Remember when Eric Holder warned us of the dire consequences of the sequester cuts?

As we speak, these cuts are already having a significant negative impact not ust on Department employees, but on programs that could directly impact the safety of Americans across the country....Our capacity—to respond to crimes, investigate wrongdoing, and hold criminals accountable has been reduced. And, despite our best efforts to limit the impact of sequestration, unless Congress quickly passes a balanced deficit reduction plan, the effect of these cuts-on our entire justice system and on the American people—may be profound.

Wow, that sounds bad. Now that the sequester is actually in effect, we would expect Justice to have pared down and streamlined, so as to focus its efforts on the most threatening of criminals and dangerous crimes. Or maybe not.

The Justice Department late Tuesday formally filed its case against Lance Armstrong and his company Tailwind Sports for millions of dollars that the U.S. Postal Service spent to sponsor the cycling team.

Rest easy, folks. Rest easy. Eric Holder's DOJ is on the case.

Told You So

Back on January 5th 2013, I wrote this:

Here's my slippery slope question: Before redefining marriage from a relationship between a man and a woman to a relationship between consenting adults, can we agree about which consenting adult relationships will not qualify as "marriages?" We haven't had that debate yet, which is why I oppose gay marriage. It shouldn't be permitted until we explore what other doors might be accidentally thrown open. Adults consent to a lot of things, and once we've made that the standard, how do we keep it at two? Why can't three adults consent? What next? How can we re-write marriage law to accommodate gays without opening up a pandora's box of possible marriages? It's a debate worth having.

Now, nearly three and a half months later, we are treated to this piece by one Jillian Keenan:

While the Supreme Court and the rest of us are all focused on the human right of marriage equality, let's not forget that the fight doesn't end with same-sex marriage. We need to legalize polygamy, too. Legalized polygamy in the United States is the constitutional, feminist, and sex-positive choice. More importantly, it would actually help protect, empower, and strengthen women, children, and families. [...]

The definition of marriage is plastic. Just like heterosexual marriage is no better or worse than homosexual marriage, marriage between two consenting adults is not inherently more or less "correct" than marriage among three (or four, or six) consenting adults. Though polygamists are a minority - a tiny minority, in fact - freedom has no value unless it extends to even the smallest and most marginalized groups among us. So let's fight for marriage equality until it extends to every same-sex couple in the United States-and then let's keep fighting. We're not done yet.

There you have it folks. If you think for a minute that embracing gay marriage will end the animosity, you are misguided indeed. It will simply open up another new front in the culture war.

Ann Coulter gets to the ugly truth behind the gun control debate:

The one clear thread that unites all the mass murders currently being exploited by the Democrats is that they were committed by visibly crazy people who were unaccountably not institutionalized. But Democrats refuse to do anything about crazy people. Apparently, the views of families with relatives murdered by severely disturbed individuals are no longer relevant when it comes to institutionalizing the mentally ill.

If liberals had a decent argument for taking guns away from the law-abiding while doing nothing to prevent schizophrenics from getting guns, they'd make it. Manifestly, they don't, so they send out victims to make the argument for them, knowing no one will argue with a person whose child has just been murdered.

Another in a series of roundups from National Review Online:

Kevin D. Williamson on Obamacare:

That leaves us with a system that is private in name only - which is the point. It is meaningless to say that we have a private system in which private consumers buy insurance from private insurers when the insurers have been forbidden to price their products, and have instead been converted into something somewhere between a public utility company and a government contractor. Sure, you are free to buy any insurance you want - but if what you want is a lower rate for being a non-smoker, the point is moot, because it would be a crime for anybody to sell it to you.

Lee Habeeb and Mike Leven explore how the Wright brothers beat government funded "experts" to the invention of the airplane:

The War Department, in its final report on the Langley project, concluded: "We are still far from the ultimate goal, and it would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts, together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars, would still be necessary before we can hope to produce an apparatus of practical utility on these lines." Isn't that just the kind of arrogance you'd expect from government bureaucrats? If their best minds can't do it with our money, no one can.

On December 17, 1903, only nine days after Langley's second failed experiment, two Ohio men did what the War Department, Langley, the Smithsonian, and all of that government investment could not. With $2,000 of their own money and little fanfare, the Wright brothers launched the first powered heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. From dunes four miles south of Kitty Hawk, N.C., the Wrights' Flyer flew for 59 seconds, traveled 852 feet, and ushered in the era of modern aviation.

