Once Lamar Smith (R-TX) opened the hearings with comments on Fast and Furious and then passed the baton to Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), it seemed the hearings would be a wash.  That’s because it was evident from the start that Conyers was there to carry water for Holder. For example, Conyers used his opening comments to highlight the “life and contributions” of Holder, and to highlight the need for more gun control in the United States. He particularly supported the new requirement for border state gun stores to file special reports on customers who make multiple long gun purchases. (Conyers made no mention of the thousands of long guns transferred to criminals via the DOJ/ATF operation Fast and Furious.)

Congressman Bobby Scott (D-VA) used his opening comments to call for more gun control, and was particularly critical of concealed handgun laws and of Republican support of concealed handgun laws. Moreover, Scott actually defended Holder by blaming gun walking on President Bush. (For the record, there was an operation called Wide Receiver under Bush, but it was very small and was done in conjunction with the Mexican government rather than by keeping the Mexican government in the dark as Holder did with Fast and Furious.)

Folks, the whole tone of the hearing changed when Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) was allowed to make his opening statement. He contented that gun control was not the important matter before the committee. Rather, “what is important is the 2nd Amendment.”  Added Issa, “ATF Used Fast and Furious to make case for gun regulations”

After this opening salvo, Issa was on a roll:

This administration is more interested in building data bases, in talking about control, than controlling the flow of guns they had control over. …[Fast and Furious] was not an accident. This project was failed and flawed from the beginning.

Issa went on to make the point that “Brian Terry is dead today because of this program,” yet Holder and Co. are hesitant to investigate Terry’s murder for fear of uncovering their own culpability to a greater degree. Said Issa: “This justice department is not looking for who killed Brian Terry” in order to preserve their own “plausible deniability.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Jon Corzine plans to tell a House committee that he doesn’t know the location of clients’ money that went missing from failed investment firm MF Global.

The former U.S. senator has been subpoenaed to explain how MF Global, which he led for about 20 months, collapsed into the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and why an estimated $1.2 billion in client funds is unaccounted for.

In prepared testimony posted Thursday on the House Committee on Agriculture’s website, Corzine apologizes to “all those affected” by MF Global’s failure. The company filed for bankruptcy protection on Oct. 31. Corzine resigned as CEO on Nov. 3 and hasn’t spoken publicly since.

“I simply do not know where the money is, or why the accounts have not been reconciled to date,” Corzine says in the statement. He says he can’t say whether there were “operational errors” at MF Global or whether banks or other companies have held onto funds that should be returned to MF Global.

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A month after an election with mixed results for the small-government cause, Ohio conservatives are suffering through a very public GOP power struggle. Governor Kasich’s push to replace Ohio Republican Party (ORP) chairman Kevin DeWine has national implications: the Issue 2 campaign proved how low Democrats, Progressives, and unions (but I repeat myself) are willing to go to win the Buckeye state.

Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama would love nothing more than an Ohio divided, so let’s get this over with.

Even without the laundry list of inside-baseball complaints cited by House Speaker Bill Batchelder, it makes more sense than you might expect to oust DeWine despite ORP’s success riding the 2010 tea party wave.

Too many ORP leaders from the Taft era (concluded in 2007 amid scandal, scandal, scandal, and more scandal) were unprincipled go-along-to-get-along “moderates,” and signs abound that Kevin DeWine falls into that category. How could DeWine expect to chair an effective party in 2012 – to say nothing of 2014 – given his fracas with Governor Kasich? Why should anyone in the POTUS field trust that campaign stops with DeWine will reach the voters they need to reach?

Case in point, Romney and DeWine’s botched October visit to a Cincinnati call center, where Romney failed to endorse either of the issues volunteers were working to pass. Commentators speculated that Romney was being used as part of an ongoing DeWine/Kasich feud – not exactly the press coverage you want in a key swing state.

