Palin endorses Hatch in Utah

And a hew and cry arose from Twitter.  Dispensing with Tea Party challenger Dan Liljenquist and calling Orrin Hatch “Mr. Balanced Budget,” Sarah Palin endorsed the incumbent Senator from Utah on Greta van Susteren last night:



Palin also made a lengthier argument for Hatch on her SarahPAC site early this morning:

Orrin Hatch is part of the one percent. No, not that one percent you’ve heard about. He’s part of the one percent of national politicians who I think should be reelected. Orrin Hatch is a life-long conservative whose dedication and devotion to the conservative cause and to his beloved and beautiful state of Utah is well documented. Orrin was a Utah state campaign chairman for a fledgling and failing presidential candidate deemed “too conservative” and “unelectable” by the media. Ironically, that candidate was the man who restored our country to be a “shining city on a hill” – Ronald Reagan.

When asked about Orrin Hatch, President Reagan once said: “If every member of the Senate were like Orrin Hatch, we’d be arguing over how to deal with a federal surplus, and that’s why I like to think of Orrin as ‘Mr. Balanced Budget.’ The United States has been strong enough to deter aggression and maintain the peace, in no small degree due to the efforts of Orrin Hatch. He has been a champion of those who fight for freedom.”

Free speech moment: Standing with Stacy McCain, Patterico, Liberty Chick, and Aaron Walker

I know what it’s like to find out that you’ve been targeted for violence — real violence, as in being targeted for death by an extremist who has picked out his target based on nothing more than writing about politics.  My situation got resolved, fortunately, but my life has not been quite the same since.  I had the good fortune of having friends who quietly made sure that my family had the security we needed for me to continue my work in American politics.

Looks like that time has come around for some of our friends in the blogosphere.  Aaron Walker, Patterico, Liberty Chick, and Stacy McCain have written extensively about a man named Brett Kimberlin and connections to violent political action.  I have only followed the story at a distance, and don’t hold myself out to be an expert on the subject.  The result of their investigations has prompted a flurry of legal harassment in some cases, and worse in others.  Today, the Boss Emeritus — who knows a thing or two about Unhinged reaction to free speech — rallies the blogosphere in defense of our friends:

Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.

Open thread: The Arkansas Democratic primary

Tonight’s the big night. If you read this post last week, you already know why. The odds of O actually losing this race are somewhere south of one percent, I’d guess, but they’re not absolute zero. Remember, a poll taken in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District roughly 10 days ago had The One leading attorney John Wolfe by seven thin points with 17 percent still undecided. Greatest upset evah?

“I’ve raised less than $2000,” says Wolfe. “My biggest contribution was $50; my smallest was $0.44.” The money helped him drive his Ford Edge from his Nashville home over to Arkansas, and to pay for some penny apiece robo-calls. These supplemented the 3000 calls that Wolfe has made personally, “just talking to voters.”…

Two weeks ago, a convincted felon and frequent candidate named Keith Judd won 41 percent of the Democratic primary vote in West Virginia. He took seven counties away from the president. Reporters, conducting interviews at the polls, learned that voters were willing to support anyone who wasn’t Obama, no matter what he did. Vice President Biden even absolved these people.

The Judd comparison is extremely unflattering to Wolfe. He’s an upstanding citizen, and reasonable, with an “economic populist” policy agenda that could fit snugly on Dylan Ratigan’s MSNBC show. When I call Wolfe, he’s ready with a 10-minute monologue about the need to restore Glass Steagall, the unfairness of the bailouts, and the good that a transaction tax could do.

As usual, Jay Cost is thinking big picture:

Obama loses 40% of the vote in two Democratic primaries

Barack Obama had no national primary challengers in his second nomination race in most states, including Kentucky. Who knew it would still be a tough choice for voters? Kentucky voters in the Democratic primary preferred the empty slot to the empty suit, apparently: About two out of every five Democratic voters in Tuesday’s presidential primary in Kentucky chose “uncommitted” instead of voting for President Barack Obama. … “I’m at a victory celebration for ‘uncommitted’ who performed admirably,” said [state GOP chair Steve] Robertson. “I’ve never met the guy but know that he highly embarrassed Obama.” Robertson contended that the Democrats who vote most regularly — those he termed “the Democrats of Democrats” — “said ‘no’ to their president. If the Kentucky Democratic Party doesn’t get it after this race, they need to stare long and hard at the results. This shows that Obama has even more than an uphill battle to win Kentucky in the fall.” That’s not the worst of it. Obama may end up losing as many as half of Kentucky’s counties to “Uncommitted” as well: Kentucky’s vote was notable, though, for the fact that there weren’t even any other candidates on the ballot. The most the “uncommitted” option won so far this primary season was previously 21 percent in the North Carolina primary earlier this month. Kentucky looks as though it will double that number. In addition, Obama looked as though he may lose more than half of the state’s 120 counties. This follows on the heels of Obama’s embarrassing outcome in West Virginia, where he lost 41% of the vote to a felon currently residing in federal prison in Texas. Both states are big coal producers, and voters in both parties have become disgusted with Obama’s attacks on the industry that keeps their economy running, and which keeps the lights on for the rest of the country. Neither state was expected to support Obama in November, but this level of anger among rank-and-file Democrats has to have Team Obama worried about their prospects in coal-heavy Ohio and Pennsylvania, which are much more critical to their hopes for re-election. On top of the embarrassing results in Kentucky, Obama also lost 40% of the Democratic vote in Bill Clinton’s home state yesterday, too. So far, challenger John Wolfe has 41% of the vote with 67 of 75 Arkansas counties reporting. Wolfe appears to be carrying almost half of the counties in Arkansas as well, just as “Uncommitted” did in Kentucky. In 1968, a weak win in New Hampshire against a tough primary challenge was enough to convince LBJ that he couldn’t win a general election. I don’t expect Obama to retire, but barely winning states against no competition sends a very similar signal in 2012.

