HALF-FULL REPORT 03/06/15

The House of Representatives passed a "clean" bill funding the Department of Homeland Security (a complete capitulation to the Democrats) Tuesday (3/3), even though more than two thirds of Republicans voted against it. I don’t see how Speaker John Boehner can survive a defection of that magnitude.

If Boehner goes, the likely beneficiary is Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. I think he’d be an improvement.

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As we discussed in the HFR two weeks ago, Republicans made a tactical error in the lame duck session when they attached their effort to roll back President Obama’s illegal executive orders on the bill funding DHS, rather than on a bill appropriating funds for an agency like EPA that neither they nor most Americans would miss if it were shut down.

Thanks chiefly to the Lying Swine, most Americans would blame Republicans if DHS were "shut down" during a time when the threat of terror was increasing by leaps and bounds.

In partial defense of Boehner, he’d been boxed into a corner. Action in the Senate was stymied by a Democrat filibuster (which the Lying Swine have carefully avoided mentioning).

When the Retromingent Right voted against his plan to fund DHS for three weeks, Boehner was denied time and room to maneuver. This was appallingly stupid. If Senate Dems blocked action on that bill, the Lying Swine would have had a hard time exculpating them from blame.

So Boehner’s choices were limited to bad and worse. If he stood his ground, Republicans would be blamed for "shutting down" DHS at a time of rising danger. Or he could capitulate.

I think Boehner chose "worse." We can’t win if we don’t fight. But we also can’t win if we don’t fight smart. So maybe the Speaker chose the lesser of evils.

The fiasco should (but probably won’t) prompt sober reflection on the part of all factions in the GOP. Unless the leadership can find a spine and grow some testicles, and the Retromingent Right can find a brain, the outlook for reigning in King Barry’s march to fascism looks bleak.

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Bibi Netanyahu gave a boffo speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday (3/3). Conservatives Jazz Shaw of Hot Air and John Podhoretz of Commentary magazine, who’d been opposed to him making it, changed their minds after hearing him. It was Bibi’s "finest hour," said the New York Sun.

Thanks to Zero’s ham fisted efforts to stop it, Bibi’s speech became a much bigger deal than it otherwise would have been. Obama’s "pettiness" turned it into "the speech of the decade," said Charles Krauthammer.

"Post-Netanyahu the debate the administration didn’t want is on and things are getting more intense in Congress," said Daniel Greenfield. "And the entire issue has gone well beyond the bubble that it would have normally stayed in if the media hadn’t spent all this time and energy echoing Obama’s smear campaign."

In the Fox News poll released Thursday (3/5), Bibi Netanyahu’s favorability rating with Americans was +6. Zero was at -11.

This is really important, because the greatest danger in the world today is a nuclear armed Iran. Thanks to the big boo boo by Zero and the Lying Swine (how do Republicans keep managing to lose to these guys?), to Bibi, and to Boehner, who invited Netanyahu to speak, the odds that we can keep this from happening have gone way up.

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The "Hands Up, Don’t Shoot" narrative of those protesting the shooting of Michael Brown is true – except for the "hands up, don’t shoot" parts. The Justice Department could find no witnesses who heard Michael Brown say: "don’t shoot," or saw him with his hands up.

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Improper payments by the federal government in FY 2014 totaled $124.7 billion, a 17.9 percent increase from the preceding fiscal year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

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The Supreme Court heard oral arguments Wednesday on King v. Burwell, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of paying Obamacare subsidies to people who purchased policies on the federal exchange.

The tenor of the questions he asked inclined observers left and right to think swing Justice Anthony Kennedy is likely to support the administration’s position.  But David Nather, writing for the liberal webzine Politico, cautioned that too much was being read into his questions. David Catron agrees. Kennedy was giving liberals a head fake, he thinks.

We’ll find out in June.

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Did you know that eating three meals a day is racist? Neither did I.

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It isn’t just Republicans who have troubles. For Hillary Clinton these days, it has come in threes.

For starters, there was the revelation that Hillary paid women on her Senate staff much less than she paid men. At the Clinton Foundation, too.

"It’s still an outrage that women are paid less than men for the same work," she said in her speech Tuesday to the Emily’s List conference.  Hillary may have no integrity, but she sure has chutzpah.

Then came the revelation that while she was Secretary of State, Hillary solicited massive donations from foreigners – including foreign governments – for the Clinton Family Foundation, which Seth Mandel of Commentary magazine described as "a super-PAC for foreign governments."  This was troubling even for the editors of the New York Times.

