Since the Attorney General does not write software and has no jurisdiction over hackers in China, there's no way she can do anything about that. She can certainly try to confront the nature of our relationship with police, and there's a lot that needs to be confronted on that topic, but if she is under the delusion that "the scourge of modern-day slavery" has anything to do with that relationship, she's not going to get very far in solving it.
Let me be clear, Mr. President. Stoking racial animosity for political advantage has consequences in the form of increased racial tension and the resulting violence. I don't blame you for this shooting, but I do blame you for contributing to the environment in which it occurred with actions much more substantial than publishing a political map.
That's a few minutes with Google. I don't post this because I think guns should be banned. I post this because banning guns does not make the world a safer place; it just ensures that only criminals and those well-connected politically will have guns. Like most mass shootings in the US, this attack took place in a gun-free zone:
Gun control doesn't stop criminals from using guns to commit murder. It stops honest people from defending themselves.
UPDATE: At least 2 dead, 50 injured in Austria with a car and a knife. It's early yet so some of the injured may not survive. Also, reports indicate that the murderer in this case has been charged with firearm possession indicating he was not a legal owner. And as commenters have pointed out, I should not leave out the recent Charlie Hebdo massacre (16 dead, 22 wounded) in France.
IRS laughs at request to investigate Clinton Foundation
Under Obama, the IRS has become utterly, completely politicized. It takes every possible measure to suppress opposition, to cover up the suppression that has already occurred, and refuses to even consider examining Democrats with well-publicized ethics issues in their so-called non-profits.
As Sebastian points out, the administration is likely to just do it anyway. He'll be out of office before anyone can call him on it, even if the courts prove willing to do so. But putting the prohibitions in place is a step forward.
If this is true, it is evidence of complete and utter incompetence in the IRS IT arena. It is not a matter of insufficient funding and manpower (especially with the IRS admitting that they have "hundreds of lawyers" tasked with concealing information from Congress). With an agency like the IRS, which should expect both information requests from Congress as a matter of course and lawsuits from "customers", it's evidence of incompetence sufficient to fire even a government employee.
If you actually want to improve civil rights, it's important to pick your causes carefully. Trying to build support for someone who is utterly unsympathetic to the majority of Americans will not succeed in advancing your cause.
Clinton faces racketeering lawsuit over email server, Clinton foundation donations
It's hard to say whether this is really a big deal or not. It's one of those cases that makes big allegations, but those allegations may not pan out or be proven. It does serve as a reminder that the trouble over the Clintons' private email server is not likely to go away for a long, long time.
Yes, it's the third Koch brother, the secret one named Soros. Turns out Soros basically bought the riots in Ferguson -- and the paid-for agitators were given instructions to coordinate with the media about when and where they would cover events. So why don't we know who in the media was basically acting as a megaphone for propaganda -- and why do they still have jobs?
Don't bother answering, it's a rhetorical question.
Illegal alien criminals released into US rather than deported
The basic problem here is that these people were caught, convicted of serious violent crimes, and served a prison sentence in the US for those crimes. They were also here in the US illegally. When their criminal sentence was complete, they were released into the US rather than deported to their country of origin.
The debate over what to do about people who are in the US illegally but want to become loyal citizens is one thing. The question of what to do with people who commit crimes is a different one, and hopefully a much easier one. But the Obama administration doesn't seem to see a difference.
An administration rationally seeking amnesty for illegal immigrants would surely wish to keep the political image of those immigrants as positive as possible by vigorously imprisoning and deporting those whose criminal acts threaten the general population.
So why is this administration releasing them instead?
I can only think of two possible reasons:
1) Like Fast and Furious, increasing crime rates provide an argument for gun control to a naive electorate.
2) Obama sees these individuals as foot soldiers in his revolution of the proletariat. Their crimes may not be useful public relations, but their propensity for violence will be useful in other ways.
It seems that the Congressional committees investigating Benghazi asked Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal to turn over all of his emails to Hillary on that topic, and he actually complied with the request. The results don't match what Hillary turned over from her private server via the State Department.
It's possible the emails went missing at the State Department, in which case they can be identified and turned over. More likely, though, Hillary never provided them.
When the New York Times is publicly doubting the Democrat front runner for president, the bloom is definitely gone from the rose. At this point, the only question is: who is going to sweep in at the last minute and put Hillary out to pasture?
None of the alternatives are particularly appetizing.
