Read it.

And they said it couldn’t be done.

Read it.

Several months ago, Palacios was taking a stroll on his ranch and stumbled upon a small portable camera with an antenna fastened to a tree. Not long after removing the recording device, which was situated on his property near his son’s home, Palacios received phone calls from CBP officials and Texas Rangers, each one claiming they were the owners of the camera and ordering him to give it back, reports Ars Technica.

Palacios, having refused their demands and dismissed their threats of arrest, is still in possession of the camera, and hopes to use it as admissible evidence in his case.

Read it.

I’m sure he looked very sharp in his uniform and had all the Politically Correct opinions.

Read it.

The IRS first started claiming that its regulations have no economic impact in response to the 1980 Regulatory Flexibility Act (RFA), which was designed to mitigate the compliance costs of federal regulations on small businesses. The RFA states that if a proposed regulation could have a large economic impact on small businesses, the agency must consider alternatives that would leave small businesses unharmed.

The RFA also contains a Congressional amendment specifically designed to cover IRS regulations, but the IRS has shirked its duty to comply with the RFA since Congress passed the law. The IRS has broadened its self-exemption from economic impacts to all impacts, including record-keeping and other reporting burdens. That means that IRS regulations can impact small businesses while completely evading oversight from Congress or the White House.

In the Internal Revenue Manual, a document the IRS uses to guide its compliance with oversight mechanisms, the agency bizarrely claims that its rules have no economic impact. This reading allows the IRS to avoid sharing information with Congress, the executive branch, and the American people. The IRS has never offered an adequate justification for this self-exemption.

Read it.

The top public school administrator in Washington, D.C., resigned his position Tuesday, four days after it was revealed that he had conspired with another official to place his daughter in the district’s highest-performing public high school. In the process, Public Schools Chancellor Antwan Wilson bypassed the rules governing placement of district students in schools outside their own neighborhoods.

The other official, Deputy Mayor for Education Jennifer Niles, was forced to resign last week.

Both of the crooked officials are Persons of Color, of course, this being D.C.

I guess they saw Congresscritters sending their kids to tony private schools instead of the behavioral-sink D.C. public schools and thought, ‘Hey, gotta get me some of that’.

Read it.

To understand how difficult and expensive it is to build housing in San Francisco, observe the case of Robert Tillman. Tillman owns a single-story laundromat in the city’s Mission District. Since 2014, he has been attempting to develop his property into a 75-unit apartment building.

The city is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis, with an average one-bedroom apartment going for $3,400 a month. So you might think Tillman’s project would sail through the permitting process. Instead, the city’s labyrinthine process of reviews, regulations, and appeals has dragged on for four years. The project has cost the self-described “accidental developer” nearly $1 million so far, and he hasn’t even broken ground yet.

Just bureaucrats being bureacrats? No, there are residential crazies to deal with as well.

The real opposition came from some of the neighbors. A community meeting in January 2016 served as something of a flashpoint.

At the meeting, one woman fretted that the tall building would violate the privacy of a nearby public school. Another argued that the project needed to be 100 percent affordable housing. Two representatives from local Latino Cultural District Calle 24 said that even a 100 percent affordable housing project was out of the question, given the proposed height of the development.

When Tillman said he saw his project as necessary so people like his daughter could afford to come back and live in the city, one particularly motivated activist said she wished his daughter was killed in a terrorist attack.

Such local ‘activists’ are rife in California, since they’ve realized that they can hold construction projects to ransom by threatening to delay progress until it’s economically dead unless they get to wet their beaks.

Read it.

Perhaps this will start a trend.

Read it.

Nancy Pelosi was heckled by a town hall attendee in Phoenix, Arizona Tuesday.

“These are kitchen table issues for America’s families,” the House Minority Leader stated while voicing her opposition to the tax cuts signed into law by President Trump. “Most people are not in deadening poverty, but some are. Most people have to struggle to make ends meet.”

“How much are you worth, Nancy?” a woman yelled over Pelosi’s screed.

“No, we’re not talking about that,” Pelosi shot back. “I’m a mother of five, I can speak louder than anybody.”

So her first impulse is to shout down the person questioning her. Good to know. I guess her definition of town hall meeting is ‘I speak, you shut up and listen’.

It should be noted that Pelosi is one of the wealthiest members of Congress and the wealthiest female member.

She and her husband have a combined net worth in excess of $100 million.

I see no evidence that she agrees with Bill Gates that she ought to be paying higher taxes. Maybe the money is all in her husband’s name.

