May 16, 2013

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This is rich. Dana Milbank, certified WaPo liberal, calls him “president passerby.”

President Passerby needs urgently to become a participant in his presidency.

Late Monday came the breathtaking news of a full-frontal assault on the First Amendment by his administration: word that the Justice Department had gone on a fishing expedition through months of phone records of Associated Press reporters.

And yet President Obama reacted much as he did to the equally astonishing revelation on Friday that the IRS had targeted conservative groups based on their ideology: He responded as though he were just some bloke on a bar stool, getting his information from the evening news.

In the phone-snooping case, Obama didn’t even stir from his stool. Instead, he had his press secretary, former Time magazine journalist Jay Carney, go before an incensed press corps Tuesday afternoon and explain why the president will not be involving himself in his Justice Department’s trampling of press freedoms.

“Other than press reports, we have no knowledge of any attempt by the Justice Department to seek phone records of the Associated Press,” Carney announced.

The president “found out about the news reports yesterday on the road,” he added.

And now that Obama has learned about this extraordinary abuse of power, he’s not doing a thing about it. “We are not involved at the White House in any decisions made in connection with ongoing criminal investigations,” Carney argued. …

 

 

Politico says the media has turned on the president and his minions.

… Obama’s aloof mien and holier-than-thou rhetoric have left him with little reservoir of good will, even among Democrats. And the press, after years of being accused of being soft on Obama while being berated by West Wing aides on matters big and small, now has every incentive to be as ruthless as can be.

This White House’s instinctive petulance, arrogance and defensiveness have all worked to isolate Obama at a time when he most needs a support system. “It feel like they don’t know what they’re here to do,” a former senior Obama administration official said. “When there’s no narrative, stuff like this consumes you.”

Republican outrage is predictable, maybe even manageable. Democratic outrage is not.

The dam of solid Democratic solidarity has collapsed, starting with New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd’s weekend scolding of the White House over Benghazi, then gushing with the news the Justice Department had sucked up an absurdly broad swath of Associated Press phone records. …

 

 

WaPo fact checker gives him four Pinocchios – their max for a lie.

… the president’s claim that he said “act of terrorism” is taking revisionist history too far, given that he repeatedly refused to commit to that phrase when asked directly by reporters in the weeks after the attack. He appears to have gone out of his way to avoid saying it was a terrorist attack, so he has little standing to make that claim now.

Indeed, the initial unedited talking points did not call it an act of terrorism. Instead of pretending the right words were uttered, it would be far better to acknowledge that he was echoing what the intelligence community believed at the time–and that the administration’s phrasing could have been clearer and more forthright from the start.

Four Pinocchios

 

J. Christian Adams describes his experience with an IRS audit. 

Franklin Graham, the Tea Party, and Larry Conners all faced the wrath of the Obama IRS.

You can add me to that list.

After Obama was elected, I faced my first IRS audit shakedown after decades of filing income tax returns. Overdue coincidence?  Perhaps.

Given the headlines of the past 48 hours, perhaps not.

My audit experience was a headache, as anyone who has experienced one can attest.  When it happened, a former IRS lawyer with whom I associated in private practice told me – “it’s no accident you were audited.”

I brushed it off.  But I wonder how many left-wing election lawyers and leftist bloggers were audited.  Any Media Matters drones face an audit in the last four years? Step right up and announce yourself if you did. …

 

 

 

It wasn’t just the IRS. The EPA did the same thing. Examiner has the story. 

Conservative groups seeking information from the Environmental Protection Agency have been routinely hindered by fees normally waived for media and watchdog groups, while fees for more than 90 percent of requests from green groups were waived, according to requests reviewed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

CEI reviewed Freedom of Information Act requests sent between January 2012 and this spring from several environmental groups friendly to the EPA’s mission, and several conservative groups, to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy for media and watchdog groups. Government agencies are supposed to waive fees for groups disseminating information for public benefit.

“This is as clear an example of disparate treatment as the IRS’ hurdles selectively imposed upon groups with names ominously reflecting an interest in, say, a less intrusive or biased federal government,” said CEI fellow Chris Horner.

For 92 percent of requests from green groups, the EPA cooperated by waiving fees for the information. Those requests came from the Natural Resources Defense Council, EarthJustice, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, The Waterkeeper Alliance, Greenpeace, Southern Environmental Law Center and the Center for Biological Diversity.

Of the requests that were denied, the EPA said the group either didn’t respond to requests for justification of a waiver, or didn’t express intent to disseminate the information to the general public, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner.  CEI, on the other hand, had its requests denied 93 percent of the time. …

 

 

 

Maybe David Axelrod has joined the Tea Party, because this is the whole point. The government is too big. From The Corner.

The government is simply too big for President Obama to keep track of all the wrongdoing taking place on his watch, his former senior adviser, David Axelrod, told MSNBC. “Part of being president is there’s so much beneath you that you can’t know because the government is so vast,” he explained. …

 

 

 

Nile Gardiner has more on Lady Thatcher’s funeral and the snub delivered by our government. 

In his joint press conference yesterday (Monday) with David Cameron at the White House, President Obama began with warm words for the former British prime minister, who passed away on April 8. “Here in the United States,” declared Obama, “we joined our British friends in mourning the passing of Baroness Margaret Thatcher, a great champion of freedom and liberty and of the alliance that we carry on today.” The British Prime Minister responded by saying: “Thank you for what you said about Margaret Thatcher. It was a pleasure to welcome so many Americans to her remarkable funeral in the UK.”

Significantly, however, those Americans who attended Lady Thatcher’s funeral in St Paul’s Cathedral did not include a single serving member of the Obama administration in Washington. As is so often the case with President Obama, his flowery, grandiose words frequently fail to match his actions. There is a name for this kind of approach – rank hypocrisy. As I noted in a previous piece: …

 

 

 

 

 

 

BBC report on how our economy has been saved from the government of rank amateurs by fracking.

… The surge in US production will reshape the whole industry, according to the IEA, which made the prediction in its closely-watched bi-annual report examining trends in oil supply and demand over the next five years.

The IEA said it expected the US to overtake Russia as the world’s biggest gas producer by 2015 and to become “all but self-sufficient” in its energy needs by about 2035.

The rise in US production means the world’s reliance on oil from traditional oil producing countries in the Middle East, which make up Opec (the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), would end soon, according to the report.

US production is set to grow to a level that is some 3.9 million barrels of oil per day (bpd) higher in 2018 than it was in 2012, accounting for some two thirds of the predicted growth in traditional non-Opec production, according to the IEA. …

 

 

Andrew Malcolm tops off the week with late night humor.

Leno: President Obama says the IRS targeting conservatives is ‘outrageous.’ And he promises to get his Benghazi investigators on the case immediately.

Leno: Obama down in Texas on his ‘Middle Class Jobs & Opportunity Tour.’ Don’t confuse that with his first term ‘Jobs & Missed Opportunities Tour.’ Obama also told people to ‘Remember the Alamo’ and forget Benghazi.

Conan: New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie revealed that he underwent a surgery earlier this year that restricts the amount of food he can eat. As a result, 12 animals have been removed from the endangered species list.

 

Today’s cartoons should not be missed.

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