This is basically the same idea as Operation Chokepoint, only it's going after encryption instead of guns. And if you can't take credit card payments, as an internet business you are out of business. That's clearly a due process violation. At least if the government took them to court for refusing to provide information on a valid warrant, they could fight it. This way there's nothing to fight, it just becomes impossible to run a business.
This matters, of course, because Gruber is on video explaining the rationale for providing subsidies to states who set up their own exchanges, and if there is a coherent explanation for that language in the legislation, then it becomes more difficult to judicially ignore the language.
The records were released in response to freedom of information act requests, but the administration controls the timing of those releases. And they are released conveniently after the Supreme Court has already decided the issue.
Anti-science environmentalists trying to discredit satellite measurements now
At some point, when you are trying to measure millimeter-level changes from thousands of miles away, you have to give up and say that the errors in your method of measurement are sufficient to prevent accurate measurements beyond a certain precision. In the case of sea level changes, trying to correct for bias drifts that small over such a huge measurement area strikes me as a complete waste of time.
And, lo and behold, when you perform their suggested "corrections", the new data suggests that the sea level rise is accelerating (Global WarmingClimate Disruption just panic already!) when previously it was decelerating.
In other words, after the first few decades a miracle occurs and everything changes, and that step happens far enough in the future that it can't be falsified before it is forgotten.
Sometimes when you "squeeze your instruments until all the decimals come out" you break the instrument and render the output meaningless.
$2M in public funds spent on legal representation for illegal aliens
This is not actually legal representation. This is an attempt to end-run the system. Obama will bring in the illegal aliens, and these lawyers -- funded by US tax dollars -- will shepherd them through the approved program to obtain Obama's amnesty.
Obama objects to CMP selling ordinary 1911 handguns
At this point, Obama isn't even bothering to try to come up with effective gun control measures. He's just trying to screw gun owners, because we blocked his legislative attempts at gun control. We're talking about a firearm design that is over a hundred years old, already widely sold on the civilian market, and is going through an existing program that already complies fully with the law and is actually more selective than the process for buying a newly manufactured firearm.
Legislation to block FCC internet takeover introduced
I'm not sure giving the FCC a small piece of pie to stop them taking the whole pie by force is entirely appropriate, but it's probably a moot point given Obama's veto and the Republican refusal to use the power of the purse.
The reasoning isn't necessarily wrong. There are a lot of problems with this approach, just as there are a lot of problems with the dedicated-funds approach to government charity. But the real, fundamental problem is that we've already tried this idea. It's the idea behind the earned income tax credit, which pays a lump sum payment every year to people who have incomes below a certain point (roughly the poverty line, modified by number of dependents).
You'll note that we still have food stamps, unemployment programs, medical programs for the poor, ObamaPhones, ObamaInternets, housing programs, and so on.
I reject the idea of expanding the earned income tax credit or similar "just pay them cash and simplify everything" programs for two reasons. The first reason is that we will inevitably end up paying whatever cash amount is specified and then paying again to provide housing, food, and other necessities.
Why will we end up paying twice? Because of the second reason: we don't trust people to spend money we give them on the things we want them to spend it on, and we aren't willing to let other people suffer because of those bad choices. If someone receiving food stamps doesn't want to buy food because they would rather buy cigarettes, they can trade their stamps for their cigarettes, yes. But should we make it easier for them to do that? Particularly when the people going hungry as a result may be children?
(And yes, that's why we have school lunch programs. Not to mention school breakfast and dinner programs. It ensures the children are fed even if their parents are utterly irresponsible and incapable of arranging that themselves).
While a rational person will necessarily understand that resources provided to aid the poor are fungible, they will also understand that not everyone will make the same value choices as everyone else. And make no mistake, charity is a value choice.
Clinton opposition research group looked at Rubio and only found traffic tickets
The amusing thing is that they sold the story to the New York Times, the New York Times bought it, and then lied about where they got the story.
The real takeaway to remember, though, is that the Clinton opposition research team searched Rubio's past and found... traffic tickets. 13 of which were issued to Rubio's wife, which is why the New York Times is reporting them as a unit.
Hillary has Benghazi, a private email server, a billion dollar foundation bribery scandal, her husband's loaded past, her own loaded past (FBI files, Whitewater, being fired from Watergate), and god knows what else will come out as documents slowly drip out.
And the best she can find on the Republican candidates to change the subject with are traffic tickets.
If the Democrats didn't have the media on their side...
