Missouri Legislature Nears Approval Of Nullification Bill To Limit Federal Gun Control

◼ The Missouri State Legislature is on the verge of forwarding a bill to Democratic Governor Jay Nixon that, if signed into law, will nullify virtually all Federal gun laws while asserting the State’s rejection of “unlimited submission” to Federal powers not enumerated in the Constitution. - Personal Liberty

On Wednesday, the Missouri State Senate approved a bill that originated in the State House of Representatives – HB 1439 – and returned the measure, with minor markups, to the House for final approval. The House had originally passed the bill on an overwhelming 110-36 vote. The Senate followed suit, approving the measure by a vote of 23-8.

According to the Tenth Amendment Center blog, both chambers tagged the measure as an “emergency” bill, which fast-tracks its enactment sooner than the standard 90 days required for news laws to take effect after a legislative session has adjourned for the year.

...What does HB 1439 do? It pretty much nullifies anything the Federal government attempts to do to guns that the 2nd Amendment hasn’t already covered: “All federal acts, laws, executive orders, administrative orders, court orders, rules, and regulations, whether past, present, or future, which infringe on the people’s right to keep and bear arms as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

$2.4 Million spent testing Receptive Anal Intercourse "Origami" condoms on Rabbits

◼ “Origami condoms” paid for by the U.S. taxpayers were first tested on female rabbits, which were killed after having pieces of silicone inserted in them for five days. - Washington Free Beacon

Daniel Resnic, who received more than $2.4 million to develop his brand of condoms modeled off of Japanese folding paper, and is now being accused of massive fraud, received his first grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a feasibility study in 2006. In 2007, he conducted his first clinical study.

After the initial $212,162 grant, Resnic applied for more funds to develop the “RAI [Receptive Anal Intercourse] Condom” in January 2009.

According to his application, Resnic asked for $731,199 to finance the entire study for his “first of its kind” anal condom on January 8, 2009. The federal government was more generous, and awarded him $828,188 just six months later....More, at the link.

Wisconsin Democrat Gubernatorial Candidate To Hand Out KKK Hoods

◼ A Democratic Wisconsin assemblyman and candidate for governor plans to hand out Ku Klux Klan hoods — which he calls “Republican party hats” — at the state’s GOP convention this weekend. - Daily Caller

“How much longer can the IPCC maintain the charade? How long before the IPCC and its machinations are understood by enough leaders to elicit some backbone? It is incredible that the IPCC and their manipulation of climate science continue to drive world energy and economic policies. How many more people must starve and economies collapse before this most egregious exploitation driven by environmentalists is stopped?

◼ EXPOSING CLIMATE SCIENCE CORRUPTION - Jay Lehr/Human Events

Review of The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, by Tim Ball, Ph.D. (Stairway Press 2014), 298 pages, ISBN- 978-0988877740

The debate is over, if there ever was one. Tim Ball argues, with overwhelming evidence, the asserted global warming crisis has been an unmitigated fraud perpetrated by people who no longer have the right to be called scientists. Their collective goal has been to alter society’s future while enriching their own personal lives.

Tracking Major Players
Ball’s book, The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science, is divided into 13 chapters, each of which opens with a picture of a major player in the historical drama of the corruption of climate science. A few are good guys, such as Richard Lindzen, Michael Crichton, and Vaclav Klaus. Most, however, are villains, including the likes of Maurice Strong, Paul Ehrlich, James Hansen, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, and Al Gore.

It's a major scandal and they're acting like it NEVER happened!!

◼ NBC's 'Today' Gives 28 Seconds to Benghazi Emails, Touts White House 'Dismissing Claims' of Cover-Up - MRC

During a 28-second news brief on Thursday's NBC Today, anchor Natalie Morales seized on Obama administration spin downplaying newly-released emails suggesting a cover-up of Benghazi: "The White House is dismissing claims by Senator Lindsey Graham that a previously undisclosed talking points email is a smoking gun about the 2012 attack in Benghazi that killed four Americans....The White House says the email was explicitly not about Benghazi, but was about the overall situation in the region."

◼ Former WH Spox to Baier on Benghazi: ‘Dude, This Was Like Two Years Ago’ - Josh Feldman/Mediaite
◼ Bombshell: NSA Spokesman Says Obama Never Entered The Situation Room During Benghazi Attack - IJ Review VIDEO at the link
◼ CBS Evening News Ignores White House Benghazi Emails Sent By CBS President’s Brother - Vince Coglianese/Daily Caller

The CBS Evening News on Wednesday ignored one of the day’s top news stories: the revelation that White House aide Ben Rhodes — brother of CBS president David Rhodes — instructed Susan Rice to emphasize a false talking point about the 2012 terror attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

In a White House email chain recently obtained through a lawsuit by Judicial Watch, Ben Rhodes urged Rice “[t]o underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy” ahead of her infamous appearance on several Sunday shows.

The decision by CBS to ignore the story made the network unique among the nightly news broadcasts.

◼ NBC, CBS Ignore Congressional Hearing on Benghazi; ABC Gives It Only 46 Seconds - Matt Hadro/MRC

On Thursday evening, ABC was the only broadcast network to cover the day's congressional hearing on the Benghazi attacks. Both CBS and NBC ignored the hearing. ABC only covered the story for 46 seconds; they gave twice that amount of coverage to the U.S. Olympic speedskating suits.