Breitbart.com: Document supporting Elizabeth Warren’s ancestry claim doesn’t exist

The exciting conclusion to the Case of the Missing Marriage Application. Remember, after a bit of sleuthing, Michael Patrick Leahy determined that the whole 1/32 claim came down to an 1894 marriage application that had supposedly been unearthed by an amateur genealogist but which no one else had actually seen. Leahy couldn’t reach that genealogist on Friday; today, he did. Mystery solved:

Lynda Smith, the amateur genealogist who unknowingly found herself at the root of the false “Elizabeth Warren is 1/32 Cherokee” meme introduced to the media by “noted” genealogist Chris Child of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, acknowledged in an email to me this past Saturday, May 12, that her statement in a March 2006 family newsletter upon which Mr. Child based his claim of Ms. Warren’s Cherokee ancestry was made with no supporting documentation. It was, in fact, an honest mistake that Ms. Smith now acknowledges is entirely without foundation…

According to Ms. Smith:

“I am rather embarrassed about this posting of mine [on rootsweb about William J. Crawford], especially since it seems to be of some importance…. I’ve been through all papers in my Crawford file and I didn’t find who sent that Cherokee reference to me…”

Read the whole thing for an explanation of Smith’s mistake. The obvious question: Why did the professional genealogist who confirmed Warren’s ancestry for the Boston Herald rely on an amateur’s research instead of demanding to see the original documents? Investigative reporter and genealogist Thomas Lipscomb was wondering that too and sent this e-mail to Powerline:

No reputable genealogist or genealogical organization would ever use a family newsletter by an amateur genealogist as the basis for an opinion. They require direct documentation from a certified copy of a birth or marriage certificate or some other objective evidence. While family newsletters, or family web postings may provide a useful tip as to where the real documentation may be, they are just as likely to be dead wrong encrustations of family myth that may or may not be true, but can’t be proven.

While family members may find these myths of interest, professionals like the New England Historic Genealogical Society and Christopher Child, or the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, where I have served on the Heraldry Committee, will not accept them as documentation for any kind of genealogical claim. And they certainly won’t take a chance of embarrassing themselves professionally by making a public statement on the basis of flimsy evidence they regard as little more than rumor.

Read all of that too. But wait — you’re not done reading yet. One last piece is William Jacobson’s new post chronicling his e-mail exchange with the New England Historic Genealogical Society and the curious appearance in his comments of someone who’s very interested in spinning what the NEHGS originally told the Herald. Did they really confirm that Warren is Native American, or did they merely confirm that she had an ancestor by the name of O.C. Sarah Smith whom others were claiming was Native American? Spintastic.

Via the Daily Caller, here’s Warren standing by her claim even as Scott Brown’s campaign insists that there’s nothing left of her minority status. Alternate headline: “Elizabeth Warren: I’m very proud of my Native American heritage that apparently no one can document.”

Victory: Federal judge strikes down NLRB’s rule approving “ambush” union elections

Big win, but it’ll probably take electing President Romney to make sure they don’t make it stick on the second try.

“According to Woody Allen, eighty percent of life is just showing up,” Boasberg wrote in an opinion issued today. “When it comes to satisfying a quorum requirement, though, showing up is even more important than that.”

The rule change, challenged in court by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, simplified and shortened balloting at a time when the unionized share of the workforce is falling, according to labor relations consultant Phillip Wilson. The compressed schedule could have cut the time permitted for voting in half to as few as 15 days, Wilson said.

Unions win 87 percent of elections held 15 days or less after a request, a rate that falls to 58 percent when the vote takes place after 36 to 40 days, according to a February report by Bloomberg Government.

O’s two Democratic appointees wanted to give unions a shot at quietly gathering the necessary signatures for an election and then dumping the petition on management before the company had a chance to make its case to the employees against unionization. The third member of the NLRB, Republican Brian Hayes, opposed the plan. No problem, though — Dems win 2-1, right? Nope. Not if Hayes doesn’t vote:

When the final rule came up, the NLRB’s lone Republican commissioner, Brian Hayes, did not cast a vote. He was given only a matter of hours on the NLRB’s electronic ballot system before the Democratic majority went ahead and published it that day, without anyone requesting a response.

Mr. Becker claimed that Mr. Hayes had “effectively indicated his opposition” and therefore he was “present” even though he was not, in fact, present. Basically, the NLRB argued that the quorum requirement was satisfied because there were three members in office when the rule was “approved.”

With a final vote of just 2-0 on what’s supposed to be a five-member Board, the court ruled that there was no quorum and therefore the rule was invalid. Think of Hayes’s absence as the anti-union version of those Wisconsin Democrats who fled the Capitol last year in order to deny Scott Walker a quorum to pass his collective bargaining reforms. What happens, though, now that Obama’s gone and dubiously recess-appointed a bunch of new members to the NLRB? Presumably the new members will pass the “ambush” election rule with a quorum and then the next court battle will be over whether those recess appointments were in fact valid. That suit has already been filed, in fact; if the next court throws out the recess appointments then the ambush rule stays blocked. If not, then President Romney’s our only hope.

Breaking: Noted gay-marriage supporter finally drops cynical charade

Via Mediaite, 16 years after going on the record in support of gay marriage, The One finally decides it’s safe to reclaim his old position. (AmSpec’s James Antle tweets, “Obama may be the only person in America who supported gay marriage in 1996 but opposed it in 2011.”) His base will swoon over this, needless to say — expect the mother of all leg tingles on “Hardball” tonight — but even as someone who agrees with him, I can’t get past the pure opportunism of it. In fact, fellow gay-marriage supporter Andy Levy flags this NYT tweet in naked disgust:

Some Obama advisers were divided on decision to support same-sex marriage, but concluded his brand has been damaged enough by hedging.

