Via Sipsey Street Irregulars
"Last week we ran an interview by CBS of an ATF agent accusing the feds of allowing guns to be smuggled into Mexico, guns that are responsible for the death of a border agent. You can watch that here. In the video they showed Rep. Grassley investigating this story.
Today Grassley came on Laura Ingraham’s show and said that he is getting nothing but stonewalled by the administration on this issue. Listen below:"
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Gov. Walker's Legislation Has Unions Caving Already
"Apparently Gov. Scott Walker knew exactly what he was doing.
Before he signed the bill limiting collective bargaining privileges, teachers unions throughout the state were slow to respond to calls for salary and benefit concessions.
They believed their members should be held harmless during a period of necessary cost-cutting. They didn't seem to care that Wisconsin schools were operating with multi-million dollar deficits that were forcing the layoffs of younger teachers and the cancellation of student programs.
Their only answer was to raise taxes at a time when few people could afford it. They didn’t want to sacrifice anything, despite the fact that schools spend about 80 percent of their budgets on labor costs.
But now, with Walker's legislation set to become law once it clears legal hurdles, the unions are suddenly coming to their senses. They are jumping at the chance to extend their collective bargaining agreements, in exchange for meaningful concessions that will help schools survive the financial crisis."
Republicans Should Not Play Nice on Judicial Nominations
"No, it was not a headline from the satirical newspaper, The Onion. It was just the latest scorn by President Obama toward conservatives everywhere, and conservative women in particular. The President has seriously nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit Stephen Six, whose prints are all over the obstruction of justice in an investigation of an alleged systematic statutory rape cover-up at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Kansas"
The Numbers War Between the States
Counting the Dead
RALEIGH, N.C.—Josh Howard is playing with fire here in the heart of the old Confederacy, with a scholarly finding that could rewrite the history of the Civil War.
For more than a century, North Carolina has proudly claimed that it lost more soldiers than any other Southern state in the nation's bloodiest conflict. But after meticulously combing through military, hospital and cemetery records, the historian is finding the truth isn't so clear-cut.
Official military records compiled in 1866 counted 40,275 North Carolina soldiers who died in uniform. Though known to be faulty, those records have gone largely unchallenged. With most of his research done, Mr. Howard has confirmed only about 31,000 deaths. "It's a number we can defend with real documents," he says. He expects to confirm a few thousand more by the time he finishes this summer, but the final tally will most certainly fall short of the original count, he says.
Across the state border in Virginia, traditionally believed to have the fourth-highest number of war deaths in the Confederacy, librarian Edwin Ray has identified about 31,000 Virginia soldiers who died in the war—more than double the Old Dominion's once-accepted number of 14,794. And he still has more to add.
"It's going to be close," says Mr. Ray, a 55-year-old Air Force veteran who works at the Library of Virginia. "Josh and I are sure of that. It's going to come down to a very small number."
Via Brother Henry
'Birthing tourism' center shut down
Our government is totally insane, period.
"The actual deliveries take place in local hospitals. At birthing centers such as the one closed in San Gabriel, mothers get room and board and care before and after delivery.
It is not illegal for pregnant women to travel to the U.S. to give birth. Birthing centers advertise in wealthier Chinese cities, where some women can afford the thousands necessary to make the trip to America for a few months.
Most of the women go back to China after giving birth. But they know their children can return easily in the future to enjoy such benefits as free public education."
100% sure Qaeda smuggled surface-to-air missiles
From kneeling position, she does consistent head shots at 25 meters. Spare MAG stowage idea Borrowed from La Femme Nikita
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PARIS (AFP)
Al-Qaeda's offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's president said in an interview to be published Monday.
Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 percent sure" of his assertion.
"The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere," a desert region of the Sahara that stretches from northeast Niger to western Chad, Deby said in the interview.
Chad President Idriss Deby Itno
"This is very serious. AQIM (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb) is becoming a genuine army, the best equipped in the region," he said.
Elsewhere in the interview, Chad's president backed the assertion by his neighbor and erstwhile enemy Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi that the protests in Libya have been driven in part by al-Qaeda.
"There is a partial truth in what he says," Deby said. "Up to what point? I don't know. But I am certain that AQIM took an active part in the uprising."
After years of tension between the two nations, which were at war during part of the 1980s, Deby has more recently maintained good relations with Gaddafi.
The Chadian leader described the international military intervention in Libya, launched a week ago by the United States, France and Britain, as a "hasty decision."
"It could have heavy consequences for the stability of the region and the spread of terrorism in Europe, the Mediterranean and the rest of Africa," he cautioned.
Deby denied assertions that mercenaries had been recruited in Chad to fight for Gaddafi, though some of the several thousand Chad nationals in Libya may have joined the fight "on their own."
AQIM originated as an armed Islamist resistance movement to the secular Algerian government.
Today, it operates mainly in Algeria, Mauritania, Mali and Niger, where it has attacked military targets and taken civilian hostages.