Thanks for reaching out to me. Each year we evaluate all of our association memberships and we’ve decided not to renew our participation in ALEC, in part because of positions that group took on issues unrelated to our business.

Best,
Mary Osako
Amazon Spokesperson

In other words: They caved. They chose to appease marginal agitators who have capitalized on the Trayvon Martin case to squelch conservatives’ participation in the legislative process.

I told you last month that State Farm and Johnson & Johnson are their next targets. AT&T is also on that list.

If you don’t speak up, they’ll cave, too.

Before you pull your dollars from Amazon, I suggest using your customer clout to pressure Amazon to reverse course. These companies need to hear from customers and investors that suppressing conservative political participation is not good for their business. Stand your ground.

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Just received this e-mail to Amazon.com forwarded by a reader:

Dear Amazon,

Bob Kellum

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Update: Sign the Reverse Course Petition and make your voice heard.

The “Obama the Frugal” reinvention probably won’t go over successfully with anybody who has spent the last few years, you know, conscious — but he’s trying:

At a fundraiser for his re-election campaign in Denver tonight, President Obama set out to upend conventional Republican wisdom that his administration has been defined by excessive government spending.

“I’m running to pay down our debt in a way that’s balanced and responsible. After inheriting a $1 trillion deficit, I signed $2 trillion of spending cuts into law,” he told a crowd of donors at the Hyatt Regency. “My opponent won’t admit it, but it’s starting to appear in places, like real liberal outlets, like the Wall Street Journal: Since I’ve been president, federal spending has risen at the lowest pace in nearly 60 years. Think about that.”

Obama was referring to an analysis released this week by Rex Nutting, a reporter for CBS MarketWatch who is also affiliated with the Wall Street Journal. Nutting concluded that Obama has presided over the slowest growth in federal spending in decades.
[...]
The Romney campaign noted that more than $5 trillion has been added to the debt during Obama’s first term, though in 2008 Obama called the $4 trillion added under Bush ”unpatriotic.”

The Republican National Committee pointed out that while growth of spending and debt may have slowed, Obama has overseen the three largest deficits in U.S. history. (They also pass along fact-checker Politifact’s 2011 designation of Obama as the “undisputed debt king” of the last five presidents.)

Every White House suggestion I’ve seen to pay down the debt involves increasing the debt massively and then flinging it off the charts within a decade, along with the rest of the country. Somehow that saves money in the long run.

Political Math has a good tutorial about the Rex Nutting analysis to which Obama is now referencing as evidence of his administration’s spend-thrift nature. Click the graphic to give it a read:

And since we’re talking actual deficits, we have this from the USA Today: Applying accounting practices the government insists we use in the real world but won’t apply to themselves, last year’s federal deficit wasn’t $1.3 trillion, but rather… $5 trillion (h/t Ed Morrissey):

The typical American household would have paid nearly all of its income in taxes last year to balance the budget if the government used standard accounting rules to compute the deficit, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Under those accounting practices, the government ran red ink last year equal to $42,054 per household — nearly four times the official number reported under unique rules set by Congress.

A U.S. household’s median income is $49,445, the Census reports.

The big difference between the official deficit and standard accounting: Congress exempts itself from including the cost of promised retirement benefits. Yet companies, states and local governments must include retirement commitments in financial statements, as required by federal law and private boards that set accounting rules.

The deficit was $5 trillion last year under those rules. The official number was $1.3 trillion. Liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other retirement programs rose by $3.7 trillion in 2011, according to government actuaries, but the amount was not registered on the government’s books.

The White House, and much of Congress for that matter, should save any laughable braggadocio about frugality for “Inside the Beltway night” at the Improv.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Last month we discussed the introduction of the legislation, and yesterday the bill cleared the Senate:

The Senate on Wednesday quickly approved legislation that would remove the word “lunatic” everywhere it appears in the federal code.

The Senate approved S. 2367 by unanimous consent, giving the House a chance to act if it wishes, although no House member has introduced a similar bill.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) introduced the bill back in late April with Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho). Conrad said the bill was the result of a conversation with a constituent, who said current law casts a stigma on people with mental disabilities. “Sen. Crapo and I agree that federal law should reflect the 21st-century understanding of mental illness and disease, and that the continued use of this pejorative term has no place in the U.S. Code,” Conrad said in April.

Forget about a word in the federal code — there needs to be a bill prohibiting lunatics from serving in federal government. Unfortunately Harry Reid will introduce a budget before that happens.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Fox News’ Wendell Goler asked White House Spokesman Jay Carney if the behavior of Occupy Wall Street at the NATO protests in Chicago has soured President Obama’s understanding for the movement.

There were pauses in Carney’s awkward dodge that were vacant for so long I’m surprised some Occupiers didn’t actually try to set up an encampment in them during the press conference. Carney answered like a 15 years old whose mom just asked what he’d been doing in the bathroom for so long. For my money, one of the finer moments in the recent history of WH Press Sec hem-haws:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

The vile exploitation of S.E. Cupp’s image by Hustler magazine — see Twitchy for background/reaction and The Blaze for the original story– falls under category 2 and 4.

Let’s review:

The first stage of Conservative Female Abuse by the Left is infantilization. Right-wing women can’t possibly believe what they believe about the sanctity of life, self-defense, free markets, or foreign policy. They must be submissive little dolls of the White Male Hierarchy. Or, as a far Left (is there any other kind of Left in San Francisco?) San Francisco Chronicle columnist wrote of First Lady Laura Bush, they must be put in their place as “docile doormats” with no brains of their own. True to form, no sooner had John McCain announced Gov. Palin as his veep pick than jeers of “Palin = neocon puppet” sprouted across the Internet.

The second stage of CFA is sexualization. A conservative woman is not merely a sellout. She is an intellectual prostitute. Unable or unwilling to argue with them on the merits, detractors resort to mocking the physical appearance of their ideological opponents in skirts and denigrating them with vulgar epithets. MSNBC hosts insulted former GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson’s accomplished wife and mother of two, Jeri Thompson, as working the stripper pole. Newspaper cartoonists Ted Rall, Pat Oliphant, and Jeff Danziger caricatured Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a mammy, thick-lipped parrot, and Bush “House Nigga” armed with “hair straightener.” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd derided former GOP Florida secretary of state Katherine Harris for applying “her makeup with a trowel.”

True to form, Dowd was first out of the box to snicker at Gov. Palin’s beauty pageant past, ridicule her “beehive and sexy shoes,” and compare her path to the vice presidential nomination as a “hokey chick flick.” Joe Biden backhandedly praised her as “good looking.” And left-wing bloggers worked overtime on lurid photoshops of Palin as a bikini model and porn star. At the Democratic Underground, a highly trafficked liberal website raising money for Barack Obama, members held a contest to come up with nicknames and posters to slime GOP Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin — and then to “spread [them] all over the ‘net.” Among the “nicer” entries: “Cruella,” “Gidget,” “Governor Jesus Camp,” “VPILF,” “Fertilla the Huntress,” “Iditabroad,” and “KILLER PYSCHO FUNDIE BITCH FROM HELL!!”

The third stage of CFA is demonization. When the Left tires of hurling whore insults, it turns conservative women in the public eye into nefarious creatures. Bill Maher called Laura Bush “Hitler’s dog.” George Carlin attacked Barbara Bush as “the Silver douchebag.” A Huffington Post website member wrote of Nancy Reagan: “Like her evil husband, she has lived far too long. Here’s hoping the hag suffers for several weeks, then croaks in the tub.” Another added: “I feel no pity for the bitch who took delight in watching thousands die of a horrible disease and watching the poor having to eat out of dumpsters because of her husband’s political beliefs.”

True to form, rumors of Palin being a crypto-Nazi surfaced on the Internet and the fringe media. And liberal critics used her gun-rights record to smear her as bloodthirsty.

And the final stage of CFA is dehumanization. Conservative women aren’t real women according to the liberal feminist establishment’s definition. Remember when Gloria Steinem called Texas Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison a “female impersonator?” Or when curdled NOW leader Patricia Ireland instructed Democrats to vote only for “authentic” female political candidates? Or when Al Gore’s fashion consultant Naomi Wolf described the foreign-policy analysis of Jeane Kirkpatrick as being “uninflected by the experiences of the female body?”

We can’t and needn’t wait for NOW to weigh in. Conservative women are waging the counter-offensives against leftist degradation for themselves that no one else will wage. Whether it’s Palin or Ann Romney or Nikki Haley or S.E. Cupp or a local grass-roots activist mom, right-wing sisters are pushing back.

Which is prompting even more hateful scorn from Democrat officials like this.

Call ‘em out ladies. Call ‘em out.

Just for kicks let’s assume we’re in an alternate universe and Biden is correct. Exactly how high would the debt be if the Tea Party didn’t stop them from growing the economy?

Vice President Joe Biden admitted to a group of supporters in New Hampshire this afternoon that the President would have been able help the economy “much, more” if the Tea Party hadn’t taken the House.

Biden showed the audience the Obama campaigns chart of job growth during the President’s first term in office and accused the Tea Party for stalling the recovery, because of the debt limit fight.

