Moe Lane

I believe that this was the CNN/ORC poll question that made David Plouffe freak out earlier today:

The percentage of people who think that the IRS story is very important dropped from 55% to 51% in the last month, sure – but in that same time period the reaction to it has solidified.  Half the country thinks that the IRS was ordered by the White House to target conservative groups.  And guess what?  It’s including parts of the country that the administration was kind of hoping wouldn’t be susceptible: (more…)

I hope I’m not giving any spoilers, here.

Five months into his second term, allies and enemies are as confounded as ever about who President Obama really is.

Barack Obama is a mildly intelligent man who has never been really pushed by anything in his life. He’s not especially intellectually curious, has never learned how to control his boredom, and thinks that the rather vicious local political culture that he – and much more importantly, his staff – was steeped in actually is how they do things Downtown. I’m sure that the man thinks that he has principles, and an organized plan to follow them; but the former are as unfinished as the rest of Barack Obama and the latter boils down to ‘make speeches until the adoring mob does all the heavy lifting.’ And, of course, he’s marking time until 2017.  That’s when the best part about being President starts for Barack Obama; all of the respect, all of the perks, nobody will expect him to do a single darn thing.

That’s who Barack Obama really is. (more…)

So. Somebody hacked into the computer of one of CBS’s best-known investigative journalists.

CBS News announced Friday that correspondent Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by “an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions,” confirming Attkisson’s previous revelation of the hacking.

CBS News spokeswoman Sonya McNair said that a cybersecurity firm hired by CBS News “has determined through forensic analysis” that “Attkisson’s computer was accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions in late 2012.”

One with a history of going after the administration. The report suggest that this wasn’t a script kiddie drive-by and it wasn’t a phishing expedition; whoever did this was after Attkisson’s personal hard drive data, and attempted to cover up the intrusion. So, whodunit?

(more…)

(H/T: Instapundit) Annnnnnd here we go.  Two meaty bits from a Fox News poll:

Translation: people don’t particularly believe that the Executive Branch didn’t know about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups all along. (more…)

I have a fundamental objection to US News and World Report’s Lara Brown’s take on Barack Obama:

With the revelations of another new and potentially serious scandal, Obama’s presidency becomes more Grant than Lincoln each day.

Not Fitzgerald Grant’s fictional presidency of television series “Scandal” fame, for it abounds with adept fixers, perceptive optics, heroic motives and clever dialogue. I mean Ulysses S. Grant’s scandal-plagued presidency, which was replete with clumsy denials, regretful dismissals, base enticements and desperate political ploys.

Well, actually I have two.  The first objection is that, strictly speaking, the ‘S’ in Grant’s name didn’t actually stand for anything, and thus probably doesn’t require a period after it*.  I know, I know: pedantry.  But my second objection is not pedantry: I frankly think that it does a great disservice to Grant to compare him to Barack Obama.  Ulysses S Grant, after all, showed mastery of a skill set that turned out to be absolutely vital for the very survival of the United States of America.  Barack Obama can read a speech off of a teleprompter. (more…)

Because apparently it’s not like Barack Obama’s reputation can be any lower among pro-lifers, anyway.

The Obama administration has decided to stop trying to block over-the-counter availability of the best-known morning-after contraceptive pill for all women and girls, a move fraught with political repercussions for President Obama.

The government’s decision means that any woman or girl will soon be able to walk into a drugstore and buy the pill, Plan B One-Step, without a prescription.

Mind you, the President is still personally hesitant about allowing eleven year old girls to dose themselves with drugs because they think that they might be pregnant, or because their ‘boyfriend’ wants them to be ‘safe,’ or because it’s a hot new trend*.  It’s just that Barack Obama feels as a matter of public policy the Republic will fall if Planned Parenthood is stymied in any way, shape or form. (more…)

Spoilers: no.

Let us imagine a world where the following occurred*:

• 2008 – 2013: Barack Obama accepts public financing for the election, promptly closes Gitmo, and rigorously avoids raising taxes of any kind on the middle class.  Just to not-really-randomly pick three of his campaign promises.
• 2009: Barack Obama secures the formal appointment of Inspector Generals at Defense, Homeland Security, Interior, Labor, State, and the Agency for International Development.
• 2009 – 2013: President Barack Obama has regular, open press conferences, in the manner of his predecessors.
• 2009 – 2010: A form of Obamacare passes that is acceptable to at least one Republican Senator.
• 2009: A proposed loan to troubled Green energy company Solyndra is circular-filed when an advisor to Energy Secretary Steven Chu sits him down and explains to him that there was probably a good reason why the previous administration refused to sign off on the loan, and that the populace doesn’t really like having its money thrown away.
• 2010: a particularly difficult worker at the IRS office in Cincinnati sends a series of terse emails to his supervisor, his supervisor’s supervisor, and the relevant officials in DC, indicating that written clarification of a new policy where conservative groups are to be under increased scrutiny will be needed before said worker would feel comfortable following that policy.  The written clarification is not given; the policy is not followed.
• 2010: plans to tell a federal judge that Fox News reporter James Rosen was a co-conspirator in a criminal case, and thus a legitimate target for a search warrant, are derailed when a Justice Department staffer reads the draft, blanches, calls her supervisor, and asks him to ‘read that draft again, only this time in a Republican voice.’
• 2010: the murder of US Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry leads to an internal Justice Department investigation of the disastrous Operation Fast & Furious.  Attorney General Eric Holder responds by producing an unusually frank and open report on the fiasco, firing everyone responsible with prejudice, and takes ultimate responsibility for his department’s mistakes.  Holder then arranges with Congress to expedite a replacement Attorney General so that he can resign respectably.
• 2012: the IRS engages in a full and public investigation over the allegation that IRS officials leaked the membership list of the National Organization for Marriage to Human Rights Campaign.  The investigation at a bare minimum wrecks several careers, and provides a salutary object lesson for the surviving bureaucrats.
• 2012: the Department of Justice contemplates wholesale subpoenas of the Associated Press.  This goes nowhere, because the combination of the terms ‘wholesale,’ ‘subpoenas,’ and ‘Associated Press’ in one sentence produces a feeling of anticipatory dread that threatens to take tangible form and savagely beat everyone in the room.
• 2012: the ambassador to Libya and three other Americans are killed as part of an organized, planned Islamist attack.  False initial reports that the attack was due to a supposed YouTube are later aggressively pushed back on by State Department officials; the President goes on the air and explains that the government is sometimes pulled in two directions by the populace’s expectation that it be simultaneously be both transparent and responsive.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton takes full responsibility for the deaths, and announces her retirement in the same press conference, after likewise working with Congress to expedite her replacement.
• 2013: the personal assistant to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius coughs discreetly and points out to her that the legislative branch gets exceedingly shirty when the executive branch tries to fund its shenanigans outside of the standard appropriations process. A series of calls to various health care companies begging for/extorting (depending on who you ask) Obamacare implementation funds are thus not made.
• 2013: Senator Rand Paul asks President Barack Obama, “Do you think that you have the right to order a drone strike on an American citizen on American soil?” Barack Obama says “No, unless we end up in some kind of nightmare Tom Clancy scenario and if that happens you’re probably going to be in the room with the rest of us anyway.”  Senator Paul says “Thank you” and the confirmation vote of John Brennan proceeds on schedule.

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I know that this Matthew Dowd piece (“Imagining Obama’s Apology to Bush“) is entertaining to many in its angry despair that Barack Obama ended doing all of those natsec things that the Left thought that George W Bush was doing, only on steroids. And it is very, very tasty despair; but there is still one important thing to remember. Barack Obama did, in fact, continue a goodly number of Bush-era policies.

The difference, of course, is that under Bush those policies worked.  Or, more accurately: those policies were implemented by a man who instinctively understood when to talk, and when to punch.  GWB’s facility with the latter after 9/11 was so successful* that foreign terrorist groups pretty much shelved whatever plans they had to make more organized terrorist attacks on American soil… which is a reticence that they no longer have, during this administration.  That’s because George W Bush terrified the groups that we’re still with war with, and use of that verb was intentional.  Obama simply doesn’t scare them as much.

This is, by the way, a problem. (more…)

Yes, apparently the NSA is doing that, now*.  But I’m sure that you can trust them; still, if they’re so intent in seeing what you’re buying, go ahead and give them a show.

(more…)

Via Ed Driscoll comes something I hadn’t considered: Susan Rice as National Security Advisor means that Barack Obama thinks that he can claim executive privilege to keep her from testifying.

A Google News search on ["Susan Rice" "executive privilege"] (typed exactly as indicated between brackets) returns two stories. The main one is at Fox News, where K.T. McFarland pointed out that President Obama, now that he has appointed Susan Rice to be his National Security Adviser, can invoke executive privilege to keep her from testifying before Congress. The second is at Mediate, and notes that McFarland said the same thing to Fox News Channel anchor Martha MacCallum earlier today.

So I think that we have established here that the President is hiding something about Benghazi; we’re now just trying to figure out what Barack Obama is hiding*.

(more…)

He would have thought the idea was shiny.

Some of President Barack Obama’s political appointees, including the Cabinet secretary for the Health and Human Services Department, are using secret government email accounts they say are necessary to prevent their inboxes from being overwhelmed with unwanted messages, according to a review by The Associated Press.

The scope of using the secret accounts across government remains a mystery: Most U.S. agencies have failed to turn over lists of political appointees’ email addresses, which the AP sought under the Freedom of Information Act more than three months ago. The Labor Department initially asked the AP to pay more than $1 million for its email addresses.

Although Nixon would have blanched at the idea of trying to get a million bucks out of the Associated Press in the process.  I mean, that’s just stupid.  And, whatever else you can say about Nixon, you can say this: the man wasn’t stupid.

Via Jim Geraghty.

Moe Lane

The answer, by the way, is “Yes.”

Since David Plouffe is so concerned about criminality, and all.

For perspective, here’s what Plouffe’s most famous client was doing when the charge against Issa was dropped: twitter.com/jimgeraghty/st…

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) June 3, 2013

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