Several Austin bloggers are suggesting that people gather to “welcome” Eric Holder to Austin, where he’ll be speaking at the LBJ Library on UT campus. I won’t be able to, due to commitments with my new job, but I encourage others to do so if it fits into their schedule.
And here’s a related cartoon from Frugal Cafe:
There’s some news on the Democratic side of the Texas Senate race.
First of all, the name of the DNC’s handpicked candidate, Ricardo Sanchez, does not appear on the list of candidates who have filed for the Texas Senate race.
Well, the deadline is Thursday. No worries. Assuming he wants to run, there’s plenty of time for Sanchez to file for the race.
But what if he doesn’t?
After all, even before his house burned down, there was precious little evidence Sanchez was really interested in running for the Senate. His fundraising is abysmal, his media appearances are rare, his campaign stops even rarer (Ted Cruz and Glenn Addison do more campaigning in a day than Sanchez manages in a month), his social media footprint miniscule, and his buzz factor is non-existent.
Other signs of the moribund nature of Sanchez’s campaign: DSCC chair Patty Murray drawing audible laughs when asked about Democratic chances in Texas. “After being initially hailed as a pick-up opportunity, Texas is off the radar for Democrats. DSCC executive director Guy Cecil suggested as much last month. Murray didn’t even mention Ricardo Sanchez’s name.”
Sanchez peaked when he announced for the race. Ever since then it’s been a long, painful slog, with his only reward the prospect of being slaughtered by Ted Cruz or David Dewhurst in the general election. Is there a serious non-partisan observer anywhere who looks at Sanchez’s dismal campaign and thinks he can win?
Is this how Sanchez pictured his retirement? He seems for all the world like someone just going through the motions.
However, there is one Democratic candidate who has filed for the U.S. Senate race: Daniel Boone! I believe Texans will be favorably impressed with his trackin’ and bear-killin’ skills, and thus might be willing to overlook his Missouri residency and the fact the he’s been dead 191 years.
Sadly for Democrats, the “rippin’est, roarin’est, fightin’est man the frontier ever knew” is not the one running, but rather a retired Air Force Lt. Colonel (which sets up a nice “flyboy vs. grunt” inter-service rivalry if Sanchez does run).
He has a website and a Facebook page. His campaign platform is vague Democratic boilerplate.
But a famous namesake isn’t enough to overcome Ricardo Sanchez, right?
Think again.
Remember Gene Kelly? The perennial office-seeker whose only notable attribute was the name of the famous dancing movie star? He won the 2000 Democratic primary runoff for this very Senate seat (then occupied by Kay Baily Hutchison) over former state legislator Charles Gandy with 58.43% of the vote.
Want to guess what Kelly’s background was?
Would you believe retired Air Force Colonel?
It would be tempting to use the “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce” line, but here the first time was farce.
If Sanchez declines the race, I would say that Boone automatically becomes the frontrunner. And so far Sanchez has run such a lackluster campaign that high name recognition (even misrecognition) might be enough to beat him…
Looking over the list of Republican candidates who had filed for the Senate race, I was surprised to see the name of former Court of Criminal Appeals judge Charles Holcomb of Wimberley, who was age-limited out of the office. Despite searching, I was unable to find any campaign website for Judge Holcomb.
So I called him up.
Judge Holcomb was gracious enough to talk a few minutes about why he was running:
BattleSwarm Blog thanks Judge Holcomb for his time.
I’m sure by now that everyone who has been paying attention knows the Obama Administration’s insatiable appetite for cony capitalism, especially when it comes to shoveling “green energy” subsidies to Obama campaign donors.
But never mind that. The latest Obama scandal has the potential to kill more Americans than Fast and Furious, maybe by three or four orders of magnitude.
The high level summary: A project backed by a prominent Democratic donor might interfere with GPS.
I used to work at both a GPS company, and a company producing RF chips for commercial computer use, so I have a little more technological background on this issue than some. Here’s a summary of the issue by the former Chief Technology Officer of one of the companies I used to work for:
LightSquared uses spectrum right next to GPS, and they expect to have both terrestrial and satellite broadband links. GPS signals are already quite faint by the time they reach the earth’s surface, and any adjacent interference could severely impact the performance of a GPS receiver – its location accuracy could be impaired, or it may not work at all. There are millions of GPS receivers in both civilian and military systems that could be impacted…it would be impossible to retrofit all of these with a fix, so the onus is on LightSquared to figure out how to avoid interfering with GPS.
GPS satellites broadcast a 50-watt signal from 12,000 miles up, across an entire continent, said Pete Large, a vice president at GPS vendor Trimble Navigation who works with the Coalition. By contrast, the LTE base stations used in the recent tests produced signals of up to 1,600 watts within about a mile of GPS receivers. LightSquared’s signals were stronger by 1 billion times or more, Large said.
