Clinton.com - When Only the Third Best Will Do . . .

Choose Chelsea Clinton for your legal bribery.

A college balks at Hillary Clinton’s fee, books Chelsea for $65,000 instead

When the University of Missouri at Kansas City was looking for a celebrity speaker to headline its gala luncheon marking the opening of a women’s hall of fame, one of the names that came to mind was Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But when the former secretary of state’s representatives quoted a fee of $275,000, officials at the public university balked. “Yikes!” one e-mailed another.

So the school booked the next best option: her daughter, Chelsea.

The university paid $65,000 for Chelsea Clinton’s brief appearance Feb. 24, 2014, a demonstration of the celebrity appeal and marketability that the former and possibly second-time first daughter employs on behalf of her mother’s presidential campaign and family’s global charitable empire.

I think it was Glenn Reynolds who suggested that reporters report Clinton's speaking fees in units of years of college tuition for one student. Approximately 4 for Hillary, and only one for Chelsea. That kind of puts it in perspective.

Aw, but she's so cute. . . Chelsea Clinton: I tried to care about money but couldn't

Hillary Clinton insists she isn’t “well-off” and now daughter Chelsea, according to a recent interview, claims she couldn't care less about money.

“I was curious if I could care about (money) on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” she told Fast Company in an interview that ran in the magazine's May edition, explaining why she gave up lucrative gigs to join her family’s philanthropic foundation.

Comparing her experience to the average millennial, the 34-year-old former first daughter defended jumping around to different careers — from consulting to a hedge fund to academia to journalism — before finding her true calling working with her parents.

“It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents? I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents … it’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work, both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make,” she continued about her reluctant status as a boomerang kid.

The Clinton name likely opened doors for the political heiress, including an eye-popping $600,000 annual salary for an irregular stint as an NBC special correspondent, but Chelsea insists her work speaks for itself.

“I will just always work harder (than anybody else) and hopefully perform better,” said Clinton, who along with former banker husband Marc Mezvinsky, purchased a $10.5-million Gramercy Park apartment in 2013. “And hopefully, over time, I preempt and erase whatever expectations people have of me not having a good work ethic, or not being smart, or not being motivated.”

 So she'll donate that $65k to a needy student, right?

Ashe Schow

Ashe Schow wants a share of that action: Chelsea Clinton too expensive? You can hire me for a lot less!

For $65,000, Chelsea spoke for all of ten minutes, followed by a 20-minute question-and-answer session. She then spent 30 minutes posing for pictures with "VIPs." That means it cost the university $1,083 per minute for an hour with Chelsea Clinton.

But if $65,000 is too expensive for your college, university, trade group or hobby club — and you really want to throw some money away — why not hire this speaker at a fraction of the cost?
For those who like to get the most for their money, here's an itemized menu of what you can get if you hire me instead:

• Bargain basement price of $200 per minute (limit of three-hour event)
• $10 per person for a handshake (light grip but not limp)
• $15 per person for a photo with me*
• $20 per person for a handshake and a photo
• $25 per person for a photo in which I appear enthusiastic
• $30 per person for a hug**
• $5 per person for a minute of light conversation
• $10 per person for a minute of light, enthusiastic conversation
• $15 and speaker will call your mom on your cell phone
• $25 per person for a lengthy, deep conversation with your mom in which I tell her we're best friends***
• $10 per person for an autographed photo
• $15 per person for an autographed photo with message, plus a dollar per character in message
• $2,000 for a private dinner with the speaker (no more than 5 VIPs in attendance)

*Must ask for consent prior to touching the speaker. Payment must be provided prior to service.
**Hugs may last no more than 3 seconds. Hands must be placed on speaker's upper back. Please obtain my prior consent as you provide payment.
***Deep personal conversations are to last no longer than 5 minutes.

My only requirement is a comfortable chair offstage for pre- and post-event time (does not need to be in a private room). Mike and Ikes (original flavor) and cans of (cold) diet Pepsi must also be provided.

The way I see it, it has to be a better deal than this university got.