Rich Lowry takes down MSNBC's proclamation that society "owns" your kids:

The truth is that parents are one of society's most incorrigible sources of inequality. If you have two of them who stay married and are invested in your upbringing, you have hit life's lottery. You will reap untold benefits denied to children who aren't so lucky. That the family is so essential to the well-being of children has to be a constant source of frustration to the egalitarian statist, a reminder of the limits of his power.

Mark Stein looks at the dearth of press coverage of a Philadelphia slaughterhouse :

The U.S. media's unanimous agreement to see no evil is sick and totalitarian. A very small consolation is that, with news judgments like these, the wretched American press is doing a pretty good job of sawing through its own neck.

I'll leave those of you with a strong stomach to read the testimony the press is ignoring.

The always quotable Jay Nordlinger:

You'll love something the Associated Press did - just love it. Listen: "Senate opponents of a treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade said Wednesday they have the votes to block ratification of the pact, which is also opposed by the outlaw regimes of North Korea, Syria and Iran."

Reminds me of what the "MSM" used to do back in the Cold War: When pro-lifers peeped up, the media would mention that Ceausescu's Romania banned abortion.

Nice, nice . . .

More peaceful, tolerant liberals

The left wing can always be counted on to keep things peaceful and classy. Check out these lefties in Great Britain "celebrating" the death of Margaret Thatcher:

Revellers in Brixton staged a street party to celebrate Margaret Thatcher's death, culminating in arrests and an attack on a local charity shop.

Around 100 hundred people were out on the streets to celebrate the death of former the former prime minister, whose death from a stroke was announced on Monday.

A board at the famous Ritzy cinema in Windrush Square was hijacked by partygoers who swapped the letters to read 'Margaret Thatcher's Dead.'

Smashed glass was strewn on the street after the window of charity shop Barnardos was kicked in during ugly scenes.

Police officers trying to keep order were attacked, with extra numbers drafted in to stop revellers spilling out on to the roads and causing traffic delays.

Two women were arrested on suspicion of burglary and spent the night in cells after Barnardos was targeted during celebrations.

When I was in 9th grade, I played Freshman football. As a defensive back, we were coached to yell "BINGO!" when we intercepted a pass as a signal to our teammates that the ball had changed hands and was coming back the other way. With that background established, this sort of silliness could have ended my football career even before I chose to end it:

A district judge has banned a Kentucky teenager from saying “bingo” for half a year, after the youth repeatedly and falsely yelled the game-ending exclamation at a local hall, upsetting patrons.

Ben Shapiro explains the real motivation behind the push for same-sex marriage:

Unlike the movement to retract laws restricting sexual behavior, the same-sex marriage movement has never been about freedom in any real sense. The push for same-sex marriage is not about wanting freedom to copulate; same-sex copulation has been effectively legal in this country for decades, and formally legal since Lawrence v. Texas (2003). The push for same-sex marriage is not about wanting legal benefits available to heterosexual couples; same-sex couples are largely able to make contractual arrangements to achieve those benefits, and in many states, civil unions equate legally with marriage.

The push for same-sex marriage is about placing the power of government in direct opposition to traditional religious viewpoints.

From Ace of Spades comes this absolutely brilliant analysis: Maybe global warming, whether it is a natural phenomenon or a man-made one, is keeping the next ice age away.

So, can someone explain to me again why mile thick glaciers over the northern states are desirable again? I missed that explanation the first time.

interesting op-ed in the Washington Examiner. When everything is a crime, everybody is a criminal.

Statutory law in America has expanded to the point that government's primary activity is no longer to protect, preserve and defend our lives, liberty and property, but rather to stalk and entrap normal American citizens doing everyday things. After identifying three federal offenses in the U.S. Constitution - treason, piracy and counterfeiting - the federal government left most matters of law enforcement to the states. By the time President Obama took office in 2009, however, there were more than 4,500 federal criminal statutes on the books.

Hyper Grammar

I was reading this review of Pat Buchanan's book and came across this curious construct:

Prague was not a Germanic city. Its part of Czechoslovakia was taken as a conquest by Hitler, and that was something up with which British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain did not feel able to put.

That, my friends is a mighty effort to avoid dangling a modifier.