So GPS signals get overwhelmed by a local source. What’s the worst that could happen?
Well imagine a Boeing 787 Dreamliner conducting an nighttime instrument approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when the GPS signal is overwhelmed at a critical phase. Now imagine that same Boeing 787 Dreamliner plowing into downtown Arlington, Virginia at 150 miles per hour, leaving a wake of bloody body parts and burning jetfuel for a quarter-mile.
That’s the worst that could happen.
How likely is that worst case scenario? Well, consider that news just broke of the U.S government test of LightSquared technology. The result?
– Philip Falcone’s proposed LightSquared Inc. wireless service caused interference to 75 percent of global-positioning system receivers examined in a U.S. government test, according to a draft summary of results.
The results from testing conducted Oct. 31 to Nov. 4 show that “millions of fielded GPS units are not compatible” with the planned nationwide wholesale service, according to the draft seen by Bloomberg News.
“LightSquared signals caused harmful interference to majority of GPS receivers tested,” according to the draft prepared for a meeting next week of U.S. officials reviewing the LightSquared proposal. “No additional testing is required to confirm harmful interference exists.”
(Hat tip: Slashdot.)
It was bad enough when the Obama Administration was just wasting taxpayer dollars on well-connected business cronies like Solyandra. But Fast and Furious has helped kill hundreds of Mexicans and at least one U.S. border patrol agent, all for the the purpose of promoting gun control. In trying to help another batch of well-connected Democratic cronies at LightSquared, the results could easily be hundreds or evn thousands dead. And it might not just be one airliner, because there’s no guarantee the accident investigation would find the cause quick enough to prevent a re-occurrence.
Will the Obama Administration back off it’s efforts to ram through LightSquared approval despite the scientific evidence? Will LightSquared stop trying to get the technology approved?
Don’t bet on it. From the same story:
LightSquared is “outraged by the illegal leak of incomplete government data,” Harriman said in an e-mailed statement. “This breach attempts to draw an inaccurate conclusion to negatively influence the future of LightSquared and narrowly serve the business interests of the GPS industry.”
Yeah, the GPS industry does indeed have a strong business interest in not seeing thousands of people die. Whether the the Obama Administration shares that concern enough to turn their back on a major Democratic donor less than a year before the 2012 elections remains to be seen.
The Supreme Court Friday night “blocked a redistricting plan for Texas drawn by a panel of federal judges.”
I’ve got to run off, and the issue is far from settled, but this is good news for the rule of law, and bad news for liberals wanting to abuse the court system to get what they want despite voters rejecting them again and again.
[Edited to add: Crappy, hastily written headline now rewritten to make it clear this was a U.S. Supreme Court stay, not the Texas Supreme Court, which is obviously holds no sway over a U.S. District Court. – LP]
Let me see if I can get this straight:
UK Prime Minister David Cameron, objecting to the Deutschland Uber Alles renegotiation of the Maastricht Treaty, is now causing the creation of a new SuperDuper Europe, with Germany reoccupying the Rhineland taking leadership of the whole shebang, finally erasing the rest of the continent’s reluctance at receiving orders from Berlin?
I mean, when even the Europhillic New York Times says that “Twenty years after the Maastricht Treaty, which was designed not just to integrate Europe but to contain the might of a united Germany, Berlin had effectively united Europe under its control,” maybe the citizens of those stodgy old entities we used to call “countries” should consider the possibility that they might may be making a mistake. I am especially surprised that the non-Euro-using generalgouvernement Poland gave in so readily, as their previous experiences with rule from Berlin have been less than exemplary.
But what’s sacrificing the last of your country’s vestigially sovereignty compared to the glorious dream of saving the Euro?
Assuming, of course, that forging this Pact of Steel (including a 500 billion Euro bailout fund) actually saves the Euro, which is a dubious proposition at best. And at least one U.S. general says we should be prepared for civil unrest if Euro ends up exploding anyway.
The irony, of course, is that David Cameron, the wetest Tory Wet PM since Neville Chamberlain, refused to give in to another Eurotreaty British citizens wouldn’t get a chance to vote on less than two months after refusing to allow a vote on the previous EU treaty British citizens were not allowed to vote on. It would be ironic if Cameron actually ended up pulling the UK out of the EU because, in a moment of weakness, he actually exhibited rare and uncharacteristic streaks of firm principle and common sense.
Will the citizens of Europe actually get a chance to vote on this Reich closer European integration? Doubtful. Ireland’s Taoiseach is being “cagey” about a vote. (Translation: Fark no, you peasants won’t get a vote.) I doubt any of his brothers in Europe’s Permanent Ruling Class will feel any less “cagey.”
