Yes, I blame Obama and the D of J.

But, federal judges have to stop turning to putty every time the government walks into court.

This is a disgrace to them as well.

That would have been me, addressing my own principles in an FDR post.

Painful, isn’t it?

The Fifth Amendment privilege is a privilege against confessing to a crime while you are testifying truthfully. The constitution relieves us of having to choose between committing perjury or confessing to a crime.

Ergo, she was not entitled to claim the privilege and also to claim that she had broken no laws.

I would not have excused her without very carefully and factually pointing that out.

I don’t think the Republicans will impeach again, given that impeachment only improved Bubba’s approval ratings. They may talk as though they have ample grounds for impeachment and rattle sabers, but they will not impeach.

Politicians, like our national security bureaucrats, always seem to be fighting the last battle. For example, there has not been a primary challenge to a sitting President in either major Party since Kennedy challenged Carter and Carter lost.

I’ve learned about it. Okay, never every detail of all 2000 pages, but the broad strokes. And I hate it. I wanted Medicare for all. I would have respected him for coming through with his promised strong public option, though. I would have forgiven him if he had fought hard for what he campaigned on, but failed anyway.

However, I was done with the fucker when he delivered healthinsurercare, and he and his White House berated those on the left who were trying to advocate for the public option while there was still time to do so

Exactly who has been governing the country for the benefit of most of the rest of us?

Maybe. I am even more cynical.

I think everyone in a position of power knew HR 676 never had a prayer in hell. AFAIK, it never even got as far as the CBO, though it had about 100 sponsors in the House at one point. I think it was more kabuki on the part of so-called progressives than any real plan. If not, why did it not come to a vote once Democrats got control of the House in 2006?

The Heritage Foundation Plan, which eventually became Obamacare, was supposedly proposed as a counter to the Nixon plan, which contained an employer mandate. The Heritage Foundation plan did 86 the employer mandate and substitute an individual mandate.

What the individual mandate also does, of course, is force the young, healthier population to buy health insurance, even if they are self employed or unemployed. And this is the gift to health insurers.

That makes up for the population over 55, but not eligible for Medicare, which is the most costly population for private health insurers.

Obama, though, also entered office with the agenda of cutting entitlements. Obamacare, of course, also takes care of certain financial issues for medical providers, like emergency rooms and pharmaceutical companies.

How about Bill Clinton?

Let’s see.

While Governor of Arkansas and aspiring to be POTUS, Bill Clinton had a consensual relationship with Genifer Flowers, leaving messages on her answering machine about how she should respond to questions about their affair.

According to Genifer, she and Bubba had sex in the bathroom of the Governor’s mansion while a official gala was in progress a few feet away.

According to Paula Jones and one of Governor Clinton’s bodyguards or aides (I’ve forgotten which), a state employee was hauled up to a hotel room to receive a proposition about giving the Guv a blow job, leading to a lawsuit while he was President.

According to sworn testimony, while President, he proposition a young intern, got a blow job while talking on the phone to another head of state, encouraged the young intern to lie under oath about their affair, and then lied to his wife about it and perjured himself about it. The perjury led to impeachment while the Paula Jones lawsuit was pending or wrapping up. Meanwhile, perhaps Clinton should have been focused more on Bin Laden.

Democrats were fine with all of that, condemning President Clinton’s critics and impeachers from here to next Sunday. However, tweets of Weiner’s wang while his wife was pregnant (and, ironically, working for Hillary), caused those same Democrats to insist on his resignation on every TV show and other forum that would give them a chance, every day until his resignation?

I don’t know that I am sanguine about Weiner or Bubba. I do know that I am not a fan of double standards.

Yes.

P.S. People can have political reasons to harass almost anyone these days, from the ASPCA to nurses to teachers to churches, to civil rights groups, to anything you can name. That does not mean that a group formed to promote teaching is political. It means only that the harasser’s motives for the harassment are political.

If I kick a dog because I hate animals rights, that does not make the dog’s activities political.

Don’t most people think that we are taxed enough? Wouldn’t most of us like some kind of tax law reform?

None of that equates to “I am going to cheat on my taxes.” And, again, the Tea Party was by far not the only group targeted.

You’re kidding, right?

If any branch of government imposes a penalty, or denies or delays a government benefit, for impermissible reasons, or imposes onerous conditions for impermissible reasons, that is harassment. That is basic constitutional law.

Obama and the guy that Obama appointed as acting head of the IRS both of whom condemned the IRS for this in the strongest terms. If you want to call both of them liars, I suspect you could find legitimate reasons to do that. However, they are correct on this issue.

First, who is a big fan of government and new taxes these days? Hell, even Obama doesn’t seem to be a fan of government–except for his Executive Branch, of course. He puts down Congress and the Supremes at will. And he gave us the Obama tax cuts of 2011.

Second, opposing tax laws is not the same as violating tax laws or advocating that others violate tax laws. It is gobstopping that the left can excuse the IRS targeting people who want tax laws changed or any particular ideology. (BTW, doesn’t the left want tax laws changed?)

Did we really object to Nixon’s dirty IRS tricks, or only to his choice of targets? If the latter, basic honesty demands that we need to sit down and shut up about Republican dirty tricks and admit that we think dirty tricks are great, as long as the right is the target.

Second, though the left keeps repeating that it was investigation of the Tea Party, that is very misleading. It very misleading because it was only a small part of what went on,

In fact–as Colbert highlighted Monday, it was also organizations that had as part of their names words like “Patriot, or “Constitution” or otherwise indicated that its aim was teaching the Constitution, or pursuing better government or a better America. Even a clean elections group got targeted.

So, it was not only the Tea Party applications that got investigated, but also the applications of groups that revealed dissatisfaction with the status quo and/or desire to better the status quo.

Third “Looked more dubiously into”? Come on, now.

Name all your members and all your donors? That is a question that has been illegal for U.S. government to ask of a 501(c)(4), not only since Citizens United (2010), but since at least NAACP v. Button (1963). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NAACP_v._Button

Name the books that your members read and give a synopsis of each of those books? Crikey, that’s been illegal for the U.S government to ask since at least 1789.

If anyone on the left actually cares to be honest about this in some degree, as opposed to purely partisan apologist, he or she can take a look at any two or more of these articles (from mainstream sources, not wingnut blogs) and what these “investigations” and “more dubious looks” actually consisted of.

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/05/irs-asks-for-reading-list-tea-party-group-sends-constitution/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2013/05/13/183680027/exactly-what-did-the-irs-want-to-know

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/blog/morning-edition/2013/05/local-tea-party-groups-say-they-were.html

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/the-irs-wants-you-to-share-everything-91378_Page2.html

http://www.mauinews.com/page/content.detail/id/572718/Tea-Party-Maui-targeted-for-IRS-scrutiny.html?nav=10

Fourth, remember Democratic boys and girls, the IRS is part of the Executive Branch; and people who are not Democrats often get control of the Executive Branch.

So, even if your entire political and ethical philosophies boil down to “It’s okay if you are a Democrat,” or “It’s okay if Obama does it,” you still need to be careful what you say is perfectly fine for the Executive Branch to do, simply because someone says they want a “better America” or they want to teach the Constitution, or even because they want clean elections. Otherwise, the precedents unprincipled Democrats set now will come right back and bite them in their asses.

Finally, Obama has called the actions of the IRS in this matter “outrageous” and “intolerable.” Why is it that the only time some Democrats seem unable to endorse whatever comes out of Obama’s mouth is when he freely admits that something somewhere in his administration went wrong?

DSWright, you must be mistaken.

Everybody knows that the Occupy Movement camped out for a couple three months, gotten beaten up and had their belongings trashed, then went totally out of existence forever.

Just ask anyone who never participated or donated, but stood by predicting total failure from the jump.

Ergo, the was no Occupy Sandy, no arrests of Occupy at the D of J recently, nor anything else.

So, the reasons to continue dismissing the movement and not donating or participating continue to be just as valid as they were when the movement began. Yep, just every bit as valid now as they ever were. /sarcasm

Good point!

One definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same behavior and expecting a different result Since Reagan, we’ve been electing one Republican after another, some openly admitting they were Republicans and some “New Democrats,” aka Same Old Republican Party–GOP and SOP.

Since Reagan, lobbyists in Washington, D.C. increased exponentially. Since Reagan, the transfer of wealth from the 99% to the 1% accelerated exponentially. Guess what, though? The next President for whom the vast majority of Americans vote will also be GOP (or SOP, if redundancy is your thing).