If, dear reader, after reading Balko’s article, HERE, you think it can’t happen in North Carolina, may I remind you of the pseudo scandal involving the Duke LaCrosse team and the despicable prosecutorial misbehavior of Durham County District Attorney Mike Nifong.

But, on the flip side, there is THIS story from San Diego about a Federal prosecutor doing the right thing, even when it resulted in professional embarrassment.  And, I think, the judge should garner some strong criticism for his role as well.

Aerial photographer Raphael Pirker flew a small drone near the University of Virginia while making a commercial video in October 2011.  In what appears to be a premature effort to regulate the commercial use of drone aircraft in US airspace, the FAA fined Pirker $10,000.  Pirker appealed, and the appeals court found that the FAA does not have any regulatory authority to govern model aircraft (toys) flights or those that classify model aircraft as an “unmanned aircraft”, meaning a drone.

Read the full article, HERE, from Market Watch.

In two recent announcements, national retailers Radio Shack and Staples have revealed plans to close large numbers of stores nationwide.  Radio Shack intends to close about 20% of its stores, or roughly 1,100.  Staples intends to close about 225 stores, which comprises roughly 12% of its retail outlets in North America.

For more, check out the CNN story, HERE.

As many readers will know, the Bill Clinton Presidential Library, after years of stalling and postponements, has finally released another batch of documents from his eight years in office.  Amazingly, the British media seems to be doing a much better job of sifting through these newly-released 4,000 pages than our left-leaning domestic mainstream media.  Imagine that.

The UK’s Daily Mail has found a trove dealing with the HillaryCare project, an effort that took up a bit more than two years of Billary’s first term, with an end stage so disastrous as to be considered the main causative factor in the Republican majority takeover in the House of Representative’s after the 1994 mid-term elections.  

Here’s an interesting bit, from an internal memo sent up the chain by a member of the HillaryCare team:

We have a line on page 10 that says “You’ll pick the health plan and the doctor of your choice.”  This sounds great and I know that it’s just what people want to hear.  But can we get away with it?  Isn’t the whole thrust of our health plan to steer people toward cheaper, HMO-style providers?  It’s one thing to say we’ll preserve your option to pick the doctor of your choice (recognizing that this will cost more), it’s quite another to appear to promise the nation that everyone will get to pick the doctor of his or her choice.  And that’s exactly what this line does.  I am very worried about getting skewered for over promising here on something we know full well we won’t deliver.

In his 1994 State of the Union address, President Bill Clinton uttered the outright lie that with HillaryCare, all Americans would have “the freedom to choose a plan and the right to choose your own doctor”.  He did so knowing full well that the statement was false.  Likewise, of course, President Barack Obama stated many times that “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.  If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor”, also while knowing it was false.   Although Bill Clinton originated the lie, Barack Obama, it seems, had no compunctions in resurrecting it.

The whole article, HERE, is well worth reading, as it will be fodder in Hillary’s 2016 campaign.

The potential for oil and gas exploration off the coast of North Carolina and other mid-Atlantic states advanced a step on Thursday last when the US Department of the Interior completed a final review of exploration proposals from the petroleum industry.  Read the full story from the News-&-Observer, HERE.

The regular Tuesday night meeting of the Crystal Coast Tea Party Patriots at the Golden Corral in Morehead City saw a good turnout, with guest speaker Mark Mansfield, candidate for the County Commission from District 3.  Also in attendance were local lumanaries including Carteret County Commissioners Bill Smith, Robin Comer, and Jimmy Harrington, along with Taylor Griffin, who is challenging Representative Walter Jones for his seat in the US House.  Janiece Wall, candidate for the Carteret County Board of Education, also spoke briefly to introduce herself and answer questions related to her campaign positions.

In addition to being a member of the school board, Mark Mansfield is a real estate broker at Golf & Shore Properties.  He has a BS in Nutrition from UNC-Greensboro, with concentration in restaurant management.  He is also President of Carteret County Association of Realtors, a two-time past president of the Crystal Coast realtors Multiple Listing Service (MLS), a member of Carteret County Chamber of Commerce, and a supporter of Habitat for Humanity and Relay for Life.  In addition, Mansfield is a former coach for the Morehead City Parks and Recreation and Seashore Soccer League.