The biggie is the revelation Monday (3/2) that Hillary used a private email account on an insecure server located in her Chappaqua home — which, experts say, almost certainly has been hacked by hostile foreign intelligence services — to conduct most of her official business as secretary of state.

Having her own private server meant Hillary could erase all traces of any email as she saw fit, noted Bloomberg News. In this video from 2000, she explains why she did it.

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It is a felony, punishable by up to three years in prison, for a custodian of official government records, who "willfully and unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, or destroys" any of them, noted Shannen Coffin.

"Congress felt strongly enough about the crime that it included the unusual provision that the perpetrator shall "forfeit his office and be disqualified from holding any office under the United States," Mr. Coffin said.

Former CIA Director Gen. David Petraeus pled guilty Tuesday to improperly handling classified material, which was awkward for Hillary.

More awkward is that as Secretary of State, she issued a memo telling employees not to use private emails because of the security risk, fired an ambassador in part because he used private email for official business. 

Hillary violated policy for all four years she was secretary, a State Department official told ABC News. Rules are for the little people, not the Clintons, the Obamas, or the crony capitalists who give them big bucks.

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As you’d expect, most of the Lying Swine are racing to Hillary’s defense. But many aren’t.

 "How stupid do they think we are?" asked Morning Joe Scarbarough of MSNBC after Hillary issued a tweet asking the State Department to release emails she has, but State doesn’t. "They have 55,000 emails that she and her staff parsed through, and decided to give to them," Scarborough said. Even Mika agreed this dog won’t hunt.

 Her tweet was "farcical," agreed Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. Hillary’s use of emails shows she isn’t ready for prime time, said Danny Vinik of the New Republic. Maybe she should retire her White House dreams, said Ron Fournier of the National Journal.

Not only is this a real scandal and a deliberate attempt to circumvent the law, it’s "a violation of the principles that serve as foundation of liberalism itself," said ultralib Lawrence O’Donnell on MSNBC.

You may enjoy this supercut "mainstream" journalists ripping Hillary.

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Brendan Nyhan of the New York Times doesn’t think the email scandal will have more legs than any of the earlier Clinton scandals. Neither do Allahpundit or Jonah Goldberg.

One reason why it may is that it raises awkward questions for the Obama administration, and the Obamunists seem prepared to let her twist in the wind. 

There’s no love lost between the Clintons and the Obamas. Zero wants Elizabeth Warren to succeed him, says author Ed Klein, who is thought to be close to the Clintons. More than a few "progressives" also would prefer Fauxcahontas, Guy Benson notes.

For a little comedy gold, here is dimwit State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf trying, and failing, to defend Hillary:

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This scandal was ignited by the New York Times story Monday, but the info on the private email account was dug up by Rep. Troy Gowdy’s Benghazi committee. There are few sharper knives in the GOP drawer than Gowdy, who was a crackerjack federal prosecutor before being elected to Congress. This could be another reason why the email scandal may have legs.

Gowdy has subpoenaed Hillary’s private emails pertaining to Benghazi. "Newly Relevant Benghazi Committee Spooks Dems" said the Daily Beast today.

"If Hillary Clinton was indeed communicating about classified matters using unsecured servers, she would have been engaging in a massive security breach and quite possibly violated the law," said Gabriel Schoenfield, who writes knowledgeably about intelligence. "The Espionage Act of 1917 has a provision that criminalizes "gross negligence" when it permits national defense information to ‘to be removed from its proper place of custody.’

On his last day in office, President Clinton pardoned CIA Director John Deutch for having put classified material on unsecured laptops, Schoenfield noted.

"Hillary Clinton’s transgression appears to be on a far larger scale," he said. "Will Hillary now need a pardon from Barack Obama? This story doesn’t have legs, it has wings."

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Hillary has retreated to the bunker, hoping to ride out the storm until the media moves on to something else, which most of the Lying Swine would dearly love to do. 

"Hillary’s team is trying to run the same playbook they’ve always run; browbeat reporters, and if that doesn’t work, start screaming," said Florida GOP consultant Rick Wilson. "If that doesn’t work, start blaming Republicans. They’re good at it, and it’s worked for a long time."

But this case is so "unspinnably bad," the only thing that can save her now is Republican overreach, said Wilson, who offers here some excellent advice on how Republicans should comport themselves.

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And it isn’t likely to be the last Hillary scandal, so some panicky Democrats are asking: "What if Hillary doesn’t run?" If Schoenfield and Wilson are right, more soon will be.

