Illegal Alien Pro-Tip

May 30th, 2017

If you’re in the country illegally, don’t draw attention to yourself. Especially by unrolling banner proclaiming you’re an illegal alien.

Especially inside the Texas legislature.

Or someone (in this case Republican state representative Matt Rinaldi) might call immigration enforcement on you. Which is what happened.

Naturally, hilarity ensued.

(Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)

In the Course of Explaining Why Democrats Lose, Matt Tabbi Demonstrates Why Democrats Lose

May 29th, 2017

Matt Tabbi had a Rolling Stone piece that Zero Hedge was kind enough to repost. It’s ostensibly a piece on why Democrats’ naked contempt for average Americans keeps losing them elections that, en passant, demonstrates the Democrats’ naked contempt for average Americans that keeps losing them elections.

After talking about Greg Gianforte’s win in the Montana election, the usual Trump and Republican bashing and various recent Democratic Party losses in the Obama era, Tabbi gets to the meat of his argument and why Hillary Clinton’s “Deplorables” comment was so devastating to Democratic Party chances. But right before he goes into that, we get this:

America is obviously a deeply racist and paranoid country.

And there it is, the recurring lie that seems to dwell at the heart of Democratic Party members’ inflated, unshakable sense of their own moral superiority, spit out almost like an involuntary Tourettes’s tic, or a password that must be given to even get Democrats to read the article. “Halt! What’s the password?” “America the racist!” “Pass, friend.”

This is a lie. America is objectively among the least racist countries in the world. And one of the biggest (excuse me, yuuuuggggeeee) reasons Donald Trump won was how sick, tired and just plain angry ordinary Americans are at being falsely labeled racists.

Democrats wielded accusations of racism against their political opponents as a cynical means to get their way. Oppose higher welfare spending? Racist! Support enforcing border control laws? Racist! Oppose unlimited, unassimilated Muslim immigration? Racist!

Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist! Racist!

And then, when their magic word lost its power and Democrats started losing elections hand over fist, instead of moderating their rhetoric, Democrats, pandering to the worst victmhood identity politics/social justice warrior cadres in their ranks, doubled down on it. White privilege! #BlackLivesMatter!

Indeed, it is progressives who have become the racists, denouncing people as evil for being born with the wrong skin color and demanding colleges offer segregated accommodations to appease radical grievance-mongering.

And, lo and behold, people who weren’t racists got sick and tried of being called racists 24/7 by the Democratic Media Establishment, and threw Democrats out of office. To use Tabbi’s own statistics: “Republicans now control 68 state legislative chambers, while Democrats only control 31. Republicans flipped three more governors’ seats last year and now control an incredible 33 of those offices. Since 2008, when Barack Obama first took office, Republicans have gained somewhere around 900 to 1,000 seats overall.”

And instead of rethinking their approach, Democrats just keep digging. “If we just keep calling them racists, sooner or later we can shame them into giving in and returning us to power!”

No, you’re not going to shame us because we know we’re not racists, and your insistence on continually labeling us such just makes us bound and determined to tune out everything you have to say.

Later on, Tabbi again exhibits that same tone-deafness, when he says that Democrats “don’t seem to have anything to say to voters in flyover country.”

Well, for starters, our liberal elites might start by not calling it flyover country. Do you have any idea what a smug, entitled prick that phrase makes you sound like? “I just can’t understand why those redneck freaks of JesusLand won’t vote for their moral superiors anymore!”

So if you’re wondering why “flyover country” isn’t more upset about a Republican candidate (allegedly) punching a reporter, that’s why. We’re finally feeling the same contempt for you you’ve been openly expressing about us for decades.

Until Democrats change their ways, expect ordinary Americans to keep ignoring them and voting them out of power.

Hillary’s Coughing Fit: 2017 Edition

May 28th, 2017

Remember all those health concerns Hillary Clinton had in 2016? They’re back.

The beginning also reminds us, yet again, what an absolutely dreadful and inauthentic public speaker Hillary Clinton is. It’s only after her coughing fit that she delivers her speechwriter’s lines with anything resembling authentic human emotion. Which, of course, does not prevent the audience showering her with the now -ritual whooping and seal-honking at every designated applause line.

Finally, take note of the little “CNN Live” bug in the lower right corner. Can you think of any other failed Presidential candidate for whom that network choose to carry a college commencement address live? Of course not. But it’s only recently that CNN fully embraced its role as an extension of the Democratic Party…

Nicholas Kristof/New York Times Lie Through Omission

May 27th, 2017

The New York Times just published this Nicholas Kristof opinion piece on underage marriage in America.

It leads with an outrageous injustice designed to immediately rouse the reader to righteous anger:

When she was a scrawny 11-year-old, Sherry Johnson found out one day that she was about to be married to a 20-year-old member of her church who had raped her.

“It was forced on me,” she recalls. She had become pregnant, she says, and child welfare authorities were investigating — so her family and church officials decided the simplest way to avoid a messy criminal case was to organize a wedding.

“My mom asked me if I wanted to get married, and I said, ‘I don’t know, what is marriage, how do I act like a wife?’” Johnson remembers today, many years later. “She said, ‘Well, I guess you’re just going to get married.’”

