Preparing the battlespace?

Fox News:

Justice Officials in ‘Panic Mode’ as Hearing Nears on Failed Anti-Gun Trafficking Program

Department of Justice are in "panic mode,” according to multiple sources, as word spreads that congressional testimony next week will paint a bleak and humiliating picture of Operation Fast and Furious, the botched undercover operation that left a trail of blood from Mexico to Washington, D.C.

The operation was supposed to stem the flow of weapons from the U.S. to Mexico by allowing so-called straw buyers to purchase guns legally in the U.S. and later sell them in Mexico, usually to drug cartels.

Instead, ATF documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms knowingly and deliberately flooded Mexico with assault rifles.

So today the Wall Street Journal prints this article, topped with a year-old picture of Zetas cartel suspects and captured guns:

The U.S. was the source of at least 70% of 29,284 firearms recovered by authorities in Mexico in 2009 and 2010...

The statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives are expected to add to controversy over the U.S. role in fueling drug-cartel violence in Mexico...
...
The controversy was fueled... when U.S. officials backed off earlier claims that up to 90% of firearms recovered in Mexico were of U.S. origin...

So, whe have a suspiciously-high 70% figure (Really?), the so-convenient timing of the release of information, and the fact that known gun-controller Sen. Dianne Feinstein is involved.

Any bets as to which story gets bigger play from the Make-Believe Media?

Related (And read the whole thing- this is not just about guns):

...If ATF Agent John Dodson had not blown the whistle and revealed that an ATF operation called Fast and Furious was in play, no one could have linked the weapon found at [US Border Patrol Agent Brian] Terry’s murder site to an operation that had to have been initiated and approved by high-levels officials at ATF and DOJ—and that story [American agent killed by Mexicans using an "illegally”-obtained American gun] would have benefited not just Mexico, but proponents of stronger gun regulation here in the US, and in the US government, as well. Win-win...

Indeed, here’s how that story would have read: Mexico’s claim re the US fueling cartel violence is right, and worse yet, weapons trafficked from the US are no longer being used just to murder Mexicans, but to kill Americans as well.

Elsewhere:

Credits: FPA link via Fighting in the Shadeâ„¢

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The EPA gets a three-fer

Kingsport Times-News:

American Electric Power on Thursday announced it plans to shut down several coal-fired power plants, convert or retrofit others, and cut as many as 600 jobs in the next few years to comply with regulations proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency...
...
Although some jobs would be created from the installation of emissions reduction equipment, AEP expects a net loss of approximately 600 power plant jobs with annual wages totaling approximately $40 million.
...
Businesses... will face the impact of electricity price increases ranging from 10 percent to more than 35 percent...

Hey, less energy capacity, higher prices for whatever’s left, job cuts... looks like Win! Win! Win!

(Via:  JimmieWearingFool)

Elsewhere:

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“Hating the rich is a lot more important than helping the poor.”

From The Guardian, a lesson in progressive priorities.

(Credit "Rafi” for the title.)

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 15:43:16 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Chapter One...

Joanna has a "flash fiction challenge” story up: Curiosities.  It hooked me!

Now if we can talk her into a second installment...

Posted by: Old Grouch in Linkage at 21:58:08 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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What about Members of Congressmen?

Reason’s Peter Suderman notes that Tennessee has outlawed

...the [electronic] transmission or display of images that might, under a "reasonable expectation,” "frighten, intimidate or cause emotional distress” to anyone who comes across it.

Starting with...?

Posted by: Old Grouch in In Passing at 17:30:37 GMT | No Comments | Add Comment
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Time to SWAT some government agencies

Ask the question any way you want:

It’s still crazy.

Tam defines the issue (and go Read The Whole Thread):

Don’t get bogged down in the minutiae of who allegedly issued the warrant or what offense it was allegedly for. ... No doubt i’s were carefully dotted and t’s were painstakingly crossed on this gobsmackingly stupid raid.

The larger question is "Why does every federal agency need their own internal cop shop, to include SWAT teams, which they then have to use at the drop of a hat to justify funding?”

Plus, the spread of police authority means less accountability combined with the greater likelihood of inexperienced "cops” killing innocent bystanders.

Not to mention that these "mistakes” never seem to have any consequences for the perpetrators or their superiors.

