BigGovernment.com broke an exclusive story in which Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, goes on the record stating that her mother actually wants out of Congress.

During a telephone interview, Ms. Pelosi–speaking from a friend’s home in New York City–described her mother’s predicament:

She would retire right now, if the donors she has didn’t want her to stay so badly. They know she wants to leave, though. They think she’s destined for the wilderness. She has very few days left. She’s 71, she wants to have a life, she’s done. It’s obligation, that’s all I’m saying.

After the story was published, Alexandra notified BigGovernment.com that she had said “greatness,” not “wilderness.” The crux of the story, that her mother would rather leave Congress, remained unchallenged. So here we have the daughter of the former Speaker of the House stating that her mother would retire if it weren’t for people who donated to her election keeping her in office.

Pretty big news, right? All kinds of questions come immediately to mind when I read this. What do her donors want of her? What has she not done that they need her in office to accomplish? There are dozens of questions a news organization would want answers to in order to give their readers the best possible coverage of this significant story. That is, of course, if the news organization is really interested in informing their readers rather than moving a narrative forward.

Enter Politico. (more…)

The media will do anything to keep Eric Holder in a good light. Politico has a piece up about Mr. Holder’s statements on more police deaths. According to Politico the statistic jumped 13% in 2011 and Mr. Holder said it is “a devastating and unacceptable trend.” He blames them on illegal firearms.

Yes, the man who is in charge of the department that allowed 2,000 guns to be illegally bought and walked into Mexico — resulting in the deaths of 300 Mexican civilians and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry — is upset about deaths caused by people using illegally purchased guns. Mr. Holder goes on to say:

“This is a devastating and unacceptable trend. Each of these deaths is a tragic reminder of the threats that law enforcement officers face each day,” Holder in a statement. “I want to assure the family members and loved ones who have mourned the loss of these heroes that we are responding to this year’s increased violence with renewed vigilance and will do everything within our power — and use every tool at our disposal — to keep our police officers safe.”

What a slap in the face to Brian Terry’s family. It wasn’t until Senator John Cornyn asked Mr. Holder if he apologized or expressed remorse to Mr. Terry’s family that Mr. Holder finally did say something to them. Ironically it was Politico (and the article was written by Tim Mak, author of this article) who leaked the apology to the public before Mr. Terry’s mother even had a chance to see and open it. It’s nice Mr. Holder is reassuring the family members of these fallen heroes, but why did it take so long for him to say something to Agent Terry’s family, especially since one of the guns from Operation Fast and Furious was used to murder Agent Terry?

(more…)

On Wednesday morning the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake posted an infographic that was a perfect example of how one can use a graphic chart to influence the public in subtle ways, ways that we of the center right better start employing in our own efforts if we want to win over the public.

Blake’s post, “Why People Hate Congress,” fits in well with President Obama’s class warfare rhetoric as employed by his campaign to set different economic classes against each other in a desperate and cynically populist bid to get reelected next year. There is little of substance to Blake’s post other than to fan the flames of the sort of hatred that he wants to see grow in order to aid Obama in 2012.

The Post’s Blake also ended up having to pull the graphic off his The Fix blog post because it simply did not illustrate what he claimed it did in his story — but that is another issue that we’ll deal with at the end of this report.

Blake begins his piece asking, “Want to know why Americans hate Congress?” He then goes on to claim it is in part because our elected representatives in Washington D.C. are members of the eeeevil rich.

The fact that members of Congress are getting richer (and 57 members come from the top 1 percent, according to USA Today) confirms what Americans suspect about the people who are running this country: that they don’t empathize with normal people.

Of course, with a dispassionate application of logic, having a few dollars more than the next guy does not ipso facto make the richer guy so out of touch that he cannot empathize with anyone in a lower salary range. Only those filled with hate make this assumption. Empathy has nothing to do with class, money, or politics. It has to do with one’s character.

Further there are plenty of members of Congress with the character to understand and have empathy with others. Then there are some that don’t. People are people, rich or poor.