Alex Tubarrok, a Real Economist, looks at the Unintended Consequences of politicians meddling.

In a market economy bidding tends to move resources from low-valued uses to high-valued uses. Regulations that prevent bidding freeze resources into low-valued uses–that’s bad for the resource owners and bad for society as the total value of production is reduced but it can be good for the consumers of low-valued uses.

Read it.

I grew up in a time when Washington’s birthday was not only observed on February 22, but was celebrated with the Fannie Farmer chocolate axe honoring the mythical story told about Washington by Parson Weems. In 1968 Washington’s Birthday was moved to the third Monday in February by virtue of the Uniform Holidays Bill. It has subsequently become known as the nondescript Presidents’ Day by which we know it today.

Read it.

As the price of housing continues to rise in many cities, one popular progressive policy idea to address it is inclusionary zoning. Inclusionary zoning requires that a certain percentage of units in a building be priced at below market, targeted at people who earn some fraction of the area median income. Often this set aside is required in exchange for density bonuses or other things the developer might want.

Portland passed one of these, and according to a report in the Portland Mercury, construction fell off a cliff.

Markets work the way markets work even when you don’t want them to.

Whenever government interferes with the action of a market, participants in that market take action that seems best in their own self-interest: either working around the government restrictions (a ‘black market’) if they can do so profitably, or deserting the market if they can’t work around the constraints. (Organized crime depends on such market constraints for their profits; their business model is working around government constraints on markets, and they are pretty good at it.)

Politicians never seem to learn that they can’t just pass a law and have everyone do what the politicians want them to do in the way that politicians want them to do it.

Read it.

How, you may ask, do energy taxes ‘fight’ ‘climate chante’? Why, by discouraging the use of ‘energy’ and thus the ThoughtCrime actions that bring on ‘climate change’.

Oddly enough, it also provides parasitic government bureaucrats with extra money to waste. Purely a coincidence, of course, Win-win!

CNN’s Hossain — Republican Women Are ‘Trapped’ With ‘Abuser’ Trump  Of course, there is no evidence that Trump is an ‘abuser’ — the overwhelming majority of ‘abusers’ outed so far are Democrats.

Former Clinton Advisor Attacks Sarah Sanders — ‘She Lies Every Day’  No actual lies cited, of course, just vague allegations.

‘This Narrative Has Sunk In’: MSNBC Panel Betray The Political Agenda Behind Trump Coverage

MSNBC Analyst: Trump’s the ‘Commander-in-Chief of American Rape Culture’  Now they’re just making stuff up.

Mike Pence ‘thinks Jesus tells him to say things’, says former Trump aide Omarosa  And of course it has to be true because a black woman said it.

CNN Contributor: ‘Trump Should Be Charged With Manslaughter!’  No doubt for strangling the Proglodyte Dream.

Ed Asner Jokes About Trump’s Sons Being Mauled By Lion  Yet he would be the first to scream of somebody made a similar joke about one of Obama’s daughters.

Former Obama Campaign Aide Compares Trump to Child Murdering Haitian Dictator  Since that child-murdering Haitan dictator was black, I don’t see the resemblance.

Read it.

I wrote here about the void in the Trump/Sessions, where four nominees for Assistant Attorney General positions are being held up due to Senate inaction. The four positions are crucial ones: Assistant Attorney General, Civil Division; Assistant Attorney General, Civil Rights Division; Assistant Attorney General, Criminal Division; and Assistant Attorney General, National Security Division.

Why can’t these nominees get a vote? Apparently, it’s because of marijuana. Sen. Cory Gardner is vexed with Attorney General Sessions over enforcement of Federal marijuana laws in Colorado.

It’s offensive that these archaic privileges are standing in the way of efficient government. It’s especially offensive that a Republican Senator is impeding a Republican administration in pursuit of so trivial a subject.

Read it.

Yet another example of the culture of corruption in Democrat-run cities.

Read it.

Tell the truth — do we really NEED an Ambassador to Germany? If Trump want to talk to Merkel, he picks up the phone. If Tillerson wants to talk to Gabriel, he picks up the phone. I don’t see this as a major problem. Or even a minor problem.

Read it.

New York City public defenders protested Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers Thursday for arresting their clients at courthouses.

Note that these are illegal immigrants who have been arrested for committing crimes.

Several hundred public defenders lined up outside a courthouse in the Bronx after ICE agents arrested Dembele Lanier, an illegal immigrant who was leaving the courthouse after seeing a judge for an assault charge. His wife said the ICE agents were waiting for Lanier outside of the courthouse, WNYC News reported.

