Any time a political leader insists that we must act quickly ("We've got to do something right now!), there should be great reluctance to go along.  The federal government was designed (in the 18th century) to work slowly, in order to impede people like President Obama who are determined to spend the United States into bankruptcy, or worse.  That is why the word emergency is not in the Constitution, and that's why the House and Senate have to agree on a bill before it becomes law.  Cities and states have emergencies now and then, but authentic national emergencies (Pearl Harbor, Cuban Missile Crisis, 9/11) are quite rare.  Even so, the last time I checked, there were fourteen (14) national emergencies in effect in the United States.*

This air of "We've got to do something!" in Washington is expensive and reckless.  You may recall that nobody had read the Patriot Act when it was passed in 2001.  Nobody in Congress read the trillion-dollar Stimulus Bill before it was passed in 2009.  It's like having someone throw a thousand-page contract on the table and demanding you sign it immediately.  It's foolish.

Unfortunately, the so-called Stimulus isn't the last of it.  The continuous crisis mode is now being used to push socialized medicine into place, without regard to its cost.  Gun control legislation can only pass if the American public doesn't have time to find out what's in it first, and the same is true of the upcoming "immigration reform" (i.e., amnesty) bill.

Congress is supposed to deliberate over proposed legislation, which means giving it long and careful consideration.

Biden Admin Authorizes Mass Overtime To Process Haitian Migrants Before Inauguration Day, Agent Says.  The Biden-Harris administration has authorized massive overtime so Department of Homeland Security agents can grant temporary status to as many illegal immigrants as possible before a new president is inaugurated, a Homeland Security agent told The Daily Wire.  "Jason" — an alias given to the agent, who spoke to The Daily Wire on the condition of anonymity, said supervisors have told workers in recent weeks that they should aim to clear the backlog of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) applications within 120 days.  Doing so would allow these illegal immigrants to live and work in the country, and shield them from deportation for two years.  The department is offering 30 hours of overtime per pay period to expedite processing of the immigrants, who come from countries including Haiti, Venezuela, and Lebanon.  The Department of Homeland Security would not confirm or deny the allegation, or explain its motives.  But the unprecedented number of TPS applicants — and the mandate to process them quickly — has put pressure on agents to approve applicants rather than investigate them further or deny them, Jason said.

Boston Children's Hospital Cut Time for Children to Receive 'Gender Affirming Care' to 2 Hours.  The NY Sun published a story today about a lawsuit filed by a psychologist who was fired by Boston Children's Hospital.  The lawsuit alleges that over several years the hospital cut the phycological inquiry required to receive "gender affirming care" from around 20 hours down to two.

New Hampshire gov says Dems 'Rushed' VP pick, claims Harris stole the nomination.  Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire said Saturday night Vice President Kamala Harris "rushed" the selection of Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate due to President Joe Biden withdrawing from the presidential race under pressure.  Harris tapped Walz to be her vice president over Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania Aug. 6, a little over two weeks after Biden announced he would not seek reelection July 21, following mounting calls from within his party to step aside after his disastrous performance during a June 27 debate.  Sununu said that Democrats "stole the nomination" for Harris by forcing Biden to drop out.  [Video clip]

I've seen how Ed Miliband's net zero dream turns into a nightmare.  It will destroy Britain.  [A] fire at a giant solar farm in East Anglia is raging out of control after a lithium-ion battery is believed to have failed, causing an explosion. [...] The explosion at the solar farm, which was bitterly opposed by local residents but went ahead after gaining approval from Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, is believed to have damaged the integrity of neighbouring containers.  This led to an alarming chain reaction known as "thermal runway." [...] When Mr Miliband rushed through the approval of the solar farm last year, boasting that it took him just three days to approve three of these giant solar farms across the UK, West Suffolk's Conservative MP, Nick Timothy, said he thought the decision was "quite disgraceful and quite arrogant".  However, Mr Miliband said: "Solar power is crucial to achieving net zero, providing an abundant source of cleaner, cheaper energy... This is the speed we're working at to achieve energy independence, cut bills for families and kickstart green economic growth."

Seriously, no one trusts the media.  Do you find yourself despising the nation's socialist media even more than usual? [...] The benefit of hindsight helps us understand that the last-minute un-democratic coup and the sudden changing of Komrade Kamala for Biden were the obvious plan.  Thus, the shortened campaign sprint is a feature, not a bug in that it helps the nation's socialist media hide her from the people.  The outlines of the plan are clear enough when you look back over the events of the past few months, with the media playing a key role in the fraud.

Boeing Under Fire After Report Found That Employees Were Told to Prioritize Speed Over Quality.  A special investigation spearheaded by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) found that Boeing prioritized production speed over quality and failed to train its employees accurately.  According to the "troubling" findings of the FAA's 2024 special audit[,] published on Wednesday[,] Boeing allegedly took "shortcuts" on production and failed to provide its mechanics with the appropriate tools and resources to complete their work.  [Paywall]

Making a House seat an inheritance.  [Scroll down]  It is impossible to imagine the unthinkable because once you've imagined it, it becomes thinkable.  But the phrase reflects the sloppy thinking behind this effort.  The [Washington] Post said, "To address such a scenario, these four House members — two Republicans and two Democrats — are pushing an unlikely solution: a constitutional amendment that would allow members to be replaced quickly in the event of a mass-casualty event.  "In addition to ensuring uninterrupted representation for constituents, the amendment would discourage attempts to use violence to sway the balance of power in the House."  So the problem according to the newspaper is that a bunch of congressmen die and the House speakership changes.  Congress says the only solution is to let incumbent congressmen pick their successor.  Obviously, we cannot wait and hold funerals and let voters choose the replacement.  No, no, no.  We must allow the officeholder to pass the public office to his heir.

Why Was Big Tech So Quick to Scrub Ryan Routh's Accounts?  Anyone who works in media knows it's a race against time to find the social-media content of anyone involved in a high-profile crime.  Whether it's a school shooter or a political assassin like Ryan Routh, social media companies immediately lock down the accounts and hide them from the public.  [Advertisement]  Yesterday, just minutes after Routh's name began circulating, his X and Facebook accounts were disabled.  Fortunately, some quick-thinking individuals were able to access the social media posts before they were memory-holed, so we now know that Routh hated Trump and had extreme left-wing political views.  [Tweet]

Clock is ticking for local governments to use billions of dollars of federal pandemic aid.  From the looks of it, the Phoenix suburb of Gilbert hasn't done too much with the $24 million it received in federal pandemic aid.  The site where it plans to spend most of the money for a crime victims center remains an empty plot of dirt.  And just one-quarter of its funds are obligated for projects, according to the most recent federal data.  But town officials say contracts should be in place soon to spend the rest of it.  For Gilbert and thousands of other local governments across the U.S., the clock is ticking to use their share of $350 billion in COVID-19 relief funds approved by Congress and President Joe Biden in 2021.  Governments must obligate all their American Rescue Plan funds for specific projects by the end of this year or else return the rest to the U.S. Treasury.

Prepare for an Exodus From New York City After Approval of Idiotic Reparations Program.  In a move that has sparked woke support and lucid skepticism, New York City is set to become the largest city in the United States to implement a reparations program.  Sponsored by Councilmembers Crystal Hudson and Farah Louis, a pair of bills aimed at establishing a Truth, Healing, and Reconciliation Commission, along with a reparations task force, passed on Thursday and will take effect immediately.  "Today, the New York City Council voted to pass legislation establishing municipal efforts to acknowledge and address the legacy and impact of slavery and racial injustices in New York City." — New York City Council.  This announcement raises eyebrows.  Why now?  What's the real agenda behind this sudden urgency?

Harris Campaign Spokesman Tells CNN 'We Don't Have Time' to Talk About What Happened Over the Last Few Years.  The Kamala Harris campaign spokesman Ian Sams appeared on CNN this week and made excuses for why they are not talking about Kamala's record from the last few years.  This gives away their whole game.  Democrats and the Harris people want voters to forget the fact that Harris has been part of the Biden administration and is directly responsible for what has transpired over the last three and a half years.  That's why they keep pushing the whole 'new way forward' nonsense.  It's a feeble attempt to erase recent history so that Harris isn't held accountable by voters.

Will Democrats suffer impulse buyer's remorse?  The most striking thing about the Democratic move to anoint Vice President Kamala Harris as the party's presidential nominee is how incredibly fast it was.  President Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the race early Sunday afternoon.  Thirty-two hours later, less than a day and a half, the party's top leadership, plus a majority of the nearly 4,000 Democratic convention delegates, had committed to support Harris.

DNC Weighs Early Nomination For Biden To Quash Internal Party Dissent.  Democrat strategists are throwing many things against walls and hoping some stick as the gaslighting continues.  Bloomberg reports that the Democratic National Committee is considering formally nominating Joe Biden as early as mid-July to ensure that the president is on November ballots, while helping to stamp out intra-party chatter of replacing him after last week's poor debate performance.  Democrats had already planned to nominate Biden, 81, before the convention in order to ensure he appears on the ballot in Ohio, which had an Aug. 7 deadline for candidates to be certified.  A potential date for Biden's nomination is July 21, when the Democratic convention's credentials committee meets virtually, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Biden's Climate Change Scare Tactics Aren't Working.  First, the stage must be set.  The joke that currently occupies the Bully Pulpit says he's the first climate president, says he's making history by confronting the climate crisis, not denying it.  "I'm taking the most significant action on climate ever in the history of the world."  Now to his latest tactic.  Biden gave a warning on climate change in September 2021, when he surveyed damage caused by Hurricane Ida in New York and New Jersey.  "We've got to listen to the scientists ... they all tell us this is code red. ... The nation and the world are in peril, and that's not hyperbole.  This is everybody's crisis."  While in Louisiana he said, "We don't have any more time." [...] There's little doubt that our "first climate president" is trying to scare people, especially young voters, into thinking climate change has reached crisis mode and we must do whatever it takes to mitigate it — now!

WHO is Wrong to Rush the Vote.  The World Health Organization (WHO) recently put up a defense of its violation of its own legal requirements by submitting draft amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) for a vote at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) this May.  This was in response to various concerns raised in parliaments and civil society.  This matters because (i) in ignoring legal requirements and rushing a vote the WHO is putting global health and economies at risk, and (ii) the WHO is acting like a spoiled child, which suggests the organization is no longer fit for its mandate. [...] Despite the WHO being shown to have grossly misrepresented their evidence on the frequency of natural outbreaks and pandemic risk, which have been declining over the past one to two decades, these are proceeding with unusual urgency.

Illinois Democrats defend hastily enacted election year changes.  The chair of the Illinois House Ethics and Elections Committee is defending a hastily approved election year change to election law preventing candidates from being slated for the November election.  Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed Senate Bill 2412 Friday, less than two days after it was approved by the House and concurred by the Senate.  "It really does make sure that we don't have backroom deals to put people on the ballot and run as a result of some small group of people in a smoke filled room making the choice," Pritzker said before the Senate passed the measure.  "So I think, to me, more transparency is better."

How Much for a 'Gay Senior Citizen Home'?  The huge spending bill was released after 2 a.m. yesterday morning and is 1,000-plus pages.  The House is already expected to vote on it today and the bill is expected to pass.  A Washington Post report says Congress is "racing to pass" the massive spending package.  Why the rush?  Well, many in Congress (and the White House) would rather nobody has much time to find out what's actually in it.  When you see what's in the bill it becomes obvious why these people are in such a hurry to pass the latest porkulus package.  On Fox News, Jesse Watters ran through just a sampling of the insanity contained in this bill:  [Tweet]

House passes $1.2 trillion spending package hours before shutdown deadline, sending it to Senate.  The House passed a massive spending package on Friday to fully fund the government through September, sending it to the Senate ahead of a midnight deadline to avert a partial shutdown.  The House approved the $1.2 trillion package, which was unveiled early Thursday, in a vote of 286 to 134.  The package wraps six spending bills into one to fund about three-quarters of the government until the end of the fiscal year.  Another package funding the rest of the government cleared Congress two weeks ago.  A majority of Republicans voted against the measure, with House conservatives objecting to the funding levels in the agreement that House Speaker Mike Johnson reached with Democratic leadership in the Senate.

Adam Schiff Is Big Mad at Justice Department for Taking Too Long to Prosecute Trump.  Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) railed against the Justice Department on Sunday for taking too long to indict and prosecute former President Donald Trump in the various cases against him.  He also lashed out at Trump for seeking to delay his trials.  While Schiff insists that his criticism is motivated by a desire for justice, it is abundantly obvious that this is more about politics.  Schiff made his remarks during an appearance on CNN's "State of the Union."  The host brought up Schiff's disagreement with Attorney General Merrick Garland's handling of the investigations into the former president, particularly when it comes to the timing.  The lawmaker responded, noting that the Justice Department "did wait at least a year to look beyond the foot soldiers, that is, those that broke into the Capitol that day and refrained from looking at those who were the inciters of the attack on the Capitol."  He continued, lamenting that the cases against Trump could stretch beyond the election.

The Consequences of Jack Smith's Rush to Trial.  Jack Smith is rushing to prosecute former President Donald Trump for the events of Jan. 6 so that the American people can have the benefit of his evidence, and the views of the jury, before they vote in November.  This rush violates Justice Department rules.  The Supreme Court now faces the question whether it too will be a party to this rush and, if not, how it will avoid it.

Australia [is] Rushing To Become [the] World's First Functionally Cashless Society.  Australia has begun unleashing a digital revolution to possibly become the world's first functionally cashless nation by 2025 after a digital identity (ID) document scheme will be rolled out across the country by July, Worthy News learned Tuesday.  Yet not everyone is happy to jump on board the fast-moving digital 'train' with residents living outside metropolitan areas and elderly Australians expressing concerns about these developments.  The government argues that the digital ID removes the pain of handing over physical copies of a driver's license, passport, or birth certificate, making setting up a new bank account easier.  The center-left administration of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese claimed that digital ID is a "secure, convenient, voluntary, and inclusive" way for Australians to verify their identity online.  However, critics say a digital ID can result in errors and bias, aggregation of sensitive personal information, hacking and identity fraud, and denial of access to essential services and entitlements.

Schumer And McConnell Want Senators To Pass Their $106 Billion Border Bill Without Reading It.  Yesterday, a reporter standing outside the Senate chamber told me that after four months of secrecy, The Firm™ plans to release the text of the $106 billion supplemental aid/border-security package — possibly as soon as today.  Wasting no time, she then asked, "If you get the bill by tomorrow, will you be ready to vote on it by Tuesday?" [...] The reporter immediately understood that my frustration was not directed at her.  Rather, it was directed at the Law Firm of Schumer & McConnell (The Firm™), which is perpetually trying to normalize a corrupt approach to legislating, in which The Firm™:
  [#1]   Spends months drafting legislation in complete secrecy
  [#2]   Aggressively markets that legislation based not on its details and practical implications (good and bad), but only on its broadest, least-controversial objectives
  [#3]   Lets members see bill text for the first time only a few days (sometimes a few hours) before an arbitrary deadline imposed by The Firm™ itself, always with a contrived sense of urgency
  [#4]   Forces a vote on the legislation on or before that deadline, denying senators any real opportunity to read, digest, and debate the measure on its merits, much less introduce, consider, and vote on amendments to fix any perceived problems with the bill or otherwise improve it.
Whenever The Firm™ engages in this practice, it largely excludes nearly every senator from the constitutionally prescribed process in which all senators are supposed to participate.  By so doing, The Firm™ effectively disenfranchises hundreds of millions of Americans — at least for purposes relevant to the legislation at hand — and that's tragic.  It's also un-American, uncivil, uncollegial, and really uncool.

Johnson Sets Vote on Tax Bill Conservatives Call 'Trojan Horse to Expand Welfare' for Illegal Aliens.  Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is rushing through a tax bill unveiled days ago over significant policy objections from both conservative and centrist factions of the Republican Party.  Conservatives have spoken out against provisions in the bill they see as handouts to illegal immigrants, particularly an expansion of the Child Tax Credit without language requiring the parent to have a Social Security number.  They argue the expansion would serve as an additional powerful migration pull, even as migrant encounters at the border reach record highs under President Joe Biden.

Dems Attempt To Cram The ERA Amendment Through Congress.  Democrats are attempting to resurrect the ERA — or "Equal Rights Amendment" to push their radical ideology.  It was not fully ratified by 1982, with only 35 states, and 3 more states ratified it AFTER the deadline.  Now two Dems, Rep. Cori Bush, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, want to push forward a bill that says it was ratified and force the National Archivist to certify and publish it as law.

The Biden Admin Is Scrambling To Spend $27 Billion 'Slush Fund' Before Congress Claws It Back.  President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making plans to rapidly invest billions of dollars in green energy and technology projects before the money must be returned to Congress in just over a year, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.  The $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) is one of several funding opportunities for green projects established by Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that Democrats are hoping to fully spend before Republicans have a chance to take back control of Congress, the Post reported.  The GGRF is unique, however, because the IRA mandates it fully disburse its funding by September 30, 2024, a move by Democrats to shield the program from GOP efforts to recover the funds, an anonymous Democratic aide told the outlet.

The U.N. Is Planning To Seize Global 'Emergency' Powers With Biden's Support.  In September 2024, less than two months before the next U.S. presidential election, the United Nations will host a landmark "Summit of the Future," where member nations will adopt a Pact for the Future.  The agreement will solidify numerous policy reforms offered by the U.N. over the past two years as part of its sweeping Our Common Agenda platform.  Although there are numerous radical proposals included in the agenda, perhaps none are more important than the U.N. plan for a new "emergency platform," a stunning proposal to give the U.N. significant powers in the event of future "global shocks," such as another worldwide pandemic.  Many of the details of the U.N. emergency platform were laid out in a March 2023 policy paper titled "Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks — An Emergency Platform."

Why Climate Change is NOT an Emergency.  [Video clip]

North Carolina's governor, who sent his own kid to private school, just issued a state of emergency over Republicans pushing school choice.  This is an emergency!  People with lower incomes in North Carolina, particularly people of color, may soon be able to enroll in private schools soon, ruining the party for the rich kids!!  Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper seriously thinks this is an emergency[.]  [Tweet]  The North Carolina House just passed a school voucher bill that would more than double the funding for school vouchers, opening opportunities for kids to get out of failing public schools.  School voucher programs give money to students instead of school systems and allow students who otherwise couldn't afford it access to private schools.  Democrats, of course, oppose this because they want kids in government schools because they're Democrat propaganda machines and activist training grounds.  They don't want poor kids to become less dependent on the government.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declares 'state of emergency' over school choice bill.  Democratic North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a "state of emergency" on Monday [5/22/2023] in an attempt to stop a school choice bill from passing the state legislature.  Cooper released a video announcement where he declared a state of emergency, arguing that the state of public education is "no less important" than other emergencies.  "It’s time to declare a State of Emergency for public education in North Carolina.  There’s no Executive Order like with a hurricane or the pandemic, but it’s no less important," Cooper stated.

The Editor says...
The three-year Covid "emergency" worked so well, it's now a tool that will be used whenever the socialits meet insurmountable political resistance.  An impending political defeat in the legislature is not an emergency.  Moreover, any adverse developments in the public schools have taken place over the last several years.

Thirty Years of Global Warming Prophecies.  NBC News recently touted a report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that says, "The chance to secure a livable future for everyone on Earth is slipping away."  It further reported, "There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all."  This was echoed by Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council: "This is the stone cold truth laid out in unassailable science by the world's top climate experts.  We're hurtling down the road to ruin and running out of time to change course."  That's the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000."  Fiona Harvey, Environment Editor at the Guardian, says, "Scientists have delivered a 'final warning' on the climate crisis, as rising greenhouse gas emissions push the world to the brink of irrevocable damage that only swift and drastic action can avert."  She cited a report from the IPCC, comprised of the world's leading climate scientists.

Undeniable Proof that Climate Change Will End the World in 2024 If We Don't Act Now!  [Thread reader]  The media claimed that "97%" of scientists believed climate change was real but ignored hundreds of thousands of scientists who disagreed with that statement.  The MSM removes photos from older articles that conflict with their narratives to make them harder to find.  For over 60 years, warnings about global warming, global cooling, and "climate change" have been pushed by the media.  Every few years, climate change doomsayers claim that the world has only 12 years to reverse the trend.  Experts have made 41 predictions, and all have been wrong.  On December 5, 2009, ABC News covered leaked emails from 1998 and 1999 involving Climate Change Summit scientists.  This email proved experts excluded or manipulated research that did not support the global warming narrative or disproved it.  Why would they hide this data?

Biden Shoveled $36 Billion In Taxpayer Funds To Bail Out Teamsters For Mismanaged Pensions.  Can Americans be bribed with their own money?  The powers that be are certainly putting that question to the test.  In recent years, we've seen inflation-inducing cash giveaways associated with "Covid relief."  We've seen the ongoing attempts at profoundly inequitable student loan forgiveness.  In December, we saw a $1.7 trillion pork pie omnibus appropriations bill passed by a Congress that had no time to read it.

Speed Is No Issue Unless It's About How Fast Our Liberty Is Being Lost.  Government, unfortunately, rarely admits to or learns from its mistakes and often seems determined to repeat them in updated form.  Sometimes, it descends into the bizarre, as when New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that "buildings are the largest source of emissions in our state" and that's why she's "proposing a plan to end the sale of any new fossil-fuel-powered heating equipment by 2030."  It's probably safe to extrapolate that the bulk of the heating equipment required under her scheme would be powered by electricity and that the electricity will be generated by solar, wind and/or hydro.  Keep that point in mind.  Governor Hochul's push for increased use of electricity comes not long after she "called for major regulatory action that will require all new passenger cars, pick-up trucks and SUVs sold in New York State to be zero-emission by 2035.  Governor Hochul has also proposed that all school buses be zero-emission by that the same year," according to a press release from her office.  Those "zero-emissions" vehicles obviously would be powered by electricity from the same sources and over the same distribution system as would her proposed heating equipment.

Democrat-led cities are already moving forward with gas stove bans that will affect millions.  Democratic leaders in major cities nationwide have already moved forward with bans on natural gas stoves even as the Biden administration has pumped the brakes on similar regulations at the federal level.  Cities including Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and New York City — which are collectively home to more than 10 million Americans — have enacted varying restrictions on natural gas hookups impacting gas-powered furnaces, ovens and stoves.  Leaders of the Democrat-led cities have argued that transitioning away from natural gas would help achieve climate and net-zero ambitions.

The Editor says...
Nobody thought gas appliances were a problem until about two weeks ago.  And now there's a mad rush to get rid of them, for reasons that are never mentioned because their reasons are so stupid!

