Month: November 2009

Hope and Change Watch: AG Holder upholding PATRIOT Act.

Actually, in this context ‘same as the old boss’ would be a comfort. To me, at least, if not the folks who made such a hullabaloo over the PATRIOT Act; I’m not worried about the government abusing its authority so much as I worry about it making an utter hash of its attempt to try to use it. But of course said ‘abuse’ was not the least common election-year theme – usually in the context of how things would change, once the Republicans weren’t running things.  And usually argued by people who really should have known better.

Which is why I’m more amused than anything else about this:

Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the Senate’s version of legislation that would extend three provisions of the Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year.

Holder wrote in a letter today to Senate Judiciary Committee members that he offers “strong support” for the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act, which would reauthorize the “lone wolf,” records and “roving wiretap” powers. By contrast, a House version of the bill would not continue the “lone wolf” provision, which lets the government track targets who don’t have any discernible affiliation with terrorist or other foreign groups.

…although I admit that I’m kind of curious of which member of the current ruling party thought that it was a good idea to hamper lone wolf surveillance.  The timing for that seems… suboptimal.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Beltway sniper execution at 9 PM tonight.

As @jaketapper reminds us; the article that spurred that is here.

Personally, I hope that he repents of his sins and seeks forgiveness before he’s executed.  Eternity is, after all, eternal.  But I’m not going to lose any sleep over the thought that he may instead choose evil until it’s too late to change.

Crossposted to RedState.

Crowder has *far* too much fun with this stuff.

Although the way things are going perhaps neither the Vice President nor the Speaker of the House is going to be too distressed about the way this turned out.

I mean, in their shoes I wouldn’t sign my work if I could possibly help it.

Via Hot Air.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Pfizer not going to need those New London homes seized, after all.

Some background here; there’s also an actual book on the subject called Little Pink House.  Anyway, turns out that there was no need in this specific case to throw out residents from their houses; it was superfluous to requirements, apparently.

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

Oops?

Moe Lane

PS: I’d just like to note for the record that the dissenting judges on this one – the ones respectful of private property, in other words – were Judges O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, & Thomas.

Crossposted to RedState.

So the Advance Group may be sued for its ACORN connection.

When I saw this title from The Conservatives.com (“Defeated Candidate to Sue ACORN Official for Costing Her Election”), I smiled. I also said to myself,You know what would be great? It’d be great if that sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] Scott Levenson was involved in this somehow. That would be great. But seeing as I can’t think of anything nice enough on the karmic scale to justify that kind of boon, I wasn’t really hopeful.

Well, maybe I’m getting this one on credit.

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

I agree with Brian that this is nonsense – if I’ve known that Scott Levenson has been a sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] for ACORN since the 2008 election season, then so should have the Materna campaign – but it’s funny nonsense that will put a spring in your step. Apparently Advance Group/ACORN couldn’t even bother to get mailings out on time, which just goes to show: it’s not that these groups are good at what they do. They’re actually pretty bad at it. It’s just that usually they don’t have anybody providing them with any sort of meaningful opposition.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes.

That sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted].

Crossposted to RedState.

‘Surely unemployment won’t reach 10% so soon!’

Jim Geraghty’s collecting examples. Keep them in mind.

For myself: I’m not an economist, not a financier, and the heights of my mathematical understanding was a grad school class informally called How vendors will lie to you with statistics.  but I knew back in July that we were going to hit double-digit unemployment, for a very simple and very cynical reason: because I knew that the people with political oversight over our economic and fiscal policy were not up to the job.  If they had been they wouldn’t have needed a perfect storm to gain political power in 2006, and consolidate it in 2008.

In other words, what was that phrase from our parents’ day, again?  Oh, right: “Would you buy a used car from this man?”

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

The Gorelick Wall’s back!

Via Instapundit, here’s something  to start the week off right: we’re right back to Gorelick-era standards of inter-agency communication on terrorism!

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

Excuse me while I go pound my head into the wall for a while.

Crossposted to RedState.