Through a thousand small steps, from committees and working groups and consultations and emergency decrees, Eurocrats have done their very best to remove power for all important decisions from the hands of the people and entrust it into their own well-greased palms. And also, not so coincidentally, to avoid taking the blame for the ruin their cradle-to-grave welfare states, and the huge and ever-growing debts necessary to pay for them, have made of Europe’s once free nations and productive economies.
Other Eurozone news, some possibly stale and out of date:
For years, Europeans loved to lecture Americans on the both the safety and soundness of the continent’s banking system as opposed to our own, and how their economic system worked so much better than ours. Well, one lesson of the 2011 financial crisis is that many of their banks are probably in worse shape than the US banks were in 2008.
At least our banks’ troubled investments were tied to real estate, which may rebound once our economy improves. Their banks are holding debt tied to some of the world’s least productive, no-growth countries.
Why so underproductive? Most of the evidence points to the failure of the European welfare state.
Europeans loved to lecture Americans on how government-run health-care and cradle-to-grave entitlements provided such safety and comfort for the masses. People supposedly didn’t mind paying higher taxes because it enhanced their standard of living.
Until, of course, it didn’t enhance anything — and Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal face the collapse of their safety nets because they can’t borrow to pay for them anymore, even as unemployment is rampant. (Meanwhile, France is not far behind.)
Keep in mind that’s not what the headline says, which is a more neutral “UT law dean forced to step down.” But what else do you call “a $500,000 forgivable loan” to UT Dean Larry Sager “at a time when deans, vice presidents and other top university officials were under a salary freeze”? When you give people money they don’t have to pay back, that’s not a loan, that’s a gift. (I also wonder whether Dean Sager declared this money on his taxes. Or did he not have to, because it was a “loan”?) And slush fund seems to be the proper term for a fund from which sums can be doled out without administrative accountability.
Or, to put it another way: If it were revealed that University of Texas head football coach Mack Brown had such a fund, to receive funds from or to dole out at his discretion, not only would we be calling it a slush fund, he would be fired, National Championship notwithstanding. Should the UT Law School be held to a lesser standard than the UT Athletics Department?
No wonder the Texas Public Policy Foundation continues to advocate for lower administrative costs in higher education, among many other needed reforms. This most recent incident shows such reform is still badly needed.
(Hat tip: Tax Prof Blog via Instapundit.)
Some cleaning-up after yesterday’s bombshell:
Continuing her excellent reporting on the issue, Sharyl Attkisson drops another bombshell: Just like us “paranoid” right wingers thought all along, Fast and Furious was about promoting gun control:
Documents obtained by CBS News show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.
[snip]
ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3”. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.
On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:
“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”
On Jan. 4, 2011, as ATF prepared a press conference to announce arrests in Fast and Furious, Newell saw it as “(A)nother time to address Multiple Sale on Long Guns issue.” And a day after the press conference, Chait emailed Newell: “Bill–well done yesterday… (I)n light of our request for Demand letter 3, this case could be a strong supporting factor if we can determine how many multiple sales of long guns occurred during the course of this case.”
Read the whole thing.
The best, most favorable explanation is that Fast and Furious was instituted for some still-undisclosed purpose, and that some ATF agents saw it as a ghoulish opportunity to promote gun control.
The worst: The Obama Administration designed and implemented Fast and Furious in a premeditated fashion, breaking the law and helping kill hundreds of Mexican citizens and U.S. border patrol agent Brian Terry, all for the sole, express purpose of promoting gun control.
They had to kill people with guns in order to save them from getting killed by guns.
It shows that just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.
Hat tip: Powerline, where John Hinderaker says: “If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs, not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hundreds of Mexicans and at least one American border agent–which they were–then we are looking at a scandal that dwarfs any in modern American history.”
Indeed.
So says that bastion of right-wing propaganda, The New York Times:
Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.
[snip]
The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.
[snip]
Another former agency official, who asked not to be identified speaking publicly about delicate operations, said, “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the D.E.A. could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”
Those are precisely the kinds of concerns members of Congress have raised about a gun-smuggling operation known as Fast and Furious
I suppose it’s progress of a sort when even The New York Times realizes something went horribly wrong in Fast and Furious. And even if the money laundering program was working, what chance does it have now that the cover has been blown?
Does anyone actually believe the Obama Administration has an effective, coherent plan to take down the cartels?
What next? Will we find out that U.S. agents actually carried out cartel assassinations?
Also this:
The former officials said that federal law enforcement agencies had to seek Justice Department approval to launder amounts greater than $10 million in any single operation. But they said that the cap was treated more as a guideline than a rule, and that it had been waived on many occasions to attract the interest of high-value targets.
If Fast and Furious is any guide, those “hundreds of thousands of dollars” will turn out to be tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)