Keywords:  Lobbyists, echo chamber, talking points.
The Creepy Cult Surrounding the Gas Stove Panic Gets Exposed.  If you've been on social media the last day or so, you've probably noticed there's a moral panic occurring over gas stoves.  According to Democrats far and wide, they are dangerous, cause asthma, and must be banned by the federal government.  As RedState reported, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pushed that line on Tuesday, resulting in much mockery given she herself has a gas stove.  But what's astonishing is that amidst her absolute certainty on the topic, she had never even mentioned the issue prior.  [Tweet]  In other words, in the span of just 24 hours, Ocasio-Cortez saw some questionable study, promoted it on the internet, gained legions of supporters for her position, and then tried to pretend that everyone else had been ignoring her desperate calls.  As Charles W. Cook notes, it's cultish behavior.  Is there anything the New York congresswoman could say that her army of simps wouldn't agree with?  And none of them even gave a second thought as to whether what she was saying was true or made any sense.  It wasn't just Ocasio-Cortez, though.  Other Democrats lined up to preach the dangers of gas stoves, having all suddenly become experts on the matter.  [Tweet]

Consumer Safety Commission Walks Back Gas-Stove Threat amid Backlash.  U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission chairman Alexander D. Hoehn-Saric issued a statement Wednesday assuring the public that his agency has no intention of banning gas stoves after a commission official drew the ire of the cooking public by suggesting the appliances might be banned in the near future due to the alleged health threat they pose to Americans.  "Over the past several days, there has been a lot of attention paid to gas stove emissions and to the Consumer Product Safety Commission," Hoehn-Saric wrote in an official statement released Wednesday.  "To be clear, I am not looking to ban gas stoves and the CPSC has no proceeding to do so."  Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. had originally told Bloomberg News that fears over air quality caused by gas stoves was creating "a hidden hazard."  "Any option is on the table.  Products that can't be made safe can be banned," Trumka Jr. insisted.  The comments came following Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Representative Don Beyer (D., Va.) urging the federal agency to investigate the issue due to its allegedly disproportionate impact on black, Latino, and low-income households.

The Editor says...
Wait, is this a solution to global warming, air pollution, asthma, or access/equity/fairness/racism?

The Long Fight for the House Speakership.  Increasingly the Congress has whiffed on its responsibilities to legislate — writing broad laws and leaving it to unelected bureaucrats to fill in the important blanks.  On really important legislation like ObamaCare, members never even had an opportunity to read the Bill before voting on it.  The level of mendacious doings on the Hill seemed to have reached new heights. [...] Perhaps later on Sunday or Monday we will know more.  I have read that one of the concessions is that members would get 72 hours advance time to read bills before the vote is taken.  With bills now thousands of pages long, that's the least that should be done.  No more the Pelosi garbage about having to pass a bill into law to know what is in it.

Biden's Unopposed Imposition of Stalinism.  The majority of Americans are opposed to Biden's policies.  According to the latest Trafalgar Group poll, more than 71% of Americans are against Democrats' massive spending plans.  Yet the House was manipulated into passing a $1.7 trillion spending bill that included $45 billion in emergency aid for Ukraine.  Thanks to deliberate obfuscation by the Biden administration, nobody really knows what is in the bill.  The 4,000-plus pages of the legislative text was released in the middle of the night, CNN reported, "leaving little time for rank-and-file lawmakers and the public to review its contents before it came up for a vote in both chambers."  And it passed.

18 Absurdities of the McConnell-Schumer Omnibus Spending Bill.  [#4] No Lawmaker Has Read This Package:  No member of Congress is physically able to read all of this spending package before voting on it.  In addition to the 12 regular appropriations bills, the omnibus bill includes two supplemental spending acts and 21 other separate divisions spanning topics as complex and varied as the Electoral Count Act, public land management, and antitrust enforcement.  As mentioned, the package contains 6,825 pages:  4,155 pages of legislative text plus 2,670 pages of explanatory materials that instruct agencies how to carry out the provisions and include at least 4,000 earmarks to pay for the pet projects of representatives and senators.  All totaled, this material is roughly twice as long as the Bible, and lawmakers planned to vote on it in fewer than four days.

Pride Centers And Wax Museums: Here Are The Woke Projects Buried In Congress' Spending Bill.  Lawmakers on Capitol Hill touted a $1.7 trillion funding package on Tuesday — with both Democrats and Republicans claiming victories — which is designed to avert a government shutdown when the current funding expires at midnight on Friday.  The text of the legislation is some 4,000 pages long, leaving very little hope for lawmakers — even with the help of aides — to get through the text prior to voting on the massive package.  [Tweet]  And according to The Heritage Foundation, the omnibus bill they may not have time to read is packed with woke pet projects.  Among them are a number of LGBTQ projects — from pride centers to museums — and "anti-racism" initiatives, according to a thread shared on Twitter on Tuesday.

McCarthy Joins Threats to Block Legislation from Any Senate Republican Who Votes for Omnibus.  Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Tuesday joined 13 Republicans who vowed to tank any priorities of GOP senators who vote for the 4,155 page omnibus bill that was negotiated with Democrats before a new Republican majority could take control of the House.  Reps.  Chip Roy (R-TX), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Scott Perry (R-PA), and Andy Biggs (R-AZ), along with nine other conservatives House members, signed a letter Tuesday promising to block any priorities of the Republican senators who rushed to support the omnibus deal with Democrats just days before Congress leaves town for Christmas.

He said this two days before Thanksgiving.
Anthony Fauci Urges Americans to Get COVID Tests Before Thanksgiving: 'Everybody Should Be Vaccinated'.  Dr. Anthony Fauci is urging Americans to get tested for the Chinese coronavirus prior to attending Thanksgiving gatherings, adding that "everybody" should not only be vaccinated but boosted as well.  Fauci spoke on Tuesday [11/22/2022] for his last White House press briefing before stepping down and ended his stint by declaring that "everybody" should be at least triple jabbed, receiving the regular vaccine series as well as a booster shot.

Nancy, We Knew Ye Too Well.  Has Nancy Pelosi really been the Democrats' House leader for only 20 years?  It feels longer than that.  As disappointing as this year's election was, the fact that we no longer will be exposed to Ms. Pelosi is a big plus.  And her successor will likely be an out radical, as opposed to a camouflaged radical.  So that could be helpful.  Others will offer more nuanced political commentary, but to me it seems that Nancy leaves a dual legacy.  First, she pioneered the tactic of drafting 1,000-page bills in secret and voting on them 24 hours later.  Remarkably, no one in the liberal commentariat had any problem with this.

Biden Asks Lame Duck Congress to Quickly Expedite Another $38 Billion for Ukraine Plus $9 Billion for Big Pharma.  The White House is urging Nancy Pelosi to utilize the lame duck congressional session and construct a massive omnibus spending bill that will wrap Ukraine funding, COVID spending and a federal budget extension via continuous resolution.  The request for Ukraine funding is an additional $38 billion.  Federal funds to support FEMA and hurricane recovery efforts will likely be part of the bargaining chips.  Essentially, the sausage ingredients are:  if congress doesn't give Zelenskyy more money, then DeSantis will not get federal financial assistance.  If you don't support Ukraine, you're a Russian operative.

Congress Trying to Ram Through $50 Billion More for Ukraine Before GOP Takes Control of the House.  Lawmakers from both parties are reportedly seeking to lock in a staggering $50 billion in additional military aid for Ukraine before a new Congress is sworn in this January.  The move is yet another indication that your elected senators and representatives no longer view the American people as their top priority, but rather, the government of a corrupt Eastern European nation is their new baby.  NBC News reports that multiple sources have confirmed ongoing discussions regarding a government funding bill during the lame-duck session following the election.

Doctors blast rush to approve Omicron COVID vaccine without human data.  FDA approval of so-called bivalent COVID-19 vaccines seems all but inevitable, worrying some physicians who want to see safety and efficacy data before millions of Americans — particularly those at higher risk of vaccine-related heart inflammation — take mRNA boosters this fall and winter.  The regulator telegraphed its intentions in June by directing vaccine makers to include the ancestral strain and currently dominant Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5 in planned shots.  White House COVID Response Coordinator Ashish Jha confirmed the plan at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last week, giving a target date of mid-September for availability.  Pfizer and BioNTech submitted their bivalent vaccine to the FDA for emergency use authorization (EUA) despite not testing it in humans, according to their joint press release Monday.  They are scheduled to start the human trial in ages 12 and up later this month.

Unconstitutional security state targets Trump.  [The federal government] knows no bounds and has assumed powers nowhere granted in the Constitution by the sheer force of its own will.  It has created a security state, replete with three lettered acronymic-named agencies — FBI, CIA, DEA, NSA, DIA — that are nowhere recognized in the Constitution, regularly break the written and moral laws, and are themselves far more dangerous to human freedom than the folks they pursue.  How many laws have the feds broken?  Ha.  No one knows how many criminal laws Congress has enacted.  Estimates range from 4,400 to 5,500.  How can this be?  For starters, members of Congress in both parties rarely if ever read the legislation they enact.  House members were given 15 minutes to read the 132-page Patriot Act, which passed overwhelmingly.  And much federal law is so convoluted that a simple reading leaves even an experienced lawyer and judge bewildered as to how many different behaviors were made criminal by the statute in question.

Pelosi-Biden's Inflation Bill Passed with 35 Percent of the House Voting Remotely and the CBO Not Finished Scoring Its Impact.  It was a mad rush to pass Biden's "Inflation Reduction Act" and now we know why.  This act from the corrupt and now communist left is named like other bills they manufacture in that it is the opposite of what it claims.  This bill will not reduce inflation and will likely add to it.  The funding will occur by taxing Americans of all classes and increasing the US debt. [...] According to Redstate around 35 percent of those voting, did so remotely.  But the bill charged ahead.  Now you have to wonder what's really in it.

This is what finally puts an end to Australia.  There is an ominous buzz in the new Australian Parliament — Albo and the Greens are planning to pass 40 new bills, quick smart.  Each bill will probably need 100 new regulations and 200 new inspectors, auditors, and enforcers plus many new taxes and fees.

Someday, Maybe, a Canadian Reckoning.  According to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his chief accountant Chrystia Freeland, runaway inflation and the recession it announces are something of a godsend.  Price increases, she said in a recent address, are "a reminder of why climate action is so important, and why we have to work... faster towards a green economy."  The benefits, according to this authority, are clear:  More green energy, lower prices.  The claim is so fatuous as to induce intellectual migraine.

Why The Biden Admin Wants Censorship Of Renewable Energy Critics.  In a talk with Axios, Biden Administration Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said, "The tech companies have to stop allowing specific individuals over and over again to spread disinformation."  After an Axios reporter asked, "Isn't misinformation and disinfo around climate a threat to public health itself?" McCarthy responded, "Oh, absolutely... We are talking, really, about risks that no longer need to be tolerated to our communities."  McCarthy pointed specifically to those who criticized the failure of weather-dependent renewables during the blackouts in Texas in February 2021.  But many of those criticisms were factual.  Over the last decade in Texas, investors sunk over $53 billion on weather-dependent energy sources, mostly wind turbines, which alongside frozen fossil fuel plants were largely unavailable during the cold snap in February.  That was only partly because of the cold and mostly because of low wind speeds.  McCarthy claimed that the critics of renewables are funded by "dark money" fossil fuel companies, which she compared to Big Tobacco.  She claimed the critics are being paid to "fool" the public about "the benefits of clean energy."  "We need the tech companies to really jump in," she said, because criticizing renewables is "equally dangerous to denial because we have to move fast."

Tucker Carlson's Latest Takedown of the GOP Is Must-See.  As of Thursday afternoon [5/12/2022], Sen. Rand Paul was blocking the passage of a $40 billion bill ostensibly meant to help Ukraine defeat Russia.  That followed on the heels of Rep. Chip Roy absolutely lambasting the spending package, noting that he and his colleagues didn't even get a chance to read it.

All three Architects of "SAFE Act" Disgraced with Corruption.  In 2013, New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, and Governor Andrew Cuomo conspired to pass rigid and likely unconstitutional restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms by residents of New York State.  The law was passed with a rushed vote under a controversial measure in the New York Constitution which gives the Governor and legislative leaders enormous power.  The members of the legislature were forced to vote on it without any time to read it. [...] Large parts of the SAFE act have proven to be impractical to implement.  Some pieces have been ruled unconstitutional.  One part was so idiotic the state legislature, with the agreement of the governor, repealed it very quickly.  There is no evidence the act has had any effect on the New York violent crime rate.  New York has been the poster child for infringing on Second Amendment Rights to protect organized crime since 1911.  It is not surprising corrupt politicians want to disarm their constituents, who will often be their victims as well.

68 senators move to circumvent Schumer and speed up the pace of votes.  Resentment over Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer's stewardship of the Senate boiled over Thursday [2/3/2022], with more than two-thirds of the chamber circumventing the leader in backing a bipartisan proposal to speed up the pace of voting.  In total 68 lawmakers — 35 Republicans and 33 Democrats — have signed onto a proposal by Sen. Thom Tillis that would curtail the time allotted for voting on legislation and nominations.  Mr. Tillis, North Carolina Republican, began circulating the proposal this week after the Senate took roughly 50 minutes each to approve three of President Biden's judicial nominees.

Prince Charles says [there is a] "dangerously narrow window" to accelerate climate action.  Britain's Prince Charles, in recorded remarks at an environment event in Saudi Arabia on Saturday [10/23/2021], said there was a "dangerously narrow window" to accelerate climate change action.  Citing experts, he said the UN Climate Change Conference COP26 due to start at the end of October must have nationally determined contributions (NDCs) with "clear baselines" and net zero emission targets by 2050.  He was addressing the Saudi Green Initiative forum, at which top exporter Saudi Arabia had earlier on Saturday announced its target to reach zero-net emissions by 2060.

Nine million to get booster jabs early:  Boris Johnson urges experts to cut six-month wait for third Covid vaccine to speed rollout.  Britain's sluggish booster vaccine rollout is being held up by the NHS sending texts to elderly Britons who 'do not know how to use their phones', medics warned today amid growing demands to speed up the drive and prevent ministers from reimposing restrictions once more.  Reena Barrai, a pharmacist in Surrey, said many patients have come in 'anxious' because they cannot work out how to access the online system to book their top-up dose.

The Editor says...
Left-wing politicians assume that you're too stupid to take advantage of all the wonderful "free" goodies they provide.  If you don't show up for a dose of their experimental "vaccine," they presume that it's because you don't know how to use your phone.  The possibility that the bureaucrats are being ignored is never considered.

Democrats rush tax bills through Congress.  The House Ways and Means Committee will soon meet to vote on the tax provisions of the Democrats' budget reconciliation bill.  They will be voting for one of the largest tax increases in history to help pay for what House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth has said was "the largest single piece of legislation in history."  The $3 trillion of tax increases under consideration include higher individual tax rates, higher corporate tax rates, and higher capital gains and dividend tax rates.  They include a complete rewrite of international tax rules, new taxes on pass-through businesses, and higher estate and gift taxes.  These are major changes that will have a significant impact on individual taxpayers, families, and businesses.  They will have a major impact on financial markets and U.S. competitiveness.  Yet, these changes are racing through the Ways and Means Committee like no other major tax bill in history.

The Jab May Have Some Really Concerning Side Effects For Our Young Men.  FDA approved?  They rushed this vaccine, and now everyone is beginning to see the disastrous effects of forcing and coercing people into taking experimental medicine.  Pfizer has been sued more times than anyone can count, and they currently hold the record for the biggest criminal fine in history for medical fraud.  Concerning data continues to pour in, and according to a recent study, teenage boys are more likely to suffer from heart inflammation due to taking the C-19 vaccine than had they simply contracted Covid-19.

Terry McAuliffe calls for vaccine mandate to 'make life difficult' for unvaccinated.  Democratic nominee for Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe on Monday [8/23/2021] called on all employers in his state to mandate COVID-19 vaccinations following the Food and Drug Administration's full approval of the Pfizer vaccine.  "Today, I am calling on every Virginia employer to require all eligible employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19," the former Virginia governor said in a statement Monday afternoon.  "I have long said that the best way to defeat this deadly virus, keep our students in school and keep Virginia's economy strong is by getting every eligible Virginian vaccinated as quickly as possible."

'No need to rush': Senator warns of FDA's shortcuts to full approval of COVID-19 vaccine.  Sen. Ron Johnson called out the Biden administration's health agencies Sunday for shortcutting the usual safety reviews in a rush to give final approval to COVID-19 vaccines, including failing to account for thousands of deaths and adverse reactions among people worldwide who got the shots.  In a letter to the administration's top health officials, the Wisconsin Republican warned against the Food and Drug Administration's pending approval of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine, which is expected Monday [8/23/2021].  He said the fast-track decision appeared more political than scientific since it skipped the usual formal advisory committee meeting and did not fully account for the reports of deaths and disabilities suffered by people after being vaccinated.

Democrat Strategist Says Dems Needs to Steamroll Their Agenda While They Still Can.  Things just keep getting worse and worse for Joe Biden, and his poll numbers are starting to take a hit.  Both the RealClearPolitics average and the FiveThirtyEight average have his job approval below 50 percent — and that's before all polls have taken into account what's happened in Afghanistan. [...] Historically speaking, the party in power typically loses seats in the midterm elections, and Biden's missteps aren't helping Democrat prospects.  But the embarrassing debacle in Afghanistan seems poised to hurt the Democrats even more, and one Democrat strategist thinks it's time for the Democrats to steamroll their agenda through Congress while they still have a majority.

Democratic-led Senate OKs more than $4 trillion of spending in less than 24 hours.  The Democratic-led Senate voted to authorize more than $4 trillion of federal spending in less than 24 hours between Tuesday [8/10/2021] and Wednesday morning.  The Senate passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which includes $517 billion in new spending and a reauthorization of funding from the highway bill, at 11:17 am on Tuesday.  The Senate moved to debate on the Democrats' filibuster-proof $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation proposal.  The framework for the plan authorizing that level of federal spending passed in a 50-49 vote early Wednesday morning at 3:50 am.  The reconciliation bill includes new spending programs related to tuition free community college, universal pre-K, support for child care and Medicaid expansion.  It contains tax increases such as a corporate tax rate hike to pay for part of the bill.  Once the proposal is turned into formal legislative language, it will be put up for a final vote on the Senate floor.  It can pass with every Democratic senators' vote plus Vice President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking vote.

Nine Things to Know About Senate's $1.1 Trillion Infrastructure Bill.  The Senate unveiled its long-awaited $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill on Monday.  In a textbook example of Washington dysfunction, members and the public will only have a few days to review 2,702 pages of programs and provisions before it's voted on.  Analysts from The Heritage Foundation have found a variety of flaws that should give pause to legislators in both chambers.

Senate Votes to Advance Unwritten Infrastructure Bill as Biden Hints HR-3684 Will Include Amnesty in Reconciliation Process.  As the nation is distracted by various COVID-centered discussion and media debate amid headlines of forced vaccinations, mask mandates and various other COVID compliance fiats, there is something rather troubling happening in congress.  Earlier today [7/30/2021], the UniParty Senate (Democrats and Republicans) voted to approve cloture on HR-3684 the Senate version of the House infrastructure bill.  The cloture vote now means the bill will be debated and opens the Senate floor for amendments to the bill.  However, this cloture vote is odd because the [...] Senate bill isn't even written yet!

Biden asks Congress to extend eviction moratorium 'without delay' as expiration looms.  President Joe Biden made an urgent plea Thursday for Congress to extend a nationwide moratorium on evictions, arguing a Supreme Court ruling had left him unable to act on his own.  The eviction freeze, which is set to expire on Saturday, was put in place last September by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to protect Americans who have fallen behind on their rent during the coronavirus pandemic.  Biden extended the moratorium through the end of July; he would have "strongly supported" another extension, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement Thursday [7/29/2021], particularly as the delta variant drives a spike in new COVID-19 infections.  She said the president is concerned the uptick in cases is hitting Americans who are most likely to face evictions and lack vaccinations the hardest.

Fact-Checking 6 Claims at Senate Democrats' Voting Law Hearing.  [#5] Georgia state Sen. Sally Harrell, D-Dunwoody, said the Republican-sponsored law lacked adequate input from Democrats in the state Legislature.  "Election bills were rushed through without public input and voted out along party lines," Harrell said.  "Questions addressed to bill authors by minority members were frequently answered dishonestly and disrespectfully. ... In the nine years I have served in the [Georgia] General Assembly, I have never seen such blatant disregard for the legislative process as I did with the passage of SB 202."  Previous media reporting shows the legislation moved quickly through the Legislature to Kemp's desk.  Questioning this speed has been a consistent line among critics, including the U.S. Justice Department.  Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who is leading the federal lawsuit against Georgia's voting law, has said the bill was "a rushed process that departed from normal practice and procedure."  "The version of the bill that passed the state Senate ... was three pages long," Clarke said in June during a press conference announcing the litigation.  "Days later, the bill ballooned into over 90 pages in the House.  The House held less than two hours of floor debate on the newly inflated SB 202 before Gov. Kemp signed it into law the same day."

Biden's Jab Patrol Spotted Going Door to Door; Now Offering Shots on the Spot.  Just days after it was announced, Biden's soviet-style intimidation program is in full swing.  Video that was released on Wednesday shows vaccine agents peddling the experimental jab in the neighborhood streets of Charlotte, North Carolina.  Health department workers joined the vax-peddlers so they could harass and vaccinate residents right at their front door.  They aim to "eliminate any excuse" that people may have for making their own decision about their health.  They ensured that you can't just send them away by 'saying' you would get vaccinated, if you turn down a jab at the door you will surely make their 'list.'

Charlottesville Abruptly Removes Statue of Lewis, Clark, and Sacagawea.  The Charlottesville, Va., City Council abruptly voted to remove a statue of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea on Saturday, the same day statues of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were removed from the city.  The council voted unanimously for the statue's removal at an emergency session at noon, and has allocated about $1 million for the removal of all three statues.  The statue of the explorers had stood at Charlottesville's West Main Street since 1919. [...] Lewis was born in Albemarle County, where Charlottesville is located.  Lewis and Clark were charged by former president Thomas Jefferson with exploring the land west of the Mississippi River, and were joined by Sacagawea, a Lemhi Shoshone woman, as a guide and interpreter.  Critics had complained that the statue in question depicted Sacagawea crouching behind the two men, though others argued this pose was meant to show her as a tracker.

Statue of Lewis & Clark and Sacagawea toppled in Charlottesville.  The city of Charlottesville, Va. followed up its removal of two controversial Confederate statues Saturday with the lightning-fast toppling of a third local landmark:  a monumental tribute to explorers Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and Sacagawea.  In an emergency meeting called with 20 minutes' notice, the Charlottesville City Council voted unanimously to cancel another piece of public art targeted by left-wing activists.  "I feel that it should just be melted down," Rose Ann Abrahamson, a Sacagawea descendant, said during the council meeting, The Daily Progress reported.  "I feel that it's entirely offensive and it should be obliterated."  Within minutes, a city work crew — the same group that had dismantled equestrian statues of Gens.  Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson earlier Saturday — arrived with ropes, a crane, and pry bars to wrench the artwork off the plinth where it had stood on Charlottesville's West Main Street since 1919.

The Editor says...
The statue stood for a hundred years.  Suddenly, an emergency meeting was called because one person was offended, and the statue was removed.  Why can't the 47,000 residents of Charlottesville vote on the matter?

Anheuser-Busch teams up with White House in free beer giveaway for 200,000 vaccinated Americans.  Brewer Anheuser-Busch announced on Wednesday that it is teaming up with the White House to offer its 'biggest beer giveaway ever' if 70 percent of American adults have had at least one vaccine by July 4 but the offer has a catch: only 200,000 people will reap the benefits of free booze.  The free beer is part of a 'month of action' that President Joe Biden is announcing to get more shots into arms before the July 4 holiday — which he has previously hoped would be the celebration of the 'independence from COVID'.  The White House is doubling down as it struggles to reach that goal.

Schumer on electric cars: 'All vehicles on the road should be clean' by 2040.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) says every vehicle on the road should be fully electric by 2040.  "There is no way the United States can reduce its greenhouse gas emissions without looking at how Americans drive," Schumer said on Tuesday.  "So I have put forward an ambitious, comprehensive proposal to accelerate our country's transition to zero-emission vehicles.  We've called it Clean Cars for America.  "The goal of that plan is that by 2040, all vehicles should be clean.  All vehicles on the road should be clean.  The International Energy Agency, by the way, recommends the world reach that target by 2050, so we beat them by 10 years, if this proposal goes into effect."

The Editor says...
I'm not sure who the International Energy Agency is, but I do know they're not elected representatives of US citizens, and we didn't approve of their agenda in any kind of referendum.  Their recommendations carry no legal weight, but the serve as a fig leaf for the Democrats' power grab.  And the power grab is based on groundless hysteria about global warming — or whatever they call it now.

US Intelligence agencies challenge Biden's climate alarmism.  The U.S. government's intelligence analysts are failing to match the heated rhetoric used by President Biden and his administration in describing threats posed by climate change, instead dubbing vague "direct" or "indirect" dangers from global warming.  Mr. Biden is set to host a virtual summit of some 40 world leaders Thursday and Friday devoted exclusively to climate change, which the White House now regards as a "crisis" requiring immediate, global action to avert catastrophe.  "There is little time left to avoid setting the world on a dangerous, potentially catastrophic, climate trajectory," Mr. Biden stated in a sweeping executive order signed in January.

The Editor says...
There's always "little time left," and the predictions of catastrophe are always proven wrong.  That's because all the predictions are based on exaggerations.

Biden Rushes to Short-Circuit the Economic Recovery Because He Has No Choice.  Joe Biden is not a stupid man.  He may believe crazy stuff but he certainly knows that raising taxes on the most productive members of society and their capital will choke off economic growth as the nation emerges from its self-inflicted, pandemic economic wounds.  With less growth and fewer jobs, Biden is fully aware of what his policies will do.  But looking at the politics of Biden's situation, you can see why he doesn't feel he has a choice.  Unless Republicans shoot themselves in the foot, they are bound to win back at least one house of Congress.  That telescopes Biden's time to make good on the trillions of dollars in promises he made to every racial, ethnic, and gender identity group in America from four years to now less than two.  The more than $4 trillion he's already sent out is just a down payment.

Most Americans want climate change addressed 'right now': poll.  The majority of Americans believe climate change needs to be addressed immediately, according to a CBS News poll published Sunday [4/18/2021].  Fifty-six percent of Americans said people should address the problem "right now," while 11% said climate change should be tackled "in the next few years." [...] But roughly one-third of Americans believe combating climate change can wait.  According to CBS News, the people who feel this way point to four reasons:  36% say climate change is exaggerated, 31% say there are other more pressing issues, 23% believe there's nothing that can be done, and 9% say it costs too much to deal with it.

Media cheers a return to the failed Iran deal.  A Monday New York Times front page headline on the explosion at a key Iranian nuclear facility claimed the "Attack May Hurt Efforts to Reboot 2015 Deal."  On Tuesday, also on the front page, the paper declared that "Israel's Role in Iran Blast Casts A Shadow on U.S. Nuclear Talks"  Get it?  Making a new deal with Iran is a very good thing, anything that hurts the chance is a very bad thing, including Israel.  Here's an alternative view: the Times is still drinking the Kool-Aid that the original Iranian nuclear pact was a success and is worth saving.  To committed dead enders, Iran's violations of the terms and spread of regional terrorism are irrelevant.  The cult surrounding the deal at the Gray Lady includes the paper's editorial board.  Its Saturday screed, written before the weekend attack, began by saying "There exists now a brief window of time" for President Biden to reach a new accord.  The reason:  Iranian moderates could be gone by summer.  Ah, yes, Iranian moderates, the unicorns that only blinkered leftists can see.  So let's hurry and make a deal, any deal.

The Liberal Race To Vaccinate.  This past February, popular Soul Cycle master Stacey Griffith was criticized for receiving her COVID vaccination ahead of seniors and first responders.  Griffith believed her role as an exercise instructor "made her eligible for the vaccine as an educator." While many in New York feigned outrage, this behavior is increasingly common among liberal elites in the Big Apple.  As a conservative living in Westchester County, a wealthy Democratic enclave north of Manhattan, I witnessed many New Yorkers engaging in a similar fashion to that of Ms. Griffith.  Oblivious to the fact that homebound seniors and those who live in minority neighborhoods were yet inoculated, these anxious suburbanites who once spent months fetishizing over New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's daily briefings and stringent lockdown measures were now obsessively trying to promote their eligibility for the vaccine.  As a result of their rush to vaccinate, many coastal elites are contributing to the racial inequities they purport to be against.

The Dawn of a New Age of Tyranny Is Upon Us.  If you're bewildered by the breakneck pace of "change" since the inauguration of Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., back on Jan. 20, you're not alone.  Average Americans have been puzzled and, in many case, chagrined by the flurry of executive orders, ukases, policy prescriptions, social proscriptions, vengeful rollbacks, and other government meddling in the lives of our citizens.  Conservatives, meanwhile, understand that all this activity has one overarching purpose:  to punish the bad Orange Man and the country that voted for him.  And make sure he never happens again.  To that end, the string of top-down bossiness has been designed to look, and be, punitive.  Every major Donald Trump initiative or accomplishment must be negated and anathematized.

Joe Biden's Rule By Decree:  How Far Can He Go?  President Joe Biden's candidacy was built on the idea that he was an old, experienced, centrist in Washington, someone who could bring two sides together.  So far, with his penchant for issuing "executive orders" to fundamentally change America, he's governing precisely as a socialist dictator would.  Is that what Americans voted for? [...] The idea is to move so fast the Republican opposition and the American people won't know what hit them.  With a 50-50 split in the Senate and a majority in the House, Biden and his advisers think he might be able to move his agenda through Congress with only mild resistance.

Biden Now Supports Ending Filibuster, Held Meeting On How 'Big,' 'Fast' He Can 'Jam Through' Agenda:  Report.  Democrat President Joe Biden reportedly held a recent secret meeting in the White House with "historians" to discuss how "big" of an agenda he could push and how "fast" he could "jam" it through.  The agenda that Biden is pursuing would bring "once-in-a-lifetime historic changes to America," Axios reported.  Democrat Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared in November that if Democrats won both U.S. Senates in the Georgia runoff elections that Democrats would "change America."  "The historians' views were very much in sync with his own:  It is time to go even bigger and faster than anyone expected.  If that means chucking the filibuster and bipartisanship, so be it," the report said.  "People close to Biden tell us he's feeling bullish on what he can accomplish, and is fully prepared to support the dashing of the Senate's filibuster rule to allow Democrats to pass voting rights and other trophy legislation for his party."  The agenda that Biden wants to enact includes a crackdown on the Second Amendment, passing a highly controversial election reform bill, and a radical climate agenda.

Donald Trump Blows Up the Last, Great Hope for Democrats in 2022.  While the last election is still fresh in the minds of most Americans, the next one is going to become an issue a lot sooner than most people think.  Republicans are poised to retake the House due to redistricting alone.  That and the historical fact that the first midterm for a newly minted president is almost always a bloodbath has Democrats dreading what looks to be coming.  That's why you see such a push to get rid of the filibuster now.  Democrats know they are on borrowed time, and they want to push through what they can now.  There has been one thing that the left have been hoping will save them, though.  Namely, that a civil war within the Republican party leads to a suppression of victories come 2022.  For that to happen, Democrats were banking on Donald Trump just going scorched earth, with no care for whether the GOP takes back the majority or not.  Well, the former president just blew that notion up, and that sound you hear is millions of liberals crying out in agony.

Biden Admin Takes First Step Towards Reparations; "We Don't Want To Wait For A Study".  Joe Biden is preparing to alienate roughly 87 percent of the country in his pursuit of a blatantly racist and likely unconstitutional policy of providing 'reparations' for at least some blacks.  And yes, American taxpayers — none of whom owned slaves, was a slave, or even knew a slave — are going to foot the bill.  Biden plans to pursue a program to provide free college tuition to any student who attends a historically black college, specifically as a form of "reparations," The Daily Caller reported Monday [3/1/2021].

Why The Texas Blackout Has The Greens So Scared:  Deflecting blame to a more exciting apocalypse.  Last month, President Biden signed a series of executive orders undermining fossil fuels, on the grounds the "climate crisis" forced his hand.  "We can't wait any longer.  We see with our own eyes.  We know it in our bones.  It is time to act."

If you're worried about ending cash bail, you're fearmongering, Pritzker says.  Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed into law Monday [2/22/2021] a bill that will eliminate cash bail in Illinois, allow for anonymous complaints against police officers in disciplinary hearings and overhaul law enforcement protocols to be more hands off when apprehending suspects.  Some of the material in the 700-page bill passed last month is laudable and worth exploring, as we've said previously.  But it's undeniable that nearly every law enforcement agency and prosecutorial association in the state is ringing alarm bells about the changes, which were shoved through the legislature with little debate in the middle of the night — by design.

Biden calls for tougher gun laws on anniversary of Parkland massacre.  Sorrow reverberated across the country Sunday [2/14/2021] as Americans, including President Joe Biden, joined a Florida community in remembering the 17 lives lost three years ago in the Parkland school shooting massacre. [...] The president used the occasion to call on Congress to strengthen gun laws, including requiring background checks on all gun sales and banning assault weapons.  There was no time to wait, the president said.  "We owe it to all those we've lost and to all those left behind to grieve to make a change.  The time to act is now."

The Editor says...
"There was no time to wait, the president said."  The country has waited three years without any ill effects.

Dems Rush New COVID Bill While Feds Sit On $1.3 Trillion In Unspent Relief Funds.  "Time is a luxury our country does not have."  That was Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer explaining why Democrats are in such a mad rush to pass a massive $1.9 trillion COVID "relief" bill.  What Schumer, President Joe Biden and other Democrats, and the mainstream media fail to mention is that the government still hasn't spent $1.3 trillion of the previous COVID relief funds.  If the public knew that, would a majority be in favor of anything like the new Biden plan?  For those with short memories, there have been five COVID relief bills in less than a year, with total spending of $4.1 trillion — all financed by deficit spending.  President Donald Trump signed the most recent bill — valued at $900 billion — just six weeks ago.  Also, there have been "administrative actions" that add up to $700 billion.

Pelosi, Schumer File Measure That Sets Up Process To Ram Through Biden Stimulus Without GOP Support.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) introduced a joint resolution on Monday afternoon that will allow them to pass President Joe Biden's coronavirus stimulus package without needing support from the Republican Party.  "Introduction of a joint budget resolution is the first step to potentially enacting a Budget Reconciliation bill, one legislative tool available to Congress to quickly pass bipartisan COVID relief legislation," a joint statement from the two Democrat leaders said.  "The Resolution outlines the 'reconciliation instructions' for each House and Senate committee, or how much funding can be spent in their jurisdiction.  If both the House and Senate pass identical Budget Resolutions (which do not require a Presidential signature), both chambers can begin work on the Reconciliation bill that is signed by the President.

[Dispense] With Unity.  Joe Biden has already rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement.  He has rejoined the World Health Organization.  He has suspended federal oil and gas permitting and canceled the Keystone XL pipeline.  He has stopped work on the border wall, suspended deportations for 100 days, and announced his intention of a path to legalization (i.e., a path to ballooning the Democratic Party's voter rolls) for millions of illegals in the country.  He signed a mandate requiring masks on federal land.  He signed a bizarre executive order forcing schools to accept biological men on women's sports teams.  He reversed Trump's ban on Chinese involvement in the U.S. power grid.  And he also reversed Trump's order mandating lower prices for insulin and epinephrine pens.  Biden will also be raising your taxes — but that takes time.  Everything above is just executive action.  Imagine how great it will be once the Democratic House and Senate start pumping out unopposed legislation.

Biden races to sign as many executive actions as possible.  As he approaches his first full week in office, Joe Biden is breaking presidential records for the most executive orders in the shortest time span.  [Video clip]

Biden signs federal mask mandate, repeals Muslim Ban, and rejoins Paris Climate Agreement.  Joe Biden has signed his first slate of executive actions as president, erasing core aspects of Donald Trump's legacy on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration, climate change, and more with the simple stroke of a pen.  Following an afternoon of ceremonies that included a virtual parade through Washington DC, and the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, the new administration immediately got to work at around 17.15 local time (12.15 GMT), rolling out 15 executive orders and two other action items.  "There's no time to start like today," the president said from the Oval Office's Resolute Desk.

Biden Seeks To Annihilate Trump's Legacy With Flood Of Executive Orders Within First 10 Days.  Former Vice President Joe Biden plans to issue a series of executive orders designed to eliminate much of what the Trump administration put into place within his first ten days in office.  He will impose these new measures as a way to indicate a new direction for the country.  However, you will be glad to know that he has no plans to govern from his basement, as far as he knows. [...] The former vice president's team has created a list of executive orders that he will implement after his inauguration on Wednesday.  These measures will be designed to reverse some of President Trump's policies, especially those related to immigration.

Biden White House chief of staff lays out executive, action-heavy, 10-day agenda.  President-elect Joe Biden is bracing for a busy first 10 days as the next commander in chief, according to his future White House chief of staff.  Ron Klain, who is returning to the role after serving as Biden's chief staffer when he was vice president, foreshadowed Biden's priorities Saturday after he will be inaugurated on Wednesday.  In a memo to incoming senior staff that was shared with reporters, Klain outlined how Biden would sign a series of executive orders, presidential memoranda, and directives to Cabinet agencies addressing the coronavirus pandemic, the strained economy, climate change, and racial unrest.

The Editor says...
[#1] Racial unrest is entirely the fault of the Democrats.  Constant racial friction and opportunism keeps the Democratic Party afloat.  [#2] The economy wasn't "strained" until the Democrats weaponized the Coronavirus; in fact, the economy was doing quite well until then — too well for the Democrats to have any chance of winning the 2020 election.  [#3] Climate change is not on anybody's top ten list of great concerns.  For all practical purposes, the climate is not changing at all.  Any changes that take place from one year to the next all too small to notice.

Joe Biden embraces deficit spending: 'We cannot afford inaction'.  President-elect Joseph R. Biden said Thursday that there's almost no such thing as spending too much money right now given the "twin crises" of the coronavirus pandemic and the associated economic fallout.  "There's no time to waste.  We have to act, and we have to act now," Mr. Biden said in a speech in Wilmington, Delaware.  "We cannot afford inaction."  Mr. Biden unveiled additional details about the $1.9 trillion rescue package he released Thursday.  The plan is designed to combat COVID-19 and mitigate the economic damage the public health crisis has caused.

Mark Levin Shreds Rushed Impeachment Report Like Nancy Pelosi Ripping up a Trump SOTU Speech.  Fox News host, author, and constitutional expert Mark Levin ripped apart House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's rushed [...] impeachment charade 2.0 during a fired-up appearance on "Hannity" on Wednesday night with the precision of a surgeon.

Top Republican says Trump committed 'impeachable offenses'.  Democrats' momentum for a fresh drive to quickly impeach outgoing President Donald Trump gained support Saturday [1/9/2021], and a top Republican said the president's role in the deadly riot at the Capitol by a violent mob of Trump supporters was worthy of rebuke.  Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said he believed Trump had committed "impeachable offenses."

A fast-track impeachment would not be justice.  It would be pointless revenge.  Proponents of a rushed impeachment during the 12 days Trump has left in office are not interested in the fact that there would be no time for the president to present evidence of his contrary intent or any mitigating factors.  He isn't owed any due process, they say, because it's a "political" process.  The Red Queen's "sentence first — verdict afterwards" is on their exercised minds.  Opponents cite the precedent that a rushed impeachment would constitute for every future president.  It is no small thing to attempt the bum's rush on an elected president who survived one impeachment easily but who is weakened now as a lame duck.  No time to find and introduce exculpatory evidence that might show Trump intended only for demonstrators to circle the Capitol and chant, a perfect constitutional exercise.  No time to learn what Trump did when he returned to the White House after his speech.

Democrats Eye Vote On Impeachment As Early As Next Week.  With the 25th Amendment out the window, Congressional Democrats are moving on to door #2 -- impeachment.  According to CNN, Democrats may vote on impeachment as soon as the middle of next week.  According to the report, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her leadership team are working out a "lightning-quick impeachment process," according to "multiple Democratic sources."
[Emphasis added.]

Covaxin:  What was the rush to approve India's homegrown vaccine?  How can a coronavirus vaccine be cleared for emergency use by millions of vulnerable people in a "clinical trial" mode?  No idea, says Dr Gagandeep Kang, one of India's best-known vaccine experts.  "Either you are doing a clinical trial or not".  Clinical trials — a three-phased process — determine whether the vaccine induces good immune responses and whether it causes any unacceptable side-effects.  On Sunday [1/3/2021], India's drug regulator gave emergency approval of a locally produced coronavirus vaccine, called Covaxin, before the completion of trials.  The government-backed vaccine has been developed by Bharat Biotech, a 24-year-old vaccine maker, which has a portfolio of 16 vaccines and exports to 123 countries.  The regulator said the vaccine had been approved for "restricted use in emergency situation in public interest as an abundant precaution, in clinical trial mode, especially in the context of infection by mutant strains".

Flying Blind:  Congress Votes on 11th-Hour, 5,600-Page Spending Bill Unread.  A terrible 2020 is coming to a close, and the American people are about to get handed a massive bill.  After months of delays and waiting, a federal stopgap spending package, combined with $900 billion in COVID-19 relief, is finally being released to the public.  The bill, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, is nearly 5,600 pages long.  Only now are most members of Congress seeing it in its entirety.

9 Things You Need to Know About the $1.4 Trillion Fiscal Year 2021 Omnibus and $900 Billion COVID-19 Package.  This massive omnibus package was written behind closed doors by a select few members of Congress and staffers, just before the deadline.  As described by Politico, "Congressional leaders are preparing the second-largest federal rescue package in our nation's history, and no one has seen it just days before it will get a vote.  All of the power is centralized among four people and their aides."  There is simply no way for members of Congress and the American public to fully comprehend the potential impacts of the numerous, significant policy provisions and spending that is included in the bill.  Members of Congress only have hours to review and understand 5,593 pages of complex legislative text and nearly 2,000 pages of explanatory materials — working around the clock from the time the bill and materials were made publicly available to the public until 1:46 p.m.  Monday afternoon, just hours prior to the vote.  Even if a member attempted to read and understand the legislation, it would not be physically possible.

AOC frustrated with lack of review time ahead of vote on 5,593-page stimulus bill.  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized the rushed process ahead of Monday's vote on a massive stimulus bill, as the text is finally released after long delays.  "It's not good enough to hear about what's in the bill.  Members of Congress need to see and read the bills we are expected to vote on," the New York Democrat tweeted.  "I know it's 'controversial' and I get in trouble for sharing things like this, but the people of this country deserve to know.  They deserve better."  Capitol Hill leaders announced a finalized deal on $900 billion in coronavirus relief and resources late Sunday evening, but the 5,593-page bill wasn't released until Monday afternoon.

Trump Needs to Shine the Light on Election Fraud.  The rush job to affirm Biden as president-elect by the media and the Democrat Party is not constitutionally required, and indeed smacks of a kind of desperation to avoid scrutiny.  Contrary to their claims, Trump's thorough investigation of potential large-scale election fraud is fully in accord with the Constitution.  As the one in whom executive power is vested, he has the constitutional obligation to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and that includes laws designed to ensure that voting is not fraudulent.

Democrats want it all now.  Remember the weeks before the election, when leading Democrats, voices in the media, and tech moguls warned America to be patient after election day?  It might take days, or weeks, or even months, to know the final results of the presidential election, they warned.  Americans should not get ahead of themselves but instead wait to let the process of choosing a new president work.  That was then.  Now, some Democrats not only want President Trump to leave office, they want him to do so, and be replaced by Joe Biden, immediately.

Bum's Rush for Trump Is Biden's First Mistake.  The better way for Mr. Biden to have handled this situation, however awkward, would have been to thank the networks for their support and for calling the election for him — but then to remind them, and the American people, that the result has yet to be certified.  And to say that out of respect for both the president and the presidency, he'd prefer to wait until the electoral college and the courts have disposed of any challenges.  That would have been the sort of unifying gesture that we would have expected from a man confident of his victory.  And of a leader genuinely committed, as Mr. Biden claims he is, to healing the country.

Hillary Clinton Tells Listeners That Pelosi Will "Move Quickly" On Radical Legislation If Biden And Dems Win.  If you're like me, you've grown somewhat exhausted with the amount of times you've been told how important it is to get out and vote on November 3 — or early if possible — but something that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this week should be a spine-tingling reminder of why your vote is literally more important this year than ever before.  According to BizPac Review, Clinton did an interview on SiriusXM's "Signal Boost" in which she laid out a preview of what will immediately happen if Democrats win the White House and, Heaven forbid, take majority control of the U.S. Senate.  "I've told the ... Biden campaign and the Biden transition team that they're gonna have to move really fast.  Let's assume we take back the Senate.  It matters whether we take it back and we have 50 votes or 51 votes or more.  And we're going to have to move really quickly," Clinton said.

Some Facts You're Not Hearing That Might Dampen Your Enthusiasm for a Shot of COVID-19 Vaccine.  [Scroll down]  On the frightening side:  Two of the leading contenders in the race to produce a vaccine are using experimental technology that artificially stimulates an immune response by... hold on to your seats... genetically altering your cells with RNA from the virus so they start producing proteins from its outer shell.  Though it probably won't be described this way in any ad campaign, it's tough to see what's inaccurate about saying mRNA technology works by genetically modifying you into a human-coronavirus hybrid.  Moreover, not only are these potential COVID vaccines being developed with never-before-witnessed haste, mRNA technology has never been approved for use before.  In fact, this will be the first time it's even been tested in a large-scale clinical trial!  There's always some risk attending the introduction of any new medication.  But put all of this together, and it's hard to see how the impending COVID-19 vaccine won't be one of the riskiest if not the riskiest pharmaceutical product ever marketed.  The pharmaceutical companies racing to be the first to develop it certainly seem to think so.

'Writing a new playbook in real time': FDA faces tough task in rushing a vaccine safely.  In accelerating the approval process for a coronavirus vaccine, the Trump administration's Operation Warp Speed is pushing the Food and Drug Administration to do the unprecedented.  While drug approval has been rushed out the door before, the FDA has never done so while revamping the entire process.  Yet many experts say that the expedited process is not likely to exacerbate the safety risks.

McConnell: What's the rush on Phase 4 coronavirus relief, except for Pelosi's hobby-horse agenda?  Two key Senate Republicans declared Nancy Pelosi's tax break for blue-state millionaires dead on arrival — if she has the nerve to actually propose it.  The chair of the Finance Committee, which would have to approve the elimination of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap, won't bother to review it at all.  A spokesperson for Chuck Grassley wondered why this would be the time to bring up a tax break for millionaires in high-tax states like California and New York.

Trump's Kiplingesque Coronavirus Leadership.  [Scroll down]  The yellow journalism storm hit hurricane strength when Fox's Tucker Carlson told the Trump base that America would end unless the president came forward with a comprehensive national plan.  Even then, President Trump's next proposals were moderate.  They mostly loosened government rules restricting private medical responses and still emphasized federalism and decentralization.  But in the face of the media blizzard and Congress' belief that spending trillions was the only way to "do something," all Washington agreed on the need to throw trillions of their borrowed money at the crisis and exert drastic new controls.  The executive finally accommodated to this panic.  Even then, he expressed hope that extreme controls would last only for a limited time, setting the restrictions for 15 days.

Derisive satire:
Congress Excited To Find Out What's In Stimulus Package They Just Passed.  Members of Congress told reporters Friday they can't wait to read through the massive economic stimulus package they passed earlier today in response to the Coronavirus crisis.  "As with other important legislation, we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it," said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).  Other lawmakers voiced similar sentiments, telling sources they were excited to learn about all the wonderful, economy-altering mandates contained in the bill they voted on and supported.  "We couldn't waste time reading through the bill.  We had to do something, Americans are hurting," Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) told reporters, as he hung up the phone with his stockbroker after authorizing another lucrative stock trade.

For the time being, at least, the dead can vote in Wisconsin.  Two days ago [1/14/2020], we hailed the good news that a trial court judge in Wisconsin held the Elections Commission and three of its Democrat members in contempt because they refused to abide by his December order that they remove 200,000 non-viable names from the state's voting records.  One day later, on Tuesday, the state appellate court stepped in to stop the Elections Commission from cleaning out the cemetery vote: [...] The same judges — Michael Fitzpatrick, JoAnne Kloppenburg and Jennifer Nashold — had on two previous occasions refused to step in to block the purge.  This time, however, they moved so quickly they did not even have time to write an order explaining their reasoning.

Virginia Passes Four Gun Bills in One Day.  Four gun-control bills flew out of the Senate panel in Virginia yesterday to include the Red flag law, background checks which we have had for decades, one gun-a-month sale law, and the right of localities to ban or not ban firearms at certain events.  One of the fascists going for the guns is Joe Morrissey, who was convicted and served time for having sex with a minor.  There are many more to come.  Virginia, the home of the NRA, is ground zero for abolishing America's Second Amendment rights.  What goes on there must be closely watched.  It is a state in the hands of elected officials who are communists, socialists, and fascists.

Virginia's Giddy Gun Controllers.  Today [1/13/2020], the Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee will begin consideration of a host of gun control bills.  One week from today, groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Virginia Civilian Defense League are planning a mass demonstration against the bills.  Northam and the Dems will try to make these protests moot by getting their legislation passed quickly.  Among the bills being considered are requirements for background checks on all firearms sales, red flag laws, a one-a-month limit on purchasing pistols, closing the "gun show loophole," and bans on possession of firearms in state buildings and parks.  And that's not the half of it.

Report:  Limbaugh Says Pelosi is Counting on Stupidity of Her Low-Info Base to Misunderstand Impeachment.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing games right now.  She told America that President Trump was a "clear and present danger" and impeachment had to be rushed through because he was so incredibly dangerous and volatile and then after the partisan vote (where she couldn't even get all of her people to vote with her) she decides not to send the articles over to the Senate to complete the process.  If anybody in America was in doubt about Pelosi's partisan "coup-like" motives, they should be cleared up by this latest garbage.

The Impulse Buy Impeachment:  How The Democrats Yielded To The Holiday Frenzy Over Facts.  Wednesday's impeachment of President Trump exemplifies the danger of impulse buying during the holiday rush.  Despite a record of evidence that is both incomplete and conflicted, the House leadership stuck to its promise to Democratic voters that it would impeach Trump by Christmas.  There is a reason people make impulse purchases — and bring impulse impeachments.  A few years ago, professors Juliet Zhu and Grace Chae completed a study of impulse buying and concluded that it increases when shoppers are "surrounded by chaos," which "ultimately impairs [the] ability to perform other tasks requiring 'brain' power."  In other words, holiday crowds in combination with yet another chorus of "White Christmas" could mean you're at high risk for making bad purchasing decisions.  As one of the four witnesses called before the House Judiciary Committee to discuss the legal issues in the Trump impeachment, I'd say the study explains a lot about Congress' vote on Wednesday.  The crescendo of impeachment noise and the chaos of partisan bickering created a perfect atmosphere for Congress to make a hasty decision.

Nancy Pelosi, What Are You Doing?  Late Wednesday night, Speaker Nancy Pelosi floated the possibility that the House might withhold the articles of impeachment against Trump and not transmit them to the Senate at all. [...] The need to impeach the president was such an urgent matter, we were told, that the House could not wait for the courts to rule on challenges to the White House's efforts to prevent key witnesses like Mick Mulvaney, Don McGahn, and John Bolton (whom House Democrats didn't even subpoena) from testifying.  These important figures all claimed they would await guidance from the judiciary before consenting to testify, and the indications were that the extraordinary nature of the impeachment process would prove compelling.  Now the courts aren't even sure if they are obliged to continue litigating the matter.  With the articles passed, the issue is all but moot.  Democrats now insist that the Senate cannot proceed unless it hears from these witnesses, but that is also tacit admission that the fact-finding portion of impeachment proceedings was unduly rushed.

House Funds Key Programs but Adds to Government Bloat, Waste.  The House passed two spending bills totaling $1.4 trillion Tuesday [12/17/2019] to fund the federal government through the remainder of fiscal year 2020, which began Oct. 1.  Although the first bill would provide much-needed funding and budget certainty to core constitutional responsibilities, such as national defense, the second "minibus" is a Christmas tree of bloated spending and add-ons that have no place being voted on through an appropriations bill.  The House passed the two bills, introduced late Monday afternoon, in less than 24 hours.  The Senate is expected to consider the two measures later this week.  The fact that the House voted on more than 2,000 combined pages of text within 24 hours of introducing the two bills is a troubling symptom of Washington's budget dysfunction.  This is not the way that the budget process is supposed to work, and it leads to wasteful spending and other negative impacts for American taxpayers.

Pelosi Rushing Impeachment Vote to Keep Wavering Democrats in Line Before Christmas Recess.  Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is rushing the impeachment vote to the floor of the House before the Christmas recess to keep wavering Democrats in key battleground districts away from their constituents, the majority of whom are potentially uncomfortable with impeaching the president.  "House Democrats on Tuesday [12/10/2019] unveiled two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump over his contacts with Ukraine:  Abuse of power and obstruction of Congress," Breitbart News Network reported.  The House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on these articles this week, setting up an up or down floor vote on both articles of impeachment in the full House before next Friday, December 20, the Washington Examiner reported[.]

Mad dash to impeach Trump by Christmas.  House Democrats are moving quickly on an impeachment process poised to wrap up by the time lawmakers leave for the Christmas break.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to answer questions about the timing of an impeachment vote, but the California Democrat's sudden Thursday announcement green lighting committees to draft impeachment articles set an unspoken deadline for Democrats to conclude a vote on impeachment by Dec. 20, the target adjournment date for the year.

Schiff gives committee 24 hours to read his impeachment report and sign off.  Rep. Adam Schiff is a man in a hurry.  After taking his time to cherry-pick just the best witnesses from his basement hearings, he held a swift set of public hearings, which drove public support down for impeachment, and now he's slapped together a report for the House Intelligence Committee to vote on, giving it all of 24 hours to vote.  Sound like a fair process?  Actually, sounds like a desperate Democrat with a bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, whose priority now is an oncoming election train headed in his direction.

Adam Schiff Gives Democrats Only 24 Hours to Sign Impeachment Report.  House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) is giving members of his committee just 24 hours to read and sign off on his report recommending articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump.  As Breitbart News reported Friday, House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler has previewed the report, and suggested it will include claims of "collusion" with Russia — as well as Ukraine, Russia's enemy.

Why the rush toward impeachment?  House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, leader of the Democratic effort to impeach President Trump, told colleagues Monday that impeachment is "an urgent matter that cannot wait."  Why?  Why is it so urgent that Trump, who has been in office for nearly three years and will stand for reelection in 11 months — why is it so urgent that he be impeached and removed this very moment?  The reasons probably have more to do with Democratic political priorities than with anything Trump has done or will do.  Schiff and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deny any political motive in impeaching the president.  Perish the thought!  Pelosi says Democrats are acting "sadly, prayerfully, [and] with a heavy heart."  But they are racing to get the job done by Christmas.

Impeachment: 3 Crucial Questions, 3 Answers, So Far.  [Scroll down]  Question 3:  What's the rush?  So much attention has been devoted to Trump's motives and the contested evidence for them that very little has been paid to how grave the alleged crime is (assuming it can be proven) and why the president needs to be removed immediately.  "Gravity" and "urgency" are closely related here.  The graver the offense, the greater the need to remove the president quickly.  It's up to the Democrats to make that case.  As yet, they've hardly tried.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and progressive members of the Democratic caucus have certainly shown that they are in a hurry.  What they haven't shown is why independent voters and centrist Democrats should be, too.

Ratcliffe: Democrats 'racing' to beat disclosure that 'damages the Obama-Biden administration'.  Democratic leaders are rushing through impeachment proceedings to beat out a potentially scathing revelation about the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation, according to a House Intelligence Committee Republican.  Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe said Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's forthcoming report on FBI intelligence-gathering activities is "likely to be damning" in how it reflects upon the Obama administration, and by extension former Vice President Joe Biden, who is a leading candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Democrats Are Failing the Reality Test.  It's hard to think of a major Democrat issue and proposed solution that is not a fake.  It's an emergency.  What's the emergency?  Everything.  The planet, white privilege, transgender rights, Nazi policies on the border, killer cops.  A health care crisis so dire the government must ban private insurance, private doctors, and private hospitals.  Most of all President Trump is a walking emergency.  His voters are hate-filled bigots who love his authoritarian tendencies.  They are a danger to our democracy.

The Elite Machine Behind Greta Thunberg.  Behind Greta is a major machine, one that is controlled by major international actors and backed by major funds.  This PR machine has allowed Greta to make the covers of magazines, become the subject of thousands of news articles while being photographed with world leaders and giving speeches at elite organizations such as the United Nations.  Although Greta might very well be genuinely concerned with the fate of the planet, her message is carefully crafted by those who control her to generate a specific response from the youth.  In short, Greta is the face of a major marketing scheme — a tightly coordinated international effort to sell global warming through a specific lens:  Fear, panic, and urgency.

Left in a hurry:  RT films inside abandoned US military base at Manbij, Syria.  An RT Arabic crew peeked inside the US compound in Syria's Manbij, abandoned by the Americans just a few hours previously.  Footage from the scene suggests the US troops were in a hurry, leaving behind hardware and personal items.  The troops pulled out of the base, located southwest of the northern city of Manbij, overnight and into Tuesday [10/15/2019].  The retreat follows the decision by the US President Donald Trump to withdraw American personnel in the face of the Turkish operation against Kurdish-led militias.

The Strategies of Targeting Trump.  The Democrats think they have learned from the long, drawn-out Mueller soap opera, that now speeding, not meandering, is the real key to destroying Trump.  One does not wound a king and expect victory.  In Trump's case whatever does not destroy him, makes him stronger.  So, the point of this strategy is to fast-track a vote to impeach as soon as possible, preferably in 6 weeks before the Thanksgiving recess, warp the rules of custom and tradition regarding impeachment, and just ram it through.  Once Trump is impeached, no one will care whether it was by hook or crook.

The climate alarmist cometh.  "It's as simple as this.  We have according to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] 12 years, but that was a year ago," [Jane] Fonda told the Washington Post.  "So according to their report we have 11 years left.  Eleven years to do something that has never been done in human history.  And if we don't do it, huge parts of the planet are going to be uninhabitable, by the way."  The radical claim, though also touted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, has been disputed by climate scientists.  Nevertheless, rather than taking a less melodramatic approach to the problem of climate change, Fonda insists on telling us we're likely doomed.  She admits that she still flies in planes and eats meat, popular objects of scorn for the climate activists of the day.  So she says she's targeting the federal government, trying to get the United States to stop funding fossil fuels.

The Editor says...
Huge parts of the planet are already uninhabitable, thanks to socialists like Jane Fonda.  For example, California.  Beware of the urgency to do "something that has never been done in human history."  If it (whatever "something" means) has never been done, there must be a good reason.  We only have 11 years!  Yeah, but how much has changed since we only had 12 years?  Nothing.  Let's just wait 11 years, do nothing, and watch the weather stay exactly the same as it has been all our lives.

Will this go down as 'the mother of all traps'?  Let's hope that President Trump starts tweeting and calling on Democrats to start the impeachment process.  It all starts with a floor vote, and no such thing is in the horizon.  The Democrats jumped the gun a bit here.  Speaker Pelosi should have have waited for the evidence.

Maxine Waters:  We Will 'Move Very Quickly' on Impeaching Trump — Might Skip Congressional Recess.  Tuesday [9/24/2019] on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show," Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said House Democrats will "move very quickly" to bring articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump. [...] Maddow said, "What do you expect the Judiciary Committee might be considering potential articles of impeachment?"  Waters said, "I don't have that information, but I do expect that the judiciary committee is prepared to move very quickly."

The Editor says...
In other words, she's going to move quickly, but doesn't know what for.

Feds rush to spend 20% of $500 billion in one month in 'use it or lose it' spending spree.  Federal agencies have shelled out tens of millions of dollars on cars, movie cameras and other items in a contract spending spree that happens across government at the end of every fiscal year.  The State Department dropped more than $33 million on passenger cars in the first two weeks of this month and the Justice Department spent more than $3 million on movie cameras, records show.  Not to be outdone, the U.S. Mint has spent more than $60 million on raw gold and silver.  An estimated $66 million has gone to debt collectors trying to claw back money spent on student loans, records show.

In Ukraine matter, Dems apply Russiagate lesson:  Strike fast; don't wait to find out what happened.  We don't know precisely what was said in the July 25 telephone conversation in which Trump reportedly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Joe Biden's son.  We don't know what a whistleblower told the intelligence community inspector general about the conversation (although we do know that he or she did not have direct knowledge of the call).  We don't know what other evidence the whistleblower did or did not include in the complaint.  And of course, we don't know who the whistleblower is or the circumstances surrounding his or her decision to come forward.  Nevertheless, the media is filled with the notion that the public already knows what happened.

Democratic voters in New Hampshire blame climate change for economic woes.  The 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls flocking to the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire could encounter voters who say they are feeling the effects of climate change in their pocketbooks — as they seek to woo Democrats who count the environment as a top issue.  Tourism is the Granite State's second-largest industry and accounts for a large portion of the state's economy.  The ski industry alone contributes on average about half a billion dollars a year to the state, but it's been forced to make some changes over the years to combat a rise in winter temperatures — an average increase of nearly six degrees since 1970.

The Editor says...
World-wide average temperatures over the last 50 years have remained essentially unchanged.  It isn't difficult to find information from numerous sources to validate this claim.  If the state of New Hampshire has seen a temperature increase of six degrees in the last 50 years, it is the only place in the world with such a record.  In my opinion, their measurement techniques and record-keeping are highly suspect.  Rash assertions about extraordinary global warming should not be used as the basis for impetuous and costly political decisions.

The Well-Funded Environmental Extremists Of The Sunrise Movement Are Gaining Within The Left.  Photos recently popped up on Twitter of young activists supergluing themselves across passageways within the U.S. Capitol in the hopes of prompting Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other House Democrats to declare a "climate emergency."  These fresh-faced, khaki-wearing rapscallions belong to a group called Extinction Rebellion, or XR, one of several organizations the Momentum Community and its parent, the Boston-based Ayni Institute, "incubated."  Founded in the United Kingdom, Extinction Rebellion now has more than 50 chapters across the United States and hundreds more around the world.  Like XR, the Sunrise Movement is dedicated to advancing climate change legislation worldwide, including declaring climate emergencies.  In fact, its use of terms such as "climate emergency," "climate justice," and similar inventions has been underway since at least the mid-2000s.

Everything They're Telling You About Mass Shootings Is Wrong.  Not only are congressional Republicans making noise about gun control laws that Obama could never get passed but the New York Times reported that President Trump is looking for ways to enact gun control through executive action.  Allow me to propose a radical thought:  Rushing important legislation that affects people's most fundamental rights based on what's trending on Twitter is not the best way to run a serious country.

Will NASA Sole-Source Northrop to Build a Space Station to Orbit the Moon?  NASA's Artemis Project is a multi-billion dollar bet that we can return to the moon in just five years' time.  To get us there, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration plans to build a "Lunar Gateway" space station where spaceships will dock, and from which lunar shuttles will descend and ascend, carrying astronauts to and from the lunar surface.  There's just one problem with this plan:  Originally envisioned as a near-decade-long marathon in which NASA would methodically make its way back to the moon by 2028, the moon race has morphed into a sprint.

Pseudo scientific hysteria is the wrong answer to climate change.  A year ahead of the US presidential election, exaggeration about global warming is greater than ever.  While some politicians continue (incorrectly) to insist it's made up, far more insist (also incorrectly) that we face an imminent climate crisis threatening civilization.  During this week's Democratic debates, Pete Buttigieg called 2030 a "point of no return," Beto O'Rourke warned we don't have "more than 10 years to get this right" and Andrew Yang claimed climate change has already moved beyond a tipping point:  "We are 10 years too late," he said.  Using climate to energize the base may make short-term political sense, but adding to polarization on the topic just makes it impossible to engage in sensible policy discussion.

Why Should We Subsidise Tomorrow's Rich in the Name of the Climate?  It is a matter of concern to us that Indian governments have been dumping scarce taxpayer resources into renewable energy and other inefficient technologies in the name of "climate change".  Instead of acting as the voice of reason, governments world-wide are having a picnic, feasting on our panic.  When people are scared, it is much easier to raid their pockets.  We are the only party in India (and possibly in the world) that stands for reason.  We believe that everything must be questioned.  In this case, IPCC's own analysis shows there is no harm from climate change.  Yes, you've read correctly:  the IPCC itself has said that there is no harm from climate change.  Of course, you won't be told about this unless you dig deep.

'Climate Emergency': Ireland Set to Ban Private Cars While Planning Mass Third World Migration.  Drivers will be forced off the roads in Ireland and the population packed into "higher density" cities under a long-awaited climate plan which will 'revolutionise' people's lifestyle and behaviours, according to local media.  "Nudge" policies such as huge tax hikes, as well as bans and red tape outlined in the plan, will pave the way to a "vibrant" Ireland of zero carbon emissions by 2050 according to the government, which last year committed to boost the country's 4.7 million-strong population by a further million with mass migration.

Mike Bloomberg Devotes $500 Million To Kill Coal Jobs, Influence 2020 Elections.  Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg will spend $500 million to close every remaining U.S. coal-fired power plant and stop the expansion of natural gas.  Bloomberg will fund environmental activist lobbying campaigns in state legislatures, city councils and public utility commissions.  Activists will demand officials replace coal plants with renewable energy, not natural gas.  "We're in a race against time with climate change, and yet there is virtually no hope of bold federal action on this issue for at least another two years," Bloomberg said in a statement Thursday [6/6/2019].

The Editor says...
We are NOT "in a race against time" to stop global warming.  There is no abnormal global warming.

$19.1 Billion 'Emergency' Relief Bill Is a Disaster of Waste.  [Scroll down]  All of those quotes came from politicians — on both sides of the aisle — after a couple of recalcitrant Republicans objected to the House using a voice vote on a $19.1 billion spending bill, instead of requiring House members to record their votes.  But why the sudden rush?  The disasters this bill is trying to address all happened last year.  The bill has been in the works for more than a month.  The House is back in session next Tuesday, when it can vote on the spending measure, which means a delay of just seven days.  But more to the point, most of the "emergency" funds lawmakers are so desperate to get signed into law right now won't be spent for years, if they get spent at all.  The Congressional Budget Office, the official arbiter of the cost of legislation, says that the disaster aid bill authorizes $19.2 [billion] in disaster relief.  But only $5.3 billion of that will be spent this year.  Next year, $4.9 billion will go out the door.

Lone GOP rep blocks disaster aid bill in surprise move.  A lone Republican congressman single-handedly stalled a $19 billion disaster aid bill that lawmakers had expected to pass before the Memorial Day weekend.  Texas Rep. Chip Roy took to the House floor late Friday morning [5/24/2019] to object when lawmakers tried to approve the legislation using a fast-track tactic, with many members of Congress already gone for the holiday.

Chip Roy:  Hero.  Single-handedly Forces Congress to Discuss Government Spending.  Congressman Chip Roy just halted the advance of a $19.1 billion disaster aid package through the House of Representatives.  Democrats and Republicans were hoping to rush it through by unanimous consent.  The congressman, a personal friend and endorsed by this site, is increasingly concerned that Congress is spending money without regard to deficits and debt.  He'd at least like the House to talk about the issue.  So he single handedly forced debate and that is a good thing.

Everything has been 'DIRE' for years:  A history of 'dire' environmental & climate warnings.  Every prediction is "dire."  And every climate summit is the 'last chance.  [Numerous examples.]

AP debunks Beto O'Rourke claim that world has just 12 years to combat climate change.  The Associated Press has thrown cold water on an increasingly popular Democratic talking point:  That the earth has just 12 years to stave off climate doomsday.  "There is no scientific consensus, much less unanimity, that the planet only has 12 years to fix the problem," said the AP in a Monday fact-check.  The wire service weighed in after former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke made the 12-year claim as he kicked off his run for the Democratic presidential nomination last week in Keokuk, Iowa.

Why Do Progressives Reject Policies That Would Achieve Their Aims?  Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Sesame Street) has delivered yet another statement that bespeaks the progressives' chronic myopia.  This time she's pondering the dilemma about whether or not it's "still okay to have children," given the apocalyptic future being created by climate change.  The point has nothing to do with demography, as birth-rates in the U.S. are already starting to decline.  The real point, of course, is to rouse the old progressive battle-cry of a "crisis" that "urgently" needs resolving, mainly by increasing the power and rapacity of bloated federal agencies and their growth-killing regulations.

The Urgency of the Green New Deal Will Only Give the State Mob-Like Power.  My late brother once pointed out to me that the Mafia, or organized crime generally, thrives wherever time is hugely important.  He drove a fish truck out of the old Fulton Fish Market and he saw some of this first hand.  Fish have a short shelf-life and that's why the mob had suppliers and buyers over a barrel.  Similarly, the mob was notoriously embedded in the newspaper-delivery truck racket.  If you can't deliver newspapers on time, the newspapers become, literally, old news and therefore worthless.  Tim Carney recently noted that the key reason why the Green New Deal will become a cronyist-fecal festival is the need to rush.  "A Green New Deal," their resolution reads, "must be developed through transparent and inclusive consultation, collaboration, and partnership with frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, worker cooperatives, civil society groups, academia, and businesses."  But you can't have this intricate, collaborative, and inclusive process unless you take a very long time.  The entire premise of this moon-shot, new deal, grand mobilization is that we don't have a lot of time before the planet melts.

Hoax Victimology — and the Search for the Black Cat at Midnight.  The Jussie Smollett matter is riveting.  The rush to judgment is exactly the hallmark of the Left — rushing to convict Brett M. Kavanaugh based on lies, [...] lies, and more [...] lies.  Rushing to convict the Duke lacrosse players.  Rushing to convict the rapist of Lena Dunham for a rape that never happened.  Rushing to convict a Columbia University student, even as he was shamed and disgraced publicly by "The Mattress Girl," with Columbia University ultimately having to settle with him.  Rushing to convict the University of Virginia fraternity.  Rushing to convict the people accused by Al Sharpton over Tawana Brawley.  Rushing to believe the Ferguson Michael Brown "Hands up, Don't Shoot!" lie and racing to convict a good police officer.  Rushing to convict more good police officers in Baltimore over the Freddie Gray lies.  And the Trayvon Martin lies.  Rushing to convict Nick Sandmann.

Green New Deal Is Bad Deal for All Americans.  According to the eco-left, the Green New Deal — a massive federal government stimulus program coupled with a rapid and total transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy — is the only way to avert environmental doom.  Just last month, shortly after winning election to the U.S. House of Representatives, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said, "We have 10 years left to plan and implement a Green New Deal before cataclysmic climate disaster."

Liberals Love Lynch Mob 'Justice'.  Last week, Democrats forced two of their own (Senator Al Franken and Rep. John Conyers) to walk the plank in response to mere allegations of wrongdoing, in a transparent attempt to position their party to try to score political points against President Trump and the GOP.  In neither case did a court of law determine that the two politicians had engaged in wrongdoing.  Nor did a congressional ethics panel take testimony, gather evidence or make findings.  Instead, to appease the appetites of a rabid liberal mob (and out of political expediency), Democrats stripped two of their colleagues of their right to a fair hearing and forced them to resign under a cloud of shame.

Is the GOP establishment behind the Roy Moore hit?  [Scroll down]  Hours after the Washington Post piece went viral, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell joined the dance, calling for Moore to withdraw from the Alabama Senate race "if these allegations are true."  No pause.  No circumspection.  No waiting until the facts are in before rushing to judgment.  It's reminiscent of President Obama immediately concluding that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly" after the Henry Gates incident or jumping on the "hands up, don't shoot" bandwagon before the facts were known.  McConnell's dance partner, Senator John McCain, was quick to the microphone, not even considering whether the allegations against Roy Moore were true, saying, "The allegations against Roy Moore are deeply disturbing and disqualifying.  He should immediately step aside and allow the people of Alabama to elect a candidate they can be proud of."  It is just like when senators also wanted Clarence Thomas to step aside based on disturbing allegations that could not be substantiated.  Senator McCain, judge, jury and executioner.  He and McConnell are moving faster on this than they ever have on a piece of legislation.  Too bad they couldn't move even half as quickly on tax cuts or Obamacare repeal.

Robert Mueller's well-timed indictment.  Special Counsel Robert Mueller plans to indict someone this week, we are told.  Nobody knows whom or for what, but I know why.  People suspect that a Trump ally will be indicted for something vaguely related to colluding with the Russian Government.  We do not know any more details than that because we just cannot find any crime there.  So why is there such a hurry to indict a Republican now?  The key is that the indictment comes in late October.  Right before a November election.  There is pattern of October indictments against Republicans.

With a Picked Lock and a Threatened Indictment, Mueller's Inquiry Sets a Tone.  Dispensing with the plodding pace typical of many white-collar investigations, Mr. Mueller's team has used what some describe as shock-and-awe tactics to intimidate witnesses and potential targets of the inquiry.  Mr. Mueller has obtained a flurry of subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify before a grand jury, lawyers and witnesses say, sometimes before his prosecutors have taken the customary first step of interviewing them.  One witness was called before the grand jury less than a month after his name surfaced in news accounts.  The special counsel even took the unusual step of obtaining a subpoena for one of Mr. Manafort's former lawyers, claiming an exception to the rule that shields attorney-client discussions from scrutiny.

The Do-Nothing Republican Congress Acts Fast — To Spend More Money.  Less than two weeks after Hurricane Harvey made landfall, the House passed an $8 billion bill to help the Houston region recover.  So Republicans in Congress can get things done quickly, just not when it comes to enacting a conservative agenda.

Sen. Lee Blasts Both Parties for Closed-Door Legislative Rush Jobs.  Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) criticized both political parties for creating a trend in Washington that has seen transparency fall victim to centralization of power.  Though the Senate has been debating Republican proposals to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act for weeks, Lee said during a town hall event on Wednesday [7/12/2017] that he had not yet seen the Senate's latest healthcare bill; the latest version was unveiled by Senate GOP leaders Thursday.  In June, Senate Democrats blasted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Republican leadership for crafting healthcare legislation behind closed doors in "secret meetings."  The criticism mirrored Republican claims against the Democratic Party in 2009-10 during the approval process for Obamacare.

Cuomo declares 'state of emergency' at MTA.  New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday declared a state of emergency for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to expedite subway repairs and replacements in the wake of rising delays and accidents. [...] "This will allow the MTA to speed up the purchase of material and equipment it needs to repair tracks, signals, switches and more," Cuomo said.

The Editor says...
Deferred maintenance and a chronic state of general disrepair is the norm.  It is not an emergency.  The state of emergency will allow spending taxpayers' money with less oversight.

World has three years to save humanity from climate change, warn experts.  The world has three years to start making significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions or face the prospect of dangerous global warming, experts have warned in an article in the prestigious journal Nature.  Calling for world leaders to be guided by the scientific evidence rather than "hide their heads in the sand", they said "entire ecosystems" were already beginning to collapse, summer sea ice was disappearing in the Arctic and coral reefs were dying from the heat.

GOP rushing to vote on healthcare without analysis of changes.  House Republicans are once again fast-tracking consideration of their ObamaCare replacement bill without knowing the full impact of the legislation they'll vote on Thursday [5/4/2017].  The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is not expected to have completed its analysis detailing the effects of the latest changes to the legislation overhauling the nation's healthcare system in time for the Thursday vote.

14 lessons from the GOP Obamacare debacle.  [H]ere, in no particular order, are 14 lessons from the Obamacare debacle:  [#1] Don't over-promise.  Absent a national emergency, Congress cannot do big things fast.  Don't promise a history-making legislative achievement in a matter of weeks.  It won't happen.

EPA to announce reversal on fuel economy standards next week.  The Environmental Protection Agency will announce a change in automobile emissions standards next week, undoing a last minute effort by the Obama administration to lock in the rules through 2025. [...] As I noted last month, a group of 18 automakers sent the Trump administration a letter asking for a reconsideration of fuel standards.  The Obama administration had until 2018 to complete a midterm review of the progress made by automakers.  They had hoped for some relief from the standards during that review.  Instead, the administration rushed through the process and announced a final decision one week before Trump took office.

Why Supreme Court Nominations Prompt Scorched-Earth Warfare.  Whenever there is a Supreme Court vacancy, a preemptive wave of exhaustion comes over me.  It's the same arguments every time.  Some process arguments migrate from one party to another depending on which side is on defense or offense.  "The nominee deserves a speedy hearing and confirmation," each side yells when their guy is in the White House.  "We have an obligation to take the advise-and-consent role seriously and cannot rush the process," each side insists when the other team controls the White House.  Each party has an endless supply of quotes to throw at the other, proving their hypocrisy.

Obama pushed $157 billion in 'midnight regs,' a year's worth in two months.  Former President Obama made good on his effort to tie President Trump's hands with new regulations, adding $157 billion in new rules from Election Day to Inauguration Day alone.  A new report from American Action Forum, which charts regulations, said that the administration published a full year's worth of new rules in just two months.

Obama rushes to fill dozens of federal jobs before leaving office.  President Obama rushed to fill nearly 100 federal government vacancies during a frenzy of appointments in his final few weeks in office.  Since the new year, Obama has named 72 people to federal job openings and nominated another 17 for positions requiring Senate confirmation, according to CBS reporter Mark Knoller.  On Monday night [1/16/2017], Obama announced appointments for 27 officials to government positions and named two to jobs requiring Senate confirmation.  The wave of announcements includes several White House officials, who will serve well after Obama leaves office.

EPA rams through new auto emission rule a year ahead of schedule.  The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday [1/13/2017] made final its decision to move ahead with strict vehicle rules aimed at boosting fuel efficiency and reducing carbon pollution, a year ahead of schedule and despite opposition from the auto industry.  Today's final determination found that the auto industry can meet the tougher vehicle emission rules through 2025.  That will require automakers to sell more small, fuel-efficient cars that lower greenhouse gas emissions and are increasingly powered by electricity.

The Editor says...
If your car emits carbon pollution, it should be repaired.  Carbon dioxide is not carbon, nor is it a pollutant.

Obama Races to Overhaul Police in Baltimore and Chicago Before Trump Era.  With just days until Donald J. Trump is sworn in as president, the Obama administration is making a last-minute push for police overhauls in two of the nation's most violent cities, Baltimore and Chicago, where officers have been accused of routinely mistreating African-Americans.  In Chicago, where a city task force appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel concluded that "the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color," the Justice Department is rushing to wrap up a sweeping investigation into police patterns and practices, prompted by the release of a chilling video that showed a white officer shooting a black teenager.

The 'most transparent' president in history issues record number of 'midnight' regulations.  President Obama has issued 145 "midnight" regulations with a cost of more than $21 billion since the election of Donald Trump, the most by a lame-duck president in a generation, a study has found.  The conservative American Action Forum said Thursday [1/5/2017] that Mr. Obama's rules, issued from Nov. 8 through Dec. 31, include 31 "economically significant" regulations with a cost of at least $100 million each.  "The administration has published more than 21 million hours of final federal paperwork requirements since November 8," said Sam Batkins, AAF's director of regulatory policy.  "At the current pace, the Obama administration is going to be the most active 'midnight' (period from Election Day to Inauguration Day) regulator in more than a generation."  The Republican-majority House on Wednesday passed the Midnight Rules Relief Act by a vote of 238-184.  It would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow Congress to repeal any regulations finalized in the last 60 legislative days of an administration under a single disapproval resolution.

The game's over Mr President - and your team lost.  End your Trump temper tantrum and show some dignity.  Obama's spent the past few weeks charging around like a guy who's watching the clock tick down and is desperate to snatch some semblance of victory from the jaws of a crushing, humiliating defeat.  Since the election, as the New York Times reported, he's banned oil drilling off the Atlantic coast, named over 100 people to a range of senior government jobs, created new environmental monuments, commuted the sentences of 232 inmates and pardoned 78 others, protected funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, ordered the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo Bay and blocked new Israeli settlements.  As some critics sneer, it's more governing than he's done in eight years.

Obama Publishes $7.4 Billion Worth Of Regulations In One Night.  The Obama administration is busy pushing out last-minute regulations, including releasing $7.4 billion worth of new rules in just one night.  Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the right-leaning American Action Forum (AAF), compiled a list of regulations published Wednesday night [12/28/2016] in the Federal Register.

Obama could still force Merrick Garland onto court during 'intersession recess'.  President Obama will have one last chance to force Judge Merrick Garland onto the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday [1/3/2017] — but it's a legal gamble and one that has so many pitfalls that even those who say he could get away with it believe it isn't worth the fight.  Mr. Obama's moment will come just before noon, in the five minutes that the Senate gavels the 114th Congress out of session and the time the 115th Congress begins.  In those few moments the Senate will go into what's known as an "intersession recess," creating one golden moment when the president could test his recess-appointment powers by sending Judge Garland to the high court.

Obama Admin Rushes To Resettle Refugees During Last Days In Office.  The Obama administration is resettling significantly more refugees in the final weeks of 2016 compared to the same time period last year, state department figures reveal.  From the start of Fiscal Year 2017, Oct. 1 2016 through Dec. 27, a total of 25,671 refugees have been resettled in the United States — little over 290 refugees per day.  During that same time period in 2015, 13,791 refugees were resettled, almost 157 per day.  The Obama administration resettled nearly 85,000 refugees in FY 2016 and the White House is on pace to resettle nearly double that amount.

EPA steamrolls auto industry to rush out new regs.  The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday rejected an auto industry request to extend the review period for strict new vehicle regulations, allowing them to go into effect before President Obama leaves office. [...] The auto industry requested last month that the EPA extend the review period for an agency study that determined the new rules for improving fuel efficiency and lowering carbon emissions be extended into the next year.  The agency had surprised the industry last month by saying it was planning on finalizing its determination this year, instead of doing so next year as the law requires.

Gun control isn't the answer.  We already know how to stop the violence.  As long as Democrats insist that new gun laws and bans are the only way to stop or slow gun violence, the Republicans and most of the American people will stand in their way — unless they rush to pass new gun laws and bans within 2-3 weeks of major mass shootings.

Gov. Cuomo announces monument to honor victims of Orlando massacre.  Governor Cuomo announced a monument will be made to honor the 49 victims of the Orlando mass shooting Sunday morning [6/26/2016].  Cuomo spoke at the LGBT Community Center before the kickoff to the Pride parade.  A commission of 10 people will come together to pick an artist and design the memorial.  The city plans to put the monument in Battery Park City or Chelsea Piers on the western edge of Greenwich Village.

The Editor says...
It seems a bit premature to put up a monument commemorating an event that just happened two weeks ago.

Justice Department Blocks White House Attempt To Speed Up Detainee Transfers.  Attorney General Loretta Lynch is blocking a White House proposal to speed along the process of shuttering Guantanamo Bay, further deepening the rift between the White House and Department of Justice over how to handle Gitmo.  The proposal is an attempt to permit detainees to plead guilty over video conference, but Lynch is convinced that such a confession constitutes a violation of criminal procedure, Reuters reports.

Gun Control Advocates Peddle Another 'Turning Point' Myth After Orlando Attack.  The Washington Post ran an op-ed Sunday arguing that, because the attacker targeted a gay nightclub, the gay community could accomplish what gun control advocates have failed for decades to achieve.  "This time, things might be different," University of Toronto sociologists Jennifer Carlson and David Pettinicchio wrote in a Post op-ed. [...] Except this is the same basic script gun control advocates have trotted out after every headline-grabbing shooting.  After the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the New York Times claimed the attack was "profoundly swaying Americans' views on guns."  Trayvon Martin's shooting was supposed to be another "turning point."  The shooting of Rep.  Gabrielle Giffords was also going to "shift the gun control debate."  A 1993 rampage at a San Francisco law firm was once cited as "a crucial turning point in the gun control movement."  And, as today, the media play up quickie polls that seem to show a big jump in support for more gun laws.

Obama, Modi seek to rapidly implement climate deal.  The U.S. and India agreed Tuesday [6/7/2016] to move the Paris climate agreement into force "as soon as possible" this year, stepping up action to meet a key agenda item for President Obama's final year in office.  Obama is meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the White House to discuss a range of concerns between the two countries.  December's Paris deal will be central in those talks.

Obama scrambling to release as many prisoners as possible from Guantanamo Bay before he leaves office.  The Obama administration is scrambling to release as many prisoners as possible from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in a bid to fulfill his pledge to close the detention center.

Obama rushes out rules to guarantee legacy.  The Obama administration is shoveling out regulations nearly one-third faster in its final year than during the previous three — all to beat a May 23 deadline to prevent a President Donald Trump from overturning them.  A total of 195 regulations have been pushed through since Jan. 1 at an estimated cost of $69.5 billion to the nation's businesses, according to the conservative American Action Forum.  One of the most significant — a sweeping rule that will extend overtime pay to more than 4 million people without any input from Congress — was released Tuesday night [5/17/2016].

'Deadline' nears for Obama admin to issue last big batch of regs.  Get ready for one last regulatory hurrah from the Obama administration.  According to one analyst, President Obama has just a week left — or until about May 23 — to issue major regulations if he wants to ensure that the next administration and Congress cannot unravel them.  It's not a hard-and-fast deadline.  But the American Action Forum's Sam Batkins points to the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress 60 working days to try and rescind a rule, in setting it.

Appoint a Justice — Don't Appoint One — What's the Hurry?  [Scroll down]  Many have pointed to the history of lame-duck appointments, giving deference to the next Executive — that it hasn't been done in many decades.  But historical precedent aside, Obama has every right under the Constitution to nominate someone, anyone to the court.  The interesting thing is that if one reads Article II, Section 2, clause 2, the founders clearly did not make a fuss over the process.  It was not some Earth-shattering event, but merely included in the several duties of the President. [...] No where does it even imply that the Senate is obligated to act in a timely fashion and it certainly says nothing of deference to the office of the President to grant him any appointee he wishes.  In fact it was quite the opposite.

Dems demand action on SCOTUS nominee.  Senate Democrats moved quickly Saturday to demand action on a Supreme Court nominee following the unexpcted death of Justice Antonin Scalia.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called Scalia a "brilliant man" and "dedicated jurist" in a statement and said the work on filling his vacancy should begin immediately.  "The President can and should send the Senate a nominee right away.  With so many important issues pending before the Supreme Court, the Senate has a responsibility to fill vacancies as soon as possible," Reid said.

The 'Read the Bill Act'.  From the Gang of 8, to Obamacare, to the Omnibus spending bill, Americans are fed up with lengthy bills rammed quickly through Congress.  The 2,000 page, $1.1 trillion Omnibus signed into law before Christmas fully funds Planned Parenthood, Obamacare, illegal executive amnesty, EPA overreach and the Syrian refugee program among other horrible organizations and programs.  In response, I have introduced legislation to hit the brakes on runaway legislation:  the Read the Bill Act.  At a minimum, our constituents expect Members of Congress to read and understand legislation before taking a vote.  The public also needs sufficient time [...] in order to communicate with their representatives.

Congress Rushes Vote for Trillion Dollar Bill.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is setting up the Senate to wrap up its work for the year on Friday [12/18/2015] as lawmakers race to leave Washington for their holiday recess.  The Republican leader said senators have reached a deal to speed up votes on the year-end omnibus spending bill, as well as a separate tax package.

CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act.  Why was the CISA included in the omnibus package, which just passed both the House and the Senate?  Because any "nay" votes [...] would also threaten the entire budget of the federal government.  In other words, it was a question of either Americans keeping their privacy or halting the funding of the US government, in effect bankrupting the nation.  And best of all, the rushed bill means there will be no debate.  The bottom line as OTI's Robyn Green said, "They've got this bill that's kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they've seen an opportunity to push it through without debate.  And they're taking that opportunity."  The punchline:  "They're kind of pulling a Patriot Act."  And when Obama signs the $1.1 trillion Spending Bill in a few hours, as he will, it will be official:  the second Patriot Act will be the law, and with it what little online privacy US citizens may enjoy, will be gone.

Nothing Good Ever Comes From Congress At 2:00am.  2:00am, December 16th 2015, and yet another 2,000+ page bill emerges from the halls of congressional staff — this one an "Ominibus spending bill" with over $1.5 Trillion in expenditures, almost certain to add yet another thousand billion to the structural deficit.  Republicans control the House and the Senate.

The Spending and Tax Lollapalooza.  In the dead of night, House Republicans unveiled a massive tax and spending bill.  The bill comes with a price tag of more than $2 trillion — and your member of Congress will never read it.  At 2,009 pages, House members would have to read one page a minute over the next 48 hours without any bathroom breaks, sleeping, Christmas parties, lobbyist meetings, or taxpayer-funded steak dinners to interrupt them.  Of course, that wont happen.  Whether you are liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, the fact that your elected representative will cast a consequential vote on your behalf, dear constituent, without fully comprehending what he or she is voting on, is nothing short of outrageous and a dereliction of responsibility.

The Best Goodies From The $1.2 Trillion Spending Bill.  The bill includes $1.2 trillion dollars in funds and is 2,000 pages long, which is why it receives about one tenth the coverage of the Republican debate from journalists.  As Ryan noted during his press conference, it's striking that Congress actually operates by assembling gargantuan, do-or-die, Frankenstein's monster fiscal legislation at the last minute each year.

Agents performing warrantless searches are the hallmark of totalitarianism.  In an effort to draw attention away from the intelligence failures that permitted the attacks of 9/11 and create the impression that it was doing something — anything — to avoid a repeat, the federal government tampered seriously with freedoms expressly guaranteed in the Constitution.  Its principal target was the right to privacy, which is protected in the Fourth Amendment.  At President George W. Bush's urging, Congress passed the Patriot Act in October 2001.  This 315-page statute passed the House of Representatives with no debate, and there was very limited debate in the Senate.  I have asked many members of Congress over the years whether they read this bill before they voted upon it, and I have yet to find a member who did.  In the House, that would have been impossible; the bill was made available to representatives only 15 minutes prior to their vote.

New Education Bill Pushes A Liberal Agenda.  After seven years of rule by decree by President Obama's Chicago crony Arne Duncan, why are Republicans about to reauthorize the federal government's authority over the nation's public schools?  And why is the new speaker, Paul Ryan, rushing a 1,059-page bill to a floor vote only two days after the text was released on Nov. 30?

Whistleblowers Claim NOAA Climate Report Was "Rushed To Publication".  I hope these whistleblowers are hiding deep, because they will be in big trouble from the CoC when found, laws [notwithstanding].  Some Warmists are already calling for the whistleblowers to be named and forced to testify publicly, in contradiction of federal law. [...] What is it with this Administration and stonewalling?  If they aren't releasing the requested material, they're hiding something.  If there was nothing there, you can bet the communications and emails would have been released.  At this point, we must ask what NOAA is hiding.

Paul Ryan abandons his promise.  Well, it was nice while it lasted.  Three weeks ago, Paul Ryan accepted the speaker's gavel with a vow to return to "regular order," in which the Congress runs by deliberation rather than fiat and lawmakers have loose rein to amend and shape legislation.  "The committees should retake the lead in drafting all major legislation," he said, adding that "when we rush to pass bills, a lot of us do not understand we are not doing our job."  That dream died about 10:15 p.m. Tuesday night [11/17/2015].  That's when House leaders announced that they would take up a never-before-seen piece of legislation, written that very day, to rewrite the rules of the U.S. refugee program for those coming from Syria and Iraq.  There had been, and would be, no hearings or other committee action before the legislation was rushed Thursday to the House floor, where no amendments would be allowed.

Obama Quietly Doubles Processing Centers for Syrian Refugees into the U.S..  As Parisians were being slaughtered by radical Islamists, of whom at least one and perhaps two were migrants, Barack Obama was opening new processing centers which will double the number available to refugees in the Middle East in an effort to speed up and increase the numbers to be admitted.  Most Syrians are screened at U.S. resettlement at centers in Istanbul and Amman, Jordan.  The Obama administration is moving to increase and accelerate the number of Syrian refugees who might be admitted into the United States by opening new screening outposts in Iraq and Lebanon, administration officials told Reuters on Friday [11/13/2015].

Senate approves two-year budget deal in 3 a.m. vote.  The Senate passed a two-year budget deal early Friday morning [10/30/2015] that raises the debt ceiling, sending the agreement to President Obama's desk.  The deal was approved after 3 a.m. in a 64-35 vote after a late speech by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who criticized the legislation as a blank check for President Obama to add to the nation's debt.

Budgetary Scheme Passes Senate at 3am — Two Year Continuing Resolution With Unlimited Debt Ceiling.  I refuse to call this a "budget deal", it's a scheme to extend federal spending until March of 2017 when the next President's (whoever gets elected next year) legally required federal budget (for fiscal year 2018) is due. [...] You know what else passed in the middle of the night when no-one was watching?  ObamaCare, that's what!

If Congress Won't Cut Spending Now, When Will It?  No wonder John Boehner and the rest of the Republican "leaders" are rushing to get their budget deal voted on and to the president's desk for signature.  The more we learn about it, the more rancid it smells.  Maybe Republicans are supposed to read it after they vote on it.  And to think they used to make fun of Nancy Pelosi for that.

Jeff Sessions Says His 'Knees Quiver' Over Boehner-Obama Deal.  Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions says he is uncomfortable with what he knows about the proposed budget deal struck between outgoing speaker John Boehner and President Barack Obama. [...] "I'm worried about how fast it's moving," Sessions added.  "I see no reason for that.  Based on what I know now, it appears the president got whatever he wanted."

Massive Debt, Budget Deal Introduced In Dead of Night, Vote Violates Another Boehner Pledge.  The giant debt ceiling increase rolled together with a budget deal was introduced at 11:36 p.m. Monday [10/26/2015], in the dead of night, several congressional sources confirm to Breitbart News.  The text is 144 pages long and increases the debt ceiling beyond when President Barack Obama leaves office, all the way until March 2017.  It also, according to Politico, increases spending by $50 billion this year and $30 billion more the following year.

An Arrogant, Ragingly Partisan EPA.  The EPA claims that both science and economics support its global campaign to force U.S. states into halting carbon dioxide emissions.  EPA's Administrator Gina McCarthy says the EPA's Clean Power Plan authority calls for an end to debate on climate change and emissions control:  "people overwhelmingly consider climate change to be a problem — and they want action, not more debate or discussion."

Congress Is Great At Manufacturing One Thing: Crises.  Congressional Republicans have become adroit at flexing their manufacturing muscles.  They wait until the legislative calendar absolutely requires that Congress acts on bills, thus creating a crisis.  Congress then rushes to get the bills passed.  These must pass bills are often constructed in a way contrary to conservative principles.  So to get them passed, Republican leadership has to feign sympathy with conservatives through a show vote or issue statements to acknowledge the conservative grassroots.  Once that is done, they can advance legislation that buttresses the status quo and avoids reforms the country needs, but that the establishment disdains.  The past and current way the Republican establishment deals with major issues before it is to stall and pass:  run the legislative clock and move legislation that won't change anything.

Obama: Forget Iran, jobs, terror, doom looms from global warming.  The president said addressing climate change is urgent and dismissed fears that more environmental controls and regulations would hurt the stumbling economy and jobs.  The pattern of talking up a crisis as a means to control the nation's political agenda and provide a distraction from other news has been very familiar during these interminable 2,416 days of Obama's White House occupancy.  Even if, in the end, little useful action ever ensues on such issues.  But Obama's remarks in Alaska this week were by far his most apocalyptic to date. [...] "There is such a thing as being too late," Obama warned.  "That moment is almost upon us."  Global warming, he said, is "a challenge that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other."

Obama in Alaska: Climate-change deniers 'are on their own shrinking island'.  "The time to heed the critics and the cynics and the deniers is past," [President Obama] told delegates to an international conference on climate change in the Arctic [8/31/2015].  "The time to plead ignorance is surely past.  Those who want to ignore the science, they are increasingly alone, they are on their own shrinking island."  He used the backdrop of America's only Arctic state to emphasize the need for this country and others to move, and move fast, to reduce carbon emissions, to pursue cleaner energy sources and to stop relying on "unstable parts of the world" for oil.

The Editor says...
If he wants to "to stop relying on 'unstable parts of the world' for oil, why is he opposed to drilling in ANWR, offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the Keystone XL pipeline, and fracking?

Obama: Virginia shooting shows gun control is more urgent than fighting terrorism.  We touched yesterday on the left's out-of-the-gate seizing on the Roanoke shooting to kick off the latest gun control push.  It's what they do, and no one was surprised that they did it — tinged as always with warnings like "we can't wait any longer," which imply, I guess, that everyone knows the left's gun control agenda would stop killings like this, and we're all just dragging our feet because the approval of the NRA is more important than the lives of folks like Alison Parker and Adam Ward.

DoD teams surveying US military sites for potential Gitmo transfers, lawmakers vow fight.  The Department of Defense notified lawmakers Friday [8/14/2015] that teams will visit two military installations in the United States — Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and the Naval Brig in Charleston, S.C. — to conduct "site surveys" looking into transferring a "limited number" of Guantanamo detainees, Pentagon and Capitol Hill sources told Fox News.  The move, coming on the same day Secretary of State John Kerry marked the re-opening of the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, has already triggered a backlash on Capitol Hill.  But, despite existing congressional restrictions on moving the detainees to U.S. soil, the notice itself suggests officials are wasting no time exploring transfer options for those at the controversial Cuba prison camp.

The Editor says...
I've never thought of Fort Leavenworth as a halfway house, but that's what it will be if Obama transfers these terrorists there, in his pro-Islam haste.  Then, of course, on his last day in office, he'll probably release them all somewhere in Dearborn, Michigan, where they can blend into the population and start their teaching careers.  If the Guantanamo Bay facility must be closed, I suggest building a facility about 200 miles this side of Barrow, Alaska.

The Pentagon Is Keeping Half of Gitmo Locked Up — Against The White House's Wishes.  The White House wants to quickly cut the number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.  One man is standing in the way:  President Obama's Defense Secretary, Ash Carter.  Carter and the White House are increasingly at odds about how to whittle down the number of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, hampering the administration's push to close the detention center by the end of its term.

House won't act on Senate highway bill.  House and Senate leaders refused to blink Monday [7/27/2015] in a cross-Capitol standoff over highway funding, edging Congress perilously close to a Friday deadline to keep road projects moving before lawmakers skip town for their August recess.  House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy shut the door to a six-year bill that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brokered with Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, saying even if the other chamber gets it done this week, it would be impossible for his troops to study a 1,000-page deal before the House leaves Thursday night.

Did Obama Just Provoke a Constitutional Crisis?  President Obama's decision to submit the Iranian nuclear deal to the United Nation Security Council before Congress has had their 60 days to review it could be as problematic for Congress as making a judgment on the deal itself.  Congress felt its responsibilities were already being usurped when they learned the Iranian deal would be treated as an agreement rather than a treaty.  In response to widespread protest, the White House had to permit the agreement to be submitted to both houses of Congress for approval.  Yet fearing that a negative vote — certain in the House — would occur, the administration decided to go to the UN immediately.  This makes any congressional veto useless; the provisions of the agreement almost impossible to turn back.

The Editor says...
This isn't a constitutional crisis at all — it's just one more reason to impeach Barack Obama and remove him from office, which should have been done years ago.

Obama Does End Run Around Congress as UNSC Unanimously OKs Iran Deal.  President Obama did an end-run around Congress on the Iran deal today [7/20/2015] in what Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) noted will become known as "Capitulation Monday" in history.  The United Nations Security Council voted 15-0 this morning to endorse the P5+1 deal with Iran and start rolling back sanctions.  Both Republicans and Democrats had been frantically telling Obama to hold off on the vote.  Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and Ranking Member Ben Cardin (D-Md.) wrote Obama on Thursday to remind the president what he would be violating if he took the deal to the UNSC right away.

Another alternative to Obama's Iran deal.  One alternative to President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran that I don't think we've discussed is for Congress to reject it and send him back to bargaining in the hope that he and John Kerry can negotiate a better one.  I haven't discussed this alternative because I consider it futile.  Not because Iran won't agree to a deal less favorable it to than the one on the table.  Obama and Kerry most likely could have negotiated a somewhat better deal if they hadn't been so desperate to enter into an agreement.

Obama's U.N. plan backfires on Congress.  President Obama's attempt to outmaneuver Congress and win quick United Nations approval for the Iran nuclear agreement is backfiring on him in Congress, and could further erode support among key players.  Key senators were already outraged that the administration was taking the lead in negotiating a deal and sidelining Congress' traditional role of being directly involved in haggling the finer points of arms control agreements.  They were resigned to let the administration handle the negotiations in return for the promise that they would have ample opportunity to review the deal and vote on it.  But Kerry this week moved to exert the maximum global leverage on Congress by circulating a legally binding draft of the deal to the United Nations Security Council.

Obama's Definition of 'Justice' Describes His Liberal Agenda.  [I]n the wake of the race riots in Ferguson, President Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing recommended changes in the way police interact with the communities they patrol.  Obama has endorsed the recommendation that police officers work with children, taking time to read to them in schools, for example.  In his speech on Tuesday [7/14/2015], President Obama said the nation's criminal justice system "isn't as smart as it should be.  It's not keeping us as safe as it should be.  It is not as fair as it should be.  Mass incarceration makes our country worse off, and we need to do something about it."  He wants to end mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, putting more of them back in the community:  "We should pass a sentencing reform bill through Congress this year," he said.

The Editor says...
Inasmuch as "this year" is half over already, I'd say the President is in a mighty big hurry to "fix" a massive and vital system that has been imperfect for centuries.  But he's being fundamentally dishonest, as usual:  There isn't any mass incarceration.  People go to trial and face a jury (if they choose) and go to prison one at a time.

Climate change poses "medical emergency," major report says.  Climate change could undermine the last 50 years of gains in global health, according to a new report from The Lancet Commission on Health and Climate Change.  The authors of the paper, published Monday evening [6/22/2015], say that the potential risk to human health posed by climate change has been underestimated.  But they also say tackling it presents one of the greatest global health opportunities of this century.  "Climate change is a medical emergency," Commission Co-Chair Prof. Hugh Montgomery, director of the University College London Institute for Human Health and Performance, said in a statement.  "It thus demands an emergency response, using the technologies available right now."

Sen. Sessions: Slow Fast-Track Now, Before It's Too Late.  Fast-Track, or Trade Promotion Authority, will receive a final cloture vote in the Senate on Tuesday morning [6/22/2015].  This is the bill that passed the House.  If cloture is invoked, the bill will pass the Senate and go to the President's desk.  More than four weeks have passed since the Senate first voted on whether to grant the Executive six years of fast-track authority.v In that time, an enormous amount has been discovered about how the President plans to use this authority — information that was either not known or understood when the vote was held.  This includes the Administration's pledge to use the agreement to impose "environmental governance."

What's The Rush On Obamatrade Plans With Its 'Global Governance' Hidden Inside?  Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) is pressuring House GOP leadership, particularly Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), to delay plans to muscle Obamatrade through the House of Representatives quickly.  In in a letter to McCarthy obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, he's asking leadership to slow down and consider the ramifications of what it is doing.

Two Members of Boehner's Leadership Team Openly Refuse to Admit if They've Read Obamatrade.  Two members of House GOP leadership — Majority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Rules Committee chairman Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) — refused to admit through spokespersons to Breitbart News whether they have read the text of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Pacific Rim trade deal, but they still support granting President Barack Obama the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) to fast track it.  What's more, Scalise and Sessions — and others GOP conference-wide, including even perhaps Boehner — could be vulnerable to serious primary challenges if they continue forward with Obamatrade.

7 Stages of the Progressive Agenda, Stage 4: Declare the issue a CRISIS!  Sometimes Progressives will skip over the first three stages to Stage 4, in which case, this is where it really starts.  You don't get anything through Congress or the courts simply by saying it's "nice to have."  No.  It is a CRISIS!  Lives are in danger!  Planet is in peril!  Time is running out!  We must start taking steps to begin taking action NOW!  A crisis receives even more funding, and the establishment of a government agency to impose regulations that will eventually bring it under control — but only as long as funding continues and keeps pace with inflation.

Obama: Climate deniers endangering national security.  President Obama in a speech on Wednesday [5/20/2015] cast climate change as a growing national security threat, accusing Republican skeptics of harming military readiness by denying its effects.  Obama argued in his address to graduates at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that rising sea levels and higher global temperatures endanger military bases and could force personnel to respond to conflicts around the world that are fueled by their effects.  "Climate change constitutes a serious threat to global security, an immediate risk to our national security, and, make no mistake, it will impact how our military defends our country," Obama told new Coast Guard officers at the academy's New London, Conn., campus.  "And so we need to act — and we need to act now."

Bill Nye "The Hot Air Guy".  There may have been a time, in an era long, long ago, in which it was fair and accurate to describe Bill Nye as "The Science Guy."  He now has become a religious figure — in the Church of Climate Scientology. [...] So Bill Nye the IPCC Guy is lying to you.  He is lying to you to help give a large and controlling government increasing control over your freedoms and your property.  He is doing so by promoting a crisis using hysterical language, in order to make people take drastic action without thinking first.  If that makes someone a "Science Guy," we need to go back and relearn our society's definition of science.

22 Very Inconvenient Climate Truths.  According to the official statements of the IPCC "Science is clear" and non-believers cannot be trusted.  Quick action is needed!  For more than 30 years we have been told that we must act quickly and that after the next three or five years it will be too late (or even after the next 500 days according to the French Minister of foreign affairs speaking in 2014) and the Planet will be beyond salvation and become a frying pan — on fire — if we do not drastically reduce our emissions of CO2, at any cost, even at the cost of economic decline, ruin and misery.  But anyone with some scientific background who takes pains to study the topics at hand is quickly led to conclude that the arguments of the IPCC are inaccurate, for many reasons of which here is a non-exhaustive list.

Governing by Executive Order.  [Scroll down]  One needs to look at [Obama's] excuses for issuing these draconian orders — Congress is not doing their job.  He "had" to issue his immigration order because Congress refused to passed comprehensive immigration reform.  He "had" to issue orders to the EPA because Congress would not address climate change.  He "had" to raise the minimum wage in federal contracts because Congress would not address income inequality (as if a few extra dollars in the dry cleaner services for the federal government will obliterate poverty in America).  It is not that he was dealing with an obstructionist and incalcitrant Congress; it was that Congress was dealing with an ineffectual leader in the White House.

Obama: U.S. must secure global climate-change deal 'before it's too late'.  President Obama said Saturday [4/18/2015] that with the U.S. at the helm, the world must come together later this year and strike a groundbreaking climate-change accord or the planet as we know it may cease to exist.  In his weekly address, the president raised the stakes for a key United Nations gathering in Paris later this year, where the U.S., China and other world leaders hope to strike the largest international climate change deal in history.  The U.S. contribution to the agreement is a pledge to cut greenhouse-gas emissions by at least 26 percent percent by 2030, while China will formally promise to cap its pollution levels by 2030 and then begin gradual reductions.

Obama Says He Would Act Fast To Take Cuba Off Terrorism List.  President Barack Obama said Tuesday he would act fast to take Cuba off the list of terrorism-sponsoring countries once he gets a State Department recommendation.  "As soon as I get a recommendation, I'll be in a position to act on it," Obama said in an interview with National Public Radio.  In a March interview with Reuters Obama had said he hoped to have an embassy open in Cuba by the time of the April 10-11 Summit of the Americas later this week.  There Obama will meet with Cuban president Raul Castro.  Cuba has made it clear that it will not move on certain negotiations until it is removed from the list.

Report: President Obama Threatens France For Not Supporting Iranian Nuclear Deal.  Several media sources have stated over the past two weeks that France is not happy with the rushed acquiescence inherent within a dangerous nuclear deal with Iran.  Last week, citing her own first-hand (eye-witness) information — CBS's State Dept. Correspondent, Margaret Brennan, who is traveling with the negotiation team, stated the French contingent was highly concerned about how Secretary Kerry seemed to be rushing for a deal regardless of consequence.

The Real Price of Lies.  It is easy to understand why the administration is in a hurry to sign up as many people for its illegal amnesty as it can:  The more beneficiaries there are, the more difficult it becomes to revoke the amnesty, even when it is confirmed as being illegal and unconstitutional.  Judge Hanen already has sided with the states on a substantial issue, handing down that injunction he had been considering.

Dems Push ATF To Ban Bullets Now.  Congressional Democrats are demanding the ATF use "existing authority" to ban a popular bullet.  The move comes just days after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives backed off a proposal to ban the M855 green-tip cartridges, one of the most popular bullets used in AR-15 rifles.  The public comment period for the proposed ban closes Monday but in the face of overwhelming public opposition the ATF announced last week that they were going back to the drawing board.  Not good enough for Democrats.  They sent a letter, obtained by The Hill, which says the ATF needs to act to keep, "dangerous ammunition out of our communities."

The 5 Most Profound Political Quotes Of The Last 5 Years.  [#5] "We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it."  Nancy Pelosi's shameful utterance about Obamacare has become the standard in America over the last few years.  Enormous bills are put together in secret; the public is deliberately misled about what the legislation does; politicians don't even bother to read what they're voting on and then it takes years for the courts to finish ruling on what the hundreds of pages of tortured legalisms actually mean.  That's no way to run a country and it's no wonder that both politicians and the law itself are increasingly held in contempt if that's the best we can do.

Obama administration asks judge to speed up immigration decision.  The Obama administration asked a federal judge in Texas to decide by Monday [3/9/2015] whether he will put on hold his prior decision to block the White House's executive orders on immigration, or at least limit the impact to Texas.

EPA chief races to finish climate rules before Obama leaves office.  Gina McCarthy is locked in a race against time to complete landmark climate change regulations before President Obama leaves office.  With just 22 months left in Obama's presidency, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator and her team are burning the midnight oil to enshrine emissions regulations for power plants in federal law.  McCarthy says she's "busier than [she's] ever been" as the caretaker of what Obama hopes will be a legacy-defining achievement on climate change.

Obama's EPA: Racing against time to pummel the private sector.  This waning Administration is in the pummel-the-private-sector business.  And there is arguably no tentacle of the federal Leviathan better equipped to do it than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  After all — it's the EPA's sole reason for being.

ATF Proposed Bullet Ban Has Been Fast Tracked.  Following the Sandy Hook shooting, the Obama administration tried to ban several kinds of firearms, including the AR-15.  Now it seems that he may have actually found a way to do it, albeit slowly.  He isn't going to outright ban the gun itself; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) is just going to ban the most commonly sold bullets for the gun instead.

When illegal immigration is halted, why is that an emergency>
Obama to seek emergency order restarting immigration programs.  The Obama administration will seek an emergency court order to move forward with President Obama's executive action on immigration.  Officials at the Department of Justice (DOJ) plan to seek what is known as an emergency stay that would essentially undo a Texas-based federal judge's injunction from earlier this week.  If the stay is granted, the government could restart a pair of executive programs that will shield millions of undocumented immigrants from deportation.  White House press secretary Josh Earnest said DOJ will file for the stay by "Monday [2/25/2015] at the latest."

Immigration advocates press Obama to act quickly.  Immigrant rights groups are pressing the Obama administration to take steps to ensure the president's lenient new deportation policies go forward quickly despite a federal judge's ruling blocking them.

The Editor says...
In other words, Democrats believe politics supersede the law.

Cromnibus Winners And Losers.  If you want to know how your tax dollars will get spent next year, the answers are in Cromnibus — the 1,695-page bill that Congress hurriedly passed last weekend to fund the federal government through September 2015. [...] Cromnibus is a monster to read.  Almost no one did.  They had no time.  House Speaker John Boehner broke his promise to give members at least a 72-hour notice before voting, instead of "ramming it down their throats," as he criticized former Speaker Nancy Pelosi for doing.  Taxpayers lost out in the rush.

Sen. Reid Could Ram Up to 88 Federal Judges Through the Senate before Adjournment.  Democrats are primed to confirm up to 88 of President Obama's judicial nominations through the Senate before the year's close.  Thanks to Reid's weakening of the Senate filibuster, Republicans have had little power to stop Obama's nominations.

Boehner Doing Exactly What He Accused Nancy Pelosi Of In 2009.  If lawmakers in the House vote this week on a "CR-omnibus" spending package, House Speaker John Boehner will be doing exactly what he accused former Speaker Nancy Pelosi of doing on a similar bill in 2009:  Ramming it down Americans' and lawmakers' throats without anyone having time to read the bill.

Boehner Broke Pledge to Give Americans 'At Least 72 Hours' to Read Every Bill.  House Speaker John Boehner has broken his pledge to give Americans "at least 72 hours" to read every bill taken up by the House before it is brought to a vote on the floor.  In his speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference held in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 18, 2010, Boehner vowed that if he became speaker members of Congress and the American people would be given "at least 72 hours" to read all bills before they were brought to a vote.

Jeff Sessions: Obama Wants Exec Amnesty Implemented Before Americans Discover 'Grave' Consequences.  On Thursday [12/4/2014], Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) accused President Barack Obama of trying to implement his executive amnesty that "stains our legal system and our country" before the American people figure out that the consequences are "graver than a lot of people think" right now.  He urged Congress to use its power of the purse to stop Obama from unilaterally wiping out the nation's immigration laws.

Congress' Sneaky Tactic to Grab More Land for the Government.  Congress has returned from the mid-term elections and members are hammering out the details of the National Defense Authorization Act.  NDAA, which has passed for more than 50 years consecutively, provides policy guidance for the U.S. defense budget.  The importance of the NDAA to the defense budgeting process and its traditional status as a "must-pass" piece of legislation makes it an inviting target for pet projects and wasteful spending.  Unfortunately, as this year's lame duck session winds down, some lawmakers are trying to end-run the normal legislative process in a rushed, closed-door approach.

Gruber, the Grey Lady, and Gullibility.  [Scroll down]  Finally, on Nov. 18 (a day earlier online), the Grey Lady cleared her throat and delivered a huffy editorial.  It included nearly as many lies as words:  [For example,] Republicans "were well aware of what was in the bills."  This was not even true of earlier versions, but certainly not of the 11,000-page final version, which had to be passed so we could find what was in it.  In a media-orchestrated campaign, it was hustled through the House as if the health care system would come crashing to the ground in hours if nothing were done.

Obamacare Architect: Lack of Transparency Was Key Because 'Stupidity Of The American Voter' Would Have Killed Obamacare.  Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber said that lack of transparency was a major part of getting Obamacare passed because "the stupidity of the American voter" would have killed the law if more people knew what was in it.  Gruber, the MIT professor who served as a technical consultant to the Obama administration during Obamacare's design, also made clear during a panel quietly captured on video that the individual mandate, which was only upheld by the Supreme Court because it was a tax, was not actually a tax.

Obama vows to use executive action on immigration before new GOP Congress sworn in.  President Obama said Sunday that he plans to proceed with an executive order to ease immigration laws before the end of the year, despite dire warnings from Republican leaders that it will damage his relationship with the new GOP-run Congress.  Mr. Obama said that he's waited a year for the Republican-run House to act on the bipartisan immigration bill passed by the Democrat-run Senate, and he can't wait any longer to address the country's immigration problems.

Senate Democrats plan a legislative rush before power shifts to the GOP.  Before ceding full control of Congress to the GOP in January, Senate Democrats are planning to rush a host of critical measures to President Obama's desk, including bills to revive dozens of expired tax breaks and avoid a government shutdown for another year.  Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) is also aiming to chip away at a backlog of presidential nominations to the federal bench and the State Department over the next month, although Democratic aides say they will be unable to process all of the hundreds of pending appointments before turning the chamber over to Republicans.

Scientists to 'fast-track' evidence linking global warming to wild weather.  Scientists are to challenge the climate-change sceptics by vastly improving the speed with which they can prove links between a heatwave or other extreme weather event and man-made changes to the atmosphere.  It typically takes about a year to determine whether human-induced global warming played a role in a drought, storm, torrential downpour or heatwave — and how big a role it played.  This allows climate sceptics to dismiss any given extreme event as part of the "natural weather variation" in the immediate aftermath, while campaigners automatically blame it on global warming.

GOP to Obama: Don't use lame-duck Congress to replace Holder.  Conservatives are warning President Obama against using a lame-duck session of Congress to push through Attorney General Eric Holder's replacement, even as the White House signals its intention to fill the post quickly.  Holder's announcement that he will resign as the nation's top law enforcement officer reverberated Thursday [9/25/2014] around Washington, where speculation has already begun to mount about who might fill the Cabinet position.

Jack Lew: Decision on executive action on taxes 'in the very near future'.  The Obama administration will make a decision on executive action to prevent corporations from leaving the country in the "very near future," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew said Monday morning [9/8/2014].  Speaking at an event on business taxes at the Urban Institute in Washington, Lew placed the responsibility on Congress to address so-called tax inversions, but said that the administration was prepared to step in if lawmakers don't move quickly enough.

Pressing the climate hoax.  A 127-page draft by the U.N. climate panel insists that humans must drastically reduce their production of carbon dioxide because it's heating the globe.  Urgent action is needed lest "abrupt and irreversible change" result.  The European Union just banned the most effective vacuum cleaners and has announced it is about to ban powerful hair dryers, lawn mowers, smartphones and kettles, all suspects in the continuing plot against the planet.  They're all in a hurry, but the planet isn't.

The Editor says...
Carbon dioxide is not "heating the globe."  The Sun heats the Earth, and the atmosphere keeps us from freezing at night and scorching in the afternoon.  Moreover, there has been no global warming for almost 18 years, so there is absolutely no reason to fast-track anything on the U.N.'s socialist agenda.

Buyer beware: Obama administration's hurry-up climate plan based on big distortions.  Have you ever rushed to avoid missing an offer that will expire in 30 minutes and then regretted it?  President Obama's claim that we must act immediately to prevent climate change deserves the same careful scrutiny that we should give to our personal purchases. [...] Contrary to the president's claims, there is no scientific consensus that climate change has driven recent weather events or that climate change is now causing harm.

Pelosi: We Must Exploit Border Crisis To "Quickly" Pass Amnesty.  Dems helped foster this mess so they could try and ram amnesty legislation through Congress.

Illegal aliens in the shadows? What shadows?  Congress is grappling with an emergency funding bill to address the surge of aliens swarming the border.  A bill by House Republicans would provide less than $1 billion in stopgap spending through the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, far less than $3.7 billion requested by the president.  A Congressional Budget Office analysis of Mr. Obama's spending request found that only $25 million of it would actually be spent by the end of the fiscal year, so Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, sensibly observes that there's no need to rush the bill.

Michelle Obama to Latinos: 'We cannot afford to wait on Congress' for immigration.  First lady Michelle Obama grabbed the political reins during a speech to the League of United Latin American Citizens in New York City, telling the crowd of admirers not to worry — that her husband wouldn't wait on Congress to take action on immigration reform.  "So make no mistake about it — we have to keep on fighting as hard as we can on immigration," Mrs. Obama said, to a cheering crowd, Breitbart reported.  "And as my husband has said, he's going to do whatever administrative action it takes to fix this broken system."  Mrs. Obama then vowed that Congress wouldn't get in the way of her presidential husband's hopes for immigration change.

Michelle Obama to Latinos: We Can't Wait for Congress to Fix Immigration.  In New York City, First Lady Michelle Obama spoke at the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) convention, promising that her husband would act on his own to fix the broken immigration system.  "So make no mistake about it, we have to keep on fighting as hard as we can on immigration," she said as the crowd cheered.  "And as my husband has said, he's going to do whatever administrative action it takes to fix this broken system."

Democrats Warn Obama Will Act Unilaterally on Immigration Reform.  Top Senate Democrats are sick of waiting for the House to take up comprehensive immigration reform.  If Republicans don't act in July, President Obama will, they warn.  After all, he still has a pen and phone, right?

White House Press Secretary: 'We're Not Just Going to Sit Around and Wait' for Congress to Write Laws.  President Obama, tired of waiting for Congress to act on immigration reform, is currently exploring ways to address issues with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson.  During an interview with MSNBC's Chuck Todd, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest explained that the Obama administration was getting impatient with Congress.  "[W]e're not just going to sit around and wait interminably for Congress," he explained.  "We've been waiting a year already. [...]"

Rupert Murdock: Amnesty, Unlimited High-Tech Visas "Can't Wait".  A day after dining with President Barack Obama's top adviser Valerie Jarrett, Murdoch, the Chairman of the group that owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, pushed for amnesty and an unlimited number of high-tech guest-worker visas in a Wednesday op-ed in the Journal.  Murdoch said his "heart sank" when he learned that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) was ousted last week in a primary election that was widely viewed as a referendum against amnesty legislation.

The senate is still trying to jam through its hugely controversial cybersecurity bill.  The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 "incentivizes the sharing of cybersecurity threat information between the private sector and the government and among private sector entities," according to a press release published on Sen. Dianne Feinstein's website on Tuesday.  "It responds to the massive and growing threat to national and economic security from cyber intrusion and attack, and seeks to improve the security of public and private computer networks by increasing awareness of threats and defenses."

Fight For Gop Has Just Begun.  The defeat of Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) last week was unparalleled in modern electoral history.  Dave Brat, a man with almost no campaign, yet a powerful message, crushed the sitting majority leader while being outspent 42 to 1. [...] House GOP leadership, anxious to return stability after Cantor's shocking defeat, ordered the election for the vacant Majority Leader slot about as quickly as feasible.  During the one week campaign, McCarthy was never forced to vouch for his position on immigration, especially in light of Cantor's defeat.

How Obama Instituted Common Core on the Sly.  It seems like the new Common Core educational standards suddenly appeared out of nowhere, doesn't it?  All of a sudden, every kid was getting a Common Core education.  The whole thing just materialized before we got a chance to think about it! [...] Through a combination of lavish spending by Microsoft's Bill Gates and swift movement by the Obama administration, the Common Core standards that have now become so controversial were instituted pretty much before anyone knew what was happening.  And of course — this is the Obama administration we're talking about — without the cumbersome, annoying intrusion of democratic processes.

More about Common Core.

Obama's Bergdahl Swap Puts Americans in Danger for Photo Op.  Obama administration officials claim they had to bypass congressional oversight and rush a deal because of concerns about Bergdahl's health and "a window of opportunity." That window, and the hurried nature of events, was almost certainly Barack Obama's current trip to Europe. It's impossible at this point for outsiders to ascertain the status of Bergdahl's health. But questions about the Obama administration's description of his ill health quickly arose from those who should know, [...]

Obama Calls Surge of Children Across US Border 'Urgent Humanitarian Situation'.  President Obama today [6/2/2014] declared an "urgent humanitarian situation" along the southwest U.S. border after a sudden surge of hundreds of unaccompanied, undocumented children flowing into the country in the past month.  The declaration, made in a presidential memorandum, directs federal agencies to coordinate an emergency response to the situation and provide the children with medical care, housing and transportation.

The Editor says...
They are coming here for free "medical care, housing, transportation, and school lunches.  Don't give them free stuff, and they won't come streaming across the border.

Mitt Romney: Not Healthy Congress Hasn't Passed Amnesty.  On Friday [5/30/2014], failed 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney said it wasn't healthy that Congress has not passed amnesty legislation that the Congressional Budget Office determined would lower the wages of American workers.  "I do believe it's important for us, before the presidential contest in 2016, to finally have immigration reform in place," Romney said, according to The Des Moines Register's Jennifer Jacobs.  "I just don't think it's healthy for the country to continue to have this issue open and unresolved, particularly with so many families that are waiting for the answers."  Romney said he was not for a "special" pathway to citizenship and reportedly added "time is running out for" Congress to pass amnesty legislation this year.

Obama Shuts Down 500,000 Acres.  President Obama signed an executive order last week to place 500,000 acres under the "permanent protection" of the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument (OMDP) in south central New Mexico.  Despite Obama's claim that "there is no time to waste to preserve our precious resources," there was no urgency and little justification for the creation of this federal park.

Conservatives slam rushed controversial House vote.  Some conservatives are up in arms over a hurried Thursday vote on the so-called "doc fix" for Medicare, which they felt leadership tried to slip by them.  The bill passed in a 30-second voice vote with very few members on the House floor.  The "doc fix" is a temporary patch to prevent a 24 percent cut to the amount of money the government pays doctors who take care of Medicare patients.  The cut will take effect on April 1 if Congress does not move to prevent it.

Brace Yourself For More Obama Executive Orders.  Just two short months ago President Obama announced from the White House, "I've got a pen and a phone and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward."  Obama made the statement out of his frustration with a split Congress and a House controlled by Republicans opposed to his big government, lawless agenda.  Now, although Obama may have a pen and a phone, he doesn't seem to have much patience, especially on the issue of immigration reform.

Obama's rush to regulate.  President Obama has ordered his officials to step on the gas and clear as much of his regulatory agenda as possible during the twilight of his time in office.  The clock is ticking, creating a sense of urgency in the administration to crank out his new rules without delay.  Just a year into the president's second term, experts and former administration officials say it is do-or-die time for scores of regulatory initiatives across the federal government that could shape his legacy.  So Obama is spurring agencies on.

Closing Arguments in ATF Agent's Case Against The Government Begin and End Today.  The closing arguments in Dobyns v. USA are set to take place this morning at the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Tucson, Arizona.  Former ATF Special Agent Jay Dobyns has been suing the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms for more than a year after the agency failed to properly provide protection for himself and his family.  His battle with the government has spanned over the course of a decade.

Reading Obamacare before passing it would have been a waste of time.  During the original debate over Obamacare, we saw some of the perils behind amateur attempts to read and decipher complicated legislation.  A cottage industry of genuine misunderstandings arose — although those who tried to read those thousands of pages deserve credit for trying when most members of Congress never did.  But some of Obamacare's provisions are very simple and can confuse no one — for example, its deadlines.

Top spenders 'ripped' appropriations bill out of hands of junior congressman, Cynthia Lummis says.  Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., shook the dust off her feet as she left the House Appropriations Committee, which she described as dominated by a few arrogant members who lack respect for conservatives on the panel.  "We were not even allowed to read the report language after we had voted for our product in subcommittee.  They were ripped out of our hands, and I'm not exaggerating.  That was just offensive," Lummis told Roll Call.

Obama Wants Mayors To Help Him Bypass Congress.  President Obama told a group of mayors at the White House on Thursday [1/23/2014] that he's relying on them to help advance his agenda when Congress won't act.  "I want to work with Congress whenever and wherever I can.  But the one thing I'm emphasizing to all my Cabinet members is we're not going to wait," Obama told a group of 250 mayors at the White House.  "Where Congress is debating things and hasn't been able to pull the trigger on stuff, my administration's going to move forward, and we're going to ... do it in partnership with all of you."

Waiting More Than 30 Minutes to Vote Is Unacceptable, Obama's Elections Commission Concludes.  "No citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote."  That's one of the dozens of recommendations and "best practices" issued Wednesday by the President Obama's Commission on Election Administration.  "Our mission in this report was to improve the voter experience," commission co-chair Benjamin Ginsburg told MSNBC on Wednesday night [1/22/2014].

ObamaCare Puts 'Entire Health Insurance Industry At Risk'.  A procurement document posted on a federal website, but little noticed by the press, depicts an administration desperate to immediately replace CGI, the key contractor behind Healthcare.gov, with Accenture.  The need was so immediate, the document says, that the usual competitive bidding process had to be dispensed with.  Why the urgency?  It turns out that after three years, CGI still hadn't built the "financial management platform" needed to track eligibility and enrollment, account for subsidy payments, and produce accurate "risk adjustment" forecasts.  As a result, the document says, "the entire healthcare reform program is jeopardized."

Warmists Pivot to Climate Adaptation.  [Scroll down]  Climate alarmists, however, are outraged by the idea of postponing action, which they portray as burdening our children and grandchildren with our unsolved problems.  Money spent now! is evidence of superior moral character.  (The "policy initiative" most characteristic of Barack Obama's presidency is labeled "We Can't Wait!")

Dem Lawmaker Admits 'Nobody' Read $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill Before Passing it.  On Thursday [1/16/2014], the House passed the $1.1 trillion spending bill that increases government spending by $44.8 billion and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the spending bill on Friday.  This reaffirms that our government is presently uncommitted to controlling spending.

Feds Release Details of 'Urgent' New Healthcare.gov Contract.  Newly released documents reveal the anxieties of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) about Healthcare.gov, which warn that failure to finish the website puts the entire health insurance industry at risk.  The HHS released documents relating to its new contract to maintain the federal health exchange on Wednesday, justifying its reasons to expedite the procurement process because of an urgent need for the website to work.

House passes $1.1 trillion spending bill and no one knows what's in it.  The House approved the $1.1 trillion spending bill in near record time.  The 1500 page bill contains all sorts of stuff that no one has a clue about because unless you're a graduate of the Eveyln Wood speed reading course, you didn't have much of a chance to study it.  So the 359-67 rout of the forces of prudence and common sense is understandable in the context that no one much cares where your money is going and little effort is made to deal with our spending crisis.

Did Rep. Connolly Read 1,582-Pg. $1.1T Bill: 'I'm Not Going to Dignify That Question With an Answer'.  When asked whether he read the entire 1,582-page, $1.1-trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.) said he would "not dignify that question with an answer."

Tea Party, Conservative Groups Blast Rushed Passage of $1.1 Trillion Omnibus Deal.  Local and national Tea Party groups joined Heritage Action and the Club for Growth on Tuesday in blasting the bipartisan $1.1 trillion Omnibus budget deal that was introduced in the House of Representatives late Monday night [1/13/2014] and could be scheduled for a final vote as early as Wednesday.  In statements released Tuesday, Heritage Action, the Club for Growth, and the Tea Party Patriots announced their strong opposition to the hurried passage of the budget deal.

Who Read 1,582-Page $1.1T Spending Bill? Congressman: 'Nobody Did'.  When asked whether he read the 1,528-page, $1.1 trillion government spending bill before he voted for it yesterday, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) said, "Nobody did!"  On Capitol Hill on Thursday [1/16/2014], CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer:  "The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?"  Blumenauer laughed and said:  "Nobody did!"

House Republicans About to Vote on Trillion-Dollar Spending Bill They Haven't Read.  Last month, the Paul Ryan-Patty Murray discretionary spending bill was unveiled.  Sort of unveiled, anyway:  it didn't actually exist, but was summarized in a series of bullet points.  Now the bill has taken tangible form. [...] The bill is advertised at $1.1 trillion, but in the brief time available, Republican Senate staffers have found that it actually spends $18 billion more than that.  The bill includes $18 billion in "CHIMPS," which are "reductions" in spending that never would have happened in any event, which are used to offset actual spending increases.

Obama to Congress: We're not waiting for legislation.  President Barack Obama sent a message to Congress Tuesday [1/14/2014]:  He plans to use his power whenever he can to move his agenda forward.  "We are not just going to be waiting for a legislation in order to make sure that we're providing Americans the kind of help that they need," Obama said before a Cabinet meeting.  "I've got a pen and I've got a phone — and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward."

Dan Pfeiffer: 'President Obama is ready to use every executive action available'.  White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer sent an e-mail early Tuesday to preview President Obama's plan to use his executive power in ways Americans have never seen before.  "President Obama has a resolution for 2014:  That this will be a year of action," Pfeiffer said in the e-mail, pointing out that Obama would no longer be waiting around for Congress to get things done.

The Washington Post phrases it a little differently:
Obama to press jobs agenda with executive actions.  With two weeks left before delivering an economy-focused State of the Union address to Congress, Obama is picking up the pace of his jobs message and demonstrating how he can advance his economic agenda administratively and through his ability to coax action from important interest groups.

All the President's On-the-Job Training.  One of the aspects that makes Obamacare unique is its destructive speed.  It took decades for the notion that FDR's Social Security was an insolvent Ponzi scheme to reach fruition.  LBJ passed his Great Society programs in the mid-'60s; it took about two decades before President Reagan could accurately point out, "In the sixties we waged a war on poverty, and poverty won."

Gun Confiscation Underway in New York.  Nearly a year ago, the New York legislature passed the toughest gun control law in the country known as the S.A.F.E. Act.  It was rushed through in the middle of the night and as soon as it landed on Governor Cuomo's desk, he signed it without asking questions.  Now, local and state government are taking the opportunity to crack down on regulations already on the books which means for many, turn in your guns or leave.

Abolish the TSA.  In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the United States took a number of rapid actions.  One was the passage of the Patriot Act, which I regarded as a mistake then, and which doesn't seem much better now.  Another was the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, a bureaucratic monstrosity that doesn't seem to have done much to keep us actually, you know, safer.  And another was the federal takeover of aviation security by the Transportation Security Administration, which also seems to have been a bust.

The goal of Obama's foreign policy.  It isn't surprising that the US and the other five powers signed a deal with Iran on Saturday [11/23/2013].  Over the past few weeks, US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry made it clear that they were committed to signing a deal with Iran as quickly as possible.

Illegal Aliens Hounding GOP Rep from One Town Hall to Another.  Pro-amnesty activists are acting "with an increased sense of urgency" these days, the New York Times' Ashley Parker reported on Saturday [11/23/2013].  The "urgency" of these activists is such that they are repeatedly sending the same groups of illegal aliens to a certain congressman's town hall events to garner some rank-and-file GOP support for amnesty.

The Very Useful Lesson of Obama's Judicial Power Grab.  It's no secret that President Obama was behind the push to end the filibuster as a means of blocking nominees for U.S. appeals court judgeships.  At a fundraiser earlier this month, he told liberal donors that he is "remaking the courts."  Recognizing that the filibuster stood in the way of a full radical makeover, Obama personally lobbied three Democratic Senators who were undecided about whether to eliminate it.  Obama reportedly told them "how important this was to him and our ability to get anything done for the rest of the term."

Senate Rules for Radicals.  Majority Leader Harry Reid broke a GOP filibuster of a judicial nominee on a 52-48 vote.  He was prodded by the Democratic Senate classes of 2006-2012, younger liberals in a hurry like Al Franken (Minnesota), Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Jeanne Shaheen (New Hampshire).  These are the same liberals who enjoyed a rare 60-vote supermajority in 2009-2010 when they rammed through ObamaCare without a single Republican vote.  They view the minority as an inconvenience to be rolled.

Under Attack on All Sides, Obama Democrats Return to Ramming Speed.  It would seem to be a rather unfortunate time for Democrats in Washington to make a naked power grab.  Americans already don't trust them with the powers they have amid the ObamaCare crash and nobody likes to see politicians do anything naked.  At all.  Whatever one thinks about the Republican habit of blockading President Obama's judicial nominees [...] the moment doesn't seem quite right for the unpopular party in power to start throwing its weight around.

While Obama Remakes the Courts, Harry Reid Wants to Remake the Senate.  Every few months, it seems, Harry Reid (D-NV) threatens to upend the Senate so that he can push something through without following the rules.  This time, it's the President's judicial nominees.

Senate Dems weaken GOP power with major filibuster rule change.  Senate Democrats bowled over Republicans on Thursday to win approval for a highly controversial rule change which would limit the GOP's ability to block nominees, in a move Republicans called a "raw power grab."  "It's a sad day in the history of the Senate," Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said after the vote.  Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., moving quickly following days of speculation, used the so-called "nuclear option" to pass the change.  Typically, major changes like this take 67 votes, but he did it with just a simple majority.

Senate Dems go 'nuclear,' eliminate filibuster of presidential nominees.  The change, approved 52-48, would prevent the minority party from using the filibuster to stall most presidential nominations, though it would not eliminate the use of the filibuster on Supreme Court nominees or legislation.  Judicial and Executive Branch nominees once needed 60 votes to advance to an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor, giving Republicans an opportunity to block them.  Under the rule change, only a simple majority would be needed to advance the nominees, so that Democrats, who control 55 votes, can do so without Republican interference.

Senate votes to limit filibuster after Reid goes nuclear.  The Senate voted Thursday to change its rules to prevent the minority party from filibustering any nominations other than nods to the Supreme Court.  The change was approved after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) triggered the "nuclear option," which allows a change to Senate rules by majority vote.  The 52-48 vote dramatically changes the rules of the Senate and limits the minority party's ability to prevent confirmation of presidential nominees.

Harry Reid's Nuclear Hypocrisy.  On Monday [11/18/2013], for the third time in less than a month, Senate Republicans filibustered an Obama nominee to the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.  That's the court that's checked the president more than once, as when it said he couldn't make "recess appointments" when the Senate wasn't in recess.  So in a Tuesday closed-door lunch, Reid moved closer to ending the practice, [...]

Reid, Democrats trigger 'nuclear' option; eliminate most filibusters on nominees.  Senate Democrats took the dramatic step Thursday of eliminating filibusters for most nominations by presidents, a power play they said was necessary to fix a broken system but one that Republicans said will only rupture it further.  Democrats used a rare parliamentary move to change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and executive-office appointments can advance to confirmation votes by a simple majority of senators, rather than the 60-vote supermajority that has been the standard for nearly four decades.

Reid in 2008: 'As Long As I Am The Leader' We Will Not Have a Nuclear Option.  Sen. Harry Reid (D., Nev.) said in a 2008 interview that as long as he was the Senate Majority Leader, the nuclear option would never happen under his watch.  "As long as I am the Leader, the answer's no," he said.  "I think we should just forget that.  That is a black chapter in the history of the Senate.  I hope we never, ever get to that again because I really do believe it will ruin our country.

52 Democrats Change Two-Century-Old Senate Rule: Abolish Filibuster of Nominees.  Sweeping aside a century of precedent, Democrats took a chunk out of the Senate's hallowed filibuster tradition on Thursday [11/21/2013] and cleared the way for speedy confirmation of controversial appointments made by President Barack Obama and chief executives in the future.

How Democrats Tried to Make Obamacare Repeal-Proof.  [Scroll down]  Democrats rushed the bill through Congress because they knew it did not have to be perfect.  It did not have to satisfy the left's demand for a "public option," and it did not even have to work (which is also why Obama neglected its implementation).  As Creamer advised, the Affordable Care Act was "a starter house that can be expanded."  Once in place, it could only be expanded.  It would never be destroyed.  Republicans wouldn't dare.

