Humpday Blues

John Lee Hooker & Friends

Live 1984-1992

HOLDER SCHEDULES PRESS CONFERENCE ON PRESS FREEDOMS, DEMANDS IT BE OFF THE RECORD

Nothing upholds Freedom of the Press like an off the record Press Conference, huh?

'Everything you report can and will be used against you.' -- Eric Holder

From Hot Air:

The news of a meeting between Holder and the bureau chiefs comes amid widespread criticism from journalists and civil liberties advocates over the DOJ’s seizure of Associated Press phone records and an accusation that Fox News reporter James Rosen could be part of a criminal conspiracy for his reporting.The fact that Holder is meeting with the bureau chiefs is on the record, but Nanda Chitre, acting director of the DOJ’s public affairs office, confirmed to The Huffington Post that the meeting itself will be off the record. Media organizations, however, will surely want such a newsworthy meeting with the attorney general to be on the record, and it remains to be seen if they will agree to meet under off-the-record ground rules.

How many off-the-record, on-the-QT, and very-hush-hush meetings have Obama or his lieutenants scheduled with favored members of the media lately? There was the one with the White House press corps on May 10 to talk about the IRS scandal that began as off-the-record but ended up as “deep background” after people started murmuring about it on Twitter. There was the instantly-infamous one on May 21 in which online Obama-water-carrying glitterati were called in for a consultation on Scandalmania. There was another onelast Thursday with foreign-policy reporters after O’s big speech in which he tried to B.S. them about his drone policy having changed when, evidently, it really hadn’t. And now here’s Holder, willing to talk to the press about how sorry-ish he is for rifling through their phone records and e-mails in pursuit of leakers but not willing to do it in a forum where anyone outside the room will know what he said. Free idea for the media: Why not insist on a televised Holder press conference instead? This whole “remorse” shtick is pure theatrical garbage designed to save his job. If he’s determined to perform, make him perform in front of an audience. Let’s see what sort of crocodile tears he can muster when the camera’s on.

Via the Standard, here’s Jay Carney politely ducking the question of whether Holder perjured himself before the House committee.

Update: The irony is too much for the Times. They are refusing to attend.

House Committee Formally Considers Perjury Charge for Holder

From Ace of Spades:

They want to know what exactly Holder's alibi could possibly be when he claimed he'd never even heard of a criminal investigation of a reporter, when in fact his signature is on a warrant claiming James Rosen was a coconspirator in espionage. 

Moderate/liberal Jonathan Turley is now calling for Holder's resignation, calling him Obama's "sin eater" -- a stooge paid to eat the sins of the departed and thus clean their souls for Heaven.

MEANWHILE:

Jay Carney Says Obama Is Satisfied Eric Holder is Doing A Good Job

Jay Carney is Satisfied With The Answers To Congress

IRS Chief Douglas Shulman Called It Perfectly Normal To Visit The White House 118 Times In A Two Year Period

118! Hello?!?

From Ace:

Know how many times the Bush appointee in his position visited the White House from 2003-2007?

Once.

So 118 times does not seem "normal."

Uh, HOMO!

Is Obama Gay?

There more. Go check 'em out.

U.S. Muslim Leaders Pushing For FBI To Reduce Its Anti-Jihad Role

 This is a poster  the Muslim group CAIR actually ran on it's website

Politically influential Muslim activists are pushing to reduce the FBI’s role in countering Islamic terrorism and are seeking greater federal reliance on hard-line orthodox Imams. 

The White House’s “Countering Violent Extremism” program “did not produce the results a lot of us were hopeful … [and] kind of collapsed towards the end of last year,” complained Mohamed Elibiary, a Texas-based advocate who was appointed to the Homeland Security Advisory Council. 

“I don’t know where it is today … [but] it presents us with the opportunity to look at the question of [whether] it is right to house it within the FBI,” he said at an May 28 event in D.C. staged by the Muslim Public Affairs Council.  

The CVE training has also been criticized for obscuring the many orthodox Islamic strictures that spur Muslims’ violence against non-Muslims. 

Elibiary’s new call for reduced policing of Islamic communities, such as Boston’s immigrant Muslims, was echoed by other speakers at the panel, which was hosted by the progressive New American Foundation in Washington D.C. 