So she was. A government clerk in Tampa, Fla., refused to marry an 11-year-old, even though this was legal in the state, so the wedding party went to nearby Pinellas County, where the clerk issued a marriage license. The license (which I’ve examined) lists her birth date, so officials were aware of her age.

Truly shocking stuff, right?

However, though Kristof takes pains to say he’s examined Johnson’s birth certificate, he’s also taken pains to hide one extremely important fact from the reader: Sherry Johnson’s underage marriage took place in 1972.

If the your leading example of injustice is 45 years old, and you deliberately hide that fact from the reader, it does rather undercut the alleged urgency of your cause.

This is not the only mistake in the piece: There’s a map showing the legal status of underage marriage in various states. Texas is shown as a state with no lower limit to the age of marriage. One tiny problem: That isn’t true. From Texas state statutes:

Sec. 2.009. ISSUANCE OF LICENSE. (a) Except as provided by Subsections (b) and (d), the county clerk may not issue a license if either applicant:

(1) fails to provide the information required by this subchapter;

(2) fails to submit proof of age and identity;

(3) is under 16 years of age and has not been granted a court order as provided by Section 2.103;

(4) is 16 years of age or older but under 18 years of age and has not presented at least one of the following:

(A) parental consent as provided by Section 2.102;

(B) documents establishing that a prior marriage of the applicant has been dissolved; or

(C) a court order as provided by Section 2.103

Section 2.103 makes clear that an age waiver can only come via a judge’s order, and only after petition to marry comes from the minor involved:

Sec. 2.103. COURT ORDER FOR UNDERAGE APPLICANT. (a) A minor may petition the court in the minor’s own name for an order granting permission to marry. In a suit under this section, the trial judge may advance the suit if the best interest of the applicant would be served by an early hearing.

(b) The petition must be filed in the county where a parent resides if a court has not awarded another person the right to consent to marriage for the minor. If a court has awarded another person the right to consent to marriage for the minor, the petition must be filed in the county where that person resides. If no parent or person who has the court-ordered right to consent to marriage for the minor resides in this state, the petition must be filed in the county where the minor lives.

(c) The petition must include:

(1) a statement of the reasons the minor desires to marry;

(2) a statement of whether each parent is living or is dead;

(3) the name and residence address of each living parent; and

(4) a statement of whether a court has awarded to a person other than a parent of the minor the right to consent to marriage for the minor.

(d) Process shall be served as in other civil cases on each living parent of the minor or on a person who has the court-ordered right to consent to marriage for the minor, as applicable. Citation may be given by publication as in other civil cases, except that notice shall be published one time only.

(e) The court shall appoint an amicus attorney or an attorney ad litem to represent the minor in the proceeding. The court shall specify a fee to be paid by the minor for the services of the amicus attorney or attorney ad litem. The fee shall be collected in the same manner as other costs of the proceeding.

(f) If after a hearing the court, sitting without a jury, believes marriage to be in the best interest of the minor, the court, by order, shall grant the minor permission to marry.

That’s quite different than “no age limit.”

That map is sourced from Tahirih Justice Center, which seems to be focused on ending sex trafficking and female genital mutilation. The editorial doesn’t mention that, probably because it only mentions the word “Muslim” once: “As in Africa and Asia, the reasons for such marriages in the U.S. are often cultural or religious; the American families follow conservative Christian, Muslim or Jewish traditions, and judges sometimes feel that they shouldn’t intrude on other cultures.”

While it might be possible to find individual instances of conservative Christian or Jewish marriage under the age of 16 in 1st century America, I would wager that the vast majority of underage marriage cases can be attributed to one of two faiths: Muslims and fundamentalist Mormons. Since New York Times and other left-leaning mainstream media outlets seem congenitally incapable of talking honestly about Islam or Muslim immigrants, they’re forced to pluck an example from 1972, then hide that fact from the reader.

Underage marriage may or may not be a significant problem in America today, but, thanks to a dishonest piece by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, we still don’t know…

LinkSwarm for May 26, 2017

May 26th, 2017

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! A time to remember the fallen and enjoy a three day weekend. It’s also an Energy Star Sales Tax Holiday here in Texas, which could mean big savings on such varied items as refrigerators, water conservation or water efficient products, and various gardening products, including soil and mulch.

Now on to the LinkSwarm!

  • Hey Democrats: How’s that “All Trump Derangement Syndrome, All the Time” working out for you? “A new Gallup Poll indicates that the rating for Democrats has slipped five points since November, while the low rating for the Republican Party remained about the same.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • What ObamaCare wrought: “The average individual purchaser of health insurance across the United States saw their premiums increase from $232 per month in 2013 to $476 per month in 2017, a ‘modest’ increase of over 100% in just a few years. To put that into perspective, that’s nearly $3,000 per year and roughly 9% of what the median American earns each year.”
  • More on Obama’s widespread, unconstitutional domestic surveillance:

    The National Security Agency under former President Barack Obama routinely violated American privacy protections while scouring through overseas intercepts and failed to disclose the extent of the problems until the final days before Donald Trump was elected president last fall, according to once top-secret documents that chronicle some of the most serious constitutional abuses to date by the U.S. intelligence community.

    More than 5 percent, or one out of every 20 searches seeking upstream Internet data on Americans inside the NSA’s so-called Section 702 database violated the safeguards Obama and his intelligence chiefs vowed to follow in 2011, according to one classified internal report reviewed by Circa.

