Defection Denied

According to a report in the Washington Free Beacon:

http://freebeacon.com/defection-denied-2/

The office of Vice President Joe Biden overruled State and Justice Department officials in denying the political asylum request of a senior Chinese communist official last February over fears the high-level defection would upset the U.S. visit of China’s vice president, according to U.S. officials.

The defector, Wang Lijun, was turned away after 30 hours inside the U.S. Consulate Chengdu and given over to China’s Ministry of State Security, the political police and intelligence service.

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What 'Gutsy Call'?: CIA Memo Reveals Admiral Controlled bin Laden Mission

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/04/26/Get-bin-laden-memo-CYA

The memo puts all control in the hands of Admiral McRaven – the “timing, operational decision making and control” are all up to McRaven. So the notion that Obama and his team were walking through every stage of the operation is incorrect. The hero here was McRaven, not Obama. And had the mission gone wrong, McRaven surely would have been thrown under the bus.

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Coulter: Romney on Illegal Immigration

http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2012-04-25.html

If you're not sure how you feel about illegal immigration, ask yourself this: "Do I have a nanny, a maid, a pool boy, a chauffeur, a cook or a business requiring lots of cheap labor that the rest of America will have to subsidize with social services to make up for the wages I'm paying?" Press "1" to answer in English. 

If the answer is "no," illegal immigration is a bad deal for you. Cheap labor is cheap only for the employer. 

Today, 70 percent of illegal immigrant households collect government benefits -- as do 57 percent of all immigrant households -- compared to 39 percent of native households. 

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A Bad Day In Court for the Obama Administration

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/04/a-bad-day-in-court-for-the-obama-administration.php

Justice Sotomayor was commenting here on an extraordinary aspect of the Obama administration’s position, to the effect that it is OK if individual Arizona law enforcement officers decide to cooperate with federal immigration authorities, but if the state directs them all to cooperate, it is somehow unconstitutional. The Obama administration literally argued that for a state to engage in “systematic cooperation” with the federal government on immigration is unlawful. We can’t blame Mr. Verrilli for his inability to sell that bizarre argument. We do blame Barack Obama and Eric Holder for trying to assert it.

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7 reasons why higher tax rates hurt economic growth

A response to Diamond and Saez

By James Pethokoukis

http://blog.american.com/2012/04/7-reasons-why-higher-tax-rates-would-be-bad-for-economic-growth-a-response-to-diamond-and-saez/

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Really, Dog Eating Is Not Funny

Yes, it is...

http://pjmedia.com/instapundit/141116/

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Earth Day leader killed, composted girlfriend

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42711922/ns/technology_and_science-science/t/earth-day-co-founder-killed-composted-girlfriend/#.T5Ru4u1Aes1

Ira Einhorn was on stage hosting the first Earth Day event at the Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. Seven years later, police raided his closet and found the "composted" body of his ex-girlfriend inside a trunk.

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dloesch's Andrew Breitbart word image

via @JonahNRO

http://instagr.am/p/JpqQMsL5Jh/

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Creative Minority Report: If I Had A Dog, It Would Look Like the Dog Obama Ate

Click for the illustration:

http://www.creativeminorityreport.com/2012/04/if-i-had-dog.html

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Follow up on John Derbyshire

Derb responds to various questions here:

http://www.johnderbyshire.com/April2012/page.html

There's also a link to an excellent posting by former NR editor, John O'Sullivan:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/296004/derb-and-discourse-john-osullivan

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North Carolina same-sex scandal for Democrats

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/16/nc-dems-demand-state-chairmans-resignation-compare-harassment-scandal-to-watergate/

Last week The Daily Caller uncovered emails that seemed to show that an unidentified state Democratic Party official, later revealed to be Parmley, sexually harassed communications staffer Adriadn Ortega.

The emails indicated that the Democratic Party made a financial settlement with Ortega, and that both Ortega and Parmley signed non-disclosure agreements to keep the incident quiet.

Local news outlets have reported that Ortega was fired after he made the sexual-harassment allegations, and that the state party has not been transparent about his firing since it happened.

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Goldberg: Fantasies of Social Darwinism

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/fantasies-social-darwinism_637016.html

> One reason the term “Social Darwinism” caught on with progressives was that it served to divert attention from the sins of “reform Darwinism” — i.e., the progressive passion for eugenics. The progressives advocated aggressive statist intervention to improve the genetic stock of the country, while the alleged Social Darwinists championed laissez-faire and private charity and—gasp—reproductive freedom. Moreover, the term Social Darwinism, which in Europe was used to justify nationalist and racist theories of the Hitlerian variety, was the perfect label for playing guilt-by-association in America. Ever since Hofstadter’s book, liberals have used the term to accuse conservatives of desperately wanting to return to a past that never was.

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Derb - By Mark Steyn

Just before Easter, Rich Lowry, editor of National Review, announced that John Derbyshire is no longer associated with the magazine after he published an "indefensible" article in another publication.

Derb's article: "The Talk: Nonblack Version" is here:

http://takimag.com/article/the_talk_nonblack_version_john_derbyshire

Lowry's announcement is here:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295514/parting-ways-rich-lowry

Mark Steyn reacts:

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/295591/re-derb-mark-steyn

> I regret the loss of John Derbyshire to National Review. Short version: Didn’t like the piece, but don’t think NR should have hustled him into the drive-thru guillotine on the basis of 24 hours of hysteria from the Internet’s sans-culottes.

> NR shouldn’t be rewarding those who want to play this game. The more sacrifices you offer up, the more ravenously the volcano belches.
>> PS If Derb’s piece is sufficiently beyond the pale that its author must be terminated immediately, why is its publisher — our old friend Taki — proudly listed on the NR masthead?

Derb has more to say here:

http://takimag.com/article/talking_back_john_derbyshire

----

My take: If you don't like what Derb wrote, refute it in writing. You don't owe him a job, but you do owe him an argument. Don't just dismiss him as offensive with the implication that he's a racist. As a result of this incident, I am canceling my subscription to National Review. It's too bad it had to end this way.

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Sheila Bair: Fix income inequality with $10 million loans for everyone!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fix-income-inequality-with-10-million-loans-for-everyone/2012/04/13/gIQATUQAFT_story.html

Under my plan, each American household could borrow $10 million from the Fed at zero interest. The more conservative among us can take that money and buy 10-year Treasury bonds. At the current 2 percent annual interest rate, we can pocket a nice $200,000 a year to live on. The more adventuresome can buy 10-year Greek debt at 21 percent, for an annual income of $2.1 million. Or if Greece is a little too risky for you, go with Portugal, at about 12 percent, or $1.2 million dollars a year. (No sense in getting greedy.)

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Mark Steyn: Buying ‘Buffett Rule’ makes you a fool

http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/buffett-349130-obama-tax.html#

Sometimes societies become too stupid to survive. A nation that takes Barack Obama's current rhetorical flourishes seriously is certainly well advanced along that dismal path. The current federal debt burden works out at about $140,000 per federal taxpayer, and President Obama is proposing to increase both debt and taxes. Are you one of those taxpayers? How much more do you want added to your $140,000 debt burden?

If you confiscate the total wealth of the Forbes 400 richest Americans it comes to $1.5 trillion, which is just a little less than the Obama budget deficit for year.

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Holder Meets Sharpton - Andrew C. McCarthy

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/296005/holder-meets-sharpton-andrew-c-...

> Holder is currently in “partnership” with his fast friend on the highly charged Trayvon Martin case. In the days before the nation’s chief federal law-enforcement official lionized the CEO of the nation’s racial-grievance industry, Sharpton had been in Florida, threatening that his “action network” — as in “direct action,” the community-organizer’s stock-in-trade — would “move to the next level” if authorities in Sanford, Fla., failed to arrest George Zimmerman, the man (or, if you prefer the New York Times Agitator’s Glossary, the “white Hispanic”) who shot Mr. Martin, a black 17-year-old.
> With such notches on his belt as Crown Heights and Freddie’s Fashion Mart, there’s not a lot of mystery involved when the Reverend Al starts conjuring “the next level” of “action.” Still, never what you’d call a master of subtlety, Sharpton — between inciting mobs with demands to “arrest Zimmerman now!” — expressly threatened to “occupy” the city of Sanford.
>> The nation’s chief federal law enforcer reacted to these threats of lawlessness with paeans to Sharpton’s besotted history.

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Medical Daily: Drinking Alcohol May Significantly Enhance Problem Solving Skills

http://medicaldaily.com/news/20120411/9496/alcohol-solving-skills-analytical-thinking-creativity-study.htm

Scientists found that men who either drank two pints of beer or two glasses of wine before solving brain teasers not only got more questions right, they also were quicker in delivering correct answers, compared to men who answered the questions sober.

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Why We Need Voter-ID Laws Now - John Fund

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/295431/why-we-need-voter-id-laws-now-john-fund?pg=1

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Shelby Steele: The Exploitation of Trayvon Martin

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303302504577323691134926300.html

So the idea that Trayvon Martin is today's Emmett Till, as the Rev. Jackson has said, suggests nothing less than a stubborn nostalgia for America's racist past. In that bygone era civil rights leaders and white liberals stood on the highest moral ground. They literally knew themselves—given their genuine longing to see racism overcome—as historically transformative people. If the world resisted them, as it surely did, it only made them larger than life.

It was a time when standing on the side of the good required true selflessness and so it ennobled people. And this chance to ennoble oneself through a courageous moral stand is what so many blacks and white liberals miss today—now that white racism is such a defeated idea. There is a nostalgia for that time when posture alone ennobled. So today even the hint of old-fashioned raw racism excites with its potential for ennoblement.

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A Conversation with Peter Thiel

http://the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=1187

> It’s not like it has been defunded, so why has DARPA been doing so much less for the economy than it did forty or fifty years ago? Parts of it have become politicized. You can’t just write checks to the thirty smartest scientists in the United States. Instead there are bureaucratic processes, and I think the politicization of science—where a lot of scientists have to write grant applications, be subject to peer review, and have to get all these people to buy in—all this has been toxic, because the skills that make a great scientist and the skills that make a great politician are radically different. There are very few people who are both great scientists and great politicians. So a conservative account of what happened with science in the 20thcentury is that we had a decentralized, non-governmental approach all the way through the 1930s and early 1940s. At that point, the government could accelerate and push things tremendously, but only at the price of politicizing it over a series of decades. Today we have a hundred times more scientists than we did in 1920, but their productivity per capita is less that it used to be.
>
Read the whole thing.

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