That’s what it was all about: The brand, plus the political awkwardness created by Biden’s candor on “Meet the Press” this past Sunday. I used to ask whether anyone seriously believes O opposes gay marriage. Now I have to start asking whether anyone seriously believes O would have stopped feigning opposition if it was still a clear political winner for him to keep it up. His “courage” here, as in all things, is about his own reelection chances. If there’s anything for gay rights supporters to celebrate today, it’s the fact that popular opinion has shifted enough that even an opportunist as transparent as The One thinks it’s safe enough to take this position before a national election.

Romney scolds reporter after social-issues questions: “Aren’t there issues of significance that you’d like to talk about?”

Via BuzzFeed, a fun way to end Gay Marriage Day. The key bit comes at 2:15 but watch from the beginning or else you’ll miss why he’s so exasperated. This is what I was getting at in this morning’s post about why O was willing to take a calculated gamble on endorsing SSM. Simply put, he knows Romney doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s desperately trying to brand himself as the candidate of economic recovery before Obama can brand him as the candidate of waging war on women and putting dogs on car roofs and yadda yadda yadda. Remember, their big talking point against Romney, ludicrous as it is, is that he’s the most conservative nominee since Barry Goldwater. If they can bog him down in talking about hot-button social issues instead of unemployment, they can get him to play into that impression a bit. His rhetoric doesn’t have to be strident or

Angry Boehner to Dems: Enough with the “war on women” crap already

The exciting conclusion to the great student-loan interest-rate debate. Remember, Romney sided with Obama on extending the current lower rate a few days ago so the questions for House Republicans were (a) whether they’d go along and (b) if so, how they’d pay for it. The solution: Extend the rate and offset the $6 billion cost by cutting a similar amount from the new Prevention and Public Health Fund in ObamaCare instead. No way were the Democrats going to let the GOP get away that easily, though, so here was Pelosi this morning demagoging the issue in the shrillest, most electorally advantageous way possible:

“Their priority is to protect the subsidies for Big Oil,” said Pelosi at a Capitol Hill press conference on Thursday. “Our priority is to prevent breast cancer, cervical cancer, to immunize our children, so that they are healthy.”
Pelosi also charged that Republicans view Obamacare as a slush fund for the administration. “It may be a slush fund to him [House Speaker Boehner], but it’s survival to women,” she said. “It’s survival to women. And that just goes to show you what a luxury he thinks it is to have good health for women. We do not agree.”

Interesting point. If the Prevention Fund is this important to saving lives, obviously it’s pure insanity to touch it. Except that … Democrats themselves already tried to cut billions from the Fund:

Democrats voted solidly earlier this year to take money from the preventive health fund to help keep doctors’ Medicare reimbursements from dropping. Obama’s own budget in February proposed cutting $4 billion from the same fund to pay for some of his priorities.

Turns out women’s health isn’t any special priority of the Fund either. Skim the list of programs for yourself; WaPo’s Suzy Khimm notes that it’s aimed mainly at training doctors and reducing obesity and tobacco use. “War on Obesity” doesn’t do much to move votes, though, which is where Pelosi comes in. And that bring us to Boehner’s angry meme-busting rebuttal, which, according to ABC, inspired Maxine Waters, Donna Edwards, Marcy Kaptur, Yvette Clark and a few other women Democrats to actually walk out in fake-outrage. Perfect Friday night viewing.
The bill passed 215-195, incidentally, although fully 30 Republicans defected. (So did 13 Democrats or else the measure would have failed.) Obama’s threatening a veto but that’s pure posturing since Senate Democrats are bound to reject the House proposal in favor of one of their own before it reaches his desk. O simply wants to be on record as opposing this dangerous woman-hating cancer-spreading legislation in case any undecideds are following the coverage. Exit quotation from the White House: “Women, in particular, will benefit from this Prevention Fund, which would provide for hundreds of thousands of screenings for breast and cervical cancer.”

* * Vault * Green Room * Ed Morrissey Show Video: Obama’s campaign movie gets the “Mystery Science Theater” treatment

Via Jim Treacher, this is actually more “Pop-Up Video” than MST but Andrew Klavan and Bill Whittle are game in the Tom Servo and Crow roles, respectively. Carve out eight minutes and then forward it to any fencesitters you know. It’s an engaging, easily digestible way to counter Team Hopenchange’s myth-making about his first term with facts that the average voter might not otherwise spend time on. A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.

The unserious nature of Washington, Exhibit A: The student loan debate

Over the last week, President Obama made a series of speeches at colleges around the country in which he decried the coming rise of student loan interest rates on July 1. Obama, joined by Mitt Romney, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)  and House Republicans, has said he refuses to let rates rise from 3.4% to 6.8%. Following his lead, as Morgen Richmond noted yesterday, Democrats immediately jumped on the chance to raise taxes on upper earners. Republicans, meanwhile, pushed a bill through the House today that takes $5.9 billion from what Speaker Boehner called an “ObamaCare slush fund” to pay for the extension.
Unwittingly, this student loan debate highlights the debacle that is politics in Washington. To wit:
1. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said the House legislation was part of the “war on women” because it took from a women’s health program. I must say, she’s good at staying on message. Good at solving the nation’s problems, or leading her caucus to do so? Not so much.
2. Pelosi also denounced “robbing from Paula to pay Peter.” This from the same women who wants to tax the wealthy because they are wealthy. And while I actually agree with her that we should get rid of oil subsidies, tax credits, etc., a) I support eliminating all such subsidies and credits, not just for companies I personally or professionally dislike, and b) Pelosi is being intellectually dishonest in pretending many of the oil industry’s “subsidies” are specifically targeted to them. Jazz Shaw nicely pointed this out last year.
3. Much like they did with the payroll tax holiday extension, Republicans let themselves get suckered into a media game. The fact is that federal subsidies to higher education institutions and/or students increase the tuition students pay, and helps increase the size of the college bubble that is likely to come crashing down soon. Republicans would better serve the public in highlighting this fact instead of playing to the voters’ lack of economic knowledge.
4. The Republican National Committee has stepped up to challenge Obama’s travels to various states under the auspices of “official events,” despite the obvious campaign style and intention of the tour. (For the record, I am aware that President Bush did the same thing. That was just as wrong.) However, the fact that it took ABC News’ Jake Tapper to really bring this issue to the public’s attention says a lot about the willingness of Congress to do its duty and challenge the President on this and other issues of the public trust and corruption, since the RNC’s challenge has no actual legislative power or authority.
5. How many more “temporary” patches to subsidies, tax breaks, pay cuts and like can the federal government afford? The Alternative Minimum Tax, the Bush tax policies, the Doc Fix, the payroll tax holiday, etc. have all been temporarily patched to prevent angering this constituency or that demographic. Once again, elections take priority over effective policy on taxes, spending and other critical issues.
As the two parties head into formal election mode – Romney is about to be the GOP nominee for President, and President Obama just announced his first “official” campaign rally will be May 5 – the voters should note the unserious nature of Washington and give a bipartisan reminder in November that we want real solutions. After all, there are 1.2 million abortions annually in this country. We have the federal government violating the First Amendment with various mandates. Debt is skyrocketing, the economy stinks, Social Security and Medicare are going bankrupt fast, we refuse to solve our immigration problems, major tax hikes are on the horizon and we’re still sacrificing troops for Karzai despite no discernible national interest…and the primary focus of Washington is on student loans.
Of course, the people may not want real solutions. In that case, I’d say it’s time to start packing; America’s decline may soon be steepening.
Dustin Siggins is an associate producer with The Laura Ingraham Show and co-author with William Beach of The Heritage Foundation on a forthcoming book about the national debt. The opinions expressed are his own.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