“Imams and counselors need to be given some leeway” by police,  said Suhaib Webb, Imam of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

Keep reading…

Vatican: 100,000 Christians die for faith every year

Vatican: 100,000 Christians die for faith every year

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

100,000 Christians die for faith every year: Vatican.HT: Breitbart.

A top Vatican official has said around 100,000 Christians are killed every year for reasons linked to their faith and pointed to the Middle East, Africa and Asia as the biggest problem areas.

Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi was quoted by Vatican radio on Tuesday as saying that the figures were "shocking" and "incredible". 

Tomasi said Christians were also forced to leave their homes and see their churches destroyed in some parts of the world, and were often subjected to rapes, kidnappings and discrimination. 

The Vatican official made particular reference to the kidnapping of two Orthodox bishops near Aleppo in Syria last month. 

Religious freedom is beset by "sectarianism, intolerance, terrorism and exclusionary laws," he said, while also pointing to exceptions like Bangladesh where he said rights are protected.

Another senior Vatican figure, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Mario Toso, said recently that discrimination against Christians "should be countered in the same way as anti-Semitism and Islamophobia".Read the full story here.

Breaking - Arrested French suspect admits to stabbing soldier

Breaking - Arrested French suspect admits to stabbing soldier

From Will at THE OTHER NEWS:

Breaking - Arrested French suspect admits to stabbing soldier.(France24).

The 22-year-old Frenchman accused of stabbing a soldier in La Defense on Saturday has admitted to the attack, which is believed to have been religiously motivated, a prosecutor has said. 

French police arrested a 22-year-old man (pictured) on Wednesday morning over the stabbing of a soldier in the business district of La Defense at the weekend. Sources close to the inquiry said the man, arrested outside Paris, was a ‘Muslim radical’. 

Police investigating the stabbing of a French soldier in Paris arrested a suspect on Wednesday morning which sources described as an adherent of "radical Islam".

"The suspected perpetrator of the attack on a soldier Saturday evening in La Defense (business district) was arrested this morning," Interior Minister Manuel Valls said in a statement.

The statement said the suspect was arrested in the Yvelines district on the western outskirts of Paris.

Sources close to the investigation said the 22-year-old man has been a follower of a "traditionalist even radical Islam for the last three or four years". 

But the sources urged caution in a case that is still in its early stages, saying the suspect was not known to be a jihadist . Sources close to the investigation said Monday that the suspect was caught praying on video a few minutes prior to the attack and that a plastic bag containing a bottle and a knife was found nearby.

Cordiez meanwhile was released from a military hospital on Monday morning and had rejoined his unit, military officials said.

Police in France are seeking to determine if the attack was a copycat of the brutal murder of the British soldier in London last Wednesday. President François Hollande said on Monday that the attacks could not be linked "at this stage".

The key suspect in the London attack, Michael Adebolajo, was captured on video carrying bloodied knives and a meat cleaver after the attack, saying he had murdered off-duty soldier Lee Rigby because British troops were killing Muslims.Read the full story here.

Holder Will Meet With Press to Review His Commitment to Protecting and Defending First Amendment

Politico Playbook reported:

The Justice Department began contacting D.C. bureau chiefs of major print and broadcast news organizations yesterday to set up a meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss changes to the department’s guidelines for subpoenas to news organizations. A source close to Holder said that in retrospect, he regrets the breadth and wording of the investigation involving Fox’s James Rosen (which Holder approved), and recognizes that the subpoena for AP records (Holder had recused himself from that case) took in more phone lines than necessary.

“The A.G. realizes that things might have gotten a little out of balance, and he wants to make changes to be sure the rules fully account for the balance between the First Amendment and law enforcement,” the source said. The first media meeting will be held at main Justice, likely later this week. A later meeting will include First Amendment advocates.

A Justice Department official tells Playbook: “Attorney General Eric Holder will hold meetings with several Washington bureau chiefs of national news organizations in the next two days as part of the review of existing Justice Department guidelines governing investigations that involve reporters. This review, which was announced by President Obama last Thursday, is consistent with the Attorney General’s long standing belief that protecting and defending the First Amendment is essential to our democracy. These meetings will begin a series of discussions that will continue to take place over the coming weeks. During these sessions, the Attorney General will engage with a diverse and representative group of news media organizations, including print, wires, radio, television, online media and news and trade associations. Further discussions will include news media executives and general counsels as well as government experts in intelligence and investigative agencies.”