“Imagine where we’d be if the Tea Party hadn’t taken control of the House of Representatives,” Biden said adding that they were “a group set on obstructionism.”

Wake up, Joe. Too many people don’t have the strength to imagine where they’d be because they’re too horrified by where they are.

Fortunately for the Stimulus Sheriff and the administration, there were plenty of economic measures the Tea Party couldn’t stop. Keep your chin up, Mr. Vice President… you still have these to campaign on — good luck:

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As for charges of obstructionism, it doesn’t seem there’s been a problem working around that:

As for Obama’s budget proposal, the Tea Party has indeed been obstructing its passage. Well, the Tea Party members along with everybody else.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Update May 25 midnight: As I noted on Wednesday, blogs and Twitter users are uniting today for Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin. This post will remain the lead story all day so that newcomers to this ongoing story can get the basics. The list of bloggers below who have stepped forward to write about Kimberlin — and support those he has attacked — will continue to be updated throughout the day. E-mail if I have missed you. New blog post excerpts and latest developments will also be added below. Just keep scrolling. Patterico reminds readers that a left-leaning lawyer and left-leaning blog were also targeted, which I want to make sure to note. Be sure to check Patterico’s blog for more revelations about his plight. Also bookmark Aaron Walker’s blog, Stacy McCain’s, and Liberty Chick Mandy Nagy’s Twitter feed. Read the comprehensive investigative piece Mandy wrote at Breitbart.com that set all the insanity in motion.

Mandy and Aaron will be on Lee Stranahan and Brandon Darby’s radio show at 7am ET to talk about Kimberlin. Please remember: Kimberlin is a radical, violent, lying, dangerous felon. This is literally a matter of life and death, freedom vs. terrorism. We side with life and freedom.

Over the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats.

Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less.

More. Louder. Bolder.

For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.

Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.

I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.

The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.

This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.

And Patterico’s plight will send chills up your spine when he is ready to tell it.

Institutional inertia, incompetence, and apathy among law enforcement officials on both coasts have exacerbated the victims’ suffering. It has moved far beyond a partisan or political story to a bottomless, Kafka-esque morass. And, via investigative journalist Matthew Vadum, it certainly doesn’t help that “progressive,” left-wing foundations that have funded Kimberlin continue to look the other way.

Ted Frank at Point of Law summed it up: “A scary tale of what can go wrong if one makes the wrong enemy of someone willing to persistently abuse the civil and criminal legal system, and how poorly the legal system protects those victims.”

Law blog Popehat wrote:

Aaron’s story is quite long. (We had a tiny, tiny piece of it here.) But he supports it with primary documents and video recordings, and ultimately it’s a wrenching depiction of how the system doesn’t prevent crazy and/or evil people from victimizing innocents — a depiction of how the system can be the instrument of such victimization. It’s not a pretty story, but it’s worth reading.

Dan Collins has a very useful summary of Aaron’s plight and the obliviousness of Maryland prosectors:

That Kimberlin lied repeatedly in his sworn charges isn’t a surprise, but it is a deep disappointment that the Maryland prosecutor seems to think there’s no substantial public benefit to be procured by making wannabe mass murderer Kimberlin pay for his false testimony in trying to frame blogger Aaron Worthing. My opinion is that people who attempt to use the law and the legal system as a means of tortious aggression towards other citizens should be summarily sentenced on conviction to penalties at least twice as high as those they’ve contemplated for their targets.

Lee Stranahan provides some basic background on Kimberlin here:

But it’s Kimberlin’s most recent actions that warrant attention and a strong wall to deter future abuse. Patterico writes:

First, this isn’t about dredging up a crime that happened 34 years ago. Kimberlin has done plenty since then. He made claims about selling pot to Dan Quayle — claims that the lefty author of a book about Kimberlin believes are false. He deceptively avoided paying a wrongful death judgment to the widow of the man he blew up. He sued a small-time blogger in 2011 for telling the truth about him, and made several false statements about his history under oath in an effort to win a large cash judgment. He made several provably false statements regarding his encounter with Aaron Walker, in an effort to get the State of Maryland to prosecute Walker. He has regularly defamed, harassed, and stalked people who criticized him.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, folks.

Several blogs have already stepped up to the plate (links to all at the end of this post), but as Ace of Spades writes:

Cowards die a thousand deaths.

I already died 40 cowards’ deaths this past week. That’s enough for me. I will die no more of them.

Am I to understand only the smallest, least-well-financed bloggers are going to be covering this? While large media franchises with lawyers on retainer all decide “we’d rather let tiny one-man blogs take the lead on this?”