World News quoted retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell, at the U.S. Africa Command headquarters during the attacks, telling Congress that the military "should have done more" to respond. ABC also included the White House's response that according to top military brass, no units were close enough to respond. What ABC didn't include was Lovell's implied answer to that excuse: "The point is we should have tried."

◼ Greg Gutfeld Shreds Media Over Benghazi Asking “Who Pushed the Video?” - IJ Review



◼ Even CNN is openly mocking White House claims that the emails 'were not about Benghazi' - CainTV

◼ CNN's Tapper on WH Benghazi Responses: "Dissembling, Obfuscating, Insulting" - Guy Benson/Townhall

CNN anchor Jake Tapper -- who interviewed Amb. Susan Rice on September 16, 2012 on ABC's This Week -- appeared on Hugh Hewitt's nationally-syndicated radio show last night to discuss the administration's response to newly-disclosed Benghazi emails. Asked about White House spokesman Jay Carney's dishonest and smug performance over the last few days, Tapper offers a cold assessment:



DRUDGE:
Darrell Issa demands John Kerry appear before committee over Benghazi... Developing...
'Disturbing disregard for legal obligations'...
'Not a game'...
FLASH: Boehner to Form Select Committee... Developing...
House GOP: Withholding email 'criminal'...
KRAUTHAMMER: Like discovery of Nixon Tapes during Watergate...
Obama Official: 'Dude, This Was Like Two Years Ago'...
PELOSI: 'Why Aren't We Talking About Something Else?'

Jay Carney Lets Benghazi Cat Out Of The Bag

◼ link - Neil Munro/Daily Caller

White House spokesman Jay Carney let President Barack Obama’s Benghazi cat out of the bag today, when he acknowledged that the president’s unilateral intervention in the 2011 Libyan civil war hasn’t led to a stable government in the Islamic and tribal country....

Three days after the Sept. 11 attack, White House officials discussed how to spin the Benghazi disaster, which threatened to upset Obama’s November reelection strategy.

The officials quickly choose to blame the attack on Arab inability to control supposed anger over a YouTube docudrama produced by a Egyptian immigrant in California, rather than a possible “broader failure of policy” in Libya, Egypt and the Arab region.

The official spin, according to the memo, on page 13 of this link, should be that “these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

The spin was successful. It kept the “broader failure of policy” issue out the 2012 election, and kept the GOP and the media focused on the credibility of the YouTube claim.

Since the election, GOP investors and media reports have focused on the White House’s promotion of the distracting video, not on the possible “broader failure of policy” that the officials have successfully sidelined for 18 months.

But Carney slipped today, and accidentally highlighted some of the “broader failure of policy” when he was asked by a reporter to explain why the U.S. has failed to catch the jihadis who killed four Americans, even after 18 months of investigations and surveillance.

“Attempts to move forward with a democratic government are challenging and are not often successful, at least, every step is not forward,” he admitted....

◼ Benghazi: American ‘Liberalism’ and the Mainstream Media on Trial - Roger L. Simon/PJM

...We still do not know why no attempt was made to rescue our people during the attacks since no one knew how long they would go on and why no one has been apprehended for these attacks. Those are only two of the ongoing mysteries about Benghazi. Where was the president that night? What did he and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton talk about in their telephone conversation? We have heard rumors of gun running, MANPADs and on and on.

But what remains is something tragically simple. The Obama Administration and related entities (State, intelligence, etc.) were willing to lie about the murder of truly heroic American citizens in order to protect their behinds and, more importantly and scandalously, win an election. And people like Candy Crowley of CNN were all too willing to help them....

More revelations are coming certainly. Democratic leaders like Pelosi look nervous. Jay Carney appears like a cross between Baghdad Bob and a Soviet apparatchik when he stands in front of the press these days. And many in the press themselves stand close to humiliation, not just the president of CBS News, who happens to be the brother of Ben Rhodes....

From Captain America to Maureen Dowd, Obama is losing the media culture war

◼ The thrill up the leg is gone. - Howard Kurtz/FOX

President Obama’s media supporters are abandoning him. Even the liberal culture seems to be abandoning him. And as he slips into the low 40s in two recent polls, it’s hard to see how he recasts his once-glittering image.

This is the kind of sea change that goes beyond polling numbers. The very mass culture that celebrated Barack Obama, that turned him into an international icon, is now migrating toward the darker side of his legacy, perhaps fueled by a sense of frustration and disappointment.

On the pundit front, the president’s self-description on his Asia trip as a man trying to hit singles and doubles, along with the occasional homer, drew a stinging rebuke from Maureen Dowd. The New York Times columnist’s message: Stop whining....

This comes after her Times colleague David Brooks questioned Obama’s manhood in the Middle East, and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank called the president’s Asia trip aimless and said he didn’t project much of anything.

But it’s not just the Beltway types who have soured on the president.

Now Obama also has Captain America against him. A New York Times piece says the new movie is set against the backdrop of an infiltrated U.S. government with evil assassins and killer drones--inspired, the director says, by "the same sort of questions Barack Obama has to address."