The Clinton State Department e-mail scandal is starting to reheat, based on new revelations that Hillary and company edited some of the emails that she did deign to release to the State Department. Technically, that's illegal, like felony level, but given that she's a Clinton, it will just be glossed over as part of the package:

For proper outrage, you need Ace and the Flaming Skull: Hillary Clinton, Get This, Edited the Emails She Turned Over to State to Delete Embarrassing References to Oil, Terrorism

Another story the media won't discuss.

I saw someone note that altering official federal records -- which Hillary's emails are -- is a felony.

Hillary Clinton withheld Benghazi-related emails from the State Department that detailed her knowledge of the scramble for oil contracts in Libya and the shortcomings of the NATO-led military intervention for which she advocated.
Clinton removed specific portions of other emails she sent to State, suggesting the messages were screened closely enough to determine which paragraphs were unfit to be seen by the public.
For example, one email Clinton kept from the State Department indicates Libyan leaders were "well aware" of which "major oil companies and international banks" supported them during the rebellion, information they would "factor into decisions" about about who would be given access to the country's rich oil reserves.

Remember, this is as she's taking $100 million from Canadian oil-and-uranium mining magnate Frank Guistra.

The email, which Clinton subsequently scrubbed from her server, indicated Clinton was aware that involvement in the controversial conflict could have a significant financial benefit to firms that were friendly to the Libyan rebels.
She thanked Sidney Blumenthal, her former aide and author of dozens of informal intelligence memos, for the tip, which she called "useful," and informed him she was preparing to hold a meeting with Libyan leaders in Paris in an exchange that suggests the flow of information went both ways.
State Department officials admitted Clinton had withheld all of nine emails and parts of six others after Blumenthal provided 60 emails to the House Select Committee on Benghazi that the agency had failed to submit earlier this year.

There's more. I can't quote it all.

But the government doesn't give a crap because there's not a Republican to hold responsible: No probe over undisclosed Clinton emails, State says

The State Department says there won't be an internal investigation into why the agency couldn’t find part or all of 15 emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s personal email server.

“I know of no such investigation, certainly not by the State Department, no,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said during a Friday press briefing.

Clinton’s former agency found it lacked the communications following the House Select Committee on Benghazi’s release of nearly 60 emails it had received from Clinton adviser Sidney Blumenthal earlier this month.

“We were clear about that in our communication with the committee that of the 15 that we did not have, that Mr. Blumenthal had, they were not specifically related to Benghazi, which was the original mandate on the select committee,” Kirby said.

“Again, we only knew about these 15 because Mr. Blumenthal had them and provided them to the select committee, so there was something to check it against,” he told reporters. “We don't know the degree to which there may be other emails that another third party may have, in this case, Mr. Blumenthal, that we do not have.”

And the intersection of the IRS Scandal and Hillary Clinton's Email Scandal. When you need something slow-rolled to prevent excess damage, call for the best: Double trouble? IRS lawyer now heads Clinton email production

A year ago, Catherine Duval was embroiled in the scandal over former IRS official Lois Lerner’s lost emails.

Now the top government attorney is heading up another document project in the cross hairs of Congress: the State Department’s release of Hillary Clinton’s emails and Libya documents to the House Select Committee on Benghazi.

And Republican GOP investigators are raising red flags, accusing her and the State Department of stonewalling Congress by narrowly interpreting document requests and failing to disclose important information.

“The person in charge of document production at two different places on two different scandals has not been completely straightforward with us,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a top IRS and Benghazi investigator, in an interview. “She was at the IRS when there was a preservation order and subpoena — and documents were destroyed. She is now at the State Department, where we were supposed to get [certain] information, and we know that some of the emails were not given.”

Duval, a former attorney for the powerhouse Washington law firm Williams & Connolly who left the IRS and joined the State Department last August, declined to comment for this story. But she told House Oversight investigators last year that she didn’t know such backup tapes of the lost Lerner emails — recently found destroyed — even existed.

And a few tidbits from the emails that got past Hillary's censorship:

Email bombshells from Hillary's secret account show she didn't know when cabinet meetings were held, was dumbfounded by a fax machine and emailed aides to fetch her iced tea

on Tuesday the State Department released the first in a series of document-dumps comprising about 3,000 of the 55,000 pages Clinton turned over to State late last year.

