White House press secretary Josh Earnest: "Well, as the constitutional lawyer who sits in the Oval Office would tell you is, he would read the entire decision before he passed judgment in terms of his own legal analysis. What we have been able to assess so far ... is that there is a problem that has been exposed, which is that there are now a group of women of an indeterminate size who no longer have access to free contraceptive coverage simply because of some religious views held, not by them necessarily, but by their bosses. We disagree...
Monday, June 30, 2014
Saturday, June 28, 2014
Striking one's head against a hard ball over and over again never seemed like a good idea. But of course there are also all the accidental falls and hits to the head. Here is an interesting article in the journal Neurology entitled: "Chronic traumatic brain injury in professional soccer players."Methods: Fifty-three active professional soccer players from several professional Dutch soccer clubs were compared with a control group...
Friday, June 27, 2014
From Fox News:An industry group is claiming the IRS should have kept full records of its apparent destruction of ex-official Lois Lerner's hard drive, saying "the notion that these emails just magically vanished makes no sense whatsoever." The latest to weigh in on the lost emails controversy is the head of the International Association of Information Technology Asset Managers. Group president Barbara Rembiesa released a statement on Thursday questioning recent testimony by IRS Commissioner John Koskinen, who told Congress last Friday...
This gets to the simple question of honesty. It isn't be quite as bad as the revelation that they didn't try to retrieve Lois Lerner's emails when she had a hard disk crash (they claimed that they had six months of backups at the IRS, but they only looked on her hard disk when the crash occurred and didn't go to the IRS backups and soon dropped the outside vendor who was backing up the emails). Still, it isn't clear why Koskinen is credible.Rep. Jim Jordan: "I want to focus on when you did officially learn, according to your definition....
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Teacher in the studio audience: Do you think that reinstating the ban on assault weapons and banning high capacity magazines would do any good?Clinton: Yes, I do. I do.More in the write up on the interview is available here:“We cannot let a minority of people, and that’s what it is, it is a minority of people, hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people,” Clinton said during a live CNN town hall. The comments were Clinton’s deepest foray into an exceedingly controversial political subject since leaving the State Department last...
From the Washington Post:What Mark Pauly, Scott Harrington, and Adam Leive of the Wharton School have done is to figure out how much non-elderly individuals spent on insurance before the ACA and then compared these figures with what they’ll spend after the ACA. They did this by using survey data for 2010 through 2012 from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey that show how much people spent on health care, including premiums and out of pocket payments. By looking at the total spent rather than just on premiums, the data reflect...
From the Washington Times:The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that police cannot go snooping through people’s cell phones without a warrant, in a unanimous decision that amounts to a major statement in favor of privacy rights.Police agencies had argued that searching through the data on cell phones was no different than asking someone to turn out his pockets, but the justices rejected that, saying a cell phone is more fundamental. . . .The Obama administration and the state of California, both of which sought to justify cell phone searches...
From Fox News:Congressional investigators have uncovered emails showing ex-IRS official Lois Lerner targeted a sitting Republican senator for a proposed internal audit, a discovery one GOP lawmaker called "shocking." . . . .The emails appear to show Lerner mistakenly received an invitation intended for Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, in 2012.The event organizer, whose name is not disclosed, apparently offered to pay for Grassley's wife to attend the event, which caught Lerner's attention. The December 2012 emails show that in response, Lerner suggested...
John Lott's latest piece at Fox News starts this way:In what’s being hailed by many as a victory for gun-control advocates, the recent Supreme Court decision on “straw” purchases of guns has completely muddled the whole issue of background checks and “straw” purchases for potential gun owners.The court ruled 5-4 that, as The Hill.com put it, “one legal gun owner may not acquire a firearm on behalf of another — a practice known as "straw" purchasing. The case heard by the high court involved a Virginia police officer, Bruce Abramski, who bought...
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
In response to Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa asking about IRS Commissioner John Koskinen's earlier promise to the committee in March to turn over all documents.Koskinen engages in some amazing double talk about what he meant by his promise that there would be no problems with him turning over all the promised emails: "I never said that I would provide you emails that we didn't hav...
