This timeline reveals at least two extremely unethical actions by the IRS. One, as early as 2010, they targeted groups for political purposes. Two, they willfully and knowingly lied to Congress for years despite being aware that Congress was investigating this practice. This is an outrageous abuse of power.Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) • Decrying actions within the Internal Revenue Service, which apologized yesterday for the targeting of Tea Party/conservative groups for special tax status scrutiny. An inspector general’s report is expected to be released later this week, and portions obtained by the AP suggests IRS officials knew of such targeting not just during the full throes of the 2012 election, but dating back to mid-2011. The report claims that Lori Lerner, head of the division of the IRS handling tax-exempt organizations, was told about the politically-motivated targeting (flagging of groups using the words “Tea Party,” “Patriot,” and Glenn Beck’s “9/12 Project”) back in June of 2011, and that she told agents to “immediately” change their criteria for applying that increased scrutiny. If so, her instruction seems not to have had much effect, as the undue flaggings continued into the following election year. source
On November 7th, his administration gleefully voted at the UN for a renewed effort to pass the ‘Small Arms Treaty.’ But after the tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut — and anti-gun hysteria in the national media reaching a fever pitch — there’s no doubt President Obama and his anti-gun pals believe the timing has never been better to ram through the U.N.’s global gun control crown jewel. I don’t know about you, but watching anti-American globalists plot against our Constitution makes me sick.An email from Senator Rand Paul, on behalf of the National Association on Gun Rights • Decrying the Obama administration’s shadowy collaboration with the United Nations, aimed at a constitutional end-around abolishing the Second Amendment via international arms treaty. If you haven’t heard about this, that may be because it’s actually a well-worn and fallacious conspiracy theory, but that didn’t stop Paul from lending his name to this paranoia-fueled fundraising effort from the National Association on Gun Rights. It’s a theory cut from virtually the same intellectual cloth as those UN-centric “Agenda 21” conspiracy theories, propagated by people like Alex Jones — who, as it happens, has landed the Kentucky Senator as an interview guest in the past. This is a major issue facing Paul, should he indulge bigger, national political ambitions — he’s proven extremely willing to court the affections (and in the process endorse the ideas) of people far out on the conspiratorial right-wing. source
I’m calling on the Supreme Leader of North Korea or as I call him “Kim”, to do me a solid and cut Kenneth Bae loose.A tweet from Dennis Rodman • Urging his self-professed “friend for life,” North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, to release American captive Kenneth Bae from the 15-year hard labor sentence he recently received, for alleged “hostile acts” against the state. Rodman has since announced that he intends to travel back to North Korea, where he befriended the dictator back in February (with a trio of Harlem Globetrotters and Vice Magazine in tow), and that he’ll use the opportunity to push for Bae’s release. One obvious question — as unlikely as it seems that this could work, what if it did? That would be a whole new rubicon to cross. source
Former Gov. Mark #Sanford will fill the vacant U.S. House seat in South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, CNN projects.
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) May 8, 2013
JUST IN: Former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford wins hotly contest U.S. House seat - AP
— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 8, 2013
Former Governor Mark Sanford is being projected as winner of the race for South Carolina’s first district House seat, defeating his Democratic opponent, Elizabeth Colbert Busch. Sanford, 52, was dogged by his infamous abandonment of his post as Governor in June of 2009, when he vanished to Argentina to engage in an extramarital affair. He ran on a very overt platform of redemption and asking forgiveness, however, and SC-1’s largely conservative voters seem to have been in a forgiving mood — Sanford is back from the Appalachian Trail, and he’s headed to the United States House.
Today brought some sad news from the entertainment world, as special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen has died, aged 92. Harryhausen was, for a time, at the cutting edge of creature and monster effects in major motion pictures, long before computer generated images took so much of the tangible, numbing labor out of creating such imaginative realms. Harryhausen employed stop-motion photography to bring his creatures to life, a slow and exhaustive method demanding masterful dedication and devotion — both of which, his body of work clearly attests, he possessed in spades. source
Just as we were posting about Thursday night’s Israeli air strike in Syria, reports broke of yet another explosion within its capitol city. Syria is claiming that another Israeli attack is the culprit, causing the enormous explosion shown above, reportedly aimed at a military research center in the outskirts of Damascus. There’s more amateur video of the incident here. source
An American official claims that the missiles were being held at Damascus International Airport when the airstrike took place — Israel believed the missile were en route to Hezbollah, causing them to strike to disrupt the shipment. This is the second time in the last four months that Israel has launched such a strike against the believed transfer of weapons through Syria into Lebanon.
I’m moving back to New York in a few days. Unlike past...
OMG. I got so...
In this week’s Newsweek, a little...
Tumblr this morning. [h/t anne]
#@#$%!.tumblr.com
Here’s a hidden feature that shipped in...
I should not have suggested - in an off-the-cuff response that was not part of my presentation - that Keynes was indifferent to the long run because he had no children, nor that he had no children because he was gay. It is obvious that people who do not have children also care about future generations.Harvard history professor and author Niall Ferguson • Apologizing for remarks he reportedly made during a conference in Carlsbad, California on Thursday. Ferguson, 49, while discussing famed early-20th century economist John Maynard Keynes, suggested he supported government spending during recessions because he was gay, and had no children, thus caring less for future generations. He’s apologized for that, though in that rather hedging way that so characterizes public figures’ apologies — he also didn’t back away from his central claim, that the influential economist cared little for the long run. source
On the occasion of World Press Freedom Day, we’re revisiting this video, which we first posted several months ago — it’s NBC News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, Richard Engel, detailing to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow the horrifying tale of how he was abducted by pro-Assad forces within Syria, and how he came to be freed. Engel is one of the lucky ones (extremely lucky, considering the content of his story) — 23 professional journalists have been killed covering the civil war, the majority of them Syrian, on top of dozens more slain citizen journalists.
Security checkpoints, background checks, and gun regulations will do little good if criminals can print plastic firearms at home and bring those firearms through metal detectors with no one the wiser. …Now that this technology appears to be upon us, we need to act now to extend the ban on plastic firearms.New York Democratic Rep. Steve Israel • Calling for a ban on plastic firearms fashioned through the use of 3D printers. The first wholly 3D-printed gun has been produced by Cody Wilson, a 25-year-old law student at the University of Texas, who gave Forbes magazine an inside look at its production. The blue and white colored plastic gun, which looks a great deal more like a toy than a potentially lethal weapon, has been named “the Liberator” by Wilson, who runs a company that intends to release the CAD (computer-aided design) file for the do-it-yourself gun online, free for all. Which means with a 3D printer (available for just $1,300 or so these days), and a modicum of practice, whatever background check system the U.S. does have, however spotty, might be circumvented entirely. Rep. Israel urgently wants this avoided, by an expansion of the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988, to include passages specific to 3D-printed guns. source
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