The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Enemies List: Holder’s DOJ and Hillary’s State Department Targeted Fox Reporter

Posted on | May 20, 2013 | 11 Comments

Everybody’s buzzing today about the Washington Post report that Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen was targeted in a Justice Department investigation of a leak by a State Department official — at least two years before the similar probe of Associated Press that raised cries of outrage from the D.C. media last week.

That probe began after Rosen reported in June 2009 that “that U.S. intelligence officials were warning that North Korea was likely to respond to United Nations sanctions with more nuclear tests,” according to the Post‘s Anne E. Marimow. Rosen’s article at FoxNews.com was filed the same day that a top-secret report on North Korea’s nuclear program “was made available to a small circle within the intelligence community — including Kim.” According to documents in the Kim case obtained by the Washington Post, federal agents obtained phone and e-mail records for Rosen, as well as records of the Fox reporter’s use of a State Department security-badge swipe card . . .

Let’s ask an obvious question here: Of all the leaks from this administration, how many were the subject of this kind of investigation?

Because it seems rather . . . coincidental, we might say, that this 2009 item by a Fox News reporter should have been the focus of such an elaborate inquiry. If you were of a suspicious disposition, you might wonder if the Secretary of State and the Attorney General were determined that, in particular, Fox News should have no sources inside the Obama administration.

C’mon: How many leakers has Eric Holder’s DOJ prosecuted the way they prosecuted Stephen Jin-Woo Kim? Was this intended as a message to administration officials — “Don’t talk to Fox News” — and was it also an attempt to treat Fox News as a criminal enterprise?


Category: Eric Holder, Fox News, Hillary Clinton, Journalism, Scandal

When the Truth Is Scandalous

Posted on | May 20, 2013 | 22 Comments

Jonathan Karl of ABC News is evidently a Republican, and liberals think it’s a horrible scandal that a Republican could be employed as a reporter: “Didn’t he see the ‘No Republicans Allowed’ sign?”

Meanwhile, Jason Richwine’s recent resignation from the Heritage Foundation, a subject I haven’t previously discussed, yields a secondary story that is either amusing or frightening, depending on whether you take Harvard students seriously:

Harvard students, outraged over a doctoral dissertation arguing that Hispanic immigrants lack “raw cognitive ability or intelligence,” this week urged the university to investigate how the thesis came to be approved and to ban future research on racial superiority. students presented 1,200 signatures to president Drew Faust and the dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, David Ellwood.
“Academic freedom and a reasoned debate are essential to our academic community,’’ the petition said. “However, the Harvard Kennedy School cannot ethically stand behind academic work advocating a national policy of exclusion and advancing an agenda of discrimination.”
The thesis — “IQ and Immigration Policy,’’ by Jason Richwine, a former doctoral candidate at the Kennedy School — compared IQ scores of US residents, including immigrants from a variety of countries, and concluded that the scores of Hispanic immigrants were substantially lower than those of native whites. The paper argued that the United States should allow only immigrants with high IQs.

This controversy essentially re-hashes the controversy over Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein’s The Bell Curve back in the 1990s. And the problem is that the facts are the facts. You can explain the facts or interpret the facts however you wish. You can use the facts as arguments for one policy or another, or you can even argue that the facts have no relevance in terms of policy. What you cannot do — at least if you have any regard for intellectual integrity — is to attempt to suppress the facts as politically incorrect.

This is the same basic problem that Harvard feminists had with Larry Summers, who merely referred to available data in suggesting that innate differences between men and women explained the relative paucity of women in elite science positions.

In all of these cases, we are talking about measurements of average group differences. I repeat: average group differences.

Men — as a group, on average — are taller and stronger than women. This does not mean there aren’t tall women who could kick my ass. Also, men — again, as a group, on average — have better mathematical aptitude than do women. (It so happens that I’m crappy at math.) Such average group differences don’t really matter in terms of assessing any individual’s aptitude, but do matter when attempting to explain large-scale socio-economic phenomena.

Liberals have spent the past several decades insisting that all socio-economic differences between groups — male and female, white and black, native and immigrant — can be explained in terms of unfair discrimination which must be remedied by policies (including quotas) to equalize outcomes between these groups.