    The Obama administration self-disclosed the problems at a closed-door hearing Oct. 26 before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that set off alarm. Trump was elected less than two weeks later.

    The normally supportive court censured administration officials, saying the failure to disclose the extent of the violations earlier amounted to an “institutional lack of candor” and that the improper searches constituted a “very serious Fourth Amendment issue,” according to a recently unsealed court document dated April 26, 2017.

  • Kurt Schlichter: Trump succeeds at his most important job:

    Looking at it objectively, as a guy who opposed Trump until he dispatched Ted Cruz, I have to consider all the facts and ponder the evidence carefully before awarding Donald Trump the grade of A+. He has done an incredible job of doing exactly what I had hoped he would do in the off chance he defeated that naggy harridan and her corps of gender indeterminate hipsters, coastal snobs, race hustlers, aspiring libfascists, media scum, and wussy pseudo-conservatives terrified that a Hillary loss would mean people might expect them to do more than wear bow ties and go on NPR to prattle about Burke in their high-pitched, nasal voices.

    There can be no serious debate. Donald Trump has done a truly outstanding job of not being Hillary Clinton.

    His not being Hillary Clinton was and remains my sole expectation of Donald Trump’s presidency. Nothing else matters in the end; it is enough that Trump foiled Felonia von Pantsuit’s creepy scheme to subjugate forever the deplorable mass of normal people she despises. The Obamacare repeal, tax reform, plus appointees of the quality of Gorsuch, Mattis and McMaster, and his lower court appointments – the inexplicable and damn-well-better-be-corrected-if-Trump-doesn’t-want-a conservative-rebellion omission of Justice Don Willett not withstanding – are merely icing on the red velvet cake of Trump’s not-being-Hillaryhood.

  • Mark Steyn weighs in on the Manchester attack, and, as usual, the difficulty is finding what not to quote:

    A few weeks ago the BBC reported that “approximately 850 people” from the United Kingdom have gone to Syria and Iraq to fight for Isis and the like. That’s more volunteers than the IRA were able to recruit in thirty years of the “Troubles”, when MI5 estimated that they never had more than a hundred active terrorists out in the field. This time maybe it’s the exotic appeal of foreign travel, as opposed to a month holed up in a barn in Newry.

    Carrying on in Germany, Angela Merkel pronounced the attack “incomprehensible”. But she can’t be that uncomprehending, can she? Our declared enemies are perfectly straightforward in their stated goals, and their actions are consistent with their words. They select their targets with some care. For a while, it was Europe’s Jews, at a Brussels museum and a Toulouse school and a Copenhagen synagogue and a Paris kosher supermarket. But Continentals are, except for political photo-ops on Holocaust Memorial Day, relatively heartless about dead Jews, and wrote off such incidents as something to do with “Israeli settlements” and “occupation” and of no broader significance.

    So they moved on to slaughter 49 gays in a nightclub in Orlando – the biggest mound of gay corpses ever piled up in American history and the worst terror attack on American soil since 9/11. But all the usual noisy LGBTQWERTY activists fell suddenly silent, as if they’d all gone back in the closet and curled up in the fetal position. And those Democrats who felt obliged to weigh in thought it was something to do with the need for gun control…

    So they targeted provocative expressions of the infidel’s abominable false religion, decapitating a French priest at Mass and mowing down pedestrians at a Berlin Christmas market. But post-Christian Europe takes Christianity less seriously than its enemies do, and so that too merited little more than a shrug and a pledge to carry on.

    So they selected symbols of nationhood, like France’s Bastille Day, Canada’s Cenotaph, and the Mother of Parliaments in London. But taking seriously assaults on your own nation’s symbols would require you to take your nation seriously, and most western citizens are disinclined to do so. As the great universal talismanic anthem of the age has it, “Imagine there’s no countries/It’s easy if you try…”

    So the new Caliphate’s believers figured out that what their enemy really likes is consumerism and pop music. Hence the attacks on the Champs-Élysées and the flagship Åhléns department store in Stockholm, and the bloodbath at the Eagles of Death Metal concert in Paris and now at Ariana Grande’s “Dangerous Woman” tour.

    Snip.

    But the arithmetic is not difficult: Poland and Hungary and Slovakia do not have Islamic terrorism because they have very little Islam. France and Germany and Belgium admit more and more Islam, and thus more and more terrorism. Yet the subject of immigration has been all but entirely absent from the current UK election campaign. Thirty years ago, in the interests of stopping IRA terrorism, the British state was not above preventing the internal movement within its borders of unconvicted, uncharged, unarrested Republican sympathizers seeking to take a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool. Today it declares it can do nothing to prevent the movement of large numbers of the Muslim world from thousands of miles away to the heart of the United Kingdom. It’s just a fact of life – like being blown up when you go to a pop concert.

    Read the whole thing.

  • 20 Coptic Christians slain in Egypt today. Update: Death toll now up to 28.
  • The threat of jihad is real. The threat of “Islamophobia” is not.
  • Obama Administration knowingly allowed MS-13 and Sureno 18 gang members to enter the country. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Denver city council decriminalizes wife-beating to keep illegal aliens from being deported:

    The Denver City Council agreed Monday to change to local sentencing guidelines in order to shield legal immigrants convicted of domestic violence from deportation proceedings.