They describe the ordinary and the shocking – everything from meeting recaps to the involvement in the agency of Sidney Blumenthal, Clinton's 2008 election hatchet-man who had officially been exiled from the administration.

They also paint the onetime first lady and New York senator as technologically maladroit – she was all thumbs with an office fax machine – and distant enough from her husband Bill that their aides kept each informed about the other's doings.

She used her email to let aides know she was thirsy. 'Pls call Sarah and ask her if she can get me some iced tea,' one message read.
. . .
And then there's 'Santa' Nikkels– the Chappaqua, N.Y. hairdresser on Clinton's meeting schedule who kept her from making it to the airport on time.

'I'm seeing Santa at 8:30,' she wrote her deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin six months after taking office, 'so [we] won't take off until closer to 9:30.'

What is it about Clintons, hair cuts and planes?

Buried in the din of thousands of people devouring the emails Tuesday night, though, was something more ominous for Clinton insiders: news that the State Department had decided to treat some two dozen of the messages as 'classified' – ruling as lawyers vetted the material that some of it was too sensitive to expose publicly.

Clinton and her campaign surrogates insisted beginning in April that her private email server was never a national security risk and never housed classified documents.

But State spokesman Alex Gerlach acknowledged Tuesday night that 'portions of 25 emails were subsequently upgraded' to the classification level 'confidential' – a notch below 'secret.'

As I have said before, it's shocking to me that the State Department bureaucrats ever let her handle anything of any importance.

Saddest Hillary Clinton Email Revealed in New Data Dump!

One of the following is an intentional joke. The other? An unintentional joke. Each is simultaneously funny and deeply disturbing. You be the judge of which is which.

And this:

See what I mean?

This Is the Best Email in the New Trove of Hillary Correspondence

Be sure to catch the last two words of the subject line in this email from Huma Abedin to Hillary Clinton, released last night by the State Department:

Sadly, this only raises my opinion of Al Gore.

And in the how long will the sun shine category: How long will the media keep covering for Hillary Clinton?

Instapundit/Free Beacon: Meanwhile State Dept threatens to arrest WFB Reporter for Covering Iran Talks

WFB: Hillary's email scandal was of her own making (too bad most of the media is no longer covering it) and Hillary undermining trust in her and politics in general

Legal Insurrection: Hillary Clinton's secret #Benghazi phone call

EBL: Are Conservatives The New Gays?

Instapundit/Ed Driscoll: Hidden Hillary emails show she was confused by a fax machine and these emails show what a weak grasp she has of the world around her and no overtime pay for Hillary's campaign workers (many of them don't even get paid)

Newly ordered released emails show how involved Sydney Blumenthal is with Hillary

Where was YouTube When I Was Young?

Wombat-socho snuck in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Independence Day Weekend Edition" late Sunday evening.

We Find It Works Better If You Skin Them First

A porcupine meal makes for a very bad python day

After the death of a 12-foot-long African Rock Python, park rangers opened its stomach. Inside they found a 30-pound porcupine.

Its needle-sharp quills seem to have punctured the snake's digestive tract and may have contributed to its death.

The engorged snake was first spotted by a mountain biker in the Lake Eland Game Reserve, about 100 miles south of Durban, two weeks ago.

Visitors showed up at the park to observe the snake and to speculate what it had eaten. On its Facebook page, the Game Reserve had its own guesses: a small warthog or impala calf.

When the snake died this week, curious park rangers performed a necropsy, or autopsy, on the animal.

Though the exact cause of death is unknown, spectators and the porcupine may be to blame. "With all the human interaction, this could have caused stress and the python would then regurgitate the meal up with all the quills causing a problem," said game reserve manager Jennifer Fuller.

That's it, blame humans first. It couldn't be because the dumb snake ate a porcupine or anything.

Pythons, which are some of the largest snakes in the world, kill their prey by constriction.

You would think that even constriction of a large porcupine in the first place would be difficult.

Ted, I and various dogs dispatched and ate a number of American Porcupines back when we lived in Oregon.  We found it extremely important to skin them before eating them, even though it was a difficult chore.

