[NYTIMES] Rolling Stone magazine retracted its article about a brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity after the release of a report on Sunday that concluded the widely discredited piece was the result of failures at every stage of the process. File under...well, you know where to file it. Crash.
The report, published by the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and commissioned by Rolling Stone, said the magazine failed to engage in "basic, even routine journalistic practice"
...the irony that the New York Times is reporting this is thick, thick, thick...
to verify details of the ordeal that the magazine's source, identified only as Jackie,
Who now should be named as she is not a rape victim and is (very likely) the perpetrator of a hoax.
described to the article's author, Sabrina Rubin Erdely.
Who is herself no stranger to questionable journalism; check out her history.
Burn.
On Sunday, Ms. Erdely, in her first extensive comments since the article was cast into doubt, apologized to Rolling Stone's readers, her colleagues and "any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article."
She didn't apologize to the frat house. Guess the lawyers managed to muzzle her on that one.
Fireball.
In an interview discussing Columbia's findings, Jann S. Wenner, the publisher of Rolling Stone, acknowledged the piece's flaws but said that it represented an isolated and unusual episode and that Ms. Erdely would continue to write for the magazine. The problems with the article started with its source, Mr. Wenner said. He described her as "a really expert fabulist storyteller" who managed to manipulate the magazine's journalism process. When asked to clarify, he said that he was not trying to blame Jackie, "but obviously there is something here that is untruthful, and something sits at her doorstep." Wreckage.
The Columbia report cataloged a series of errors at Rolling Stone, finding that the magazine could have avoided trouble with the article if certain basic "reporting pathways" had been followed. Written by Steve Coll, the Columbia journalism school's dean; Sheila Coronel, the dean of academic affairs; and Derek Kravitz, a postgraduate research scholar at the university, the report, at nearly 13,000 words, is longer than the 9,000-word article, "A Rape on Campus." No survivors.
After its publication last November, the article stoked a national conversation about sexual assault on college campuses and roiled the university. No insurance.
The police in Charlottesville, Va., said last month they had "exhausted all investigative leads" and found "no substantive basis" to support the article's depiction of the assault. Jackie did not cooperate with the police and declined to be interviewed for the Columbia report. She also declined, through her lawyer, Palma Pustilnik, to be interviewed for this article. She is no longer in touch with some of the advocates who first brought her to the attention of Rolling Stone, said Emily Renda, a rape survivor working on sexual assault issues at the University of Virginia. Any further attempts at "investigative" reporting by Rolling Stone can be dismissed, even if they come with pictures and signed confessions.
Mr. Wenner said Will Dana, the magazine's managing editor, and the editor of the article, Sean Woods, would keep their jobs. Good thing, since they wouldn't be able to find jobs anyplace reputable.
In an interview, Mr. Dana said he had reached many of the same conclusions as the Columbia report in his own efforts to examine the article, but he disagreed with the report's assertion that the magazine had staked its reputation on the word of one source. "I think if you take a step back, our reputation rests on a lot more than this one story," he said. They'd have to settle for writing for some rag like the New York Times.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2015 01:47 ||
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#1
>On Sunday, Ms. Erdely, in her first extensive comments since the article was cast into doubt, apologized to Rolling Stone's readers, her colleagues and "any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article."
#7
Remember these are the same lying 'journalists' that will cover the 2016 election.
Note to any Trunk hopeful - spend the next year attacking the media for its long list of lies. Get that doubt in the minds of the swing electorate early and often.
#10
On Sunday, Ms. Erdely, in her first extensive comments since the article was cast into doubt, apologized to Rolling Stone's readers, her colleagues and "any victims of sexual assault who may feel fearful as a result of my article."
Sounds like the victims were the frat boys. How about apologizing to them?
#11
Reading between the lines, she's sorry that she didn't write it better so as to hide the details that helped some catch onto the fiction almost immediately. Another edit and it could have taken weeks.
Avoided specific mention of which Fraternity, avoided bodily wounds, even exact days could have given this story legs enough to do the intended damage. Instead sloppy journalism made it easy to detect as a phony.