    In a unanimous 12-0 vote, council members revised criminal penalties for several “low-level” crimes, reducing the maximum sentence to less than 365 days in jail. Under federal law, a criminal conviction that results in a sentence of a year or more is grounds for deporting any alien, including U.S. visa holders and legal permanent residents.

    (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)

  • Speaking of border control, there were over 700,000 visa overstays in 2016 alone. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • “The Islamic State chops off children’s hands for refusing to execute prisoners.”
  • Allegedly body-slamming a reporter did not prevent Republican Greg Gianforte from handily beating singing socialist Rob Quist in a special election for Montana’s at-large congressional seat. Hey, remember when progressives were busy telling us it was OK to punch Nazis? Good times, good time…
  • Indeed, Gianforte raised over $100,000 right after news of the alleged assault spread. One need not condone violence to suggest that the Trump Derangement Syndrome-riddled press just might have an image problem with the American people… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Estonia Expels Two Russian Diplomats; Moscow Warns This “Unfriendly Action Will Not Go Unanswered.'”
  • A game a lot of newly-minted college graduates will be playing:

    (Hat tip: Instapundit.)

  • A tweet:

  • Does Trump have a short attention span, or just the ability to quickly grasp the most important details? Scott Adams says the latter.
  • Adams also says its time to end presidential press briefings.
  • In the Middle East, Trump clears the very low bar of sucking less than Obama:

    The success – so far – of the president’s Middle East trip stands on the ashes of Obama’s failures. It’s easy to forget that for all Obama’s alleged expertise, his foray into the Middle East foundered on his arrogance and naiveté. In his 2009 Cairo speech, he unspooled clichés as wisdom, thinking that his name alone would put points on the board. He bought into the idea that the road to stability and peace in the Middle East went through Jerusalem.

    As Obama learned on the job, he came to believe that the road to peace went through Tehran, crafting an Iranian deal that alienated both our democratic ally Israel and our strategic Sunni allies, chief among them Saudi Arabia. In pursuit of his fantasy, he turned a blind eye to Iran’s crushing of the Green Revolution and dithered to the point of complicity in the Syrian abattoir. Meanwhile, Iran remains as implacably hostile and as determined to be a regional hegemon as ever.

    That is the context of Trump’s fawning reception. “Welcome, President Not Obama!”

  • Know who else funds President Trump a big step up from Obama? historically black colleges.
  • Mom’s advice to her son: Don’t marry a feminist. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • China has a huge debt problem. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Social Justice Warriors hound Portland burrito company out of business for “cultural appropriation.” This is why you can’t have nice things… (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Sea level guages show the oceans rising…but much more slowly than global warming alarmists predict.
  • Manchester bombing proves one of the most important element of preparedness is learning first aid skills.
  • Latest academic hoax: “the conceptual penis.”
  • He may not be President, but Ted Cruz is still the hero we need. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Robber, robber, pants on fire!
  • Enjoy your weekend!

    Debbie Wasserman Schultz Just As Good at Cybersecurity as at Running the DNC

    May 25th, 2017

    Debbie Wasserman Schultz has long been the gift that keeps giving for Republicans. Her tenure at the top of the DNC saw dramatic declines Democratic Party officeholder at a time when Obama was still (theoretically) personally popular. Now her incompetence may be endangering not just the Democratic Party, but American security.

    Remember earlier this year when three Pakistani brothers (Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan) who managed office IT for Democratic members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computer networks without permission?

    Refresher:

    Jamal handled IT for Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat who serves on both the intelligence and foreign affairs panels.

    “As of 2/2, his employment with our office has been terminated,” Castro spokeswoman Erin Hatch told TheDCNF Friday.

    Jamal also worked for Louisiana Democrat Rep. Cedric Richmond, who is on the Committee on Homeland Security.

    Imran worked for Reps. Andre Carson, an Indiana Democrat, and Jackie Speier, a California Democrat. Carson and Speier are members of the intelligence committee. Spokesmen for Carson and Speier did not respond to TheDCNF’s requests for comments. Imran also worked for the House office of Wasserman-Schultz.

    Then-Rep. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, employed Abid for IT work in 2016. She was a member of House committees dealing with the armed services, oversight, and Benghazi. Duckworth was elected to the Senate in November, 2016. Abid has a prior criminal record and a bankruptcy.

    Abid also worked for Rep. Lois Frankel, a Florida Democrat who is member of the foreign affairs committee.

    Also among those whose computer systems may have been compromised is Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the Florida Democrat who was previously the target of a disastrous email hack when she served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 campaign.

    In addition to the brothers Awam, two more staffers, Hina Alvi (Imran Awan’s wife, who worked for Rep. Gregory Meeks (Democrat, New York) and Rao Abbas, were also fired. “The five current and former House staffers are accused of stealing equipment from members’ offices without their knowledge and committing serious, potentially illegal, violations on the House IT network.”

    (Though reports often list five members, Natalia Sova, another Awan wife, also worked as a staffer.)

    So when they were accused of stealing and improperly accessing information, they were fired, right? No. Because they were Muslims:

    Meeks said he was hesitant to believe the accusations against Alvi, Imran Awan and the three other staffers, saying their background as Muslim Americans, some with ties to Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.

