PrairiePundit

Hans A. von Spakovsky: Controversy continues to swirl around how the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica obtained personal data from over 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge and used it to target ads to individuals in an effort to help Donald Trump be elected president in 2016. But a more serious case of apparent misconduct involves Facebook data going to a different presidential campaign – this time in 2012. In this case, which is getting far less attention, Facebook reportedly voluntarily provided data on millions of its users to the re-election campaign of President Obama. If true, such action by Facebook may constitute a major violation of federal campaign finance law as an illegal corporate campaign contribution. The matter should be investigated by the Federal Election Commission – an agency I am quite familiar with, because I served as one of its commissioners from 2006 to 2007. The commission enforces campaign finance laws for congressional and presidential...

NY Times: Gov. Scott Walker Goes Back to His Day Job His presidential campaign over, Mr. Walker has relations to soothe in Wisconsin, a state that feels a bit forgotten, some political operatives say. Both Walker in the current race and Perry in the 2012 contest made the mistake that running on their record of success as governors would be enough to propel them into the White House.  Both  were very good governors who showed a knack for executive decision making.  What they found when they got into the race was they need to respond to questions outside their comfort zones and they were unprepared to do so.  Perry was much more prepared this go round but he was not able to stir enough interest and money for a second chance.  It is too bad, because he would have made a very good President.

NY Post Editorial: Harry Reid’s disgraceful Deflategate take He would rather complain about the Redskins name than deal with what looks like outright cheating.  But that is not surprising since Harry Reid is a notorious cheater at politics.  The allegations against certain members of the New England Patriots is that they tried to get a competitive advantage by deflating balls to make it easier for the quarterback to grip them in cold weather.  The punishment given the quarterback by the league is almost exactly the same as for those who cheat by using performance enhancing drugs to get a competitive advantage. In 2012 Harry Reid used an outrageous lie to get a competitive advantage by alleging that Mitt Romney had paid no taxes.  Democrats also used the IRS to get a competitive advantage by abusing Tea Party activist and other conservatives.  So it is not surprising that Reid would be indifferent to cheating.

They were changed by the White House to blame the video.  Morell does not go into it, but it is clear that Hillary Clinton went along with the political ruse.

Red States: The activist Left has given us ample evidence over the last several months that the narrative is more important than the truth, and Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV)10% all but confirms this in his latest interview. Reid, if you will remember, said the following from the Senate floor prior to the 2012 Presidential election: “So the word’s out that he hasn’t paid any taxes for ten years,” Reid said. “Let him prove that he has paid taxes, because he hasn’t. We already know from one partial tax return that he gave us, he has money hidden in Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and a Swiss bank account. Not making that up, that’s in the partial year that he gave us.” In the years that have followed since then, has Reid come to feel any remorse over his lie? After all, once an older Senator announces his retirement, sometimes he decides to be a little more honest in his views, since he doesn’t need to please people to get reelected. However, Reid still stands by his remarks. Courtesy of the Wa...

Moe Lane: ... ... There are two things that we know about the next election, more or less: first, the Democrats [are] tanking among white voters . Second, black voters aren’t going to come out for a non-black Presidential candidate with the same intensity that they did for Barack Obama. Add those two together, and the end result looks verybad for the Democratic party. And that’s why Hillary Clinton is still being propped up by the Democratic establishment: she’s the most prominent female politician that they have right now. I personally don’t think that she’s going to be able to recreate Barack Obama’s 2012 performance when it comes to white women voters, but former Secretary Clinton has a better shot at it than pretty much anybody else. …And that is, as they say, pretty much it. The appeal to women voters is even narrower because it is mainly single women who are still voting for Democrats.  So they are looking for single women in blue states to keep them in power.  ...

NY Times: Prepping for 2016, a Gathering of Republicans in Iowa Leans Hard to the Right Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times Jabin Botsford/The New York Times 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, challenged activists to demand that party leaders prove their conservative bona fides. The more centrist potential nominees for the party, such as Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, were barely represented at Saturday’s forum. With the failure of centrist like John McCain and Mitt Romney there is a feeling among many conservatives that nominating another centrist will be another path to defeat.  Cruz has ...

Washington Times: Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson said in a Fox News appearance that her former CBS News bosses purposely hid a clip of President Obama refusing to call the Benghazi attacks an act of terrorism in order to help him get re-elected. Mr. Obama told Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” the Sunday after the attack, “Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved. But obviously, it was an attack on Americans.” The clip didn’t air, though the transcript with that portion was sent to “CBS Evening News” staff, Ms. Attkisson told Fox . Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, took Mr. Obama to task during a presidential debate for his failure to call the attack an act of terror for 14 days — a perfect, and missed, opportunity for CBS to air the clip, Ms. Attkisson said. “That exchange, I believe, should have been pulled out immediately after the debate, which would have been very newsy at the time,” she said. “It was exclusive to CBS...

Steve Hundley: Romney got so much right It was not that Romney was not articulate.  His message was drowned out by a sea of negativity launched by Obama and his support from liberal millionaires.  He was also hurt by the IRS attacks on his own donors and their abuse of Tea Party groups who were sidelined by a hostile bureaucracy.  But Romney was right on Iraq and Russia and most of the major issues.  But the media was too fascinated by off the cuff remarks about the "47 percent." Events have shown that Obama's sarcasm and snark are no substitute for an intelligent foreign policy.

Washington Times: The Obama administration ’s just-released criminal complaint against the alleged mastermind of the Benghazi terrorist attacks provides a final contradiction to its own evolving explanations for what happened that day. The Justice Department’s indictment spells out a calculated conspiracy by Ahmed Abu Khatallah and associates to attack the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex, which killed four Americans. The indictment might be viewed as a death knell for a theory that the attack resulted from a spontaneous protest against a U.S.-produced video. Now in custody, Khatallah was a commander of Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, and is himself deemed a global terrorist by the State Department. During President Obama’s re-election campaign, the White House and senior officials blamed the September 11, 2012, onslaught as the work of demonstrators angered by an anti-Muslim YouTube video. Then officials spoke of a smattering of extremists who...

Erick Erickson: Hillary Clinton Mocked Romney on Russia, Then Goes To Hitler Comparisons While the Hitler comparison is historically accurate, she clearly lacked an understanding of the character of the Russian government under Putin when she was being critical of what Romney said about them being a geo-political foe.

Paul Bedard: Over seven in 10 Obama voters, and 55 percent of Democrats, regret voting for President Obama's reelection in 2012, according to a new Economist/YouGov.com poll. Conducted to test the media hype about a comeback by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney , the new poll found voters still uninspired by Romney, but also deeply dissatisfied with Obama who has so far failed to capitalize on his victory over 15 months ago. The poll asked those who voted for Obama's reelection a simple question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?” — Overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no. — 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes. — 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed. — 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents. ... I think this is a reflection of the dishonest campaign Obama ran and his lie of the year claims about being able to keep you healthcare pl...

WFB: Former CIA Director Mike Morell may have altered the Benghazi talking points to benefit the Obama administration during the 2012 election, Catherine Herridge of Fox News reports. On September 15 one day before Susan Rice made her infamous appearances on various Sunday shows, according to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report Morell received an email from the CIA station chief in Libya indicating the Benghazi attacks were “not/not an escalation of protests.” The report does not indicate when Morell read the email, but that same day Morell cut the word “Islamic” from the talking points and left the word “demonstration.” On September 16, Morell emailed embassy staff in Tripoli asking for more information. The FBI and CIA reviewed the closed circuit footage on September 18 showing there were no protests. Yet, President Obama still employed the “demonstration” verbiage just days later . Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Morell accompanied Susan Rice in a closed Nove...

Jim Geraghty: ... Remember, “ Bin Laden is dead and Detroit is alive ”? Detroit is bankrupt and al-Qaeda now controls more territory than ever. The facade of competence has crumbled for the Obama administration, but we are still in an important strguggle with whose who want to subject us to a tyranny like no other.

Richard Fernandez: ... The logic of class warfare is simple. It relies on convincing the public that even if the the administration has screwed up, the “teabaggers” will do worse. If the administration can demonize their rivals sufficiently, voters will stay home and desist from kicking them out.... ... It was part of a successful voter suppression effort in 2012 that defeated Romney, but with the threat of the demons removed the angst about Obama quickly returned.

The retreat from Iraq has given the enemy a vacuum to fill and they are doing it with vengence right now and it is also contributing to the mess in Syria.  You cannot end a war through retreat unless the enemy agrees and it has always been clear that radical Islam has not accepted defeat and will pursue victory.  The problem has been compounded by the ineptitude of the the Iraqi government. It turns out that "ending the war in Iraq" was just one more false and misleading claim Obama made in the 2012 election.

Washington Post: White House delayed policies before election The Obama administration didn’t want rules on the environment, worker safety and health care to be points of contention before the 2012 campaign, officials say. They did not want voters to know just how strong their liberal inclinations were.  They new the liberalism would be rejected by voters.

Daily Caller: If voters had been aware last year that they might lose their health-care plans when Obamacare went into effect, Republican President Mitt Romney would be sitting in the White House today, according to a poll released Friday. A Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research survey conducted from Nov. 18-20 asked voters who supported President Barack Obama in 2012: “As you may know, millions of Americans have lost their insurance plans despite President Obama’s promise that, quote, ‘if you like your plan, you can keep it.’ If you knew in 2012 that this promise was not true, would you still have voted for Barack Obama?” In response, 23 percent said they would not have voted to re-elect Obama, while 72 percent said they would still have voted for him. The largest number of defections were among female voters ages 18-54, 31 percent of whom said they would not have supported the president. An ABC/Washington Post poll released earlier this week found that if they had a do-over, Romney...

NY Post: In the home stretch of the 2012 presidential campaign, from August to September, the unemployment rate fell sharply — raising eyebrows from Wall Street to Washington. The decline — from 8.1 percent in August to 7.8 percent in September — might not have been all it seemed. The numbers, according to a reliable source, were manipulated. And the Census Bureau, which does the unemployment survey, knew it. Just two years before the presidential election, the Census Bureau had caught an employee fabricating data that went into the unemployment report, which is one of the most closely watched measures of the economy. And a knowledgeable source says the deception went beyond that one employee — that it escalated at the time President Obama was seeking reelection in 2012 and continues today. “He’s not the only one,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous for now but is willing to talk with the Labor Department and Congress if asked. The Census employee caught faking the result...

George Magliocca: Gerard Magliocca is a professor of constitutional law at Indiana University. His latest book is “American Founding Son: John Bingham and the Invention of the Fourteenth Amendment.” The Affordable Care Act was passed by Congress, signed by President Obama, upheld by the Supreme Court and reconfirmed by the president’s reelection. Many of its provisions have gone into effect. As Democrats have taken to saying, it is the law of the land . But contrary to what the president suggested in the Rose Garden this past week, that does not mean Obamacare is “ settled, and it is here to stay .” And it is not illegitimate for Republicans to use every lawful means at their disposal to stand in its way. Lawyers use the term “settled law” to describe court decisions that clearly establish a rule or a doctrine. Yet settled law also refers to legal actions that are accepted by society. Consider two of the most famous Supreme Court decisions: Brown v. Board of Education, which desegreg...