Airbusted (verb) – 1. a) to collapse under the strain of blowing millions on partisan witch hunts. *
An Open Letter
To Leah McLaren.
Update: Nazanin Afshin-Jam MacKay responds.
They’re Just Not That Into Him
In the wake of the cellphone privacy ruling, two more unanimous decisions from the US Supreme Court. The first;
The Supreme Court dropped a huge bomb on the Obama administration, unanimously rebuking the President for arrogating to himself the determination of when Congress is in session for the purpose of making recess appointments.
On Thursday the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a 35-foot protest-free “buffer” zone outside abortion clinics in Massachusetts. The justices ruled that the zone violates the First Amendment rights of protesters.
Hobby Lobby decision to be announced on Monday.
The Sound Of Settled Science
His case is one of dozens around the U.S. to come under scrutiny because of entrenched but now-discredited beliefs about how arson can be detected. The Arson Research Project at the Monterey College of Law in California has highlighted at least 31 convictions based at least partly on debunked fire investigations, including that of a Texas man executed in 2004, and experts believe there are many more.
“There was just no science behind” the old assumptions about arson, said Paul Cates of The Innocence Project, a group that works to overturn wrongful convictions, primarily through the use of DNA. “A lot of this was just guesswork and voodoo.”
Flashback: The FBI’s Bullet Lead Analysis Used Flawed Science
Values of the Underclass
Theodore Dalrymple:
I remember a population that was terrified of falling into dependence on the state, because such dependence, apart from being unpleasant in itself, signified personal failure and humiliation. But there has been an astonishing gestalt switch in my lifetime. Independence has now come to mean independence of the people to whom one is related and dependence on the state. Mothers would say to me that they were pleased to be independent, by which they meant independent of the fathers of their children — usually more than one — who in general were violent swine. Of course, the mothers knew them to be violent swine before they had children by them, but the question of whether a man would be a suitable father is no longer a question because there are no fathers: The state would provide.
Now Is The Time At SDA When We Juxtapose!
Barack Obama “On The Issues”, 2007 – Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency will strictly regulate manure spills from large CAFOs, with fines for those that violate tough standards.
Environmental Protection Agency, 2014 – EPA Employees Told to Stop Pooping in the Hallway
h/t Melinda
Tremble Before The Power Of The Almighty #Hashtag
#ThatWasSoYesterday – Boko Haram is suspected of kidnapping approximately 60 more women and girls.
Reader Tips
Came the day when pig did frown / and the wolf blew into town ♫
The comments are open for your Reader Tips.
IRSgate
Juan Williams: “This whole idea that we’re now to Watergate and burning tapes … I mean that … you’d have to … that’s quite a leap for me.”
George Will: “It’s a leap when six, not only Lois Lerner’s hard drive crashes 10 days after they get the letter from Dave Camp, the chairman of the appropriate committee, but SIX others do?!? Including those of the person who was the Chief of Staff to the IRS commission who was fired. And you know what the response to this is – Charles talks about the incompetence demonstrated here and that’s the default explanation of what government does a lot of the time – but the beauty of this – it’s almost an elegant thing – Commissioner Koskinen has said, as the perfect bureaucrat would, that all of this is evidence that the IRS needs a bigger appropriation so it can get better computers.”
Watching Juan Williams, one can’t help but remember this guy.
Update: Bill O’Reilly illustrates the rampant media coverup of this story.
“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal”
Looks like she missed one.
Today, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) announced the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) targeting of conservative individuals includes a sitting United States Senator. According to emails reviewed by the Committee under its Section 6103 authority, which allows the Committee to review confidential taxpayer information, Lois Lerner sought to have Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) referred for IRS examination.
“We have seen a lot of unbelievable things in this investigation, but the fact that Lois Lerner attempted to initiate an apparently baseless IRS examination against a sitting Republican United States Senator is shocking,” said Camp.
The Government They Deserve
Oh, boo hoo – The “horror” stories of Hydro One customers over their bills have unleashed an unprecedented number of complaints to his office, Ontario ombudsman Andre Marin said Monday.
h/t Kevin B.
O, Sweet Saint Of San Andreas
Hear my prayer. (Plus this aftershock).
h/t Chris in Texas, Peter O.
Proud to be Canadian!
h/t Mark from Oshawa
Know The Enemy: Deep Green Resistance
Deep Green Resistance was founded by the authors of a book of the same name, a nasty set of activists named Derrick Jensen, Lierre Keith, and Aric McBay.
They advocate a method known as “decisive ecological warfare” designed to destabilize and ultimately overthrow capitalism, industry, agriculture and civilization itself. Their unambiguous aim is to return the earth to a more “sustainable” position. In caves, presumably.
DGR calls itself an “above ground” eco-activist movement and tries to associate with many fringe enviro or aboriginal activist organizations. However, the book and its authors also call for parallel “underground” operations, which include isolated and covert operative cells. Their above ground arm seeks to support activist movements publicly, but their underground arm may recruit from these same groups.
Unlike previous ecological terrorist movements, they advocate for destruction of property and, if need be, assassination of the purveyors of industry. They justify it in that industry proponents are killing people already and as such are potentially viable targets. If innocents are killed, their excuse is that industry caused the deaths, not them. Their valued targets are those critical ties to infrastructure which could cause cascading effects to industry if impacted. These include power substations, pipelines, lines of communication, transportation hubs or water control.
Brian Lilley interviewed McBay on Byline in 2011 and wrote a blog post on the book.
They are currently known to be operating in opposition to the Northern Gateway, but were also present during the Rexton, NB anti-fracking debacle.
Wife Of! Peter MacKay Sexist? Our National Broadcaster?
This morning CBC News Network is atwitter to the max over the federal justice minister’s Mother’s and Father’s Day e-mails to departmental staff:
Peter MacKay lauds moms for changing diapers, dads for moulding minds in holiday messages
Mother’s and Father’s Day emails from justice minister praise mothers as caregivers, fathers as role models
Meanwhile the scroll on the bottom of the screen has this news item:
Jim Flaherty’s widow set to announce bid to lead Ont. PCs
And who might that be? Does the woman (one must assume that is the gender, still these days…) have a, gasp, name?
Reader Tips
Tonight, the late great Elizabeth Cotton performs her enduring classic Freight Train. Note her upside-down guitar, with the bass strings at the bottom and treble at the top.
The comments are open, as always, for your Reader Tips.
Honey, I Finished The Internet
Your Moral And Intellectual Superiors
The World Still Has Too Many Reporters
If the best you can offer is the parsing of a Fathers’ Day greeting – it’s time to downsize the newsroom.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors
The GWPF: Between 2012 and 2013, demand for solar panels has dropped by 60% as German government plans to introduce a tax on solar energy