I can think of nothing whatever that the DoE might be investigating that would require a 6AM no-knock break-down-the-door raid.

Time for a departmental death penalty.

Hey Republicans!  You gonna do anything about this?


LATER:  And while you’re at it...


Elsewhere:

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Clipfile - June 8, 2011

"It’s a shame Twitter is such a new technology; if it had been around a little longer, Bill Clinton would be a disgraced ex-governor of Arkansas and nobody would have ever heard the name ‘Kennedy’.” - Tam

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No Anthem at Goshen

Insty links to a blast from the 70s, eminating from (of all places) Goshen, Indiana:

The Goshen College Board of Directors announced today that it has asked President James E. Brenneman to find an alternative to playing the Star-Spangled Banner that fits with sports tradition, that honors country and that resonates with Goshen College’s core values and respects the views of diverse constituencies...

The Board expressed a strong commitment to advancing with President Brenneman the vision for Goshen College to be an influential leader in liberal arts education with a growing capacity to serve a theologically, politically, racially and ethnically diverse constituency both within and beyond the Mennonite church.  The Board concluded that continuing to play the national anthem compromised the ability of college constituents to advance the vision together...

"Goshen College has been and remains a ministry of Mennonite Church USA with an enduring peace tradition,” Romero [Carlos Romero, executive director, Mennonite Education Agency] said.  "The Board’s decision reflects a belief that faith and honoring country can co-exist without disturbing higher allegiances to God and that Goshen College will become increasingly diverse and will welcome diverse viewpoints.”

Because some of those "constituents” may feel uncomfortable celebrating America?

There’s a bit more to this story than what’s in the headlines: Goshen hadn’t performed the anthem at sporting events until 2010; the board’s request to look for a substitute is the outcome of a year-long consultation.  And the Mennonites who operate Goshen have a long tradition of pacifism, so it’s not a surprise that some might be uncomfortable lending their imprimatur to words that, at least at the outset, celebrate a successful military action.

But the 70s-vintage "diversity” language in the College’s statement leaves me suspecting that this is as much about pandering to the campus’ racial nationalists/seperatists as it is about pacifism:  Not "give peace a chance,” but the Nation of Islam and La Raza.

Because if their concerns stem from "higher allegiances to God” and the Anthem’s "warlike” opening, they could go a long way toward addressing them not by doing away with the Anthem, but by singing (and understanding) its fourth verse:



Elsewhere:

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I certainly HOPE not!

The AP on Cong.Weiner:

...the pugnacious 46-year old Brooklyn native, who until this mess was widely seen as one of the smartest members of Congress...

Related: Glenn Reynolds:

The people who think they’re smart enough, and morally superior enough, to run everyone else’s lives are risible.  They’re not smart enough to run their own lives competently, and they’re actually, overall, morally inferior — I mean, John Edwards, DSK, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Barney Frank, Tax Cheat Tim Geithner, just go down the list...

Which says what about all those beltway and media types who "widely see” these guys as "smart”?

AP Via:  R.S. McCain

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More of the usual...

Investors Business Daily:

It’s been over two years since the Democrat-led Senate last passed a budget, a fact that puts it squarely in violation of the law...  This hasn’t happened since the budget rules were changed in 1974.  Though required by law to pass a budget, Democrats have just said no.  Yet the media have largely given them a pass on this willful lawlessness.  Why?

Ummm... "Because”?

Hot Air:

Google "Stocks Fall 279 Points” or "Stock Market Falls 279 Points”...  ...Major papers and network online sites have already buried this plunge in the markets as if it just never happened...

We can all imagine how a major stock market plunge would have greeted George W. Bush...

Yes, we can.

Mickey Kaus:

Will the MSM give Breitbart & Co. credit for gratuitously pursuing the truth here, even if it might come at the expense of a media narrative that Rep.Weiner is losing?

No.  Next...?

The Wall Street Journal:

Former NPR Boss Is Hired by NBC

NBC News said Thursday that it had hired Vivian Schiller, who quit as chief executive of NPR in March, to a new role overseeing the news unit’s digital strategy...

Me. Schiller’s new job comes just months after she left NPR amid controversy [link added - o.g.] over political bias...

She should feel right at home.


Related, previously:

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