Planning to call in.

Available here.

Will try to embed below the fold.

UPDATE: It’s over and I couldn’t do the embed. But many of you listened and heard some CLASSIC lines from Tommy, like:

“They fooled me into telling a true story.”

And:

“They basically told me nothing.”

Classic.

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

Mmm, yeah, that’s gonna leave a mark.

And his youtube page has links to other videos from his catalogue.  It’s funny how Weird Al has managed to keep his career going longer than most of the people he has parodied.

H/T: Althouse.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Lee Stranahan]

Want to hear the sound of people making a difference on the Pigford story?

I mentioned in a previous post that Allen West had voted no on Rep. Steve King’s amendment to stop Pigford funding. This vote struck me as strange because of Rep. West’s reputation as an opponent of wasteful spending.

Talk show host David Webb asked West about his vote today and Rep. West seems to feel that he made an error in his vote. I watched the ‘lightning round’ of fourty (40!) or so amendments live on C-SPAN and I can see where an honest error is certainly possible. I accept his explanation and appreciate his straightforward answer.

But listen to what Rep. West as soon as Webb asks him about Pigford – he says he’s answered the question about his Pigford many times. And THAT is the sound of the tide turning. Pigford is clearly getting onto people’s radar, thanks to you. If you haven’t done so, please sign the Pigford Petition.

And blogger The Right Scoop  has another example of West answering a Pigford question. (h/t Joe Brooks)

Here’s Rep. West explanation from his newsletter (h/t to Peresphone from Right Scoop’s comments)

FY 2012 Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations – On Thursday, June 16, the House approved H.R. 2112 by a vote of 217-203, I voted YES. The bill would provide a total of $17.25 billion in non-emergency, discretionary budget authority in FY 2012 for government programs funded through the Agriculture and Rural Development Appropriations Act. The bill would represent a decrease of $2.67 billion or 13 percent below the FY 2011 funding level and a reduction of $5.03 billion or 22 percent below the President’s request. H.R. 2112 meets and surpasses House Republican’s pledge by bringing discretionary budget authority for Agriculture and related agencies down to nearly FY 2006 spending levels.

There were some 40 amendments to this piece of legislation and there are those who questioned my NO vote on Rep. Steve King’s amendment on Pigford. I accept full responsibility for not doing a complete due diligence and personal research on this amendment. I am mortal and a fallible human being who seeks to do his best daily, and improve as such."

– Lee Stranahan

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

I have mentioned before about how Islamofascist hate runs so deep in Palestine that it resulted in the deaths of Shalhevet Pass and Hadas Fogel, beautiful newborn infants intentionally and specifically murdered by Palestinian terrorists.  What that leaves out, though, is girls (and boys) like Sohana Jawed, of Pakistan.  Here’s a picture of her:

I am thankful to be able to report to you that she is alive and relatively well, considering what she had been through.

But she is eight years old, or nine depending on your news source.  In civilized societies she is far too young to fight, drive, smoke, vote, drink, or to have sex.

But in the eyes of the terrorists, she is the perfect age to be a suicide bomber, whether she volunteers or not:

In a first case of its kind, an eight-year-old girl was reportedly forced by terrorists to wear a suicide vest for blowing herself up at a check-post in the Lower Dir area of Khyber Pukhtoonkhwa – formerly North West Frontier Province.

However, she surrendered herself to the very police she was supposed to attack. Narrating her experience to the media, Suhana* — a Class III student — said she was kidnapped from her hometown in Peshawar by two women and a man on Sunday.

The kidnappers apparently beckoned her and when she approached them, they put a handkerchief around her nose after which she fell unconscious. Once she regained consciousness, Suhana said she was forced to wear a suicide vest and taken to the police post in Balambat area of Lower Dir.

Read the whole thing.  Or simply watch this news report:

If there is any silver lining here (I mean besides the fact that the child is alive to tell the tale), there is the fact that these people at this news station—located in Pakistan—is as horrified as most of us would be.

But not every would-be child suicide bomber would be so resistant, apparently:

The Daily Mail has the story behind that video.  Its murky in many of the details, but it’s hard to imagine a non-fraked up explanation for it.  And I have seen this sort of thing before.