"What many screenwriters, novelists and visual artists have seized on is not an inspirational story of the first black president. Instead they have found more compelling story lines in the bleaker, morally fraught parts of Mr. Obama’s legacy."

The piece adds that "the public relations machinery of the White House assiduously tries to control Mr. Obama’s image and legacy, but there is nothing it can do to stop artistic interpretation of his policies."

◼ Is Barry Whiffing? - Maureen Dowd/New York Times
◼ Apathy in the Executive - Peggy Noonan/Wall Street Journal

...Popes aren't presidents, and presidents aren't saints. Both operate within wildly different realities and have wholly different obligations, so to compare the two isn't quite just. And yet I couldn't help think the past week of President Obama, whom I started to think of as poor Obama—whose failings as a leader are now so apparent, and seem so irremediable, partly because they spring from not only his nature and personality but his misunderstanding of what leaders do....

The aspect of the presidency he seems to enjoy most is the perks—the splashy vacations, the planes, the hoops, the golf. When his presidency is over there will be the perks of the post-presidency—foundations, libraries, million-dollar speeches, staff, protection. A literary agent estimated he'll get up to $20 million for his memoirs, Michelle Obama perhaps $12 million....

Jeb Bush's Endorsement Boosts Neel Kashkari.

◼ California Republican gubernatorial candidate Neel Kashkari won the high-powered endorsement of potential Republican presidential contender and ex-Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who praised the former Treasury Department aide's focus on education and the economy. - Newsmax

"California needs a leader who will take on bold reforms that put students first," Bush wrote in a letter declaring his support, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

...The heavyweight support could help Kashkari gain some ground in his race against GOP Assemblyman Tim Donnelly in the June 3 primary, the newspaper noted. Incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to be the Democratic choice in the primary.

Sharyl Attkisson: CBS told me it wasn’t relevant to our Benghazi coverage that the president of the news division is Ben Rhodes’s brother

◼ link - Allahpundit/HotAir

She wanted the network to disclose in its Benghazi stories that, oh by the way, the guy who’s in charge of news programming here is a blood relation to the guy who was overseeing the White House’s end of the controversial CIA talking points that Susan Rice got after the attack. The response: No, that’s so irrelevant to our coverage that we shouldn’t devote even three seconds of airtime to mentioning it every now and then. Better to leave CBS viewers totally in the dark.

"I got everybody here apologizing for the White House. What about a cover-up here, Donny?!...what's the politics of the White House lying about something that we all know they're lying about?"

◼ link - Kyle Drennen/Newsbusters

On Thursday's MSNBC Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough annihilated liberal pundit Donny Deutsch's attempt to defend the Obama White House over emails showing a cover-up of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack...

[W]ith just two exceptions, at least since 1950, all the multiple victim public shootings in the United States have taken place where guns are banned.

◼ FedEx Mass Shooting Took Place in Gun-Free Zone - CNS

Yesterday, a man decided to go on a shooting rampage at a local FedEx facility in Kennesaw, Georgia. He injured six people, with one of them in critical condition. It's a terrible tragedy, and it happened even though the FedEx facility is a "gun-free zone."

...The anti-gun folks don't want to talk about this...

WaPo/ABC Oversamples Democrats, Undersamples Republicans, And STILL...

◼ 7 Takeaways from a WaPo/ABC Poll That Suggest End is Near for Democrat Control - IJ Review

Ever since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2006 and coasted on a wave of terrible economic news and hopeychanginess into the White House, the left-wing party has been effectively in control of Washington D.C.

A new poll from WaPo/ABC News suggests that it’s going to take more than finger-pointing to save the Democratic Party’s bacon. See why at the link.

Going Viral: Princeton University Student’s Bold Response After Allegedly Being Told Repeatedly to ‘Check Your Privilege’

◼ Tal Fortgang, a freshman at Princeton University, says he has been ordered to “check your privilege” by his “moral superiors” several times this year because he happens to be a white male. In a column in the Princeton Tory, Fortgang takes on the ideology he says ”assumes that simply because I belong to a certain ethnic group I should be judged collectively with it.” - The Blaze

“‘Check your privilege,’ they tell me in a command that teeters between an imposition to actually explore how I got where I am, and a reminder that I ought to feel personally apologetic because white males seem to pull most of the strings in the world,” he continues.

Fortgang then explores his family’s history to figure out where his “privilege” comes from:

Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.

Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.

Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.....

“Behind every success, large or small, there is a story, and it isn’t always told by sex or skin color. My appearance certainly doesn’t tell the whole story, and to assume that it does and that I should apologize for it is insulting,” Fortgang writes. “While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life. But that is a legacy I am proud of.”

“I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing,” he concludes.

Fortgang is from New Rochelle, N.Y., and plans to major in either history or politics.

◼ Read his entire column here. Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege - The Princeton Story

Krauthammer: Most Scandalous Element of Benghazi Is Hillary Invoking Video When Consoling Victims’ Families

◼ LINK - Washington Free Beacon

Charles Krauthammer: White House 'cover-up of a cover-up' is the 'smoking document' of the Benghazi scandal

◼ Krauthammer: ‘Mainstream Media’ Won’t Be Interested in Benghazi ‘Cover-up of a Cover-up’ - Heritage Foundry

The email Krauthammer called “the smoking document” implicating the White House is dated three days after the attack on Sept. 11, 2012.