Study: Analytic thinking causes religious belief to diminish

Alternate headline: “Hey, who’s up for an angry, thousand-comment thread on Friday night?”

First, students were randomly assigned to look at images of Auguste Rodin’s sculpture “The Thinker,” or of the ancient Greek statue of a discus thrower, “Discobolus.” Those who viewed “The Thinker” were prompted to think more analytically and expressed less belief in God — they scored an average of 41.42 on a 100-point scale, compared with an average of 61.55 for the group that viewed the discus thrower, according to the study.
Two additional experiments used word games rather than images. In one case, participants were asked to arrange a series of words into a sentence. Some were given neutral words and others were presented with trigger words such as “think,” “reason” and “analyze” to prime them to think more analytically. And indeed, those who got the “thinking” words expressed less religiosity on a 10-to-70 scale: They ranked themselves at 34.39, on average, while those in the control group averaged 40.16.
In the final experiment, students in the control group read text in a clear, legible font, while those in the other group were forced to squint at a font that was hard to read, a chore that has been shown to trigger analytic thinking. Sure enough, those who read the less legible font rated their belief in supernatural agents at 10.40 on a 3-to-21 scale, compared with 12.16 for those who read the clear font.

Lots of news stories about this on the wires today, as you might expect, but I think people are overinterpreting the results. As I understand it, the researchers aren’t claiming that analytic thinking will turn you atheist or that nonbelievers are sharper critical thinkers than the faithful. They’re claiming that intuition is a component of religious belief and that intuition tends to dim when the mind is preoccupied with reasoning, which means religious belief dims with it. Note: Dims, but not disappears. Per the study, you’re talking about small, if statistically significant, differences in belief between the test subjects and the control group. Says one psychologist of the results:

“In some ways this confirms what many people, both religious and nonreligious, have said about religious belief for a long time, that it’s more of a feeling than a thought,” says Nicholas Epley, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. But he predicts the findings won’t change anyone’s mind about whether God exists or whether religious belief is rational. “If you think that reasoning analytically is the way to go about understanding the world accurately, you might see this as evidence that being religious doesn’t make much sense,” he says. “If you’re a religious person, I think you take this evidence as showing that God has given you a system for belief that just reveals itself to you as common sense.”

Yeah, I’m not sure why these results are controversial; they can be interpreted in different ways. For instance, religious friends tell me that their faith isn’t merely something they’ve reasoned through but something they “feel” or “experience.” For God to enter your heart, you must be “open” to him. In other words, faith isn’t strictly analytic; there’s more to it, or so I’m told. It may be that, as your mind adjusts to perform analytic tasks by applying certain known criteria, its capacity to analyze something that doesn’t operate according to known criteria momentarily decreases. You become less “open” to supernatural possibilities. If that’s true, then it’s not that “intuitive” understandings are necessarily false (although maybe they are), it’s that it’s hard for the brain to switch quickly from one paradigm to the other. Or maybe there’s another explanation? I’m all for the “atheists are inherently awesome” theory, if anyone wants to offer it!

Quotes of the day

“A year after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, President Barack Obama’s team is launching another precision operation: a full-scale public relations offensive aimed at using the bin Laden mission to boost the president’s reelection bid…
“‘It was the defining moment of the first term. To think people aren’t going to talk about it, Republicans are really naive,’ said Chris Lehane, a former spokesman for Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). ‘It’s going to be very difficult for the Republican Party, [whose] entire campaign in 2004 was predicated on issues like this, complaining somehow about all of this. … Any number of presidents, Democrat and Republican, did not succeed in getting bin Laden, and there’s one who did.’…
“‘There really is a double standard. … President Bush could barely use the number 9/11 in a sentence without somebody accusing him of politicizing 9/11,’ Fleischer said, adding that he thinks it is ‘perfectly appropriate for both presidents’ to discuss such events in their campaigns.

*** “President Barack Obama, taking an election-year victory lap of sorts one year after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, did an unprecedented television interview in the White House’s strategic nerve center, the Situation Room.
“NBC’s sit-down with Obama will air on May 2, one year after Navy SEALs dropped into the al-Qaida chief’s compound in the Pakistani garrison city of Abbottabad and killed him. The network said it had also interviewed Obama’s top national security and foreign policy aides, including: Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then-Joints Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough and John Brennan, Obama’s homeland security and counterterrorism adviser.”

