PrairiePundit

Daily Caller: House oversight committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa and Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley are asking the Department of Justice’s internal investigator to hold accountable anyone who retaliated against or threatened to retaliate against Operation Fast and Furious whistleblowers. In a Friday  letter  to the DOJ’s Inspector General Michael Horowitz, Grassley and Issa said they’re now concerned retaliation is much more likely following Thursday’s votes to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in criminal and civil contempt of Congress. “We just learned that ATF senior management placed two of the main whistleblowers who have testified before Congress about Fast and Furious under the supervision of someone who vowed to retaliate against them,” they wrote before describing how senior political figures have made dangerous threats before. Grassley and Issa said that in early 2011, right around the time Grassley first made public the whistleblowers’ allegations ab...

NY Times: Bain Attacks Make Inroads for President Romney has an effective rebuttal to these attacks but he has not launched in ads to counter the fraudulent statements of Obama that have been blanketing the airways.  At some point Romney is going to have to engage beyond just presenting the facts to the media who promptly ignore it in many cases. Romney can also mount an effective counterattack against Obama for his own outsourcing programs from electric cars to the real biggy oil and gas energy jobs.  Democrats including Obama have been outsourcing our energy jobs to mad men around the world for decades while they strangle domestic production of energy.  In fact, Obama has helped to finance offshore drilling for Brazil while he has been imposing a moratorium on most offshore tracts near the US. He and Democrats continue to block drilling in ANWR in one of the most ridiculous displays of obstinacy withou...

NY Times: Few handicappers gave a band of Republican attorneys general much chance of success when they filed a constitutional challenge to President Obama’s  health care law just minutes after it was signed on March 23, 2010. Some mocked them, while others largely ignored them. But by the time the Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling to uphold the law on Thursday, the litigation hatched by conservative state legal officials like Bill McCollum, who was Florida’s attorney general, had attracted a legitimacy born of shifting scholarly opinion, early victories in strategically selected lower courts and popular discontent spurred by the  Tea Party . While they fell short of their ultimate goal, they got much farther than almost anyone had predicted, and can claim significant victories — both legal and political. The intellectual underpinning of the litigation had always been the argument that the health care law’s individual insurance mandate was an unconstitutional use...

NY Daily News: Man plagued by porn-induced headaches I have heard it explained that one of the attractions some men have to porn, is that the women never have a head ache and they never say no.  But if the stuff is making you sick there are plenty of alternatives to look at.  Why do something that causes you pain, unless you are a character in Fifty Shades of Gray .

Politico: Conservative megadonors Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers and Donald Trump aren’t stopping with their efforts to swing the presidential election. Now, they’re shoveling cash into down-ticket races.   Their big checks have helped state-focused GOP groups more than double the cash haul of their Democratic counterparts and open up another front that could help Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama. Many of the hottest gubernatorial races are in key presidential election states, including North Carolina, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin and the increased activity could and attention to conservative policies on critical issues like government spending, labor rights, voter access, gay rights and immigration could help tip the scales in Romney’s favor. Negative ads against the Democrats won’t hurt either.   “I think that you’ll see amazingly the same swing counties and swing precincts that will determine the outcome of the presidentia...

Chris Burgard: Back in 2009, I was in Del Rio, Texas, attending a Texas Border Sherriff’s Coaliton conference. During one particular Q and A session, the Obama liaison from the Department of Homeland Security kept focusing on stopping the southern flow of guns and money into Mexico. That felt odd. Yes, stopping the flow of money back into Mexico would hurt the Mexican drug cartels. And yes, some weapons purchased from US gun stores were ending up in Mexico. However, hand grenades, RPGs, explosives and the vast amount of military hardware that the cartels were using were not available at Walmart, not even in Texas. The cartels have an unlimited supply of cash. They can purchase whatever they desire on the international arms black market. The folks that didn’t have sufficient cash and resources were the good guys--the men and women in US law enforcement that are tasked with holding the line.... ...  That is a part of the story that the media seemed to ignore outside of a f...

Especially hard hit are the young who are struggling to pay for student loan debt caused by runaway higher ed costs and predatory lending by the government and the schools. It is one reason why many of these young might choose to forego health insurance.

Ben Shapiro: OBAMA CAMPAIGN CELEBRATES INDEPENDENCE DAY ... WITH FUNDRAISER IN PARIS Don't these guys have a calender?

BBC: A judge in California has blocked US sales of Samsung's Galaxy Nexus smartphones while the court decides on the firm's patent dispute with Apple. US District Judge Lucy Koh said Apple "has shown a likelihood of establishing both infringement and validity". Earlier this week, she barred sales of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet in the US until the case was resolved. However, she said that Apple would have to post bonds of nearly $100m (£64m) to enforce the rare pre-trial injunctions. The bonds serve to secure payment of damages sustained by Samsung should it win the cases. ...  I am getting tired of Apples anti competitive  attacks as it tries to secure a monopoly for smart phones.  Neither the latest Apple phone or the Samsung Galaxy or all that great, but the Apple attempt to stifle competition also stifles innovation that could make these phones much better. The main thing the Galaxy Nexus has going for it is that is is one of the fe...

This is an interesting piece which shows just how the ruling hurts Democrats.

Toward the end of this clip Ryan is asked about the budget impact of the ruling.  He thinks the bill is even less sustainable.  This election maybe our last chance to stop this monstrosity.

Democrats continue to deny the obvious.  Their health care monstrosity was sold on the basis of a fraudulent claim that the mandate was not a tax.  Voters will get a chance to see a lot of Obama denying the obvious.

Peter Ferrara: ...  The marker Obama himself laid down for judging his economic policies is whether they would serve “to create strong, sustained growth…pay down our long-term debt…[and] generate good, middle class jobs….” Last week , we discussed how his economic policies would consistently produce the opposite of those results, just as they have in his Presidency so far. But his speech contained many more fallacies that further illuminate his perverse economic thinking.   Lowering marginal tax rates, not just cutting taxes, expands the incentives for increased production, and consequently increases productive activities, such as saving, investment, expanding businesses, starting businesses, job creation, entrepreneurship, and work. That expands production and increases GDP, which means economic recovery, growth and prosperity. Even under Keynesian economic thinking, tax rate cuts promote economic recovery and growth by increasing demand for goods and services, wh...

Washington Post: ... “The court has declared that President Obama can have the federal government use its powers of taxation to compel behavior, and that’s one of the most frightening legal aspects of this decision,” Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a conference call with reporters that was arranged by the Republican National Committee. “It really raises the question, what’s next? Taxes on people that refuse to eat tofu or refuse to drive a Chevy Volt?” ... That argument is going to resonate because it sounds like something Obama would do.

FactCheck.org: ... ...    after reviewing numerous corporate filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, contemporary news accounts, company histories and press releases, and the evidence offered by both the Obama and Romney campaigns, we found no evidence to support the claim that Romney — while he was still running Bain Capital — shipped American jobs overseas. One TV ad, called “Come and Go,” claims that Romney “shipped jobs to China and Mexico.” But two examples cited by the Obama campaign occurred after Romney left Bain. There’s no clear evidence that a third company shipped jobs to China under Romney. A second ad called “Revealed” mocks Romney’s tough talk about cracking down on China’s trade practices by saying “all he’s ever done is send them our jobs” and citing the  Washington Post  article. But the newspaper article contained no examples of U.S. jobs being shipped to China while Romney was working at Bain. The “Come and Go” ad casts Ro...

NY Times: Morsi Says He Will Work for Release of Sheik Jailed in U.S. This is evidence that this Islamic religious bigot is out of touch with reality and anyone in this country that would take the idea seriously is also out of touch with the political realities of such a move. Andrew McCarthy who was a lead prosecutor in the case that put the Blind Sheik in prison gives the back ground on how dangerous the man is. He also had this to say about the Obama administration's mishandling of the group the Sheik belongs to: The Obama administration recently issued a visa to, and hosted in Washington, a member of the Blind Sheikh’s Islamic Group. This was done despite the IG’s formal designation as a foreign terrorist organization to which it is a federal crime to provide material support, and despite the fact that the IG signed al Qaeda’s 1998 declaration of war against the United States. With President Obama sending these signals, it is no surprise that Egypt’s new Islamist pres...

NY Times: Signature Issue for Obama Looms Large Ahead of Election The Affordable Care Act has prevailed in the Supreme Court, but two years after its approval, the public is no happier with the law than it was then. All the court ruling has done is energized to opposition.  If Obama and the Democrats think that the public is ready to accept this monstrosity, they will be in for another shellacking in November.  It will be well deserved.  Cramming liberalism down on the voters is always a mistake and this is a big one. Republican governors are wise not to waste any money or political capital on setting up the exchanges called for under the act.  Their voters do not want it.  They want to defeat those responsible for this control freak policy.  The court decision has given them no alternative but to vote against Democrats wherever possible at all levels of government. The Times  in an editorial pushes for surrender, ...

TM Daily: “ Texas dominated” a new United States Census Bureau  report  that tracked population growth between April 1, 2010 (the date of the last full ten-year census) and July 1, 2011. “ These numbers provide further evidence of a continuation of the trend of rapid population growth in Texas we observed between the 2000 and 2010 censuses,” Census Bureau director Robert Groves said in a news release.  The bureau said that “Texas dominated the list as a whole,” though New Orleans, which is still bouncing back from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, topped the list of “fastest-growing large cities.” Number two was Round Rock, followed in quick succession by Austin, Plano, McKinney, Frisco, and Denton. Also in the top fifteen were McAllen (thirteen) and Carrollton (fourteen).  “We have a relatively young population, which is increasingly Hispanic, and that population tends to have a higher birth rate,” state demographer Lloyd P...

Freshman Rep. West: Nancy Pelosi 'somewhat delusional' - The Hill's Video Rep. West is not the only one who does not have a high regard for what Rep. Pelosi has been saying of late. Sarah Palin says Pelosi is a "dingbat." Rep. Gowdy says Pelosi needs to schedule an appointment with a mental health professional. It is pretty clear that Minority Leader Pelosi's recent statements are not considered intelligent debate by many Republicans.  Perhaps the stress of defending Eric Holder, Obama and her health care fiasco are taking a toll on her communication skills.

Fred Lucas: Obama Contributor, Who Helped Enact Assault-Weapons Ban, Ran ‘Fast and Furious’ This is a very long report on the operation that gives details about those who were running the operation and suggest who was responsible for giving false information to Congress.  It is well worth reading in full.

Fox News: Border Patrol agents in Arizona are blasting their bosses for telling them, along with all other Department of Homeland Security employees, to run and hide if they encounter an "active shooter."   It's one thing to tell civilian employees to cower under a desk if a gunman starts spraying fire in a confined area, say members of Tucson Local 2544/National Border Patrol Council, but to give armed law enforcement professionals the same advice is downright insulting. The instructions from DHS come in the form of pamphlets and a mandatory computer tutorial.   “We are now taught in an ‘Active Shooter’ course that if we encounter a shooter in a public place we are to ‘run away’ and ‘hide’" union leader Brandon Judd wrote on the website of 3,300-member union local. “If we are cornered by such a shooter we are to (only as a last resort) become ‘aggressive’ and ‘throw things’ at him or her. We are then advised to ‘call law enforcement’ and wait for their ar...

Joel Gehrke: Green company creates three jobs in three years, gets another $80 million from DOE The company first got a 40 million dollar subsidy from state and DOE funds to create the three jobs, while promising to create 70.  They were supposed to be making cellulosic biofuel.  I think that is the stuff that still does not exist in commercial quantities that the EPA is fining energy companies for not putting the non existent additive into diesel fuel. We need to get rid of this administration and its goofy "investments."

Scott Rasmussen: The U.S. Supreme Court's decision that President Obama's health care law is constitutional keeps it alive for now. But it's important to remember that the law has already lost in the court of public opinion. The Supreme Court ruling is a temporary reprieve more than anything else. In March, I wrote that the health care law was doomed even if it survived the court. Looking at the data today, it's hard to draw any other conclusion.   Fifty-four percent of voters nationwide still want to see the law repealed . That's going to be a heavy burden for the Obama campaign to bear.   It's hard to believe that public opinion will change between now and Election Day because opinion on the law hasn't budged in two years. In fact, support for repeal now is exactly the same as it was when the law first passed.   Consistently, for the past two years, most voters have expressed the view that the law will hurt the quality of care, increase th...

AP/Washington Times: Egypt’s new leader vows to free sheik jailed in U.S. The chances of that happening are beyond remote.  It that is one of his priorities there is little chance he will be a success in his new office.  Egypt has so many problems, he should not be wasting his time trying to free a mass murderer for Allah.

The panel from the Wall Street Journal does not hold the Roberts decision on Obamacare in high regard.  If the idea was to protect the integrity of the court it failed miserably.

This is a good ad from AFP.  I like the pacing and the message.  There are so many of these ads coming now, it is going to be hard for Obama and his campaign to catch up much less get off the defensive.

Washington Free Beacon: The Obama administration on Friday threatened to veto a defense appropriations bill in part because it does not include higher health care fees for members of the military. “The Administration is disappointed that the Congress did not incorporate the requested TRICARE fee initiatives into either the appropriation or authorization legislation,” the White House wrote in an  official policy statement  expressing opposition to the bill, which  the House approved in May . President Obama’s most recent budget proposal includes  billions of dollars in higher fees  for members of TRICARE, the military health care system, and is part of the administration’s plan to cut nearly $500 billion from the Pentagon’s budget. ...  Military health care under TRICARE is a pretty good deal, but it is not as good a deal as it was when I was in the Marines and the military had doctors we could see without a copay.  What the political mistake...

Perhaps it will find some other medium.

Rep. Gowdy says he would rather have the documents than the contempt vote.  He says we should not accept less than 100 percent of the truth.

The RNC hits Obama on his health care tax.  I think they also should direct some of these ads at the young people who are going to have to pay the tax.  For some reason these people still support Obama despite is running up the debt that they will have to pay on top of the tax increases.

I expect to see several ads like this.  This particular Democrat is running for the Senate in North Dakota.

The Hill: Poll: Most in Pakistan view US as enemy If Pakistan is not an enemy it has to be one of the worst allies in history.  It is a country in the grip of Islamic religious bigots.  It is the training ground for terrorist and the sanctuary for attacks on US forces in Afghanistan.  Yeah, Pakistan sure acts like an enemy.

Perhaps they can create some T-shirts to make fun of he ones Obama is selling.  If hey don't someone will.

Romney uses Hillary to attack Obama's misleading ads.

He will have to be an artful dodger to avoid criticisms like this one.  I think another message should be directed to the young people this tax will hit the hardest.  It makes no sense to me that they would vote for Obama now.

James F. Smith: Oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020, which could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices, according to a new study by a researcher at the Harvard Kennedy School. The findings by Leonardo Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow in the Geopolitics of Energy Project in the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects. Contrary to some predictions that world oil production has peaked or will soon do so,  Maugeri projects that output should grow from the current 93 million barrels per day to 110 million barrels per day by 2020, the biggest jump in any decade since the 1980s. What’s more, this increase represents less than 40 percent of the new oil production...

Indianapolis  Star: It was hailed as a “game-changing community investment ” and “the biggest thing manufacturing-wise that’s ever come to Tipton.”   With a big boost from taxpayer dollars, Abound Solar was going to create up to 1,000 new jobs in an Indiana county with an unemployment rate north of 10 percent. It was going to make the workforce less dependent on the auto industry. And it was going to bring new life to an unused manufacturing facility that another company had abandoned.   Cut to Thursday, when the Colorado-based maker of solar panel parts announced it would suspend operations and file for bankruptcy.   The move came before the company had ever used the facility here, and almost two years after officials touted it as a coup for the region and state. But not before the federal government had approved a $400 million loan — about $40 million to $60 million of which the government acknowledged Thursday it would not get back.   In a ne...

Glenn Harlan Reynolds: ... ...   meet Cortney Munna, a 26-year-old graduate of New York University recently reported by The New York Times to have nearly $100,000 in student loan debt, debt that her degree in religious and women's studies did not equip her with the actual job skills to repay. Payments on Cortney's debt are about $700 per month, equivalent to a respectable house payment and a major bite on her monthly income of $2,300 as a photographer's assistant earning an hourly wage. And unlike a bad mortgage on an underwater house, Cortney can't simply walk away from her student loans, which cannot be expunged in bankruptcy. She's stuck in a financial trap, and she's not alone.   "Even students who major in programs shown to increase earnings, like engineering, face limits on how much debt that can sanely amass. And with costs approaching $60,000 a year for many private schools and $30,000 for state schools, six-figure student loan debt is fast bec...

Washington Times: Conservatives upset by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold most of the 2010 health care law are furiously cutting checks to Mitt Romney's campaign. Less than 12 hours after the high court's ruling, the GOP nominee's spokeswoman Andrea Saul tweeted that the campaign had received more than $3 million in donations in the wake of the decision. "Thank you to everyone who donated at http://www.mittromney.com today! Raised $3.2 million online & counting! #FullRepeal," she posted on her Twitter account shortly after 9 p.m., her sixth tweet of the day documenting the Romney team's mounting haul. Just a few hours after the decision was announced, RedState's Erick Erickson tweeted that he had just donated to Mr. Romney's campaign. "Swore I wouldn't do it, but I just gave Mitt Romney a donation. Thanks John Roberts. Sigh," he tweeted. ...  Conservatives need to make this court ruling the worst thing that ha...

Jennifer Rubin: On MSNBC last evening Chris Matthews and Howard Fineman crowed that President Obama will be happy to talk about Obamacare for the next few months rather than the lousy economy. That’s quite an admission about his economic stewardship, but it’s bad political punditry as well. The president hasn’t talked about Obamacare before this court case because it’s a loser politically. That’s not going to change now that the law is actually worse from a political and policy standpoint. The uninsured who will be helped by the measure, to be blunt, either don’t vote or were already voting for him; the conservatives and independents who dislike the bill will be charged up. The Obama camp has known this from the get-go, which is why in that 54-minute Batan-death-march-of-a-speech he couldn’t find time to mention his “signature” legislation. Moreover, Mitt Romney isn’t going to  stop  talking about the economy. In fact, his entire argument is that the president’s policie...

Chris Cillizza: Thursday was a banner day for President Obama and congressional Democrats as the  Supreme Court validated the signature accomplishment of his first term in office . But, even as Democrats celebrated, Republicans insisted that their rivals — and members of the media — couldn’t see the forest through the trees.   Jonathan Collegio, communications director for American Crossroads, a leading conservative outside group, called the ruling a “millstone” around the neck of any Democrat running for federal office this fall.   “The Supreme Court’s decision forces Obamacare to be litigated in the 2012 elections, and in virtually every case where Obamacare has been litigated by voters in an election, the law and its supporters lose,” added Collegio.   “This ruling is the kiss of death for the Democrat majority in the U.S . Senate as health care just became a tax increase on the middle class in one of the worst economies Americans have ever faced,” add...

Washington Post: Energy issues don’t spark much excitement among voters, ranking below health care, education and the federal budget deficit — not to mention jobs and the economy.   And yet those same voters are being flooded this year with campaign ads on energy policy. Particularly in presidential swing states, the airwaves are laden with messages boosting oil drilling and natural gas and hammering President Obama for his support of green energy. The Cleveland area alone has heard $2.7 million in energy-related ads.   The disconnect between what voters say they care about and what they’re seeing on TV lies in the money behind the ads, much of it coming from oil and gas interests. Those funders get the double benefit of attacking Obama at the same time they are promoting their industry.   Democrats also have spent millions on the subject, defending the president’s record and tying Republican candidate Mitt Romney to “Big Oil.”   Overall, more than $41 mill...

John Podhoretz: ... Roberts’ grotesque offense against elementary logic is so bald-faced, I’m almost tempted to believe he left it there on purpose, either out of perversity or as a not-so-hidden message that he had ulterior motives for upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare.   He did get the four liberal justices to agree to the first serious limit on the power the court has assigned to the Constitution’s Commerce Clause in 75 years. And he basically gutted the bill’s ability to force states to enlarge the size of the Medicaid entitlement.   But the act stands, and this is the bitter pill conservatives have had to swallow. Liberals had their day in court and prevailed; the taste of victory must be sweet indeed.   But Roberts had a not-so-veiled warning for them, too: “The court does not express any opinion on the wisdom of the Affordable Care Act. . . Under the Constitution, that judgment is reserved to the people.”   And therein lies the danger for ...

Houston Chronicle: The Obama administration on Thursday finalized a five-year plan for offshore drilling that focuses on allowing development in already- explored areas of the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic to the chagrin of oil and gas companies who were hoping for more territory.   The first sale of leases under the Interior Department’s 2012-2017 plan is set to take place this fall, with areas of the western Gulf of Mexico up for grabs. Eleven more Gulf of Mexico sales are planned, as well as three auctions of leases in the Cook Inlet near Anchorage and the Chukchi and Beaufort seas north of Alaska.   The plan rules out lease sales in Atlantic waters, despite pressure from Virginia officials eager for oil and gas development off the commonwealth’s shores. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described the plan as “smart,” but “aggressive,” with planned auctions of waters around Alaska targeted to areas that have both big potential energy resources and small environmental and...