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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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(‘Criminal illegal aliens’ is a redundancy.)

Only 20 million to go….

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The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) made its largest lease sale in four years, marking the start of President Donald Trump’s plans to expand drilling on federal lands.

BLM sold drilling rights on 278 parcels of public land for $129.3 million. Bids ranged from $2 per acre to $16,500 per acre. The land sold was mostly located in Wyoming — about half of which is directly controlled by the federal government.

Well, it’s not really Trump; nor is it clear that he had any hand in it. It does suggest, of course, that the Bureau of Land Management is prepared to lick the hand that feeds it.

I really dislike this trend to ascribe everything that the government is doing, whether good or bad (depending on the viewpoint) to Trump. Unless he issues an executive order or gets on the phone to tell somebody what to do, the most that can be said is that the bureaucracy is taking their tone from the top, which is customary in any organization. More interesting, I think, is where bureaucrats continue in Normal Democrat Mode even after the change of administration. Of course, the DemLegHump Media aren’t really interested in drawing any attention to such things.

Rolling back federal restrictions on public lands would create 2.7 million jobs and add $663 billion to the economy each year for the next 30 years, according to a 2016 study by Louisiana State University and the free-market Institute for Energy Research.

Opening these lands and waters could boost wages by $5.1 trillion, generating $3.9 trillion in new federal tax revenue over the next 37 years according to the research. Increased energy development could create 2.7 million new jobs.

Such prognostications tend to be self-serving, especially when issued by ‘think tanks’ with a political agenda. Unfortunately, what passes for journalism today has a time horizon of about 48 hours, so there’s very little chance of somebody keeping track of these predictions, especially over the course of ’37 years’, which is why making such predictions is merely hot air.

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Some time ago, around the time hat Congress passed No Child Left Behind, a reporter asked me what I thought its effect would be. I said I didn’t think it would have any.

Judging from the NAEP long-term trend scores for 17-year olds, I was right. They have hardly changed in more than 40 years. Naturally that’s what you would want to look at, rather than the scores for 4th graders or 8th graders. If they go up while graduates stagnate, it doesn’t matter. Only an idiot could get excited over that kind of sterile improvement – but since nearly everyone involved with this question is an idiot, they go on and on about it.

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Through an examination of thousands of opinions (especially of district courts), docket sheets, briefs, and other filings, plus archival research and interviews, this Article provides the first general assessment of how federal courts handle the federal government’s disobedience. It makes four conclusions. First, the federal judiciary is willing to issue contempt findings against agencies and officials. Second, while several federal judges believe they can (and have tried to) attach sanctions to these findings, the higher courts have exhibited a virtually complete unwillingness to allow sanctions, at times swooping down at the eleventh hour to rescue an agency from incurring a budget-straining fine or its top official from being thrown in jail. Third, the higher courts, even as they unfailingly thwart sanctions in all but a few minor instances, have bent over backward to avoid making pronouncements that sanctions are categorically unavailable, deliberately keeping the sanctions issue in a state of low salience and at least nominal legal uncertainty. Fourth, even though contempt findings are practically devoid of sanctions, they have a shaming effect that gives them substantial if imperfect deterrent power.

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For the fourth year in a row, a record number of Americans and green-card holders renounced their U.S. citizenship or legal permanent residency in 2016, according to Treasury Department data slated for publication Thursday.

…

Taxes, and penalties for citizens abroad not paying taxes, are a key reason for the record levels of expatriations, according to Mitchel. The 2010 Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, a statute intended to fight tax evasion by Americans with accounts abroad — Mitchel explained to The Daily Caller — has caused many American living outside the U.S. to escape the IRS’ grasp by leaving the system entirely.

Walter Williams, a Real Economist, points the finger.

Our nation’s first minimum wage law, the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, had racist motivation.

During its legislative debate, its congressional supporters made such statements as, “That contractor has cheap colored labor that he transports, and he puts them in cabins, and it is labor of that sort that is in competition with white labor throughout the country.”

During hearings, American Federation of Labor President William Green complained, “Colored labor is being sought to demoralize wage rates.”

