NSA Gate Shooting Gets . . . Weird

This ain't Hell blog   "We now have a bit more news about that NSA gate shooting the other day.  And it’s gotten a bit strange, to put it mildly.

Hall

 
"The FBI has now identified the dead guy as “Ricky Shawatza Hall”.  He was the driver of the stolen car.  The passenger, who remains hospitalized, has not yet been publicly identified.



"What’s a bit odd is the “rest of the story” that was released today.

"The accounts you heard about the two guys being “cross-dressed”?  Yeah, they were correct.


"Seems Hall and his “buddy” had been picked up in Baltimore earlier that day – or maybe the previous night – by a Baltimore resident. They then drove to a motel in nearby Elkridge to “party”, checking in at 7:30AM.


"The two cross-dressers then apparently stole the guy’s car and left the area.  Unfortunately for them, they managed to screw up and ended up at the gate of the NSA compound at Fort Meade.


"My guess is that the two crooks took a wrong turn after stealing the guy’s car, then freaked when they saw the police.  They then chose to ignore police instructions – picking precisely the wrong place to do that (NSA police do not play games).  They then compounded the error by try to run for it and ended up getting shot.


"At this point,  it doesn’t look like terrorism had anything to do with the incident.  That it happened is unfortunate, but as the saying goes:  “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.”
Fox News has a few more details. 

"Check out this Fox News story if you’re interested.

"Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

Where the red line came from -- before it was crossed

 

Washington Examiner   "There are still nearly two years left in Barack Obama's presidency, but historians looking back on his record in foreign policy will surely identify one costly error: his refusal to follow through on the implied threat in stating that the Syrian regime's use of chemical weapons would be a "red line."
"That statement was made in a press conference on Monday, Aug. 20, 2012. The president was not scheduled to appear; press secretary Jay Carney said, "Looks like there's a surprise guest here." After fielding questions on other topics (Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin, Mitt Romney's attack ads and tax returns, friendly fire deaths in Afghanistan) Obama responded to NBC's Chuck Todd's question on whether he envisioned using U.S. military to keep Syria's chemical weapons in safekeeping."
. . .
 Unfortunately, bungling of language has consequences. Government leaders use words like "red line" to mean that grave consequences — including military action — will follow if the line is crossed. Obama's failure to back up his "red line" statement with such action has undermined America's credibility. That's a problem for America — and the world — until Jan. 20, 2017.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-989638-start-0.html

WATCH Harry Reid’s ‘Disgusting’ Dishonesty Burnt To A Crisp By Fire-Breathing Fox News Host

Western Center for Journalism   "When then-Majority Leader Harry Reid took to the floor of the Senate in 2012 to charge that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney hadn’t paid taxes for 10 years, the Nevada Democrat offered no proof — only hearsay — for his slanderous accusation.

"Despite being challenged to divulge his source of the outrageous claim, despite repeated calls that he prove Romney hadn’t paid his taxes, Reid never produced any evidence. He did, though, continue leveling the unsubstantiated charge.

"And now, shortly after announcing that he won’t seek re-election in 2016, the senator has all but admitted that he was lying at the time to keep Romney from being elected…and he’s happy that it worked.

"On her Fox News show Tuesday night, Megyn Kelly responded to Reid’s smirking acknowledgement to a CNN interviewer that he has no regrets about his repeated smears against Romney.

"And Kelly was on fire, blasting the senator’s false claim as an “ugly breach of the public trust.” In her fiery rant against Harry Reid’s apparent glee at perpetuating false rumors and ugly lies, Kelly slammed his “complete lack of integrity, complete lack of honesty, never mind respect for the American people.”

"You can watch Megyn Kelly express her unabashed contempt for, and utter disgust with, Sen. Harry Reid by clicking on the video above.

How Long Can South -African/ African- American Noah Tread Water?

PowerLine Blog  "The Daily Show has announced little known South African comic Trevor Noah as Jon Stewart’s replacement, and going with an unknown talent is an understandable move for such an iconic show. (Some initial media reports predictably referred to this South African as “African-American” because they’re afraid to say “black,” because PC.)


"But speaking of PC and compromised comics, the furor that has erupted over some of Noah’s old un-PC tweets reminds me of that old Bill Cosby punch line: “Noah—How long can you tread water?” Because it looks as though Trevor Noah may come undone for making jokes about un-petite women and Jews. Dave Weigel notes over at Bloomberg that Noah has gone from Progressive hero to villain in 24 hours." One of several Noah tweets here:

 

...Rush Limbaugh/31/liberal_hate_tweets_obama_regime_economist_and_new_daily_show_host
 "But the new Daily Show host said that present day America has worse race relations than apartheid South Africa."