Does that make sense?

No. That won’t do.

For those of you who are old fogies in the blogosphere, you’ll remember the “blogburst” concept — hundreds of bloggers of all sizes getting together to push an idea or action item. In this case, a blogburst would raise the cost of the online terrorists’ speech-squelching business immensely. It’s a collective show of support and force.

Along those same lines, Stranahan has proposed that Friday be “Everybody Blog About Brett Kimberlin Day.” Even a simple link, e-mail, or tweet will do.

I will join and I hope you will find a way to spread word about this horrifying saga, too (it gets worse, believe me). The targeted victims — past, present, and future — will need not only media support, but sustained financial support. A few good and brave philanthropists could come in handy right about now. Send me an email if you can help.

Telling the truth on the Internet shouldn’t mean risking your job or your life, or the well-being and safety of your loved ones. Make your voices heard if you agree.

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Background reading:

Aaron Walker: Summary/Preview of my Post “How Brett Kimberlin Tried to Frame Me for a Crime (And How You Can Help!)”

Immediate action items to help Aaron are here.

Stacy McCain: Brett Kimberlin Saga Takes a Bizarre Turn, Forcing Me to Leave Maryland

Patterico: Brett Kimberlin’s Latest “Peace Order” Against Aaron Walker Is Retaliation for Truthful Speech

One of the things that Kimberlin complains about is that Aaron has called Kimberlin a terrorist…

“Terrorism” is a fair way to describe what Brett Kimberlin did to the town of Speedway, Indiana in 1978, when he set off eight bombs over the course of several days. Kimberlin has been convicted of those bombings, one of which blew off the limbs of a Vietnam veteran named Carl DeLong, who committed suicide as a result of his injuries. Brett Kimberlin earned the right to be called a convicted domestic terrorist, and he should not be marching off to court complaining about it when someone calls him just that.

It is beyond the scope of this post to detail every way in which Kimberlin’s peace order is misleading and deceptive. Kimberlin complains that Aaron spoke of purchasing a gun, implying that Aaron’s statement was aggressive — when Aaron actually said he had bought a gun to defend himself. Kimberlin claims that Aaron is responsible for “alerts” coming to his email inbox, suggesting Aaron is emailing him, when in fact the “alerts” Kimberlin is talking about are Google alerts. If you write about this guy on the Internet, he may run to a judge and say you are causing abusive alerts to come to his email.

You might say: what’s the harm in getting a peace order? I have watched this play out in other venues and I know just what Kimberlin is up to. As soon as he gets a “peace order,” he will run back to court the very next time Aaron mentions his name in public. That means that Kimberlin asserts the right to abuse the court process to harass Aaron — and if Aaron tells the world how Kimberlin is abusing the court process, Kimberlin will claim that as a violation of the peace order and try to have Aaron held in contempt of court.

Kimberlin and his crew have relentlessly harassed Aaron, me, and others over the course of the last several months. It is not harassment for us to tell the world what happened to us. It could happen to any of you. His supporters have outed or threatened to out commenters to this very site. They talk about wives, children, and fathers of bloggers and commenters. They ceaselessly abuse everyone they can who speaks the truth about Kimberlin’s past.

Ultimately, this is a free speech issue. Kimberlin and his group of thugs have done their level best to attack everyone in the blogosphere who wrote anything negative about him. Now the blogosphere is starting to wake up, and there are so many critics he can’t possibly intimidate them all.

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Many bloggers have already spoken up for Kimberlin’s victims and/or linked to related stories (let me know if I’ve missed you):

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds
iowntheworld.com
The American Thinker
Walter Olson at Overlawyered
Blazing Cat Fur
Donald Douglas at American Power
The American Catholic
The Lonely Conservative
Kathy Shaidle at Five Feet of Fury
Nice Deb
Sundries Shack
PJMedia Tatler
Dan Riehl
Film Ladd
The Coalition of the Swilling
DaTechGuy
Richard Fernandez
Legal Insurrection
Doubleplusundead
Daley Gator
The Camp of the Saints
Wake Up America
Darth Chipmunk
Zilla of the Resistance
Lady Liberty 1885
Goldfish and Clowns
Small Dead Animals
Hillbuzz
Yid with Lid
Evil Blogger Lady
Israel Matzav
Lisa Graas
Bob Owens asks a central question: Why are Maryland Democrats letting the “Speedway Bomber” get away with terrorism?

Every voice counts.