    “I wanted to be sure individuals are not being singled out because of their nationalities or their religion. We want to make sure everybody is entitled to due process,” Meeks said.

    “They had provided great service for me. And there were certain times in which they had permission by me, if it was Hina or someone else, to access some of my data.”

    [Rep. Marcia] Fudge [Democrat, Ohio] told Politico on Tuesday she would employ Imran Awan until he received “due process.”

    “He needs to have a hearing. Due process is very simple. You don’t fire someone until you talk to them,” Fudge said.

    On Wednesday, Lauren Williams, a spokeswoman for Fudge, wouldn’t provide details about Imran Awan’s firing but did confirm he was still employed in Fudge’s office as of Tuesday afternoon.

    The bottom line is simple – these House Democrats decided it was better to be at risk of hacking and extortion than to be accused of racism.

    Then it came to light that “House IT Aides Fear Suspects In Hill Breach Are Blackmailing Members With Their Own Data.” Turns out that the Awan brothers were incompetent at their jobs, but House Democrats refused to fire them or consider cheaper employees.

    Also this: “Court records show the brothers ran a side business that owed $100,000 to an Iranian fugitive who has been tied to Hezbollah, and their stepmother says they often send money to Pakistan.”

    More on that lovely individual the Awan brothers do business with:

    The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has reported that while working for Congress, the Pakistani brothers controlled a limited liability corporation called Cars International A (CIA), a car dealership with odd finances, which took–and was unable to repay–a $100,000 loan from Dr. Ali Al-Attar.

    Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, wrote that Attar “was observed in Beirut, Lebanon conversing with a Hezbollah official” in 2012–shortly after the loan was made. Attar has also been accused of helping provoke the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq as a leader of Iraqi dissidents opposed to Saddam Hussein.

    After moving to the U.S., Attar made his money practicing medicine in Maryland and Virginia and defrauding Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies by billing for non-existent medical procedures. The FBI raided his offices in 2009 and the Department of Health and Human Services sued his business partner in 2011.

    Attar was indicted in March 2012 on separate tax fraud charges after the IRS and FBI found he used multiple bank accounts to hide income. He fled back to Iraq to avoid prison.

    “He’s a fugitive. I am not aware of any extradition treaty with Iraq,”

    Then the story of the Awan brothers’ security breech took yet another strange turn:

    Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz threatened the chief of the U.S. Capitol Police with “consequences” for holding equipment that she says belongs to her in order to build a criminal case against a Pakistani staffer suspected of massive cybersecurity breaches involving funneling sensitive congressional data offsite.

    The Florida lawmaker used her position on the committee that sets the police force’s budget to press its chief to relinquish the piece of evidence Thursday, in what could be considered using her authority to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation.

    The Capitol Police and outside agencies are pursuing Imran Awan, who has run technology for the Florida lawmaker since 2005 and was banned from the House network in February on suspicion of data breaches and theft.

    “My understanding is the the Capitol Police is not able to confiscate Members’ equipment when the Member is not under investigation,” Wasserman Schultz said in the annual police budget hearing of the House Committee On Appropriations’ Legislative Branch Subcommittee.

    “We can’t return the equipment,” Police Chief Matthew R. Verderosa told the Florida Democrat.

    “I think you’re violating the rules when you conduct your business that way and you should expect that there will be consequences,” Wasserman Schultz said.

    As one of eight members of the Committee on Appropriations’ Legislative Branch subcommittee, Wasserman Schultz is in charge of the budget of the police force that is investigating her staffer and how he managed to extract so much money and information from members.

    In a highly unusual exchange, the Florida lawmaker uses a hearing on the Capitol Police’s annual budget to spend three minutes repeatedly trying to extract a promise from the chief that he will return a piece of evidence being used to build an active case.

    “If a Member loses equipment and it is found by your staff and identified as that member’s equipment and the member is not associated with any case, it is supposed to be returned. Yes or no?” she said.

    Police tell her it is important to “an ongoing investigation,” but presses for its return anyway.

    The investigation is examining members’ data leaving the network and how Awan managed to get Members to place three relatives and a friend into largely no-show positions on their payrolls, billing $4 million since 2010.

    The congresswoman characterizes the evidence as “belonging” to her and argues that therefore it cannot be seized unless Capitol Police tell her that she personally, as opposed to her staffer, is a target of the investigation.

    When TheDCNF asked Wasserman Schultz Monday if it could inquire about her strong desire for the laptop, she said “No, you may not.” After TheDCNF asked why she wouldn’t want the Capitol Police to have any evidence they may need to find and punish any hackers of government information, she abruptly turned around in the middle of a stairwell and retreated back to the office from which she had come.

    Very curious indeed.

    It seems that Wasserman Schultz (and very possibly other Democratic congressmen) would prefer to see American intelligence compromised rather than have embarrassing personal information revealed. One wonders if the dismissed staffers were conveying information to overseas jihadis, or if they had incriminating information on any of the DNC, Obama or Hillary Clinton scandals so much in the news.

    Stay tuned…

    Philippines City Invaded By Islamic State Fighters

    May 24th, 2017

    While all eyes were on Manchester, fighters loyal to the Islamic State were launching a big attack half a world away:

    A group of heavily-armed militants from a group linked to Isis have reportedly stormed a city in the Philippines and engaged in firefights with the national army.

