On March 28^th, I had a post on the Big Government website that highlighted the details of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) ‘Operation Gun Runner.’ This operation, sometimes called by the name ‘Fast and Furious,’ entailed selling thousands of guns to known Mexican criminals in the U.S., allowing the weapons to be carried into Mexico, and tracing the movement of the guns in hopes of catching major players in the Mexican Cartel.

The problem with this plan is that it didn’t work. Of the 2,000 to 2,500 guns that were sold, only 1,300 (approximately) have been recovered: which means that right now, as I type, 1,200 guns are passing hand to hand between cartel members and others in Mexico.

And as I pointed out on the 28^th, at least one Border Agent – Brian Terry – died as a result of this nonsense, and it seems that hundreds of Mexican civilians have been killed as well.

Of course President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have no idea how this happened. Both of them deny authorizing ‘Gun Runner’ or ‘Fast and Furious,’ and seem shamefully indifferent to the crime and investigative complications that could arise from the thousands of guns the BATF allowed into Mexico.

Fortunately, Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) isn’t satisfied to sit back and wait for the administration to remember what they did or didn’t authorize. On March 16^th he sent a letter to Acting Director Kenneth Melson, BATF, “requesting specific documents related to Project Gunrunner, its ‘Fast and Furious’ component, and records related to the death of Border Agent Brian Terry.”

Although the requested documents were to be turned over by March 30^th, the BATF didn’t comply. So Issa has now gone a step further and issued a subpoena that clearly specifies the documents the Congressman wants to see, and expects to receive by April 13, 2011.

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It hasn’t gone quite as well as one would have hoped. We face the real prospect of the West losing, in fact.

It’s budget time again. And Democrats are once again taking down and dusting off all their human shields and straw people, in order to convince those Americans, who are still unable to think for themselves, that they will die if the government doesn’t provide them with every form of aid from the day of their birth.

So far we have the Obama administration declaring that at least 70,000 children will die if the Republicans pass their spending cuts. No hyperlink to the authoritative study on how they came up with this number because, well, there is none. But, if children could be endangered in any way due to a cut in a program, could we skip the farm subsidies so that we can still make sure kids don’t die if we can help it? Make a note of that.

Then we have all the women who will be dying of breast cancer because they won’t be able to avail themselves of a mammogram at Planned Parenthood if this organization is defunded. Trouble is, Planned Parenthood doesn’t seem to offer mammograms. Oops.

Nancy Pelosi says the nation will lose 1,000,000 jobs if the Republicans pass their cuts. In Democratic lingo, that’s lost and destroyed, instead of saved and created. But, they use the same math to get their numbers.

Such concern for children and families. Yet, on Wednesday of this week, no concern was shown by the House Democrats when Republicans passed the SOAR Act (H.R. 471), which reauthorizes and expands the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the hallmark school choice program for low income children in the nation’s capital.

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From AFP:

An upcoming book about Google claims that Eric Schmidt, who is to step down next week as chief executive, once asked for information about a political donation he made to be removed from the Internet giant’s search engine, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Times said Schmidt’s request is recounted in “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works and Shapes Our Lives,” a book by technology journalist Steven Levy which is to appear in stores on April 12.

The Times said Levy spent three years reporting inside the company to write the book, a copy of which was obtained by the Times.

According to the book, Schmidt’s request was rejected as unacceptable by Sheryl Sandberg, who served as Google’s vice president of global online sales and operations for six years before leaving in March 2008 for Facebook.

Google announced in January that Schmidt would be replaced as chief executive on April 4 by Google co-founder Larry Page.

Read the whole thing here. This goes to the heart of something that’s been a bit of a nagging concern for civil libertarians. Namely, that Google could or would somehow “game” their search engine results for its own ends. According to this account, the company denied the request, but that its CEO would even think of it is cause for concern.

Photo taken 2004; Credit WKOW.com

26 year-old Katherine R. Windels has been charged for sending emails containing bomb threats and death threats to Wisconsin state senators during the budget battles last month.

According to the Milwauakee Journal Sentinel:

Windels was charged with two felony counts “bomb scare” and two misdemeanor counts of “computer message-threatening injury/bodily harm.” If convicted, each felony count carries a maximum penalty of three years and six months in prison and a $10,000 fine, and each misdemeanor count carries a maximum penalty of 90 days in prison and a $1,000 fine.

Windels was never arrested, but released on her own recognizance. This is surprising, since it now comes to light that she was investigated last year for similar activity. It is not known what she wrote exactly, as police redacted all content of the emails, but an acquaintance, Lisa Patterson, who received the e-mails, felt compelled to take them to the police. The police  merely told Windels to cease contact with Patterson.

In this latest caper meanwhile, Windels used the alias “Lisa Patterson.” Vindictiveness perhaps?

Liberty Chick reported at BigGovernment Friday that the Mackinaw Center recently received similar threats from a female caller. Could this be the same person again?

Windels’ e-mails got a lot of play when they first appeared. They were particularly vicious. Here is the complete text of one:

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

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On Mar. 31, Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee introduced a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) to make it a constitutional requirement for Washington, D.C., to end our deficit spending and culture of debt. And our national grassroots organization, Pass the Balanced Budget Amendment, is working with them to compel lawmakers to approve this change to the Supreme Law of the Land.

The BBA requires that the U.S. cannot spend more than it takes in, making the federal government act just like most state governments, and for that matter just like all of you reading this column.

There are a few emergency exceptions, such as allowing two-thirds of the House and Senate to suspend it for a specific reason for one year, with lower thresholds to respond to a military threat to our national security or an official, declared war against a specific nation (not some open-ended or global military operation).

But with the exception of an all-out war, those exceptions only apply if there’s the political will for a supermajority of Congress to support it. If those of us who fought to get the right people elected in 2010 keep those efforts up in 2012 and beyond, then we can finally force Congress to live within its means.

The amendment is cosponsored by all 47 Senate Republicans. This raises eyebrows in that the last time a proposed BBA was voted on, 1997, it enjoyed Democratic support with 66 votes, falling a single vote short in the Senate. (It also means that we need some solid constitutional conservatives to win a few more Senate seats.)

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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell swiped at President Obama this week for comments he made in the course of calling for a significant reduction in oil imports.

Obama, outlining his new energy “blueprint,” said he wants to slash Americans’ dependence on foreign oil by as much as one-third. But McConnell claimed that this is mere posturing by the administration, which he suggested was positively disinterested in taking basic steps that would enable the U.S. to become energy independent.

According to McConnell, “Over the past two years, the administration has undertaken what can only be described as a war on American energy. It’s cancelled dozens of drilling leases. It’s declared a moratorium on drilling off the Gulf Coast. It’s increased permit fees. It has prolonged public comment periods. In short, it’s done just about everything it can to keep our own energy sector from growing. As a result, thousands of U.S. workers have lost their jobs, as companies have been forced to look elsewhere for a better business climate.”

McConnell indicated that he sees limited prospects for bipartisan support for a strategy designed to deliver energy independence, saying “Tell a Democrat in Washington that gas prices are too high, and, as if on cue, they’ll throw together a speech or a press conference to suggest that we open an underground oil reserve that was created to deal with calamities, not market pressures; they’ll take you on a tour of some alternative car plant that promises to have one of its $100,000 prototypes to market 25 years down the road; or they’ll quietly release some report to the media about how energy companies aren’t working hard enough to extract oil — while schizophrenically claiming American reserves are minuscule and that more production isn’t the solution.”

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Clearly there is no shame in the culture of conceit in which NPR’s “Morning Edition” co-host Steve Inskeep lives, and like NPR, he is lying to the American people.

The supposed point of his March 24 op-ed in the Wall Street Journal was to refute the irrefutable – that NPR is an egregiously and unabashedly hard left, Soros-backed operation subsidized by taxpayers.

But Inskeep, like other NPR representatives, fraudulently claims “emails show that NPR refused the money” from the Muslim Brotherhood front group.  At no point did NPR ever do so, and on the contrary the emails released by NPR did quite the opposite.  They confirmed that NPR’s top executives had no objections whatsoever to taking money from a front group controlled and primarily financed by a jihadist organization explicitly committed to the subversion and destruction of this country.  They were moving along with the perfectly standard procedures for accepting an institutional donation of that size.

Even long after we had established our Muslim Brotherhood front group status and explained that our purpose was to counter and replace the “Jewish” control over the American media, NPR’s top brass only became more and more eager, even putting “a dollop of urgency” on advancing the process, in Betsy Liley’s words.

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April is Jazz Appreciation Month. (Anyone who says anything positive about Kenny G risks getting banned from commenting. We’re serious.)

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board released today the filing reports for the recall committees of eight Republican state senators. A look at the numbers does not reflect a grassroots effort to raise money but large donations from the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Progress PAC.

Included among the expenditures is money allocated for paid staff. These totals amount to more than 12 times the money raised by efforts to recall Democratic senators.

Committee to Recall Kapanke
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$8,589
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$6,586.12
TOTAL-$15,175.13

Committee to Recall Darling
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$7,404.73
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$8,775.12
-Friends of the Committee to Recall Alberta Darling- $634.57
TOTAL-$16,814.42

Committee to Recall Hopper
-Democratic Party of Wisconsin-$31,667.63
-Wisconsin Progress PAC-$8,053.12
TOTAL-$39,667.63

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The Kabuki theater that is the debate over the federal budget took a weird turn this afternoon. The GOP-led House of Representatives passed HR 1255, the “Government Shutdown Prevention Act.” The measure is largely symbolic…it states that if the Democrat-led Senate and President Obama don’t act on $61 billion in cuts passed earlier this year by the House, those cuts would be ‘law of the land.’ Which, obviously, doesn’t hold any water. This isn’t too far away from when Democrats proposed “deeming” ObamaCare passed.

The House GOP Leadership, however, did add something to their legislation that should give pause to all conservatives. They grafted onto their bill a Democrat proposal to suspend pay for members of Congress if there is a government shutdown. So, if members believe that the budget cuts “negotiated” by GOP Leadership are too small or think we should finally face up to the inevitable tough choices, they potentially could lose their pay.

I think Rep. McCotter summed it up best:

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Apparently, the Big Labor-related death threats aren’t limited to Wisconsin.  Or to lawmakers.

This following email is just in from our friends at The Mackinac Center for Public Policy:

<start email>

“The Mackinac Center for Public Policy received numerous death threats and bomb threats in the aftermath of national publicity about a Freedom of Information Act request it sent to three public universities.

The messages were left on the Center’s voice mail Thursday night and early Friday morning, but it is unclear at this point if one or two women were responsible for the threats.

Mackinac Center President Joseph Lehman said the Mackinac Center has contacted law enforcement about the threats.

“We, along with the authorities, are doing everything necessary to protect ourselves,” Lehman said. “No threats will prevent us from showing the public how universities spend tax dollars.”

There were five messages left containing death or bomb threats. Four of them appear to be from the same caller. A fifth message was from a woman who left a death threat and, unlike the previous caller, left her name and indicated she lived in a neighboring state. It was unclear if the second caller was the same as the first caller.

A female voice said:

“Scotty Walker is dead. So are you. We know where you live.” The woman then recited the Mackinac Center’s address and said, “We are coming up to destroy you.”

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Victim of sex abuse Troy Merryfield fired back at JoAnne Kloppenburg and the Greater Wisconsin Committee by appearing in a new ad paid for by Citizens for a Stronger America. In the ad, Merryfield condemns the use of his pain for political gain. Earlier this week Merryfield sent a letter to the Greater Wisconsin Committee and JoAnne Kloppenburg asking them to pull the ad.

For over a week now, the Greater Wisconsin Committee has been running an ad that attacks Justice David Prosser for a 30 year old case involving sex abuse committed by a priest. Prosser was Outagamie County District Attorney at the time.

In a debate on March 28, Prosser asked Kloppenburg to condemn the ad after Troy Merryfield wrote a letter asking the ad to be pulled. Kloppenburg refused.

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With the Federal government scheduled to shut down on April 8, Congress is not only debating where to spend trillions of dollars in the next fiscal year, but also whether to raise the roof, i.e. the debt ceiling.  The debt ceiling simply represents a cap on the total debt the U.S. government can hold, and it is currently set at a whopping $14.294 trillion.  Though the resolution for this limit was signed a mere year ago, we are quickly approaching the limit and should reach it sometime in the first week of April.  Keep in perspective that it would take more than 31,000 years of earning $1 a day to make a measly $1 trillion of the total debt. The government has added to the total debt every year since 1960 (except for two years).  Worse yet, it has added over $5 trillion in the past three and a half years alone.  Wouldn’t common sense indicate that there’s little room to borrow more?  Apparently not.

