The TSA, which claims to be doing its job as they grope little kids and the elderly, had an illegal immigrant using a murdered man's ID working a top security job at Newark Airport

Seriously?!?.  At this point we should abolish the TSA and start over.  Besides being focused on procedure rather than on actually catching terrorists, they have become a national embarrassment.  Between groping and scarring crying 4 year old girls, medal of honor winners, Henry Kissinger and Geraldo, the fact that they had a major security risk (given the fact that nobody knows how he got the murdered man's ID and therefore could have been the murderer himself) as head of security at a major airport is just the last straw.

An illegal immigrant worked undetected at Newark Liberty International Airport for 20 years, and used a dead man's identity to acquire a top position in airport security, officials said.

The man was known to co-workers as Jerry Thomas, and for nearly 20 years he has guarded some of the most secure areas of one of the nation's busiest airports.

He was arrested Monday after authorities discovered he is really an illegal Nigerian immigrant by the name of Bimbo Olumuyiwa Oyewole (among other alilases) who entered the country in 1989, officials said.

CBS Station WCBS reports Oyewole, 54, allegedly assumed the identity of a dead man to get a top security job at the airport. He was arrested at his Elizabeth, N.J., home following an anonymous tip, officials said.

"In this case, the defendant utilized an elaborate and complex scheme of identity theft to defraud his employer, the State of New Jersey, the federal government and the Port Authority," Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Inspector General Robert Van Etten said.

The revelation came the same day that the Inspector General's Office of the Transportation Security Administration released a report saying that TSA officials at Newark Liberty took corrective actions in fewer than half (42 percent) of the security breaches shown in its records.

The OIG also said TSA does not have a comprehensive oversight program in order to collate information on security breaches and, consequently, cannot monitor trends or make improvements to security.

WCBS correspondent Marcia Kramer reports that Oyewole somehow obtained the birth certificate and Social Security number of a man murdered in Queens in 1992. He used that identity to obtain a New Jersey driver's license, a state security guard license, airport identification and even credit cards, officials said.

"Jerry Thomas" worked security at Newark, and had access to the tarmac and passenger planes without ever being detected, officials said. At the time of his arrest he supervised 30 other guards, Kramer reported.

Authorities want to know how he got the ID made and whether he was involved in the man's death. The NYPD is checking his fingerprints to see if they match those at the scene of the still-unsolved murder.

Cherokee Genealogist to Democrat Elizabeth Warren: Stop Lying

Someone who actually knows something about Cherokee history calls Elizabeth Warren's bluff.  I've excerpted it below but be sure to read the whole thing.  Can we start calling her Fauxcahontas now? (h/t legal insurrection):

It seems you would like the "attacks" against your claims of Cherokee ancestry to stop so I thought I would offer some advice on how to make it stop. 

Tell the truth. 

You see, Ms. Warren, some of us have independently done our own research and we know you have no documentation supporting your claim of Cherokee ancestry.* We wonder why you believe you have the right to claim Cherokee ancestry and to call yourself a Native American when you have no evidence to support your claim. While you cling to a family story and the inaccurate report that ONE document was found that supports your claim, we real Cherokees understand that those things mean nothing. You see, we Cherokees have lots and lots and lots of documentation supporting our claims of our ancestry. Our Cherokee ancestors are found on every roll of the Cherokee Nation (30+ rolls!) dating back to before the removal and in all sorts of other documentation, including but not limited to claims against the US government for lost property; the Moravian missionary records; ration lists before and after the forced removal, etc...yet your ancestors are found in NONE of those records. 

But, your ancestors are found in plenty of historical records, and every time, they are found living as white people among other white people. Never are your ancestors ever found living among the Cherokees. Never, never, never, never.......yet you claim they were Cherokee.

Hmmm........and they say you are an elite lawyer! Really?

Are we supposed to believe an elite lawyer knows nothing about the burden of proof? According to Lawyers.com, the burden of proof is the responsibility of producing sufficient evidence in support of a fact or issue and favorably persuading the trier of fact. Well, Ms. Warren, you should know that you are not doing a very good job of supporting your claim or persuading anyone to believe what you say. This is starting to make us question your ability as a legal mind! And that makes us question whether you really got your job at Harvard on your own merits or whether you climbed on the backs of the Cherokee people in order to further your career.

So, Ms. Warren, you see, it is not just your opponent who has questions. We Cherokees have questions too and those questions have yet to be answered by you. You see, for us Cherokees, this is not political. This is about the truth. 

You have claimed something you had no right to claim -- our history and our heritage and our identity. Those things belong to us, and us alone.

...