Today’s stated intentions behind the support of minimum wages are nothing like yesteryear’s. However, intentions are irrelevant. In the name of decency, we must examine the effects.

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Pay is flowing so generously at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) that bureaucrats receive more than most members of Congress.

The Senate majority and minority leaders are paid $193,000 annually. Two hundred and one CFPB employees outdo Sens. Mitch McConnell and Charles Schumer in pay.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan of Wisconsin receives $223,000 per year, but that’s less than what 54 CFPB employees are paid.

Another 170 CFPB employees earn more than the secretaries of defense and state, the attorney general and the director of national intelligence. All cabinet salaries are capped at $199,700, but not at the bureau. Thirty-nine CFPB employees earn more than the $230,000 paid to Vice President Mike Pence.

My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Down the Memory Hole….

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Money talks.

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Can he pick ’em, or can he pick ’em?

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Three brothers who managed office information technology for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers were abruptly relieved of their duties on suspicion that they accessed congressional computers without permission.

Brothers Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

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Families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also called food stamps, are less likely to save money by buying generic brands or using coupons if they are buying food with government benefits, researchers at Brown University claim in a study published Monday.

The study upends the idea that food stamps recipients use the taxpayer-funded benefits just like they would use cash, and instead show that people’s food choices change when using food stamps.

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Our friend Katherine Kersten is senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s conservative think tank, at which John Hinderaker serves as president. Kathy is an indefatigable analyst and advocate who has effectively promoted good public policy and opposed bad public policy while breaking major stories illustrating the way we live now.

Most recently, Kathy has turned her attention to the destruction of student discipline in the St. Paul public schools. This destruction has been wrought in the name of “racial equity.” In telling this story, Kathy offers a dystopian case study demonstrating the destructive ideological fevers that power the left generally and the Obama administration in particular.

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Dr. John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told the Daily Mail NOAA’s 2015 study was meant “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

Bates said NOAA scientists made a “blatant attempt to intensify the impact” of global warming to eliminate the “pause” in temperature rise since 1998. The Daily Mail claims Bates showed it “irrefutable” evidence NOAA’s study relied on “unverified” data.

But you knew that.

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Perhaps wary of the fact that it took years to pass the most recent Farm Bill in 2014, Congress has already moved to begin deliberations over the next five-year bill, which would likely become law in 2018. The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee will hold its first hearing on the upcoming Farm Bill in Kansas later this month.

The Farm Bill is perhaps best known for handing billions of dollars of taxpayer money to a small number of the shrinking percentage of Americans who farm. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s agriculture Henry Wallace pitched payments to farmers during the Great Depression as “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” The emergency—the Depression—ended around the same year that my grandparents went to prom. But the subsidies remain. In fact, they’ve only mushroomed in the decades since their adoption.

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Same old, same old.

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One of the most delightful consequences of Trump’s election is that the statist Left bureaucracy is fighting defense for the first time in my lifetime.

The EPA is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

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It will be entertaining to see how cognitive dissonance ties up the Chattering Class into knots.

Pass the popcorn.

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It’s amazing how positions change depending on which foot the shoe is on. Back in the sixties, the Crust were all about savaging local politicians who resisted enforcing the laws against, say, segregation. But now it all runs the other way.

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Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty from Connecticut launched a tweetstorm Monday afternoon against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, but quickly backtracked after followers confronted her on her visa-related voting history.

People in Congress (and there are far too many of them) who turn their positions on a dime in order to follow partisan marching orders from their leadership are so used to being in control of the public narrative that it often comes as a shock when they are called to account. Of course, in a rightly-ordered society it would be the ‘journalists’ who would do the vetting, but as we all know the DemLegHump Media can’t perform that function on Democrats.

Esty co-sponsored H.B. 158 on Dec. 3 2015, a bi-partisan bill that enabled the executive branch led by the the Department of Homeland Security to severely limit or curtail visas from countries like Iran and Iraq.

Hmm. Not that long ago, even. Must be something in the water in Connecticut. Yeah, that would explain what’s been going on at Yale, too.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Information is to be gathered, reviewed and summarized during the periods of suspension so that policy can be conformed to the national interest of the United States. Indeed, the order focuses throughout on the national interest of the United States, as in this provision that will never be quoted in a New York Times story:

Sec. 1: …In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.