In a ‘sanctuary city’ like New York, it’s their most efficient option.

After Lanier’s arrest, Bronx public defenders and attorneys for The Legal Aid Society gathered in front of the courthouse with posters that read “immigrants are welcome here.”

Note the refusal to distinguish between legal immigrants (who are indeed welcome here) and illegal immigrants (who aren’t).

The Legal Aid Society is a communist-dominated group whose members never met a criminal that they didn’t try to get off.

The Bronx public defenders said ICE was “not an immigration enforcement zone.”

That’s a very stupid statement for lawyers to make.

Read it.

ThoughtCrime! Down the Memory Hole!

Time to home-school.

Read it.

She was expensive, but worth it.

Read it.

Good luck with that.

Read it.

I’m surprised it’s that low.

Read it.

‘Make unto you friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings’

Read it.

These are the people that Democrats want in charge of our health care.

You would have thought that the Post Office was sufficient counter-example, but no ….

Read it.

Because the game was played in Minneapolis, the $112,000 bonuses paid to each player on the winning team (and the $56,000 bonuses paid to the losers), will be taxable in Minnesota, which has some of the highest personal income tax rates in the country. Each member of the Eagles will end up paying about $7,200 of their Super Bowl bonus to the state of Minnesota. That comes on top of an estimated $23,500 federal tax hit for each of the winning player’s shares.

And that’s just the start. Minnesota also imposes a so-called “jock tax” on athletes that visit the state for practices and games. Income earned during the days leading up to Sunday’s big game will be taxed at the state’s top marginal rate of 9.85 percent. Only California has a higher jock tax, and even states with no personal income taxes—like Texas and Florida, both frequent Super Bowl hosts—still hit up professional athletes, coaches, and team staff with special taxes.

Read it.

“The law that is supposed to restrict copying has instead been misused to crack down on competition, strangling a future’s worth of gadgets in their cradles,” said EFF Special Advisor Cory Doctorow. “But it’s hard to notice what isn’t there. We’re aiming to fix that with this Catalog of Missing Devices. It’s a collection of tools, services, and products that could have been, and should have been, but never were.”

The damage comes from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA 1201), which covers digital rights management software (DRM). DRM was designed to block software counterfeiting and other illegal copying, and Section 1201 bans DRM circumvention. However, businesses quickly learned that by employing DRM they could thwart honest competitors from creating inter-operative tools.

Right now, that means you could be breaking the law just by doing something as simple as repairing your car on your own, without the vehicle-maker’s pricey tool. Other examples include rightsholders forcing you to buy additional copies of movies you want to watch on your phone—instead of allowing you to rip the DVD you already own and are entitled to watch—or manufacturers blocking your printer from using anything but their official ink cartridges.

Read it.

Attorney Michael Haddock told WZZM-TV this week that he received a notice from the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency in the mail that said “Michael Ryder” will receive $360 a week.

But there is nobody named “Michael Ryder” at Haddock’s address. “Ryder,” however, is the name of Haddock’s German Shepherd and Michael is his first name. So Haddock assumed the notice was for his dog.

“Not sure what he is going to do with the money, but it should be interesting,” Haddock said. “I knew he was clever, but he surprised me this time.”

Read it.

When I was a young boy, that was called The Draft and supposedly we don’t have it any more.

I guess these two ‘legislators’ (perhaps the more accurate term would be ‘commissars’) didn’t get the memo.

Read it.

Last month, Republican Assemblyman Tom Lackey introduced legislation to repeal California’s recently enacted tax on space travel. California’s space tax, the first ever created, requires businesses exploring and attempting space travel to pay taxes based on miles traveled through space and the frequency of flight launches.

I hereby christen California ‘Taxifornia’.

If we could get rid of California and Massachusetts, well, that would really make America great again.

Scott Johnson blows the whistle on the IRS, strong right arm of the Deep State.

If there was a federal agency that Barack Obama did not corrupt, it must be because it was corrupt when he took over in 2009. The corruption of the IRS is a case in point. Its criminal misconduct perfectly represents what Obama wrought in the agencies that he charged with dictating the way we live. Consider the case of Lori Lowenthal Marcus and Z Street.

Z Street is Lori’s pro-Israel group. It had its application for tax-exempt status held up at the IRS for seven years. When Lori asked why, she was told that IRS auditors had been instructed to give pro-Israel groups special attention and that Z Street’s application had been forwarded to a special IRS unit for additional review. Not to put too fine a point on the legal issues, this wasn’t kosher. It’s illegal.