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Friday midnight blogburst list update:

Erick Erickson, Red State
Maggie’s Farm
Noisy Room
Hogewash
Andrea Shea King
Bookie
Trevor Loudon
Melissa Clouthier
Blackfive
Kim Priestap
Pirate’s Cove
Other Half of My Brain
POH Diaries
Wicca Pundit
An Ex Con’s View: Apathy or Courage?

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Media coverage:

Washington Examiner, Mark Tapscott -

The enemies of free speech and thought have lately turned to more subtle tools of suppression than merely shouting down speakers. Among these are extortionary threats to launch false charges of racism against companies that support politically incorrect groups, such as the American Legislative Exchange Council.

But far more sinister is the tactic adopted by Brett Kimberlin, an activist and the founder of the group Velvet Revolution who was convicted in 1981 of exploding eight bombs in 1978 in Speedway, Ind. One of his bombs blew off the leg of a man who subsequently committed suicide.

Nowadays, Kimberlin targets conservative bloggers like Aaron Worthing and Robert Stacy McCain in Maryland, and Patrick Frey of Patterico’s Pontifications in California. Why? For publishing facts about Kimberlin’s criminal record.

Kimberlin harasses his targets by, among many other ways, filing false charges in courts that require expensive, time-consuming litigation, disrupting his targets’ workplaces, and dropping dark hints about spouses and kids.

…Unless these tactics are vigorously repudiated by the First Amendment’s friends across the ideological spectrum, our Constitution will become little more than a parchment barrier to oppression.

The groups that Kimberlin has founded and associated with since his release from prison have received more than $1.5 million in grant support, much of it from liberal foundations — the Tides Foundation, Streisand Foundation and Heinz Foundation — according to Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center. Vadum wonders if they know (or care) how their donors’ money is being spent.

So count me today with Michelle Malkin, Instapundit’s Glenn Harlan Reynolds, blogger Lee Stranahan, PJMedia’s Tatler and many others with one message for the Brett Kimberlins among us: Get your hands off our First Amendment.

This isn’t about Left and Right, it’s about liberty versus tyranny.

Matthew Vadum, Front Page Magazine – Must-read on who’s financially aiding and abetting – “Brett Kimberlin and the Hall of Fame of Leftist Terrorists.”

Jaczko the Jerk: Harry Reid’s sexist crony gets the boot
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2012

The embattled chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission resigned this week. It’s a victory for Republican oversight on Capitol Hill, women and sound science. But it’s also a lesson in the futility of Bush-era bipartisanship. When you cut deals with bullies, it’s a timeless and bitter recipe for more bullying.

Gregory Jaczko served as appropriations director and science policy adviser to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., before joining the NRC in 2005. The anti-nuclear advocate was sworn in by his brass-knuckled boss and protector, Reid, who pressured the Bush administration to appoint him as a condition for moving through any other NRC nominations.

The GOP rolled. Reid and Jaczko rampaged. And President Obama — doing the thing he does best — made matters abysmally worse.

Reid connived to install Jaczko at the NRC to carry on their shared crusade against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility in Nye County, Nev. Despite assurances that he would recuse himself, Jaczko proceeded to meddle aggressively in the issue. After the Obama administration named Jaczko chairman of the safety panel in 2009, all hell broke loose — and then some.

Out of fear that researchers would confirm positive safety data, Jaczko ordered NRC staff to halt a technical evaluation of Yucca Mountain. Then he used the lack of data to order a complete work stoppage on the long-obstructed project. Last summer, the NRC inspector general determined that Jaczko “strategically withheld” information from the rest of the panel, manipulated agendas and “was not forthcoming about his intent” to shut down Yucca by any means necessary.

He kept the panel in the dark on other matters, too. After the Fukushima meltdown in Japan, Jaczko ordered his staff to hoard safety findings and keep them from other commissioners while he made unilateral policy decisions against their will.

In the course of his investigation, the NRC inspector general heard from numerous commission staffers about Jaczko’s “unprofessional behavior” and outburst of anger that created an “intimidating workplace environment.” The report said Jaczko told investigators he “regretted” his temper tantrums. (Full report PDF here.)

Last fall, the entire commission sent an extraordinary letter to the White House expressing “grave concerns” about Jaczko the Jerk’s continued boorishness. “We believe that his actions and behavior are causing serious damage to this institution and are creating a chilled work environment at the NRC,” wrote NRC commissioners Kristine L. Svinicki (Republican), George Apostolakis (Democrat), William D. Magwood IV (Democrat) and William C. Ostendorff (Republican). Commission staff detailed how Jaczko’s “shaking angry” rage-fests caused at least one woman to cry and prompted Svinicki to have a staffer accompany her whenever she was in Jaczko’s presence.