 

. . . "Hands up, don't shoot," and he said, "I never thought I'd be more afraid of police in America than in South Africa. It kind of makes me a little nostalgic for the old days back home." So why move here? If you're more afraid of the cops in the United States than you were during Apartheid in South Africa, why move here? Why move to such a violently racist country? What was he thinking? Anyway, the audience of The Daily Show loved it. They ate it up. So all of this lying bigotry and discrimination and hatred is perfectly fine wherever it occurs on the left.

"They have to make things up about conservatives and white police officers! They have to make things up and then perpetuate the lies that they tell. This Religious Freedom Restoration Act, think of it as it's a shield. It's protection is right there is in the name of the law. It's not a gun; it's not a weapon. It's not a sword, as people say. It's a shield. It protects people. And, boy, has it been distorted way out of the ballpark." . . .

Commentary relating to the Kerry/Obama - Iran deal

The White House insisted Friday that Barack Obama's Mideast strategy is working. Right now the U.S. government Mideast policy is backing the Iranians against Sunnis in Iraq while backing the Sunnis against the Iranians in Yemen. Laurel and Hardy looked better pushing a piano up the staircase.

Saudi Arabia demanded nuclear weapons Friday when the U.S. conceded a nuclear lab bunker to Iran and released photos of Israel's nuclear bomb facility. You know this won't end well. It's like overhearing the flight attendant saying over the PA system that she can't get the captain to stop crying. Comedian Argus Hamilton

 DEBKAfile: Nuclear talks reach dead end. Partial document to be released  "Officials close to the nuclear talks in Lausanne between the six power and Iran confirm that this round has come to a dead end, having failed to reach agreement on fundamental questions by the March 31 deadline.. DEBKAfile has reported consistently that supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s radical clergy and Revolutionary Guards had set their faces firmly against this deal, preferring to leave a diplomatic void for Tehran to continue to develop a nuclear weapon, without US interference. Sources in Lausanne report that the diplomats gathered there are working on a joint partial communiqué to mask the fiasco and justify the continuation of negotiations up until the next deadline in late June."

 Jeremy Wynes, the Republican Jewish Coalition & Carly Fiorina Have No Problem w Jesse Jackson’s Jew-Hate, Enabling Iran; Don’t Oppose Obama’s Iran Deal

. . . " Wynes refused to answer my questions about why the RJC is hosting Fiorina, who traded with Iran in violation of the U.S. trade embargo and sanctions. Wynes also refused to answer my questions regarding why the RJC is hosting a woman who praised and palled around with Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson, who has a history of Jew-hatred and anti-White racism. “I’m not gonna answer that,” he responded. " . . .  Debbie Schlussel

Jewish leaders call on Fiorina to apologize for HP sales in Iran [VIDEO]  "A small group of Jewish leaders is calling for Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, a former Hewlett-Packard CEO, to apologize for the company’s alleged sale of printers and other products to Iran through a distributor during her six-year tenure.
 . . .
"Fiorina’s campaign, however, says the allegations are not true." . . Full article in the Jewish Journal

 

The Iran nuke deal and the greenies  "Politics isn’t the only thing that stops at the water's edge.  It looks like the administration's climate change agenda and war on oil are for domestic consumption only."

 Hold it.  Didn’t President Obama just veto the Keystone pipeline project because of the evils of oil?  And now he’s the driving force behind the lifting of sanctions on Iran, which in turn will  open of the oil well valves?

The Germanwings co-pilot did incalculable damage.

"It is far easier for an individual to do great evil than to do great good"

Dennis Prager   . . . "Yet every one of us knows one or two depressed individuals, and it is inconceivable that they would commit mass murder. As a number of Lincoln biographers have noted, most recently Richard Brookhiser, the great president was probably depressed all his life. And he was a moral giant." . . .

The nuclear deadline is upon us...well... maybe not

 

 WaPo/ABC poll: 59% support Iran deal, same percentage not confident it will prevent Iran nuke    "Maybe Barack Obama really does represent the American people best … or perhaps he’s left the electorate as confused as his administration."

. . .

 "Why make this deal at all? Michael Ramirez makes the point clearly in his editorial cartoon for Investors Business Daily:"

The French fear Obama’s destabilizing shift toward Iran over Saudis, Israelis
. . . "Fearing correctly that they had lost the faith of the American president, Israeli officials turned to France in mid-March in the effort to ensure that at least one Western nation had Jerusalem’s interests in mind while negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran." . . . 

The UK Guardian cited above reports: Israeli officials head to France in last-minute bid to block nuclear deal  . . . "France has been more hawkish than the US at the negotiating table, reportedly demanding more stringent restrictions than other western delegations."

