Hide and Seek: White House hides meetings with lobbyist offsite

Another Black Conservative  "Politico: Caught between their boss’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds – and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.
"It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs collected on visitors to the White House and later released to the public."

Wisconsin governor urging others to take stands against unions

Washington Post  "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose efforts to curtail the rights of public-employee unions have thrust him into the national spotlight, is pushing other new Republican governors to follow his lead.
"He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers.
"There's a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big," Walker said this week. "This is our moment."
"His comments about his GOP brethren came in an unusual forum: a recorded telephone conversation with a liberal blogger purporting to be conservative financier David Koch."

Obama Bows Out on the Defense of Marriage Act

National Review  "The Holder letter concludes: “Our attorneys will notify the courts of our interest in providing Congress a full and fair opportunity to participate in the litigation in these cases.” It would have been fuller and fairer for President Obama and the Justice Department to have done that from the beginning when the DOMA suits were filed in Massachusetts. The silver lining is that the way has now been cleared for a real adversarial process. The law enacted by Congress and the views of the American people finally will have a champion in court."

Volokh Conspiracy on DOMA   "So I take the Obama Administration to task not for asserting executive review here, which is at least arguably proper, but for trying to split the baby in half, and declaring that it won’t defend an unconstitutional law, but will enforce it. And not just any unconstitutional law, but one regarding which the Administration claims there are no “reasonable” supporting arguments."

More from Volokh Conspiracy:  "I also agree that there is a big difference between declining to enforce a law and declining to defend it. ... First, my sense is that it is not clear that others can step in to defend DOMA, and if so, how that would work. ...And second, the decision not to defend DOMA is likely to trigger a tit-for-tat that will have significant repercussions for the role of the Executive branch in defending legislation in the future."

Will Harry Reid Also Hide in Illinois?

Heritage  "If President Obama and Majority Leader Reid want to punt these tough choices to another time, another Congress, another generation one more time they will be abdicating their responsibilities in the same way their liberal colleagues in Wisconsin and Indiana are doing. It’s time for both chambers of Congress and the White House to get to work. Kicking the can is no longer an option."

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Jihadist Opportunities in Libya

STRATFOR "However, even though jihadists have not been successful in overthrowing governments, they are still viewed as a threat by regimes in countries like Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. In response to this threat, these regimes have dealt quite harshly with the jihadists, and strong crackdowns combined with other programs have served to keep the jihadists largely in check.

"As we watch the situation unfold in Libya, there are concerns that unlike Tunisia and Egypt, the uprising in Libya might result not only in a change of ruler but also in a change of regime and perhaps even a collapse of the state."

Look for the Union Fable

Ann Coulter  "Government unions have nothing in common with private sector unions because they don't have hostile management on the other side of the bargaining table. To the contrary, the "bosses" of government employees are co-conspirators with them in bilking the taxpayers."....

http://townhall.com/cartoons/lisabenson

"Democrats buy the votes of government workers with generous pay packages and benefits -- paid for by someone else -- and then expect a kickback from the unions in the form of hefty campaign donations, rent-a-mobs and questionable union political activity when they run for re-election."

UN Asks Lefty Hollywood to Write Global Warming Propaganda Into Movie Story Lines…

Weasel Zippers  "Now the beleaguered multi-national agency, fresh from a disappointing round of climate negotiations in Cancun, wants something more concrete: actual story lines in movies, television and social media drawing attention to the dangers of global warming."

Breaking: Obama to abandon DOMA defense

Hot Air  "President Obama has decided that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and has asked his Justice Department to stop defending it in court, the administration announced today.
"“The President believes that DOMA is unconstitutional. They are no longer going to be defending the cases in the 1st and 2nd circuits,” a person briefed on the decision said."

Obama Won't Go to Court Over Defense of Marriage Act  Attorney General Eric Holder "said that Obama also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines “spouse” as a member of the opposite sex, “fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the president has instructed the department not to defend the statute in such cases. I fully concur with the president’s determination.”

Government Unions vs American Taxpayers

Heritage  "Conservative governors across the nation should absolutely work to reform the way public-sector unions drain our economy. As Governor Christie told MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’ today: “We’re not trying to break the unions, the unions are trying to break the middle class.”"

http://townhall.com/cartoons/henrypayne

Civility from the left

Skip Maclure

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard  "A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media’s longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protest."

Can American Values Radicalize Muslims?

Raymond Ibrahim  "In fact, far from eliminating radicalization, there is reason to believe that Western values can actually exacerbate Islamist tendencies. It is already known that Western concessions to Islam — in the guise of multiculturalism, "cultural sensitivity," political correctness, and self-censorship — only bring out the worst in Islamists. Yet even some of the most prized aspects of Western civilization — personal freedom, rule of law, human dignity — when articulated through an Islamist framework, have the capacity to "radicalize" Muslims."

But That’s What Community Organizers Do

Victor Davis Hanson   "So we should cease being surprised that the president editorializes about extraneous issues while ignoring critical ones, or that the administration is now addressing breast pumps, or that Obama has ignored the findings of his own debt commission, or that he has added 200,000 new federal workers at a time of fiscal insolvency, and on and on.
"You see, that is what community organizers do, now and in the past."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/mikelester