Note - Several people who are experienced researchers in Cherokee genealogy have been working together exploring Elizabeth Warren's ancestry. They have uncovered many documents that, combined, paint a very clear picture that Warren descends from white people who had no connection whatsoever to the Cherokee Nation. These documents will be posted soon.

Typical Public School Thinking: If Too Many Kids Fail, Lower the Passing Score

No wonder our schools are failing as a nation:

The Board of Education has decided to lower the passing grade on the writing portion of Florida's standardized test in an emergency meeting on Tuesday after preliminary results showed a drastic drop in student passing scores.

...

Results on the FCAT are the major factor for determining grades the state uses to reward top schools and sanction those at the bottom of the spectrum.

This is the first year students and schools will be assessed on the basis of tougher tests and scoring systems, expecting to result in more students failing the FCAT and lower school grades.

The board, though, agreed at its regular meeting last week not to let any school drop more than one letter grade this year to help them adjust to the rigorous new standards.

The writing exam was made more difficult by increasing expectations for proper punctuation, capitalization, spelling and sentence structure. The board also increased the passing grade from 3.5 to 4 on scale of zero to 6.

The preliminary results show only 27 percent of fourth-graders received a passing score compared with 81 percent last year.

For eighth-graders it was 33 percent — down from 82 percent in 2011. For 10th-graders it was 38 percent — a drop from 80 percent last year.

The lower passing score is expected to increase the number of students passing the exam to 48 percent for fourth grade, 52 percent for eighth grade and 60 percent for 10th grade, still well below last year's results.

And it's not like the students have been asked to write The Brothers Karamazov, a typical writing question on an FCAT exam is:

Everyone likes getting good news.
Think about a time you got good news.
Now write a story about a time you got good news.

Not exactly rocket science now is it?  This reminds me of something that Newt said at the final debate:

We have bought -- we bought over the last 50 years three huge mistakes. We bought the mistake that the teachers unions actually cared about the kids. It's increasingly clear they care about protecting bad teachers.

And if you look at L.A. Unified, it is almost criminal what we do to the poorest children in America, entrapping them into places. No Nation Left Behind said if a foreign power did this to our children, we'd declare it an act of war because they're doing so much damage. The second thing we bought into was the -- the whole school of education theory that you don't have to learn, you have to learn about how you would learn.

So when you finish learning about how you would learn, you have self esteem because you're told you have self esteem, even if you can't spell the words self esteem.

Our system is failing the kids that are most in need of help because of this type of thinking, that it's bad to have too many kids fail even if they can't write a simple essay about a simple question.

Europe is FUBAR

It's no surprise that Europe is doing badly, but I don't think most people really understand how badly Europe, especially the western and southern portions, are doing.  Take the industrial production statistics that came out yesterday which showed that Europe as a whole contracted by 0.4% on a monthly basis and fell 1.9% compared to last year. The numbers are bad, signifying a recession, but aren't necessarily horrible.  Two things need to be noted.  First, growth in eastern europe is buoying these numbers so that weakness in the larger countries is being masked.  Second, it's very important to take note where the absolute industrial production level is compared to years past.  Incremental declines of 0.2% or 0.1% really add up.  Take a look at this chart that I compiled of industrial production levels of select countries compared to 2005 and also what year those countries first hit this level (to give a sense of how far an economy has regressed).  It's really not pretty:

As you can see, Greece's industrial production is almost 30% lower than it was in 2005, the same level it was at in 1978 (Newt Gingrich was not even in Congress then and Pink Floyd's The Wall hadn't been released yet)!  That is over 30+ years of progress wiped out.  Spain is doing better but you can't really say it is doing "well" as industrial production there is 21% lower than 2005, the same level as 1989.  Go down the list, just about all the major western European economies are performing badly right now, except for Germany.  And just for a reference, back at the height of the recession in the US, our industrial production was just 11.9% lower than 2005. So right now the UK, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Spain and Greece are all doing worse than we were when it looked like to many in the US as if the sky was falling.

And I just don't see how things are going to get better anytime soon.  To cure the debt crisis, the European authorities have been throwing even more debt at is, making the eventual fall even worse.  Also, "austerity" has meant heavy tax increases, putting economies deeper into recession (something that could happen in the US as well, thanks to the massive scheduled tax increases that are coming in several months).  Take a look at this list of measures approved in Greece last year:

• Taxes will increase by 2.32bn euros this year, with additional taxes of 3.38bn euros in 2012, 152m euros in 2013 and 699m euros in 2014.
• A solidarity levy of between 1% and 5% of income will be levied on households to raise 1.38bn euros.
• The tax-free threshold for income tax will be lowered from 12,000 to 8,000 euros.
• There will be higher property taxes
• VAT rates are to rise: the 19% rate will increase to 23%, 11% becomes 13%, and 5.5% will increase to 6.5%.
• The VAT rate for restaurants and bars will rise to 23% from 13%.
• Luxury levies will be introduced on yachts, pools and cars.
• Some tax exemptions will be scrapped
• Excise taxes on fuel, cigarettes and alcohol will rise by one third.
• Special levies on profitable firms, high-value properties and people with high incomes will be introduced.

Seems like a great way to crash an economy, which is exactly what happened. It's no wonder that extremist parties did so well in the recent Greek elections.  The second largest party in parliament is now SYRIZA (gained almost 17% of the vote), which is a coalition of radical left wing parties (including maoist, trotskyite and traditional communist & socialist parties) with such names as Anticapitalist Political Group, International Workers' Left, Communist Organization of Greece and Renewing Communist Ecological Left.  And this wasn't the only communist game in town either, the official Communist Party of Greece gained another 8.5% of the vote.  There is even a Greek neo-nazi party called Golden Dawn which gained 7% of the vote.  It comes complete with a nazi salute and even a Greek version of the swastika.  If you add it all up, these three crazy authoritarian parties gained a whopping 32.2% of the vote (this number could go up soon as new elections are necessary after no coalition government could be agreed to by the various parties).  And this insanity is not limited to Greece either (thought he Greek parties seem to be especially extreme).  In France, Presidential candidates representing fascists, communists and radical leftists got 30.2% of the vote in the first round of voting.  As a reference, back in Weimar Germany, in the 1930 election, the Nazis and Communists gained 31.4% of the vote between them.    Just saying. 

Maybe Voter ID Laws Should Include Proof of Citizenship Requirements

Unbelievable.  Florida's Division of Elections has found 2,600 people (so far) who may not be citizens on the voter rolls and are going through a list of 180,000 total to see who is and who is not a citizen.  Of course the Obama administration is refusing to help them in their quest to make sure only US Citizens are able to vote.  Note that the 2000 Presidential election was decided by a margin of just 537 votes in Florida:

Florida's Division of Elections said it is checking the citizenship of voters by comparing its databases with those of the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, which keeps track of whether a licensed driver is also a U.S. citizen.

Similar efforts have been carried out by state authorities in Colorado and New Mexico, which also have large Latino communities.

"We're going to vet a list of 180,000 people to try to come up with a real number," said Chris Cate, a spokesman for Florida's Division of Elections. "We don't want to jump to conclusions without a thorough investigation."

Officials in Florida have so far identified more than 2,600 potential voters who may not be U.S. citizens and sent their information to local election authorities, Cate said.

Drivers in Florida are required to show proof of their legal status when they get a driver's license or renew an old one.

Cate said cross-referencing voter rolls with the highway department information could help better determine whether voters are U.S. citizens, but he added the information was sometimes incomplete.

"Their last contact with the highway department may have been four or five years ago and they could have had the chance to become a citizen since then," he said.

Potential non-citizen voters are notified by mail and given 30 days to respond.

Nearly 1,600 of the voters identified up until now reside in Miami-Dade County, Florida's most populous county, which includes the city of Miami.

Cate said some Florida officials have asked the Obama administration to grant the state access to databases maintained by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to help determine who is a citizen.

"We've been requesting access, but have so far been denied," he said.

Great Mark Steyn Piece on Geert Wilders And the Insanity of Eurabia

Here are a couple of excerpts from Mark Steyn's Foreword to Geert Wilders book Marked For Death, Islam's War Against the West and Me, be sure to read the whole thing:

In 21st-century Amsterdam, you're free to smoke marijuana and pick out a half-naked sex partner from the front window of her shop. But you can be put on trial for holding the wrong opinion about a bloke who died in the seventh century. 

...

A decade ago, in the run-up to the toppling of Saddam, many media pundits had a standard line on Iraq: It's an artificial entity cobbled together from parties who don't belong in the same state. And I used to joke that anyone who thinks Iraq's various components are incompatible ought to take a look at the Netherlands. If Sunni and Shia, Kurds and Arabs can't be expected to have enough in common to make a functioning state, what do you call a jurisdiction split between post-Christian bi-swinging stoners and anti-whoring anti-sodomite anti-everything-you-dig Muslims? If Kurdistan's an awkward fit in Iraq, how well does Pornostan fit in the Islamic Republic of the Netherlands?

The years roll on, and the gag gets a little sadder. "The most tolerant country in Europe" is an increasingly incoherent polity where gays are bashed, uncovered women get jeered in the street, and you can't do The Diary of Anne Frank as your school play lest the Gestapo walk-ons are greeted by audience cries of "She's in the attic!"

According to one survey, 20 percent of history teachers have abandoned certain, ah, problematic aspects of the Second World War because, in classes of a particular, ahem, demographic disposition, pupils don't believe the Holocaust happened, and, if it did, the Germans should have finished the job and we wouldn't have all these problems today. More inventive instructors artfully woo their Jew-despising students by comparing the Holocaust to "Islamophobia" — we all remember those Jewish terrorists hijacking Fokkers and flying them into the Reichstag, right? What about gangs of young Jews preying on the elderly, as Muslim youth do in Wilders' old neighborhood of Kanaleneiland?

As for "Islamophobia," it's so bad that it's, er, the Jews who are leaving. "Sixty per cent of Amsterdam's orthodox community intends to emigrate from Holland," says Benzion Evers, the son of the city's chief rabbi, five of whose children had already left by 2010. Frommer's bestselling travel guide to "Europe's most tolerant city" acknowledges that "Jewish visitors who dress in a way that clearly identifies them as Jewish" are at risk of attack, but discreetly attributes it to "the Israeli-Palestinian conflict." "Jews with a conscience should leave Holland, where they and their children have no future," advised Frits Bolkestein, former Dutch Liberal leader. "Anti-Semitism will continue to exist, because the Moroccan and Turkish youngsters don't care about efforts for reconciliation."

If you're wondering what else those "youngsters" don't care for, ask Chris Crain, editor of The Washington Blade, the gay newspaper of America's capital. Seeking a break from the Christian fundamentalist redneck theocrats of the Republican party, he and his boyfriend decided to treat themselves to a vacation in Amsterdam, "arguably the 'gay-friendliest' place on the planet." Strolling through the streets of the city center, they were set upon by a gang of seven "youngsters," punched, beaten, and kicked to the ground. Perplexed by the increasing violence, Amsterdam officials commissioned a study to determine, as Der Spiegel put it, "why Moroccan men are targeting the city's gays."

George Lucas Gives the Hypocritical Snobs of Marin the Middle Finger

After graduating from college, I spent a couple of years working in Marin County, just north of San Francisco.  The people who populate that area struck me as quite hypocritical.  They loved having money but didn't particularly like capitalism.  They also pretended to favor diversity and multiculturalism, though they generally didn't want diversity or multiculturalism to get past the borders of Marin county (I was actually quite shocked to hear some of the anti-latino comments that I heard).  That's why I think the letter that George Lucas wrote canceling his proposed project to build a studio and deciding instead to turn it over to a developer of low-income housing to be a perfect FU to people who clearly deserve it (h/t Powerline):

It is with great sadness that Skywalker Properties has decided to pull its application to build a studio facility on the old Grady Ranch.

The level of bitterness and anger expressed by the homeowners in Lucas Valley has convinced us that, even if we were to spend more time and acquire the necessary approvals, we would not be able to maintain a constructive relationship with our neighbors.

We love working and living in Marin, but the residents of Lucas Valley have fought this project for 25 years, and enough is enough. Marin is a bedroom community and is committed to building subdivisions, not business. Many years ago, we tried to stop the Lucas Valley Estates project from being built, but we failed, and we now have a subdivision on our doorstep.

While we managed to build on Skywalker Ranch after one year master plan approval and another year PDP approval, it took over 10 years for the Master Plan approval on Big Rock and Grady Ranches. It took us three years for a PDP on Big Rock and now we are four years into trying to get a PDP permit for Grady Ranch with no end in sight.

As the company grew we realized we needed more space than what we were building in Lucas Valley at Skywalker Ranch, and it could not accommodate the whole company. We then worked to find more land on which to expand our corporate headquarters, our video game enterprise LucasArts, and our visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic. We were told there was no way we would be able to build a facility of that size in Marin County and therefore we moved the majority of our employees from Marin to the Presidio in San Francisco. We've had a great partnership with the Presidio Trust and created a low impact facility which offers great benefit to its surrounding community.

We then went back to Marin County with only the studio facility that was previously approved in the Master Plan. We have been trying for four years to get the Precise Development Plan approved, but it appears that, as always seems to be the case, the process will be delayed again for more months or years.

We are not a real estate developer. We need the spaces we build to do our work. Movies are waiting to be made, and we must move forward. Unfortunately, the projects we had planned to shoot on those stages have already started production and we will need the studio space by early 2013. We have several opportunities to build the production stages in communities that see us as a creative asset, not as an evil empire, and if we are to stay on schedule we must act on those opportunities.

When we first proposed Skywalker Ranch in 1978, we understood people's concerns about a business moving to residential area. They feared helicopters landing with celebrities and tour buses coming down Lucas Valley Road. None of their fears materialized. Over 5,000 acres were permanently preserved with an 11 mile hiking trail, all the buildings are hidden from the road, the pond and ranch restoration created an area for wildlife to thrive, and over 8,000 trees were planted. Lucasfilm provided fire and rescue aid to the community and boosted Marin's economy by hundreds of millions of dollars and provided employment to its residents. After Skywalker Ranch was completed, our neighbors praised us and the County continually used us as an example of how best to develop. We were one of the first large employers certified as a Marin County "Green Business."

We realize our solution to creating open space by placing low-impact commercial facilities on farmland, while permanently preserving over 95% of the total acreage, has not been accepted by our neighbors. Nor are they or many of the public agencies interested in the $50-70M restoration of the stream. Maybe we're ahead of our time.

We plan to sell the Grady property expecting that the land will revert back to its original use for residential housing. We hope we will be able to find a developer who will be interested in low income housing since it is scarce in Marin. If everyone feels that housing is less impactful on the land, then we are hoping that people who need it the most will benefit.

Just awesome.

Romney Donor: Obama Campaign is Investigating My Personal Records

A Romney donor is having his personal divorce records snooped into just because he gave money to a Romney SuperPAC.  It's amazing how thuggish the left is. Seriously they have no ethics:

MEK: Iran is Accelerating Its Nuclear Program

It's going to be a hot summer:

Iran is accelerating its nuclear weapons program, according to a report compiled by the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) Iranian opposition group and obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Friday. Publication of the report comes just days before Western powers are scheduled to begin a second round of talks with Iran in Baghdad.

The report first appeared in the Die Welt German daily and was provided to the Post by Brussels-based Iran expert Emanuele Ottolenghi, who had been asked by the paper to verify its contents.

The report and various additional charts outline the different offices involved in Iran's weapons program and identify some 60 directors and experts working in various parts of SPND and 11 additional institutions and companies affiliated with the program.

The SPND headquarters is based in Mojdeh, a military facility near Tehran. The facility is headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh-Mahabadi, who has previously been identified by western intelligence agencies as the man responsible for the nuclear weapons program. He is under United Nations sanctions.

...
"The information sharply contradicts the assessment by some that Iran has not yet made the decision to go forward with the weapons program, as well as the observation by others who suggest that the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has forbidden the development of a nuclear bomb, because it would be a 'sin' to do so," the report said.

...

MEK, which is a member of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), has long been suspected of working closely with the Mossad and the CIA. In 2002, for example, the NCRI revealed the existence of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility which until then had not been known to the world.

Rand Paul on the Crony Capitalist Ex-Im Bank

Rand Paul rails against the Ex-Im Bank, a crony capitalist institution that generally has bipartisan support (as someone once said, there is a stupid party and an evil party, when there is bipartisan legislation we end up with something both stupid AND evil). The Ex-Im bank is an institution that spends millions funding a steel mill in China, which undercuts our own steel mills. How does this make sense to anyone?:

 

 (h/t Redstate)

Nigel Farage: It is a European Union of Economic Failure

MEP Nigel Farage at his very best:



(h/t Zerohedge)

President Indecision: It Took Obama a Year to Decide to Take Osama Out

Good thing Osama didn't go anywhere while the committees inside the White House decided what to do:

“We actually had the target the summer before execution — in other words, we had the target the summer of 2010, and it took until the following May to execute the mission,” Keane said. “I was surprised that it was taking that long to execute because the longer you spend on something like that, the greater likelihood that the target will be compromised because of your surveillance and then the target will flee.”

...

“Certainly the people that were close to it wanted to get after it,” he said. “Because they realized that the target could be compromised, and it took so long to actually find him, and you had the sense that this was it and it was real and let’s go get it."

...

Vice President Biden said he advised against the raid because there wasn’t enough evidence that bin Laden was at the compound in Pakistan where he was ultimately killed.

Biden said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the only one of Obama’s top advisers who wasn’t on the fence about whether to strike.

Welcome to Left Wing Bizarro World

(h/t instapundit)

Could a libertarian be the GOP nominee in 2016 or 2020?

It sounds like Rand Paul is starting to make inroads with social conservatives and is more willing to make alliances than his father.  He also might have some organizational advantages going into Iowa next time:

Later this month Rand will return to Iowa — without his father — to deliver the keynote speech at the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalitions spring rally — the most obvious indication yet that Sen. Paul has his own presidential ambitions.
"He loves Iowa," Sen. Paul's communications director Moira Bagley told Business Insider. "He's been out there so much, with his dad's campaign, so he's really comfortable and really happy with the people out in Iowa, and especially the evangelical groups."
In fact, Sen. Paul's overture to Iowa's social conservatives is evidence of a budding romance between the Kentucky Republican and evangelical leaders, most of whom have never been particularly taken with the elder Paul.
Business Insider has learned that Sen. Paul has even been approached about a possible trip to Israel with Christian activist David Lane, a conservative kingmaker whose "Pastor Policy Briefings" helped launch Mike Huckabee's political star in 2008.
"Rand Paul is going to inherit his dad's political assets — he's going to be very formidable," Lane told Business Insider. "Structurally, there is something that is happening inside the state Republican parties that will have to be dealt with politically."
Lane added that the Paul message of fiscal conservatism and limited government dovetail with that of social conservatives, who increasingly see the federal debt as one of the country's biggest moral ills.
"I disagree with Ron Paul on some things, but I like that he has courage," said Lane. "He has been a real steward of the money — that's why I like Rand Paul."
Lane, who supported Rick Perry and later Newt Gingrich in the 2012 primary, said that he broached the possibility of a trip to Israel with the Senator's staff as part of a larger discussion about Sen. Paul's position on the Jewish State, which has been a political landmine for the elder Paul.
"I had heard that Ron Paul and Rand Paul were anti-Israel," Lane said. "But they explained to me that the position is not anti-Israel — it's anti-foreign aid….We give a lot more money to Israel's enemies than we do to Israel."
...
Sen. Paul's political positioning provides some interesting clues about what the Ron Paul Revolution 2.0 might look like. As we have previously written, Ron Paul has built up a powerful national organization that has been staging quiet coups over local and state GOP Establishments, and is now poised to have a significant delegate presence at the Republican National Convention.
Given that Ron Paul's own presidential prospects are virtually nonexistent, Rand Paul stands to inherit this formidable movement-cum-campaign organization when his father retires from Congress at the end of this year.
Which brings us back to Iowa. After this year's caucus debacle, Ron Paul supporters were elected into almost all of the key leadership posts in the state Republican Party and are expected to deliver him the bulk of Iowa's RNC delegates, giving the younger Paul powerful allies in the first-in-nation caucus state.
"The best network in the state of Iowa is Ron Paul's — they are the Republican Party in Iowa," Iowa conservative leader/talk radio host Steve Deace told Business Insider. "If Rand Paul wants to run for president, he will have that organization as a huge advantage over everyone else."
Deace, like a number of other prominent social conservatives, is deeply dissatisfied with Romney, and predicts that the GOP will lose this year's election to Barack Obama, precipitating Republican "trench warfare" that will reshape the party going into 2016.

Hillary Clinton Caught in a Lie About Chinese Dissident

When Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese dissident, left the US Embassy, Hillary Clinton said that this was all his choice and the US would continue to protect him outside the walls of the Embassy:

"I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the US embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values.

"Mr Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment," she said.

"Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task. The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead."

Well that turned out to be a big load of crap.  Here is what Chen had to say to CNN:

"I would like to say to President Obama - please do everything you can to get our family out," Chen told CNN, according to a translation of his quote. He also accused US Embassy officials of pushing him hard to leave on Wednesday.

"The embassy kept lobbying me to leave and promised to have people stay with me in the hospital, but this afternoon as soon as I checked into the hospital room, I noticed they were all gone."

Does it sound like returning to China was his choice?  It didn't even take 24 hours for the US government to abandon him, despite the Secretary of State's assurances.  They just abandoned him to a state that will probably wait until the press dies down and will make him disappear.  It's just so abhorrent.  

Zuckerman: We're Heading for an Even Weaker Economy

Mort Zuckerman is completely correct in his assessment when he says "we have the most stimulative fiscal and monetary policy in the history of this country and here we are three years into the recession and it's not ended. I think we may be heading for an even weaker economy this year than people expect." It really is amazing that with both fiscal and monetary policy at the loosest it has ever been that we are still growing a paltry 2% a year. Anyway here is the clip, he also comments about Europe:

Another Chinese Dissident Betrayed by Obama

Just yesterday, I posted this about how the Obama administration turned down an asylum request from a high level defector, who now appears to be missing.  Well, the Obama administration has done it again.  Now Chen Guangcheng was just forced to leave the US embassy after Chinese government threats to his family.  The Obama administration is spinning this somehow as a victory, as if Chen got what he wanted, but the facts don't seem to back that up.  Do you really think someone who spent months planning his escape from house arrest would want to go back into the hands of his captors?:

Mrs Clinton said: "I am pleased that we were able to facilitate Chen Guangcheng's stay and departure from the US embassy in a way that reflected his choices and our values.

"Mr Chen has a number of understandings with the Chinese government about his future, including the opportunity to pursue higher education in a safe environment," she said.

"Making these commitments a reality is the next crucial task. The United States government and the American people are committed to remaining engaged with Mr Chen and his family in the days, weeks, and years ahead."

After leaving the US embassy, the Chinese dissident had a telephone call with Mrs Clinton in which he reportedly said: "I want to kiss you."

Mr Chen's lawyer Li Jinsong said he had spoken to his client on the phone. He said Mr Chen was "very happy and wants to hug all his friends".

Mr Li said the dissident had told him he now had "true freedom", his rights were now protected by the national law and he was "a free citizen".

'Threats' to family

However, a close friend of Mr Chen told Associated Press that the dissident had chosen not to go to the US because he had been warned his wife would face recriminations if he did so.

Zeng Jinyan, herself an activist in Beijing, told the BBC she had spoken to Mr Chen and learned he had opted to stay in China to protect his family.

Ms Zeng said that Mr Chen "had no choice" because "thugs with sticks" were waiting for him and his family in their home village in Shandong province.

She said: "It's impossible, he couldn't do anything. He said, 'please help me'."

Bob Fu, of Texas-based rights advocacy group ChinaAid, said reliable sources had also told it that Mr Chen had left the embassy because serious threats to his immediate family members were made by the Chinese government.

"We are deeply concerned about this sad development if the report about Chen's involuntary departure is true," Mr Fu said.

These reports contradicted one US official, who said Mr Chen had "made clear from the beginning that he wanted to remain in China, and that he wanted his stay in the United States Embassy to be temporary".

The official, who wanted to remain anonymous, said the dissident had gone into the embassy on 26 April "requesting medical treatment from the embassy" - which had been given.

The official said China had "acknowledged that Mr Chen will be treated humanely while he remains in China.

"He has been reunited with his family - his wife and two children - at the hospital, and they remain together with him as a family. He had not seen his son in a few years, and his wife had not seen [the son] either, so this was a family reunification after a long and difficult separation."

Mrs Clinton said she was glad to have the chance to speak to Mr Chen and "to congratulate him on being reunited with his wife and children".

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Weimin earlier said Mr Chen had been taken into the US embassy "via abnormal measures", the Chinese authorities were "strongly dissatisfied", and the US should apologise.

Mr Chen, who has been blind since childhood, has long been a high-profile figure and international rights groups have frequently expressed alarm at the treatment of him and his family.

He was placed under house arrest in 2010 after spending more than four years in jail for disrupting traffic and damaging property.

Mr Chen exposed how local authorities in Linyi, in Shandong, forced thousands of women to have abortions or be sterilised as part of China's one-child policy.

Mr Chen's colleagues said the escape from house arrest had taken months to plan, and was carried out with the help of a network of friends and activists.

He scaled the wall that the authorities had built around his house, and was driven hundreds of miles to Beijing, where activists say he stayed in safe houses before fleeing to the embassy.

Several people involved in Mr Chen's escape have been detained or have disappeared in recent days.

Yes, you read that right, several people have disappeared in recent days because of helping Chen escape.  You really think he is alright?  Hillary just didn't want this guy interfering with her visit to China so she made sure he was no longer an issue.  If there were threats to his family, the right thing to do was to pressure the Chinese government until they let his family go as well, not surrender to a bunch of Communist thugs.  Last time, the Obama administration betrayed a dissident in order to help a major Obama donor (Jeffrey Katzenberg), I wonder if there was another one involved here?

Social Conservatives Shoot Themselves in the Foot Again, Force Out Romney's National Security Spokesperson For Being Gay

Seriously, what is wrong with these people?  Romney hires John Bolton's ex-spokesperson, Richard Grenell, to be his spokesperson and then social conservatives have a hissy fit because he is gay and a proponent of gay rights (which is kind of understandable right, if I was gay I don't think I would be a proponent of gay second class citizenship).   So now with Obama on the ropes and having to defend his sleezy comments on Osama, we get this story of outright idiotic discrimination.  It's not like Grenell wasn't qualified, having been the spokesperson for conservatives' favorite Secretary of State candidate.  What does being gay or supporting gay rights have to do with nuclear weapons in Iran? 

What's also disappointing is how, once again, Romney shows he has no core.   As Jennifer Rubin reported, Romney did almost nothing to defend Grenell.:

During the two weeks after Grenell's hiring was announced the Romney campaign did not put Grenell out to comment on national security matters and did not use him on a press foreign policy conference call. Despite the controversy in new media and in conservative circles, there was no public statement of support for Grenell by the campaign and no supportive social conservatives were enlisted to calm the waters.

I guess if you stand in front of Romney's ambitions he will throw you under the bus and won't even think about defending you (that would require a backbone and strength of conviction, which Romney's record shows he doesn't have).  Isn't that the type of thinking we are trying to get OUT of the White House?

Obama and Biden Illegally Turned Down an Asylum Request by a High Level Chinese Defector, Who is Now "Missing"

Looks like one reason for this unbelievable action was so that Biden could help out Dreamworks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg, a big Obama donor:

The office of Vice President Joe Biden overruled State and Justice Department officials in denying the political asylum request of a senior Chinese communist official last February over fears the high-level defection would upset the U.S. visit of China's vice president, according to U.S. officials.

The defector, Wang Lijun, was turned away after 30 hours inside the U.S. Consulate Chengdu and given over to China's Ministry of State Security, the political police and intelligence service.

Wang has not been seen since Feb. 7.

...

According to officials familiar with internal discussions on the Wang case, the rejection of his asylum request may have violated the 1980 U.S. Refugee Act, a law championed by Michael H. Posner, currently assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. United Nations human rights conventions on handling threatened refugees also may have been ignored, the officials said.

During interagency discussions over the attempted Wang defection, which played out during a tense standoff in China Feb. 6 and 7, Posner and other senior officials argued that the Chinese official should be granted asylum and helped out of China so he could appear before a federal judge in California.

...

During the 30-hour incident in Chengdu, the consulate exchanged at least three cables with the State Department on what to do with Wang, a former police chief and anti-organized crime investigator who had run afoul of his boss, Chongqing Communist Party chief Bo.

According to the officials, Wang entered the consulate, located in a neighboring province from the large metropolis of Chongqing, and met with three consulate officials.

His presence and appeal for asylum triggered a debate within the Obama administration over whether to grant him political asylum.

The question posed to Wang after the exchange of three cables between the consulate and the State Department was whether Wang feared for his safety. At one point he said yes, his life was threatened as a result of a falling out with his boss, Bo Xilai. As evidence, Wang provided information indicating Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, had been involved in the murder of British businessman Neil Heywood, who was found dead in a Chongqing hotel last November.

The acknowledgement of the threat to his safety was the key element of the interagency debate that involved officials from State Department, including Posner and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asia, along with Justice Department and National Security Council staff officials who met via teleconference.

In the end, Antony Blinken, Biden's national security adviser, successfully prevailed over other officials in arguing that Wang's asylum appeal should be rejected.

Blinken, according to the officials, feared China would cancel the upcoming visit by Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, whose visit was to be hosted by Biden, unless Wang was sent away from the consulate as soon as possible.

During Xi's visit, he and Biden met with Jeffrey Katzenberg—the head of DreamWorks Animation and multi-million dollar donor to President Obama's Super PAC—to negotiate a business deal. DreamWorks is now under investigation by the SEC for possibly bribing Chinese officials during that deal's negotiations.

Elizabeth Warren is 1/32nd Cherokee Yet Still Claimed She Was Native American at Several Universities

This is just hilarious:

Desperately scrambling to validate Democrat Elizabeth Warren's Native American heritage amid questions about whether she used her minority status to further her career, the Harvard Law professor's campaign last night finally came up with what they claim is a Cherokee connection — her great-great-great-grandmother.

"She would be 1⁄32nd of Elizabeth Warren's total ancestry," noted genealogist Christopher Child said, referring to the candidate's great-great-great-grandmother, O.C. Sarah Smith, who is listed on an Oklahoma marriage certificate as Cherokee. Smith is an ancestor on Warren's mother's side, Child said.

The missing link comes after Warren's embattled campaign faced sharp questions about her Native American background in the wake of Herald stories that showed both Harvard Law School and Warren herself had touted her tribal lineage and claimed she was a member of a minority for years.

Warren's shaken campaign faced another crisis yesterday when it was revealed that beginning in 1986 and continuing through 1995, Warren had listed herself as a minority professor in the Association of American Law Schools desk book, a directory of law professors from participating schools.

Warren had flatly denied that she ever touted her Native American background professionally.

...

Suzan Shown Harjo, a former executive director of the National Congress of American Indians, expressed outrage yesterday after learning that Warren had identified herself as a Native American on law school records without documentation.

"If you believe you are these things then that's fine and dandy, but that doesn't give you the right to claim yourself as Native American," said Harjo, who said Warren might have taken a job another Native American could have received.

So based on the Elizabeth Warren standard of creative box-checking, I move that my Israeli wife start checking the Asian box, as it's pretty clear that Israel is in Asia.  Also, I think an argument can be made for us to start checking the African-American box as well.  It has been documented (in the Torah) that our people did reside in Africa for a time about 3,500 years ago.  Also, based on the "out of Africa" theory, we're all Africans anyhow.   I'm starting to like affirmative action much more...