I'm Back from Fishing

I got the call from Pete to go com fishing again, with Mike and Bob. Again, we started out from Deale and passed the ships anchored well south of the Bay Bridge.

Today we stopped for a while at Thomas Point Shoal Light. The Bay is a small place. See the little boat to the the left? Those are the boys we rescued at "Location X" back in March.

Looking at the Bay Bridge from well South

We ended up going a little farther north than last week, and into the Chester River, looking at the Kent Narrows from the back.

We ended the day jigging up Stripers around pilings at the Bay Bridge, before returning to Deale with enough fish to pay for gas for another couple of trips.

Some Gigi to Start a Hot Day

Rule 5 subject Gigi Hadid lies around in the sun.



She should have some of those moles checked. If I knew anything, I'd volunteer.

Supposed to 90 ish here today, and I'll be out most of the day fishing.

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links. Wombat-socho snuck in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Independence Day Weekend Edition" late Sunday evening.

This Post is for the Birds

Come on people! Landscape!



See, isn't that better?.

I wonder if that is the Magpie's natural voice or whether it started mimicking a person.

CBF to Virginia Farmers: "Get Off Our Lawn!"

CBF sues Virginia for not making livestock stream exclusion mandatory

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation announced legal action against Virginia for failing to protect streams, rivers and the Chesapeake Bay from the pollution that results when livestock are allowed access to waterways.

The CBF contends that the Virginia State Water Control Board and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality have failed to enforce Virginia statutory provisions that are in place to ensure clean water for the “benefit, enjoyment, and general welfare of the people of the Commonwealth.”

The CBF took action in April 2014, after the State Water Control Board approved a 10-year permit governing large farming operations without specifically requiring fencing to exclude livestock for streams. The case will be heard by the Virginia Circuit Court on July 2 in Richmond.

In Virginia, livestock exclusion is currently required for confined animal feeding operations — where livestock is contained in small fenced areas — but has been considered “voluntary” for pastured livestock by state program managers.

Allowing livestock to wade in streams causes problems with water quality as well as animal health. Stream banks erode after being trampled by livestock, degrading habitat for aquatic life. When cattle and other livestock are allowed in or near streams, animal waste creates health problems for the animals — and for people. Almost half of the streams in Virginia that do not meet water quality standards have excessive bacteria, often from the lack of livestock management near streams.

I wonder if the deer, elk and buffalo ever wade through streams?

Child Killed in Collision at Chesapeake Bay Boat Race

7 year old Julianne Rosella

1 killed, 3 injured in Kent Island racing crash

A young girl was killed and three other people were injured during the Thunder on the Narrows boat race off Kent Island, U.S. Coast Guard officials said.

The Kent Narrows Racing Association said the boat was a Grand National hydroplane boat participating in Sunday's last race at the Kent Island Yacht Club. It was about 23 feet long and probably traveling about 125 mph when it hit spectators near Kent Island.

"One of the race boats was on course racing and struck a spectator boat," said Paul Schlotterbeck, with the Kent Island Volunteer Fire Department.

According to the Coast Guard, the driver of the racing boat lost control about 5:30 p.m. and slammed into spectator boats filled with people watching the race.

"There were about five vessels that were involved in the incident and there were some injuries," Coast Guard Cmdr. Mike Keane said.

"Four patients were transported; two by ground to local hospitals and two were transported by Maryland State Police Aviation to Shock Trauma," Schlotterbeck said.

Authorities sent their thoughts and prayers to the families of the three injured and the 7-year-old girl who died.

"With those vessels that were rafted during the race, the speedboat collided into three of them. All the 12 vessels had different rafts that were actually on the stern, tied off, and we believe the little girl was on one of the rafts," Keane said. "Our prayers go out to the families and the loved ones involved of the individuals that were involved in the event."

Still no word on what happened to the boat. Observers saw it fail to make a turn, making them think a rudder may have failed.

Another fatality on the water this week:

Maryland authorities are searching water near the Chesapeake Bay Bridge trying to find a man who went under when the boat he was in sank.

Maryland Natural Resources divers have been in the water searching for Javier Sotelo. FOX 5 spoke with Sotelo's brother on the phone and he said the family was on a boat near the bridge when the weather turned rough. Several waves hit the boat and then it started going down.

