This is a classic case of looking the trojan horse in the mouth. The "Internet Access" being offered is limited, basically, to Facebook itself and perhaps a few other sites. That's clearly a self-interested offer to gain market share. On the other hand, it's free, and the people taking the offer probably have no affordable alternatives (or if they do, can take those alternatives instead of the limited free offering).
Exactly. The administration stonewalls and refuses to release any information, leaning on friends in the media and delaying matters until the scandal seems old news. Once it's old news the media has an excuse not to report heavily on any new developments. And when the media isn't reporting on the developments, the people forget about the whole thing by the time the next election rolls around.
It only works because the media plays along, but so long as they do -- and so long as the alternative media can't break into big audiences effectively, which twitter and facebook (to pick two examples) are working hard to prevent -- it does work.
It's clear that the authorities are taking the threat of Islamic terrorism very, very seriously. So seriously they are refusing to do anything about it at all.
The problem with allowing absolutely everyone to vote just because they exist is that people who are unproductive drains on society can vote themselves enough money taken from those who are productive benefits to society in order to exist in relative comfort without any need to change. Today's "poor" have subsidized housing with air conditioning, subsidized food, subsidized (mostly free) health care, and large flat screen TVs that mysteriously appeared in their subsidized housing after a hurricane destroyed their last subsidized housing.
While I like the idea here, and I'd like to see Rubio drop out and endorse Cruz so we could have something closer to a two-person race on more issues than just immigration, it's not going to happen. Kasich and Carson need to leave the race first, so we can see where their voters go, and also see how well Cruz does in the next big set of primaries that includes his home state of Texas and other likely Cruz-friendly states.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a prediction.
I think Obama will slow-walk his nominee, giving the Senate ample time to obstruct things, fight about whether or not to have hearings, whether or not to have an up or down vote, and all the things the Senate does that make it look unproductive and obstructionist. In the end, the Senate will either take no action or vote down Obama's nominee.
This is exactly what Obama wants.
He's eying the gap between the November elections and the incoming Senate. If Congress votes down his nominee, he will nominate someone new -- who appears more moderate -- but late in the game. If the Senate does not act on his nominee, Obama will wait till after the election to act. In either case, he will focus on making the Senate look obstructionist and lobbying those Senators who have just been reelected. He will want Senators whose seats are now safe for the next six years to cave on his nominee. He will argue, if a Republican wins, that that Republican will have the chance to appoint his own nominees fairly (and threaten to obstruct those nominees if his own is blocked). He will argue, if a Democrat wins, that the Senate is better off appointing his own "moderate" pick than whoever the new President picks.
And he will say that whatever the Senate does, the voters will have forgotten about it in 6 years.
Will it work? I dunno, but I think that's how he's going to play this. Let the Republicans posture and attack them after the elections.
If you're interested in the details of the case, read the whole thing. And realize that the shenanigans the DOJ is engaged in here -- basically conspiring to surrender to ensure their favored outcome rather than defending the law as their duty requires -- are not only a pattern at DOJ (see the Philadelphia Black Panthers voter intimidation case) but a pattern throughout many government agencies under this president.
... but mainly because their whole lives have been spent in the socialist public school system, and they are now being bled dry by debt in a "higher" education system run by liberals as an indoctrination center and the Liberal Messiah with White Hair is promising them free college (by which he means someone else with a job will pay for it). It doesn't help that the people currently in college cannot remember a time when the Berlin Wall was intended to keep people in their socialist prison on pain of death and are about to graduate into a job market destroyed by socialism despite being told that the United States should be despised as a capitalism nation.
More importantly, the events of 9-11 were not presented as a justification for invading Iraq, except to the extent that nations which presented a terrorist threat (which intelligence estimates on Iraq indicated it did) should be dealt with proactively instead of waiting to respond to a potentially devastating attack.
The justification for invading Iraq was based primarily on the belief that they had an active chemical/biological warfare program and were seeking to obtain the material for a nuclear program. The first turned out to be true, if not as dangerous as believed at the time, and the second had enough evidence to convince almost everyone in politics with access to the classified material at the time... including Trump.
