In doing my roundup of gun bills in the Texas legislature, I missed Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas)’s HB 1009 to allow schools to designated one “Marshal” for every 400 students eligible to receive firearm and emergency response training. Existing CHL holders on-staff would be eligible for the training. The measure passed the House and Senate and goes to Governor Perry’s desk for signing.
Missed One: Teacher Firearm Training Bill
May 22nd, 2013Quick Overview of Pro-Second Amendment Bills in the Texas Legislature
May 22nd, 2013Dwight was kind enough to provide a quick rundown on a few pro-Second Amendment bills making their way through the Texas legislature. He also linked to the TSRAPAC site, which includes even more bill information. (I’ve also found Texas Firearms Freedom useful, and it includes a few more bills.) Since I’ve been meaning to do a rundown on these, and since I run a full-service blog, here’s an even more brief, high level summary of the state of various bills, with links to the text of the bills themselves:
I can’t find any online record for the stuff scheduled for May 20. I’ll let you know if I do.
The Ten California Cities Most Likely To Declare Bankruptcy
May 21st, 2013Who’s next on the California bankrupt city hit list? Well, USA Today has been kind enough to take a stab at it, and offers up the following likely candidates, listed alphabetically:
Wait, Vernon? Vernon hasn’t already declared bankruptcy? The city that would probably win “Most Corrupt City in California” if not for stiff competition from Bell?
If I had to wager, I’d pick Vernon, though Compton and Mammoth Lake are also good candidates…
A Tiny Smidgeon of Random Obama Scandal News
May 20th, 2013Been busy, stuff on my plate, fish to fry, insert polite noise here.
So, a few links:
LinkSwarm for May 17, 2013
May 17th, 2013And here’s another Friday LinkSwarm!
Obama Scandals Midday Update for May 16, 2013
May 16th, 2013There’s so much information about various Obama scandals that I’m hard-pressed to keep up, but here are a few nuggets of savory scandal goodness (or rather, badness):
Under a Democratic administration, the IRS was under pressure from Democratic elected officials to investigate political enemies of the Democratic party. The agency did so. Its commissioner lied to Congress about its doing so. When the inspector general’s report was about to make these abuses public, the agency staged a classic Washington Friday news rollout at a sleepy American Bar Association tax-law conference, hoping to minimize the bad publicity. Lerner lied to the public about the nature, scope, and extent of the IRS intimidation campaign.
Another Day, Another Obama Scandal
May 15th, 2013I’ve been joking on Twitter that Tea Party membership would count against people during their death panel hearings. Now comes word that the IRS illegally seized some 60 million medical records from over 10 million people in California, and suddenly the joke isn’t so funny anymore. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades.)
So we have a powerful and feared government agency, the IRS, which has admitted to targeting Obama’s political opponents, now being accused of illegally seizing confidential medical records. I’m sure there’s no way the information in those records (which included “included psychological counseling, gynecological counseling, sexual/drug treatment”) could possibly be used against Obama’s political opponents. (You know, like sealed divorce records.)
Funny how often supposedly confidential information just magically appears in the hands of Obama Administration bureaucrats. Like those AP phone records. It just happens, like the waxing of a pestilence.
So what’s next in the hopper of scandal? Or we going to find out the NSA has been monitoring all telephone conversations in America and providing the records directly to the DNC?
Stay tuned…
The Obama/Nixon Moment
May 14th, 2013I was about 10 hours ahead of the curve:
The burglary occurred in 1972, the climax came in 1974, but40 years ago this week — May 17, 1973 — the Senate Watergate hearings began exploring the nature of Richard Nixon’s administration. Now the nature of Barack Obama’s administration is being clarified as revelations about IRS targeting of conservative groups merge with myriad Benghazi mendacities.
Snip.
Jay Carney, whose unenviable job is not to explain but to explain away what his employers say, calls the IRS’s behavior “inappropriate.” No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense.
The IRS was using the information to build an enemies list.
In fact, the Obama Administration’s use of the IRS to harass political enemies, and the threat to do so, has been long-running and pervasive.
The Boston Herald also breaks out the N Word (Nixon):
President Obama’s second-term campaign slogan was “Forward,” but instead we’ve got cover-ups, congressional investigations and the government persecution of political opponents and reporters.
That sounds like “backward” to me. All the way to, say, 1972.
Who would have guessed that just a few months into his second term, President Obama would be compared to Tricky Dick. And by a liberal Massachusetts Democrat — U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano.
Republicans could not even have scripted this one. The agency most hated by voters, the Internal Revenue Service, admits to going on a Nixonian witch hunt against Tea Party and conservative groups during the re-election campaign.
This is a story even the most partisan Massachusetts liberal cannot defend. It’s so bad that even Ed Markey is calling for heads to roll.
The man behind The Pentagon Papers thinks that Obama is worse than Nixon ever was.
The multiple scandals are so obvious that even the MSM is waking up. Jay Carney has spent six months peeing on reporters’ legs and calling it rain. Reporters have finally started waking up. “Hey, wait a minute! I don’t think rain is usually this warm!”
And here’s a nice image from Buzzfeed:
Obama Is Not A Crook!
May 13th, 2013Or so he would have us believe. But the Obama Administration has been acting pretty Nixonian as of late.
First there’s how the White House lied about Benghazi, and how the CIA’s original talking points were altered to support the lie. (Exactly how those edits in talking points evolved can be found here.) And they’re still lying.
Then there’s the IRS scandal. Not only was the IRS targeting and auditing Tea Party groups, there were asking for a ridiculous amount of personal information. Like the names of family members and a list of all the members of the news media the group has ever interacted with. Then they released some completed comments to ProPublica before they had been approved, i.e., they weren’t public documents yet.
And here’s the IRS crew responsible.
Then there’s that whole getting all AP telephone records for two months thing.
Time even breaks out the Kleins in an attempt to poo-poo the very idea of Obama’s resemblance to Tricky Dick.
Indeed, Obama seems to be following the Nixonian blueprint far more effectively than Nixon ever could.
Of course, there is one big difference between Obama and Nixon…
LinkSwarm for May 10, 2013
May 10th, 2013For a shocking change of pace, the Friday LinkSwarm will be on Friday:
