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“Telling lies on Capitol Hill is like ’carrying coals to Newcastle,’” is what the Roger Clemens jury decided. Well, maybe we’re editorializing. David Harsanyi has the story.
Not guilty on all counts. That’s the return on millions of tax dollars, dozens of witnesses, ludicrous Congressional hearings and nine hours of deliberation. Today, a jury acquitted pitching great Roger Clemens on all counts of lying to Congress about steroids and human growth hormone. …
James Pethokoukis says the Greek election has everyone under whelmed.
The Greek election was for schnooks. That’s not where the real story is happening.
Sure, a win by the loony leftist Syriza party would have put Greece on the fast-track to the euro exits. But Hellas, even with a New Democracy-Pasok coalition government, is still on the moving walkway that is likely taking it to the very same place. So instead of sooner rather than later, it’s probably [a bit] later rather than sooner.
Here’s what Citigroup is saying today:
“Initial reactions from European officials welcome the outcome of the election, but made very clear that the there is little room for the new government to change the existing bailout programme. With this in mind, our probabilities for Grexit [Greek Exit] remain unchanged in the range between 50% and 75% over the next 12 to 18 months.”
And Morgan Stanley in a new research note:
“Not much is resolved from a medium-term perspective. … ”
John Fund thinks Holder may be out of stone walls.
The Washington Post just bestowed its “Worst Week in Washington” award on Attorney General Eric Holder, and it’s not hard to see why.
Over the weekend, Senator Joe Lieberman, who caucuses with the Democrats, clearly expressed his lack of confidence in Holder by calling for a special counsel who is independent of the Justice Department to investigate serious leaks of national-security documents. Someone near the president is leaking classified information, and both Democrats and Republicans seem determined to find out who.
But the real blow came last week, when Holder’s carefully constructed stone walls against House investigators started to crumble.
Representative Darrell Issa, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, announced he would initiate contempt-of-Congress proceedings against Holder for not turning over documents related to the committee’s probe of the Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal at Justice. Issa says that more 200 Mexicans and a U.S. Border Patrol agent were murdered with weapons that the U.S. government allowed to be sold to Mexican drug cartels as part of a probe into gun smuggling. …
Ed Morrissey enjoys the irony of the Politico’s reporting on the NY Times saying the press of governance may take Obama away from the campaign. The next story reported on Obama’s 100th round of golf since the inauguration.
I’ve subscribed to Politico’s Morning Score for quite a long time. It’s a handy roundup of political stories from around the country, and while much of it never makes it into posts here at Hot Air, I find the background data very useful for context. I almost never quote directly from the e-mail itself, since it mainly consists of excerpts from the stories it links, but today will have to be an exception. Someone at Politico either has a wicked sense of humor or perhaps didn’t notice the irony of putting these two stories sequentially in today’s output. Here it is, verbatim: …
WSJ reports on the attempts to introduce E-Readers to rural Africa.
It is time for a vocabulary lesson in Bernard Opio’s sixth-form class at the Humble Primary School in Mukono, Uganda. One new word the students have already learned this year is “Kindle.”
Mr. Opio instructs them to pull out their Amazon.com Kindle e-reading devices. Within seconds, most of the teenagers have a digital Oxford English Dictionary open on their screens. “It took the kids just a few days to learn how to use them,” says Mr. Opio.
The Humble School, which serves needy children in a part of Africa ravaged by poverty and HIV, is on the front lines of an effort to reinvent developing world literacy programs with technology. The premise is that the new economics of digital publishing might make more and better books available in classrooms like Mr. Opio’s.
“Instead of just having 1,000 books, they have 10 times or 100 times that,” says David Risher, co-founder of a San Francisco-based nonprofit called Worldreader that is leading the experiment in Uganda and two other African countries.
A vision of “one Kindle per child” for developing countries faces considerable challenges, including the cost of e-readers and making sure that kids actually learn better on the devices than with old-fashioned books. Africa is littered with well-intentioned technology programs that fail because devices don’t get used, fall into the wrong hands or just can’t find enough power to run. …
NY Times reports on the moose lottery in New Hampshire.
CONCORD, N.H. — “Oh my God,” cried Alice Jenness, fanning her overheated face with both hands. She had just won the lottery.
The lottery for a permit to hunt a moose, that is.
Ms. Jenness, 51, has been entering her name in New Hampshire’s moose-hunting lottery since it began in 1988. She had never won, and this year, she, like the other hopefuls, faced ever-greater odds at the drawing on Friday.
More than 13,400 people entered the lottery this year for a permit to each hunt just one moose; 275 would be chosen. The number of permits is down, in part because the size of the herd is about where state officials want it and because excessive numbers of ticks, spawned by warmer winters, appear to be killing more moose.
So Ms. Jenness, who was packed with about 150 people into a room here at the State Fish and Game Department for the drawing, was astonished when she heard her name called after a computer selected the lottery winners. Thousands were listening on live radio or watching as the event streamed on the Web.
Ms. Jenness, who works at a supermarket deli, said that she grew up hunting deer with her father, who died in 1983. The moose hunt, which will take place in late October, will be a tribute to him. “I’m going to use my dad’s .308,” she said proudly. “It means a lot to me.” …
Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.
Leno: Sen. Rand Paul endorses Mitt Romney. Makes for an awkward Father’s Day with dad Ron Paul. What would you like, Dad? Little help would be nice.
Fallon: J. Crew announces it’s getting ready to open its first store in Asia. Which explains why the tags on the clothes say, “Made By You.”
Conan: Illinois State Rep. Derrick Smith has been accused of accepting a $7,000 bribe. If convicted, he could serve up to four years as the state’s governor.
Conan: Kanye West is preparing to propose to Kim Kardashian. Today he said, “I can’t wait to marry Kim and get started making the worst family on Earth.”