TSA appointee violated privacy, lied to Congress about it.

(H/T AoSHQ Headlines) Well, at least Erroll Souther’s not a tax cheat, right? Puts him ahead of the pack for this administration, it does.

The White House nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration gave Congress misleading information about incidents in which he inappropriately accessed a federal database, possibly in violation of privacy laws, documents obtained by The Washington Post show.

[snip]

Southers first described the episode in his October affidavit, telling the Senate panel that two decades ago he asked a San Diego Police Department employee to access confidential criminal records about the boyfriend. Southers said he had been censured by superiors at the FBI. He described the incident as isolated and expressed regrets about it.

The committee approved his nomination Nov. 19. One day later, Southers wrote to Lieberman and Collins saying his first account was incorrect. After reviewing documents, he wrote, he recalled that he had twice conducted the database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife’s boyfriend and passed information on to the police department employee, the letter said.

‘Incorrect.’

Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.

Report: WH in full CYA/BDS mode over Christmas attack.

A quick survey of priorities:

  • In 2001, the American government’s response to a successful series of terrorist attacks was to look outwards to see who to hit for this*.
  • In 2009, the American government’s response to an only-because-we-got-lucky unsuccessful terrorist attack was to look inwards to see who to blame for this. (H/T: Nice Deb)

I think that, all things considered, I prefer the first approach.

Moe Lane

*To somewhat purify the Onion’s point.

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, I’ll give the new decade more than an hour…

…before I endorse this position, but it should be noted that I was made the same promise that Avery Brooks was.

And that was back in 2000.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes, I know why it was decided that we wouldn’t have flying cars. I was still promised flying cars.

I need hardly recommend that people drink responsibly tonight…

…actually I probably do, at that.  Drink responsibly tonight.  Don’t drive if you’ve been drinking.  I myself am having a glass of Chocovine  (essentially, it’s Bailey’s, only as not as alcoholic) at home and being quietly thankful that it would take real effort for a drunk driver to send his car through my kitchen.  Depending on the sleeping baby’s sleeping habits, I might even put in a movie.

Here’s to a considerably less drama-filled new year and decade.  Won’t happen, but it never hurts to hope.

The Frozen trailer.

I am not actually suggesting that you see this film; it is, bluntly, stupid.  It is stupid because clearly neither the writer(s) nor the director of the movie (plot: “Three people stuck on a snow lift for a week.  Also, wolves”) have kids.  If they had kids, then they would have probably purchased the Mighty Machines DVD “Winter Blast” by now – and so would know that there would be an entire team of snowplows and specialized machines out there all week putting the slopes back in order.

Yes, yes: no doubt they could have some convoluted reason to explain that away – if they thought of it.  Bets that they did?

Moe Lane

Democrats resegregate DC school system.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Are you surprised? I’m not surprised.

The leaders of D.C.’s school choice movement, Kevin P. Chavous (former D.C. Councilman) and Virginia Walden Ford (executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice), today issued the following statement:

“House and Senate Appropriators this week ignored the wishes of D.C.’s mayor, D.C.’s public schools chancellor, a majority of D.C.’s city council, and more than 70 percent of D.C. residents and have mandated the slow death of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. This successful school voucher program—for D.C.’s poorest families—has allowed more than 3,300 children to attend the best schools they have ever known.

Via Big Government.  You know, there’s a part of me that would almost prefer that this was evidence of some sort of long term payback – one that would have been in the works for about 150 years at this point – against African-Americans by the Democratic party.  At least that would be a reason to wreck school choice.  It would be a conscious decision.  Instead, though, I’m faced with the tawdry reality that the Democratic Party simply just doesn’t care.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

To a deep pit in Perdition.

Sing it, brother.

It was a decade that demonstrated what a bitter thing winning could be. Remember how, despite the opposition party’s best political efforts to abandon a war effort and abandon a nation to deadly chaos, our political and military leadership found a way to prevail there? Most people have forgotten. The more than 4,300 Americans dead in Iraq don’t need to have died in vain, though the commonly accepted narrative will be that they did. They did something good there, for that nation whose future was always written in blood, for a region that was stabilized and shown that democracy is possible. The only satisfaction from all of that was of the sort that can barely be spat out in words … You see, we’ve done it. You tried to stop us. So many fought so hard, and would not be denied. It had to be done and now it has been.

God damn the Naughts.

Personally, it wasn’t bad: but I’ll be happy to see this damned decade dead and buried.

Crossposted to RedState.