Category Archives: Cabinet
Eric Holder
Eric Holder recently griped that he has been treated more disrespectfully than any other US Attorney General. As Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) explained to his men in Saving Private Ryan, you never gripe down you always gripe up. In that case our AG was griping up to his host, mob informant and TV pundit Al Sharpton‘s National Action Network.
Holder
Brit Hume thinks Holder is playing 52 pick up with race cards.
Internet Control
Al Gore invented the internet and Barack Obama is giving it away.
Who Controls the Internet
Brendan Greeley in Bloomberg Businessweek explains how it works. The system that assigns names to web servers, the Internet domain name system (DNS), is run by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann). Icann is under the control of the U.S. Commerce Department. The government announced in a news dump last Friday it’s giving up that control.
Countries like China and Russia want that power to go the U.N. Then they would have influence over which websites get domain names. Without a domain name you’re nobody. As Greeley puts it:
It’s a bad sign that the U.S. has chosen to give up this power. It means that the administration doesn’t feel that it can get away with holding onto it, diplomatically, which means that on this issue, we no longer enjoy the support of countries such as Germany. Perhaps it was that time we tapped Angela Merkel’s cell phone.
Reset to the 19th Century
Secretary of State Kerry feels President Putin’s “19th century” behavior is not up to G-8 elite standards.
This isn’t Putin’s first rodeo when it comes to dropping in uninvited on his neighbors. He invaded Georgia on President Bush’s watch in August 2008. Like the current Crimea crises, Bush didn’t do much to stop it.
Then came Hillary’s “Reset”, or Overcharge.
Reset
Michael Gerson in the Washington Post thinks the reset may have contributed to Putins feelings of grandeur:
President Obama’s “reset” with Russia was designed to end the economic, political and military isolation of Putin’s Russia after the invasion of Georgia in 2008. The Kremlin did not keep the terms of the cease-fire ending that conflict. But Obama was determined to unfreeze the post-Georgia relationship, particularly since cooperation was needed on issues of mutual concern such as Iran and Syria.
Issa and Cummings Committee Chaos
The big story on Fox New Sunday was that IRS kingpin Lois Lerner would waive her 5th amendment rights and testify before Daryl Issa’s House Oversight committee. At least that’s what Issa told Chris Wallace on Sunday. On Wednesday Lerner pled the fifth again.
Issa Cummings Committee Chaos
Angered by Lerner’s continued silence, Issa ruled the the hearing adjourned. He then silenced the leading committee Democrat, Ellijah Cummings, by cutting off his mic. The room erupted in chaos with Cummings shouting “I’m a U.S. Congressman” and fellow Dems chanting “shame”. Let’s go rinkside to Dana Milbank:
Issa told Wallace on Sunday that Lerner’s “attorney indicates now that she will testify” after refusing to do so at a hearing last year. The lawyer denied this, and Lerner did not testify Wednesday — and that would have been the news, if not for Issa’s sound-system antics.
Indeed. Issa keeps stepping on his own punchline. The news might have been about why Lerner doesn’t want to talk about these emails:
“Tea Party Matter very dangerous… Counsel and Judy Kindell need to be in on this one… Cincy should probably NOT have these cases,” Lerner said in a February 2011 email.
“Cincinnati wasn’t publicly ‘thrown under the bus’ (but) instead was hit by a convoy of Mack trucks,” wrote Cindy Thomas, former director of the IRS exempt organizations office in Cincinnati, in a May 10, 2013 email to Lerner.
It looks like the IRS intimidated conservative groups and the Tea Party was relatively quiet in the 2012 election. Was there corruption? So far Republicans haven’t come up with a smidgen of proof.
Settled Science
The Settled Science is unsettling. President Obama began last week with a trip to California where he blamed the drought on Global warming, aka Climate Change. Most climate change models predict warming will cause a wet California.
Click on this chart to see the WSJ Mcnider/Christy article on why John Kerry is all wet.
More Settled Science
Then John Kerry dragged the State Department into the act by proclaiming Climate Change to be the world’s greatest weapon of mass destruction. He added that only shoddy scientists disagree. Here’s is Dr. Krauthammer’s diagnosis.
This Forbes piece shows that 31,000 scientists might not like being called “flat earthers” by Kerry and his fellow climate McCarthyites.
Update:
Krauthammer, in the piece mentioned above, says insisting the science is settled is “a crude attempt to silence critics and delegitimize debate”. Sure enough, environmental activists launched a petition demanding that the Washington Post not publish his column.