The weather can turn awful in a minute on the Bay if you're not watching the radar. I have some experience with that. . .

Some of the family had access to life vests, but Sotelo did not and stayed on the boat as it was sinking. He could not swim.

Officials say the rescue mission has turned into a recovery mission.

"We actually have side scan sonar that we're running to try to locate the subject if possible,” said Maryland Natural Resources Police Sgt. John Buchanan. “We have divers standing by if we do find something with side scan and then we'll work from there.”

 Legally, they were supposed to have life jackets for everyone on board.

So Where Did I Hide the Chocolate Bars?

Dark Chocolate Could Improve Memory By 25%, But You’d Have to Eat Seven Bars a Day

Does bathing in it help too?

Dr. Scott A. Small, a neurologist at Columbia University Medical Center, led the study, which was funded by the chocolate company Mars, the National Institutes of Health, and two other research foundations. The results were published yesterday in Nature Neuroscience.

When healthy people ages 50 to 69 drank a mixture high in cocoa flavanols for three months, they performed about 25% better on a memory test.

That would raise my chances of remembering our anniversary to what, 12.5%?

Here’s Pam Belluck, writing for The New York Times:

The findings support recent research linking flavanols, especially epicatechin, to improved blood circulation, heart health and memory in mice, snails and humans. But experts said the new study, although involving only 37 participants and partly funded by Mars Inc., the chocolate company, goes further and was a well-controlled, randomized trial led by experienced researchers.
Besides improvements on the memory test — a pattern recognition test involving the kind of skill used in remembering where you parked the car or recalling the face of someone you just met — researchers found increased function in an area of the brain’s hippocampus called the dentate gyrus, which has been linked to this type of memory.

So women don't eat chocolate to forget?

While the study supports the idea that cocoa flavanols help reverse age-related memory decline, it probably won’t ward off Alzheimer’s. The participants didn’t show any marked difference in the functioning of the entorhinal cortex, which is impaired in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The distinction shows that age-related and Alzheimer’s-related memory loss are not the same thing, and that flavanols won’t have an effect on cognitive disease.

Even if you don’t have Alzheimer’s, though, binging on any old chocolate this Halloween will help you remember where you left your keys. Milk chocolate won’t help since processing usually removes the key flanvanol epicatechin. Eating dark chocolate may not help much, either. To ingest the same amount of epicatechin as the study group, you’d have to consume the equivalent of about seven average-sized bars a day, which would probably invite other health problems.

So why can't we just buy epicatechin?

Wombat-socho snuck in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Independence Day Weekend Edition" late Sunday evening.

Behold the Mighty Bunny!

Reminds me of:

CBF Upgrades Chesapeake Bay to "D+"

Chesapeake Bay receives D+ on report card

Chesapeake Bay Foundation's most recent evaluation scores the bay's health at a dismal D+.

Every year, the foundation performs a detailed evaluation, collecting water quality and biological data to construct an overall health profile for the bay.

"Since 1998, CBF has been issuing our signature 'State of the Bay Report' to answer the question that we get all the time, which is how is the bay doing?" said Will Baker, CBF president. "Our 2014 report has mixed news. The Chesapeake Clean Water Blueprint is in place and it's working. As a result, the water is clearer, pollution is declining, dead zones are shrinking, underwater grasses are starting to come back, and the oysters are way more plentiful. But the bay is far from saved.

"We are worried about the declining populations of rockfish (striped bass) and blue crab. Our report confirms that the bay remains a system that is dangerously out of balance. We certainly have a lot of work left to do."

Sounds about fair to me. Although I do see a small conflict of interest on the part of the Foundation. If it were suddenly find a vastly improved bay worthy of an A, they would have to disband, and abandon all their lovely waterside facilities:

SCOTUS Slaps Down EPA Power Plant Regulations

Supreme Court overturns landmark EPA air pollution rule

The Supreme Court dealt a blow to the Obama administration’s landmark air quality rule on Monday, ruling the Environmental Protection Agency did not properly consider the costs of the regulation.