 Obama wants to turn America against Israel  . . . " When questions first arose regarding his controversial relationship with the anti-American, anti-white, and anti-Semitic Jeremiah Wright (whom he called his “moral compass” and “political mentor”), the media were eager to dismiss allegations that he shared -- or even heard Wright express -- such beliefs."

. . . 

"The New York Times quoted Wright as predicting that if more people knew about his closeness to Barack Obama and his own views, "a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.' " 

The New Intolerance; Indiana isn’t targeting gays. Liberals are targeting religion.

WaPo

Wall Street Journal  Entire article reprinted below:

Begin quote:

"In the increasingly bitter battle between religious liberty and the liberal political agenda, religion is losing. Witness the media and political wrath raining down upon Indiana because the state dared to pass an allegedly anti-gay Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The question fair-minded Americans should ask before casting the first stone is who is really being intolerant.

"The Indiana law is a version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that passed 97-3 in the Senate and that Bill Clinton signed in 1993. Both the federal and Indiana laws require courts to administer a balancing test when reviewing cases that implicate the free exercise of religion.

 To wit: Individuals must show that their religious liberty has been “substantially burdened,” and the government must demonstrate its actions represent the least restrictive means to achieve a “compelling” state interest. Indiana’s law adds a provision that offers a potential religious defense in private disputes, but then four federal appellate circuits have also interpreted the federal statute to apply to private disputes. 

The federal RFRA followed the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v. Smith ruling in 1990 that abandoned its 30-year precedent of reviewing religious liberty cases under strict scrutiny. Congress responded with RFRA, which merely reasserted longstanding First Amendment protections.

In 1997 the Supreme Court limited RFRA’s scope to federal actions. So 19 states including such cultural backwaters as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Illinois followed with copy-cat legislation, and Indiana is the 20th. Courts in 11 states have extended equally vigorous protections. 

 Indiana was an outlier before the new law because neither its laws nor courts unambiguously protected religious liberty. Amish horse-drawn buggies could be required to abide by local traffic regulations. Churches could be prohibited from feeding the homeless under local sanitation codes. The state Attorney General even ruled Indiana Wesleyan University, a Christian college which hires on the basis of religion, ineligible for state workforce training grants.

 In February, 16 prominent First Amendment scholars, some of whom support same-sex marriage, backed Indiana’s legislation. “General protection for religious liberty is important precisely because it is impossible to legislate in advance for all the ways in which government might burden the free exercise of religion,” they explained.

 That hasn’t stopped the cultural great and good from claiming Indiana added the religious defense in private disputes as a way to target gays. If this is Indiana’s purpose, and there’s no evidence it is, this is unlikely to work.
The claim is that this would empower, say, florists or wedding photographers to refuse to work a gay wedding on religious grounds. But under the RFRA test, such a commercial vendor would still have to prove that his religious convictions were substantially burdened.

And he would also come up against the reality that most courts have found that the government has a compelling interest in enforcing antidiscrimination laws. In all these states for two decades, no court we’re aware of has granted such a religious accommodation to an antidiscrimination law. Restaurants and hotels that refused to host gay marriage parties would have a particularly high burden in overcoming public accommodation laws. 

In any event, such disputes are rare to nonexistent, a tribute to the increasing tolerance of American society toward gays, lesbians, the transgendered, you name it.

The paradox is that even as America has become more tolerant of gays, many activists and liberals have become ever-more intolerant of anyone who might hold more traditional cultural or religious views. Thus a CEO was run out of Mozilla after it turned out that he had donated money to a California referendum opposing same-sex marriage.

Part of the new liberal intolerance is rooted in the identity politics that dominates today’s Democratic Party. That’s the only way to explain the born-again opportunism of Hillary Clinton, who tweeted: “Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love.” 

 By that standard, Mrs. Clinton discriminated against gays because she opposed gay marriage until March 2013. But now she wants to be seen as leading the new culture war against the intolerant right whose views she recently held.

The same reversal of tolerance applies to religious liberty. When RFRA passed in 1993, liberal outfits like the ACLU were joined at the hip with the Christian Coalition. But now the ACLU is denouncing Indiana’s law because it wants even the most devoutly held religious values to bow to its cultural agenda on gay marriage and abortion rights.

Liberals used to understand that RFRA, with its balancing test, was a good-faith effort to help society compromise on contentious moral disputes. That liberals are renouncing it 20 years after celebrating it says more about their new intolerance than about anyone in Indiana.
End quote.  

Indiana really needs to calm down.

 It can't be too bad because Al Sharpton doesn't like it " In the opening segment of MSNBC’s “PoliticsNation,” host and notorious tax-evader Al Sharpton compared the newly-enacted Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act to Jim Crow and slavery. “This is a key moment for the country,” he said." . . .

"I’m Only Going to Do Business in States That Support the First Amendment From Now On"

 Paula Bolyard

"This protest movement against Indiana’s Religious-Freedom Restoration Act has gotten completely out of hand. The outrage is based on lies, misinformation, and propaganda about things that are not even in the law.

"Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a Washington Post editorial that the new law says “individuals can cite their personal religious beliefs to refuse service to a customer or resist a state nondiscrimination law.” That’s a complete fabrication and the Washington Post allowed him to get away with it.

"You will not find one word in the law that allows someone to refuse service to a customer. All it says is that the government must show a compelling interest if it’s going to force people to violate their religious beliefs and if people believe the government has done so, they are allowed to raise religious liberty as a defense in a court case. That’s all. Not one word about gay lunch counters and no separate drinking fountains, despite the hyperbole comparing the RFRA to Jim Crow laws." . . .

 

NRO: In Defense of Indiana "The anti-RFRA backlash is a perfect storm of hysteria and legal ignorance. Indiana is experiencing its two minutes of hate.
. . .

"All the Indiana law says is that the state can’t substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, unless there is a compelling governmental interest at stake and it is pursued by the least restrictive means. The law doesn’t mandate any particular outcome; it simply provides a test for the courts in those rare instances when a person’s exercise of religion clashes with a law."   Rich Lowry

The Rules of Racialists — Part One

Victor Davis Hanson

On a Wednesday, March 18, 2015 photo, a barista at a Seattle 
Starbucks store writes on a cup for an iced drink as she 
wears a “Race Together” sticker.

. . . "We live in such a strange world. Our government compiles exhaustive statistics on race and crime, but to cite them can be racist. Authors write, properly so, according to canons of racial propriety and careful consideration, and then newspapers print scary racist commentary that follows without worry over its repercussions. Elites of all races navigate around race and class in matters of choosing homes, schools, and entertainment, and then lecture others on their illiberal Neanderthalism for trying to poorly emulate, according to their reduced stations, the patterns of picking a home, school, or golf course embraced by a Barack Obama or Eric Holder — or Rev. Wright.

"For now we need to review the rules that racialists use and to navigate carefully around them. The stakes are quite high." . . .
. . .
"We live in a surreal age in which the two most powerful men in the United States — President Barack Obama and Attorney General Holder — can both periodically accuse others of racism and therefore themselves dip into it (“typical white person,” “cling to their…,” “punish our enemies, “nation of cowards,” “my people,” etc.).

"The president warns of stereotyping on the basis of race all the time, and therefore was free to stereotype the working class of Pennsylvania, his own grandmother, the Cambridge police, and Darren Wilson. And when we descend to Al Sharpton, tragedy becomes farce. Is there one group that Sharpton has not slurred — homosexuals, Jews, whites? And how exactly did such a lurid history of racist disparagement and petty crime earn him exemption from the IRS for chronic tax avoidance, or over 70 visits to the White House to counsel the administration on matters racial?"

 

The clash of “religious freedom” and civil rights in Indiana

Volokh Conspiracy    "Supporters of the new Indiana Religious Freedom Restoration Act argue that it is substantially modeled on the 20-year-old federal RFRA and on the many other state mini-RFRAs that have not been used to erode civil rights. Moreover, they note that the new Indiana law does not even mention, much less target, the group (LGBT people) most vulnerable to discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations.  Therefore, they argue, there is nothing for anyone to fear from the new law.

"The newly proposed RFRAs being considered in a number of states do in fact differ textually from the older RFRAs in ways that somewhat expand their application and that resolve disputed interpretations of the original federal RFRA in favor of more expansive readings (e.g., on the question whether RFRA can be used as a defense in private litigation).  The Indiana law does both of these, although its core provisions establishing the strict scrutiny test for substantial burdens on the exercise of religion are the same as the federal law’s." . . .

Dale Carpenter is the Distinguished University Teaching Professor and Earl R. Larson Professor of Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Law at the University of Minnesota Law School. He teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law; the freedoms of speech, association, and religion; and sexual orientation and the law

 What will the Indiana religious freedom law really do?

The Incredible Moment Stray Dogs Paid Their Respects At The Funeral Of The Woman Who Fed Them

Buzzfeed

 

"It’s very painful to tell you that my mother has passed away. Thanks to everyone who prayed for her health. I’ll share photos of the saddest day of my life, only because something marvelous happened that I want to share. My mother was an animal lover – she couldn’t come across any without giving them a little bit of food.

"Upon arrival at her wake, out of nowhere a group of dogs came into the salon and stayed there all night as if on guard. This morning they left and couldn’t be found anywhere, but one hour before we brought my mom out the dogs came back and grouped around as if to say goodbye. 
"I swear by God that it was beautiful, marvelous."

Photos from Patricia Urrutia's post