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:. . . Police did not release the 46-year-old shopkeeper's name, but sources identified her as Sharon Doyle, who worked as a police officer in Philadelphia, Lower Makefield, and Warminster Township. She also served as a Secret Service agent from 2002 to 2004, according to a resume posted online.She was behind the counter of Stan's Health Foods, on the 7100 block of Frankford Avenue in Mayfair, just after 5 p.m. when a 47-year-old man walked in and brandished a 6-inch hunting knife, said Philadelphia Inspector...
Monday, June 23, 2014
Saturday, June 21, 2014
From the Clarion Ledger in Mississippi:A alleged would-be robber took a gamble outside a north Jackson motel Friday morning, betting a potential victim, a guest at Motel 6, wouldn't have a gun.The guest did though and shot the alleged robber, reported WLBT.. . . the man, who left the motel's premises after being shot, was picked up by an ambulance later at Pines, an apartment complex on Watkins Drive.The report stated the failed robber approached the motel guest asking for a cigarette. When the guest said he didn't have any, the other...
Friday, June 20, 2014
SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): But what else should we expect? The decisions by the Supreme Court have left the American people with a status quo in which one side’s billionaires are pitted against the other side’s billionaires. Except one side doesn't have billionaires. We must undo the damage done by the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decisions.Steyer brothers, Michael Bloomberg and George Soros are among some of the billionaires who are throwing a lot of money behind Democrats. Can the media really keep a straight face...
Thursday, June 19, 2014
Washington Times: Congress: Obama uses Justice Dept. to target gun sellers, ‘high risk’ businessesA House panel says the Obama administration is using the Justice Department to target and “choke out” businesses it finds objectionable, from gun dealers and payday lenders to drug paraphernalia sellers and porn merchants.The administration is using an anti-credit card fraud effort dubbed Operation Choke Point to go...
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Private companies providing currency have a much better incentive to keep price levels constant. But it is unlikely that governments will want to give up the power to earn seigniorage (the difference in value between what the currency can buy and the cost of making it -- so a $50 bill may only cost a few cents to make, it buys $50). Some system of taxation might allow governments to extract that seigniorage, though government taxation might go well beyond that amount. The UK Guardian has an interesting article:The...
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
My newest Fox News starts this way:President Obama just can't seem to help himself. Over and over again, he makes exaggerated or false claims about guns and crime. Last year Obama kept asserting the bogus numbers such as “40 percent of all gun purchases take place without a background check.” Besides the study being based on a tiny survey it was started before the Federal background check law went into effect. Moreover, the 40 percent figure referred to all transfers, not just sales, and the vast majority of transfers...
Monday, June 16, 2014
How someone treats low level people often tells you a lot about a person. From the UK Daily Mail:If Hillary Clinton runs, and wins the Presidential race in 2016, the Republicans won't be the only ones with trepidation. The Secret Service, who have tangled with Hillary since she became First Lady in 1993, will also be quaking in their lace-ups. Hillary has been known to hurl a book at the back of the head of one agent driving her in the Presidential limo accusing him of eavesdropping, forget her ps and qs by never thanking her protectors...
Does anyone really think that the Obama administration is competent on designing cell phone apps? People don't want apps that distract themselves from driving, but there are trade-offs people face in usefulness versus distraction. Will the Obama administration care about usefulness? From the NY Times:Getting directions on the road from Google Maps and other smartphone apps is a popular alternative to the expensive navigation aids included in some cars. The apps are also a gray area when it comes to laws banning the use of cellphones...
Sunday, June 15, 2014
A chart on how deaths from K-12 school shootings has changed over the past 23 years is available here. From the Discovery Channel:Although it sounds sadly modern, the account was published in the New York Times more than a century ago.Dated April 10, 1891, the article described an elderly man firing a shotgun at children playing in front of St. Mary's Parochial School in Newburgh, N.Y."None of the children were killed, but several were well filled with lead," the report said.More than a century earlier, on July 26, 1764, a teacher and 10...
Friday, June 13, 2014
From The Hill newspaper:"We had probably 15,000 card-carrying Democrats come into this primary. There's just no way to anticipate something like that," Allen tells The Hill. . . ."My guess is now looking at the precinct-by-precinct analysis, probably half this electorate wasn't Republican," he said. "There's not a pollster in this country who polls voters from the other party in primary."His analysis mirrors McLaughlin's."Where the voter surge was, it was Democrats who united against Cantor, who don't like him. And the mistake for our campaign...
The newest piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer: The shootings last week at Seattle Pacific University and on Tuesday at a high school near Portland, Ore., both occurred at places that banned guns — gun-free zones. The shooting last Wednesday in Canada also took place where citizens were not allowed to carry guns. Time after time these killers pick places where civilian guns are banned. Around the world, virtually all the attacks where at least four people have been shot to death occurred where civilians were not able to use guns to defend themselves. Gun-control...
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Via Erik Wemple's blog at the Washington Post with the title "Ouch: MSNBC barely registers in media study":The failure of any outlet to reap a wider Democratic/liberal audience, suggests the report, could stem from ideological diversity within the Democratic Party (46% liberal, 31% moderate and 20% conservative). . . .An alternative explanation is that there is relatively little difference between Broadcast News, CNN, and Public Television. Possibly...
ABC US News | ABC Celebrity NewsErik Wemple at the Washington Post has this analysis of Clinton's interview last night on ABC News:A standard defense for Hillary Rodham Clinton when facing questions about Benghazi, Libya, has been to cite her commissioning of a report from the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), which took a deep look at the attacks that claimed the lives of four U.S. personnel on Sept. 11, 2012. In testimony before Congress in January 2013, Clinton said: “I hurried to appoint the Accountability...
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:A husband and wife armed with guns were able to stave off an apparent home invasion Monday night, police said.One man was killed and a second taken to a hospital in the incident, which happened about 11 p.m. . . .According to police, a 17-year-old girl who lived at the home was outside retrieving something from her car when she was approached by two armed men who demanded she return to her residence.The teen's father, 34, saw the men walking with his daughter, got his firearm and fired several shots at...
Who needs congress when the president can just rewrite the laws himself? From the Boston Globe:. . . The dual strategy — taking executive action while urging Congress to finish the job — has become Obama’s signature playbook this year. Stymied by gridlock as Congress marches toward the midterm elections, he has repeatedly sought ways to go around Congress with modest steps.Under an income-based repayment plan created by Congress, the maximum monthly payment is already set to drop from 15 percent of income to 10 percent in July 2014....
Machin might be wanting to separate himself from Obama because he is toxic in West Virginia, but this is still strong language. Whether it means anything in practice is debatable. From The Hill newspaper:Did Bergdahl or his father attempt to make inappropriate contact with the Taliban?Some lawmakers are demanding answers about what efforts Bergdahl or his father, Robert, made to contact the Taliban.Bergdahl’s team leader told CNN that radio and cellphone intercepts revealed chatter about an American looking to speak to the Taliban.Time...
Obama administration claims that release of confidential IRS tax information that was turned over to FBI wasn't political, but why won't the Obama administration unwilling to tell congress about what information released? From Politico:Republicans charged the IRS on Monday with potentially violating federal tax privacy laws by turning over a database of tax-exempt organizations to the FBI, the latest salvo in their ongoing probe of the IRS’s scrutiny of tea party groups. The IRS acknowledged that some non-public taxpayer information...
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Are these public school teachers parents? Are they really more worried about allergic reactions to sunscreen than they are to kids getting serious sunburn? From Fox News:A Texas mom is angry over a school ban on sunscreen that she says led to her daughter getting a severe sunburn during a field trip.The North East Independent School District has the restriction because it considers sunscreen toxic, and fears kids will eat it, parent Christy Riggs, of San Antonio, told Fox News.“The reality is: Children don’t eat sunscreen and they’re...
