From CBS News:

With a $13 trillion debt, why is the Department of Justice spending money on parties and rollercoaster rides rather than investigating crime, drug cartels, prosecuting terrorists?

Untold millions of your tax dollars are paying for recreation in the name of crime prevention: pool parties, rollercoaster rides, and police donut-eating contests. The idea is that fun activities keep kids out of trouble, build self-esteem and prevent crime.

CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports the problem is the money comes from the Department of Justice – which doesn’t even have enough resources to keep up on analyzing foreign intelligence.

Now, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)has found nobody is measuring just how much is spent on the recreation – or whether it even works.

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The ink is not yet dry on the Obama Health Care takeover and rationing advocate Donald Berkwick has yet to have his desk moved into the Medicare offices, and the Administration is already attempting to limit life-extending drugs for cancer patients.

This is the first shot in the health care revolution.

In September, the Food and Drug Administration will try to take the anti-cancer drug Avastin “off-label.”  Avastin is a Stage 4 drug used to battle breast cancer.  Avastin is not a cure but has been shown to stop the growth of cancer for an average of five months — meaning some late stage breast cancer victims live beyond five months.

But late stage breast cancer patients do not fit into the cost-benefit analysis of the Obama Administration.  We told America rationing would happen if the health care takeover bill passed and in September, women with breast cancer will be its first victims.

Avastin is the first medicine to fight cancer by blocking the growth of blood vessels that feed tumors.  While Avastin is expensive and may not be the miracle drug some anticipated for breast cancer (it is for other types of cancer) from the success of the early trials, the overwhelming majority of breast cancer specialists believe the drug can be effective and useful in certain patients

If the FDA takes Avastin off label it will effectively deny all but the richest Americans access to the drug. Once a drug is off label, most insurance and Medicare will no longer cover the cost of the treatment. So even if a patient meets the criteria of one who might respond positively to Avastin once it is taken off label it is highly unlikely that patient will have access to the drug unless they have the money to pay for it outright.

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My family immigrated to America in the same year that South African police murdered Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko. The racist regime that destroyed him viewed him as a threat because of his simple credo: “I write what I like.” Biko understood that freedom of thought and expression were the greatest weapons against tyranny.

Steve Biko (1946-1977)

Last week, my opponent, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), called on me to denounce Andrew Breitbart and to end any further association with his website, BigGovernment.com.

Her attack was typical of a corrupt Washington elite that believes it is entitled to tell people what to say and where to say it. It was that kind of behavior that convinced me to run against Schakowsky to begin with, after she collaborated with paid organizers in shutting down questions from constituents at her town hall meeting last August.

For the record, Schakowsky blogs at the Huffington Post, as does her husband, convicted felon Robert Creamer. She spoke this past weekend at Netroots Nation, a conference for left-wing bloggers. I have never once demanded that she stop blogging or expressing her point of view, though I disagree with her and some of her colleagues.

I write what I like, and so do Schakowsky and Creamer.My freedom has the same value as theirs. The First Amendment is not a perk for members of Congress and their spouses. That is the greatness of America, and one of the many reasons I am proud to be an American.

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“A House Divided against itself cannot stand.”

When Lincoln prophesied in such terms, he did so to a nation ruptured by the most violent political schism in its History.  Thank providence A. Lincoln possessed the commanding charisma, and granite leadership to galvanize his base at such a time.  The young Republican Party knew no other loyalties and saw no other future than that of a perfect union.

Times change, but politics stay shockingly the same.  Just as important today is a president’s own party support.  This bellwether of presidential stamina has collapsed on our current administration and the inevitable flames of criticism flicker shockingly close to the door of the Oval Office.  The closest to the president have broken rank, even if off the record, and have begun the deconstruction of the agenda of the POTUS.

Krauthammer wisely warned us not to underestimate Barack Obama.  This is sage political advice for such a dynamic political creature as BHO.  However, the abandonment of faith in his followers has the clandestine potential to hemorrhage his agenda.  Just notice the backlash he received this week from his racial fumble.

Let us disseminate the recent revolt against the president by his own party.

“I can’t say that the president is fully behind me…He is not someone who has experienced what I have experienced through life, being a person of color”

Shirley Sherrod

“I never thought I would say this, but even I’m unsure what President Obama really believes.  Instead of outsourcing decisions to Congress, he should spell out his bottom line. That is what leaders are for.”