Here's the thing. In the last debate Cruz attacked Trump for Trump's opposition to defunding Planned Parenthood. Trump called Cruz a liar, had a temper tantrum, and then admitted that Cruz was right and said that Planned Parenthood does lots of wonderful things for women... except, you know, those abortion things.
Now, he's promising voters he'll sign a bill to defund the organization as long as they do abortions. (Of course, they will always do abortions; it's why they exist, and the rest is just a sideshow).
I agree that Planned Parenthood should not receive government funds. For any reason, not just for abortion, but abortion seems like a particularly horrible use of government funds particularly when a large portion of the electorate would like to ban it completely and has a reasonable argument for doing so.
So Trump is now claiming to be in the right position.
But he was still defending the idea of government funding for Planned Parenthood in the debates last week. He flipped on this issue this week because he will say whatever he needs to say to seal the deal in the South Carolina primary. And he will flop back to his old position for the general election, I'm sure. How many other positions will he flip to win the primary and flop for the general election?
This is not the first openly political charge coming out of this particular DA and jurisdiction. It's time the state of Texas took systematic steps to fix this problem, and frankly, I'd like to see some sort of ethics charges brought up on the DA. That will likely never happen, but it would be justice.
Never mind that IFL and LED light bulbs cost about 10x-20x more than traditional incandescent light bulbs, don't necessarily last any longer (I've had several under-1-year failures), and are already a huge step up in efficiency. Never mind that redesigning the bulbs to get even MORE efficiency will cost quite a bit just when the market was settling down into the new bulbs. Never mind that consumers are perfectly capable of choosing between three types and multiple brands and models of such bulbs on their own and that more choice is better.
Court overturns order keeping Fast and Furious documents sealed
The immediate practical problem with using the courts as a remedy for executive misbehavior is that the courts drag out problems rather than solve them in a reasonable problem. This case should have been resolved years ago when it was still relevant. Instead, we're unlikely to see these documents before the end of Obama's second term. If they contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors by Eric Holder, he's resigned already. If they contain evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors by Obama, what's the point of opening an impeachment trial when he has less than a year in office remaining?
Does Trump have fraud charges hanging over his head?
I'm not sure what to make of this and how much it threatens Trump as an individual rather than whatever legal entity was using his name to run this "university". It would be sort of amusing if Trump's run for president turned out to be the biggest jury-tampering attempt in history.
Frankly, though, even if Trump gets hit with personal charges of fraud over this (which I don't think seems likely), Hillary's almost-two-thousand felony counts of negligent handling of classified material dwarf it.
The mistake here is having any red lines for an Obama nominee at all. Obama could nominate Cruz himself and I wouldn't trust it. Between the (speculated) NSA blackmail material on Roberts and the assumed willingness of any nominee to lie through their teeth during nomination hearings, and the utter certainty that Obama is not willing to act in good faith, there is no one he could nominate that I would trust. No one.
Obama's EPA urging states to ignore Supreme Court injunction
He's not technically calling for states to ignore the Supreme Court, he's just saying they should voluntarily comply with the rules anyway. That seems like a desperation move. If states wanted to enforce those rules, they could pass legislation to set tighter rules than the federal government does. Some states do this already (California).
Those would be the free market forces giving us tremendously low oil prices, and the free market forces of billions of taxpayer subsidies and government loans to failed companies like Solyndra? I think that the EPA thinks government regulations and subsidies are market forces.
You mean like the one who's been in the White House these past 7 years?
The truth is, liberals have been full-on Socialists for decades. The same president who gave us New Deal Liberalism gave us ethnic concentration camps, tried to pack the Supreme Court, and prevented a farmer from growing food on his own farm to feed to his own animals because it was "interstate commerce".
The claimed liberal concern for free speech and other rights extends to Neo-Nazis, naked dancers, and shouting down people who disagree with them on college campuses. It doesn't cover any ordinary person trying to live their life.