In a 5-4 ruling, the justices ruled that the EPA should have taken into account the costs to utilities and others in the power sector before even deciding whether to set limits for the toxic air pollutants it regulated in 2011.

The case, Michigan v. EPA, centers on the EPA’s first limits on mercury, arsenic and acid gases emitted by coal-fired power plants, known as mercury and air toxics (MATS). Opponents, including the National Federation of Independent Business, say it's among the costliest regulations ever issued.

The EPA estimated its rule, which took effect for some plants in April, would cost $9.6 billion, produce between $37 billion and $90 billion in benefits and prevent up to 11,000 premature deaths and 130,000 asthma cases annually.

EPA's estimations can be totally discounted as the fantasies of true believers. But even so. . .

But the agency concluded that its regulatory impact analysis should have “no bearing on” the determination of whether regulations are appropriate, as set forth in the Clean Air Act.

In the majority ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia concluded that the EPA “unreasonably” interpreted the Clean Air Act when it decided not to consider industry compliance costs and whether regulating the pollutants is “appropriate and necessary.”

While the agency is afforded a certain level of power to interpret the law, the court wrote, “EPA strayed well beyond the bounds of reasonable interpretation in concluding that cost is not a factor relevant to the appropriateness of regulating power plants.”

Expect weeping and wailing on the scale of Citizens United over this ruling.

Mind you, I wouldn't mind at all if every coal power plant in the US were replaced with an equivalent sized nuke. But the people who want to kill coal aren't interest in that.

A Holiday In Greece

Bank Holiday that is. They're still out of other peoples' money: Greece Closes Banks in Crisis

It was first announced that Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras debt-ridden left-wing government would close banks Monday, but now they’ve decided the banks will remain closed all week:

Greek banks are to remain closed and capital controls will be imposed, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras says.
Speaking after the European Central Bank (ECB) said it was not increasing emergency funding to Greek banks, Mr Tsipras said Greek deposits were safe.
Greece is due to make a €1.6bn (£1.1bn) payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday – the same day that its current bailout expires.
. . .Greek banks are expected to stay shut until 7 July, two days after Greece’s planned referendum on the terms it had been offered by international creditors for receiving fresh bailout money. . . .
Eurozone finance ministers blamed Greece for breaking off the talks, and the European Commission took the unusual step on Sunday ofpublishing proposals by European creditors that it said were on the table at the time.
But Greece described creditors’ terms as “not viable”, and asked for an extension of its current deal until after the vote was completed.
“[Rejection] of the Greek government’s request for a short extension of the programme was an unprecedented act by European standards, questioning the right of a sovereign people to decide,” Mr Tsipras on Sunday said in a televised address.
“This decision led the ECB today to limit the liquidity available to Greek banks and forced the Greek central bank to suggest a bank holiday and restrictions on bank withdrawals.” . . .
The temporary closure of banks in Greece, and the introduction of capital controls, is very bad news for Greece. Greek people will have less money to spend and business less to invest; so an already weak economy will probably return to deep recession.

(More at Memeorandum.) Notice how Tsipras suggests that the creditors are being undemocratic, rather than admitting that Greece has been irresponsible? Tsipras obviously believes Greeks have a right to other people’s money, and that it is wrong for European creditors to expect them to pay back what they borrowed.

And this interesting news item, a bit closer to home:

Oh, by the way: Puerto Rico can’t pay its debts, either.

Puerto Rico’s governor, saying he needs to pull the island out of a “death spiral,” has concluded that the commonwealth cannot pay its roughly $72 billion in debts, an admission that will probably have wide-reaching financial repercussions.

The governor, Alejandro García Padilla, and senior members of his staff said in an interview last week that they would probably seek significant concessions from as many as all of the island’s creditors, which could include deferring some debt payments for as long as five years or extending the timetable for repayment.

“The debt is not payable,” Mr. García Padilla said. “There is no other option. I would love to have an easier option. This is not politics, this is math.”

Time for the Jubilee?

