Eric Cantor loses in the primary!
The reports of the death of the Tea Party have been greatly exaggerated!
In what could be one of the greatest political upsets in recent US history House Majority Leader Eric Cantor lost to the upstart David Brat in the Virginia primary.
This should send shock waves throughout the Republican establishment for while they funneled roughly $5 million into Eric Cantor’s campaign in order to protect him his opponent only had about $200,ooo on hand. To be honest I haven’t been following this race closely because I assumed money would trump everything else but this is one time where the issues may have actually trumped the moneyed interests in Washington.
MSNBC host blames the Las Vegas shooting on Ted Cruz
Earlier today MSNBC host Michael Eric Dyson basically blamed the Las Vegas shooting on Ted Cruz. Here is what he had to say:
Michael Eric Dyson is subbing on the Ed Show today and during his monologue on the couple who executed the Las Vegas police officers, Dyson linked them specifically to Ted Cruz, suggesting that they got some of their extremist beliefs from Cruz.
Specifically, Dyson said “the suspects likened the US government to Nazi, Germany. I wonder where they got that idea,” and then he played a clip from Ted Cruz’s famous ‘defund Obamacare’ filibuster where he was talking about Nazi Germany.
I am going to be perfectly blunt here: after every shooting the mainstream media, and dare I say it, many in the Democratic party hope and pray that the shooting can be blamed on a right winger for political purposes.
The Obama administration says Chuck Hagel made the final decision on the Bergdahl swap
Since the announcement of the Bergdahl prisoner swap Barack Obama has been facing increasing criticism from both sides of the aisle. Even people such as Dianne Feinstein have voiced loud dissatisfaction with the president’s decision to break the law by not notifying the Congress about the deal.
This is something that Barack Obama never expected because usually he can count on the Democrats to fall in line, but the general negative reaction from the public amid allegations of desertion by Bergdahl, and the release of reportedly high Taliban officials, has some Democrats distancing themselves from a president whose popularity is diminishing daily.
With the Democrats distancing themselves from the president it is time for Barack Obama to start distancing himself from the Berdahl deal, and that is what he did at a closed door meeting with the House yesterday.
There is only one thing that the Republican establishment in Washington DC hates more than Barack Obama’s policies and that is those within the party who dare to challenge the status quo. (It is my opinion that the GOP establishment does not really oppose what the president is doing, they simply claim they do so they can run against him in the 2014 and 2016 elections. This is why they have basically done nothing but pay lip service to stopping him.)
We have seen two blatant examples of this: First; John Boehner punished the conservatives in the Republican party for not going along to get along by removing them from influential committees. And second; Karl Rove created a Super PAC which was designed to protect the incumbent ruling class Republicans against any outside threat in the primaries.
Now it is being reported that the ruling class Republicans in Washington are prepared to go to war against Ted Cruz because he will not fall in line with his Republican masters.
Just when you thought that for all intents and purposes the IRS targeting scandal was dead and buried in the wake of Lois Lerner invoking her 5th amendment right under the Constitution comes a new report which claims the IRS might have illegally shared the personal information of taxpayers with the FBI.
Here is more:
The big news story over the last week or so has been the prisoner swap for Bowe Bergdahl and rightfully so, there is much to be debated on this issue. But when so much of the mainstream media is focused on a single issue such as this we must look for the stories which are being ignored. I have tried to do this however there is one story I haven’t had a chance to get to so I will do so tonight.
Since Barack Obama loosened the immigration laws, granting defacto amnesty to some illegal aliens as well as the DREAM Act through Executive Order after these measures failed to pass in the Congress, thousands of illegal aliens, emboldened by these moves, have been flooding across the border in the hope of taking advantage of these new policies.
Last week a backpack was found in Connecticut which included the personal information of 400 Obamacare enrollees.
Four notepads with the personal information of approximately 400 people — including names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of customers of the state’s health insurance exchange — were discovered in the backpack, reports the Hartford Courant.
“The notepads initially appear to belong to an employee of Maximus, the vendor providing call center services to Access Health CT,” said Peter Van Loon, the chief operating officer of the exchange. “Close examination of the data is indicating that fewer than 200 Social Security numbers were contained on the pads.”
Now the Connecticut healthcare exchange is warning its customers about the risk of identity theft.
It looks like a new front might be opening up on the global warming battlefield and this time the attackers will be the insurance companies. A few weeks ago I intended to write about an insurance company which, rather than pay for storm damage, decided to sue the city of Chicago for failing to adequately prepare for global warming but I never got around to that post.
Since that time the lawsuit has been dropped but this is just the beginning: insurance companies believe they have found a way out of paying for their obligations and there is more likely to follow according to this article.
Open thread for Sunday, June 8th: One
Here is the open thread for Sunday, June 8th; please feel free to post links to interesting articles and to discuss whatever issues arise during the course of the day. Nothing is off-topic here.
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Please check out what the New Federalist Party has been up to by clicking on the link to the right. On the NFP Facebook page you will find a link to the party platform. Check it out and if you like what you see we are currently looking for donations and delegates to the states for the convention.
Metallica is supposed to headline the Glastonbury music festival this year but that might now be in jeopardy because the oh so tolerant left found out that lead singer James Hetfield is a big game hunter and is set to narrate a new television show about bear hunting. Naturally they want Metallica booted from the festival.
So today I stand in solidarity with Metallic and give you their song ‘One’ as performed live with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Alex Friedmann is the editor of ‘Prison Legal News‘ and he is–or was–investigating allegations of abuse at a local jail. As part of his investigation he requested public records about jailing practices.
Not only was he denied access to these public records but, according to this article, he actually became the target of the local sheriff, Normal Dalton, who harassed him and reported him to Homeland Security.
An editor for Prison Legal News has sued the sheriff’s department in Marshall County, Tenn. (pop. 30,883) because the sheriff refused to comply with a request for public records about practices at the local jail.
In addition to refusing to comply with the records request, the sheriff, Normal Dalton, ordered a background check on the editor, paid a visit to his home and contacted the Department of Homeland Security.
Friedmann claims that Dalton and his department snubbed the records request – and spied on him, and contacted a federal agency charged with preventing terrorism – to cover up misconduct.
“The Marshall County Sheriff’s office apparently doesn’t feel it has to comply with the law,” the inmate advocate told the NBC affiliate.
“I think that’s very alarming and very disturbing that a law enforcement officer can do a background check, and in this case actually drove in to check my residence in person just because I filed a public records request with his agency,” he added.
Sheriff Dalton’s attorney defended his actions thusly:
America's Watchtower 