Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Washington Times: Israel Science and Technology, the national database and directory of science and technology-related websites in Israel, has published an article asserting the long-form birth certificate released by the White House is a forged document.

The HIll: A group of House conservatives is calling for foreign aid to Libya and Egypt to be stripped from a six-month federal funding bill set for a vote on Thursday.

Paul Moreno at the Wall Street Journal: FDR pointed out the obvious, that the government is sovereign. If an organization can compel the government to do something, then that organization will be the real sovereign.

The Hill: Mitt Romney on Wednesday stood by a statement issued by his campaign criticizing the Obama administration over its handling of violent protests at American diplomatic missions in the Middle East, saying, “President Obama has demonstrated a lack of clarity as to a foreign policy.

AP: But hang on to your wallets. Premiums averaged $15,745, with employees paying more than $4,300 of that . . .

NCPA Policy Digest: Unions were once an important avenue for protecting workers by providing a powerful tool to negotiate with employers. However in today’s economy it is increasingly less relevant for workers to be represented by unions; it may even hurt the employee more, says James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics at the Heritage Foundation.

Washington Post: They say D.C. Republicans ultimately will not stay out of a race so critical to their national prospects — if they are convinced Akin won’t end his campaign.

DickMorris.com: In a scene right out of a typical authoritarian regime, Fox News reports that “employees at the venerable Gallup polling firm suggested they felt threatened by Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod when he questioned the methodology of a mid-April poll showing Mitt Romney leading the president – according to internal emails published Thursday.”

Washington Post: Tonight’s speech is Obama’s last chance to take a first step toward accommodation with a country increasingly concerned about his unmasked determination to “transform” what the Founders considered “fundamentals.”

Dallas Morning News: Texas has now spent more than $2 million defending its law to require photo identification to vote and its redrawing of political boundaries, officials said after federal judges sided against the state in both cases last week

AP: The ruling by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton clears the way for police to carry out the requirement that officers, while enforcing other laws, question the immigration status of those they suspect are in the country illegally

AP: They may never be confused with “Swan Lake,” but an upstate New York strip club says its nude lap dances are every bit as much an art form and should be exempt from state taxes.

FoxNews (includes video): Fully two-thirds of the national debt is owed to the U.S. government, American investors and future retirees, through the Social Security Trust Fund and pension plans for civil service workers and military personnel. China, it turns out, holds less than 8 percent of the money our government has borrowed over the years.

Ron Paul: Amazingly, a new system was devised which allowed the U.S. to operate the printing presses for the world reserve currency with no restraints placed on it– not even a pretense of gold convertibility! Realizing the world was embarking on something new and mind-boggling, elite money managers, with especially strong support from U.S. authorities, struck an agreement with OPEC in the 1970s to price oil in U.S. dollars exclusively for all worldwide transactions. This gave the dollar a special place among world currencies and in essence backed the dollar with oil. In return, the U.S. promised to protect the various oil-rich kingdoms in the Persian Gulf against threat of invasion or domestic coup. This arrangement helped ignite radical Islamic movements among those who resented our influence in the region.

Bloomberg: Food-stamp use reached a record 46.7 million people in June, the government said, as Democrats prepare to nominate President Barack Obama for a second term with the economy as a chief issue in the campaign.

CNBC: The world’s largest economy, which was placed 5th last year, fell two positions to the 7th spot – marking its fourth year of decline.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: Perhaps the reason other journalists are so deferential toward the “fact checkers” is that these fact checkers, unlike the traditional ones, don’t check the facts of journalists but of politicians. By and large, they aren’t actually checking facts but making and asserting judgments about the veracity of politicians’ arguments. The quality of their work is generally quite poor.

Eugene Volokh at the Volokh Conspiracy: In principle, the government might well be able to prosecute many American pornography producers and distributors under current obscenity laws. But even if every single U.S. producer is shut down, wouldn’t foreign sites happily take up the slack? It’s not like Americans have some great irreproducible national skills in smut-making, or like it takes a $100 million Hollywood budget to make a porn movie. Foreign porn will doubtless be quite an adequate substitute for the U.S. market

The Hill: Morality in Media (MIM), a non-profit that states its mission is to curb obscenity and “uphold standards of decency in media,” applauded the GOP’s pledge to clamp down on pornography in the platform that was approved at the party’s convention this past week in Tampa, Fla. “Current laws on all forms of pornography and obscenity need to be vigorously enforced,” the platform said under a plank titled “Making the Internet Family Friendly.” Patrick Trueman, president of Morality in Media, welcomed the adoption of that line in the platform, which added on to wording in previous versions that was limited to voicing opposition to child pornography.

Christian Science Monitor: In last night’s acceptance speech, Mitt Romney sketched out his personal biography and delivered an effective brief on why we shouldn’t reelect President Obama. But, oddly, when it came to taxes he was nearly silent.

The Volokh Conspiracy reports and links to the ruling.

AP reports.

The Church Report: LifeWay Research asked 1,000 pastors about the economy’s effect on their churches and found that 56 percent described it somewhat negatively and 8 percent very negatively . . .

AP: Many analysts think a third round of bond purchases – QE3 – would include both Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities.

CBS ConNecticut: The National Atheist Party is canceling its secular convention due to a lack of funding.

LifeNews carries it here.

Washington Post: “There is no difference in what we can learn genetically about a person that lived 50,000 years ago and from a person today,” Paabo said Wednesday in a conference call with reporters.

ACLU: A U.S. District Court today blocked Texas’ new voter ID law because it discriminates against minorities and conflicts with the federal Voting Rights Act . . . For a copy of the decision, go to: www.aclu.org/voting-rights/texas-voter-id-decision

Seth Lipsky at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): In the ferment within today’s Republican Party, there’s a growing realization that America’s system of fiat money is part of the economic problem

AP: One way to think about this year’s election is as a contest between the impact of a sour economy (advantage Romney) and the power of the nation’s shifting demographics (advantage Obama).

Lorelei Laird at the ABA Journal: Under the Crime Victims’ Rights Act, the government must notify Amy and other child pornography victims anytime anyone is arrested by federal authorities for possessing their images. Her attorney, James Marsh of New York City, says his office has received at least 1,500 required notices of federal prosecutions for possession of those images. “The day after we were retained in 2008, we had someone open up all these notices she received in the calendar years 2006 and 2007,” Marsh says. “It took two days just to open the envelopes.” Using the restitution provisions of the Violence Against Women Act, Marsh has begun utilizing the courts to request financial restitution from those convicted of possessing images of Amy’s child sexual abuse.

Politico carries some excerpts. The full text is here at the Drudge Report.

Politico embeds the video.

Heritage Foundation: A survey by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) in July revealed that small businesses’ top three concerns were taxes, regulations, and poor sales. A quick look at these top three small business struggles shows they have every reason to be demoralized . . .

NCPA Policy Digest: The persistent inability of the Fed to stimulate aggregate demand makes it difficult to escape the reality that the U.S. economy is stuck in a liquidity trap.

NCPA Policy Digest: For instance, if a pipeline in Phoenix were to burst and prevent supplies to the city, Phoenix could not look to Tucson for supplies because there are different EPA standards for the blend of fuels they each use.

Available here.

Christian Institute: A federal court has found evidence of discrimination in Texas voting maps drawn by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature.

Salt Lake Tribune: Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday rejected a bill to expand gambling in Illinois that would have made way for a land-based casino in Chicago, saying the proposal lacked sufficient regulatory oversight.

Daily Caller: The U.S. Army command recently announced that only 25% of the lethal “green on blue” Afghan military insider attacks against U.S. and N.A.T.O. troops were attributable to the Taliban. Mere “personal grievances,” we are told, account for the other 75% of attacks committed by our Afghan allies. How could it be that so many Muslims in the Afghan National Army (A.N.A.) have become murderously enraged over personal disagreements and accidental insults? What has caused this upsurge in murders that has killed at least 40 U.S. troops since January 2012?

Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy: When the government seeks to establish probable cause that evidence or contraband is inside a home, it sometimes has to deal with concerns of “staleness.” Staleness refers to the possibility that evidence or contraband previously located in the home is no longer there, because over time evidence can be moved or destroyed. In today’s opinion in United States v. Seiver, Judge Posner argues that concerns over staleness are rarely relevant in cases involving digital evidence. The issue arose in a child pornography case . . .

NCPA Policy Digest: In the face of slow economic recovery, states are beginning to look to legalizing more forms of gambling as a means of generating revenue. But this approach is utterly misguided . . .

Paul.House.Gov: The problem is that democracy is not freedom. Democracy is simply majoritarianism, which is inherently incompatible with freedom. While our Constitution certainly features certain democratic mechanisms, it also features inherently undemocratic mechanisms like the First Amendment and the Electoral College. American is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Yet we’ve been bombarded with the meaningless word “democracy” for so long that few Americans understand the difference. If we intend to use the word freedom in an honest way, we should have the simple integrity to give it real meaning: Freedom is living without government coercion.

The Church Report: The Republican Party is calling for a crackdown on pornography in a move that could pit social conservatives against hotel operators, television providers and other businesses that profit from the sale of sexually explicit material.

Sacramento Bee: Supporters of embattled U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, Missouri’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate , today called on pro-life delegates to the Republican National Convention to delay any Presidential nomination for Mitt Romney until GOP financial support for Akin’s candidacy is restored and Romney answers questions about his income from an abortion-related Bain Capital deal.

The ballot question on a proposed constitutional amendment implementing a photographic identification requirement for Minnesota voters is not so unreasonable and misleading as to be a palpable evasion of the constitutional requirement in Minn. Const. art. IX, § 1, that constitutional amendments shall be submitted to a popular vote.

AP: A Minnesota football coach accused of taking pornographic videos of his children is offering a simple explanation: The images are nothing more than innocent family antics, unfairly misinterpreted by authorities as having the darkest possible motive.

Washington Times: Senior GOP officials are accusing the Romney campaign’s chief attorney, Ben Ginsberg, of pushing through a rules change for delegate selection that would give Mitt Romney enormous power over the primary process should he win the White House and seek re-election in 2016. “It shifts the power to select delegates from the state party to the [party’s presidential] candidate,” Republican National Committee Vice Chairman Jim Bopp told The Washington Times on Sunday. “And it would make the Republican Party a top-down, not bottom-up, party.”

Financial Times: Drafts of the party platform, which it will adopt at a convention in Tampa Bay, Florida, next week, call for an audit of Federal Reserve monetary policy and a commission to look at restoring the link between the dollar and gold.

NY Daily News: A hate crime reported last month by a lesbian claiming three masked men tied her up in her Nebraska home, carved derogatory slurs into her skin and set fire to her house was allegedly an elaborate hoax, police said Tuesday….

Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy quoting from a Wall Street Journal article: For most of the 20th century, the United States was a single market for gasoline. Today we have a series of fragmentary, regional markets thanks to dozens of regulatory requirements imposed by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and state regulators.

AP: The Afghan conflict generates barely a whisper on the U.S. presidential campaign trail. It’s not a hot topic at the office water cooler or in the halls of Congress – even though more than 80,000 American troops are still fighting here and dying at a rate of one a day.

LA Times: Trade group calls for a nationwide shutdown on X-rated productions while more than 1,000 performers are tested for the sexually transmitted disease.

Fox News: Alabama Public Schools Can’t Check Immigration Status of Students, Court Rules
The court also upheld the “show me your papers” provision in Alabama and Georgia immigration laws that allows police officers to ask someone they stop for another reason — and who they suspect may be in the country illegally — for their immigration documents.

AP: Laws written long before the dawn of the Internet age have authorities across the nation struggling to prosecute online prostitution rings because of huge loopholes . . .

AP: The study released Monday by the Chronicle of Philanthropy found that residents in states where religious participation is higher than the rest of the nation, particularly in the South, gave the greatest percentage . . .

One News: With the Commission on Presidential Debates announcing the moderators for the 2012 presidential and vice presidential debates, a media analyst says the selected moderators compose an “all-star” lineup of the liberal left.

Washington Examiner: But Clinton, exhausted from four years of international travel and diplomacy, shrugged off the suggestion to lay the groundwork for her own 2016 bid with her husband at her side, according to author Ed Klein.

AP: A federal court on Thursday gave five Florida counties four extra days of early voting in this fall’s elections.

The Hill: Two polls released Thursday reveal a tight race for the Senate in Indiana, with Democratic Rep. Joe Donnelly and Republican State Treasurer Richard Mourdock essentially polling neck and neck.

CNSNews: The money the U.S. government owes to foreign entities rose to a record $5.2923 trillion in June, according to data released by the U.S. Treasury Wednesday afternoon.

AP: Colo. Shooting Prompts Gun Bills In Big States AP: Some States Try To Fill National Gun Control Void

NC Register: Madison, Wis., Bishop Robert Morlino says he’s not endorsing Ryan, but upholds the candidate’s reputation as a serious Catholic committed to applying Church social doctrine.

Wisconsin Gazette: The American Civil Liberties Union is denouncing Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s executive order on Aug. 15 that bars undocumented immigrants who qualify for temporary legal status in the United States from receiving state or local public benefits.

PDF download here at the ACLU website.

AP: A voting member of the Federal Reserve’s policy committee is cautioning that the Fed’s power to fix the U.S. economy is limited now. Jeffrey Lacke . . .

LifeNews: The man who is alleged to have shot a security guard yesterday at the offices of the pro-life group Family research Council has been formally charged and new FBI documents present more information.

Chicago Tribune: Unity proved to be an elusive commodity for Democrats at their day at the Illinois State Fair today as the party’s key organized labor support bashed Gov. Pat Quinn for his efforts to reform public employee pensions, forego pay raises and close state facilities.

CNBC.com: Pensions are a growing federal budget burden, rising twice as fast as inflation over the last decade. Pension payments cost $70 billion last year, plus $13 billion for retiree health care. Taxpayers face a $2 trillion unfunded liability — the amount needed to cover future benefits — for these programs, according to the government’s audited financial statement. (

AZ Central: As young undocumented immigrants on Wednesday celebrated the start of a new federal program allowing them to apply to stay and work temporarily in the United States, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer issued an executive order telling state agencies not to grant driver’s licenses to program participants.

AP: The Maryland General Assembly has passed a measure that would allow a casino to be built in Prince George’s County, just miles from the nation’s capital.

Daily Caller: The 1988 essay, titled “Minority and Women Law Professors: A Comparison of Teaching Styles,” ran in a special edition of the BLSA Memo. The future first lady justified her demands for more black and female law school faculty by attacking the “traditional model,” in which law students were educated through the Socratic method. She also opposed the traditional meritocratic hiring principle, where professors with better legal pedigrees were more often hired, arguing that it limited the success of women and blacks.

National Review: Try this thought experiment. Imagine that someone grows up in poverty, works his way through law school by holding the night shift as a Capitol Hill policeman, and spends all but two years of his career as a public servant. Now imagine that this person’s current salary — and he’s at the top of his game — is $193,400. You probably wouldn’t expect him to have millions in stocks, bonds, and real estate.

WFMZ.com: Pennsylvania judge on Wednesday refused to stop a tough new voter identification law from going into effect, which Democrats said will suppress votes among President Barack Obama’s supporters.

CNSNews: People who drop out of high school and get a job with the federal government earn, on average, 36 percent more in wages and benefits than their dropout counterparts in the private sector, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) . . .In the report, Comparing Compensation for Federal and Private-Sector Workers: An Overview,