In a previous appearance at a meeting of the Carteret County Republican Men’s Club, Mansfield had been asked questions relating to his 18-month tenure on the Carteret Board of Education.  Some of the questions related to the school system budget, and due to the detailed nature of the inquiry, he deferred his answers until he had more time to research the issue.  At the Tuesday meeting, however, he came fully prepared to answer all questions posed, about both the budget and other aspects of his service on the school board.

Brant Clifton reports on some digging being done by an Asheville radio talk show host, and says this:

On Friday, Kaliner devoted an hour to Robert Rice, the CEO of the tech company at the center of the lawsuit in question.  I encourage every one of you to …

Check out the full article, HERE, at The Daily Haymaker.

This piece comes from, of all places, the Miami Herald newspaper.  An excerpt from the article:

Chesapeake Bay watermen haven’t been able to work for days at a time because of one of the coldest winters in more than three years.

They rely on Maryland’s icebreaker boats to clear the waterways.

Around Kent Narrows, where Corbman is, the A.V. Sandusky has been breaking ice.  The Sandusky is one of four icebreakers the Maryland Department of Natural Resources sends out every year.

The full piece, HERE, includes a nice video as well.

And isn’t it ironic that this comes on the very day that Fox News is reporting, HERE, on efforts by AGW alarmists to suppress Charles Krauthammer’s commentary on climate change.

Quoted from a post earlier this month at The Minority Report BLOG, with slight editing:

Sirius Satellite Radio host Howard Stern supports the merger of his network with XM Satelitte Radio and is fuming at Democratic opposition on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) panel.

After FCC commissioners announced they have reached a deal to approve the merger of Sirius and XM, Stern ranted about Democrats’ ‘gangsterism’ and ‘communism’ and the obstacles to the merger.  Stern described a phone conversation he had with his agent, who he described as a “liberal Democrat kind of guy.”

“That’s it!  You know what Don, I’ve voted Republican and I’ve voted Democrat.  I have vowed I will never vote for a Democrat again.  I don’t give a [expletive] – no matter who they are.  I don’t care if God becomes a Democrat.  I backed Hillary Clinton, I backed Al Gore, I backed John Kerry.  I am done with them.”, Stern said.

 Stern took it a step even further and called Democrats on the FCC “communists” and referred to their tactics as “gangsterism.”

“The fact [is] that these Democrats on the FCC are communists,” Stern said.  “They’re for communism.  They don’t want to see companies – this is gangsterism.  This is crazy.”

I’m sure that Hillary, in the run-up to the 2016 elections, will feel this defection acutely.  NOT!

Almost one month ago, I put up special pages for our readers to use in expressing their opposition to the homeowner’s and flood insurance rate increases being currently proposed by the Rate Bureau in the NC Department of Insurance.  I took them down after the deadline for public comment passed, but now Senator Norm Sanderson is encouraging us to do it again, this time with messages sent directly to him.

Everything is explained on the “Homeowner Rates” page, which can be accessed under the “Current Issues” menu topic, above, or simply by clicking HERE.  As before, I have included boilerplate text which can be copied and pasted into an e-mail message, and Senator Sanderson’s e-mail address is also provided.

We need to do this within the next week, so take the five minutes and GIT-ER-DONE !!

For decades, I have occasionally puzzled over the dichotomy posed, in the evolutionary context, by homosexual persistence.  As we all learn in high school biology, if the male peacocks with the most spectacular plumage are more successful in attracting female mates, then over time, the male progeny will develop even more spectacular plumage as the gene for this trait becomes more dominant.  Conversely, if the females spurn the advances of the male peacocks with puny tailfeather displays, then the genetic trait for puny plumage will gradually become less and less dominant (i.e., more recessive), even to the point of disappearing altogether.