One goal of Rice’s appearances Sept. 16 on all five Sunday morning talk shows was “To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy,” according to Rhodes’ email.

Rice is now Obama’s national security advisor. Rhodes, then the White House deputy communications director, is now Rice’s deputy for strategic communications and speechwriting.
Krauthammer condemned the Obama administration for shifting responsibility for the sanitized talking points to intelligence officials.

◼ Charles Krauthammer: White House 'cover-up of a cover-up' is the 'smoking document' of the Benghazi scandal - Justin Green/Washington Examiner



The White House Disinformation Campaign on Benghazi, Libya



◼ ABC’s Jon Karl Sends Jay Carney to Press Conference Hell Over New Benghazi Emails - IJ Review

◼ Pelosi: Discussion of White House Benghazi Email Is GOP 'Subterfuge' - John McCaormack/Weekly Standard

Pelosi said she hadn't read the email, but was certain that the discussion of it was simply a Republican "subterfuge."

"I haven't seen that, but I will say is again, diversion, subterfuge. Benghazi, Benghazi, Benghazi. Why aren't we talking about something else?" Pelosi said. "What I know of what I've read in the press about those emails is very consistent with what was put out there before."

"He also posted pictures of license plates allegedly belonging to Tea Party members and asked supporters to identify them, the Examiner notes. Now the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is “looking into” possible illegal activity by Dickinson as he may have violated federal law."

◼ Democrat Urges Supporters to Call 911 on ‘Tea Partiers’ to Harass Them — But His Plan Could Seriously Backfire - The Blaze

Now the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is “looking into” possible illegal activity by Dickinson as he may have violated federal law.

“Supreme Court says it’s perfectly legal to call in anonymous tips. A tea partier looks like a terrorist to me,” he wrote on Twitter.... He later tweeted the license plate belonging to a “tea party idiot and Twitchy captured a screengrab in case he decided to delete it. The plate is blacked out for obvious reasons.

One Twitter user recognized the potential violation of the law and passed along the information to the Federal Elections Commission and the Virginia DMV.

“The person who reported the information also suggested Dickinson might also be guilty of violating RICO statutes,” according to the Examiner.

The Virginia DMV replied on Twitter on Monday, saying “We take serious any allegation like this” and driver information “is private & protected.”

“We’ll be looking into it,” the agency said.

Democrats Abort Their Texas Takeover

◼ Thus ends the campaign of “Abortion Barbie” Wendy Davis. I told the Democrats they couldn’t run a gubernatorial campaign in Texas on pink shoes and children ripped limb from limb. But the Cult of Moloch is so strong with them, they were convinced their gods would help them. - Erick Erickson/RedState

No more.

Under investigation from the FBI; off the campaign trail for neck surgery; losing women to the white, male Republican; and not getting enough support from south state Hispanic voters, poor old Wendy Davis is collapsing. The Democratic Governors Association chair says winning Texas is not a priority. The money isn’t going to be flowing to Wendy like she thought.

◼ Democratic Governors Association chair not exactly optimistic about Davis campaign - San Antonio Express-News

Ralph Nader's America: Impeach Obama, decriminalize drugs, libertarians & progressives unite!

◼ link - Jeff Zeleny, Jordyn Phelps, and Alexandra Dukakis/Yahoo

What if Washington politics were no longer defined by partisan gridlock but instead by a cross-party alliance that forged solutions? The alliance would be unstoppable.

That’s the premise of the new book “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State” by longtime political activist and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging....

...When it comes to the current president, Nader said that Obama has violated the Constitution on several occasions and should be impeached.

"Oh, most definitely," Nader said when asked if Congress should bring forward articles of impeachment against Obama. "The reason why Congress doesn't want to do it is because it's abdicated its own responsibility under the Constitution."

Nader said the president's use of military force in Libya has been his most "egregious violation of the Constitution."

“Even as Congressional Democrats were calling for an end to the Benghazi investigation with false claims that everything had been turned over and examined, the State Department was hiding this e-mail and other documents covered by the Committee’s August 2013 subpoena”

◼ Congress only saw latest Benghazi e-mail two weeks ago - Ed Morrisey/HotAir

Yesterday’s blockbuster release of a Ben Rhodes e-mail took the media by surprise yesterday, which had for months shrugged at demands to ask more questions about Benghazi. That was old news until the September 14, 2012 memo from the White House adviser surfaced, stipulating that Susan Rice’s appearances on news programs less than two days later had the goal of convincing people that the attack that killed four Americans was not brought on by “a broader failure of policy,” by stressing that “these protests are rooted in an Internet video.” The White House had insisted for almost a year that it had released all of the communications relating to the Rice talking points, both to Congress and the press.

◼ Obama Administration Accused Of Slow Walking Congress On Benghazi - Eli Lake/Daily Beast

An important email on Benghazi that showed the White House's role in the election season spin about the attack was only made available to a key Congressional committee two weeks ago.

Almost since Congress began investigating the Benghazi attacks of September 11, 2012 in Libya, the White House has stressed its unprecedented cooperation with lawmakers seeking to get to the bottom of the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

Those claims were challenged Tuesday after the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch published an email from deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes to senior administration officials on what they should say about the Benghazi attacks.

...“Even as Congressional Democrats were calling for an end to the Benghazi investigation with false claims that everything had been turned over and examined, the State Department was hiding this e-mail and other documents covered by the Committee’s August 2013 subpoena,” the committee’s deputy staff director, Frederick Hill told The Daily Beast.

Hill added, “It is disturbing that this highly important e-mail showing a White House role in pushing a false narrative was only turned over after it was discovered by the Department’s FOIA office in response to a specific request. While he had promised cooperation, by hiding subpoenaed documents from Congress, Secretary Kerry is failing to meet his legal obligations.”

◼ ...MORE...

Yes, The White House Did Tell Susan Rice To Lie About Benghazi

◼ More than 100 pages of documents - Jim Treacher/Daily Caller
◼ Email Shows White House Planned Benghazi Video Deception - Neil Munro/Daily Caller

White House officials consciously planned to spin the successful 2012 jihadi attack on the Benghazi diplomatic compound as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam video, according to a new email exposed by the public-interest law firm Judicial Watch.

The Sept. 14 email by Ben Rhodes, President Obama’s chief foreign policy spokesman, described the public relations goals for a planned briefing of a top official — Susan Rice — who was scheduled to appear Sept. 16 on five Sunday talk-shows.

She was invited on the shows to explain the September 11 attack, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The subject of the email was “PREP CALL with Susan.”

◼ Benghazi Emails Show White House Effort to Protect Obama - Washington Free Beacon

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”

...The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.

◼ BENGHAZI BOMBSHELL: EMAILS PROVE THE ‘VIDEO PROTEST’ DECEPTION WAS DIRECTLY ORDERED BY THE WHITE HOUSE - John Hayward/Human Events @Doc_o

All that spin from Obama apologists, gone in an instant. All those questions about the original of the false “video protest” narrative pushed by the White House to save Barack Obama’s re-election campaign, answered at a stroke. Yes, it was all a lie, and the White House knew it.

They ordered it, for blatantly political purposes, and kept the proof secret until Judicial Watch finally managed to uncover some long-suppressed correspondence with a Freedom of Information Act request....
None of these documents are exactly “shocking,” because they buttress exactly what critics of the Administration have been saying all along. It’s another great example of Obama’s strategy for political survival by “winning,” or at least enduring, one news cycle at a time. Bombshell revelations lose their explosive force over time. Emails that would have ended the 2012 presidential campaign are now a historical footnote. The Obama-friendly mainstream press is unlikely to bring the story they’ve been trying to bury for the past two years back to the front pages, just to inform their readers that all of spin they previously delivered was invalid. Critics of President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were 100 percent right all along… but as the latter so memorably put it, “what difference, at this point, does it make?”

◼ New Benghazi Emails Mean Obama Impeachment Trial Must Be Launched - Roger L Simon/PJMedia

I didn’t know how right I was when I wrote on September 29, 2012 ◼ “Benghazi Worse then Watergate.”

With the release of new emails it is spectacularly worse — so bad in fact that it has made a full investigation with an impeachment trial necessary for the protection of our republic.

...The levels of criminality involved in this are mind-boggling. Everyone from Ben Rhodes to Hillary Clinton to Jay Carney to Susan Rice to Mike Morell to Barack Obama and on and on must explain themselves minute-by-minute. American “liberals” and their media consorts should search their souls. People died here....

Anyone who now considers Benghazi a “fake scandal” is a either a complete liar or a moron. This new release of emails thanks to Judicial Watch is literally a call to arms. We will now see if there is even a figment of honesty in our mainstream media and if our elected representatives are to be trusted in any way.

◼ Newly released Benghazi documents reinforce that White House was pushing that video was to blame - Jake Tapper/CNN

These newly released documents include “TOPLINE POINTS” in question and answer form, prepared by the national security staff, apparently part of the briefing for Susan Rice, then the U.N. ambassador, in preparation for her appearance on Sunday interview shows.

◼ New Evidence Shows White House Role in Changing Benghazi Talking Points - Heritage
◼ The Emails - Judicial Watch

Wait. Ben Rhodes. Isn't that the brother of the CBS exec who tried to tamp down @SharylAttkisson's stories? http://t.co/Jt9XTQxc5F

— RB (@RBPundit) April 29, 2014

Todd Starnes: The Benghazi smoking gun has been found -- and the Obama Administration is about to find out what difference its going to make.

10,000 Commandments: Average U.S. household spends more on federal regulations than for health care, food or transportation

◼ 10,000 (very costly) Commandments - Mark Tapscott/Washington Examiner

Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute... latest edition of his annual compilation, "10,000 Commandments: An annual snapshot of the federal regulatory state."

Crews estimates the annual cost of compliance with the record number of new federal rules and regulations issued under President Obama at $1.863 trillion.

That works out to a $14,974 "hidden tax" every year for the average U.S. household. That's 23 percent of the $65,596 annual average household income in America.

You can't do that! Or that! Or that!

Just how well-chosen is Crews' title is seen in another data point produced for the 2014 edition of his study: Congress passed and Obama signed 72 new laws in 2013. The federal bureaucracy to date has issued 3,659 rules to implement those new laws.