The Jubilee (Hebrew yovel יובל) year is the year at the end of seven cycles of shmita (Sabbatical years), and according toBiblical regulations had a special impact on the ownership and management of land in the Land of Israel; there is some debate whether it was the 49th year (the last year of seven sabbatical cycles, referred to as the Sabbath's Sabbath), or whether it was the following (50th) year. Jubilee deals largely with land, property, and property rights. According to Leviticus, slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven, and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest. 

GOP Threatens Impeachment Over IRS Scandal

But only Koskinen, alas, and that probably won't happen either:

Agency destroyed e-mails after telling Congress they couldn’t be found.

House Republicans investigating the IRS’s targeting of tea-party groups are seriously considering an effort to impeach IRS commissioner John Koskinen or other agency employees for “culpable misdemeanors” pertaining to the destruction of e-mails written by Lois Lerner, the former official at the heart of the scandal.

“We’ve briefed the leadership’s counsel, and I think that they’re open to it, but it’s the type of thing where this town is like, ‘oh, that’s not how we do things, it’s not really been used lately,’” a Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee says. “But, quite frankly, we really haven’t had executive branch officials behave this way like we do now.”

Lawmakers have been privately mulling the unconventional tactic for months, in part due to frustration that cutting the agency’s budget and holding Lerner in contempt of Congress failed to speed up the glacial pace at which the agency has produced documents requested by the committee. The ultimate decision depends on their ability to demonstrate that the IRS has obstructed the investigation — a public case that might begin Thursday, when the Treasury Department’s inspector general announces that IRS officials destroyed the files “most likely to have contained Lerner’s emails” after telling Congress they could not be found, according to a transcript of the IG’s forthcoming testimony to the Oversight Committee obtained by NR.
. . .
“It’s really a test of whether Congress is going to defend its institutional prerogatives,” the Oversight Committee member says. “If you have a situation where it’s fine for people to come misrepresent the facts, not produce documents, and just do that with impunity, then why are we even conducting oversight?”

TIGTA: Lerner hard-drive crash likely due to “an impact of some sort”

What could happen in an IRS office on a Saturday evening to create “an impact of some sort” on a laptop hard drive? According to Lois Lerner, the computer mysteriously failed to operate when she returned to the office on Monday, June 13, 2011, but server data shows that the computer had been in communication with the office systems continuously until Saturday, June 11th, at least until 5 pm. The House Oversight Committee discovered this sequence of events from the Treasury’s Inspector General, whose testimony raises new questions about the hard drive failure that kept Congress from retrieving Lerner’s e-mails (via ATR):

Our investigation determined that on Saturday, June 11, 2011, between 5:00 pm and 7:00 pm, Ms. Lerner’s IRS issued laptop computer stopped communicating with the IRS server system. The IRS server system sends messages out to all of the network-connected computers every two hours. The last communication between Ms. Lerner’s laptop and the server system occurred around 5:00 pm, and at that time, based on consistent network reporting for more than a week, the laptop computer was likely located in Ms. Lerner’s office. The laptop failed to respond to the server at 7:00 pm.
On Monday, June 13, 2011, Ms. Lerner reported that she found her computer inoperable when she entered her office, and the malfunction was reported to the IRS Information Technology (IT) staff. The assigned IT specialist determined the hard drive had crashed, and following standard protocol, he placed a new hard drive in Ms. Lerner’s laptop. In addition to the hard drive, a Hewlett Packard (HP) contractor replaced the laptop’s keyboard, track pad, heat sink, and fan. When interviewed, both the IRS IT technician and the HP technician reported that they did not note any visible damage to the laptop computer itself. When asked about the possible cause of the hard drive failure, the HP technician opined that heat-related failures are not seen often, and based on the information provided to him, the hard drive more than likely crashed due to an impact of some sort. However, because the HP technician did not examine the hard drive as part of his work on the laptop, it could not be determined why it crashed.
On July 19, 2011, Ms. Lerner requested IRS IT to attempt to recover data from her crashed hard drive because, according to her, she had “personal information” on the drive. The IRS IT management agreed and requested assistance from the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division (IRS-CI). After receiving the hard drive from the IT technician, the IRS-CI technician attempted, but was unsuccessful in recovering data, so he returned the hard drive to the IT depot at the IRS headquarters building for its ultimate destruction. According to the IRS-CI technician, he noted some scoring on the top platter of the drive, and he believed there were additional steps that could have been taken to attempt to recover data.