-Obama Advisor, asked to remain anonymous

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The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

– Mark Twain

The internet is the worst thing that has ever happened to civil discourse in this country.

Before the internet, political disagreements were hostile.  Everyone believed the other side was wrong.  No matter the argument presented, regardless of its basis in fact, it was almost impossible to sway the other side to one’s viewpoint.

With the internet, political disagreements have become toxic and destructive.  The partisanship, the arguments, the daily slander – they have all escalated out of the realm of sanity.   There are literally fights going on the streets.   Sure, we’ve seen it before, but never with this level of ferocity.

The internet is to blame.  Why?

We look to Marcus Aurelius, who tells us, “Of each particular thing, ask: ‘What is it in itself, in its own construction?”

The internet does not exist as anything more than various forms of technology strung together.  The worlds created by it are constructs.  They are virtual worlds, not real ones.

Given that the internet itself is not human, our interaction with it only serves to depersonalize the communication it allegedly facilitates.  In point of fact, interpersonal communication has eroded since the internet became ubiquitous.

With depersonalization comes dehumanization.   We now see the Other as more inhuman than ever before, because we now longer see him face-to-face, or eye-to-eye.

All we see are the Other’s words, taken out of context, printed, reprinted, disseminated, distorted, and reworked to fit an agenda.  No different perhaps than traditional print media, except now the misinformation is created and distributed instantaneously.  With each successive iteration, the original text, subtext, and context are stripped away.  In the end, there is no there, there.

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With no shock and awe and little pomp and circumstance, China has declared war on the world.  Having watched the Gulf Wars on CNN, Americans are accustomed to wars fought with jets, battleships, tanks and infantry.  We constantly are on the look out for foreign enemies on our soil and the vigilance of our citizens has thwarted numerous terrorist attacks.  Unfortunately, Americans are not accustomed to recognize international weapons of economic mass destruction.  In the modern world, exports, deflation and economic competiveness are weapons far more powerful than cruise missiles.

Naive to this new deadly threat, the US government has launched wave after wave of assaults on the competiveness of American business.  Healthcare and financial service “reform” is driving business operating costs higher and credit availability down.  The soon-to-expire tax cuts will result in the largest tax increase in American history.  It should not be surprising that China would use tactics akin to economic guerrilla warfare to attack when our nation is most vulnerable.

China’s supply of young workers entering the labor force is peaking this year and will decline by one third over the next dozen years due to decades of population control.  But big increases in rural farm productivity are pushing huge numbers of the young off the farms and into the factories on the coast.  With factory worker suicides rampant and labor striking over wage rates too low to buy food, China panicked last year and increased its money supply by a spectacular 40% to quell dissent.  Given the threat from a sinking economy creating a revolutionary environment at home, communist China chose to invade world markets by exporting almost 40% of its gross domestic product.

Statistics just released have obliterated any hope that a meaningful economic expansion is under way in Europe, Japan or the US.  Business confidence, factory orders, auto sales and consumer product purchases are plummeting.  Meanwhile, Chinese exports grew a blistering 22% rate for the second quarter of 2010.  With their exports equaling 5% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), China’s capture of another 1% of the world’s economy will force producers in other countries to cut employment by approximately 10 million jobs.

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When companies are found to have violated regulations that govern their industry, is it right that a jury of non-experts can award damages the amount of which will wipe the company off the face of the earth? That is a question that has been raised in a case recently decided against Skilled Healthcare LLC of California.

A class action lawsuit (lawsuit info here) brought by trial lawyers was filed late last year against Skilled Healthcare of California claiming that the company had violated state regulations that stipulates that nursing homes must maintain 3.2 nursing hours per patient, per day (ppd). The lawsuit claimed that the nursing homes operated by Skilled Healthcare often did not meet the requirement.

Interestingly, there was never any claim from any patient that they’d been harmed or put in danger. Not a single patient claimed personal injury before these lawyers began to file their class action lawsuit.

After a six-month trial the jury decided that the company did violate the rules and awarded the plaintiffs $613 million in statutory damages and $58 million in restitutionary damages.

There is a problem with this award, however. The company only has borrowing credit of $94 million. If the company were to be held to this outrageously high award it would go bankrupt and would be forced to close its doors.

Not only that but some 32,000 people — patients/residents and healthcare workers alike — would lose their heatlhcare facilities and jobs if this award were enforced.

Does this make sense?

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Those of us who had to square dance in grade school may remember the old Virginia Reel; the caller commanding us to do the dos-a-do which was a spin move in one direction and then another.  That spin, however, doesn’t compare with the Obama Administration’s version of that dance move, in which the American people are told one thing, and then with dizzying speed, find out something else . . . the truth. Fortunately, most Americans are beginning to focus on the complete disconnect between the absurdity of the claims made by the Administration’s spinmeisters and the people’s own sense of reality.

The most breathtaking flight of fancy from Washington this past week was the full- court press by the President, Vice President, Chairperson of the White House Council of Economic Advisors and a whole host of Obama acolytes to proclaim that the Stimulus is working, that we’re “ahead of schedule” on job creation and that we’ve created  (or saved) millions of jobs.  The job saving claim is, in a strange way, irrefutable…sort of like a witch doctor saying if he hadn’t done his rain dance, the drought would have been worse.  As Democratic Senator Max Baucus complained to the White House “you created a situation where you cannot be wrong.  If 2,500,000 jobs are lost, you claim that without your stimulus program, 3,500,000 jobs would have been lost.  Taken to its logical conclusion, if everyone except one person were laid off, the Administration could claim that without its stimulus program, that person would have lost his job.”

There is, of course, a reason for this disciplined chorus of downright silly spin.  The Administration knew that data were about to be released from a variety of reliable sources revealing a further decline in manufacturing and retail activity, a further pull back in private sector hiring plans and industry investment plans, unemployment stubbornly stuck at just under ten percent and a further sinking of consumer confidence.  What’s a “fella” to do with elections coming and millions of jobs lost?  Dance the old dos-a-do and around you go, and claim the stimulus saved jobs.

This further sinking of consumer confidence is particularly significant and vexing to the Administration.  Consumer confidence is a consequence of the consumers’ sensitivity to what they see, hear and feel all around them.  It is reality. It can’t be manufactured, successfully manipulated (for very long), divined from the White House or spoon fed from a teleprompter.

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Today, in 1945, the Labour Party in Britain won election in a massive landslide, turning out of office Winston Churchill. Just months prior, Germany had been totally defeated in WWII. It is impossible to overstate Churchill’s role in this, but it wasn’t enough to stave off electoral defeat. Voters can be silly sometimes.

We owe a great favor to Mike Godwin. Those of us who have spent any amount of time arguing nonsense on the Internet are familiar with Godwins Law. Briefly, Godwins Law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches … given enough time, all discussions —regardless of topic or scope —inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.”

The most wonderful aspect of Godwin is that “there is a tradition in many newsgroups, and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically ‘lost’ whatever debate was in progress.”

Now there are exceptions to Godwin, for instance when discussing Jesse James affair with Bombshell McGee, it would be quite difficult to not bring up Nazi references. As a student of Hayek, a personal beef I have, is that sometimes a political argument requires a comparison.

Friedrich A. Hayek believed, the infringements on Liberty caused by programs like National Health Care, or any other central planning, will inevitably lead to a totalitarian government that is indistinguishable from National Socialism, save for the logo on the armbands. However being held to Godwin is a rigorous discipline that forces me to plum the depths of my intellect, for an alternate metaphor when discussing issues with liberals.

I believe that Godwin also applied during the years of the Bush Administration. Their argument was lost when Code Pink and MoveOn started with the BusHitler remarks, and I think images of the current President sporting a Charlie Chaplin moustache should probably be discouraged as well.

But I think we should add another corollary to Godwins Law. I think that if you call your opponent a Racist, you have also lost the argument.

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She was likened to a modern day Rosa Parks or Nelson Mandela, but the former Ag official, according to the Washington Post, was not interviewed on a single major Sunday morning talk-show following a week that can only be described as a Shirley Sherrod media frenzy.  Though the conversation on Sunday morning focused on race in America, noticeably absent from the discussion was the woman behind the controversy. Earlier this week a handful of people in the blogosphere began to speculate Sherrod would pull off a “full Ginsburg,” or become only the thirteenth person to appear on all major Sunday talk-shows on the same day since the feat was first accomplished by William H. Ginsburg in 1998.  However, this was before a clip of Sherrod suggesting Andrew Breitbart wants blacks “stuck back in the times of slavery” went viral.  Sherrod also drew extensive criticism late in the week for blasting Fox News as racist.

Considering the Shirley Sherrod interview barrage that took place last Thursday, to not see Sherrod on television Sunday morning sends a clear signal the mainstream media no longer feels allowing the public to get to know the real Shirley Sherrod advances their agenda.

Last week, Charles Krauthammer pointed out that while Sgt. Crowley got a beer summit after Obama merely (and mistakenly) said he “acted stupidly,” Shirley Sherrod got just a seven-minute phone call after she was forced to resign.  The White House and the Obama Administration who hastily relieved her of her position were already keeping her at arms length, and now the mainstream media is too.

Tell Chuck Norris to stand down. Invasion USA never happened.

I contacted both the Laredo Police Department and the Webb County Sheriff yesterday and debunked claims that Los Zetas gunmen from the Gulf Cartel has crossed the border from Mexico and took over two ranches in Texas. The Laredo Morning News also refuted the claim. Pro 8 News, the NBC affiliate, didn’t think enough of the absurdity to even comment on it… they found the installation of a new traffic light more newsworthy.

Absurdly, the same trio of sites that cried wolf are still sticking by their story, utter lack of credible evidence aside.

Cypress News publisher John G. Winder is sticking with the story, not because any additional evidence has been produced, but because the two sources for his version of the story, blog Digger’s Realm and Examiner.com’s San Diego (CA) County Political Buzz Examiner blogger Kimberly Dvorak are standing by their militiamen and anonymous police sources.

The original Cypress Times story? A re-publication of the original Digger’s Realm story.

The Digger’s Realm story? Two anonymous Laredo police sources and a San Diego California Minuteman named Jeff Schwilk who claims he got his information from… an anonymous Laredo PD officer.

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The liberal tax revolt, as the Wall Street Journal is calling it, is a very important topic — especially for investors and small-business entrepreneurs. And for new jobs.

The so-called revolt is comprised of three Democratic senators: Kent Conrad, Evan Bayh, and Ben Nelson. They want to extend all the Bush tax cuts. That includes taxes on the wealthy, or the top personal tax rate, the investment taxes on capital gains and dividends, and the estate tax.

So is this revolt a game-changer, or merely wishful thinking?

With a strong pushback against the revolt by President Obama, Treasury man Tim Geithner, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, right now it looks like wishful thinking. But with Democrats getting badly paddled in various polls, you never know.

When Tim Geithner told me in a CNBC interview a few weeks ago about his 20-20 rule for the top tax rate on capital gains and dividends, I blogged that this was a good thing — in particular the story for dividend taxes, which could go to 39.6 percent. But no increase at all on investment taxes would be even better.

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Click to Play

Rob Long, Peter Robinson, and James Lileks are joined this week by Istanbul based contributor Claire Berlinski (AKA, Queen of Comments) and WSJ editorial writer Joe Rago. We cover pesky software updates, The List, Mitt, Breitbart, Mac v. PC, and the lessons we should learn from the Massachusetts health care reform experience. Questions? Comments? Visit us at Ricochet.com or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.

Ricochet Rundown:

00:00 – 03:02 Opening Chat

03:02 – 15:07 Journo-List

15:07 – 35:17 Claire Berlinski, Queen of Comments

35:20 – 1:03:10 Joe Rago, WSJ

1:04 – Closing Chat

I’m a warrior trained by Khalid Muhammad
I’m a terrorist trained by Usama bin Laden
Demolitionist, breaking down the walls of the rotten
Never hit and miss
So, first time, take out your target

You want freedom?
You’re gonna have to kill some crackers!
You’re gonna have to kill some of their babies!

Minister King Samir Shabazz, leader of the New Black Panther Party

Patriots understand the threat posed by the New Black Panthers and ACORN and other Democratic Party-protected groups.  As the mid-term elections approach, these thugs will become ever more aggressive.  Remember that Barack Obama’s marching orders were for them to get in the faces of his opponents and to bring a gun.  Where can all this be headed?

In 1935, at a time when many intellectuals viewed fascism as a progressive movement, Sinclair Lewis wrote a novel that envisioned a political tragedy akin to the Obama presidency.  It Can’t Happen Here is the story of Berzelius Windrip, a charming, charismatic demagogue who, in the midst of an economic crisis, is elected president by promising lots of free goodies for everyone.

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People walking the streets armed with guns must be dangerous, right? The Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center keep claiming that even those individuals who have legally obtained permits to carry concealed handguns are extremely dangerous. With millions of Americans already having been issued such permits from the various states, this is an important issue.

The gun control organizations have frequently made these claims in the press. The Associated Press articles by Erik Schelzig and by Jim Abrams have given extensive, uncritical coverage. Members of the gun control organizations have made these claims unchallenged on such places as Fox News and on the Huffington Post. But the gun control advocates inaccurately describe many shooting cases, choosing to ignore that the majority of incidents involve people properly defending themselves.

Over the past three years, the number of active permit holders in the United States has gone from about 5 million to more than 6.2 million today. The numbers issued by the state regulatory agencies show time after time that these permit holders abide by the law.

Take Florida, which currently has the most concealed handgun permit holders in the country and is one of the two most populous states with right-to-carry laws. Between Oct. 1, 1987, and May 31 this year, permits had been issued to 1.8 million people. On average, the permits had been held for quite a long time, well over 10 years. For all those individuals across the more than 22 years of legal carry, there were only 167 cases where the permit was revoked for a firearms related violation, or about 0.01 percent of permit holders. While the state doesn’t provide a precise breakdown of the reason for those revocations, the vast majority were apparently for people who accidentally carried their concealed handgun into a gun-free zone, such as an airport or school.

Throughout the past 30 months, beginning January 2008, only three additional permit holders have had their permit revoked for a firearms-related violation. With more than 739,000 active permit holders, that is an annual revocation rate of 0.00017 percent.

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It looks increasingly like Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will take the fall for the Obama Administration’s firing of Shirley Sherrod. Our take: he fired her too quickly… and offered to rehire her too quickly.

Twitter exploded a while ago about this story, which claims that heavily-armed Los Zetas gunmen of the Gulf Cartel have taken over ranches on the U.S. side of the border.

My curiosity got the better of me, and so I called the Laredo Police Department, and had a delightful chat with the acting watch commander, Sgt. Perez.

Sgt. Perez informed me that I was her seventh caller about this claim since she came on duty this afternoon. She stipulated two things that blows holes in the invasion claim.

1. The location of the alleged invasion is outside of their city-limits jurisdiction, so they would not be involved, and;
2. while they would not be involved in any law enforcement response outside of their jurisdiction, they work closely with the county sheriff’s office and would know if such an event is occurring.

She also provided me the number of the Sheriff’s Department. The deputy that answered the phone there was less bemused, having also dealt with this rumor multiple times in a short amount of time. She also told me that there was no invasion and no law enforcement siege, and that deputies were continuing normal operations.

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When men who didn’t serve in the armed forces pretend to be decorated war heroes, they’re labeled as “fake veterans” and can even be prosecuted for for what many call “stolen valor.” Recently, one Missouri politician began mailing campaign literature that leads me to believe he’s guilty of stealing the valor of members of the Tea Party Movement (i.e., freedom-loving patriots who sacrifice time, talent and treasure in an effort to save their country from socialism). In short, he’s guilty of “stealing tea.”

The politician at the heart of this matter is Scott Rupp, a RINO Republican running for re-election in Missouri’s 2nd Senatorial District.

This week, I learned from friends in the Tea Party Movement that Rupp had mailed a four-color piece that features a photo of him standing, arms crossed, in front of a bright yellow Gadsden (a.k.a., “Don’t Tread On Me!”) flag. In addition to featuring the flag that’s become a symbol of the Tea Party Movement, the photo features people holding up signs in the background.

The problem I have with Rupp’s brochure is that it gives voters a false impression about a candidate who, according to everyone with whom I’ve spoke, has never been to a single Tea Party event in the district — and I’ve attended dozens of ‘em!

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