Read it.

Suckin’ on lemons, every day….

Read it.

Though Maxine Waters — who boycotted President Trump’s State of the Union address — declined to give her empty SOTU seat to Ricky Taylor, the Army veteran still got to take attend Tuesday’s address.

The Daily Caller caught up with Taylor, who ended up attending as a guest of Congressman Sean Duffy, in Statuary Hall on the Hill Tuesday night, during which he poured a little more salt in Waters’ wound.

“It’s disrespectful honestly,” Taylor says, “That’s what I really believe. It’s very unpatriotic, regardless of if you like the President or not.”

That’s never stopped them before. The D in Democrat also stands for Disrespect.

Sucking on a lemon since 1991.

Read it.

Suckin’ on lemons, every one. Pelosi looks as if she’s got something caught in her teeth.

Maxine Waters may have boycotted the SOTU speech, but her face was there — every damned one of those Democrats looks as if he or she had been sucking on a lemon for the last 20 years.

Read it.

Tech Sgt Geraldine Lovely has been “removed from her supervisory role” after the Facebook post went viral over the weekend, officials at Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas have said.

The Sergeant is female and apparently white or Hispanic.

“It pisses me the f*** off that they have no respect and constantly have attitude,” Ms Lovely says in the video. “What the f*** is up with that?”

That’s the way they were raised. Good manners have no value in the ‘hood.

The Air Force base said that they will be using the profane video to start a dialogue within their ranks.

Said ‘dialogue’ will be rather one-sided: ‘You WILL shut up about this.’ Been there, heard that.

Read it.

Saw THAT coming’….

Read it. And watch the videos.

Matching what Dems said then and what they say now.

Read it.

Democrats as Officer Obie: ‘And everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it….’

And Trump is going to make them look like full-diaper fools.

Read it.

Perhaps I ought to start a new category, Crooked Black Women Democrats. (Well, ‘Democrat” is probably redundant.)

Worst part of it is, she still gets a handsome pension.

Read it.

New proposed legislation, introduced by Sen. Scott Wiener and co-authored by Sen. Nancy Skinner, that would require California cities to allow denser, taller housing developments near transit hubs and bus lines, has ignited controversy in Berkeley and nationally.

With some limitations, SB 827 would eliminate restrictions on the number of houses that can be built within a half-mile of BART and within a quarter-mile of major bus routes, including Muni and AC Transit. It would also block cities from mandating parking requirements.

For those curious as to why it’s impossible to find affordable housing in California.

Read it.

Illinois has been losing population for four years. The state’s outmigration crisis is so bad that Illinois has dropped from the fifth-largest to the sixth-largest state, falling behind Pennsylvania. Since 2010, the Land of Lincoln lost a whopping 640,000 people on net to outmigration. The state is shrinking so rapidly that it’s at risk of losing a House seat.

…

Illinois ranks near the bottom in terms of economic freedom compared with the rest of the country, according to the Fraser Institute’s recent Economic Freedom of North America, or EFNA, report, released in partnership with the Illinois Policy Institute. This report ranks states based on an index of 10 variables related to government spending, taxes and labor market freedom. Only 12 states were ranked lower. Unsurprisingly, blue states California and New York ranked at the bottom of the economic freedom list.

Read it.

And how many of them, do you think, would vote Republican?

That tells you everything you need to know about the push to grant felons the vote.

Read it.

Tim Cook is apparently determined not to make the Microsoft Mistake.

Read it.

Amazon has narrowed the list of places where it might put its second headquarters down to 20. Maryland’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, is so excited that Montgomery County made the shortlist that he’s offering Amazon a new $5 billion package of incentives.

“Amazon sent a clear signal that Maryland truly is open for business by selecting Montgomery County as one of an elite group of contenders for this transformative project,” Hogan said today as he unveiled the sycophantically named Promoting ext-Raordinary Innovation in Maryland’s Economy (PRIME) Act.

Not only is Maryland open for business, it appears to be for sale cheap.

Funny how Democrats who spend their working hours castigating rich people as the scum of the earth line up to kiss the butt of the richest one of all. But he’s a Democrat so that’s okay. I’m told that he’s officially a Republican. You can understand my natural mistake.

Read it.

The key issue here, of course, is how much of a Federal power grab by the bureaucracy the Supremes will stomach.

Historical evidence suggests Quite a Bit.

But we’ll see.

Read it.