It is also telling that even Blake admits that Congress has always been filled with “the rich.” The founders were not groveling in poverty, after all. It often takes a person that has achieved a certain place in society to become elected. I mean, should they be elected, how can anyone expect “the poor” or even the lower middle class to afford to fund homes both in D.C. and back in their district? Who can afford to leave their family and business if half the year off more to fly off the D.C. to attend to government business? And with the costs of elections and the Byzantine election laws these days causing many candidates to self fund, it will only be natural that “the rich” end up being our representatives in Congress.

But special attention has to be paid to the graphic Blake used to illustrate his story. And what a masterwork of subtlety it is. Blake claimed that the illustration made by a well-known hate-the-rich researcher from California showed in graphic form the distribution of wealth among both chambers of Congress. The graphic depicts the “top 1%” and the “next 9%” in the color red. Then it uses blue to show the “following 10%” and the “bottom 80%.” Notice what is going on? That’s right, this graphic uses the color red to depict the eeevil rich. And what is the color red in politics these days? None other than the color the Old Media has assigned to the Republican Party.

(more…)

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman/Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz is feeling the heat from a formidable opponent, Republican Karen Harrington, in her battle to keep Florida’s 20th Congressional District seat.

Several weeks back, Wasserman Schultz was interviewed by the Spanish-language network Univision and was directly asked if she thought her congressional seat was “safe” in the forthcoming 2012 elections. Wasserman Schultz appeared unnerved by the question and it likely caused her to pivot back to her typical talking points and assert that the candidates running in the Republican primary in Florida’s 20th Congressional District are “very focused on the agenda of the Tea Party” and “that’s not a reflection of the values of this district.”

Screenshot. ‘Someone’ complained about the video, so our friends over at Univision asked us to take down the video. We took the video down as a courtesy.

The Shark Tank removed the video in question from its site after somebody from Wasserman Schultz’s campaign or congressional office complained to the network as a courtesy to Univision.  Fast forward a few weeks later, and lo and behold, the Politico runs a two-part story on who could have leaked the video to the Shark Tank.  Coincidence?  You be the judge. Politico: Part 1 Part 2.

(more…)

It almost seems unfair to give CBS News’ investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson a “Credit Where It’s Due.” That gives the impression that this is an anomaly when, in reality, Ms. Attkisson’s consistency in fair and robust reporting on the brewing “Fast and Furious” scandal has been exemplary, a reminder of what Legacy Media is still capable of when the only agenda is truth and watchdogging the powerful.

Today, Ms. Attkisson reported what could very well be a game changer in a story few of Obama’s Media Palace Guards desire to cover. Probably because they fear the story might take them directly to a point such as this: [emphasis mine]

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.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told CBS News and Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

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.”

In the past, others have floated the idea that gun control might have been one of the agendas behind an operation that is now looking  much less like it was botched and much more like it was calculated. But if you read the emails embedded in the story, that theory appears to have been confirmed.

(more…)

There’s so much going on these days. The Occupy movement, a man arrested for attempting to assassinate our president, the never-ending drama behind the GOP primary, and–as always–we have to fight the corrupt mainstream media.

There are so many dragons to slay with only so many hours in a day, and no one knows better than a political blogger that it’s impossible to go to bed feeling as though you’ve covered everything that deserved covering.

—–

But we need conservative leadership on this one; your voice, your passion, your reasoned arguments and your moral authority:

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) announced Thursday that his panel would be considering legislation to prohibit lawmakers from investing based on private information.The chairman announced the Dec. 6 hearing one day after ranking member Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), sent a letter to Bachus, calling on the committee to consider such legislation and eventually pass it. The announcement also comes after Bachus has come under scrutiny for allegations that he profited on investments made based on private information.

“Existing law clearly prohibits insider trading by members of Congress.  However, the American public deserves for there to be no question or equivocation concerning members of Congress or any citizen being exempted from laws prohibiting insider trading,” Bachus said in a statement.Frank told Bachus in his letter that he had “neglected” similar legislation when he was chairman of the committee, but that recent attention to the matter meant the bill should be considered and passed.

The panel will consider a bill, introduced by Reps. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.) and Tim Walz (D-Minn.), which would prohibit members and White House employees from investing based on private information, or from passing that information along to others for investment purposes.