In early 2010, solid conservative candidates lined up for the attorney general and auditor races. ORP had other plans: enter Mike DeWine, Chairman DeWine’s cousin and a former US senator (lifetime ACU rating: 79.8) unseated by Sherrod Brown in a 2006 election fraught with Iraq war fatigue and aforementioned Taft-era scandals.

ORP nudged Dave Yost into running for auditor instead of attorney general, bumping Seth Morgan out of the picture to make room for Attorney General DeWine. DeWine narrowly defeated Richard Cordray – now President Obama’s Vital Bureaucrat of the Week – but DeWine family maneuvering contributed to lingering distrust between ORP and Ohio conservatives.

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From BusinessInsider:

The House Financial Services Committee canceled a scheduled “mark-up” of a bill to ban congressional insider trading last night, amid concerns that the committee’s chairman, Spencer Bachus, was moving forward with the bill to take the heat off his personal political troubles.

Bachus’ trading habits during the financial crisis were featured in a ‘60 Minutes’ profile last month as an example of potential insider trading on the part of lawmakers. He’s denied those allegations, and seized upon the trading ban — called the STOCK Act — to rebuild his image.

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From CBSNews:

Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

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The Obama Administration has taken the unusual step of labeling the Fort Hood Massacre as a case of workplace violence.

During a joint session House and Senate Homeland Security Committees on Wednesday, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins blasted a letter by the Department of Defense labeling the Fort Hood Massacres carried out by Major Nidal Hasan, a former Army psychiatrist, who was station at Fort Hood at the time as a case of workplace violence. Major Hasan currently stands accused of carrying out the massacre that killed 13 people (12 of his fellow soldiers, 1 civilian and one unborn child) as well as wounded 29 others on November 5th 2009

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn), who is chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, states that. “The U.S. Military has become a direct target of violent Islamist extremists based here in the United States.”

In a interview with Fox News before the joint committee meeting, Senator Lieberman went on to further state that the U.S. military services member was increasingly under the scope of terrorists not only just overseas, but within the United States as well.

In a recent span of 6 months there have been 3 unsuccessful attack attempts by homegrown jihadists. In June, two Men allegedly plotted to attack Seattle Washington, military installation using guns and handgrenades. In July Army Pvt. Naser Abdo sought to follow in the footsteps of Major Nidal Hasan in his planning of a second attack at Fort Hood and in November New York City Police arrested homegrown jihadist Jose Pimentel for plotting to kill service members returning from Afghanistan and Iraq.

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In a video shot at #Occupy Chicago, Aisha Karim, a professor from Saint Xavier University, is shown preaching the gospel of Karl Marx to a cheering crowd in a display of stunning economic and historical ignorance – but was her speech part of a wider effort to unionize St. Xavier?

The video titled Communist Manifesto Teach-In @ Occupy Chi showing a speech by Professor Aisha Karim has flown under the radar for a couple of months – it had fewer than 400 views when I found it – but it’s another clear example of the explicitly Marxist strain in the #Occupy movement, how it relates directly to unionization, and how just plain silly its ivory tower thinking actually is.

Professor Karim is molding the minds of American’s young adults through her work as a teacher at places like the University of North Carolina, Greensboro where parents have spent their hard earned money so their kids can sit through classes like English 209: The Terrible Logic of Capitalism: A Survey of Postcolonial Literature.

Currently, Professor Karim teaches at Saint Xavier University, Chicago’s oldest college. In this video of her teach-in, she begins by asking the Occupy Chicago crowd whether it’s time to reconsider whether Marx, socialism and communism aren’t actually pretty awesome after all (1:33 to 2:00):

And what we want to do at point is to wonder (unintelligible) if we are still skeptics about socialism or communism, we need to wonder if Marx was also right about socialism and the necessity for capitalism to turn into something completely different.

(Whoops and applause from audience)

Professor Karim then goes on to discuss Marx’s central concept of the exploitation of labor, and she makes an revealing choice for her example of an exploited worker: Professor Karim herself (2:30):

I’m going to take my example of what I do and how my labor is actually taken away from me–the fruits of my labor is taken away from me–but it is not just me. This is representative of every single person in this world who works for wages in this world right now.