In the movies, I’ve seen people who try to get out of a traffic ticket by telling the police officer they made a donation to the policeman’s ball, but those were comedies. I had no idea that no only does this exist there are official cards.

Yet another aspect of the city-as-corrupt-enterprise pioneered and refined by Democrat machine politicians.

I’ve always wondered why Republicans don’t publish statistics of the murder rate in jurisdictions run by Democrats versus that in jurisdictions run by Republicans.

UPDATE: NYC Police Union to Limit ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ Cards

Read it.

You can see the problem immediately. Homicide in Baltimore, as in other cities, is mainly a black-on-black crime. But how are you going to police black areas of the city if, in doing so, you’re accused of discriminating against blacks?

This is made worse by having public officials who rode into office on a wave of identity-politics we-are-oppressed breast-beating, and have no idea how to run a city — and, really, no intent of doing so, as long as they can collect a fat public-employee salary while trashing their critics as racists. (Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson have ridden that particular mule to the bank and back for decades.)

Read it.

Immigration authorities have detained in recent weeks two prominent activists who are themselves illegal immigrants, demonstrating the Trump administration’s commitment to expand the pool of deportable aliens.

The arrested men have openly lived in the U.S. for years and have until recently enjoyed a de facto immunity from deportation, thanks to their status as high-profile immigrants’ rights activists. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have denied the arrests are politically motivated, but they clearly show that immigration agents are now emboldened to arrest even the most connected of illegal immigrants.

Sounds like progress. If people who are obviously breaking the law act with impunity, it merely encourages others to break the law. It also encourages other public officials to not enforce the law.

Montrevil, who co-founded the New Sanctuary coalition, was taken into custody in early January near his home in Queens, touching off a firestorm of protest. Activists accused ICE of breaking an “understanding” that Montrevil would not be arrested while he appealed his order of removal. Despite the public outcry, ICE deported Montrevil to Haiti on Tuesday.

One down.

The week before Montrevil’s removal, ICE arrested Ravidath Ragbir during his check-in with officials at the ICE office in New York. The executive director of New Sanctuary and the public face of immigration activism in New York City, Ragbir came to the U.S. in 1991 as a legal permanent resident, but he was ordered deported in 2006 following a wire fraud conviction for which he served a two-and-a-half year prison sentence.

Two down. Both obviously deserve deportation.

Ragbir’s wife Amy Gottlieb, an immigration lawyer, has accused the Trump administration of singling out her husband because of his outspoken activism.

And rightly so. Scofflaws ought to be the first targets of genuine law enforcement. The law must not only be enforced but also be seen to be enforced.

Read it.

At issue is whether Trump can use his executive authority to enforce the law and undo President Barack Obama’s use of his executive authority to skirt the law.

Read it.

California lawmakers are targeting the expected windfall that companies in the state would see under the federal tax overhaul with a bill that would require businesses to turn over half to the state.

A proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment by Assemblymen Kevin McCarty, D-Sacramento, and Phil Ting, D-San Francisco, would create a tax surcharge on California companies making more than $1 million so that half of their federal tax cut would instead go to programs that benefit low-income and middle-class families.

“Trump’s tax reform plan was nothing more than a middle-class tax increase,” Ting said in a statement. “It is unconscionable to force working families to pay the price for tax breaks and loopholes benefiting corporations and wealthy individuals. This bill will help blunt the impact of the federal tax plan on everyday Californians by protecting funding for education, affordable health care, and other core priorities.”

I hereby dub thee Taxifornia.

Steven Hayward of PowerLine yanks back the curtain.

It seems Senate Democrats are determined to have a government shutdown probably because of the default requirement of the Democratic base of “total resistance” to Trump. They are attaching the demand that DACA be “fixed” as a condition to funding the federal government (as OMB director Nick Mulvaney pointed out this morning, Democrats do not oppose any of the funding specifics of the continuing resolution), because they know that if DACA is part of larger immigration deal they lose a lot of leverage. More on that point in a moment.

Democrats are banking on the premise of the media-academic complex that a government shutdown will be blamed on Republicans. The second premise of the media-academic complex is that Republicans are supposed to forever be the Washington Generals to the Democratic Progresstrotters, and roll over for “the side of history.” Trump just might be the kind of person who will call an end to this perverse state of affairs. In addition, Mulvaney suggested this morning that the Trump Administration is prepared to hunker down for a good long while, as many agencies can use holdover funds and “transfer authority” to pay for priority services—something Obama refused to do back in 2013.