So then, how is it that the human homosexual trait, with its associated reduction in reproductive rates (estimated to be about 22%), persist in the human gene pool?  An article from earlier this week by William Kremer in the BBC News Magazine was helpful in shedding some light on this puzzle.  An excerpt:

… Since the early 1990s, researchers have shown that homosexuality is more common in brothers and relatives on the same maternal line, and a genetic factor is taken to be the cause.  Also relevant – although in no way proof – is research identifying physical differences in the brains of adult straight and gay people, and a dizzying array of homosexual behaviour in animals.

But since gay and lesbian people have fewer children than straight people, a problem arises.

“This is a paradox from an evolutionary perspective,” says Paul Vasey from the University of Lethbridge in Canada.  “How can a trait like male homosexuality, which has a genetic component, persist over evolutionary time if the individuals that carry the genes associated with that trait are not reproducing?”

My question, exactly.  For more on what the latest research tends to reveal, read the whole thing, HERE.

As most readers probably know, the jury in Greg Brannon’s Wake County civil trial came back with a guilty verdict earlier this week.  Among the pundits speculating on how the verdict will affect his campaign for the nomination to be the Republican opposition to Senator Kay Hagan this November is WRAL television, who had this to say:

Although not a criminal verdict, Brannon was found responsible for repaying two investors – one a medical school classmate and the other the husband of a patient in his obstetrics practice – the $250,000 plus interest they lost in a technology start-up.  Brannon served on the company’s board and actively recruited the two men to invest.

and

In the wake of the judgment, Brannon vowed he would appeal and said that the trial had not treated him fairly.  He also said that the jury’s decision would not derail his plans to run for U.S. Senate and that he would officially file the paperwork to get on the ballot later this week.  He has already filed papers with the Federal Elections Commission that allow him to raise money and legally conduct a federal campaign.

The full article from WRAL is HERE.  And for another perspective, HERE are the views of Brant Clifton, expressed at The Daily Haymaker.

In a post yesterday, I wrote about Senator Kay Hagan’s agitprop against the Koch Brothers political support for conservative causes and candidates.  Today, in an article on Powerline, HERE, Steven Haywood calls attention to the bias in political donations among the top fifteen donors as listed by OpenSecrets, a website maintained by the left-wing Center For Responsive Politics.

Among the big-fifteen, there were three corporate donors, one Democratic PAC, one non-partisan PAC, and ten unions.  Curious, I analyzed the figures a bit more to learn the following:

The donations of the three corporate donors and the National Association of Realtors PAC, individually and in total, tended to be divided between Democrats and Republicans about 45% / 45%, give or take 4% either way.  This suggests to me that they are mostly just trying to grease both rails on the track without appearing to be overly biased in either direction.  I therefore view these as being effectively non-partisan.

Although many donations are made indirectly via PAC’s, of the direct partisan donations (i.e., going to recipients directly identifiable as being Democrats or Republicans, and excluding the non-partisan donations) on this top-fifteen list, 83% were to Democrat recipients versus 17% to Republican recipients.

Of the direct partisan donations to Democrats, 81% came from unions and 19% came from a Democratic PAC (ActBlue).

If the non-partisan donations are removed from the equation, leaving only the donations from the ten unions plus the ActBlue PAC, the overall breakdown reveals that 97% of the partisan donations went to Democrats, and 3% went to Republicans.  Of the donations to Democrats from partisan sources, 78% of the money came from the unions, and 22% from the ActBlue PAC.

Among the take-aways from this, in my view:

In spite of the left-wing agitation about corporate political donations (and the SCOTUS decision on the Citizens United case), they are not really much of a factor overall because they are distributed fairly evenly between the two political parties.  

Of the partisan donations (i.e., going to recipients directly identifiable as being Democrats or Republicans, and excluding the non-partisan donations), the overwhelming majority (97%) go to the Democrats.

Although left-wing PACs are a factor, of the partisan donations going to Democrats, the bulk of the money continues to come from the unions.

As always, the devil is in the details.

And finally, if any of our members wishes to review my work on this, e-mail me and I will send the Excel spreadsheet. 