UPDATE: The Las Vegas Review Journal has this:After the shooting, the couple headed toward a nearby Wal-Mart, where Jerad Miller was confronted by Joseph Robert Wilcox, 31, of Las Vegas. Wilcox was legally carrying a concealed pistol. Wilcox was unaware that Amanda Miller, who was pushing a shopping cart, was involved in the incident and “lying in wait,” the official said.She slipped behind Wilcox and shot him at close range.“He had no idea the wife was walking behind him,” the police official said of the murdered man. “This guy (Wilcox) was not...
CNN: Taliban Told Special Ops Bergdahl Doesn't Have Any Serious Health Issues, Medical Officials in Germany confirm that his condition is certainly not one of life or death, questions raised about Obama administration's initial explanation for not telling Congress about trade with Taliban.Of course, the Obama administration seems to realize that their initial story isn't working out too well so now they are claiming that they had to make the deal quickly because "the Taliban threatened to kill Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl if the pending deal to free him...
Saturday, June 7, 2014
From the New York Post:. . . It could be in a drug called ampelopsin, aka dihydromyricetin, found in oriental raisin trees. It’s a traditional Chinese cure that may actually work, and is now being sold over the counter as BluCetin.UCLA researcher Richard Olsen, who has been studying the effects of low to moderate drinking, thinks the drug may bind to an ethanol receptor called delta-GABA-R — and deflect booze.Then again, do we really want a society in which heavy drinking occurred without automatic retribution? College students might binge-drink...
It is hard to think of a more flawless experience with any voting experience. From the Clarion-Ledger:Mississippi’s new voter ID law caused few problems in the first election since its controversial passage, with only one report of a voter turned away for lack of identification.A Pike County poll worker mistakenly told a person he couldn’t cast a ballot without an ID, said county Election Commissioner Trudy Berger.“It was a misunderstanding,” Berger said. “We trained on it that nobody is ever told they can’t vote, period. As soon as we heard...
This advance will be important against people who can claim that their fingerprints were left at another date. From CBS News:. . . A team of Dutch forensic scientists has discovered how to accurately date fingerprints to within one or two days of when they were left on an object, as long as they're no more than 15 days old, according to reports."Being able to date the prints means you can determine when a potential suspect was at the crime scene or which fingerprints are relevant for the investigation," Marcel de Puit, fingerprint researcher...
Bill Clinton was urged to fight against against this narrative, but he decline to do so. From Bloomberg.com:President Bill Clinton was coached to combat the narrative that his “health-care debacle” was the result of influence from his “ultraliberal wife” and “wonky” elites, according to the fifth batch of Clinton administration documents released by his presidential library. White House health adviser Ira Magaziner delivered that advice before Clinton sat down with authors and journalists David Broder and Haynes Johnson on July 17, 1995,...
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.comMegyn Kelly has a great segment over at Fox (available here). After the Obama administration referred to Bergdahl as a hero who had served with distinction, six soldiers who served with Bergdahl, some who had been his friends, spoke out to correct the record. The Obama administration's response: accuse them of not knowing what they were talking about, of "swift boating" Bergdahl, and finally describing them as psychopaths. Doesn't everyone think that this goes too far when the Obama administration...
Tuesday, June 3, 2014
Politico has the list of races that they are targeting here. When you add Gifford's $20 million to the $50 million that Bloomberg plans to spend this year and the money that other gun control groups are putting up, this is going to be yet another election where gun control advocates massively outspend those who support self defense rights. From Politico:The group said they have raised $14.5 million in donations so far and is on track to meeting its fundraising goal of $20 million by the end of the election cycle. . . . “The NRA...
My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:The NRA’s strong statement reprimanding a few people for carrying long guns into restaurants was bound to get media attention. Bloomberg’s Moms Demand Action and much of the media quickly jumped in and described various restaurants as “asking customers to leave their guns at home.” But their assertions couldn’t be more misleading. The headline at USA Today saying “No Guns Inside” or at MSNBC and Huffington Post saying “No-Gun Policies” are simply wrong. A big deal...
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