(Audience member – “That’s right.”)

Professor Karim goes on to disclose her shocking plight:

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Today, in 1993, President Bill Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement. Remember that time that Democrats weren’t anti-free markets? Good times.

The bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 killed over 2,400 Americans and led directly to the entry of the United States into World War II.

In his powerful, thickly researched new book, December 1941: 31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World, Craig Shirley chronicles the day-by-day shifts in American culture, politics, and national identity through that horrible month. Before December, Shirley tells Reason’s Nick Gillespie, a solid majority opposed entry into World War II and the “eminently respectable” America First movement was poised to help select the next president of the United States. Non-interventionism was so universal that Franklin Roosevelt himself had campaigned for his third term as president on a promise to keep “American boys” out of European wars.

By the start of 1942, says Shirley, the long tradition of isolationism was over, never to be seen again. The nation that had rejected the League of Nations after World War I helped create the United Nations and America quickly became not simply a global economic, political, and military power but the dominant player on the globe.

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McIntyre: permission to occupy the bench! (Photo credit: AP)

Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Frances McIntyre, who was prematurely panned for granting Occupy Boston a temporary reprieve (and for being a Mitt Romney appointee), delivered an elegant decision against the protestors today:

Plaintiffs claim that their occupation of the site and the community they have established thereon are protected by the First Amendment. They seek a preliminary injunction against their removal by the defendants.

But the injunction is denied because, while Occupy Boston protesters may be exercising their expressive rights during the protest, they have no privilege under the First Amendment to seize and hold the land on which they sit…[T]his court seriously doubts that the First Amendment permits the plaintiffs to seize and hold a public forum to the exclusion of others. (1, 15)

Judge McIntyre noted that “the setting up of tents, sleeping, and governance” on a public square is “expressive conduct,” albeit subject to local regulations that have a merely “incidental” impact on free speech, and which are consistent with established time, place, and manner restrictions on the First Amendment. However, the fact that protesters sought to “Occupy” that public square crossed the line from speech into land seizure.

(Time to rename that movement, perhaps?) (more…)

On October 18, 2010, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer sent communiqués to Attorney General Eric Holder alerting the A.G. that indictments over Fast and Furious could be forthcoming.  This alert came on the heels of briefings on Fast and Furious which were sent to Holder at least as early July 2010. Yet although Fast and Furious was the topic of such correspondence and the focus of such briefings, in February 2011 Breuer told Congress he knew nothing about the gun walking tactics which had been used in the operation. His contention was that he only learned of the tactics once Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry had been killed in December 2010.

More recently, however, Breuer has decided he knew about the gun walking aspects of Fast and Furious as early as April 2010. But he continues to carry water for the DOJ by saying that although he knew, he never took the time to tell Holder about the gun walking.

How many lies can these people tell before someone changes the locks on their office doors and takes away their parking credentials?

Senator Charles Grassley, for one, has had enough, and just today officially called for Breuer’s resignation from the Senate floor. (more…)

The joke was on the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) this week. On Tuesday, a fake press release claimed SEIU had voted to revoke their endorsement of President Obama. The Washington Post reported the fake release quoted SEIU President Mary Kay Henry as saying, “Our members gave $60.7 million dollars to the Obama campaign in 2008 and fought hard for his election because we were promised change. We’re still waiting.”

The Post also reported, “The email was sent by Mark McCullough, spokesman for the SEIU. But if you looked closely at his email address, it was missing a ‘c,’ and emails to that address bounced back.” While the release was meant as a prank, the payoff that unions expect from their political backing to the Democrats and Obama is no laughing matter.

Also on Tuesday, the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) voted to endorse the president’s reelection bid. AFSCME vowed to spend $100 million to help his campaign. That was no joke, and neither are the massive budget deficits which states and localities across the country face due to the unsustainable contracts and pension obligations negotiated by AFCME’s affiliates.

