Charming:

From: XXXX
Sent: Wed 3/9/2011 9:18 PM
To: Sen.Kapanke; Sen.Darling; Sen.Cowles; Sen.Ellis; Sen.Fitzgerald; Sen.Galloway; Sen.Grothman; Sen.Harsdorf; Sen.Hopper; Sen.Kedzie; Sen.Lasee; Sen.Lazich; Sen.Leibham; Sen.Moulton; Sen.Olsen
Subject: Atten: Death threat!!!! Bomb!!!!

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your familes will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then it will save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die.

WE want to make this perfectly clear. Because of your actions today and in the past couple of weeks I and the group of people that are working with me have decided that we’ve had enough. We feel that you and the people that support the dictator have to die. We have tried many other ways of dealing with your corruption but you have taken things too far and we will not stand for it any longer. So, this is how it’s going to happen: I as well as many others know where you and your family live, it’s a matter of public records.

We have all planned to assult you by arriving at your house and putting a nice little bullet in your head. However, we decided that we wouldn’t leave it there. We also have decided that this may not be enough to send the message to you since you are so “high” on Koch and have decided that you are now going to single handedly make this a dictatorship instead of a demorcratic process. So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent.

This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun. Since we know that you are not smart enough to figure out why this is happening to you we have decided to make it perfectly clear to you. If you and your goonies feel that it’s necessary to strip the rights of 300,000 people and ruin their lives, making them unable to feed, clothe, and provide the necessities to their families and themselves then We Will “get rid of” (in which I mean kill) you. Please understand that this does not include the heroic Rep. Senator that risked everything to go aganist what you and your goonies wanted him to do. We feel that it’s worth our lives to do this, because we would be saving the lives of 300,000 people. Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!

And Jim Hoft has a report (with a photo) of a threat slipped under a Senator’s door saying the only good Republican is a dead Republican.

All hail the new civility!

Big Media reports to follow in 3 … 2 … never.

Can we not hear another word about how peaceful this whole thing has been? kthxbai

Details here.

Besides the scheming and secrecy — and the fact that the exec was breaking NPR’s policies — there is the fact that, previously, they had categorically denied any intention to take the check.

I wonder if the fact-checking on that was done by the ombudsman.

UPDATE: Click the link for NPR’s response, where they provide evidence contradicting the assertion that they were going to hide the donors’ identity from the feds.

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Okay, Mr. President, I want to talk to you about this story in the AP. Do I have your attention?  Good.

In that story you have an event at the white house to deal with the issue of bullying.

Now right off, as head of the Federal Government, with Libyans and Saudis being butchered, terrorists trying to get nukes, Obama, you shouldn’t be wasting your time caring about school bullying.  Seriously, let the states deal with it.  If some kid gives another kid an Indian Native American burn, it’s not a Federal issue in the first place.

But okay I get it.  You believe the Federal Government should be involved in almost everything.  Fine.  But for frak’s sake, with all those thugs around the world, don’t tell the entire world that you were bullied as a child.  And however many people around you are sharing about how bullying has effected their lives, don’t chime in with anything like this:

“I have to say, with big ears and the name that I have, I wasn’t immune,” said Obama, who moved around a lot as a boy, being born in Hawaii and growing up there and in Indonesia. “I didn’t emerge unscathed,” he said.

Obama said adults have too often turned a blind eye to the problem by chalking up the harassment to kids being kids. But he said a national attitude adjustment is in order because of the damage that bullying can do.

Look, I am not saying I hold it against you that you were bullied as a kid.  I am just saying that if you were bullied DON’T TELL THE ENTIRE WORLD ABOUT IT. You have an image to maintain.  You have to seem like a tough motherfraker.  And picturing our President getting a swirly as a boy kind of ruins that, okay?

In fact, do us all a favor and lie and claim that you kicked everyone’s butts and took their lunch money, please?  Oy vey.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

No big issue, here.  Just a odd slice of life in the Daily Mail.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

Not much to say that hasn’t already been said, but it is still outrageous:

Libyan leader Col Muammar Gaddafi’s security forces detained and beat up a BBC news team who were trying to reach the strife-torn western city of Zawiya.

Members of the three-man team were beaten with fists, knees and rifles, hooded and subjected to mock executions by Libyan troops and secret police.

The three were detained on Monday and held for 21 hours, but have now flown out of Libya.

The UN Human Rights Commissioner says their treatment may amount to torture.

“For them to be targeted, detained and treated with such cruelty, which could amount to torture, is completely unacceptable and in serious violation of international law,” said High Commissioner Navi Pillay in a news release.

“If an international television crew can be subjected to this type of treatment,” she said, “it makes me extremely concerned about the treatment that is most likely being meted out to Libyan opponents of the regime who have fallen into the hands of the security services.”

(Source.)  And you can watch a pretty harrowing interview with the reporters in question, here:

This regime cannot end quickly enough.  And to the credit of the French, they have officially recognized the rebels as the real government of Libya.  Good for them.  I am not sure if that adds up to any real-world benefits, but morale matters too.

Ht: The Blaze.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

Last night Alicia Shepard, the NPR “ombudsman” issued the following message on Twitter:

Uh-oh! There goes that James O’Keefe again, with his heavily edited and deceptive videos! Why, I bet he wasn’t even wearing a pimp costume! Her message was repeated by Jack Shafer of Slate and Radley Balko of Reason — and more than 100 others, as you can see.

Just one problem: the message was flatly untrue. And when I called her on it, her regard for facts was about what you would expect from an NPR ombudsman.

Do you really think that Ron Schiller — the guy who called Tea Partiers “seriously racist” people — is a Republican? Do you really believe he said so on that video?

Yeah, neither did I. I could see him saying he was raised as a Republican. But that he is one? Uh-uh. I asked Shepard:

I added:

Corroborating my suspicion was the fact that one of the people who appeared on the video, who goes by the name of Simon Templar, took issue with Shepard and said she was wrong:

So I went and found the full two-hour video, which is posted on the Project Veritas web site, here. I quickly found the relevant passage at timestamp 12:52:48, where Schiller says:

I grew up a Republican and am proud of that even though I’ve voted mostly Democratic lately.

Just as “Simon Templar” had claimed, he said he was raised as a Republican, not that he “is” a Republican. He goes on to severely criticize the current Republican party, as we have all heard. I sent the proof to Shepard on a silver platter, complete with a link to the video and a timestamp, and copied Jack Shafer:

This is the part where she reviewed the video, apologized for her misstatement, and quickly and cheerfully issued a prompt correction. Right?

Yeah, not quite.

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.]

I meant to post this yesterday, but I had a funeral for a coworker to attend.  From the WaPo:

David S. Broder, 81, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post and one of the most respected writers on national politics for four decades, died Wednesday at Capital Hospice in Arlington of complications from diabetes.

Mr. Broder was often called the dean of the Washington press corps – a nickname he earned in his late 30s in part for the clarity of his political analysis and the influence he wielded as a perceptive thinker on political trends in his books, articles and television appearances.

In 1973, Mr. Broder and The Post each won Pulitzers for coverage of the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation. Mr. Broder’s citation was for explaining the importance of the Watergate fallout in a clear, compelling way.

Of course this is not the day to share any disagreements with the man.  If you don’t like him, take an attitude of “I come to bury Caesar, not praise him.”  Because regardless of whatever disagreements there might be, he was a human being with a family that loved him and we can sincerely hope that he receives life everlasting.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]