Slow Joe Biden’s supporters (yes, there are some) smell blood in the water, but most Dems – and Dems with bylines — fret about a thin bench. So thin some Dems are talking about Al Gore – who is planning a trip to Iowa – as their standard bearer in 2016.

Even if Hillary does run – and the Lying Swine can bury the email scandal – she’s no lock. According to a Rasmussen poll Tuesday, Scott Walker leads her, 51 percent to 43 percent, among "informed voters."

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After Capitol police refused to lift a ban on sledding on Capitol Hill, dozens of kids and their parents held a "sled-in" last Saturday in defiance of it.

"This is a great day for sledding and democracy," said Tim Krepp, a parent who was an organizer of the event.  "#SledFreeorDie" was the hashtag of another organizer, Lyndsey Medsker, mother of Atley, 5, and Finley, 4.

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The administration lied to a federal judge about the president’s executive actions on illegal immigration, news which doesn’t come as a shock. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, with the enthusiastic support of the governor and lieutenant governor, is fighting back.

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As part of their effort to smear Climate Change "deniers," three Democrat senators wrote to Koch Industries demanding information "about Koch Industries’ payments made in support of scientific research and scientists."

Koch told them to pound sand.

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I’ve been in a foul mood all week because ever since Pam and I got back from the Caribbean, I’ve been shoveling tons of snow from my driveway, injured my back doing it. The craven, Keystone Kops performance of Republicans on Capitol Hill did nothing to improve my mood.

But I’m heartened by the kids on Capitol Hill, the "don’t mess with Texas" attitude of state officials, and Koch Industries stand. They’re chiefly why I don’t share the pessimism Jack Wheeler expressed in a column this week.

They’ve a simple message for us. If we act like sheep, the fascists win. If we act like sheepdogs, we win.  It’s a message we’ve heard before:

"All that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing," said Edmund Burke.

 "The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress," said Frederick Douglass.

"Today, we need a nation of Minutemen, citizens who are not only prepared to take arms, but citizens who regard the preservation of freedom as the basic purpose of their daily life and who are willing to consciously work and sacrifice for that freedom," said John F. Kennedy.

"We have learned in the past that an aroused citizenry can achieve miracles," said Sen. James Buckley, C-NY.

It’s time we heeded the message. Our Founding Fathers risked "their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor" to give us our liberty. We can’t expect to restore it unless we’re willing to take some risks ourselves. But if we’d rather fight than run or bitch, the bastards won’t be that hard to beat.

Zero is skating close to the abyss. Americans are uneasy. They’ve figured out that Obama favors the rich, not them, have serious doubts and his ability – and his willingness – to defend them from Islamists. It will take a dreadful event – such as the mass casualty attacks terrorists have threatened, and which I fear Zero’s policies have made inevitable – to trigger it, but his regime could fall very fast when it does, and take the Democrat party and many of the Lying Swine down with it.

It’s especially important to confront the main enemy, the Lying Swine. Good things can happen when we do. It was posts on Facebook by a handful of aroused vets that did in Lyin’ Brian Williams, a handful of bloggers who did in Dan Rather. The razzing they got on Twitter forced New York Times columnist Gail Collins and National Journal Editor Ron Fournier into a humiliating retreat after they blamed Scott Walker for something that happened before he became governor.

Given up on the spineless, brainless jellyfish in Congress? Fine. Join Dr. Tom Coburn in supporting the Convention of the States.

Three constitutional amendments – to limit terms of members of Congress; to replace life tenure for federal judges with terms of 9 (for Supreme Court justices), 7 (for appellate judges) and 5 (for district judges), and to permit 2/3 of state legislatures to nullify acts of Congress or rules issued by federal agencies – would stop in its tracks the slow motion fascist coup of the Obamunists, prevent a repetition of it ever in the future. 

There are more Republican legislators than ever, and state legislators are more responsive to angry constituents than to big contributors.

Consider nonviolent civil disobedience. The EPA has offices all over the country. Organize sit-ins in one or more of them. Shut the bastards down.

Whether the glass is half full or half empty is mostly a matter of perspective. If we focus on what’s wrong with the Republicans in Congress, it’s easy to view it as more than half empty. But if we focus on Hillary’s troubles, the absence of any realistic Dem alternative to her, and plummeting support for Zero and his policies, you can view it as more than half full.

Way long again. Time to wind this up. The Hero of the Week is Bibi Netanyahu, but I thought about giving the Putz of the Week an Honorable Mention, because of how Zero’s blunders turned Bibi’s speech from kind of a nothingburger into a very big deal. (How do Republicans keep managing to lose to this guy?)

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