What a coincidence, Oversight chair Jason Chaffetz exclaims! If the time of the event is so narrowly deducible, why not take a look through the security data to see who came into the office that weekend? Well … not exactly, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations Tim Camus explains:

Again, more records destroyed. . .



It's clear that the IRS has become, in many respects, an enforcement arm of the Democrat party. Only vigorous action by Republicans can alter that reality. Getting rid of Koskinen to demonstrate that they mean business is a start, but the real way to bureaucrats heart is through his wallet. Cut the budget of the IRS another 20% and strip away their perks and any non-tax collecting arms (like the tax-exempt group).

No Contest

Don't Scare Me Like That!

Instead of kayakers, it could have been an Orca or a Greenland Shark.

Greenland sharks are one of the slowest-swimming sharks, which attain a maximum swimming speed that is about half the maximum swimming speed of a typical seal. Therefore, biologists have wondered how the sharks are able to prey on the seals. Evidence has been found that Greenland sharks search out seals and ambush them while they sleep. Greenland sharks have also been found with remains of polar bear, horses, moose and reindeer (in one case an entire reindeer body) in their stomachs.

Sunday, 6/28/15 Beach Report

It rained all day yesterday, and ended with a tornado warning and 3 inches of rain. After that, a partially sunny day with light winds and temperatures in the upper 70s was a pleasant change.

There was signs of yesterday's storm around.  High tides cut through the jetty, left the water dirty, and a line of woody debris stranded on the shore at the high tide mark.

 A few sharks' teeth. Ten I think.

Enough west wind to heel this sailboat over.

Greece Still Out of Other Peoples' Money

Greece's attempts to gain some breathing space in its ongoing debt crisis by accusing the countries it hopes to lend them money of bad faith and imperialism, and by not showing any willingness to put it's financial house in order has paid off exactly as one would expect. Its own citizens are losing faith in the government and bank and are trying to reclaim the money they have before it is confiscated or devalued out of existence:

Via Stacy McCain

The Eurozone’s problem child throws a tantrum:
Two senior Greek retail bank executives said as many as 500 of the country’s more than 7,000 ATMs had run out of cash as of Saturday morning, and that some lenders may not be able to open on Monday unless there was an emergency liquidity injection from the Bank of Greece. An official with Greece’s Capital Markets Commission, the markets’ regulator, also warned that the Athens Stock Exchange may be unable to operate on Monday without a cash injection into the banking system. A Greek central bank spokesman said it was making efforts to supply money.
 . . .
After withdrawing more than 30 billion euros as the anti-austerity Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza, took power, depositors are now reacting to the latest twist in the five-month standoff with European leaders and creditors.

In addition to Margaret Thatcher’s famous maxim about socialists eventually running out of other people’s money, there is also Stein’s Law. This was coined by Herb Stein, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during Richard Nixon’s presidency: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

And the problem of the Eurozone’s weaker nations expecting bailouts from their rich neighbors obviously cannot go on forever. So what happens when it stops? We don’t know.

Portugal, Spain, Italy and Ireland — the other fiscal weak sisters in the Eurozone — may manage to avoid default, and the richer EU nations may be able to stabilize the overall regional economy. If so, the Greek problem is just a Greek problem.

On the other hand, who knows?
. . .
We’ve spent seven years in a slow, weak recovery from the crash of 2008, and it might be that the Greek crisis will trigger a worldwide recession. Riots, famine, hyperinflation — anything is possible.

The only question is whether the financial collapse of Greece will be the trigger in a series of similar catastrophes leading to a world wide debt crisis, or the bad example which will at least temporarily cause the remainder of the PIIGS to pay attention.

Silver and gold are still pretty cheap . . .

Working in a Car Wash

I like how the girl at 17 seconds or so is just spraying the ground. . .

Linked at Pirate's Cove in the weekly "Sorta Blogless Sunday Pinup" and links.



Wombat-socho snuck in with "Rule 5 Sunday: Independence Day Weekend Edition" late Sunday evening.

Morning Music - "Easy, Easy Like Sunday Morning"