You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds.

Read it.

Well, that’s what happens when Democrats are in charge.

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One agency, the Centers for Disease Control, has been called out for wasteful spending and duplication of effort for many years. Now a new report published Dec. 19, 2016, by EconoSTATS had done it again. The think tank’s work revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been duplicating work done by 19 other federal agencies.

Yet, the broadcast networks have ignored this latest evidence of CDC waste. Between Dec. 19, 2016, and Jan. 23, 2017, NBC, CBS, and ABC morning and evening news broadcasts failed to report the EconoSTATS findings at all.

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Currently, only five of NATO’s 28 members—the U.S., Greece, Britain, Estonia, and Poland—meet the alliance’s target of spending at least 2 percent of their own gross domestic product on defense, a fact that is especially concerning, experts say, because of Russia’s aggressive behavior.

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Teachers are speaking out against a week-long BLM curriculum starting Jan. 23 aimed at kindergarten to 12th grade, reportsPhilly.com.

One teacher said that Black Lives Matter does not need to be in the classroom.

“It challenges nuclear families, and our justice system. I don’t think kids should be taught that Western society is perpetrating a war on black people,” Christopher Paslay, an English teacher, said.

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‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … oh, wait….’

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Cotton was reportedly irate with Schumer’s delay of the confirmation vote and loudly accosted him on the Senate floor. Schumer retorted that the Senate had never confirmed a CIA director on Inauguration Day, adding that Senate Republicans did not do the same for former President Barack Obama. He continued that Cotton would have known this if he had been in the Senate eight years ago.

“Eight years ago, I was getting my ass shot at in Afghanistan,” Cotton reportedly shot back. He continued, “So don’t talk to me about where I was 8 years ago.” Cotton served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the U.S. Army as a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

Schumer, of course, has never served anywhere except as a politician.

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Somebody send this clown a copy of the script, he appears to be off the reservation.

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Obama spent a lot of money on things that didn’t work.

He didn manage to double the national debt, though, and I suppose that’s something.

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The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. I don’t mean that in the Nixonian sense of personal corruption, whereby the president is personally above the law, although the idea that Barack Obama’s tenure has been ethically pure is laughable.

No, my accusation rests on the 44th president’s seeing himself as professionally above the law, ignoring the executive branch’s legal limits and disrespecting constitutional bounds like federalism and the separation of powers.

But don’t just take it from me. Liberal law professor Garrett Epps (a professional acquaintance) admits that “even for those like me who admire Barack Obama, the constitutional record is disturbingly mixed. Obama leaves the Constitution weaker than at the beginning of his terms.” Epps labels Obama’s posture to be one of “aggressive compliance,” torturing statutory language as far as it can go in order to avoid constitutional claims.

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NAO’s report found the U.K.’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy spent an initial $84 million on CCS, but then pumped another $123 million into a second competition after the first failed.

“The Department has now tried twice to kick start CCS in the UK, but there are still no examples of the technology working,” Amyas Morse, head of the NAO,told The Construction Index. “There are undoubtedly challenges in getting CCS established, but the Department faced an uphill battle as a result of the way it ran the latest competition.”

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The Obama legacy.

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There’s something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as zealotry. Watching President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions this week was just another reminder of how irrational liberalism has become.

Which is no surprise; most of what Democrats do is immoral.

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Hope, maybe, but where was the Change?

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There’s a legacy for you.

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Not bad for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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I spotted a Muslim women in a trash bag shuffling up to one of the counters. Two swarthy men were hovering around her. They guarded her virtue as she exposed her head for the license photo. From what I saw, they have no fears of rival males carrying her off. Everyone in the place was intently watching the scene, even the surly functionaries. For a minute, all of us were plugged into the collective consciousness, wondering why our rulers are doing this to us.