The Federal Register in 2013 devoted 26,417 pages just to publishing the new rules. That's the most ever in a single year.

◼ Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State - Competitive Enterprise Institute

Ten Thousand Commandments is an annual report by CEI Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on the growing compliance costs of federal regulations. The purpose of the report is to hold legislators and regulators accountable for the regulatory burdens they impose on American business owners, workers, and families.

About the report: The federal government primarily funds its programs in three ways. The first is to raise taxes to pay for new programs. The second is to borrow money to pay for them (with a promise to pay back that borrowed money, with interest, from taxes collected in the future).

The third way the government can accomplish its goals is to regulate. That is, rather than pay directly and book the expense of a new initiative, it can require that the private sector and lower-level governments pay. By regulating, the government can carry out desired programs but avoid using tax dollars to fund them. This process sometimes allows Congress to escape accountability and to blame agencies for costs. Since disclosure and accountability for regulation are limited, policymakers have little incentive to care about the extent of regulatory costs or where those costs stand in relation to ordinary government spending. Regulatory costs are unbudgeted and lack the formal presentation to the public and media to which ordinary federal spending is subject, and thus regulatory initiatives allow the government to direct private-sector resources to a significant degree without much public fuss. In that sense, regulation can be thought of as off-budget taxation.

Another perspective:

◼ Donald Sterling: Watch what he does, not what he says! - Charles Butler
__________________
◼ L.A. Clippers Owner to GF: Don't Bring Black People to My Games ... Including Magic Johnson - TMZ
◼ Donald Sterling's wife slams her 'small-minded and despicable' husband as LA Clippers REFUSE to show shirt logos in protest over owner's racist rant as he fights to stay in NBA - Mail ONline
◼ 'How can we make this go away?' Donald Sterling 'contacts ex-girlfriend over racist rant tape' amid claims she has 100 HOURS of recordings
◼ NAACP Willing to ´Forgive´ Clippers´ Donald Sterling After Yanking Award - ABC

The NAACP said today they are still willing to work with Los Angeles Clippers´ owner Donald Sterling despite yanking an offer of a lifetime achievement award over an audio tape containing racist comments that Sterling allegedly made. (Snip) "We are negotiating with him about giving more moneys to African American students at UCLA, and so we are in preliminary discussions," Jenkins said. He also noted, however, they had not spoken since the scandal broke. The news conference was held to discuss the organization´s decision to cancel plans to honor to Sterling with a lifetime achievement in the wake of the tape...

◼ Media Ignoring Dem Donations of LA Clippers' Owner, Allegedly Caught on Tape in Race-Based Rant - Newsbusters

...if the Clippers' owner had a 20 year-old record of donating to Republican candidates, it would not only be included in mainstream media stories about the controversy; it would also be considered prima facie evidence of racism.

So far, there's stone silence about Sterling's politics in stories found at the Associated Press, which notes that Sterling "has a decades-long history of alleged discrimination and offensive behavior"; the New York Times; and the Washington Post, which has included a quote from the Clippers' team president noting that the woman involved "is the defendant in a lawsuit brought by the Sterling family alleging that she embezzled more than $1.8 million."

◼ PUNISHMENT: SUSPENSION? FINE? OWNERSHIP? - LA TIMES
◼ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Welcome to the Finger-Wagging Olympics - TIME

It's time to look at ourselves — and our collective moral outrage — in the mirror, says former NBA player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Moral outrage is exhausting. And dangerous. The whole country has gotten a severe case of carpal tunnel syndrome from the newest popular sport of Extreme Finger Wagging. Not to mention the neck strain from Olympic tryouts for Morally Superior Head Shaking...

And now the poor guy’s girlfriend (undoubtedly ex-girlfriend now) is on tape cajoling him into revealing his racism. Man, what a winding road she led him down to get all of that out. She was like a sexy nanny playing “pin the fried chicken on the Sambo.” She blindfolded him and spun him around until he was just blathering all sorts of incoherent racist sound bites that had the news media peeing themselves with glee.

They caught big game on a slow news day, so they put his head on a pike, dubbed him Lord of the Flies, and danced around him whooping....

A Doctor's Declaration of Independence

◼ It's time to defy health-care mandates issued by bureaucrats not in the healing profession. - Daniel F. Craviotto Jr.

In my 23 years as a practicing physician, I've learned that the only thing that matters is the doctor-patient relationship. How we interact and treat our patients is the practice of medicine. I acknowledge that there is a problem with the rising cost of health care, but there is also a problem when the individual physician in the trenches does not have a voice in the debate and is being told what to do and how to do it.

As a group, the nearly 880,000 licensed physicians in the U.S. are, for the most part, well-intentioned. We strive to do our best even while we sometimes contend with unrealistic expectations. The demands are great, and many of our families pay a huge price for our not being around. We do the things we do because it is right and our patients expect us to.

So when do we say damn the mandates and requirements from bureaucrats who are not in the healing profession? When do we stand up and say we are not going to take it any more?...

Hot Trailer: Dinesh D’Souza’s ‘America’

DRUDGE: New Trailer for Dinesh D'Souza's 'AMERICA' Takes on the Haters...