From the Tea Party Patriots National Support Team:

Five years ago, faced with auto bailouts, “stimulus” packages, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and the utter abandonment of fiscal responsibility from both Republican and Democrat politicians, Americans of every race, creed, gender, age and political affiliation said “enough!”   Around the country, we united to stand up to elected officials’ abandonment of the Constitution, government waste, overreach and abuse.  On Thursday, February 27, 2014, the Tea Party movement will be five years old and Tea Party Patriots will gather at the Hyatt Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
 
We are excited to announce that Senator Mike Lee of Utah is confirmed as keynote speaker for our lunch session and we hope you’ll be able to join us for this special occasion!  Register for the event HERE.

Thanks to tremendous grassroots support and amazing volunteers, the Tea Party movement has made significant progress.  We will continue to fight for our core values and build on the successes we have experienced together.  In 2010’s landslide elections America sent a message to elected officials that citizens are tired of being let down by spend-happy politicians in Washington.  While there is still work to be done on challenges like Obamacare and rampant overspending, we can be proud of what we’ve accomplished.   With the hard work of the volunteers that have dedicated their time to the movement, the Tea Party has continuously put pressure on Congress to rein in the madness in Washington, DC.  This month we will celebrate five years of having an impact and we’ll look forward to the many years of work that we have ahead of us.

Please join us on February 27th to celebrate the Tea Party movement’s five-year anniversary, thank the grassroots and volunteers, reflect on past successes, and pave a path forward to greater effectiveness and success.  Tea Party Patriots Co-Founder Jenny Beth Martin will be there with other liberty-loving Americans including Senator Lee, Southwest Metro Tea Party Patriots Co-Founder and Minnesota State Representative Cindy Pugh, Center for Self-Governance President Mark Herr, Washington Blueprint Organizer Woody Herzog, Representative Louie Gohmert (TX), Mansfield Tea Party Founder Marianne Gasiecki, and Representative Steve King (IA).

We look forward to seeing you!

For more information on the event or to reserve your place today, please click HERE!  If there is a need to contact the National Support Team by phone, the number is 404/593-0877.

The New York Times has THIS new article up saying that the facility in Hawaii where Snowden did most of his snooping did not have basic protections against low-tech web-crawler bots if they were introduced within the NSA system, and that he made slight code revisions to a basic crawler bot that then targeted the thousands of documents he subsequently leaked.

From the article, two key bits:

Using “web crawler” software designed to search, index and back up a website, Mr. Snowden “scraped data out of our systems” while he went about his day job, according to a senior intelligence official.  “We do not believe this was an individual sitting at a machine and downloading this much material in sequence,” the official said.  The process, he added, was “quite automated.”

and, utilizing the passwords he had duped other legitimate users out of as well as his own,

Mr. Snowden appears to have set the parameters for the searches, including which subjects to look for and how deeply to follow links to documents and other data on the NSA’s internal networks.  Intelligence officials told a House hearing last week that he accessed roughly 1.7 million files.

One of the Volokh Conspiracy pundits, Ilya Somin, writes to highlight some recent remarks by the ever interesting Antonin Scalia.  First, on Kelo versus New London, which ruled that government can condemn private property and give it to other private owners to promote “economic development”, Scalia

… reiterated his 2011 prediction that the decision will eventually be overruled, stating that it “will not survive.”  Kelo was a closely divided 5-4 decision (Scalia voted with the dissenters) that generated an unprecedented political backlash across the political spectrum, and has also been repudiated by every state supreme court which has considered the question of whether to adopt it as a guide to the interpretation of their state constitutions’ public use clauses.  In 2011, Justice John Paul Stevens, the author of the Kelo majority opinion, conceded that he made a significant, “embarrassing to admit” error in his analysis of precedent (though he continues to defend the result on other grounds).

Scalia did not predict that Korematsu (the 1944 SCOTUS case that validated 6-3 the WW2 Japanese internments) would be overturned, but he did say that the ruling was wrong, which puts him at odds with a “small but noteworthy group of conservatives who have defended the decision in recent years, such as Judge Richard Posner and columnist Michelle Malkin.”

“But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again,” he said.

He used a Latin expression to explain why.  “Inter arma enim silent leges … In times of war, the laws fall silent.”

“That’s what was going on – the panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and whatnot,” Scalia said.  “That’s what happens.  It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again – in time of war.  It’s no justification but it is the reality.”

Over the weekend, the Washington Free Beacon began publishing some of the papers of the late Diane Blair.  Mrs. Blair’s husband was Jim Blair, a former Chief Counsel at Tyson Foods, and Diane Blair was a political science professor.  The couple were long-time friends of Bill and Hillary Clinton dating from the days before Bill Clinton became the Arkansas Attorney General, and Mrs. Blair conversed with both Clinton’s on a regular basis until her death in 2000.  She also kept detailed records of the conversations in the form of diaries, correspondence, memos, etc., all of which her husband donated to the Special Collections library at the University of Arkansas after his wife’s death.

As one might expect, the collection includes many potentially embarrassing revelations about the Clintons, and particularly about Hillary.  If she runs in 2016, some portions of the papers from this collection will come to the fore.  This one, for example:

On February 23, 1993, Blair joined the Clintons for a family dinner at the White House.  The subject of health care reform came up.

“At dinner, [Hillary spoke] to [Bill] at length on the complexities of health care—thinks managed competition a crock; single-payer necessary; maybe add to Medicare,” Blair wrote.

The account is at odds with public statements by the former First Lady that she never supported the single-payer option.  In an interview with the New York Times as she ran for president in 2008, Hillary Clinton said she had never seriously considered adopting a single-payer system, in which the government, using funds appropriated from taxpayers, pays for all health care expenses.

“You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single payer system,” said Clinton in the interview.

The Washington Free Beacon article is HERE, and the transcription of the Diane Blair papers is HERE.

Remember Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher?  Just for jollies, watch this two minute video of his and his family’s encounter with a woman (Roseanne Barr, maybe?) who becomes greatly incensed with him because he left the engine idling in his pickup while he left his daughter inside to run an errand.  Anyone care to guess how much hot air she contributed toward global warming with her ranting?

The Claremont Institute is a conservative think tank based in California.  Their stated mission is “to restore the principles of the American founding fathers to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life”, and to return American political guidance to the vision held by the founders.  Toward that end, one of the Institute’s current projects is a series called “The American Mind”, in which today’s conservative thinkers are interviewed on video about Conservatism’s insights, ideas, and perspectives, both past and present.

In the video below (15-minutes), host Charles Kesler and law professor John Eastman discuss the ways in which the vision of the founders, as expressed in the Constitution, is being assaulted.

Did you know about this monument? I think this video shows how important God was in establishing this country.

Posted by publius2013 in NC Politics

Reference

I was going to save this post until January, the tenth anniversary, but it is prescient that we address it now because the ringleader is trying to get back to the table.  Even though we’re in the middle of the NC GOP Convention, we need to remind ourselves of the battles we’ve been through so we don’t repeat them.  Now hang on, because we’ve got some ground to cover!

I try not to be petty.  No elected official is perfect and all are going to make a voting mistake here or there.  Usually it is the body of work that indicts one’s character, but occasionally a singular event is so egregious that it exposes a fatal character flaw.  Such is the case with Richard T. Morgan and his four co-conspirators.

The reason this must come up now is that Richard Morgan is currently in a runoff election on July 17 trying to become our next Insurance Commissioner. We must do everything in our power to make sure he does not succeed (vote for Mike Causey – http://gocausey.com/)

Richard Morgan and his co-conspirators sold the rest of the Republicans down the river in deals with Jim Black, the Democratic Speaker at the time.

A little background is in order for those who don’t remember that far back.  In 2002, North Carolinians elected a majority of Republicans to the NC House for only the second time since 1870.  It was a slim majority (61-59), but a majority nonetheless.  As the House Republicans caucused, they selected Leo Daughtry to be their nominee for speaker.  On the eve of taking power, however, Richard Morgan and his co-conspirators sold the rest of the Republicans down the river in deals with Jim Black, the Democratic Speaker at the time.

