.
'Toronto Star' to Cut One-Fifth of Newsroom Staff (Editor and Publisher)
CHICAGO The Toronto Star, Canada's biggest newspaper, is outsourcing its copy editing to Pagemasters North America, eliminating 78 editing jobs in a move it says will save US$3.8 million annually.
The reductions, amounting to about one-fifth of the staff, was outlined in a memo to employees by Star Editor in Chief Michael Cooke that was first reported by Joe Schneider of Bloomberg.
"At a time of unprecedented business nightmares facing the Star and our industry, and despite the many operational challenges associated with outsourcing, we believe there are sound business reasons for this proposal," Cooke wrote in the memo.
News of the outsourcing comes as the Star is offering buyouts and early retirement packages to all employees. In the memo, Cooke said the paper will have a better idea of staffing levels, and the need for layoffs, when the so-called voluntary separation plan is complete.
The union representing newsroom employees, the Southern Ontario Newspaper Guild, has 30 days to propose alternatives to the outsourcing, Cooke said.
"I realize what deskers especially, and all of you, want and need most is clarity," Cooke said in the memo. "This note is to share with you information about what has happened and what might happen." He added no layoffs will occur until January at the earliest.
Hindu Animal Slaughter Bad, Muslim Good (Sweetness-Light) Paging PETA
(But we only hate America)
From those defenders of the faith at the Associated Press:
Festival of mass animal sacrifice begins in Nepal
BARIYAPUR, Nepal – The ceremony began with prayers in a temple by tens of thousands of Hindus before dawn Tuesday. Then it shifted to a nearby corral, where in the cold morning mist, scores of butchers wielding curved swords began slaughtering buffalo calves by hacking off their heads.
Over two days, 200,000 buffaloes, goats, chickens and pigeons will be killed as part of a blood-soaked festival held every five years to honor Gadhimai, a Hindu goddess of power.
While cows are sacred and protected by law in Nepal, animal sacrifice has a long history in this overwhelmingly Hindu country and parts of neighboring India.
The Bariyapur festival has become so big, in part, because such ceremonies have been banned in many areas in the neighboring Indian state of Bihar.
And while it is criticized by animal-rights protesters, the festival is defended as a centuries-old tradition...
Animal rights groups don’t have much power in Nepal, but they have staged repeated protests in recent weeks. Local news reports say some activists set up stands in towns on the way to the Bariyapur temple, offering Hindu pilgrims coconuts and other fruits to sacrifice instead of animals.
There was no sign of them Tuesday.
"We were unable to stop the animal sacrifices this year but we will continue our campaign to stop killings during this festival," said Pramada Shah of the group Animals Nepal...
Experts say it will take many more years before there are changes in these deeply rooted traditions.
"They continue these animal sacrifice rituals because they believe it is a tradition that can’t be broken," said Ram Bahadur Chetri, an anthropology professor at Katmandu’s Tribhuwan University.
"The people who follow these traditions believe that if they discontinue, then the gods will get angry and there could be catastrophe in the country."
Buffaloes, goats, chicken and ducks are sacrificed at most Hindu homes in Nepal during the Dasain festivals, which fell in September this year.
As we have mentioned several times before, we hold no brief for the ritual slaughter of animals.
(That is, where their throats are cut and they are left to slowly die as their blood runs out.)
But this Hindu festival only happens every five years. Surely more than 200,000 animals are cruelly ritually slaughtered during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha year in and year out all around the Moslem world.
Have the animal-rights protesters ever protested Eid al-Adha? We’ve never seen them.
Walpin Is Cleared (Investors.com )
Oversight: After an unjust firing and campaign of character assassination, the former AmeriCorps inspector general has been cleared of acting improperly. Now where does he go to get his job and reputation back?
On June 10, Gerald Walpin was fired with one hour's notice as the watchdog of AmeriCorps in violation of a federal law requiring Congress to be given a heads-up 30 days in advance.
He then fell victim to a campaign of character assassination.
When pressed for a reason for the sudden and improper dismissal of a federal watchdog, the White House responded with a letter to Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins, respectively the chairman and ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, from Norm Eisen, special counsel to President Obama.
The letter said Walpin's firing was at the unanimous request of the AmeriCorps board of directors. It described a May 20, 2009, board meeting where the 77-year-old Walpin "was confused, disoriented and unable to answer questions and exhibited behavior that led the board to question his capacity to serve."
Had this occurred in private industry, no doubt the administration's EEOC would have filed an age discrimination suit.
Walpin was fully competent and a congressional hearing with Walpin testifying would have shown that.
He wasn't guilty of exceeding his authority either. Something else was afoot.
It seems that Walpin did a very bad thing — his job.
He followed the money and discovered that part of hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal AmeriCorps funds given to St. Hope Academy in Sacramento, Calif., had been misspent on questionable activities.
ACORN Document Dump: Why Did ACORN Spend $9,000 at Fertility Clinic? (Breitbart)
Big Government’s first post about the San Diego Document Dump showed a bank authorization to automatically pay monthly membership dues.
That particular individual committed to paying ACORN $10 a month. Thousands of California residents have made similar commitments, adding up to substantial monthly revenue for ACORN.
How an organization chooses to spend its members money says alot about that organization.
Below is a monthly credit card statement for ACORN employee David Lagstein’s corporate credit card:
We’re not entirely certain what the “Fertility Specialist Medical Group” or the “San Diego Reproductive Surgery Center” does, but we know that, in June, ACORN paid them more than $9,000.
We also know that ACORN dumped the credit card statement detailing the charge into a public dumpster just days before the Attorney’s General office was scheduled to visit.
No doubt, Mr. Lagstein has a good reason for this purchase. Or, at least, an explanation for how payments to a fertility clinic further the hopes and dreams of the poor and low-income families who have turned to ACORN for help.
We’ll be waiting along with the rest of you for the answer.
5:15 Thanks for the tip about the newspaper union at Detroit Free Press agreeing to unpaid fuloughs.
“Obozo's dropping like a rock” Now that would be hilarious if it wasn’t wreaking our country. Didn’t we try to tell these fools Obama was a snake oil salesman? Now, the snakes have come home to roost. That doesn’t sound Wright!
This "maybe, baby," "coulda, shoulda, woulda," kind of governing by the seat of one's tutu is moving beyond lame
-Obama May Add 30,000 Troops in Afghanistan-
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From the clever staff at Lucianne.com; makes you want to laugh before you cry.
'Corruptocrats' one word says it all.
=
"The cronies, czars & corruptocrats at Obama’s first state dinner"
@ Michelle Malkin
Hot Air: The 9/11 trial Clueless Moment of the Day:
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/24/the-911-trial-clueless-moment-of-the-day/
Leonard Pitts sticks his foot in it...
"It’s not often that one runs across a column quite so clueless as this one by Leonard Pitts and published by McClatchy. Maybe Pitts should take a little time to learn about history and current law before opining on this topic again."
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