This is an example of why open borders will end in disaster. In a world without government, people will sort themselves out, one way or another. In the custodial state, everyone is dealing with the state. That means the interface has to accommodate all comers. In a world where the picture ID is critical, a people who think photos steal their soul or make Allah angry with their women is doomed to failure. The DMV can handle Mexican fruit pickers, it cannot adapt to Bronze Age barbarians.

The funny thing about the diverse community is they will sit forever, waiting for government service. Honkies get impatient with lines and expect the government to work like the private sector. The diverse are much more reasonable in this regard. Everyone had head phones so they could listen to their music while they stared at their phones, doing whatever it is they do on their phones. They came prepared to entertain themselves for the day. Maybe it is from habit or maybe it is from nature. Regardless, these are not people who will be voting libertarian.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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I’m sure they’ve all wanted to say that at one time or another.

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FBIThe FBI does want you to understand that while, yes, they do seize and keep billions of dollars in assets from citizens through a system that doesn’t require them to prove a crime, they’re doing it for the financial benefit of communities.

Nowhere in this new FBI “news story” titled “Forfeiture as an Effective Law Enforcement Tool” will you find the words “Fourth Amendment, “Due Process,” or “innocence.” Instead it uses a single example of using forfeiture to snag drug dens in Rutland, Vermont, and returning them to the community. By “community” they mean the organization with a $1.25 million redevelopment grant and not the family that was forced out of one of the buildings and ended up living in a trailer. That’s right—the FBI is using a case where families got bounced out of their homes as an example of the benefits of forfeiture. The FBI wants to convince us that this is what civil asset forfeiture looks like—that it is all for our benefit.

‘Hi! We’re from the government and we’re here to help … ourselves.’

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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In his invaluable history of the maniacal leftist terrorism of the 1970s, Bryan Burrough frankly characterizes FALN leader Oscar López Rivera as “the man behind the deadliest bombing campaign of the era.” That’s quite a distinction.

And the man remains unrepentant, as they say. He therefore escaped pardon by Slick William J. Clinton in his corrupt departure from office at the end of his second term. Clinton pardoned 16 of the 18 FALN terrorists convicted in the group’s bombing campaigns; the other two convicted FALN members rejected Clinton’s offer of pardon. Debra Burlingame condemned these “terror pardons” in a superb 2008 Wall Street Journal column. They felt they had nothing for which to apologize.

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When Prohibition ended in 1933, my great-grandfather, Giuseppe Marano, thought his money-making glory days were over. Having made a good living selling alcoholic beverages to willing buyers at a time when that business was illegal across the country, he and his cohorts certainly viewed the passage of the 21st Amendment as the end of a very profitable era.

Except that it really wasn’t. Politicians may have formally dumped the national ban on booze, but in many places they’ve imposed enough foolish restrictions to keep bootlegging a going concern.

And, of course, it was Prohibition that gave us the Mafia’s glory days.

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Spending is what Democrats do best, so long as it’s somebody else’s money.

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How many can you name? None? Maybe that’s because the DemLegHump Media DIDN’T COVER THEM.

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That would be … entertaining.

President-elect Donald Trump met with a Princeton University physicist and skeptic of man-made global warming who observers believe could be the next White House science czar.

Trump met with Dr. Will Happer in New York City Friday. Happer didn’t take any questions entering or leaving Trump Tower last week, so it’s hard to say what the meetings were about. Trump has yet to fill key energy and science roles in his administration.

He’s from Princeton, so his Crustian credentials are impeccable. Trump is a judo-master with Leftist brain-space.

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Geographic mobility–the movement of people from place to place in response to changing job trends–had declined in the United States, which in turn contributes to the reduction in economic mobility. David Schleicher, a Yale University associate law professor, has written a paper arguing that this reduction is due to government regulations, including land-use regulations that make it expensive to move and occupational licensing that makes it expensive to enter new markets.

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Remember when those pesky other branches of government wouldn’t bow down to Obama’s whims, and the president famously bragged about going it alone? Now Obama’s out and it will soon be Donald Trump wielding his pen and phone.

As Barack Obama bids farewell to his presidency this week, keep in mind these five scary powers that President Trump will inherit from him.

Someone needs to remind the Left ‘be careful what you wish for’.