*** “U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) released the following statement on President Obama’s decision to play politics with the one year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death:
“Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of September 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad. This is the same President who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden ‘to score political points.’
“This is the same President who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn’t ‘spike the ball’ after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get reelected.
“No one disputes that the President deserves credit for ordering the raid, but to politicize it in this way is the height of hypocrisy.”

*** “Hours before McCain, a spokeswoman for Romney’s campaign likewise criticized the video.
“‘The killing of Osama bin Laden was a momentous day for all Americans and the world, and Governor Romney congratulated the military, our intelligence agencies, and the president. It’s now sad to see the Obama campaign seek to use an event that unified our country to once again divide us, in order to try to distract voters’ attention from the failures of his administration,’ press secretary Andrea Saul said.”

*** “But in 2008 Obama likewise thought killing the 9/11 mastermind wasn’t the central goal, saying the top priority should be capturing the leader alive.
“‘What would be important would be for us to do it in a way that allows the entire world to understand the murderous acts that he’s engaged in and not to make him into a martyr, and to assure that the United States government is abiding by basic conventions that would strengthen our hand in the broader battle against terrorism,’ Obama said as he unveiled his new national security team in June 2008.”

*** “Vice President Joe Biden traveled to New York University to give a speech lauding the decision to kill bin Laden, at the same time accusing Romney of shying away from the hunt. Biden quoted a 2007 Associated Press interview in which Romney said, ‘It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person,’ and suggested that Romney essentially gave up on the bin Laden hunt while Barack Obama courageously stayed the course…
“So just what did Romney say in that interview? Yes, he did say ‘moving heaven and earth,’ but he also discussed at some length a greater war on terror that targeted not only al Qaeda but other terrorist groups as well…
“GOVERNOR ROMNEY: I think, I wouldn’t want to over-concentrate on Bin Laden. He’s one of many, many people who are involved in this global Jihadist effort. He’s by no means the only leader. It’s a very diverse group – Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood and of course different names throughout the world. It’s not worth moving heaven and earth and spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person. It is worth fashioning and executing an effective strategy to defeat global, violent Jihad and I have a plan for doing that.”

*** “Earlier this week, an Obama-appointed federal judge ruled in favor of the government in a national security case (needless to say), when he denied a FOIA request to obtain all photos and videos taken during and after the raid in Pakistan that resulted in Osama bin Laden’s death. The DOJ responded to the lawsuit by arguing (needless to say) that the requested materials ‘are classified and are being withheld from the public to avoid inciting violence against Americans overseas and compromising secret systems and techniques used by the CIA and the military.’ Among other things, disclosure of these materials would have helped resolve the seriously conflicting statements made by White House officials about what happened during the raid and what its actual goals and operating rules were.
“But while the Obama administration has insisted to the court that all such materials are classified and cannot be disclosed without compromising crucial National Security secrets, the President’s aides have been continuously leaking information about the raid in order to create politically beneficial pictures of what happened.”

*** “President Obama is shamelessly turning the one decision he got right into a pathetic political act of self-congratulation,’ McCain boldly declared, despite backing the President on the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, defending the President’s involvement in Libya from Republicans, and applauding the President’s decision to block the release of photos documenting abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Candidate McCain also used the idea that he would make the decision to order the killing of Osama bin Laden while a putative President Obama would not on the campaign trail in 2008.
“Expect more to come of the Romney campaign trying to paint President Obama’s foreign policy as “weak” while agreeing in principle with everything the President’s done and pushing for more of the same.”

*** “If showing OBL-as-a-corpse photos would incite the Islamists, why wouldn’t reelection campaign ads incite them, too?”

Weekly initial jobless claims at 388K

Up? Down? All around?  The new level for weekly jobless claims this week hit 388,000, according to the Department of Labor, which would have been an increase of 2,000 over last week’s initial level of 386,000.  Last week’s report got revised upward by 3,000, though, so the DoL calls this a decrease of 1,000:

In the week ending April 21, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 388,000, a decrease of 1,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 389,000. The 4-week moving average was 381,750, an increase of 6,250 from the previous week’s revised average of 375,500.
The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate was 2.6 percent for the week ending April 14, unchanged from the prior week.
The advance number for seasonally adjusted insured unemployment during the week ending April 14 was 3,315,000, an increase of 3,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,312,000. The 4-week moving average was 3,311,750, a decrease of 9,750 from the preceding week’s revised average of 3,321,500.

The four-week moving average tells the story more clearly.  Just two weeks ago, it was at 368,500 while the jobless claims increased.  The ramp-up in joblessness is not a huge trend, but it’s definitely turning into a trend, and it’s going in the wrong direction.
AP’s Chris Rugaber notes that this is the highest level in three months, both in the weekly level and in the four-week rolling average:

The number of people seeking U.S. unemployment benefits remained stuck near a three-month high last week, a sign that hiring has likely slowed since winter.

The Labor Department said Thursday that weekly applications dipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000. It was little changed from the previous week’s figure, the highest since Jan. 7.

The four-week average, a less volatile measure, rose to 381,750, also the highest in three months.

Rugaber shoots down the notion that the slowdown occurred because of “temporary layoffs during the spring holidays” by noting that hiring has obviously not rebounded since.  I’m not aware of any significant seasonal cycle of drops in employment over spring breaks.  The fact that the March jobs report was so mediocre and that this trend has been under way for a month makes it pretty clear that this is no seasonal burp.
For comedy, try Reuters, which headlines its report “Jobless claims ease but four-week average rises”:

 New claims for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week but a trend reading rose to its highest since January, the latest sign of a weaker pace of healing in the still-struggling labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 388,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The prior week’s figure was revised up to 389,000 from the previously reported 386,000.

Er … right.  Jobless claims “eased” only if you compare the revised number from last week to the initial number from this week.  If the pattern holds, next week’s revised number will be a few thousand higher than today’s number, which is exactly what we saw over the last few weeks.  The story in this case isn’t that jobless claims are easing, but that they’re increasing.  The AP gets it right, while Reuters apparently is trying out for a spot on Team Obama.
Hey, at least they didn’t repeat the 400K myth this week.  Maybe we’ll see less of it as claims keep climbing higher to the 400K level.
Update: Suitably Flip has more on the revisions game:

For the 59th week of the last 60, the previous initial jobless claim report was revised upward, from 386,000 to 389,000.  And once again, this enables the Labor Department to report a week-over-week decline in new jobless claims, from the adjusted 389,000 to an adjusted 388,000.  Upon next week’s revision, this week will almost certainly have shown another increase.
If that sounds familiar, it may be because last week, the government reported a decline of 2,000 (but only after upwardly revising the previous week by 8,000).
Looking back over the last five weeks, the cumulative reported weekly changes (from previous weeks’ adjusted data to the new unadjusted numbers) showed a net decline of 1,000, despite an actual cumulative net increase of 24,000.  And that’s without the 5th revision factored in, at which point the cumulative increase will be closer to 30,000.
In addition to serving as fodder for another round of “Jobless Claims Fall” headlines, this week’s underestimate has the additional side effect of avoiding the probably true headline “Jobless Claims Reach New 2012 High” from being written (at least for another week).  They started at 390,000 in early January and, assuming next week brings an upward revision of more than 2,000 (revisions have ranged from +3,000 to +10,000 over the last month), then we’re already sitting at year-to-date highs.

Give credit to the AP for actually headlining the news, rather than the spin.

The Ed Morrissey Show: Kerry Picket, Steven Crowder

Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), Kerry Picket brings us up to date on the goings-on inside the nation’s capital, and Steven Crowder returns to discuss his latest video efforts.
The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!Video streaming by Ustream

Marizela Perez has been missing for a year.

Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.

Michelle has a new update on the case on the one-year anniversary:

Exactly one year ago today, my 18-year-old cousin Marizela (known affectionately to her family and friends as “Emem” or “Mei”) Perez disappeared from the University of Washington campus in Seattle.

She is still missing.

Those words form on the computer screen with disembodied disbelief. But my heart is screaming:

SHE IS STILL MISSING. WHY, DEAR GOD, WHY?!!!!!

The not-knowing is every parent’s worst nightmare. It brought normal life to a standstill for Marizela’s parents, Edgar and Jasmin. And yet, they have to keep living and working and praying for their only daughter. Because that is what they must do. Their strength and dignity through all the suffering has been an inspiration to me.

There have been no new developments in Emem’s case. No word from the police or the medical examiner’s office. No activity on her bank accounts or social media accounts.

And no response from the Google legal department to our request for help in January.

Keep the prayers coming.

Great news: Pitiful sporting event likely to be canceled

In an age when left and right agree on so little, my friends, let’s at least agree on this.

Many players who will be selected during this week’s NFL draft are regarded as future Pro Bowl selections, but the game itself likely will be suspended this season and beyond, according to league sources…
If the game is suspended, the league still would have a Pro Bowl balloting process to identify the season’s top players and would direct teams to remain open to negotiating Pro Bowl clauses into player contracts and to honor Pro Bowl incentive and escalator clauses to avoid any serious conflict with the players association. Those players also likely would be honored in some fashion during Super Bowl week.
The league and union held discussions last week on whether the Pro Bowl can become more attractive but neither side has embraced an alternative solution, sources said. Both sides also concede that heightened player health and safety issues have been a contributing factor to a diminished product.

Over at NBC’s “Pro Football Talk” site, the online poll on whether to cancel the game is currently split 82/17 in favor of euthanasia. I’ll neither confirm nor deny that I’ve ever watched the Pro Bowl, but if I’ve watched, then hypothetically I might have wondered if the game would actually be better as flag football. With the fear of brute contact gone, guys could play harder. You’d tune in to watch the NFL’s best and brightest using rules designed for eight-year-olds, right?
In honor of the occasion, here’s one of my all-time favorite Onion vids. Question: Is there any way to make this game kinda sorta competitive? There are plenty of other things the league could do the week before the Super Bowl to pique fans’ interest — here’s one — but if they’re intent on keeping the Pro Bowl, their options are slim. One obvious possibility is paying giant bonuses to the winners. To America’s everlasting shame, the Pro Bowl actually gets higher ratings than baseball’s All-Star Game; a newly competitive Pro Bowl would get higher ratings still. Give the winning side an enormous chunk of the ad revenue. The other possibility that occurs to me is following baseball’s lead by rewarding the winning side with some sort of home-field advantage. That won’t work for the Super Bowl since it’s played on a neutral field, but what if teams in the winning conference got an extra home game the following season against teams in the losing conference? I doubt that’d fly since there’s likely too much money to be lost in playing seven games at home instead of eight, but if you want a competitive game, that’d do it. Any other ideas? Surely there are ways to make this embarrassing spectacle slightly less embarrassing.

* Home * Vault * Green Room * Ed Morrissey Show Fed to WH: We’re not going to bail you out

With economic indicators flashing red all over the place, the Obama administration may be looking at some bad news this spring on economic growth. If they’re looking to the Fed to toss them a lifeline, they may be waiting a while. Despite some expectations that the Federal Reserve might embark on a third round of quantitative easing, Fed chair Ben Bernanke announced yesterday that they will wait and see — and keep from causing any more damage:

Facing fire from the left and the right, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke on Wednesday mounted a spirited defense of the central bank’s wait-and-see approach to the economy, arguing that his detractors fail to grasp the damage that could be done if the Fed were to prematurely take any new actions.

After its third policymaking meeting of the year, the Fed left short-term interest rates near zero on Wednesday and said it planned to hold them there until at least late 2014. As it has all year, the Fed continued to say that the economy faced headwinds but would gradually improve. Economic projections from senior Fed officials suggested the economy would grow a bit faster than anticipated early this year and the unemployment rate would come down a bit more than earlier thought, perhaps ending the year around 8 percent.

Bernanke attacked Paul Krugman for demanding an inflationary policy in order to produce a little more incentive for jobs growth. One would think that the two previous rounds of quantitative easing — which has weakened the dollar and helped drive energy prices higher — would be enough for any interventionist to love. Bernanke called Krugman’s demands “very reckless”:

Bernanke seemed to take most umbrage at Krugman’s critique, in the New York Times Magazine, which suggests that the Fed has refused to take action to help the out-the-work because it worries too much that such efforts can cause inflation. Economic theory holds that creating money to spur lending and drive economic growth — what the Fed does — tends to cause prices and wages to rise, but the Fed expects that inflation will come in at or below its target of 2 percent for the next few years.

“The question is, does it make sense to actively seek a higher inflation rate in order to achieve a slightly increased pace of reduction in the unemployment rate?” Bernanke said. “That would be very reckless.”

Not to mention ineffective. We’ve already had two rounds of quantitative easing. Has that solved unemployment? Spurred economic growth? Not at all. In fact, we’re heading into the third straight Stagnant Spring thanks to the incompetent and interventionist policies of this administration, the weakening of the dollar, and regulatory and tax environments which have predictably driven investors out of the market. Few of those who hold capital want to take risks in the US economy, thanks in large part to all of the uncertainties introduced by Obama’s team and all of the ad hoc interventions that keep taking place.

Bernanke did say that if the economy deteriorates significantly, the Fed would be prepared to intervene again. They don’t have much choice. The current administration won’t change course, and the only option Bernanke has is to take the helm and steer the ship away from the biggest icebergs. If the Fed has to do that a third time by essentially printing money, the temporary lift it provides to the economy will be far outweighed by the demonstration of Obama’s impotence and incompetence in economic policy.

Egyptian parliament considering bill legalizing, er, sex with spouse after death?

Reminds me of that story in 2006 about Iran supposedly requiring its Jewish citizens to wear yellow badges: Hard to believe, yet not nearly as hard to believe as it should be. In fact, blogs across the political spectrum have bit on this item today, suggesting that when it comes to claims involving Islamists behaving like rank degenerates, even the left can’t muster much skepticism anymore.

One question, though. Am I right in thinking that this whole thing is being pushed by a single source? Read the Al-Arabiya piece for yourself and see:

Egypt’s National Council for Women (NCW) has appealed to the Islamist-dominated parliament not to approve two controversial laws on the minimum age of marriage and allowing a husband to have sex with his dead wife within six hours of her death according to a report in an Egyptian newspaper.

The appeal came in a message sent by Dr. Mervat al-Talawi, head of the NCW, to the Egyptian People’s Assembly Speaker, Dr. Saad al-Katatni, addressing the woes of Egyptian women, especially after the popular uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak in February 2011…

According to Egyptian columnist Amro Abdul Samea in al-Ahram, Talawi’s message included an appeal to parliament to avoid the controversial legislations that rid women of their rights of getting education and employment, under alleged religious interpretations.

“Talawi tried to underline in her message that marginalizing and undermining the status of women in future development plans would undoubtedly negatively affect the country’s human development, simply because women represent half the population,” Abdul Samea said in his article.

A cleric in Morocco did indeed approve the practice of, er, “farewell intercourse” within the past few years, but unless I’m missing something in the Al-Arabiya story, the evidence that the bill exists — and that the NCW has complained about it to the speaker — is purely Samea’s say-so. Half a dozen other articles I read today about this all point back to the Al-Arabiya article; as far as I can tell, no one named in the story has spoken to any media about it or otherwise confirmed that what Samea claims is true. And who’s Samea? According to the CSM, that’s curious too:

Today, Egypt’s state-owned Al Ahram newspaper published an opinion piece by Amr Abdul Samea, a past stalwart supporter of the deposed Hosni Mubarak, that contained a bombshell: Egypt’s parliament is considering passing a law that would allow husbands to have sex with their wives after death…

There’s of course one problem: The chances of any such piece of legislation being considered by the Egyptian parliament for a vote is zero. And the chance of it ever passing is less than that. In fact, color me highly skeptical that anyone is even trying to advance a piece of legislation like this through Egypt’s parliament. I’m willing to be proven wrong. It’s possible that there’s one or two lawmakers completely out of step with the rest of parliament. Maybe.

But extreme, not to mention inflammatory claims, need at minimum some evidence (and I’ve read my share of utter nonsense in Al Ahram over the years). The evidence right now? Zero.

Al-Ahram is controlled by the Egyptian government, which I assume means it’s heavily influenced by the ruling military junta. And the junta, of course, is invested in discrediting the Islamists in order to defend its prerogatives against parliament’s growing power. (It’s worth noting too that Al-Arabiya, which picked up the story from Al-Ahram, is a Saudi outfit and the Saudis are mighty anxious about the idea of Islamist populists seizing power from sclerotic tyrannical regimes.) Again, none of this is to say the story isn’t true — the part about the marriage age being lowered is all too plausible — but it’s not hard to see why Mubarak allies might want to make something up or inflate something one of the fringier parliamentarians said in order to galvanize international opinion against the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists. It is, however, hard to see why the MB would allow parliament to entertain a law like this at a moment when they’re busy gladhanding westerners to reassure them that the Brotherhood are “modern” Islamists who are worthy of foreign aid and trade deals. If this really is being kicked around by MPs, I’d bet it’s the Salafists who are pushing it. But we’ll see.

Anyone seen any news items today confirming this with sources besides Samea? If so, shoot us an e-mail at the tips line and I’ll update.

Is Obama really in trouble with young voters?

There has been a wavelet of stories from outlets like The Atlantic, The Hill and Yahoo! suggesting Pres. Obama could be in trouble with the youth vote. The Atlantic’s Molly Ball notes:

Less than half of 18-to-24-year-old voters want Obama to win reelection, and he leads a generic Republican candidate by just 7 percentage points, according to a survey of youth voter attitudes released Thursday by the Public Religion Research Institute and Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs.

The poll did not test Obama against Romney directly, but found more enthusiasm for Obama than Romney. The Hill’s Amie Parnes found a somewhat different result in another poll:

Obama leads presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney 60 percent to 34 when it comes to the youth vote, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. But Obama’s enthusiasm has taken a nosedive, the poll shows. In 2008, 63 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds took a big interest in the election. Four years later, 45 percent have the same level of interest, reflecting the most sizable drop in one of the major voting groups.

Yahoo’s Chris Moody reports on yet another survey:

The wide-ranging survey of 3,096 18-29 year-olds conducted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics shows 43 percent said they plan to vote for Obama in November, while just 26 percent plan to vote for Romney. The last time Harvard matched Obama against a GOP challenger, in December 2011, they asked who young voters thought would win the election: 36 percent said Obama would lose, a sign that support for Obama is increasing closer to the election.

***

However, Obama’s approval rating has dipped by six percentage points from Obama’s first year in office, according to a Harvard poll taken in November 2009, from 52 percent to 58 percent. That could be a sign that the youth vote is far more up for grabs in 2012 than it was in 2008, when Obama overwhelming won the youth vote.

As John Sides notes, these types of stories should always be read in the context of a number of polls, as well as the broader population and other demographics. Sides notes that a recent Pew poll has Obama over Romney 61%-33% among 18-29 year-olds, in comparison to Obama’s 66%-33% victory with the demographic in the 2008 exit poll. Those numbers are better for Obama than some of the polls cited above, but what Sides notes is that Obama’s numbers now are down 3%-5% among all of the age demographics from the 2008 exit poll results. Moreover, as Andrew Gelman notes, nonuniform swings are difficult to detect in a survey, because they have a larger margin of error. In short, Obama’s problem with young voters is likely reflective of Obama’s problem with voters generally.

So why is Obama wooing college students and slow jamming the news with Jimmy Fallon at taxpayer expense this week? Because Team Obama, like most everyone, is anticipating a much closer election in 2012 than in 2008. If Obama were to drop from 66% to the level of youth support John F. Kerry got in 2004 (~54%), he would lose ~2% of the overall vote, which he likely cannot afford. We cannot know this for certain. Obama’s 2008 performance with young voters was tied in part to his boost in performance and turnout of minority voters. Conversely, we do not know whether the Republican-leaning youth vote was particularly depressed. While the latest raft of polls might look like Obama’s youth vote has softened, the GOP should not take it for granted any more than Obama does.

Update (Allahpundit): One more data point for you. New from Gallup:

That 64/29 split is right in line with O’s margin over McCain in 2008, which is a testament to the amazing durability of his appeal to young voters. Even after four years of economic dreck, with recent college grads facing a brutal job market, they’re still his strongest age demographic by far. I think Romney’s strategy with respect to young adults during this campaign will be simply to avoid giving Obama any powerful wedge issues to get them excited. That’s why he sided with O on extending the student-loan interest rate and against the congressional GOP. He knows he’s going to lose this demographic by 30 points; his best bet at neutralizing them is making sure they have no strong reason to turn out. Judging by Gallup’s numbers, it’s working so far.

This post was promoted from GreenRoom to HotAir.com.
To see the comments on the original post, look here.

New Secret Service scandal in El Salvador?

It didn’t take too long for KIRO-TV to confirm what the Washington Post suggested yesterday — that the Secret Service scandal in Colombia was not a unique event. CBS picked up on the report this morning, and reporter Chris Halsne tells what he found when he traveled to El Salvador this week: This source witnessed the majority of the men drink heavily (“wasted,” “heavily intoxicated”) at the strip club. He says most of the Secret Service “advance-team” members also paid extra for access to the VIP section of the club where they were provided a number of sexual favors in return for their cash. Although our source says he told the agents it was a “really bad idea” to take the strippers back to their hotel rooms, several agents bragged that they “did this all the time” and “not to worry about it.” Our source says at least two agents had escorts check into their rooms. It is unclear whether the escorts who returned to the hotels were some of the strippers from the same club.

These alleged incidents in El Salvador occurred a full year prior to recent revelations that secret service agents used prostitutes in Cartagena, Colombia, on a presidential trip this month.

To further confirm information provided about behaviors in El Salvador that reportedly occurred in March of 2011, Halsne interviewed the owner of the San Salvador strip club in which the subcontractor said they visited. The strip club’s owner confirmed a large number of U.S. secret service agents (and some military escorts) “descended on his club” that week prior to President Obama’s visit. He claims agents were there at least three nights in a row. “No surprise to me.” The owner told Halsne his club routinely takes care of high-ranking employees of the U.S. embassy in San Salvador as well as visiting FBI and DEA agents. The owner says his reputation for “security” and “privacy” makes him a popular strip club owner with “those who want to be discreet.” He told Halsne during a lengthy interview, he doesn’t allow prostitution inside the club and that all his “girls” are at least 18-years-old. He says the girls can do what they want after work, but he discourages them from making contact with customers at other locations.

Once again, this involves an advance team sent ahead to determine security risks and map out routes for the President. The advance teams are critical for security, since the President’s protective detail cannot leave him to make those determinations for themselves. Security depends on having a professional advance team focused on the job, and not on the strip clubs and hookers — and certainly not on allowing the hookers to stay in rooms where sensitive information about the visit and travel plans might be accessible.

Halsne says the Secret Service hasn’t contacted him yet to hear about his information on the El Salvador trip, but they will soon enough. CBS reports that Halsne has the names of at least some of the agents involved:

Halsne reportedly has names of some of the agents allegedly involved in the partying and has viewed records which add credibility to the subcontractor’s eyewitness account.

Perhaps the House and Senate committees on Homeland Security will be interested in talking with Halsne, too.