◼ Having made the second-highest-grossing political documentary of all time, the team behind 2016: Obama’s America is now, as promised, following up with America. - deadline.com

Sending up some fireworks of his own to rival the ones 2016 generated, producer-writer and kind-of host Dinesh D’Souza says of his new docu, “We answer the central moral challenge of America’s critics, which is that America’s greatness is based on theft, plunder and oppression.” Listen for other red-button phrases from interviewees describing the USA as “the new evil empire” and a “predatory colonial power” as well as referring to Mount Rushmore as “a symbol of oppression and genocide to our people.” Director John Sullivan’s film comes out two years after its predecessors — hitting theaters on the Fourth of July....

She tries to mischaracterize him right off the bat.. big mistake. Watch the clip.

◼ 'Sorry, Candy, Whoa!' Benjamin Netanyahu Vigorously Schools Candy Crowley - Newsbusters

That was the sound of Candy Crowley about to be vigorously schooled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on CNN's State of the Union. As if he were a teacher attempting to straighten out an errant student with the facts, Netayahu added, " No, Candy. No, no. I'm sorry. I heard that. I hear people write that up, but, in fact, it's the very opposite." Chastened student Crowley finally corrected corrected herself. If only more guests on her show were as strenuous in correcting Crowley.

California loses 5000 more jobs

◼ It Makes Sense For Toyota To Leave California For Texas

For Japanese auto brands, the logic of keeping their U.S. sales and administrative arms in California is breaking down under the outsized penalties of conducting business in the Golden State and the changing dynamics of the North American automotive industry. So Toyota is leaving, according to Automotive News.

And where is Japan’s biggest automaker relocating its sales and marketing operations in America? Why, North Texas, of course. The move MOVE -3.45% to Plano, Texas, will involve most of the 5,000 managers and employees at Toyota’s current Torrance, Calif., headquarters, the magazine said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry apparently didn’t even have to make a recruiting trip to southern California to get Toyota to do this, although he has helped lure plenty of companies with that gambit over the last several years....

A half-century ago, Toyota and other Japanese brands clustered in southern California when they began their assault on the U.S. market because California offered the single best market opportunity for Asian brands coming to America and because the state’s location closest to Japan made logistics easiest.

For most of the time since then, California’s justified reputation as America’s automotive, societal, cultural, and economic bellwether continued to ratify the Japanese brands’ focus there. Consider how Toyota was able to grow its Prius hybrid line into the segment’s dominant brand by starting with an emphasis in California.

But now Toyota and most of it Japanese rivals are treating North America like their domestic market — meaning that a California lens isn’t always the best one. Maybe a new headquarters in Flyover Country will be.

◼ Toyota withdrawal a bombshell, economic blow to California city - Reuters

Toyota Motor Corp's decision to move its North American sales headquarters from California to Texas was met by disbelief in Torrance, this Los Angeles exurb where the Japanese car manufacturer has run its U.S. operations since 1982.

Torrance Mayor Frank Scotto, looking grim, said outside city hall on Monday that he had been blindsided by the move. A few feet away sat Pat Simpson, a Torrance resident for over 60 years, with her head in her hands. "Why do they want to tear this place apart?" Simpson, 72, asked.

◼ California Tops List of 10 States With Highest Taxes - CNS

“I don’t think the general public has any idea their health care dollar doesn’t go to the health care provider.”

◼ Obamacare deals death blow to one-doctor clincs - UT San Diego

Despite the predictions of fortune tellers in politics and think tanks, we won’t know for years whether the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, will ultimately leave people sicker or healthier, richer or poorer.

Yet already the law, coming on top of previous legislation, is speeding the demise of an American small-business institution; the one-doctor medical practice.....

So far, nobody knows if the move to factory-style medicine will improve the quality or cost of care.

Yet there’s no question that patients are losing something valuable. It’s OK to be sad about this.

Straight talk about Republican Congressional candidate Carl DeMaio

◼ ...DeMaio has been the target of homophobic attacks. But where are those attacks coming from?... - Dana Perino/FOX

"I've found more tolerance, acceptance and inclusion from social conservative groups who have to reconcile that I'm a Republican who happens to be gay...versus the intolerance the LGBT leaders see me as a gay man who happens to be a Republican," DeMaio said.

As the race heats up and DeMaio gains in the polls ahead of the Republican primary on June 3rd, the LGBT groups have gone from silence about his candidacy to actively working against him.

“Despite claims that they insist on tolerance, diversity and acceptance on all political issues, I suspect that they really want to keep intact their alliance with unions so that they don't upset their funding sources and coalition. The Democratic groups need the GOP to remain the bogeyman because if the Republicans are no longer a threat, who needs to donate to these LGBT political groups?” he said....

But the person least interested in DeMaio’s sexual orientation is, predictably, DeMaio himself, who labors mightily to stay focused on the issues that truly concern him.

“Our economy is in the tank. We’re in a national debt crisis. The progressive agenda in D.C. is not producing results. Washington politicians from both political parties can't defend their broken programs, so they have to play the shiny object game on social issues,” he says. And so he has to find a way to talk about everything all at once, while pointedly not talking about his sexuality.

And it’s working. DeMaio has a strong record to run on, and his policy platform is solid. He is an entrepreneur who says that the economy needs to be turned around. He believes that he would not be able to succeed in today’s economy as he did in the past.