So when Larry Summers tried to say that maybe the reason there aren’t more women doing advanced scientific research at elite institutions is because women aren’t as good at science or, alternately, aren’t as interested as men in pursuing such careers, the feminist outrage was to be expected. Summers had denied the radical-egalitarian thesis that all differences between groups are the result of systematic unfairness —  “social injustice” — that must be rectified at all costs.

To quote Orwell, “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that; no ordinary man could be such a fool.”

Radical egalitarianism so pervades the thinking of our 21st-century intelligentsia that they can’t seem to think outside of its dogma. The witch-hunt against Jason Richwine is typical: Exactly what did he do wrong? He was not, as the article says, doing “research on racial superiority,” nor did he argue that all Hispanics lack “raw cognitive ability or intelligence.” Richwine examined the data and found that — as a group, on average — immigrants score lower on IQ tests than native-born Americans, so that our current policy (or lack thereof) has the effect of lowering the nation’s average intelligence, with consequences that are both unfortunate and predictable.

One can disagree with Richwine’s policy recommendations without shutting down an entire field of academic inquiry, which is what the Harvard petitioners seem to have in mind. But any institution that would make Soledad O’Brien a “distinguished visiting fellow” obviously doesn’t have much intellectual integrity left to lose.

Harvard students are assholes. As a group. On average.

 

Category: Culture, Education, Science

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.20.13

Posted on | May 20, 2013 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho


TOP NEWS
Senate Committee Moves Toward Vote On Immigration

Do the sponsors actually have the votes in the full Senate?

Do the sponsors actually have the votes in the full Senate?

Judiciary Committee still wrestling with contentious high-tech worker visas, same-sex marriage issues

AP President Blasts DOJ Subpoenas
Says DOJ actions are unconstitutional, hurt press


Burma’s Thein Sein: Military Will Always Have Special Place In Government
Dismisses allegations that military involved in anti-Muslim pogroms



POLITICS
Mitch McConnell: Obama Created “Culture Of Intimidation”

Senate Minority Leader: President has created a nanny state

Senate Minority Leader: President has created a nanny state

Blasts White House for IRS targeting of conservative groups

Civil Rights Trial On NYPD “Stop & Frisk” Tactics Closing

Massive Toxic Contamination At Camp Lejeune? (Video)

Obama Gives Commencement Address At Morehouse College

Two FBI Hostage Rescue Team Agents Killed In Training Exercise

Gomez Seeking To Turn Markey’s Long Tenure In Washington From Asset To Liability

Union Of Immigration Enforcement Officers To Oppose Senate Bill

NPR Claims Gay Marriage Bans Take Psychological Toll



THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Oil Falls Back Below $96/Barrel Ahead Of Economic Data Release: NYMEX $95.77, Brent $104.35
Yahoo In Rumored $1.1 BIllion Bid To Buy Tumblr
European Shares Advance With Asia As Yen Climbs And Silver Tumbles
PRC Housing Inflation Quickens In April
Suburban Poor Outnumber Impoverished City Dwellers
Dimon Under Pressure Ahead Of JP Morgan Chase Investor Vote
Elan Makes Two Acquisitions For $380 Million
LG To Unveil Stunning 5-Inch flexible OLED Display Soon
Windows 8: Five Hopeful Signs
Google Glass Year In Review
iOS Devices Approved For Use On Military Networks
New XBox More Than A Game Console To Microsoft
Sony Reveals More Tense Moments In “The Last Of Us”
Samsung Galaxy S4 To Hit $10 Million In Sales
Nokia Initiates MDM Rollout For 25,000 Staff
Dell’s Thumb PC, Project Ophelia, To Ship In July



SPORTS
Late Heroics Propel Senators To Double OT Win Over Penguins

Colin Greening comes through

Colin Greening comes through

Senators still trail 2-1

Unsung Heroes Help Bruins Ice Rangers

Spurs Rout Grizzlies In Game 1, 105-83

Sharks Get Physical, Bring Down Kings In OT

Dwight Howard Headed For Houston Rockets?


Cabrera Hits Three Dingers, Tigers Still Lose To Rangers 11-8

Another Tough Loss For Astros’ Harrell As Bucs Notch 8th Win In 10 Games

Haren Disappoints Again As Nationals Fall To Padres 13-4



FAMOUS FOR BEING FAMOUS
Janet Jackson Talks Eponymous Album’s 20th Anniversary

janet.

janet.