As you know already, it is currently legal for members of Congress to enrich themselves with insider information to which the rest of us aren’t privy. When corporate executives do this they go to jail, and should. Insider trading breeds corruption and can create conflicts of interest whereby as those charged with the public trust manipulate markets and, yes, legislation to enrich their own personal portfolios.

(more…)

How long has Baghdad Bob been writing at Politico?

(more…)

This was the battle-cry of the 2008 elections: Obama was the Great Uniter who would bring America together and save it from the horrible division that Evil Bush caused.

The activist old media (who constantly promise to protect us from everything that could possibly harm us) easily bought this line because it fit their template and they wanted to believe it. Today will any of them walk this back, even a little bit? Nope — instead they blame the GOP and try to convince us that their poor Dear Leader has become a victim of the Rancorous Republicans.

Here’s just one example of the story line from 2007 with this little bit from the Washington Post about Obama, “he has the capacity … to unify the country and move it out of what he called “ideological gridlock.” Wow, good thing we don’t have gridlock and we hired the guy for the job who could stop it with a beer summit or the wave of his magic cigarette.

I anchored local news during the 2008 Democrat Primary, I covered one of the debates back then, and I know what I read and you know what you heard. Obama was the “Great Uniter.” Of course, nobody with a brain bought it, but the media loved it and spread it like barnyard fuel.

(more…)

The Democrat talking points are out. There is one that seems to have been circulated to all the usual suspects amongst the liberal illuminati and they are repeating it over and over ad nauseum. The talking point in question? The Tea Party is a bunch of terrorists. Last week, Thomas Friedman compared them to Hezbollah. Joe Biden piled on as well, saying that they “acted like terrorists.” The Grey Lady’s Joe Nocera carries on the meme as well, while kicking it up a notch. Not only are they terrorists, but they’ve been waging a jihad on the American people.

It really isn’t the point of this article to mention the fact that the New York Times refuses to call, you know, actual terrorists “terrorists.” They’re just militants. Even the term Jihad, according to unindicted co-conspirators CAIR, “includes struggle against evil inclinations within oneself, struggle to improve the quality of life in society, etc. etc.” It’s clear that this definition only holds true when discussing misunderstood Muslims who really only want to be loved and hugged, especially when they’re flying jet liners into buildings and blowing up subways.

Nocera rails against the terror tactics of the Tea party that have kept the American people dumbstruck with horror. They scorned compromise, unlike the President and Senate Majority leader who, at every opportunity, said that any bill that included cuts would be Dead on Arrival. The fact that the Tea Party was unwilling to budge on what President Obama recently referred to as “Job Killing Tax Increases” is irrefutable proof that they hate Americans and worked with “gleeful willingness” to destroy American faith and credit. (more…)

My memory is getting worse with time, but it’s still pretty good. Anybody out there remember what happened on Nov. 2, 2010?

I think there was an election that day and if my memory serves me well, Democrats and liberal Republicans got creamed. Bear with me for a second, I think my numbers are pretty good here, 63 House seats, six Senate seats, about a dozen governorships, and close to 700 State House seats flipped from “D” to “R.” I also seem to recall at the time that the Democrats and their activist old media worked hard to downplay and ignore the massacre because….well….because it just hurt too much to acknowledge the slaughter.

American voters sent one of their most clear messages ever.

Voices have been heard in DC over the recent debt ceiling talks, but they will not be silenced until this problem is solved Constitutionally. Government cannot solve its spending problem on its own, it must be controlled through the Constitution. Our Founders knew this, the tea party patriots know this, the media and the Democrats still don’t get it, but they are on the run right now, and they do know that.

While both sides will claim victory over the debt ceiling talks, there is no question the debate has changed. Victory never happens soon enough for those on the right side, but serious ground has been gained. A battle has been won, but the war itself is still undecided.

Elections have consequences and the progress being made right now is because of what happened Nov 2, 2010. (more…)

“This has been a befuddling experience.”

“After almost 11 hours of answering questions, any that anyone wanted to put, today I’m going to have to get back to work doing the job that I’m paid to do.”

Ya—ask away. Anthony Weiner will sit there and deflect and create more Strawmen than the King of Strawmen in the White House. “You know, pictures can be altered.” No Anthony, I didn’t know that, really? Photoshop has been invented? He won’t say if his picture has been altered, just pictures can be altered.

Watching this entire Weiner affair has been as entertaining as can be. The smartest, most brilliant, intelligent Democrat Congressman in the history of Congressmen sounds like your typical teenaged boy whose mother just caught him with a Playboy.

I’ve been through something similar myself. I told my mom the pictures were put in my “secret” coat pocket by a friend and I didn’t know how they got there.

She didn’t buy it.

My episode lasted about 30 minutes from investigation to confession and finally the penalty phase. Justice was swift. (more…)

“I hope he [Weiner] comes after me. Look up my IP. Nothing to hide here. I’d voluntarily hand anything they want over. Check me and my IP. Anything. I did not post that tweet.”

Twitter user Dan Wolfe (known as @patriotusa76) has clarified several details concerning his involvement in the “Weinergate” scandal, insisting that a thorough investigation of the tweets in question will prove he did not compromise the verified Twitter account of Congressman Anthony Weiner (D, NY-9). In a series of direct messages on Twitter, Wolfe explains how he found the offensive image sent from Weiner’s Twitter account, his previous tweets about accounts followed by the Congressman, and his desire for law enforcement to investigate his online activity that night.

Asked whether he followed Congressman Weiner or the recipient of the controversial tweet, Wolfe states he “wasn’t following either of them ever.” He named several other twitter uses who he regularly communicates with, explaining, “Our twitter group mentions him a lot because he appears in media a lot and says things we hate a lot. If he wasn’t saying anything, we wouldn’t comment.” Wolfe claims that on May 27th, the date the tweet went public, he navigated to the @RepWeiner account by clicking on Weiner’s username on a retweet in his Twitter stream. The tweet in question was the much-discussed one where Weiner announced the time of his upcoming appearance on the Rachel Maddow show with the hashtag #Thats545InSeattleIThink. “I found the 5:45 tweet weird,” Wolfe says.

(more…)

Anthony Weiner is a real favorite of a lot of Democrats because he’s not afraid to put it out there.

But as Big Government is reporting, maybe he put a little too much out there. Rep. Anthony Weiner’s Twitter account  appears to have sent out a photo of…ummm…underwear. To a woman who isn’t his wife. There’s no face, though. Just a bulge in some underwear.  That’s editing! .

As I write this, the tweet in question is still up at TweetCongress.org.

So, around the same time he was tweeting about hockey, he allegedly sends the underwear photos to the Woman Who Shall Not Be Named. Don’t bother looking there, though. Rep. Weiner’s  photos are all erased. And The Woman Who Shall Not Be Named seems to have deleted her entire Twitter account. And, it seems, her Facebook account.

Look what Rep. Weiner tweeted earlier in the evening (as of this writing it’s still in his feed) . I don’t know what it means, but look … why is he talking about Seattle?

Well, could it be because The Woman Who Shall Not Be Named seems to live in Seattle. And Rep. Weiner’s Seattle tweet was retweeted on her account, which likely means she saw it.

So here’s a possible scenario, and though unproven at this point, it does fit all the facts we have so far: Rep. Weiner knows The Woman Who Shall Not Be Named and that she lives in Seattle. She has a bit of a crush on the Congressman. He sends a message out about his Maddow appearance with a message to his Seattle friend in it. After the show, he tries to send her the underwear photo as a direct message but accidentally sends it out publicly. Realizing the problem, she deletes all traces of herself as best she can and Weiner claims to have been hacked and erases his photo account, because there might be EXIF data in the photos that would be revealing – showing which camera took the pictures, etc.

Again, all speculation at this point. But…

No word from Weiner denying it yet.

Undeterred by opposition to an unpopular health control bill they rushed through congress, the deficit they tripled in just two years’ time, fumbled foreign policy moves, and disastrous energy proposals, Democrats believe that the problem isn’t with their policy, but with messaging.

Democrats are hoping they’ve found a secret weapon for winning back the House in 2012: Twitter.

House Democrats say that while they may be outnumbered, they stand to come out ahead by becoming more savvy to social media to stay more directly connected to the public.