Enough fraud to swing elections found in Florida. 3000 registrations list UPS stores as residence

◼ More Florida voter fraud? 3000 registrations list UPS stores as residence - Allen West

...A review of the state-mandated voter registration list reveals that of the 3,000 UPS store registrations:

- 1,200 match addresses already known as commercial that were ignored
- 500 match addresses erroneously marked as residential
- 1,100 have no match at all.

The question is, when stories like this surface, how can the voting electorate believe there is integrity in their electoral process? We’ve reported here on the Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Ohio poll worker, Melowese Richardson, who voted nearly seven times. She was supposed to have a five-year sentence but thanks to Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, she served just about 18 months.

Oh and by the way, she wasn’t charged by the federal government with any type of voter fraud allegations — so much for Eric Holder’s concern about voter suppression....

A Good Explanation of Why We Need To Understand The Left's Arguments [CBD]

◼ "Can, say, a Republican write a defense of the minimum wage that a reader of the Daily Kos would accept, or will it just come out sounding like a straw man? " - Ace

◼ Ideological Turing Tests, Climate, and Minimum Wage - Coyote Blog

Long ago, Tacitus said "Proprium humani ingenii est odisse quem laeseris. (It is a principle of human nature to hate those whom you have injured.)" Or as people have more recently noted, the Europeans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz.

◼ Overnight Open Thread at Ace

◼ Yom Hashoah — Holocaust Remembrance Day - Bookworm Room

The media is turning on President Obama

◼ With multiple crises spiraling out of control around the world, stories about the Obama presidency are taking on the air of postmortems. What went wrong, who’s to blame, what next — even The New York Times is starting to recognize that Dear Leader is a global flop. - Michael Goodwin/Washington Post

“Obama Suffers Setbacks in Japan and the Mideast,” the paper declared on Friday’s front page. The double whammy of failure pushed the growing Russian menace in ­Europe to inside pages, but even they were chock-full of reports about utopia gone wrong.

One story detailed how the White House was facing the “consequences of underestimating” North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. Others recounted the continuing Syrian slaughter and the murder of three Americans in Afghanistan.

The accounts and others like them amount to an autopsy of a failed presidency, but the process won’t be complete unless it is completely honest. To meet that test, the Times, other liberal news organizations and leading Democrats, in and out of office, must come to grips with their own failures, as well.

Obama had a free hand to make a mess because they gave it to him. They cheered him on, supporting him with unprecedented gobs of money and near-unanimous votes. They said “aye” to any cockamamie concept he came up with, echoed his demonization of critics and helped steamroll unpopular and unworkable ideas into reality....

That he is now the imperial president he used to bemoan is no long­er in dispute. The milking of perks, from golf trips to Florida to European vacations for the first lady, is shockingly vulgar, but not a peep of protest comes from his supporters.

The IRS becomes a political enforcer, but that, too, is accepted because nobody will risk their access by telling Obama no. You are either with him or you are his enemy.

The evidence is everywhere that his ideas are flawed, that his view of economics, diplomacy, the military, history, science and religion are warped by his own narcissism. He doesn’t even talk a good game anymore.

Yet it remains a fool’s errand to hope he will correct his ways. He is not capable; he looks in the mirror and sees only a savior....

We need to expose the leaders and people in the tea party. Names and addresses.

Unhinged:

We need to expose the leaders and people in the tea party. Names and addresses.

— DickinsonForCongress (@VoteMike2014) April 26, 2014

◼ Congressional candidate: ‘When you see tea partiers driving or swerving, call the police’ - Twitchy

Self-defined left-wing liberal Mike Dickinson, who is running to unseat Rep. Eric Cantor in Congress, has made no secret of his hatred of the Tea Party. When he says he wants the names and addresses of Tea Party members, he’s not kidding. Now he’s asking people to collect and run the license plates of Tea Partiers so he can expose the Tea Party “idiots.”

When you see tea partiers driving or swerving call the police- likely they have a gun in vehicle and no carry/concealed. Let the laws work

— DickinsonForCongress (@VoteMike2014) April 26, 2014

◼ Earlier: Candidate takes his ‘war on Fox News’ to Greta Van Susteren [video] - Twitchy

Pope Francis makes history with dual canonization of Pope John XXIII, Pope John Paul II

◼ Hundreds of thousands gather at Rome to witness canonisation of two great figures of 20th-century Roman Catholicism - Lizzy Davies in Vatican City/The Guardian

Pope Francis has declared two of his predecessors, John Paul II and John XXIII, saints of the Roman Catholic church in an unprecedented double-canonisation mass in St Peter's Square.

The two towering figures of the 20th-century church were canonised to great applause from hundreds of thousands of pilgrims gathered in the Vatican piazza.

◼ Pope Francis declared Popes John XXIII and John Paul II saints before some 800,000 people on Sunday in an unprecedented ceremony made even more historic by the presence of emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Square. - AP via FOX

Never before have a reigning pope and a retired pope celebrated Mass together in public, much less at an event honoring two of their most famous predecessors.

Benedict's presence was a reflection of the balancing act that Francis envisioned when he decided to canonize John and John Paul together, showing the unity of the Catholic Church by honoring popes beloved by conservatives and progressives alike....