Why the extravagant spending using the forced dues of workers? In his book Democracy Denied, Phil Kerpen details how the Obama Administration gives favors to Big Labor while making an end run around congress.

The unions expected that enormous investment to pay dividends, and Obama did not intend to disappoint them. While the public has mostly focused on the high-profile fights raging in Congress, the key implementer of the union agenda is a relatively obscure federal agency called the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Now stacked with SEIU lawyers who are Obama’s ideological fellow travelers, the  board is poised to grant union bosses vast new powers without so much as a vote in Congress.

Kerpen writes how much the President owes to the unions and SEIU.

(more…)

CHICAGO (AP) – Rod Blagojevich, the ousted Illinois governor whose three-year battle against criminal charges became a national spectacle, was sentenced to 14 years in prison Wednesday, one of the stiffest penalties imposed for corruption in a state with a history of crooked politics.

Blagojevich’s 18 convictions included allegations of trying to leverage his power to appoint someone to President Barack Obama’s vacated Senate seat to raise campaign cash or land a high-paying job.

“When it is the governor who goes bad the fabric of Illinois is torn and disfigured and not easily repaired,” Judge James Zagel said.

(more…)

Solyndra was once known as the poster child for the Obama administration’s “green energy” initiative. However, it has become the poster child for the corruption that ensues when the government treats tax money as a play thing and meddles in the private sector.

Solyndra, you may recall, filed for bankruptcy in September, leaving 1,100 workers without jobs and American taxpayers on the hook for a half billion dollars due to an Obama administration stimulus loan guarantee. Thanks to some good work from the House Energy and Commerce Committee along with some thorough reporting by The Washington Post, we now know that not only was this loan a horrible “investment,” but it was also rife with corruption.

And yet, rather than coming clean and releasing all records related to the Solyndra deal, the Obama administration continues to stonewall and obfuscate.

For this reason, JW filed separate lawsuits against the Obama Department of Energy and Office of Management and Budget to obtain records regarding the taxpayer funded Solyndra loans. Here’s what we’re after, pursuant to our original September 6, 2011, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent lawsuits:

1. Any and all records regarding, concerning or related to the issuance of loan guarantees to Solyndra LLC, Solyndra Inc., Solyndra Fab 2 LLC, and/or 360 Degree Solar Holdings Inc.
2. Any and all records of communication between any official, officer, or employee of the Department of Energy and any official, officer or employee of any other government agency, department or office regarding concerning or related to Solyndra LLC, Solyndra Inc., Solyndra Fab 2 LLC, and/or 360 Degree Solar Holdings Inc.
3. Any and all records of communications between any official, officer or employee of the Department of Energy and any official, officer or employee of the following entities [Solyndra investors] regarding concerning or related to Solyndra LLC, Solyndra Inc., Solyndra Fab 2 LLC, and/or 360 Degree Solar Holdings Inc.:
   

   a. Argonaut Private Equity LLC

   b. Madrone Capital Partners LLC

   c. U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) LLC

   d. Rockport Capital Partners LLC.

Both agencies have acknowledged receipt of Judicial Watch’s FOIA requests.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Daniel Flynn to discuss technology’s disruption of a society where the everyman sought out high culture, and when intellectuals sought to formulate discourse with the everyman.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – More than 100 police officers gave protesters at the Occupy encampment in San Francisco five minutes to gather belongings before authorities took down about 100 tents and arrested 70 people as the camp was dismantled in an overnight raid.

A few officers remained at daybreak Wednesday as trash crews raked up paper and plastic bottles, removed chairs and other belongings that accumulated at the camp over the past two months and pressure-washed the sidewalks.

Dozens of police cars, fire engines and ambulances surrounded the campsite at Justin Herman Plaza and blocked off the area during the raid, which began shortly after 1 a.m.