Exit polling from November 2nd showed that the top concern for voters was the economy. A recent ABC poll shows that confidence in government has hit a 30-year low while 55% are unhappy with how Obama is handling the economy. Democrats are making a politically deadly assumption that any loss for GOP in terms of public perception is due to Republicans grossly watering down the red mandate they were handed on November 2nd — not because voters suddenly favor the very Democratic policies which caused them to vote red last year.

It’s not that Democrats aren’t already connected to the public; the public just doesn’t like what it sees.

The California Democrat pointed to the roles that Twitter and Facebook have played in affecting political climates, most recently in the context of the government upheaval in Egypt and labor disputes in Wisconsin. Democrats should harness that same potential when it comes to developing an effective messaging strategy this cycle, Honda said.

“I think when we have more air time and utilize technology … we can focus on getting control back of Congress in 2012,” he said.

A gross misunderstanding of new media and its role in grassroots. Social media served to organize and spread information about counter demonstrations in Iran and Egypt — just as it was used (and still is) with the tea party movement and before that, #dontgo.  Social media won’t help Democrats sell a rejected platform. Revising the platform and then attempting to spread awareness of the changes will work, but House Democrats believe that voters just don’t get it. You’re stupid, apparently, and need the benefit of the big govocrats’ “effective messaging.”

(more…)

All rally around the Civility Pole.

The latest example of supposed civility is nothing more than a “made for TV” battle cry that the media will love. Mark Udal of Colorado proposed that Congress sit in no particular political side of the aisle for the upcoming State of the Union Address.  Udal proposed this in a letter to his colleagues pointing out that there’s nothing in our founding documents saying that lawmakers must sit in separate parts of the Capitol Building during the speech.

He’s right, it’s not specifically written in the Constitution, but he must not have read Federalist Paper 10, or James Madison Rules America, by William Connelly Jr. Either will give him a good look at the Constitutional origins of partisanship.

I’ll get to that in a moment, but first, Udal knows the media will take this “ball of supposed bi-partisanship” and run with it. Democrats don’t have to appear as bi-partisan as Republicans because they have the media doing their dirty work for them every step of the way. Democrats have the luxury of knowing they can sit in their Ivory Tower of Unity and the activist old media will be there to give them cover.

(more…)

As socialists progressives gear up to take on the filibuster, again, Jim Hoft shares some important filibuster myths that you’ll likely see parroted by many in the media as they struggle to carry Harry Reid’s increasingly heavy water pail.

I spoke with Brian Darling, who is a Big Government contributor, after the event yesterday at Heritage Foundation. He later sent me his “List of Myths” that the democrat-media complex will try to push on the American public this week as they go for their power grab in the US Senate.
With his permission, I am posting those “myths” here.

Four Myths about the Filibuster

There are four myths that you will hear over and over again about the filibuster. Don’t believe the left when they claim that the filibuster is unconstitutional and was an accident of history. Furthermore don’t believe it when you hear that the Senate is not a continuing body and therefore the Senate can only change rules in the first day of a new Congress. The explicit words of the Constitution, the Senate’s written rules and the history of the Senate show that the filibuster was created by design, it is constitutional and the Senate is a continuous body.

Myth: The Filibuster is Unconstitutional. Senator Tom Udall (D-NM) argues that “When the authors of the Constitution believed a supermajority vote was necessary, they clearly said so. And while the Constitution states that we may determine our own rules, it makes no mention that it require a supermajority vote to do so. In addition, a longstanding common law principle, upheld in Supreme Court decisions, states that one legislature cannot bind its successors. To require a supermajority to change the rules, as is our current practice, is to allow a Senate rule to trump our U.S. Constitution and bind future Senates.”

Fact: The Filibuster is constitutional and efforts to restrict debate in the Senate may be unconstitutional. The Constitution empowers the House and Senate to establish rules of procedure. Article I, Section 5 of the Constitution states that “each house may determine the rule of its proceedings.” This provision in the Constitution empowers the Senate to make rules governing debate. The Senate in 1917 established the cloture rule requiring a 2/3rds vote of all Senators present and voting to shut down debate after years of not having a means to shut down debate. Senate Rule 22 today states “invoking cloture on a proposal to amend the Senate’s standing rules requires the support of two-thirds of the Senators present and voting.” The clear letter of the Senate’s rules mandate a supermajority vote to change the Senate’s rules.

(more…)