Sting thought there could be peace between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. if the Russians loved their children, too.  Whatever the merits of his argument, it is clear we don’t even have that commonality between us and the Islamofascists.

Hat Tip: The Blaze.

——————————–

* There is apparently more than one way to transliterate her name.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

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

This broke on Friday, where stories go to die, so I decided to sit on it over the weekend.  Still this New York Times piece is devastating:

President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.

Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.

But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged.

Presidents have the legal authority to override the legal conclusions of the Office of Legal Counsel and to act in a manner that is contrary to its advice, but it is extraordinarily rare for that to happen. Under normal circumstances, the office’s interpretation of the law is legally binding on the executive branch.

Do read the whole thing.  As Allahpundit put it on Friday:

What they’re basically saying here, without actually saying it, is that the president’s own lawyers told him that the Libya war is illegal and he responded by looking around for other lawyers who’d tell him what he wanted to hear.

Of course the most amazing thing about that is that in conducting this war the President has rejected his own legal advice on the subject.  So it’s not just “hey, these lawyers tell me this is wrong.  Let me get a second opinion.”  It’s: “hey, these lawyers tell me this is wrong and I agree.  Let me get a second opinion.”  That is why I call this a willful violation of the constitution—because it is wrong, and he knows it is wrong.

The good news is that

House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, last week said Congress could cut funding for U.S. military involvement in Libya, ratcheting up pressure on Obama.

I hate to do something so drastic, but somehow this administration has to be brought to heel on this.

But then again, how do you cut off funds that were never allocated in the first place?

Update: Jack Goldsmith has thoughts on the subject, here.  Thanks Ian.

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

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

So yesterday was Juneteenth, that is June 19, on which many Americans celebrate the end of slavery.  But the strangeness of this choice of date is demonstrated by this Presidential Proclamation:

On this day in 1865, more than two years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, the word finally came down to slaves in Galveston, Texas, that they were free and entitled to the same “absolute equality of rights” and “right to property” protected under law.

From what I know of the history of the time, though, the slaves assuredly knew well before that day.  As this Smithsonian website makes it clear, it’s probably better termed as the day they were officially told, in one place.  To be blunt, it’s an event of dubious national historical significance.

On the other hand, it seems self-evident to me that we should have a day to remember when slavery ended.  Even if not a single one of your ancestors was held in bondage, we all had a stake in the struggle to end slavery.  We were struggling for nothing less than our national soul.  We were determining whether we were going to actually stick to the ideas of the Declaration of Independence, or fritter it away with special pleading.  Consider for instance Abraham Lincoln discussing the dueling interpretations of the Declaration, and what it would mean if the narrower interpretation was adopted:

(more…)

In light of the recent Tommy Christopher debacle, I think it’s about time we started asking big-J Journalists to show their work. Let’s start with Jennifer Preston of the New York Times:

At least three months before the revelation that former Representative Anthony D. Weiner was sending lewd messages and photos to women online, a small group of self-described conservatives was monitoring his exchanges with women on Twitter. Now there is evidence that one or more people created two false identities on Twitter in order to collect information to use against him.

How do you know they were trying to get information to use against Weiner? Show your work, please. Bonus points if you can explain why these girls and Nikki/Betty’s mom later issued deliriously pro-Weiner statements that sounded like something from his P.R. team. All part of their devious plan to attack him!

Now Tommy Christopher:

The main thrust of the story was that Rep. Weiner had not made inappropriate contact with “Betty,” and that Andrew Breitbart was not guilty of engineering a hoax against Weiner. Both of these things are still true.

How do you know that Rep. Weiner did not make inappropriate contact with Nikki/Betty? Show your work, please.

And stop calling her Betty. The NYT published their names. Here is your handy guide:

Betty=Nikki Reid
Veronica=Marianela Alicea
Ethel=Ethel

The thrust of your story before, Tommy, was:

1. Marianela contacted the #bornfreecrew (PatriotUSA76, Mike Stack/goatsred, and others) saying she had relatively innocuous DMs between Nikki and Weiner, and DMs between Seattle woman Gennette Cordova and Weiner showing they had flirted. Marianela told Stack Nikki was willing to provide all this, but that they both insisted on anonymity.