Can a group of states ban together for the first time since 1787 to change the Constitution at a convention? It all comes down to a matter of math and a few important numbers: 5, 27, 34, 38, 535 and 9.
The current debate is about a movement to call a convention of states to propose a balanced budget amendment, instead of leaving that task to Congress.
Article V of our Constitution lays out two ways to amend the current document. One way has been used 17 times since the 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights were ratified in 1791. So far, these 27 amendments have originated in Congress and been sent to the states for approval. Once three-quarters of the individual states ratify an amendment, it becomes the law.
The second method has never been used. It involves petitions from at least 34 states to call a constitutional convention, where one or several amendments are proposed. The amendment or amendments are then sent on to the states, where 38 states are needed for ratification.
If you are really interested in big questions involving constitutional conventions, there is an excellent overview available from Thomas Neale at the Congressional Research Service. It discusses the background of the Article V process and some current movements underway to bring some issues to national prominence using Article V.
Currently, the Balanced Budget Amendment Task Force, a group that tracks petitions, says there are 27 active petitions on this issue that have been filed with Congress. The group is targeting 13 additional states, hoping to get seven states to approve balanced budget resolutions. That magic number of 34 would force the 535 members of Congress to find even more creative ways to waffle act.
Among these 13 states -- Maine, West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Arizona, Wyoming, Montana, Washington and Idaho -- 10 currently are controlled by the Republicans, according to the National Council of State Legislatures. So in theory, balanced budget proponents need to get seven of the 10 GOP-led states on board with passing amendment petitions.
But that is where the complications begin, once there is a widely recognized claim that two-thirds of the states have asked for a constitutional convention. For starters, some states could rescind their amendment applications as the quorum number gets closer to 34 states. Maryland is a Democrat-controlled state that has an active Balanced Budget petition, for example. And then are big questions about how the 535 members of Congress would handle the convention process.
"The Article V Convention presents many questions that Congress would be called on to consider, and perhaps answer, in the event a convention became a serious possibility. If so, Congress would not be without resources," said Neale from the CRS back in April 2014.
One immediate problem would be how Congress would acknowledge of the acceptance of the petitions as meeting the Article V requirement. Critics have pointed out that not all of the petitions have the same wording. Another issue would be the type of conventions called by Congress for the nomination and then ratification of an amendment or amendments.
Despite trying 22 times between 1973 and 1992, Congress wasn't able to approve legislative rules for a constitutional convention process. In the scenario of a balanced-budget amendment convention, Congress would need to establish who can attend the convention to finalize the wording of a single amendment -- or if such a convention can propose multiple amendments.
Then Congress would need to determine if state legislatures would ratify the new amendments or if an ad-hoc conventions of state residents would ratify the proposed amendments.
There are deep political and legal disagreements about these concepts, as well as the proper role of Congress in determining convention rules, so the issues could come down to number 9 -- as in the nine Justices of the Supreme Court.
But in one past case where the constitutional convention quorum was almost met, Congress settled the issue in 1912 by passing an amendment that would have been proposed by a national convention anyway.
The 17th Amendment was a direct action taken by Congress after states became concerned that the United States Senate appointment process was compromised or tainted. The amendment allowed for the direct election of Senators, and headed off a likely Article V convention.
#1
Been doing this calculation for years. We had better numbers after the 2010 election. Anyway, I do not trust the current Republican party to not f*ck this up.
#2
Any amendment from the convention still requires approval by the 3/4 of the states. I doubt the Donks will get much that will have any effect out of the convention.
#4
Dear God, NO - the last thing we want is a Constitutional Convention. It would be the target of every death-or-glory liberal who could fly, walk, or crawl to the proceedings with their particular hobby horse. That would be after, of course, the Two Parties did their damnedest to stop it from happening in the first place. If you want to see the loss of every freedom we're still barely hanging on to, have a Convention.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/06/2015 16:33 Comments ||
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#5
...sort of missed my comment did you? How many states do the socialists control? That's their problem. Concentrating on big city states leaves them crippling short of getting anything subsequently ratified. Heck they couldn't even get the Equal Rights Amendment passed in the heyday of 'liberalism'. Now they have to do it through judicial interpretation.
#7
..then there is no constitution or basis of legitimacy of power. It becomes an exercise in power. Which is why they desperately want to get guns out of the hands of the population. They can not afford one Concord bridge event in their application of force cause then they can only control what they can occupy and in this vast continental arrangement that's not much. Even Mao understood you had to control the countryside not the cities.
#8
Even Mao understood you had to control the countryside not the cities.
Is this the vast part of the country that liberal black south African comedians such as Trevor Noah try to make fun of (but don't quite pull it off? The part of the country where POTUS says the people like to hang onto their God, guns, and religion?
[The Shooter's Log] When FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg testified about his agency's involvement in Operation Choke Point, he insisted FDIC was simply trying to inform banks about high-risk businesses and reduce fraud--not threaten banks or blacklist industries such as firearms retailers.
However, in the two-hour hearing before the U.S. House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations on March 24, Gruenberg told lawmakers that the FDIC should be faulted for failing to communicate to the public that it did not want banks to cut off legitimate businesses from the banking system.
"These examples came to be viewed as a prohibition of serving, that these examples came to be seen as a prohibition on serving certain customers, was clearly in hindsight a failure on our part," Gruenberg said.
The government used Operation Choke Point to stop financial service companies from providing banking and credit services for some industries. Operation Choke Point was a Department of Justice initiative that targeted gun and ammunition businesses as high risk, along with payday lenders, pornographers, Ponzi schemes, and others. See our previous coverage of the topic here, here, and here.
During the hearing, Committee Chairman Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) compared Gruenberg to former IRS official Lois Lerner and called for his removal from office. Duffy took over as chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations in January.
"You're abusing your power," Duffy said. "You say, 'I don't like these industries. And I'm gonna use -- just like Lois Lerner -- the power that I have at the FDIC to target these industries, and I'm gonna put them out of business. ... I think the buck stops with you. I don't think you should chair the FDIC."
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) introduced legislation to end Operation Choke Point in February. His proposal would fully defund Operation Choke Point and prohibit the incoming attorney general from restarting it or a instituting a similar program. During the markup of S. Con. Res. 11, the fiscal year 2016 budget continuing resolution, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) introduced an amendment to establish a deficit-neutral reserve fund to end Operation Choke Point. The Crapo amendment was approved by a committee vote of 13-9 and the full Senate passed S. Con. Res. 11 with the Crapo amendment on March 27.
#3
There are far too many federal agencies all of which are trying meddle in people's lives--agencies which have no respect for individual freedoms. They need to be starved out of money.
In 1990 I went to a Cato Institute conference in what was then still the Soviet Union. We were told to bring our own toilet paper, which was in fact useful advice.
Now, after only 16 years of Chavista rule, Venezuela has demonstrated that "Socialism of the 21st Century" is pretty much like socialism in the 20th century. Fusion reports:
Venezuela's product shortages have become so severe that some hotels in that country are asking guests to bring their own toilet paper and soap, a local tourism industry spokesman said on Wednesday....
"It's an extreme situation," says Xinia Camacho, owner of a 20-room boutique hotel in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada national park. "For over a year we haven't had toilet paper, soap, any kind of milk, coffee or sugar. So we have to tell our guests to come prepared."...
Montilla says bigger hotels can circumvent product shortages by buying toilet paper and other basic supplies from black market smugglers who charge up to 6-times the regular price. But smaller, family-run hotels can't always afford to pay such steep prices, which means that sometimes they have to make do without.
Camacho says she refuses to buy toilet paper from the black market on principle.
"In the black market you have to pay 110 bolivares [$0.50] for a roll of toilet paper that usually costs 17 bolivares [$ 0.08] in the supermarket," Camacho told Fusion. "We don't want to participate in the corruption of the black market, and I don't have four hours a day to line up for toilet paper" at a supermarket....
Recently, Venezuelan officials have been stopping people from transporting essential goods across the country in an effort to stem the flow of contraband. So now Camacho's guests could potentially have their toilet paper confiscated before they even make it to the hotel.
Shortages, queues, black markets, and official theft. And blaming the CIA. Yes, Venezuela has truly achieved socialism.
But what I never understood is this: Why toilet paper? How hard is it to make toilet paper? I can understand a socialist economy having trouble producing decent cars or computers. But toilet paper? And soap? And matches? Because you spend all your spare time standing in line rather than thinking about how to get out of the hole you dug for yourselves by putting Chavez in charge?
Sure, it's been said that if you tried communism in the Sahara, you'd get a shortage of sand. Still, a shortage of paper seems like a real achievement. Try corn cobs.
#2
This particular shortage has been alleviated, somewhat. Command economies suck at the little shit (uc?), the paper mill cranking out this die was going along well enough making tissue paper, lots of tissue paper, but they don't make the damn cardboard thingies the tissue I'd rolled up on and then cut. Those thingies are imported from el Norte Imperio and require dollars. Thus, no toilet tissue rolls. Now all imported, sometimes by the plane load.
[Iran Press TV] A new report says a UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) blunder has put the Malvinas Islands, also known as the Falklands, at risk of attack from Argentina ...a country located on the other side of the Deep South. It is covered with Pampers and inhabited by Grouchos, who dance the Tangle. They used to have some islands called the Malvinas located where the Falklands are now. They're not supposed to cry for Evita... , which sees the isles as its own.
According to the Sunday Express, MoD workers are accused of handing Argentina an "invasion handbook" for the Southern Atlantic archipelago after forgetting to encrypt a secret document, and putting it online.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2015 00:00 ||
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Pfffttt, by the time Argentina is truly ready to reconquer the Malvinas the datums will be obsolete.
Pragmatically, the EURO-JIHAD is Christina's best weapon agz the UK in the NT as per Malvinas reconquest, as long as She + Argentina understands that there may be no UK or Euros, or even US, to save their own sixes once SOUTH AMERICAN JIHAD GETS UP-N-RUNNING.
A Russian Federation Foreign Ministry spokesman warned the Romanian government Sunday that its agreements to allow NATO troops inside its borders will be a factor in Russian military planning in the future, according to a Russian language news account.
Alexander Lukashevich was commenting about Romania's decision to end the law which limits NATO troops within its borders to 3,000 at a time.
Alexander Lukashevich said that Russia will "keep in mind the [Romanian] accommodation" of the "mailed fist" of NATO inside Romania's borders.
The warning is similar to the one issued to Denmark when it decided to be covered by the NATO antimissile defense shield, a system that proponents say are defensive and not aimed at Russia.
According to a news report which appeared in regnum.ru, Lukashevich also directed his warning toward Romanian plans to be included in a NATO antimissile defense shield, similar to Poland's and Denmark's.
Romania also is beginning work on an intermodal system which it says will help "expand the operational capabilities" of NATO, according to remarks recorded in a news item in the nineoclock.ro news website.
Romania recently marked its ten year anniversary as a member of NATO.
Chris Covert writes about foreign military issues for Rantburg.com. He can be reached at grurkka@gmail.com. You can read past articles about the 2014 war in southeastern Ukraina by clicking here.
North Korean authorities are recruiting young women to be part of a revived so-called "pleasure squad" that entertains dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a published report.
that the group that used to perform for Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, was disbanded shortly after the elder Kim's death in December 2011. The members were made to sign a pledge of secrecy in exchange for money and gifts. According to the paper, the women who worked as entertainers received an amount of money worth $4,000 before returning to their hometowns.
The Chosun Ilbo reported that women who worked in Kim's palaces and summer homes as maids and cleaners received about half that amount. Both groups of women also reportedly received home appliances.
Britain's Daily Telegraph quoted Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Tokyo's Waseda University described as an authority on North Korean affairs, as saying that Kim believed the women who entertained his father knew too many state secrets.
"After he came to power, Mr. Kim trusted no-one and ordered thorough investigations into every official in the regime, from the highest to the lowest", Shigemura told the paper.
The formation of the new troupe also coincides with the end of the formal three-year mourning period for Kim Jong Un.
The Chosun Ilbo reports that Kim Jong Un became interested in re-forming the troupe while recovering from an undisclosed physical ailment at one of his summer cottages last year.
"Pleasure squads" have existed in North Korea since the rule of the country's founder Kim Il Sung, grandfather of the present dictator. Officials were sent to select women and girls they deemed the prettiest to the dictator's many mansions, where they were expected to be available upon request. All men would be tyrants if they could.
The Telegraph reports that while most of the women were singers, dancers, or maids, those judged to be especially beautiful were made to be concubines to members of North Korea's elite power structure. According to the paper, many of the women were "retired" from the squads in their 20s and paired off with military officers looking for wives.
China is strongly protesting the apparent emergency landing of two U.S. Navy F-18 fighters at an airbase in Taiwan -- the first time such an incident has occurred in three decades.
Beijing has long considered Taiwan part of its territory and the presence of U.S. warplanes there has caused unease. And I always thought we were supposed to be the imperialist pigs.
"We have already made solemn representations to the U.S. side," China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, told a regular news briefing.
"We require the U.S. to abide by the 'One-China Policy' ... to prudently deal with the relevant issue," Hua added.
Media in Taiwan have portrayed the incident as a first since the mid-1980s.
Taiwanese military expert Lin Yu-fang, who is also a member of parliament with the ruling Kuomintang party, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying the two jets were escorting an EA-6B Prowler, an electronics warfare aircraft, en route to the Philippines.
"Taiwan must have been considered by the United States a trusted place to make the emergency landing," Lin told AFP.
Reuters offers a bit of background:
"U.S. weapons sales in recent years to Taiwan, or indeed any formal contact between the two armed forces, have provoked strong condemnation by China, but have not caused lasting damage to Beijing's relations with either Washington or Taipei.
"China views Taiwan as a renegade province and has not ruled out the use of force to bring it under its control.
"While Taiwan and China have signed a series of landmark trade and economic agreements since 2008, political and military suspicions still run deep, especially in democratic Taiwan, where many fear China's true intentions."
#1
Last time US planes needed an emergency landing in that area is was because Chinese planes bumped them and then held onto them for some time. So bite me China.
The U.S. economy isn't off to a great start in 2015.
It's looking so rotten that the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta just cut its growth projection to zero for the first three months of the year.
That's a big drop from the 1.9% growth forecast they started with in early February.
Of course, this is only an estimate. The official data on first-quarter growth will be released April 29. But it's yet another sign of the cracks appearing in the economy in a year when America was supposed to be the global growth leader.
What went wrong? Blame the weather and the strong U.S. dollar CNN won't say so but Obamacare and predatory regulations might have something to do with it also.
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/06/2015 03:20 ||
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#1
Wouldn't be a surprise if they were being honest about the employment numbers. Like using the U-6 instead of the U-3.
#2
...I started working at my current employer - a galvanizing plant - in June of 08, and in all honesty even after the collapse that October, things never slowed up. In fact, they continued to speed up until last August, when things perceptibly slowed down. And from December to now, it's been miserable - I'm barely getting forty hours a week in, and some weeks not even that.
Now it's making sense.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
04/06/2015 16:43 Comments ||
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President Milos Zeman has "closed the door" of Prague Castle to the US ambassador following comments perceived as critical of the Czech's decision to attend a World War Two commemoration in Moscow, according to local media reports on Sunday.
European Union leaders are boycotting the ceremony in May over Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict but Zeman -- who has frequently departed from the EU line -- has said he would attend.
"I can't imagine the Czech ambassador in Washington would give advice to the American president where to travel," Zeman told news portal Parlamentni Listy. "I won't let any ambassador have a say about my foreign travels."
"Ambassador (Andrew) Schapiro has the door to the castle closed."
One of France's top Muslim leaders has called for the number of mosques to double over the next two years to remedy a shortage of places of worship for the country's millions of faithful. Maybe they could make room for them by razing a few churches and synagogues.
Speaking at a weekend gathering of French Islamic organisations, where participants asked for respect in the face of a rise in anti-Muslim attacks, Dalil Boubakeur said the 2,200 mosques in the country did not adequately represent Europe's largest Muslim community.
"We need double (that number) within two years," the head of the French Muslim Council and rector of the Paris mosque said in the town of Le Bourget near the capital.
"There are a lot of prayer rooms, of unfinished mosques, and there are a lot of mosques that are not being built," he added Saturday at the Muslim gathering, billed as the largest in the Western world.
This annual convention of the Union of Islamic Organisations of France (UOIF), which groups together more than 250 Muslim associations, comes just months after jihadist gunmen killed 17 people in and near Paris.
Since then, there has been a marked rise in Islamophobia in France, with 167 acts against mosques or threats recorded in January alone compared to just 14 in the same month last year.
France has long had a difficult relationship with its Muslim minority -- currently estimated at between four and five million -- that dates back to bloody struggles in its former North African colonies and the legacy of immigrants trapped in some of the country's poorest districts.
Long decades of insurgency against French rule in Algeria in the mid-twentieth century, followed by a spate of Algerian extremist attacks in France in the 1990s created difficulties for communal relations -- which reawakened with the rise of global jihadism after 9/11.
Apart from physical acts, anti-Muslim sentiment in the country varies from mayors refusing to have mosques built to resistance to halal meals being served in prisons or schools.
Participants at the gathering -- which while organised by the UOIF, a group close to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, ranged from liberal to ultra-conservative -- denounced violence committed in the name of Islam.
"We are loyal to our country, France. We love God, we love our prophet, but we also love the French Republic," said Amar Lasfar, UOIF head.
Boubakeur agreed, adding nevertheless that Muslims must also be respected in Franc
"Islam is no longer an Islam stemming from immigration, it is a national Islam that has the right to the recognition and consideration of the French population, just like other communities in France," Boubakeur said. Including its own customs unique to France, like the wildly popular Car-B-Que.
[ARABNEWS] One of La Belle France's top Moslem leaders has called for the number of mosques to double over the next two years to remedy a shortage of places of worship for the country's millions of faithful.
Speaking at a weekend gathering of French Islamic organizations, where participants asked for respect in the face of a rise in anti-Moslem attacks, Dalil Boubakeur said the 2,200 mosques in the country did not adequately represent Europe's largest Moslem community.
"We need double (that number) within two years," the head of the French Moslem Council and rector of the Gay Paree mosque said in the town of Le Bourget near the capital.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
Ok double the moskees and divide the existing ones by 20... send the rest of your anti-civilization sh^t into space ...preferably to Mars
[al-Monitor] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... 's pro-Justice and Development Party (AKP) media have gone all out in an attempt to control public opinion in the run-up to the June 7 elections, following polls indicating that the AKP is not doing so well. With the corruption probe at the end of 2013 not yet forgotten, extravagant spending at the presidential palace (White Palace) has caused an uproar in Turkey. Due to lack of transparency, it is difficult to tell how much was spent on the palace's construction and decoration, and what is spent on the maintenance of a building with more than 1,000 rooms.
The AKP's grip on the media is well documented in Turkey and is used not only to prevent embarrassing news from spreading, but also to generate a false positive image in the public opinion of the president and his family.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2015 00:00 ||
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Politicians are 2 faced no matter what race, nationality, creed or color so what else is new ?
#2
Remember, the conventional news model is something rare and unusual. Being king in display or behavior isn't unusual. It goes with the 'job'. The dog bites man story.
#3
He believes he deserves it, after all he is establishing the Ottoman Empire anew, and it needs a Sultan, so he's volunteering to live like a Sultan.
Erdogan wants a presidential system with him as president of course. Quite a number of authoritarian moves recently, which may be about stifling domestic dissent, but may presage something bigger. Removal of Assad maybe, or military action to support Turkmen in Iraq and hence confront Iran.
A federal judge, Judge Susan J. Dlott--ironically in Cincinnati, where the Obama administration's first bumbling explanation for targeting was "rogue IRS agents"--has ordered the IRS to produce a list of all 298 conservative nonprofits the IRS targeted. 'Huh, what targeting?' one can imagine Justice Department officials mumbling. Mr. Obama's Justice Department fought to keep the list private despite promises his would be the most transparent administration ever.
The lawsuit by conservative groups could end up certified as a class action for violating their constitutional right to equal treatment. The judge determined that the litigants were entitled to know so the judge ordered the IRS to release the list of targeted Tea Party groups. If the judge also certifies the case as a class action, the disclosures could be broader still.
The timing is propitious, coming just as Targeter in Chief Lois Lerner was exonerated by the Obama administration. It has confirmed in a tortured seven-page letter that there will be no criminal charges for Lois Lerner. Meanwhile, controversial IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recently claimed that the changes at the IRS are so significant that "you could hang a sign out at the front of the headquarters saying 'Under New Management.'" That's right, any alleged targeting was in the past. Fixed it. Sorry for all the fuss.
Meanwhile, a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, an independent, nonpartisan agency, says former IRS employees can still peruse your tax returns. Of course, the President himself has said there was never a smidgen of corruption at the IRS, but some conservative groups are not so sure. Moreover, they are not satisfied with the flow of information that has hardly been robust. Judicial Watch's latest Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, Judicial Watch v. Internal Revenue Service, seeks "any and all records related to the destruction of damaged hard drives from IRS employee computers from January 1, 2010, to the present."
The suit was filed even before the latest Hearings of the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform. On February 26, 2015, the Treasury Inspector General said he is investigating possible criminal activity at the IRS. Remember all the millions and millions in taxpayer money spent looking? One report said over 250 IRS employees spend 100,000 hours, costing taxpayers at least $14 million. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen testified that recovery efforts had been thorough, and the tapes and emails couldn't be found.
Yet the Inspector General now reports that the IRS had not even asked for the backup tapes when the 'hard drive crash' excuse was first used. The tapes were easy to find and the emails were easy to recover. It is astounding, and yet Democrats still pooh-pooh the targeting and imply it is the fault of the conservative groups in the first place.
This narrative started in 2010. Ms. Lerner and Justice Department officials met in 2010 about going after conservative organizations in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United case. In August 2010, the IRS distributed a 'be on the lookout' list for Tea Party organizations. By March 2012, amid reports of targeting, former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman testified there is "absolutely no targeting" by the IRS.
And now Judge Susan J. Dlott has said that Tea Party groups can pursue their claims that the IRS violated their First and Fifth Amendment rights, along with a section of federal law that prohibits the government from releasing private information contained in tax returns. The lawsuit wants a list of 'all dissenting groups targeted for additional scrutiny by the IRS from January 20, 2009, through July 15, 2013.' The court said this information was "directly related to the issue of class certification in this federal court proceeding."
Some names on the list will be no surprise, as a partial list was unearthed by USA Today in September 2013. An IRS spreadsheet characterized the activities of some groups as "propaganda." Judge Dlott ordered the IRS to tell the court whether or not that list was authentic, The Washington Times reported. It sad to see the IRS used for political purposes, and sad to see the endless difficulty private parties and Congress have had getting answers. Perhaps that will change.
#3
Part two is the same ID parties suing individuals for suppression of their civil rights. That's why the administration jackals have been fighting this. Some people may well face financial ruin in the process and in two years unlikely to have 'cover' for their acts.
The trial of an upgraded interceptor missile conducted by DRDO scientists has failed on Monday. According to DRDO sources, the missile called Advanced Air Defence (AAD), plummeted into the Bay of Bengal a few seconds after the liftoff from Wheeler Island, off the Odisha Coast.
There appeared to be a problem in one of the sub-systems, which malfunctioned, DRDO scientists told The Hindu. The exact cause would be known after analysing the data and it might take 24 hours to come to a preliminary conclusion.
The DRDO planned to conduct the Interceptor missile test against an electronic target missile to validate the missile’s capability to carry a bigger warhead, improved manoeuverability and reduced mis-distance, among other parameters. India plans to deploy a two-tiered Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system to protect important cities and vital installations from external threats.
The first phase envisages to engage and destroy incoming enemy ballistic missile of 2,000-km range, while the second phase seeks to tackle missiles between 2,000-km and 5,000-km range. With Monday’s mission the DRDO has conducted 10 interceptor missile tests and eight out of them have been successful.
Posted by: John Frum ||
04/06/2015 10:07 ||
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[DAWN] At least ten members of a family, including women and kiddies, were killed by a man police are describing as a 'serial killer' in the Jendi area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa ... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central... 's Charsadda district on Sunday morning.
A Charsadda police official told DawnNews that the alleged culprit, Gul Ahmed Said, opened fire and killed Jamal, who was his paternal uncle and nine family members.
The police official said that the culprit was engaged to one of Jamal's daughters and that he had killed his own father and sister a few months ago.
The girl's family members, upon learning about the previous murders, had refused to give her hand in marriage.
The refusal provoked the culprit into killing the family, according to police sources.
Most of the victims were shot in their heads and faces.
Police registered a First Information report (FIR) against Gul Ahmed Said in Tangi cop shoppe.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/06/2015 00:00 ||
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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say that refusal by jails to cooperate with so-called "detainers" is resulting in unauthorized immigrants with violent criminal pasts -- including alleged rapists, child abusers and drug traffickers -- being released in New Mexico before federal authorities can take them into custody.
But the counties being asked to hold those individuals are pushing back, citing lawsuits and costs, among other objections.
Nearly every New Mexico county detention center, along with hundreds of other jurisdictions around the country, have in most circumstances stopped honoring ICE's 48-hour "detainer" -- a request to hold arrested persons whom the agency suspects are in the country illegally...Counties say ICE should be held to the standards of other federal law enforcement agencies and charge people with an immigration crime, seek a warrant for their arrest or arrest them upon their release.
"County jails can't hold a person unless they are criminally charged," said Matt Elwell, director of the Luna County Detention Center, which stopped honoring ICE detainers three years ago.
#1
Why bother when you're just going to release them anyway. The reimbursement doesn't match the expense. Besides, most illegals leave the state as quickly as possible. Why remain someplace that just as poor and corrupt as it was back home?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Can a group of states ban together for the first time since 1787 to change the Constitution at a convention? It all comes down to a matter of math and a few important numbers: 5, 27, 34, 38, 535 and 9.
In 1990 I went to a Cato Institute conference in what was then still the Soviet Union. We were told to bring our own toilet paper, which was in fact useful advice.
North Korean authorities are recruiting young women to be part of a revived so-called "pleasure squad" that entertains dictator Kim Jong Un, according to a published report. 
China is strongly protesting the apparent emergency landing of two U.S. Navy F-18 fighters at an airbase in Taiwan -- the first time such an incident has occurred in three decades.
One of France's top Muslim leaders has called for the number of mosques to double over the next two years to remedy a shortage of places of worship for the country's millions of faithful.
[al-Monitor] 
A federal judge, Judge Susan J. Dlott--ironically in Cincinnati, where the Obama administration's first bumbling explanation for targeting was "rogue IRS agents"--has ordered the IRS to produce a list of all 298 conservative nonprofits the IRS targeted. 'Huh, what targeting?' one can imagine Justice Department officials mumbling. Mr. Obama's Justice Department fought to keep the list private despite promises his would be the most transparent administration ever.
The timing is propitious, coming just as Targeter in Chief Lois Lerner was exonerated by the Obama administration. It has confirmed in a tortured seven-page letter that there will be no criminal charges for Lois Lerner. Meanwhile, controversial IRS Commissioner John Koskinen recently claimed that the changes at the IRS are so significant that "you could hang a sign out at the front of the headquarters saying 'Under New Management.'" That's right, any alleged targeting was in the past.