As if being a data doctor, control freak and chauvinist pig weren’t enough, Jaczko added liar to his resume. Two weeks ago, Jaczko testified before Congress that he was unaware of any incidents in which he was accused of intimidating NRC staff. But internal GOP sources at NRC told Capitol Hill oversight staff that Jaczko personally had apologized to three female employees.

Where were all the Democratic femme-a-gogues who have spent the entire year braying about the GOP War on Women? Defending Reid’s sexist crony, of course. Democratic California Sen. Barbara Boxer blamed the nuclear industry and complained of a “witch hunt.”

Let there be no doubt: If Jaczko had been a Republican, Sen. Boxer, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sandra Fluke and Gloria Allred would be hosting anti-bullying conferences and workplace safety summit tours with his victims from now until November.

This is now the second high-profile resignation of an Obama green thug. Environmental Protection Agency administrator Al Armendariz, the combative enviro-crat who vowed to “crucify” businesses that challenged the administration’s regulatory tyranny, stepped down last month. GOP watchdogs have done their jobs on Capitol Hill. But it’s up to voters at the ballot box to get to the root of the problem — and kick the head goon-in-chief to the curb.

Many of my friends and readers are e-mailing me furiously tonight and the common sentiment is this:

“I don’t get it.”

“It” is this:

Sarah Palin just officially threw her hat in the Utah ring on the Greta Van Susteren show and endorsed six-term Beltway barnacle Orrin Hatch over fresh-faced challenger/Tea Party-backed/acclaimed state legislator Dan Liljenquist.

This is no surprise to those of you who have paid attention to my blog and my coverage of the Utah race.

Instead of staying out of the race, Palin has proactively sided with the ridiculous Beltway barnacle Orrin Hatch, who now poses as a Tea Party godfather while launching bitter diatribes against the fiscal conservative members of Freedomworks.

Palin has lent her invaluable support to many upstart candidates seeking to disrupt the old GOP boys’ network. I have the utmost respect for her. But on this inexplicable Hatch endorsement, we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

And Utah conservatives sick and tired of the same old, same old will just have to work harder.

They knew it would be an uphill battle. Sen. Hatch has locked up just about every major GOP big name, bullied opponents, and arrogantly informed a Utah TV station that he wouldn’t rule out an 8th term in 2018!

Hatch attacked FW’s 15,000 grassroots activists, who oppose his re-election, and said he “despised” them — so much so that he threatened to “punch them in the mouth.”

Hatch has lied shamelessly about Liljenquist’s pension reform record, ducked debates, and relied on crapweasel surrogates like Arlen Specter.

I’ll repeat what I said last August:

Orrin Hatch is the antithesis of the Tea Party spirit. He is a mascot for big-spending Beltway entrenched incumbency who has consistently joined hands with destructive Democrats.

He slobbered over corruptocrat Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd.

He co-sponsored the $6 billion national service boondoggle and dedicated it to his good friend Teddy Kennedy, with whom he also joined hands to create the ever-expanding SCHIP entitlement.

He supported tax cheat Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner from day one, lavished praise on Joe Biden’s balls, and embraced and defended Attorney General Eric Holder’s nomination because, he said, “I like Barack Obama and I want to help him if I can.”

He was an original sponsor of the open-borders DREAM Act illegal alien student bailout and voted for the massive TARP bailout.

I’ll repeat what I said in February when I endorsed Ted Cruz, Richard Mourdock, and Dan Liljenquist:

Liljenquist excelled in the private sector as a global management consultant and business strategist; he also helmed a privately owned call center company that grew from two to 1,500 employees since its 1995 founding. Liljenquist was elected to the Utah Senate in 2008, where he spearheaded state pension and Medicaid reforms that earned him the non-partisan Governing magazine’s 2011 “Public Official of the Year” award.

The 36-year, six-term Hatch was first elected in 1976 on an anti-entrenched incumbent platform. Hatch’s campaign line then against his opponent Frank Moss: “What do you call a Senator who’s served in office for 18 years? You call him home.” Now, Hatch is clinging to power after almost four decades in government — and vainly attempting to claim the tea party mantle to stave off Liljenquist’s David vs. Goliath primary challenge.

…The GOP needs just four seats to take control of the Senate. With inspired and inspiring free-market candidates like Dan Liljenquist, Richard Mourdock and Ted Cruz, 2012 bodes well for the tea party footprint on Capitol Hill. Remember: Entrenched incumbency is the disease. Fresh blood is the cure.

Support Dan Liljenquist.

What’s good for Indiana, Texas, and Nebraska is good for Utah: Out with the old. In with the next generation of fiscally conservative GOP leaders. 36 years is enough.