(more…)

Sources on Capitol Hill tell Big Government that SEIU has organized a major effort to ‘Take Back the Capitol’ this week with a collective of community, labor and Occupy groups that are dedicated to “show Congress what democracy looks like, shine a light on corporate greed and the human suffering it has caused, and demand justice for the 99%.”

According to Congressional sources, Occupy protestors have been visiting one Congressional office after another and demanding to speak with representatives while loitering in their waiting rooms and chanting. ‘Trackers’ are also being spotted roaming the hills of various Congressional buildings.

Joanna Burgos, Deputy Communications Director for the National Republican Congressional Committee described the trackers as, “people with cameras who are trying to track a member or politician on a certain issue. Its just part of the videos you see used all the time. I think their goal is to get them to say something on camera or say something. They tape a lot of their protests and put them on YouTube.”

Some of those videos have already been posted at a site for Think Progress, which describes itself as nonpartisan organization, but was voted the “Best Liberal Blog,” in the 2006 Weblog Awards.

One Think Progress piece posted at 1:57 pm today featured video of protestors occupying U.S. Representative Joe Walsh’s (R-IL) office, reporting that, “These protesters asked to meet with the congressman. The Chief of Staff, Justin Roth, said that Walsh was busy and could only meet with them later but offered to meet with the protesters himself. ‘“I think we’ll stay,”’ said one protester. Roth shrugged and the protesters sat down and decided to occupy the office until Walsh arrives.”

Sgt. Kimberly Schneider told Big Government that although they’ve been “monitoring more activity on the Hill today then yesterday,” there has only been one arrest.

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You know, this whole FCC torpedoing AT&T’s planned T-Mobile merger is nonsense.  As I have written about often, I think the merger’s a mini jobs stimulus plan which can inject jobs into the economy far beyond anything that may happen at the company post-merger.

We sorely need that here in America.  This privately borne proposal is just one such plan, one which would provide some needed fuel for new American jobs.  Up to 96,000 by AT&T’s estimation.

Yet the FCC’s got the company by the proverbial short hairs, firmly believing that its judgment is better than those who are taking the risk and making investments needed to build out new broadband facilities for Americans.  Consequently, as one industry observer dryly noted:

“This is central planning at its most repugnant.”

Yes it is.  And, it’s got some powerful cheerleaders from the media-Marxist crowd jumping up and down with profound excitement.

Leading this pack is the holier-than-thou radicals at Free Press.

Holier-than-thou because, though they claim AT&T’s Washington money has corrupted communications policy, it is they who have raked in millions from murky “progressive” foundations – the latter actively working this past decade to corrupt and “transform” America by laundering – often from hidden / non-transparent sources – approximately $100 million to kneecap telephone, cable and media companies with new rules, regulations and costly proscriptions.

Not surprisingly, Free Press sits atop the list of “media reform” foundation grantees.

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KENOSHA – Apparently there’s no room for free thought or disagreement within the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

We suppose that’s not terribly surprising for a group that has to force its members to join.

Still, it’s troubling to hear that Kristi LaCroix, the courageous public school teacher who had the guts to film a television ad supporting Gov. Scott Walker’s reforms, is being harassed by union zealots to the point where she wants to change careers.
LaCroix, who teaches at Lakeview Technology Academy in the Kenosha school district, recently posted the following on her Facebook page, according a news story from WISN 1130:

“Going through and deleting my daily amount of hate mail that is sent to my work email. I have now been assured, by one of the emails (all of which I forward to my Principal) that there is an online movement called ‘Fire Kristi‘ where they are going to email, post and talk to everyone (telling) millions of stories to ruin my reputation, career and life.

“Kind of hard to keep my head up with stuff like this. I have said for a couple of years that I really need to leave teaching. I think that it is time for me to move on.”

Here’s a sample of an email that’s been sent to LaCroix:

“On Facebook there are lots of people willing to join the Fire Kristi movement. You are alone in a wilderness. Your financial help from the likes of the Koch brothers will dry up once your liabilities outweigh your assets, which will be very soon. Your best bet is to start a job search soon. Enjoy your isolation.”

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