This Venn diagram cracked me up.

National Review Roundup

National Review Online has a great collection of essays today.

Rich Lowry writes that we no longer build things, we obstruct them:

We don't excel at building things. We excel at studying things, and putting up obstacles to building them. We delay, cavil, and sue. We protest and micromanage. It is not the age of the engineer but of the bureaucrat, the lawyer, and the environmental activist.

Mona Charen comments on the Democrats continuous campaign:

Democrats are so focused on blaming any misfortune on Republicans that they've become almost cartoonishly predictable. Mr. Obama devoted the first two years of his term, after his policies failed to deliver the economic results his administration had promised, to blaming his predecessor. Following the 2010 elections, the president continued to shake the George W. Bush mask with one hand and point the finger at the Republicans in Congress with the other. It was the Republicans who were to blame when the recovery dissipated, unemployment remained high, and labor-force participation tanked. The how part was a little vague, but never mind.

Charles Cooke explains why the government is buying so much ammunition:

Nonetheless, one could reasonably ask why the Social Security Administration would need any ammunition at all. Are the elderly especially unruly these days? Jonathan L. Lasher, in the SSA's external-relations department, explained to the Huffington Post that the ammunition is "for the 295 agents" in the outfit's office of inspector general "who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes." Divide the rounds by the number of agents, and you get about 590 per agent; in a given year, that's about ten rounds a week. "Most will be expended on the firing range," Lasher continued.

John Lott looks at what motivates mass murderers. He concludes:

We should be trying to deprive these killers of what they crave: attention and easy targets. Instead, we ignore measures that might keep them from getting attention and pass laws that give them defenseless victims.

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama's relationship with the press:

(T)here are plenty of reasons to assume that Barack Obama has established the tenor and methodology of press relations from the very outset of his administration, characterized by expectations of unfailing support, coupled with a general vindictiveness toward his few critics among the press corps. In the past, Obama's habit of leaking the divorce records of opponents, his calls for supporters to confront opponents and "get in their face," petty threats in St. Louis by prosecutors against any who might say untrue things about Obama, and successful pressure to keep unpublished the Obama speech praising the radical Palestinian-American Rashid Khalidi were not even news, but usually written off as the normal pro-Obama zeal. Obama alone could not have elevated The View to a supposedly serious 60 Minutes-type news show - and reduced 60 Minutes to the inanity of The View.

Follow Joe Biden's Advice - Buy a Shotgun

At least 28 people were injured at Daytona in the blink of an eye. How can this kind of carnage be prevented? We need to have a national conversation to institute some common-sense car controls.

First, close the race track loophole. Not a single NASCAR vehicle was purchased at a licensed car dealer, and none of them even have government-approved VIN numbers.

Second, put an end to these high displacement engines. Nobody needs a 350 cubic inch V-8 for driving purposes, limit engines to 200 cubic inch in-line 4 cylinders.

Third, those cars simply look too fast. It's really scary if you ask me. Ban spoilers, air dams, and any other automotive features that Dianne Feinstein thinks encourage overly fast driving.

There is no reason 200,000 fans won't come out to watch 40 hipsters in Birkenstocks driving SMART cars, and that's my vision for a more civilized country.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar . . .

Via National Review Online comes this study, paid for by the taxpayers. Now, at long last, we know why some people think lower taxes are better than higher taxes. Witness this bit of nonsensical psychobabble:

Extreme resistance to governmental taxation and authority is derived, according to Freud's theory of anal characterology, from premature and harshly coercive toilet training, in which a child is forced unfairly and against its will to surrender the products of his eliminations (which represent money, among other things, in the unconscious) to parental authority. Among these individuals anal eroticism plays a significant role in the psychogenesis of paranoia and conspiracy theorizing, which may represent a defense mechanism erected against repressed fears of passive submission.

Yes, I am sure that is it.

Dispatch from the Religion of Peace

We haven't done a dispatch from the RoP for a while, but only because it's now so routine as to be unremarkable. Sometimes, however, the always peaceful and holy Islamists reach a new pinnacle of tolerance. From Mark Stein:

So a Jew, a homosexual, and an uncovered woman walk into a Waziristani bar, and the barman says, “Sorry, everyone’s out killing polio workers“

That's right, the peaceful followers of the RoP have now expanded their murderous venom from Jews, gays, and women to now include health care workers.