Michael Decker switched parties to become a Democrat leaving the House in a stalemate of 60-60 right before the vote.  Richard Morgan and his co-conspirators, Harold Brubaker, Julia Howard, Danny McComas, and Wilma Sherrill, made a deal with the Democrats to elect Morgan and Black as co-Speakers in a power-sharing agreement that ended up with the Democrats back in power for the next 8 years, Jim Black as Speaker until 2007, and left the Republican party in disarray.

We must do everything in our power to make sure that [Richard Morgan] does not succeed

This is further significant because after the 2000 census, Democrats had fraudulently redrawn the congressional and legislative districts across the state.  Upon challenge, the courts struck down the new maps.  This debacle spilled over into the 2002 election cycle and contributed to Republicans winning a majority in the state House.  The “Morgan Five” and other Republican conspirators like Michael Decker, and David Miner not only thwarted the will of the people, but handed the re-redistricting process right back to the Democrats.  They botched it again producing lawsuits that had them re-redrawing parts of the maps for the remainder of the decade.

Because of this, we must remind each other continually of who these traitors are.  To that end, we will now tell you where each of these untrustworthy “Republicans” are in our system.  Thankfully, Michael Decker went to prison for his part and David Miner and Wilma Sherrill are no longer in or running for elected office.  Here’s the breakdown on the other four:

Richard Morgan was thrown out of the NCGOP Executive Committee and finally defeated in 2006.  However, in 2008 he ran for Superintendent of Public Instruction, a council-of-state seat.  Now, in 2012, he’s running for another council-of-state seat as Insurance Commissioner.  Morgan has never apologized, recanted, or acknowledged his error.  To this day, he defends his actions.  He must never be allowed to hold the reigns of power again!  Don’t let your neighbors unwittingly vote for him – support Mike Causey for Insurance Commissioner – http://gocausey.com/ (Learn more about Morgan at http://www.mooregop.org/)

Harold Brubaker conspired with Morgan, yet remains a member of the NC House in a seat he has held since 1976!  In fact, the new Republican leadership under Thom Tillis made him head of the Appropriations Committee as well as the House Select Committee on State-owned Assets.  Being a long-serving Republican in the Democrat-controlled Legislature for 36 years is not an indictment by itself, but it sure makes you wonder how he survived through nearly four decades of Democrat re-districting when they notoriously ousted effective Republicans by drawing them into unwinnable districts.  His partnering with Morgan reveals his true nature.

Julia Howard also conspired with Morgan and remains in the NC House occupying a seat she has held for 24 years.  Like the others, she survived numerous Democrat re-districting efforts as well as any repercussions by Democrats after Republicans had a majority for four years in the mid 90′s.

She currently stands as the Senior-Chairman of the Finance Committee, and Chairman of the Ethics Committee as well as the House Select Committee on Legislative Program Evaluation.

Danny McComas conspired with Morgan against other Republicans, yet still served in the seat he has held since 1994.  He is Chairman of the Commerce and Job Development and House Select Committee on Tort Reform, and is Vice-Chairman of the Banking and Finance committees.  (Note: McComas announced in February that he would not seek re-election to a 10th term.  He did not rule out running for another office, but has not done so in this election cycle.)

Each of these legislators has been kind enough to vote the right way most of the time in recent years when they needed to.  They’re certainly politically savvy enough to ride the recent Republican wave.  They’ve established themselves as political survivors.  However, the role that they played in setting Republicans back is enough for them to make our upcoming “Wall of Shame”.  To my knowledge, none of them have ever apologized or acknowledged their error and the bitter wounds dealt to the North Carolina Republican party.

Many “establishment” Republicans have urged unity.  Well, I’m all for unity, but I like the example of Jim Bakker.  Remember him?  The disgraced televangelist is back on TV, but not before he 1) apologized and admitted his wrong, 2) showed true repentance (working with and even adopting inner city children), and 3) did his time.  Even though he’s back, it will never be in the capacity he was before.

Even though they’re still in office (or seeking office), the folks above are merely political opportunists.  If you’ve read this blog very long at all, you know that’s a big problem for me!  If any of the above folks would like me to print their apology, I will be glad to do so.  After that, they need to step out and do their penance and show us they’ve really changed.  Until they do that, let’s just be honest, they’re untrustworthy.

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