Explosion At Disneyland

Toontown evacuated after explosion at Disneyland, police say

Do they sell dry ice at Disneyland?

This could be a Probing Attack by a Jihadist, attempting to see what the security response would be.

UPDATE - DISNEY EMPLOYEE ARRESTED, CHRISTIAN BARNESS, 22 YEARS OF AGE

TO THE SLAUGHTER

From Mark Steyn:

On Wednesday, Drummer Lee Rigby of the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, a man who had served Queen and country honorably in the hell of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, emerged from his barracks on Wellington Street, named after the Duke thereof, in southeast London. Minutes later, he was hacked to death in broad daylight and in full view of onlookers by two men with machetes who crowed “Allahu akbar!” as they dumped his carcass in the middle of the street like so much road kill. 

As grotesque as this act of savagery was, the aftermath was even more unsettling. The perpetrators did not, as the Tsarnaev brothers did in Boston, attempt to escape. Instead, they held court in the street gloating over their trophy, and flagged down a London bus to demand the passengers record their triumph on film. As the crowd of bystanders swelled, the remarkably urbane savages posed for photographs with the remains of their victim while discoursing on the iniquities of Britain toward the Muslim world. 

Having killed Drummer Rigby, they were killing time: It took 20 minutes for the somnolent British constabulary to show up. And so television viewers were treated to the spectacle of a young man, speaking in the vowels of south London, chatting calmly with his “fellow Britons” about his geopolitical grievances and apologizing to the ladies present for any discomfort his beheading of Drummer Rigby might have caused them, all while drenched in blood and still wielding his cleaver. 

If you’re thinking of getting steamed over all that, don’t. Simon Jenkins, the former editor of the Times of London, cautioned against “mass hysteria” over “mundane acts of violence.” 

That’s easy for him to say. Woolwich is an unfashionable part of town, and Sir Simon is unlikely to find himself there of an afternoon stroll. Drummer Rigby had less choice in the matter. Being jumped by barbarians with machetes is certainly “mundane” in Somalia and Sudan, but it’s the sort of thing that would once have been considered somewhat unusual on a sunny afternoon in south London — at least as unusual as, say, blowing up eight-year-old boys at the Boston Marathon. It was “mundane” only in the sense that, as at weddings and kindergarten concerts, the reflexive reaction of everybody present was to get out their cell phones and start filming. 

Once, long ago, I was in an altercation where someone pulled a switchblade, and ever since have been mindful of Jimmy Hoffa’s observation that he’d rather jump a gun than a knife. Nevertheless, there is a disturbing passivity to this scene: a street full of able-bodied citizens being lectured to by blood-soaked murderers who have no fear that anyone will be minded to interrupt their diatribes. In fairness to the people of Boston, they were ordered to “shelter in place” by the governor of Massachusetts. In Woolwich, a large crowd of Londoners apparently volunteered to “shelter in place,” instinctively. Consider how that will play when these guys’ jihadist snuff video is being hawked around the bazaars of the Muslim world. Behold the infidels, content to be bystanders in their own fate. 

This passivity set the tone for what followed. In London as in Boston, the politico-media class immediately lapsed into the pneumatic multiculti Tourette’s that seems to be a chronic side effect of excess diversity-celebrating: No Islam to see here, nothing to do with Islam, all these body parts in the street are a deplorable misinterpretation of Islam. The BBC’s Nick Robinson accidentally described the men as being “of Muslim appearance,” but quickly walked it back lest impressionable types get the idea that there’s anything “of Muslim appearance” about a guy waving a machete and saying “Allahu akbar.” A man is on TV dripping blood in front of a dead British soldier and swearing “by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” yet it’s the BBC reporter who’s apologizing for “causing offence.” To David Cameron, Drummer Rigby’s horrific end was “not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam. . . . There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act.” 

How does he know? He doesn’t seem the most likely Koranic scholar. Appearing on David Letterman’s show a while back, Cameron was unable to translate into English the words “Magna Carta,” which has quite a bit to do with that “British way of life” he’s so keen on. But apparently it’s because he’s been up to his neck in suras and hadiths every night sweating for Sharia 101. So has Scotland Yard’s deputy assistant commissioner, Brian Paddick, who reassured us after the London Tube bombings that “Islam and terrorism don’t go together,” and the mayor of Toronto, David Miller, telling NPR listeners after 19 Muslims were arrested for plotting to behead the Canadian prime minister: “You know, in Islam, if you kill one person you kill everybody,” he said in a somewhat loose paraphrase of Koran 5:32 that manages to leave out some important loopholes. “It’s a very peaceful religion.” 

That’s why it fits so harmoniously into famously peaceful societies like, say, Sweden. For the last week Stockholm has been ablaze every night with hundreds of burning cars set alight by “youths.” Any particular kind of “youth”? The Swedish prime minister declined to identify them any more precisely than as “hooligans.” But don’t worry: The “hooligans” and “youths” and men of no Muslim appearance whatsoever can never win because, as David Cameron ringingly declared, “they can never beat the values we hold dear, the belief in freedom, in democracy, in free speech, in our British values, Western values.” 

Actually, they’ve already gone quite a way toward eroding free speech, as both prime ministers demonstrate. The short version of what happened in Woolwich is that two Muslims butchered a British soldier in the name of Islam and helpfully explained, “The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day.” But what do they know? They’re only Muslims, not Diversity Outreach Coordinators. So the BBC, in its so-called “Key Points,” declined to mention the “Allahu akbar” bit or the “I”-word at all: Allah who? 

Not a lot of Muslims want to go to the trouble of chopping your head off, but when so many Western leaders have so little rattling around up there, they don’t have to. And, as we know from the sob-sister Tsarnaev profiles, most of these excitable lads are perfectly affable, or at least no more than mildly alienated, until the day they set a hundred cars alight, or blow up a school boy, or decapitate some guy. And, if you’re lucky, it’s not you they behead, or your kid they kill, or even your Honda Civic they light up. And so life goes on, and it’s all so “mundane,” in Simon Jenkins’s word, that you barely notice when the Jewish school shuts up, and the gay bar, and the uncovered women no longer take a stroll too late in the day, and the publishing house that gets sent the manuscript for the next Satanic Verses decides it’s not worth the trouble. . . . But don’t worry, they’ll never defeat our “free speech” and our “way of life.” 

One in ten Britons under 25 is now Muslim. That number will increase, through immigration, disparate birth rates, and conversions like those of the Woolwich killers, British-born and -bred. Metternich liked to say the Balkans began in the Landstrasse, in southeast Vienna. Today, the Dar al-Islam begins in Wellington Street, in southeast London. That’s a “betrayal” all right, but not of Islam.

NBC News: Letters Show IRS Higher-Ups Requested Info On Conservative Groups

From NBC:

Additional scrutiny of conservative organizations’ activities by the IRS did not solely originate in the agency’s Cincinnati office, with requests for information coming from other offices and often bearing the signatures of higher-ups at the agency, according to attorneys representing some of the targeted groups. At least one letter requesting information about one of the groups bears the signature of Lois Lerner, the suspended director of the IRS Exempt Organizations department in Washington. 

Jay Sekulow, an attorney representing 27 conservative political advocacy organizations that applied to the Internal Revenue Service for tax-exempt status, provided some of the letters to NBC News.  He said the groups’ contacts with the IRS prove that the practices went beyond a few “front line” employees in the Cincinnati office, as the IRS has maintained. 

“We’ve dealt with 15 agents, including tax law specialists — that’s lawyers — from four different offices, including (the) Treasury (Department) in Washington, D.C.,” Sekulow said. “So the idea that this is a couple of rogue agents in Cincinnati is not correct.” 

Among the letters were several that bore return IRS addresses other than Cincinnati, including IRS headquarters in Washington, and the signatures of IRS officials higher up the chain. Lerner’s signature, which appeared to be a stamp rather than an actual signature, appeared on a letter requesting additional information from the Ohio Liberty Council Corp.

Keep reading…

Netherlands: Muslim-Majority Parts Of The Hague No-Go Areas For The Police, Self-Governed By Sharia Law

From the Irish Times:

There have been calls for an urgent debate in the Dutch parliament about the integration of Muslim immigrants amid claims that one area of The Hague, known locally as “the Sharia triangle”, is being run by a form of unofficial Sharia police. 

The claims relate to the district of Schilderswijk, about two kilometres from the city centre, where an almost entirely Muslim population of some 5,000 people surrounds the El Islam mosque, fuelling criticism that the government has failed to ensure a proper ethnic mix in schools and local housing. One recent investigation, in which local people were extensively interviewed, concluded that Schilderswijk had become “orthodox Muslim territory” which was now largely ignored by the city authorities, by politicians and even by the police, on the grounds that it had become self-regulating. 

The investigation found that orthodox Muslims had become so dominant that they were dictating what people in the neighbourhood wore and how they behaved. 

“The norms of the majority are beginning to take over,” it said. 

In the case of women, dress was a particular issue. One woman told how her daughter had been approached and told her short skirt was inappropriate, while her son had been called a “kaffir” – a racist term formerly used in colonial South Africa to refer to a black person – for smoking. 

A youth who had previously been involved in local gangs said that criminality had dropped off, not because of the police, but because he and his friends were “afraid of the wrath of Allah”. 

Another man said he felt he was gradually being driven out of his home because he had a dog, and many traditional Muslims tended not to keep or favour dogs.

Keep reading…

IRS Employees Directed To Lock Down Data Across Entire Agency, “Not To Wipe, Re-Image Or Destroy Any Hard Drives”

From National Review:

The Internal Revenue Service is in the process of locking down all computer data across the agency, a sign that investigations into the scandal-plagued agency may be taking a broader sweep than initially anticipated. 

Agency employees last Thursday received an e-mail alerting them, ”This is a late breaking top priority and things could change in the future,” according to an IRS employee who asked not to be named. 

Employees were directed not to “wipe, re-image or otherwise destroy any hard drives” on any machine currently in use or in stock. During this time, the IRS will not discard any laptop and desktop computers that are replaced, and it is  ”working on securing a location” where they will be kept, according to the e-mail. 

National Review Online previously reported that data on computer hard drives in the Tax Exempt and Government Entity division in Cincinnati was being preserved and uploaded to a restriccted server where investigators can access it.

Keep reading…

BREAKING NEWS: IDIOCRACY THE MOVIE BECOMES IDIOCRACY THE REAL WORLD - STUDY SHOWS THE IQ OF THE AVERAGE WESTERNER HAS DROPPED 14 POINTS IN THE PAST 100 YEARS

HEY, HONEY BOO BOO, C'MERE, 

YER NOT GUNNA BELIEVE THIS SHIT

From Yahoo News:

A new study from researchers in Europe claims that the average IQ in Western nations dropped by a staggering 14.1 points over the past century. 

"We tested the hypothesis that the Victorians were cleverer than modern populations using high-quality instruments, namely measures of simple visual reaction time in a meta-analytic study," the researchers wrote in the study, which was published online in the journal Intelligence on Thursday. "Simple reaction time measures correlate substantially with measures of general intelligence and are considered elementary measures of cognition." 

The results might surprise some. Especially if the researchers were simply measuring visual response times. After all, in a digital world constantly competing for our attention, it would seem people generally respond more quickly to visual stimuli. However, the results appear to indicate something different. 

The Victorian era ran roughly from 1837 to 1901, coinciding with the reign of England's Queen Victoria. Some have credited the Reform Act of 1832 with sparking an era of previously unprecedented peace and prosperity in the U.K. 

The results were measured using data from 1889 to 2004 and were analyzed by Michael A. Woodley of Vrije Universiteit in Brussels, Jan te Nijenhuis of the University of Amsterdam and Raegan Murphy of the University College Cork in Ireland. 

So why has there been such a steady drop? As UPI notes, previous research studies have found that women of higher intelligence tend to have fewer children on average, meaning that population growth may be driven by those with a lower IQ. And over time, the abundance of less intelligent offspring would affect the overall IQ average.