New album on the way

Aimee Teegarden From “Friday Night Lights” Skinny, Unrecognizable

Paris Hilton SWATted Again…

…And So Was Miley Cyrus

Denise Richards On Caring For Sheen/Mueller Kids: “I Want To Be There For Them”

Katrina Bowden Of “30 Rock” Gets Married

Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart Break Up Again

LAPD Investigating Death Threats Against Chris Brown

Justin Bieber And Selena Gomez Attend Billboard Music Awards, But Not Together



FOREIGNERS
NZ Says PRC Refusal Of Meat Imports “A Short-Term Hiccup”
Hunting For Syrian Hackers’ Chain Of Command
Fierce Battle In Syria For Key Town Of Qusair
Hezbollah Suffering Heavy Losses In Syria
Imran Khan Blames Exiled MQM Leader For Death Of Activist
Obama Finally Gets Around To Guantanamo
India, PRC In New Bid To End Border Row
Riots In Tunisia After Ansar-Al-Sharia Meeting Banned
Irish PM’s Reputation At Stake In Safe Passage Of Abortion Bill
Historic Meeting Between Pope Francis And Coptic Patriarch Tawadros Fosters Unity
PRC Urges Norks To Release Fishing Boat



BLOGS & STUFF
Conservatives4Palin: Pfeiffer Tells Stephanopoulos “The Law Is Irrelevant”
Lonely Conservative: White House Adviser Says Legality Of IRS Actions Irrelevent, GOP Should Apologize To Rice
Protein Wisdom: Shorter White House Spokeshole – Shut The F*** Up, Peasants
Riehl World News: Empty Chair? Pfeiffer Says “Irrelevant” Where Obama Was During Benghazi, “Offensive” To Ask
Gateway Pundit: Obama Tells College Grads “I’m A Black Man”
Power Line: How Much Are Obama’s Scandals Hurting Him?
Weekly Standard Blog: More Polling Shows Americans Do Care About IRS, Benghazi Scandals
NewsBusters: Politico’s Gerstein Assumes GOP, Other Efforts To Get At The Truth About “Claiming A Trophy Firing”
Legal Insurrection: State Of Denial
Jihad Watch: Islamic Jihad Top Dog Calls For Muslims To Confront And Destroy Israel
Althouse: “The Onetime Messiah Seems Like A Sad Sack”
Jawa Report: IDF Investigation Concludes Pallywood’s Muhammad Al Dura Not Killed
PJ Tatler: NYT Claims “Climate Warnings Growing Louder” As CO2 Emissions In Free Fall
American Power: E.W. Jackson Wins GOP Nomination For Lieutenant Governor


Category: Live at Five

Experience Matters: Old Man Schieffer Puts Young Punk Pfeiffer in His Place

Posted on | May 19, 2013 | 13 Comments

“It looks like they’ve lost Bob Schieffer,” says John Hoge, which might be a slight exaggeration. Schieffer is a liberal, but he’s also a veteran Washington journalist who has seen enough scandals to know what a scandal looks like, and he was having none of the Jedi mind trick — “These are not the scandals you were looking for. Move along.” — from Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer today. Right off the bat, Pfeiffer tried to cast the argument in partisan terms, which every scandal-plagued politician does, claiming that any suggestion of wrongdoing is a manufactured artifice, the creation of one’s political opponents:

“[T]he Republican playbook here . . . they don’t have a positive agenda, try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings and false allegations.”

Schieffer was highly dubious of this excuse, and reminded Pfeiffer of how familiar his excuse-making sounded:

I don’t want to compare this in anyway to Watergate. I do not think this is Watergate by any stretch. But you weren’t born then, I would guess, but I have to tell you that is exactly the approach that the Nixon administration took. They said these are all second-rate things. We don’t have time for this. We have to devote our time to the people’s business. You are taking exactly the same line that they did.

Exactly right. Bob Schieffer was born in 1937, he was working for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram the day JFK was shot, and he’s not likely to be impressed by a 37-year-old “senior advisor.” And when it came to Benghazi, Schieffer didn’t let Pfeiffer bulldoze him:

The bottom line is what [Susan Rice] told the American people [Sept. 16] bore no resemblance to what had happened on the ground in an incident where four Americans were killed. . . .
[T]hat was just PR, that was just a PR plan to send out somebody who didn’t know anything about what had happened. Why did you do that? Why didn’t the Secretary of State come and tell us what they knew and if you knew nothing say we don’t know yet? Why didn’t White House Chief of Staff come out? I mean I would, and I mean this is no disrespect to you, why are you here today? Why isn’t the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?