***

Let me address directly the idea — again — that “Mr. Balanced Budget” would be a great role model for Tea Party conservatives in the Senate because of his past support for a balanced budget amendment.

I repeat: The seeds of the Tea Party protest movement sprouted in February 2009 as grass-roots citizens outside the Beltway gathered to protest the massive Obama porkulus, generational theft, and the White House push for massive expansions of the government mortgage entitlement. On Feb. 19, CNBC’s Rick Santelli issued his now-famous “Tea Party” call — prompted, many people forget, by Obama’s mortgage entitlement expansion plans (proposals we’ve protested whether from Democrats or moron Republicans). Let me remind you that John McCain supported a behemoth $300 million mortgage entitlement expansion that dwarfed Obama’s — and it was the failure to provide a clear contrast to the Democrats’ Santa Claus politics that helped doom McCain and the 2008 GOP presidential bid.

Foremost on the agenda of grass-roots Tea Party activists was the need to stop new bipartisan bailouts and block Obama’s new spending programs. Investor’s Business Daily’s David Hogberg and Patrik Jonnson at the Christian Science Monitor were the first national media reporters to provide a fair and balanced look at protesters mad at both parties for bailout-a-palooza in late February:

To be sure, the federal spending package includes tax cuts for most Americans, and Obama has promised to eventually halve a US deficit the Democrats have largely blamed on the Bush administration.

But protesters like Kevin Tanner of South Dakota said deficit spending by both parties has unnerved Americans. “The Republicans have their own problems because we elected them and they didn’t do what we wanted,” says Mr. Tanner.

Many protesters expressed a sense that basic American freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are threatened by new Washington policies seen by many as more socialistic than capitalistic. The proposed taxpayer bailout of homeowners who may have inflated their earnings in order to secure mortgages is one example, says Jeff Crawford, a protester from Dacula, Ga.

“The first year after the Mayflower arrived, the colonists tried a communal method of storing and sharing food and it failed miserably,” says Mr. Crawford. “Why are things any different now?”

Eighteenth-century symbolism was rife at the Atlanta event as speakers drew comparisons with the Boston patriots who dumped the King’s tea in Boston Harbor to protest taxation without representation, an act that began the American Revolution and the founding of the United States.

Some kids at the Atlanta protest wore tri-cornered hats, and one held a sign that said, “When I grow up I want to be free.”

In Tampa, two dozen protesters held handwritten signs with slogans like “Keep Your Bailout; I’ll Keep My Freedom.” About 300 people showed up in 25-degree weather in Wichita, Kansas, and someone brought a pig.

In St. Louis, local media expected about 50 people to show up while actual turnout surged to over 1,000 people.

After the nationwide Tax Day Tea Party protests in April 2009, the next wave of protests in the summer of 2009 focused on Obamacare and costly federal health care spending, regulations, and mandates.

The balanced budget amendment — while important to many founding Tea Party activists and candidates — was simply not what drove so many thousands of first-time fiscal activists onto the streets and into town halls and polling booths. It was disgust with the very kind of big-spending bipartisanship which Orrin Hatch embodies.

Remember in November.

Yesterday, 43 Catholic institutions, including the Archdiocese of New York and Notre Dame University, filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over the contraception mandate’s infringement upon on religious freedom. The plaintiffs have two liberals unexpectedly working on their behalf to win the lawsuit against the Obama administration:

The biggest legal threat to the White House’s birth control mandate could come from a decades-old law that was championed by liberal Democrats, according to legal experts.

The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has been mentioned in nearly all of the more than 30 lawsuits pending against President Obama’s administration over the mandate. One, filed by the University of Notre Dame on Monday, cited RFRA’s protections in the first paragraph.

Legal scholars see the merit in challenging the mandate with RFRA, which then-Rep. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) introduced in 1993 to protect religious exercise from laws that might unintentionally restrict it.

According to the article, the law was introduced nearly 20 years ago after two Native American Church members in Oregon were denied unemployment benefits because they had been fired for using peyote in a religious ceremony (Elizabeth Warren was only allowed a 1/32nd mescaline dose but it still culminated in some pretty good recipes), but now the Kennedy and Schumer’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act might cause this particular provision in Obamacare take a trip and get overturned.

Related Media Bias Fun Fact: On last night’s ABC, NBC and CBS nightly newscasts, one of the largest (if not the largest) religious lawsuits in American history warranted a grand total of 19 seconds of air time between the three networks.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

No, really.

Just watch it and see how other Big Labor goons shrieked “Hit her again! Whack her again!” Click on the pic:

But, you know, using a bullseye target is an incitement to violence…

***

The national AFL-CIO wants the video taken down:

A video posted online that shows a former union leader in South Carolina smashing a piñata effigy of Gov. Nikki Haley has riled the national office of the AFL-CIO, which wants it taken down.

“Do you think we can get this video pulled,” asked a national AFL-CIO official in an email to Palmetto State union sources.

The author of the email also worried the video might get “picked up by tea partiers, maybe even Haley herself, to attack labor again.”

The video in question features former AFL-CIO of South Carolina president Donna DeWitt smacking a Haley piñata with a baseball bat at DeWitt’s retirement party over the weekend.

It is accompanied with text under the video that reads in part, “Gov. Nikki Haley has been vicious to organized labor in South Carolina, saying in her State of the State address that ‘unions are not needed, wanted or welcome.’ After years of being treated like a union thug, Donna Dewitt gets sweet revenge at a reception in her honor.”

…Pro-union sources in South Carolina say they aren’t worried about the video.

“[Haley] has been whacking at us since she realized how much money the business PACs can contribute in South Carolina,” DeWitt tells Free Times. “We felt justified in taking a whack back.”

The footage was shot at the South Carolina Progressive Network’s 2012 spring gathering May 19, at the CWA Hall in West Columbia.

***

Flashback: Happy Labor Day: Top 10 union thug moments of the year; Update: Jimmy Hoffa makes the list

Flashback: AFL-CIO history lesson — Big Labor’s legacy of violence

Jimmy Fallon spoke with Matt Lauer about President Obama’s “slow-jam” appearance on his show last month, and Fallon revealed something that is hardly surprising: it was the White House, not Fallon’s staff, who booked President Obama on his show. Why wait for an invitation that you know will be coming shortly anyway?

From Real Clear Politics:

“It’s the craziest thing ever to have happened to me,” Jimmy Fallon, the host of “Late Night” said about President Obama appearing on his show.

“We keep going to each other on the set, ‘Hey, it did happen right? We did Slow Jamming with the President of the United States?’ What happened is they called us, the White House called us because we did a piece with Michelle on,” Fallon said.

“He booked himself on your show?” Matt Lauer of the “Today” show asked Fallon.

“The President booked himself,” Fallon said. “He didn’t call, the White House called us.”

While recalling a visit to the White House where he was throwing dodgeballs around historical paintings with First Lady Michelle Obama, Fallon revealed more about the request from the White House.

To lighten President Obama’s travel load this summer, his staff should turn the Oval Office into a talk show set and invite all the other hosts (as well as network news anchors) on as guests at the White House instead wasting time doing it the other way around. That would free up more of the President’s time to invite himself to deliver commencement addresses and such.

Click below to roll tape at RCP:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Driving down this road will be just like one of Nancy’s stock tips: guaranteed yield.

From the Washington Examiner:

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee will rename a street after former-Speaker Nancy Pelosi today in Golden Gate Park.

“Middle Drive East” which connects Martin Luthjer King Jr. Drive and John F Kennedy Drive in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park will now be renamed in honor of Pelosi and her 25 years of service in Congress.

At Twitchy they’re having fun with suggested street names.

If you’ll be driving out that way, don’t forget that Pelosi Street is a toll road — it’s just that your grandkids are stuck with the freight.

Pelosi has a street in Baltimore too. Getting a road named in your honor is just one of the many benefits sometimes afforded those who dedicate their careers to selflessly spending future generations into oblivion.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

Throw in the Angry Office Clown and this thing sounds like a GSA junket with robes.

From The Hill:

Two senior Senate Republicans on Monday blasted plans by judges in the 9th Circuit to hold a conference in Hawaii this August that they said could run up a tab of $1 million or more, and includes a schedule of sport fishing, yoga, surfing lessons and Zumba dancing lessons.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) last week wrote to 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski to warn that the Hawaii meeting does not appear to fit with the 9th Circuit’s own opinion that the federal budget is tight. The letter was sent just weeks after Republicans took the General Services Administration (GSA) to task for a notorious $800,000 conference that led several GSA officials to resign.

“We are concerned about the overall cost of this conference and do not believe that discussions about the administration of justice would be less successful were they held somewhere other than a spa and resort in Hawaii,” the senators wrote. The letter adds that while conference organizers note that government funds are not to be used for recreation, the conference program “reads more like a vacation than a business trip to discuss the means of improving the administration of justice.”

Recently the courts have purportedly been focused on cost containment measures. Maybe they’ll discuss saving money during ashwini mudra exercises in yoga class.

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe