Related: Spanish Muslims outraged by name of disco

Also, thanks to Michelle for the link.

And while Feingold did not blame Republicans, he did single out “groups” for having looked to take down Obama, and with him, Democrats in Congress.

“I started coming back and telling my staff and my friends -– way back in spring of ‘09 -– that something is going on out there that is pretty deadly and pretty harsh even before we had any idea what the healthcare bill was going to be,” he said. “There appears to be a systematic, conscious attempt to dismantle this president, so I’m less surprised than other people.”

Boo! Cheney!

Source.

Gee, Alter . . . I wonder what that’s about:

President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said of himself: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such confusion.

UPDATE: Baby (Baby, Baby), where is your mojo?

Other highlights:

“The war was won by the State Department and NGOs.”

“I told the EPA to stand down on the lead bullets thing, because it might look silly when I was going to be announcing a new offensive in Afghanistan, as well as one in Arizona.”

“Now it’s important that you let me spend more money.”

“To honor the sacrifice of so many men and women in uniform and their families, I’m giving up wagyu beef. Nah, just kidding.”

“Pretending for the moment that there is a God, may He, She or It bless America.”

via Breitbart.TV

The problem, however, is that those districts are not going to be won by the opposition party any time soon; it would take felony charges and publicized evidence involving children to flip those seats.  If Rangel was term limited, he would simply run the seat from back stage as a king maker; choosing successor after successor with machine politics.  I much prefer the current system to opening machine politics in every safe district in the country.

As a good capitalist, I pretty consistently think the answer lies in competition; but the rules have been rigged with gerrymandered districts.  I love a good safe Republican seat as much as the next guy, but it’s a deal with the devil.  There are states who have experimented with non-partisan commissions aided by computer software; with some success measured by congressional turnover.

I’m not sure what to do about the Senate, where it seems to take a felony conviction (Stevens) or death (Kennedy) to get some folks removed.  Maybe the higher turnover at the House level would increase the size of the field, helping to identify candidates who could hope to unseat a Harkin or Grassley.  Or maybe our imperfect system really is the best option we have.

The administration, I suspect, does not want the Court to rule that the political question doctrine precludes tort litigation against CO2-emitters, because it wants the only solid, durable shield for industry to be the EPA’s “displacement” of common-law injury claims via the agency’s endangerment rule and ensuing regulatory cascade under the Clean Air Act (CAA).

In other words, just as the administration used the endangerment rule to try and spook Congress and industry into supporting cap and trade, it is now using CO2 tort litigation to try and spook them into supporting — or at least not aggressively attacking — EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act.

*******

The significance? This case is a very big deal: if litigators can sue large utilities for emitting CO2, they can also sue smaller utilities and manufacturers. Indeed, they can in principle sue anyone and everyone. Utilities, after all, only emit CO2 in the process of serving customers who use electricity. People lighting their homes, powering their factories, and running their laptops are ultimately to blame for destroying the planet, according to the “science” invoked by plaintiffs. In their worldview, everybody is injuring everybody else — which implies that everybody has standing to sue everybody else. Plaintiffs may preach “green peace,” but they sow the seeds of a war of all against all.

Welcome your new unelected masters, children.

Of course, the foregoing analysis assumes that Congress intended the CAA to be a statutory scheme for regulating greenhouse gases — exactly what opponents of EPA’s shocking power grab deny. The point, however, is that the Obama administration is attempting to manage rather than eliminate the threat of litigation chaos. The price we must pay for such “protection” — not spelled out but clear enough from the terms of Team Obama’s argument — is support for (or at least acceptance of) EPA’s Court-awarded authority to Kyotoize the economy.

That’s exactly what it is: a protection racket. Government continues to arrogate powers away from us, because it’s in our own best interests.

More President Thug-Boy policy in action:

Remember, you have a right to these overlords.

Brave liberal voices of outrage drowned out by crickets.

A former employee of the state Division of Youth and Family Services was sentenced in federal court today to three years and four months in prison for stealing $800,000 by filing hundreds of phony federal tax returns and claiming refunds using the personal information of clients he pulled from state files.

Ugochukwu Madubuike, 30, of Orange [NJ], pleaded guilty in April to mail fraud, conspiracy to pass forged checks and lying to the U.S. Treasury Department.

Madubuike was a family services specialist with DYFS from June 2004 to November 2007. He admitted stealing confidential information from files to submit fraudulent tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service.

The returns resulted in more than 200 refund checks that were sent to addresses to which Madubuike had access. He forged the signatures of the payees on those checks, according to the charges, and deposited the checks into bank accounts controlled by him and a co-conspirator, Onyinye M. Nwokeji, 27, of Irvington.

NTTAWWT. It’s just something I noticed. I consider it likely that he was driven to this act of desperation by his inability to get typical white people to friend him.

RELATED: Law school failed lawyer by not teaching business ethics.

Top 20 PAC Contributors to Candidates, 2009-2010

PAC Name | Total Amount | Dem Pct | Repub Pct
Honeywell International $2,760,600 55% 45%
AT&T Inc $2,597,375 50% 50%
Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers $2,561,123 98% 2%
National Beer Wholesalers Assn $2,244,500 56% 44%
American Assn for Justice $2,202,500 97% 3%
Operating Engineers Union $2,109,300 89% 11%
American Bankers Assn $1,981,430 39% 61%
American Fedn of St/Cnty/Munic Employees $1,869,500 100% 0%
International Assn of Fire Fighters $1,843,500 83% 17%
National Assn of Realtors $1,818,298 58% 41%
Boeing Co $1,765,000 59% 41%
Teamsters Union $1,732,910 98% 2%
American Crystal Sugar $1,729,500 68% 32%
American Federation of Teachers $1,682,250 100% 0%
Laborers Union $1,670,000 96% 4%
Lockheed Martin $1,657,950 58% 42%
Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union $1,646,500 98% 2%
Credit Union National Assn $1,598,446 58% 42%
National Air Traffic Controllers Assn $1,594,900 83% 17%
Plumbers/Pipefitters Union $1,554,075 96% 3%

Totals include subsidiaries and affiliated PACs, if any.

*For ease of identification, the names used in this section are those of the organization connected with the PAC, rather than the official PAC name. For example, the “Coca-Cola Company Nonpartisan Committee for Good Government” is simply listed as “Coca-Cola Co.”

Based on data released by the FEC on August 22, 2010.

More transparency: Fed doesn’t want to cough up bailout docs.