The reality is that many lawmakers want to “stabilize the debt” by increasing the debt ceiling.  Of course, you can’t stabilize trillions of dollars.  So essentially, the government ends up selling more bonds just to pay interest on the national debt and pay for new spending.  What’s a few more hundred billion when you already owe several trillion?

Often, to explain how we must increase the debt ceiling, government plays on one major fear – the fear of U.S. default.  Those in support of raising the debt ceiling argue that if it’s not increased the government will not be able to meet obligations.  They essentially say the country will go bankrupt.  To prevent this very issue, the debt ceiling has been raised 74 times since March 1963.  The problem with this rationale is that it’s like urging a boat to take on more water to keep it from sinking.  Imagine meeting with your financial planner and hearing him say, “In these tough financial times I recommend you add to your debt in order to stay solvent.”  I hope you would quickly find a new financial planner.

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Union officials who have been challenged to accept a federally supervised secret ballot election for Hyatt hotel employees have sought and received protective cover from the Obama Administration. Thus far, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has rejected four petitions from hotels in California and Indiana asking for a straight up and down vote on unionization. Although it is unusual for an employer to ask for an election, this option has existed at the NLRB for 75 years.

The NLRB had scheduled hearings to review petitions for three of the four properties, but later cancelled those hearings when it became clear UNITE HERE was not asking for the election. The idea now is for the union to hide behind and NLRB procedure so it can sustain its corporate campaign and pressure Hyatt into accepting “card check” as a substitute for a secret ballot election.

The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA),” which provides for “card check,” has been a top legislative priority for union leaders but with Republicans now in control of the House it is unlikely to move. Even with Democrats in control of Congress and the White House in the first two years of the Obama administration, the legislation ran into stiff opposition.

“The lesson from this episode is clear: although unions couldn’t convince Congress to force card check on the American people, it remains their preferred method of organizing and they’ll do whatever they can to intimidate workers and employers into using it,” said Glenn Spencer executive director of the Workforce Freedom Initiative with the Chamber of Commerce.

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As is the case with any important election, events are happening fast as we approach the final weekend prior to the crucial Tuesday April 5 vote that will ultimately decide the future of Wisconsin for a generation to come. In one corner, you have sitting State Supreme Court Justice David Prosser, a reliable 4-to3 tie-breaking vote in favor of judicial restraint. In the other corner, Joanne Kloppenburg, a die-hard lefty with zero judicial experience who has all but promised the state’s thuggish public unions that she will be their firewall in stopping Governor Walker’s reforms via judicial fiat.

We all know Democrats and public unions plays dirty. That’s not the question. The question is only how dirty, and in their bid to get Kloppenburg on the court, they played it as dirty as anyone can — going so far as to exploit a victim of sexual abuse. Here’s a disgusting smear that’s been airing non-stop in Wisconsin for a week now:

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The ad buy was for a full $3 million but immediately upon release the victim, Troy Merryfield, asked Kloppenburg to call for the ad to be taken down, calling it “offensive, inaccurate, and out of context.” Incredibly, Kloppenburg refused, and residents of my home state tell me that as of yesterday the smear was still airing ad nauseum on every channel.

Obviously disgusted with the Left shamelessly exploiting what was obviously as traumatic and painful an experience anyone can go through, Merryfield bravely took to the airwaves today with a devastating ad that Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes has learned is part of a massive buy:

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London was just hit by heavy riots as part of a protest against the “deep” and “savage” budget cuts of the Cameron government. This is not the first time the U.K. has endured riots. The welfare lobby, bureaucrats, and other recipients of taxpayer largesse are becoming increasingly agitated that their gravy train may be derailed.

The vast majority of protesters have been peaceful, but some hooligans took the opportunity to wreak havoc. These nihilistic punks apparently call themselves anarchists, but are too dense to understand the giant disconnect of adopting that title while at the same time rioting for bigger government and more redistribution. My anarcho-capitalist friends must be embarrassed by the potential linkage with these angry morons.

Speaking of rage, Paul Krugman is equally dismayed with Prime Minister Cameron’s ostensibly penny-pinching budget. Summoning the ghost of John Maynard Keynes, he asserts that such frugality is misguided when an economy is still weak and people are unemployed. Indeed, Krugman argues that the U.K. economy is weak today precisely because of Cameron’s supposed austerity.

Not surprisingly, the purpose of his argument is to discourage similar policies from being adopted in the United States.

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