Pfieffer didn’t have a good answer for that. In fact, Pfeiffer had no answers for any real questions at all Sunday. Pfieffer tried to use the “doctored e-mails” distraction that Jazz Shaw discusses at some length, and which doesn’t have any bearing on the real issues about the Benghazi attack, which can be summarized simply: If the administration had nothing to hide, why were they lying?

One can agree with Schieffer that this isn’t Watergate “by any stretch” and still be curious about why, if everything was on the up and up, the administration was acting so shady. And why did Pfeiffer refuse to say where Obama was during the Benghazi attack?

Schieffer gave a little lecture later on Face the Nation about the IRS scandal that’s worth quoting in its entirety:

You heard Dan Pfeiffer earlier in the broadcast say that he wasn’t born when Watergate happened. Well, it will come as no news to anyone that I was. And when the burglars broke into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate, a lot of us back then found it hard to believe. Why would anyone break in to a political headquarters? What did they hope to find–bumper stickers? Yard signs? Nobody is dumb enough to pull a stunt like that. But they were. I admit I had about the same reaction when I first heard the IRS had gone after the Tea Party last year, the Tea Party? Surely no one could be dumb enough to think you could get away with something like that in an election year. But they were. So welcome to dumb and dumber. It did take a while for the news to get to some quarters. We heard that the President say that he didn’t find out about it until last week, last week, which qualified him for Washington’s fastest growing club, the longer and longer list of officials who suddenly don’t know much about a lot of unpleasant things from Benghazi to the Associated Press investigation. At this point, just spare me the talking points and the excuses. No matter whether Republicans or Democrats are doing this kind of thing, this stuff is not just wrong it’s really stupid. And it will take more than firing a few temps and low-level bureaucrats to fix it. The President won reelection with a smart political team, but the election is over. Maybe he should look now for people of substance who know about other things who could help him govern.

As they say in Texas: Hell to the yes, Bob.

 

Category: CBS, Journalism, Scandal

@SpeakerBoehner, Sir, Please Don’t Bore Me With Mere Talk Of Jail

Posted on | May 19, 2013 | 19 Comments

by Smitty

Speaker Boehner on the IRS scandal:

Sure, there are malefactors who should be jailed.

But the larger issue, sir, it the system itself. The IRS has now become Checkov’s Gun.

If all that’s done is a appoint a special prosecutor, locate one or two more flagrant folks, and jail them, a major point stands missed.

Let’s break it down:

  • Our tax code has completely gone to seed.
  • Taxation is not directly tied to a balanced budget.
  • Anything you do short of total reform is tacitly agreeing to a fundamentally broken system.

So, Speaker Boehner: don’t let a crisis go to waste in the face of a need for fundamental reform, rationalization, and rebuilding of integrity.

Category: Uncategorized

Shorter Dan Pfeiffer: ‘Your Partisan Questions Are So Largely Irrelevant and Offensive, I’m Not Going to Answer Them’

Posted on | May 19, 2013 | 26 Comments

When the White House sent Obama’s senior adviser out to do five Sunday shows, his orders were obviously to claim that (a) only Republicans care whether the administration is lying about Benghazi, and (b) the answer to any question about Benghazi is “largely irrelevant”:

Wallace repeatedly asked Pfeiffer where the president was and what he was doing while terrorists were attacking the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Pfeiffer refused to answer Wallace’s question of whether Obama entered the White House Situation Room during the Sept. 11 attack, saying, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.” . . .
On CBS Sunday, Pfeiffer said that the question of who edited the administration’s “talking points” about the Benghazi was “largely irrelevant.”

The Obama answer to everything: “Shut up, Republicans!”

Notice who is included in the Memeorandum aggregation on Daniel Halper’s Weekly Standard story: Rick Moran at PJ Tatler, Scott Johnson at Power Line, Ann Althouse, Doug Brady at Conservatives4Palin, Dan Riehl at Riehl World News, William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection and Andrew McCarthy at National Review. In other words, not a single liberal blogger or journalist considers it newsworthy that Obama’s senior adviser refused to say where the president was on the night of the Benghazi attack. This strategy of ignoring the obvious functions as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy: If Democrats don’t pay any attention, interest in the administration’s scandals is therefore, by definition, strictly a Republican affair, and . . . “Shut up, Republicans!”

Tautologically confining any scandal to the category of “partisan fishing expeditions” (another Dan Pfeiffer talking point) does not, however, work as an explanation: If the answers to these questions are “largely irrelevant,” why won’t Pfeiffer answer the questions?

“Shut up, Republicans!”

 

Category: Barack Obama, Libya, Scandal

‘Diversity Is Our Strength’ — And Also Leads to Hate-Crime Murder in New York

Posted on | May 19, 2013 | 19 Comments

Dan Riehl points out that “three Hispanic males” were implicated in the murder of a gay black man in Greenwich Village, a potentially relevant fact that the New York Times couldn’t be bothered to mention in maundering on about the historic vicinity of the crime:

Mark Carson did not hide that he was gay, and when he went out on the town he would often head to Greenwich Village, where years before he was born, much of the struggle for gay liberation unfolded. Yet late Friday night, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn, among the most important landmarks of that struggle, he was confronted with a man screaming antigay slurs, who then stalked him before pulling out a silver revolver and fatally shooting him, the police said. . . .
“There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk down the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment,” said Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, whose district includes the Village and who hopes to become the city’s first openly gay mayor. “We refuse to go back to that time.”

No, Ms. Quinn, we are going forward to that time: A deluge of immigration, the breakdown of the family, the failure of public education, economic malaise — pious liberal sermonizing cannot eliminate the sources of social friction that lead to crimes like this.

Tres hombres decide to go swaggering muy macho through the West Village on Friday night, looking for somebody to fight:

According to Mr. Kelly, the gunman was in the neighborhood with two other men shortly before midnight when he urinated in front of the Annisa bar and restaurant on Barrow Street at West Fourth Street.
The man then went inside and angrily confronted the bartender with antigay slurs, the police said, pulling up his gray hooded sweatshirt, and revealing a silver revolver in a shoulder holster. He threatened the bartender that if he called the police, he would be killed, the police said.

Gun-control laws, hate-crime laws — none of New York’s laws could protect a “fabulous gay man” from Harlem and his boyfriend:

Both the victim and another man with him were wearing tank tops, cutoff shorts and boots.
“Do you want to die here?” Morales asked the victim.

Does this involve the Men on Strike phenomenon?

American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. . . . [M]en aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers.

In a culture where the ordinary sources of male self-esteem are stigmatized, doesn’t violent machismo become more common?

 

 


Category: Crime, Culture, Gays, Racism

FMJRA 2.0: All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down

Posted on | May 18, 2013 | 3 Comments

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Rule 5 Sunday: In The Heat Of The Night

The Fate of Basseley Nakoula

#Gosnell Convicted: Quick Reactions

FMJRA 2.0: All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight

A Short Lesson in Liberal Media Bias: Has Alex Koppelman Forgotten Fitzmas?

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.13.13

World’s Youngest Blogger: Did You Love Momma Today?

My Wife Is a Soldier’s Mom

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.14.13

‘People Need to Be Sent to Jail’

The Obama Presidency, in One Tweet

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.15.13

ObamaGate Scandal Mania!

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.16.13

President Cosmic Lightworker Expresses Disappointment in Mere Mortals at IRS

One More Jump …

As You Can Perhaps Imagine, This Has Been a Rough Week for Charles Johnson

CNN Now Aiming for Zero Ratings

LIVE AT FIVE: 05.17.13

‘Hate-F*ck’ Hoaxer Meg Lanker-Simons Has Criminal Record for Gun Incident

Jahar, the Teen Idol Terrorist

Obama #IRS Scandal Amnesia

Our Lawless President: Obama’s IRS Thuggery Certainly Was No Coincidence

He Gets His Wings Tonight!

Apparently there was a shortage of people wanting to get drunk and get loud in the blogosphere last week.

Top linker of the week, and still champeen:

Rick’s Rants (22 the hard way)

There were a couple of near misses, but people seem more inclined to tweet or like posts on Facebook. This makes the wombat sad. Deadline to submit links for next week’s FMJRA (and turn your favorite marsupial’s frown upside down) is Friday, May 24. No slacking off just because it’s Memorial Day weekend, now.

 

 

Category: FMJRA Award
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