Interior secretary says Obama may bypass Congress on monuments.  Interior Secretary Sally Jewell says she will recommend that President Obama act alone if necessary to create new national monuments and sidestep a gridlocked Congress that has failed to address dozens of public lands bills.  Jewell said the logjam on Capitol Hill has created a conservation backlog, and she warned that the Obama administration would not "hold its breath forever" waiting for lawmakers to act.

Obamacare Will Be Repealed Well In Advance Of The 2014 Elections.  Prediction:  even if HealthCare.gov is fixed by the end of the month (unlikely), Obamacare is going to be repealed well in advance of next year's election.  And if the website continues to fail, the push for repeal — from endangered Democrats — will occur very rapidly.  The website is a sideshow:  the real action is the number of people and businesses who are losing their health plans or having to pay a lot more.  Fixing the website will only delay the inevitable.

Sebelius: Obamacare "delay is not an option".  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Wednesday [11/6/2013] told Congress that it isn't worth delaying the implementation of new Obamacare rules, or taking down the botched HealthCare.gov website, in spite of the ongoing problems.  "Delaying the Affordable Care Act wouldn't delay people's cancer or diabetes or Parkinson's," Sebelius testified to the Senate Finance Committee.  "For millions of Americans, delay is not an option."

The Editor says...
Obamacare medical insurance itself is not an option.  That in itself is tyranny.  Your health is your own business, not the government's.

No Fast Track for Obama's Next Power Grab.  President Obama is seeking power the Constitution has assigned to Congress.  Soon, he will formally ask Congress to surrender its constitutional authority and grant him "Fast Track" Trade Promotion Authority.  And House Republicans are inexplicably ready to give it to him.

Freedom of the Press is now an Entitlement?  Diane Feinstein and a few other well meaning Senators are in the process of defining who qualifies for 1st Amendment rights, or privileges as she put it, as the Senate Judiciary Committee attempts to iron out a "shield law for reporters or journalists" from having to divulge their sources.  This rush for an immediate fix regarding the press has nothing to do with a recent scandal in which the NSA ran rough shod over individual rights or private records and which the Justice Department claimed to have no knowledge; no there's no connection, move along.

Port Authority unfairly fast-tracked toll hikes, report says.  The Port Authority fast-tracked the approval of multiple toll hikes — the third of which is only three months away — without giving the public enough notice or input, the investigative arm of Congress said in a report released Friday [9/13/2013].  The study by the Government Accountability Office backs up critics who complained about the single day of public hearings in 2011 that preceded a quick vote on the largest toll increase in the agency's history.

Wyoming Corruption Disturbingly Reflective of Washington.  Unable to maintain their despicable pork-barrel pipeline by which enormous public funds have been squandered under the auspices of "education," and resentful of her opposition to increasing federal intrusion into education, [Cindy] Hill's enemies reacted by instituting "Senate File 104."  This scheme involved the State Legislature in a collaborative effort to supplant Hill's decision making authority by diverting it to a newly established education Czar who is appointed by the Governor.  Despite enormous public disapproval, SF 104 was ramrodded through the legislature in the early days of the 2013 session amid abbreviated public hearings and a highly suspicious "fast track" to the desk of Governor Matt Mead, who quickly signed it into law.

Obama: Marxist Revolutionary.  Under Obama, we have seen the Constitution violated on an almost daily basis.  Laws that the public overwhelmingly disapproves of are passed regulary by a renegade Congress that consistently violates its own rules in the process.  Huge bills are amassed, so big and introduced and voted on so quickly, that no one has time to read them, to know what they will require from us, and what the consequences of these radical rules will be.

The Internet Sales Tax Rush.  Every time Congress has taken a serious look at proposals to boost Internet sales taxes, it has rejected them.  That's probably why pro-tax Senators are trying to rush through an online tax hike with as little consideration as possible.

Senators Got 154-Page 'Fiscal Cliff' Bill 3 Minutes Before Voting on It.  The U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to approve legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff despite having only 3 minutes to read the 154-page bill and budget score.  Multiple Senate sources have confirmed to CNSNews.com that senators received the bill at approximately 1:36 AM on Jan. 1, 2013 — a mere three minutes before they voted to approve it at 1:39 AM.

Cuomo signs flatly unconstitutional gun control law.  [Scroll down]  But the content of the legislation is taking a back seat to the imaginary need to get it passed as quickly as possible.  The state Senate passed the measure without any debate on the bill, and Governor Cuomo has dispensed with the three-day public review law in an attempt to avoid public debate on the topic.

Libya and Lies.  What has this man not deceived the public about? [...] Remember his pledge to have a "transparent" government that would post its legislative proposals on the Internet several days before Congress was to vote on them, so that everybody would know what was happening?  This was followed by an Obamacare bill so huge and passed so fast that even members of Congress did not have time to read it.

Forrest Gump at Treasury.  Senate Democrats are in a hurry to confirm Jack Lew as Secretary of the Treasury before anyone notices his biography.  Otherwise, liberal lawmakers might be embarrassed voting for a man who represents everything they've been campaigning against.

Hurry Up and Wait.  For the past year, Obama has been demanding that Congress enact his so-called reform immediately.  Last July, it had to be done before the August recess.  Then, after Democrats suffered big losses at the polls in November, it had to be done by the end of the year.  It was so urgent that the House stayed in session late into Saturday night after Election Day, and the Senate actually voted on Christmas Eve.  "Slow down!" shouted the voters of Massachusetts.

Why The Rush?  A pattern is emerging for this new presidency.  The more radical and far-reaching the plan, the less time the public gets to debate it.

Desperation Does Not Become Him.  Politics is a fickle game and political capital a currency in flux.  The same Barack Obama who ascended to the Presidency amid adulation befitting a rock star six months ago is now desperate to regain momentum for the passage of his government-run healthcare plan.  But with approval numbers lower than Jimmy Carter's were at this same point in the Carter presidency, Obama finds himself at odds not only with Republicans but with members of his own party as well.

Unseemly haste, thy name is Obama.  What's the hurry?  "I need $800 billion and I need it now, today."  Thus President Obama (summa dixit) shortly after taking office last winter.  Maybe it's all part of what Governor Mitch Daniels has called the Obama administration's "shock and awe statism":  startle the punters with outrageous demands.  Then tell them you want them met immediately ... "Don't bother reading the bill, just give me the money."  It really was a breathtaking performance.  He almost got away with it.

Coburn:  'What is it we don't want the American people to see?'.  Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, stopped the Senate dead in its tracks yesterday [10/14/2009] and posed a question that made many of his colleagues squirm in their seats:  "What is it we don't want the American people to see?"  The Oklahoma Republican was referring to a Senate-House conference committee's decision to drop from the $33.5 billion energy and water appropriations bill, a Coburn-backed provision approved unanimously by the Senate in July.

To Save the Constitution, Liberals Must First Destroy It.  Although Ray Bradbury's dystopic world of Fahrenheit 451 book banning has not yet become reality, that day may arrive sooner rather than later in view of the Obama administration's rush to control not only physical property such as banks, auto manufacturers, hospitals, drug companies and the like, but also intellectual real estate such as thoughts and ideas.

Obama is leading us into Marxism.  Have you wondered why Obama is pushing so many huge issues so fast?  Do you question the need for a so-called global-warming tax, as record low temperatures are recorded worldwide?  Wonder why the so-called health reform bill wasn't even read by most of our representatives?  Do you wonder why they are trying to deepen our economic problems by printing money as fast as they can causing the dollar to collapse?  Look back at history, the Nazis used this same method in their rise to power.

Top 10 Reasons Obamacare Is Wrong for America:  [#10] Rushing It, Not Reading It:  We've been down this road before — with the failed stimulus package.  Back then, we also heard that we were in a crisis and that we needed to pass a 1,000-plus-page bill in a few hours — without reading it — or we would have 8% unemployment.
Deception is the only reason to rush through a bill nobody truly understands.
[Emphasis added.]

Immigration:

Obama rallies illegals, immigrants against GOP.  People who support legalizing the 11.5 million illegal immigrants should focus their energies on lobbying Congress and on the 2014 election, President Barack Obama declared in a San Francisco speech Monday [11/25/2013].  "If in fact I could solve all these problems without passing laws in Congress, then I would do so," he told a heckler who urged him to stop deporting illegals.

House will slow Senate's rush to pass immigration bill.  House Judiciary Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., signaled today that he will schedule a lengthier process for the Gang of Eight's immigration reform proposal than the Senate intends provide.  "Since the Senate bill is so large and the issue so complex, the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on this legislation soon to consider its merits and flaws," Goodlatte said in a statement today.  "One way to do this is for the House to examine these issues in a step-by-step process. [...]"

Giant Bills Make Bad Laws.  The Gang of Eight — four Democratic and four Republican U.S. senators — have been meeting behind closed doors since January to produce "comprehensive immigration reform."  That will mean a multi-thousand-page bill that no one reads.  You know the saying "fool me twice."  Americans got bamboozled in 2010, when the 2,572 page Obama health law was rushed through Congress unread.  The surprises buried in that law are causing havoc.

What's Really Inside the Amnesty Bill? We've Got to Pass it to Find Out.  It is the nature of comprehensive reform of any kind that so much is slipped in, or reinterpreted by the bureaucrats who write the rules, or otherwise disguised or hidden, that, like Obamacare, we really won't know what's in the bill until it is passed and implemented. [...] At one time, the United States Senate was known as "The world's most deliberative body."  What can you say about them now?

Why Is Congress Rushing A Bad Immigration Bill?  The Senate's Democratic leadership and bipartisan Gang of Eight were in such a hurry to stop debate on their 1,200-page immigration bill that they didn't want anyone to read it.  It's the latest in a long line of political travesties that threaten the future of our 237-year-old republic.  Sadly, those who pass our laws can't be bothered even to read them these days.  But if they did, they might be shocked to discover that the "Immigration Reform Bill," after the Corker-Hoeven amendment, has turned into a giant piñata stuffed with all kinds of hidden pork and goodies to make it easier for senators to choke down.

Immigration Day: 'Gang of Eight' Republicans, Once Critical of Obamacare, Go All-In.  The Senate is expected to vote on the 1200 page immigration bill on Monday afternoon [6/24/2013].  The new immigration legislation, which incorporates changes from the Corker — Hoeven amendment, was dumped on the laps of Senate staffs on Friday, leaving members and their offices 75 hours to read through all the pages.

Democrats to Shut Off Debate On a Bill No One Has Read.  Tomorrow [6/24/2013], Harry Reid will call for cloture on the Gang of Eight's immigration bill as amended by Corker-Hoeven, a 1,200-page bill that no one — literally no one, given the fact that it was drafted by committee — has read.  It is a remarkable moment in American history.

Drunk on Amnesty.  One of the reasons for that speed is that Gang of Eight proponents don't want the American people to know what's in the bill — the same way they didn't want us to read the last bill they passed in a blind haste, ObamaCare.  (And look how that's working out.)

Rubio: Legalize Illegal Immigrants So They Can Fund Border Security.  On Thursday, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said one reason illegal immigrants must be legalized as soon as possible is so they can help fund border security measures by paying taxes and fines.  During an interview on "The Andrea Tantaros Show," Rubio, as Byron York points out, first said there was no choice but to legalize at least 11 million illegal immigrants because he said the country "cannot wait another four years" to enact immigration reform.

Senate skips details in rush to pass immigration bill.  Among other things, the bill sets pay scales for "Animal Breeders; Graders and Sorters; Farmworkers and Laborers, Crop, Nursery, and Greenhouse; and Farmworkers, Farm, Ranch and Aquacultural Animals."  The Gang dictates, for example, that graders and sorters will be paid $9.84 an hour in 2016, equipment operators $11.58 in 2015, and nursery and greenhouse workers $9.64 in 2016.  Despite the bill's far-reaching scope and extraordinary level of detail, Democrats are trying to move it through the Senate with unusual speed.

That's it? That's your hearing?  The hearing lasted for about two hours and was limited to one round of questions for two witnesses — economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin (who supports the bill) and Peter Kirsanow of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission (who opposes it).  Both witnesses were good.  But, as Kirsanow testified, they had received the nearly 900-pager only about two days ago, and thus lacked anything close to enough time to review and analyze it sufficiently.  Given this fact, and the brevity of the proceeding, the hearing was a farce.

Immigration Reform: The Truth Challenged and Useful Idiot Sen. Marco Rubio.  Immigration is back in the headlines this week.  ABC News is reporting the senators from the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" are expected to unveil their comprehensive immigration bill, on Tuesday.  Reportedly the bill is about 1,500 pages in length and "includes a pathway to citizenship for many of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S."  Like ObamaCare, it appears the bill will have to pass before anyone knows what is really in it.

1,500 Page Immigration Bill to Drop One Day Before [its] Only Hearing?.  According to an ABC News report, senators from the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" pushing immigration reform are expected to drop their bill, estimated at around 1,500 pages, on Tuesday [4/16/2013], mere hours before the only scheduled Senate hearing on the topic.

ICE union head [comments] on immigration reform.  Chris Crane, ICE officer and National ICE Council president representing 7,000 ICE agents, officers, and employees, expressed concern in a statement issued Friday [3/22/2013] that the "the immigration bill being crafted behind closed doors" by the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" senators "will be rushed to passage without proper public consideration and proper input from the law enforcement community."

Wisely and Slow.  The Nancy Pelosi approach to lawmaking — pass the bill to find out what's in it — is no way to go about repairing our defective immigration system.

Obama's Alinsky Tactics Go into Overdrive.  One day it's voting rights; the next day, gun control and immigration reform; then health care; then student loans; then climate change; then oil drilling; then the coal industry; then gay marriage; then minimum-wage and living-wage laws; then a brain research initiative. [...] Above all, it is vital to understand that none of this "hyperactivity" is random or accidental.  Every single, solitary bit of it has been carefully planned and orchestrated by Obama and his political allies, for the purpose of advancing the transformational change the president so zealously seeks to impose on America by means of the tactics taught by the late, famed godfather of community organizing, Saul Alinsky.

What's The Rush?!  What should we label this administration?  Democrat?  No.  They seem different than the olden-day Democrats.  Progressive?  Isn't that just a fancy name for Neo-Communist?!  Well, whatever the label that history will lay on them, they are America Haters.  They are Freedom Haters.  They are People Haters.  And, many of them are God Haters.  And, they are in a big, big hurry! ... because they are hoping to CHANGE our country from a Capitalist nation to a Socialist nation before anyone notices!  And, before the 2010 election!

Taxes and Spending:

Obama's Straws And Our Tired Back.  Some of the more naïve who voted for Obama were taken back by his sudden rush to take over insurance companies, banks, student loans, and the auto industry.

Without the Consent of the Governed.  Now that Obama & Co. have found the legislative mechanisms to subvert the Law of the Land on the federal health care grab, they intend to rush forward with the passage of "financial reform" — "energy reform" — and "Immigration reform" — none of which are any type of "reform." ... They plan to advance their anti-American agenda no matter how many stand opposed, and in such a manner that it can never be reversed.

Immigration Bill Expected to Be About 1500 Pages.  The immigration bill is expected to be about 1500 pages.  What could possibly go wrong with that?  Will they even read it?  I know we won't because the process isn't transparent.  Senator Leahy said he might consider having one hearing on this massive bill.

Obama's Insidious War on the Middle Class:  Like a PacMan gobbling up everything in sight, going after folks making more than $250,000 a year is not enough to satisfy Obama's insatiable appetite for money and power.  He wants more.  Although it means breaking a campaign promise to only tax the "rich," Obama's mad rush for revenue to fund his social engineering has transformed his agenda into a war against the middle class.

Despite Obama's Repeated Claims of Urgency, 78 Percent of Money Remained Unspent.  After his election last November and until the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed in February, President Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that it was urgent for Congress to enact his economic "recovery" bill immediately.  Yet, by the end of fiscal 2009 fully 78 percent of the federal spending authorized by that bill had not yet taken place, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Gun control:

We need an IQ test for politicians.  The debacle over New York's rushed-through gun bill is one example of what happens when enthusiasm meets stupid.  But another is to be found in Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), who supports a ban on full-capacity magazines without understanding what a magazine actually is.

New York's 'SAFE' Act: The 'Rape' of the Second Amendment.  In January, the New York State Legislature passed the Orwellian-sounding "SAFE" (Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement) Act.  The act was debated in closed session without committee hearings, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law within an hour of its passage — after waiving the required three-day public comment period.

New York Gun Owners [Defy] "Assault Weapons" Registration Law.  New York Governor Cuomo the Junior may have rushed through his new gun control law with such speed that police will avoid its restrictions only through the blessed miracle of selective enforcement, but he may have a little trouble getting the state's firearms owners to attend his party.

New York Passed a Gun Control Law So They Could See What Was in It.  Earlier this week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo rushed to sign sweeping and extremely restrictive gun control legislation into law.  Negotiations were made behind closed doors in the middle of the night, debate was rushed, public input was ignored and the votes were taken.

Maryland Democrats Ram Through Sweeping Gun Control on Good Friday.  While many Americans were paying attention to things other than politics on Good Friday, Maryland's Democrat delegates were ramming through Gov. Martin O'Malley's gun grabbing legislation S.B. 281.  This measure is an "assault weapons" ban which is so draconian that it punishes law-abiding gun owners whose guns are stolen from their homes.

Cuomo: Gun Control Would Have Never Happened If Public Was Allowed to Review It.  In order to pass the New York SAFE Act, which substantially erodes a citizens Constitutionally granted Second Amendment right to bear arms, Governor Cuomo had to circumvent his own state Constitution.  That document has an amendment requiring a three-day public review of all laws.  By issuing a "Message of Necessity", Cuomo was able to pass the law without public scrutiny, with the Senate actually voting on the bill a mere 30 minutes after receiving it.  The process led to State Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin to say that, "Moscow would be proud of our state Legislature and Executive Chamber, but every New Yorker should be outraged."

Environmentalism:

Obama on the 'urgency' of combating 'global warming'.  Few challenges facing America and the world are less urgent than combating the nonproblem of "global warming". [...] On all measures, global temperatures have been falling for seven full years since late 2001.  The January-to-January fall in temperatures between 2007 and 2008 was the greatest since global temperature records were first compiled in 1880, 128 years ago.  The rate of new Arctic sea-ice formation in mid-October 2008 was among the fastest since satellite records began almost 30 years ago.  There has been no decline whatsoever in the total global extent of sea ice since satellite records began.

Lawmakers Urge Administration to Stop EPA Takeover of Ponds, Ditches, Streams.  Lawmakers are urging Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and the White House to put the brakes on rulemaking that would drastically expand the agency's jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act.  The redefinition of "waters of the United States" would include all ponds, lakes, wetlands and natural or manmade streams that have any effect on downstream navigable waters — whether on public lands or private property. [...] In a fast-tracking move, the EPA sent its draft rulemaking proposal to the White House for approval before the scientific study on which the changes are based was peer reviewed.

GOP Leaders Break 72-Hr Pledge.  The House Republican leaders today [3/6/2013] rushed through a vote on a 269-page $982-billion continuing resolution (CR) to fund the federal government for the remainder of fiscal 2013 in direct violation of a pledge they made to the American people to post bills online for at least 72 hours before voting on them.

More about Solyndra.

The PATRIOT Act:

Obama makes rare use of autopen to sign highway funding bill.  President Obama signed a two-week extension of highway funding Friday [11/20/2015] using a so-called autopen, controversial technology that reproduces the president's signature.  The White House said Obama, who is in Malaysia, authorized his signature to be placed on the measure "given the need for this extension and given the fact that the president is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean."

Obamacare:

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad ObamaCare.  Now post-election, new regulations are pouring out from HHS -- more than 13,000 pages so far and yet nuts-and-bolts questions are still unanswered.  Most of what we know so far comes from a 17-page question-and-answer document that HHS divulged this week, though none of the answers have the force of law and HHS says they're subject to change at any moment.  HHS is generally issuing rules with only 30 days for public comment when the standard is 60 days and for complex regulations 90 days and more.

In the Rush To Obamacare California Dems Want To Redefine Who Is A Doctor.  Did you know that the California legislature is looking to erode the quality of everyone's access to healthcare, in their rush to implement Obamacare? [...] Three years after the bill was signed into law, the American public is only now beginning to understand the wide array of unintended consequences that this misguided reform effort will have on our nation's health care industry.

War:

[The] Senate Breaks [its] Own Rules in [the] Rush to Vote on [the] Syria War.  Senate Democratic leadership tossed aside the rules for moving legislation with regard to the resolution authorizing the use of military force against Syria, angering some Republicans and creating confusion on Capitol Hill in the run-up to the war vote.

The Editor says...
Confusion might be the goal, because confusion and deception go hand in hand.

Other issues:

Subscription required to read the entire article.  Highly recommended.
Stem cell freeze.  [Scroll down]  The lawsuit alleges that NIH violated administrative rules this year as it rushed to fulfill President Obama's executive order to write new guidelines for ESC funding.  The agency allowed only 34 days for the public to offer input on its proposed guidelines, and it appears to have ignored comments (about 30,000 out of 49,000) that questioned the usefulness of the research on ethical or scientific grounds.

No Mandatory Swine Flu Vaccinations II.  Aside from the "pandemic" created by 2009 H1N1, there are the more troubling questions surrounding the vaccines purportedly designed to fight it.  Why the fake pandemic, and the mad rush to get the whole world inoculated?"  If you are familiar with the Progressive's historic affinity for population control, then some deeply disturbing answers arise.

If you bypass the Senate, it's not a treaty.
Obama WH; we don't need no stinking Senate!  Everything Obama does is hasty, rushed and performed under a big, flashing red sign that screams, "emergency; no time to discuss, no time to read, no time for bothersome procedure... just do what I want, and trust me, we'll be fine... three minutes to critical mass..."  I can only imagine the guttural sounds of outrage that would be coming from the press and the left if Dubya had tried this.

Dem NLRB 'recess' appointments rushed, don't appear on White House nominee list.  Obama referred his two Democratic nominees, Sharon Block and Richard Griffin, to the Senate on Dec. 15.  The Senate adjourned for the year — but did not go into an official recess — on the following day.  WhiteHouse.gov tracks the status of all of Obama's appointments and nominations.  Block and Griffin do not appear on that list — a sign that the administration rushed the recess appointments through too quickly for the Senate to even consider them.

IRS Buying Spying Equipment.  The IRS, currently in the midst of scandals involving the targeting of conservative groups and lavish taxpayer-funded conferences, is ordering surveillance equipment that includes hidden cameras in coffee trays, plants and clock radios.  The IRS wants to secure the surveillance equipment quickly — it posted a solicitation on June 6 and is looking to close the deal by Monday, June 10.  The agency already has a company lined up for the order but is not commenting on the details.

Update:
IRS Cancels Order for Spying Equipment.  The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has cancelled its purchase order for surveillance equipment, which had included coffee trays with hidden cameras and cameras that could be hidden in plants.  The IRS issued the cancellation on Wednesday at 11:49 a.m.  CNSNews.com published an initial story about the IRS's purchase order on Monday afternoon — and that story was linked on The Drudge Report.