2. Nikki contacted you to raise the #bornfreecrew as an issue. When you asked her about what Marianela had, they both denied it, said they made it up, issued pro-Weiner statements, and told you they were really Nikki Reid and Marianela Alicea. Now we learn that last bit was a lie — so you conclude that they are now telling the truth about everything else. And the New York Times concludes they are anti-Weiner.

Sigh.

Oh — speaking of people manufacturing evidence against people, get a load of this. Someone is going around posting images that look for all the world like DMs a) between Weiner and Gennette Cordova, talking like they are in league with Nikki and Marianela in how to respond to the #bornfreecrew, and b) from Gennette, talking about how she flirted with Weiner. One person posted this in a comment on one of Lee’s posts here:

Gennette & Weiner May 15
http://bit.ly/m4DHMQ

Gennette & Weiner May 15 part2
http://bit.ly/kFCSng

starchild part 1
http://bit.ly/l960b7

starchild part 2
http://bit.ly/mwrbJm

starchild part 3
http://bit.ly/kJKsuM

starchild part 4
http://bit.ly/kdXIdC

Here are the top two:

And on Ace’s site, someone posted this:

251 Gennette Nicole Cordova

http://bit.ly/mP4dVy

Here is what that one looks like:

Until these are properly vetted by our media betters, we can’t say what the heck these are. I’d ask Gennette myself, but a) her umpteenth Twitter account is private, so I can’t contact her, and b) she has always said she won’t answer any of my more probing questions because I am not a “reputable journalist.”

They’re either genuine or they’re faked by someone.

Either way, they’re interesting. If they’re faked — they’re exactly the type of information that Nikki Reid said she had from Gennette: evidence of flirtation between Gennette and Weiner. So this could be a clue to finding the real Nikki and Marianela. They faked IDs and they probably faked these, too. Right?

Or, they’re genuine, and they are what Nikki and Marianela told Mike Stack they had.

Which is it? Well, the key thing to remember is that a) Tommy Christopher maintains Nikki and Marianela never had anything on Weiner, and the fact they lied to him doesn’t change that, and b) Jen Preston of the NYT assures us that Nikki and Marianela were working against Weiner. With those cold hard facts, related to us by our media betters, we can easily see that these are obvious fakes. So I pass them along to you with that assumption.

P.S. They also could easily be fakes dummied up by someone to try to get us right-wingers to publish them and declare that they are evidence of something. That is why I make absolutely no such declaration. At this point, I see these links as simply a curiosity found on the Internet, like interesting shells you find on the beach. Hey, look at these! Aren’t these interesting.

We’ll all look at them together. Maybe people will ask some questions. Then we’ll decide whether to put them in our pocket or put them back down on the sand.

UPDATE: In one place in the post I had a typo, saying “pro-Weiner” instead of “anti-Weiner” to describe the NYT characterization of Nikki and Marianela. Fixed. Thanks to Caleb Howe.

UPDATE x2: Looking at these screenshots again. They look like fakes to the naked eye. Look at how the dates and times don’t line up.

For example: look at the first DM allegedly from GennetteNicole.

You see the date, and then the time jumps up noticeably.

See that?

I say: bad Photoshop.

Fascinating. Who did it? I’d love to know!

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

Professor Jacobson, one of the recent “Cinderella Stories” of Teh Internetz, has moved to a new site (also called Legal Insurrection).  Update yer bookmarks.

That is, he has left his Blogger site.  I asked him by email if it was prompted by Althouse’s trouble and I don’t think I am revealing too much that he said that while his issues with Blogger preceded Althouse’s issues, it didn’t help matters.

So join the insurrection… as long as you keep it legal.  And you might enjoy him discussing how he got into blogging, here.

(Also, Ann Althouse is planning a similar move, which assuredly is related to her troubles.)

[Posted and authored by Aaron Worthing.]

[Guest post by Lee Stranahan]

Maybe not QUITE yet but I love a strong headline.

And “An Hour of Obsessive Compulsive Ramblings By A Middle Aged Guy In A Dark Room” isn’t as pithy.

Anyway, get deep in the weeds on #Weinergate with me, won’t you?

– Lee Stranahan