Hope, change, duck, and cover;
When the Cold War ended, people forgot about that stuff, to the point that when I teach Cold War material in my Constitutional Law or National Security Law courses, I find that my law students, except for a few military veterans or emergency-services types, know nothing about basic nuclear weapons facts that almost everyone knew as late as the 1980s. But now it may be time for that knowledge to come back.
As the United States and Russia eye new shipping routes in the melting Arctic, political and military leaders in Washington are pointing to a crucial gap in the one type of vessel that can turn frozen waters into reliable lanes for commerce or national defense.
Icebreakers — the ships that smash through sea ice, opening routes for other craft and rescuing trapped vessels — are increasingly important to navigating in the far north. Russia has 40 of them, including nuclear-powered craft painted an intimidating red and black.
Meanwhile, the U.S. icebreaker fleet? Two.
It’s all about priorities.
And the Saudis continued to get their money’s worth;
The Obama administration is proposing to cut methane emissions from U.S. oil and gas production by nearly half over the next decade in an unprecedented step to curb climate change.
Individuals familiar with the proposal say the Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday will set a target to cut methane from oil and gas drilling by 40 to 45 percent by 2025, compared to 2012 levels. That’s the same target the administration unveiled in its preliminary blueprint in January.
The individuals weren’t authorized to discuss the proposal before its public release and requested anonymity.
Wow: Milloy coal prediction comes true — Soros buys coal stocks dirt cheap. Prediction: http://t.co/5YNAl03jvi Event: http://t.co/zIeVM5HZxn
— hockey schtick (@hockeyschtick1) August 16, 2015
“A week before The EPA disastrously leaked millions of gallons of toxic waste into The Animas River in Colorado, this letter to the editor was published in The Silverton Standard & The Miner local newspaper, authored by a retired geologist detailing verbatim, how EPA would foul the Animas River on purpose in order to secure superfund money…”
h/t Ed S.
“Are you, or have you ever been a member of a conservative organization?”
At another point, however, a different Customs and Border Protection officer tells O’Keefe that agency officials had put a “hit on you” to avoid getting “egg on their face, basically.”
The video does show, however, officers asking O’Keefe a series of detailed questions about his business model, how his company makes money and his political views.
“What’s your next project?” one officer asks.
“I was so flabbergasted by the question, I couldn’t even form a coherent response,” O’Keefe says in the video.
An officer then asks O’Keefe who he wants to win the Republican nomination for president and if he would support businessman Donald Trump, who has fueled his political rise with outspoken comments about illegal immigrants.
NOOoonononono… U.S. State Dept. Bars Christians from Testifying about Persecution
h/t Adrian
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by malice:
While Israel and much of official Washington remain focused on the deal President Barack Obama just cut with the ayatollahs that gives them $150 billion and a guaranteed nuclear arsenal within a decade, Obama has already moved on – to Syria.
Read it all. But first, take a Gravol.
Obama Administration Strips Requirement to Defend The United States From Citizenship Oath.
Nuanced: Iranian leader tweets graphic of Obama with a gun to his head.
… in response to the latest Muslim atrocity, President Obama went on vacation to New York City to fund-raise and for some “down time” with his daughters. Oh yes, and the Empire State Building was lit up Muslim green to “celebrate” the end of Ramadan, a “holy” month during which (if you’ve ever seen some of them in action) they fast during the day and then stuff themselves silly after sundown.
But there’s much more.
Fundamental transformation, all systems gone;
It’s difficult to say what’s more striking about President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation: its breathtaking radicalism, the refusal of the press to cover it, or its potential political ramifications. The danger AFFH poses to Democrats explains why the press barely mentions it. This lack of curiosity, in turn, explains why the revolutionary nature of the rule has not been properly understood. Ultimately, the regulation amounts to back-door annexation, a way of turning America’s suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities.
At a hearing Monday in Manhattan in which he ruled filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza must continue community service for four more years, U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman said he considers D’Souza’s violation of federal campaign-finance laws to be evidence of a psychological problem and ordered further counseling.
D’Souza’s defense counsel Benjamin Brafman provided evidence to the court that the psychiatrist D’Souza was ordered to see found no indication of depression or reason for medication. In addition, the psychologist D’Souza subsequently consulted provided a written statement concluding there was no need to continue the consultation, because D’Souza was psychologically normal and well adjusted.
But Judge Berman, who was appointed by Bill Clinton, disagreed, effectively overruling the judgment of the two licensed psychological counselors the U.S. probation department had approved as part of D’Souza’s criminal sentence.
An IRS document confirms that the organization supplied the FBI with 21 computer disks containing 1.25 million pages of confidential information from more than 113,000 tax returns.
“The FBI and Justice Department worked with Lois Lerner and the IRS to concoct some reason to put President Obama’s opponents in jail before his reelection, and this abuse resulted in the FBI’s illegally obtaining confidential taxpayer information,” Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said in the release.
Lerner, a former IRS official, was at the center of past allegations that the agency had specifically targeted conservative groups applying for 501(c)(4) nonprofit status. More than 6,000 Lerner emails thought to be lost were turned over to the Senate Finance Committee in April.
The new documents shed light on the relationship between various agencies in the Obama administration and their plans to gain access to unredacted documents forbidden under federal tax law, according to Judicial Watch.
Just saying.
Ann Althouse has a practical take.
More: The best lines from Scalia dissent.
Ben Shapiro Flashback:
Perhaps Roberts is a safe pick. He’s politically conservative and undoubtedly brilliant. He will sail through the Senate without much hassle. But it is shocking to watch many constitutional originalists and textualists abandon their philosophies in favor of cheap politics.
Roberts is not an originalist. There is nothing in his very short jurisprudential record to indicate that his judicial philosophy involves strict fidelity to the original meaning of the Constitution. He is not Antonin Scalia, nor is he Clarence Thomas. At best, he is William Rehnquist, for whom he once clerked. While Rehnquist has been a steady political conservative on the bench, the bench should not be about political persuasion: It should be about upholding the explicit words of our Founding Fathers. There is nothing to indicate that Roberts prioritizes the words of the Constitution above other, more immediate political concerns.
Is there anything more likely to make you shit your pants out of a mix of fear and anger than getting a federal subpoena out of the blue?
Well, yes, there is: getting a gag order that prohibits you from speaking publicly about that subpoena and even the gag order itself. Talk about feeling isolated and cast adrift in the home of the free. You can’t even respond honestly when someone asks, “Are you under a court order not to speak?”
Far more important: talk about realizing that open expression and press freedom are far more tenuous than even the most cynical of us can imagine! Even when you have done nothing wrong and aren’t the target of an investigation, you can be commanded, at serious financial cost and disruption of your business, to dance to a tune called by the long arm of the law.
This all just happened to my colleagues and me at Reason.com, the libertarian website I edit.
Related: “Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.”