    Residents of Marawi City, in the south of the country, were urged to remain indoors as at least 15 gunmen from a Muslim rebel group called Maute stormed the streets brandishing assault rifles.

    The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, have reportedly received support from Isis.

    Troops and a special police force were deployed to the city after residents in a nearby village raised the alarm and appealed for help.

    Marawi City is the provincial capital of Lanao del Sur on the southern island of Mindanao.

    Like many countries in Asia and the south Pacific, the Philippines has been fighting a Muslim insurgency on and off for quite a while. In fact, if you count the original Moro War fought and won by General Pershing, since 1899. Groups in the Philippines alone that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State include the Abu Sayyaf Group, Ansar al-Khilafah (also on Mindanao), Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (also on Mindanao), and Jemaah Islamiyah (a transnational Islamic terrorist group which which carried out the Bali bombing also has cells in in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia). And that doesn’t count the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (also on Mindanao), with which the government signed a peace agreement in 2014.

    The fight against the Islamic State is one war that extends across the entire globe. Hopefully President Trump understands this fact better than Obama did…

    (Hat tip: Jihad Watch.)

    22 Dead in Manchester Jihad Attack

    May 23rd, 2017

    Another week, another deadly jihad attack on Europe. Current numbers: 22 people were killed (including an eight year old) and 59 injured in an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert at Manchester Arena. Many of the victims were under 16 years old. The explosion occurred where people were queued at the ticket office to get in rather than inside the concert venue.

    The Islamic State has claimed responsibility.

    The Mirror has continuing updates, including the name of the suicide bomber (AKA “some jihadist asshole”).

    Jihad Watch put up a video of a woman whose legs were bleeding from nails from the bomb.

    There was, as usual, the requisite outpouring of Emotional Expressions It Is Acceptable To Display Rather Than Actually Addressing the Problem of Islamic Terrorism:

    And David Frum decided to be an even bigger tool than usual:

    To which Instapundit replied:

    Getting Instapundit to cuss at you is like being such an asshole that Mary Poppins has no choice but to pop a cap in your ass.

    Posting sad Tweets and changing icons are the things that western liberals do in order to not feel bad about themselves rather than actually deal with the problem of radical Islam.

    Feeling sad will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    Compassion will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    Candlelight vigils will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    Pledging to fight “Islamophobia” will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    Hashtags will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    Changing your Twitter and Facebook icons will not stop Islamic terrorism.

    The only things that stop Islamic terrorism are restricting the flow of terrorists and their enablers into your country, and destroying Islamic terrorist networks and the countries that support them. Completely and utterly destroying the Islamic State probably won’t end terrorism, but it will likely take the wind out of their sails for a while. When the west hits back hard (as in Iraq in 2003, or after Israel hit PLO targets in the Bekaa Valley in 1982), Islamic terrorism drops in the aftermath.

    Until the west is serious about destroying radical Islam, many more attacks like Manchester (and Paris, and London, and…) lie ahead.

    Texas vs. California Update for May 22, 2017

    May 22nd, 2017

    We’re in the home stretch of hammering out the Texas biannual state budget, which has to be completed by May 29. Until then, enjoy another Texas vs. California roundup:

  • Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Texas is once again ranked the best state for business, while California is ranked the worst. (Hat tip: Will Franklin’s Twitter feed.)
  • California’s big-government model eats its young:

    In this era of anti-Trump resistance, many progressives see California as a model of enlightenment. The Golden State’s post-2010 recovery has won plaudits in the progressive press from the New York Times’s Paul Krugman, among others. Yet if one looks at the effects of the state’s policies on key Democratic constituencies— millennials, minorities, and the poor—the picture is dismal. A recent United Way study found that close to one-third of state residents can barely pay their bills, largely due to housing costs. When adjusted for these costs, California leads all states—even historically poor Mississippi—in the percentage of its people living in poverty.

    California is home to 77 of the country’s 297 most “economically challenged” cities, based on poverty and unemployment levels. The population of these cities totals more than 12 million. In his new book on the nation’s urban crisis, author Richard Florida ranks three California metropolitan areas—Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego— among the five most unequal in the nation. California, with housing prices 230 percent above the national average, is home to many of the nation’s most unaffordable urban areas, including not only the predictably expensive large metros but also smaller cities such as Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo. Unsurprisingly, the state’s middle class is disappearing the fastest of any state.

    California’s young population is particularly challenged. As we spell out in our new report from Chapman University and the California Association of Realtors, California has the third-lowest percentage of people aged 25 to 34 who own their own homes—only New York and Hawaii’s are lower. In San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, the 25-to-34 homeownership rates range from 19.6 percent to 22.6 percent—40 percent or more below the national average.

  • California continues to slouch toward socialized medicine. “California’s current system relies in large part on employer-sponsored insurance, which is still the source of health care coverage for tens of millions of people. That coverage would disappear under SB 562. Instead of receiving coverage financed by their employers, working Californians would see a tax increase of well over $10,000 per year for many middle-income families.” (Hat tip: Legal Insurrection.)
  • “If you live in California, have a job and pay taxes Governor Jerry Brown would like you to know that you’re a freeloader and he’s tired of your complaining.”
  • “Congratulations, California. You keep electing these same Democrats over and over again. and then you act surprised when they make you one of the most heavily taxed populations in the country. And when you finally raise your voices to protest the out of control taxation and spending, the state party’s titular leader is brazen enough to come straight out and tell you what he really thinks of you.”
  • Has the Democrats latest gas tax hike created an actual tax revolt in California? (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • One lawmaker is the target of a recall petition over the tax hike: “Perceived as the most vulnerable of the legislative Democrats who passed Gov. Jerry Brown’s gas and vehicle tax package by a razor-thin margin, freshman state Sen. Josh Newman, D-Fullerton, faced an intensifying campaign to turn him out of office, potentially depriving his party of the two-thirds majority that allowed them to pass Brown’s infrastructure bill in the first place.”
  • Vance Ginn’s monthly summary of Texas economic data. Lot’s of data, including the fact that all major Texas cities created jobs in 2016 except Houston, which was down just a smidge.
  • San Bernardino could go bankrupt again.
  • Buying a house in Southern California is insane. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • California starts selling bonds for the doomed “high speed rail.”
  • 40-60 “youth” flash mob robs passengers on Oakland BART train. The complete absence of descriptions or pictures cues the astute modern American reader in to the ethnic makeup of the mob. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • “Gov. Jerry Brown and state Treasurer John Chiang have a plan to help cover the state’s soaring pension payments: Borrow money at low interest rates and invest it to make a profit. What could go wrong?” I can see it now: “Come on seven! Baby needs a new High Speed Rail!” Also this: “The problem was exacerbated because Brown’s so-called pension “reform” of 2012 failed to significantly rein in retirement costs. Statewide pension debt has increased 36 percent since his changes took effect.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “Riverside utilities dispatcher triples salary to nearly $400,000 with state’s 10th largest overtime payout.” (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • And speaking of California public employees working overtime:

    The time cards Oakland city worker Kenny Lau turned in last year paint a stunning, if not improbable, picture of one man’s work ethic.

    Lau, a civil engineer, often started his days at 10 a.m. and clocked out at 4 a.m., only to get back to work at 10 a.m. for another marathon day. He never took a sick day. He worked every weekend and took no vacation days.

    He worked every holiday, including the most popular ones that shut down much of the nation’s businesses: 12 hours on Thanksgiving and eight hours on Christmas.

    In fact, his time cards show he worked all 366 days of the leap year, at times putting in 90-plus-hour workweeks. He worked so much that he quadrupled his salary. His regular compensation and overtime pay — including benefits, $485,275 — made him the city’s highest-paid worker and the fourth-highest overtime earner of California public employees in 2016.

    (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)

  • The Los Angeles Unified School District has decided it can break federal immigration laws at will. “No immigration officers will be allowed on campus without clearance from the superintendent of schools, who will consult with district lawyers. Until that happens, they won’t be let in, even if they arrive with a legally valid subpoena.” There’s no way such a genius decision could possibly backfire on them… (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • How California hurts the poor by jacking up traffic fines. (Hat tip: Pension Tsunami.)
  • “San Diego using loophole to hand out large raises during pay freeze.” It’s a blatant attempt to evade Proposition B.
  • An auditor funds the University of California President’s office of Janet Napolitano had a secret slush fund:
    • The Office of the President has accumulated more than $175 million in undisclosed restricted and discretionary reserves;
      as of fiscal year 2015–16, it had $83 million in its restricted reserve and $92 million in its discretionary reserve.

    • More than one-third of its discretionary reserve, or $32 million, came from unspent funds from the campus assessment—an annual charge that the Office of the President levies on campuses to fund the majority of its discretionary operations.
    • In certain years, the Office of the President requested and received approval from the Board of Regents (regents) to
      increase the campus assessment even though it had not spent all of the funds it received from campuses in prior years.

    • The Office of the President did not disclose the reserves it had accumulated, nor did it inform the regents of the annual undisclosed budget that it created to spend some of those funds. The undisclosed budget ranged from $77 million to
      $114 million during the four years we reviewed.

    • The Office of the President was unable to provide a complete listing of the systemwide initiatives, their costs, or an assessment of their continued benefit to the university.
    • While it appears that the Office of the President’s administrative spending increased by 28 percent, or $80 million, from fiscal years 2012–13 through 2015–16, the Office of the President continues to lack consistent definitions of and methods for tracking the university’s administrative expenses.

    An Ex-Obama Administration official with a secret slush fund? What are the odds?

  • Texas continues to attract net in-migration from every region.
  • California wants to tax rockets launched from California into orbit, based on miles traveled away from California. I’m sure many of Texas own spaceflight companies will welcome any business California drives out…
  • Speaking of spaceflight, Elon Musk’s Space X, just like Telsa, is more emblematic of subsidies and special favors than the free market:

    Tesla survives on the back of hefty subsidies paid for by hard-working Americans just barely getting by so that a select few can drive flashy, expensive electric sports cars. These subsidies were originally scheduled to expire later this year, and Tesla is lobbying hard to make sure that taxpayers continue to pay $7,500 per car or more to fund their business model. Tesla even tried to force taxpayers to pay for charging stations that would primarily benefit their business. That is not what Musk’s high priced image managers will tell you, but it’s the truth.

    SpaceX is even worse — its business model isn’t to invest its money developing competing space products that meet the same safety and reliability standards as the rest of the industry. Instead, its business model is to get billions in taxpayer money and push, bend, and demand regulatory special favors. Then, it produces a rocket that is more known for failed launches, long delays, and consistently missed deadlines.

  • How California’s air emission rules went to far.
  • “California may end ban on communists in government jobs.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Bachrach Clothing Stores File for Bankruptcy Protection in Los Angeles.”
  • “California solar installer HelioPower filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada.”
  • Hudson Products relocating from Tulsa to Rosenberg, Texas.
  • “Bay Area bookseller Bill Petrocelli is filing a lawsuit against the state of California, hoping to force a repeal of the state’s controversial ‘Autograph Law.’ The law, booksellers claim, threatens to bury bookstore author signings under red tape and potential liabilities. Petrocelli, co-owner of Book Passage, filed Passage v. Becerra in U.S. District Court for the North District of California, pitting the bookstore against California State Attorney General Xavier Becerra.” As a bookseller on the side, I can tell you that California’s law is particularly asinine and is completely ignorant of the signed book trade.
  • A Long, Hard Look at Weiner’s Sentence

    May 20th, 2017

    Apologies in advance, but I’ve got to use up this pallet of Anthony Weiner puns I got at Sam’s or they’ll all be expired by the time he gets out of prison. So let’s quit dicking around and talk about the details on the prick’s plea bargain.

    Are the sentencing guidelines for Weiner’s underage sexting plea bargain too stiff or too soft? Both:

    So the guidelines should be 10 years in federal prison, but because it’s Anthony Weiner he’s only going to get about 2? Isn’t that extremely suspicious? Is this preferential treatment for a connected Democrat?

    Well, it’s got a very unfortunate appearance, I think.

    Here’s what may be going on.

    Fist, Weiner got struck by lightning, in a way. It’s quite rare for the feds to prosecute someone for sexting a teen like this. It’s vastly more common for the state to handle it, and generally the consequences would be much less severe if the state prosecuted. Weiner got caught up in this because of his prominence and connection to high-profile people and high-profile investigations. If he were Tony Weynor, married to a hairdresser in Brooklyn, he almost certainly wouldn’t get federally investigated or prosecuted for this. His social, political, and media prominence, combined with his idiocy and recklessness, made his actions the equivalent of doing something right in front of the cop — the cop feels duty-bound to arrest you. The U.S. Attorney’s office may have thought that he was facing unfairly disproportionate consequences — ten years instead of perhaps probation or a minor sentence stateside — because of who he was, and might have thought some leniency was appropriate.

    Second, the Federal Sentencing Guidelines are arcane. It’s a thicket of “use this guideline, but wait, cross-reference to that guideline if factor X is present.” Here, the base guideline applying to the offense dictates a far more lenient result — one in the 21-27 month range the government is going to recommend. But because Weiner apparently encouraged a minor to send him explicit pictures, the guideline cross-references to a far, far harsher guideline designed for “sex trafficking.” I suspect that the U.S. Attorney’s Office thought that the Sentencing Commission didn’t contemplate such a harsh guideline being applied to a sexting-a-minor offense that normally would not be prosecuted in federal court.

    So are you saying he’s getting a sweet deal, or not?

    He’s getting a terrible deal by being prosecuted federally for conduct that only very rarely would attract federal prosecution. But he’s getting an extraordinarily lenient, compassionate, humane deal within that context. I have only very rarely seen a recommendation for a sentence so dramatically below the guideline range when the defendant wasn’t cooperating in an important case.

    Look, the system strikes some people with lightning. Those people normally get ground up mercilessly. Anthony Weiner’s getting struck by lightning but then treated with very unusual mercy. I don’t disagree with the arguments that the guideline sentence is too high, or that nobody intended for the sex trafficking guideline and its harsh results to be applied to sexting with a teen. But I’m troubled by who gets that consideration and who doesn’t. Federal court dishes out brutal mandatory minimum sentences and guideline sentences to people all the time. People like Anthony Weiner get sympathy and special consideration; people think about whether the law is fair as applied to them. People generally don’t ask that about most defendants.

    (Most Shocking voiceover) “He used to be cock of the walk, but now Anthony Weiner is going to be doing…hard time.”

    Keep in mind that the day before Weiner copped his plea bargain, former uniformed Secret Service officer Lee Robert Moore was was sentenced to 20 years in prison for “sending sexually explicit photos of himself to underage girls — while he was on duty at the White House.”

    Weiner’s wife, former (and future?) Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, officially filed for divorce from Weiner. The only thing she can be criticized for (in this particular instance) is waiting so long. But I’m pretty sure it’s easier to get full custody of your child when the other party in the divorce is a registered sex offender.

    She might have another reason: “So long as she remained ‘Mrs. Weiner,’ Abedin could claim spousal protection and dodge taking the stand in her husband’s underage sexting case. Now that Weiner has pleaded guilty, there can be no trial — so she has no need for the spousal protection.”

    People in Hillary Clinton’s circle do seem to have an aversion to taking the witness stand under oath.

    All in all, it’s a flaccid end to what Democrats once considered a rising political star…

    And let’s not forget the first man who broke the original Weiner sexting story:

    Now some images: