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Abandoned and neglected parts of Detroit are quickly becoming dumping grounds for the bodies of murder victims. And authorities acknowledge there’s little they can do.

Well, that’s what decades of Democrat government will do to you….

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In recent weeks, there’s been a flurry of articles written on the proposed Marketplace Fairness Act. The Marketplace Fairness Act is a “bipartisan” proposal that would require out-of-state retailers to collect taxes on items sold in states where they have no physical presence. It’s supposed to level the playing field for all involved. Actually, its just a boon for big box retailers who can’t compete in today’s marketplace.

Big business regards the government as a friend, not an enemy, because lobbying can get legislation that, while nominally affecting all players, favors the big guys who can afford the price of compliance better than the little guys. (This is why Warren Buffet doesn’t mind high taxes. However much he pays, your Friendly Local Wannabe Rich Guy winds up worse off.)

What the Act will do is typical of such laws. It will disregard decades of Supreme Court precedent and allow Congress to redefine the playing field thus picking new winners and losers. If you’re having trouble figuring out whom the winners will be, just look at those lobbying for the Act. Generally, it’s the large retailer that’s already nationwide, gets large volume discounts from vendors and that can afford to spend $250k on a tax calculation engine to handle the complex calculations and support a complete tax department to handle the compliance burden and the unions that organize them. But wait, isn’t there a free service to calculate the tax for the retailers? As my Dad says, you get what you pay for.

There are approximately 7,500 state and local tax jurisdictions and the logic required to determine what type of tax and how much to collect is obscene. To say that a retailer with over $500,000 in revenue can comply is insane.

Unfortunately for the local government leeches, the Constitution puts ‘commerce among the several states’ in the hands of the Federal government, which is why interstate shippers have been successful so far in resisting local leech demands to collect state sales and use taxes, and why a Federal law — such as this one — is demanded by those whom it will profit.

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With the euro-crisis threatening the economies of Europe, the United States, and Asia, the usual suspects are coming up for blame. Bankers and corrupt regulators face scorn from the left and much of the right. Yet those perhaps most responsible for the world’s dismal economic future have names many would not recognize. Indeed, the people who have done the most to screw up Europe would be able to walk down almost any street in the world without being recognised. It’s time to meet them!

Time to put a face to some faceless bureaucrats. Europeans invented the modern bureaucratic state, and nobody does it better (or worse, depending on your perspective).

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 The six-storey mansion on the Avenue Foch of the chic 16th arrondissement, reportedly worth between 100 and 150 million euros, was seized on July 19 in connection with the investigation into Teodorin Obiang, a source close to the inquiry told the AFP news agency.

French judges Roger Le Loire and Rene Grouman, who suspect Teodorin Obiang of using embezzled funds, in July issued an international arrest warrant for the president’s son, four months after beginning proceedings and after he ignored a second summons for questioning.

…

Teodorin Obiang has since May been second vice-president of the oil-rich west African country, which has been ruled with an iron fist since 1979 by his father.

Sheesh — it’s not even profitable to be a corrupt Third-World dictator any more. What’s the world coming to?

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The Obama administration’s support for its Islamist allies means a lack of U.S. support for their enemies or, more properly,victims—the Christian and other non-Muslim minorities of the Muslim world.

Your tax dollars at work.

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With the coming advent of ObamaCare, states that are bracing for the huge increase in Medicaid recipients are looking for a way to save money and they think they’ve found one; limiting the number of prescription drugs that Medicaid patients can obtain. The cost for Medicaid will skyrocket under Obamacare because of the expanded eligibility requirements.

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We’ re from the government, and we’re here to help … ourselves to your money.

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He reportedly told her he would throw away the ticket but then later phoned a lottery hotline to say it was he who had bought the lucky jackpot ticket from the store.

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Last week campaigner Luke Steele was sentenced to 18 months in jail for harassing staff at Harlan’s laboratories. A second activist, Jonathan White, was given a seven-month sentence, suspended for 18 months. The pair, both aged 22, were members of a small group who terrorised staff at Harlan’s three UK sites last year, using hailers to chant “shame on you”, “blood on your hands” and “puppy killers” at employees queuing up in their cars to enter or leave their workplaces. They also claimed that animals in the centres were subject to “horrific neglect”.

One female Harlan worker told the Observer: “When you arrived in the morning, you would have to queue for up to five minutes to get through the gates. Their loudhailers were deafening. They would scream at you that you were a puppy killer and would bang on your car. It was horrible. I was left shaking for hours afterwards.”

Feel the love.

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Invincible Armor links to a piece at Investors.com alleging that Iraq transferred its chemical weapons to Syria shortly before the U.S. launched Operation Iraqi Freedom.

“As Sada told the New York Sun, two Iraqi Airways Boeings were converted to cargo planes by removing the seats, and special Republican Guard units loaded the planes with chemical weapons materials.

Can’t wait to see how the Voices of the Crust will spin this one.

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When Mitt Romney visited Orange County, California for a fundraiser in May, his campaign promptly paid Newport Beach for security costs.

President Obama’s campaign, on the other hand, still has not paid a $35,000 bill incurred when he went to a private home in Corona del Mar, in February, for a fundraiser that required, according to the Los Angeles Times, “street closures and additional security requirements for the president.”

Hey, spending other people’s money is what being a Democrat is all about. Deal with it.

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Oxford University has rewritten the laws governing its strict academic dress code following concerns that they were unfair towards transgender students.

Can’t see how. Women wear pants without, apparently, feeling that their sexual identity is impaired. I guess ‘transgender’ is the new ‘gay’.

Paul Gottfried is pretty hard-core.

Although Cathy and his staff have affirmed their determination “to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect—regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender,” this statement, which reads like something from the Department of Education, is apparently a ruse. According to gay-advocacy organizations The Huffington Post and The New York Times, as well as leading Democratic pols such as Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Cathy is trying to stamp out (you guessed it!) “tolerance.” Every time someone bites into one of his sandwiches, the customer promotes hate. Presumably if one bites twice, one gets cholesterol poisoning and causes a recurrence of Auschwitz.

Thin edge of the wedge, man, thin edge of the wedge. Gotta guard against that shit.

The government social engineering that was congressionally approved in the 1960s for advancing blacks and women has now been extended to other victim groups, and there’s no way to stop the process. It just goes on and on, with ever more intrusive tactics being applied to bring everyone into line. This is not fascism, with due respect to my libertarian friends who insist that it is. Mussolini, for all his rhetoric about the state’s majesty, would never have engaged in the present insane attempt to stand society on its head by placing homosexuals beyond criticism and by pushing the private sector into showering them with jobs. The alternative left does not really object to such arrangements provided they can elect Romney as our next president and get on with important things such as carpet-bombing Iran and filling patronage jobs with party loyalists.

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When work crews pulled open a broken BART escalator at San Francisco’s Civic Center Station last month, they found so much human excrement in its works they had to call a hazardous-materials team.

While the sheer volume of human waste was surprising, its presence was not. Once the stations close, the bottom of BART station stairwells in downtown San Francisco are often a prime location for homeless people to camp for the night or find a private place to relieve themselves.

Five of the nine escalators that weren’t working at BART stations on Wednesday were in downtown San Francisco, said Jim Allison, a BART spokesman. While there are many reasons a BART escalator can break down, the beating they take at night is among the most acute.

If you go to San Francisco, be sure to wear a flower in your hair … and maybe some Depends.

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A study released this week by the Joint Economic Committee found that the death tax fails to produce any recognizable benefits and significantly hinders economic growth in the U.S.

The study shows that the death tax fails to achieve any of the goals that it was intended to achieve.

Specifically, the death tax has: (1) reduced the amount of capital stock in the U.S.; (2) significantly hindered entrepreneurial activity; (3) prevented economic mobility; and (4) raised an insignificant amount of revenue.

Well, duh. The purpose of the death tax, as everyone with two brain cells to rub together knows, is to confiscate wealth from those who, being freshly dead, are in no position to complain, so that the government can spend it for it’s own purposes. It’s robbery, pure and simple. ‘Your money belongs to us; we’ll decide how much we let you keep.’

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Crapitalism is alive and well in … wait for it … Michigan.

This summer, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski wanted to make some money to help out his disabled parents—his mom has epilepsy and his dad has multiple sclerosis. So he decided to open a hot dog stand. He saved $1,200, mostly money made by mowing lawns and shoveling snow. He checked with the city to make sure he didn’t need any licenses or permits, even going to city hall in person with his mom. And then he bought a cart. (Yep, that’s hot dogs from Nathan’s, for those who are keeping score at home.)

He arrived to set up shop on his first day and 10 minutes later, a zoning official arrived to shut him down. The problem: The cart, which is in the parking lot of a sporting goods store, is on the edge of official downtown commercial district of Holland, Michigan. The city bans food carts in that area in order to minimize competition for the eight tax-paying restaurants a couple of blocks away.

As it happens, I’ve been to Holland. It’s a lovely town, but not exactly a booming metropolis. And frankly (ha!), after an evening of Blue Motorcycles Butch’s Dry Dock, a hot dog would really have hit the spot. The city says it is willing to work with Nathan, but keeping food carts out of the small, walkable downtown area is pretty much the same thing as banning food carts altogether. Nathan and his family obviously know that: The hot dog cart is now for sale.

After all, we can’t have some punk kid wanting to help out his disabled parents affect the profit margins of Established Businesses who no doubt have better connections at City Hall. So much for the American Dream in Obama’s America.

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Of course he did. God forbid that any enviro-nazi should be answerable for his behavior.

German authorities detained Captain Watson following a request from Costa Rica. The Central American country claimed that his behaviour during an incident on the high seas in 2002 had threatened the safety of the crew of a Costa Rican fishing vessel.

The Sea Shepherd has also been involved in number of violent confrontations with Japanese whaling vessels, and last year three members of its crew were held on board a Japanese ship after boarding it to deliver a letter protesting against the whale hunt.

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“The diversity of transitions between note combinations – roughly speaking chords plus melodies – has consistently diminished in the past 50 years.”

The “timbre” of songs – the number of different tones they include, for example from different instruments – has also become narrower, he added.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

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This Monday, July 30, 2012 will mark the 47th anniversary of the enactment of Medicare and Medicaid. On that day in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson journeyed to Independence, Missouri to sign the enabling legislation in the presence of former President Harry Truman. It was the dawn of “The Great Society” and the American nanny state.

Financially, it’s been downhill ever since.

Medicare was designed to provide medical services to those over the age of 65. Medicaid was designed to provide financial assistance to the poorest among us who can’t otherwise afford medical services. From the inception of these programs, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement have dominated their operation.

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In the United Kingdom, the Royal National Institute of Blind People reports that more than half of the nation’s National Health Service trusts are restricting cataract surgery. The institute says the trusts have imposed tougher standards for offering the surgery, standards that could force patients to wait until their vision has seriously deteriorated before getting surgery.

Don’t you just love that government health care? Don’t you just wish that America had a system like that?

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All in blue states, naturally.

Researchers at MIT have developed a new computer model that shows that it’s not necessarily the busiest airports that are the biggest hubs for spreading viruses during a pandemic. The study looked at the 40 biggest airports in the United States, exploring how they effect the spread of disease in the early days of an outbreak, incorporating factors like where the airports are located, their waiting times, and how they’re connected to airports in other cities. According to the study, airports in New York and Los Angeles topped the list, though Honolulu wasn’t too far behind.

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I love the range of political opinion in Britain. They have the Labour Party, which is like our Democratic Party, and then they have the Conservative Party, which is like our Democratic Party.

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The survival of a woman shot in the head during the Colorado cinema massacre has been hailed as a “miracle” after a shotgun pellet traversed the precise course of a brain defect she was unaware she had.

According to her family Petra Anderson, 22, a musician, lived because she had a rare genetic condition that left her with a small channel of fluid running from the front to back of her brain.

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It was unclear where the foetuses, some of them six inches long, had come from. A local prosecutor said they were biological material left over after abortions and appeared to originate from at least four different hospitals and clinics. However, other reports suggested they were the result of stillbirths and miscarriages. Police said they were investigating tags attached to some of the foetuses which had reference numbers and surnames on them.

Perhaps Planned Parenthood ran out of space in the back room.

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Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Monday said the White House appears to be responsible for leaking classified national security information.

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

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Not that anybody in the government gives a shit.

Smitty at The Other McCain points out the reality-free zone in which the Obamassiah lives.

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The Sun, a British tabloid, has done the kind of investigative reporting that the larger papers can’t seem to manage: it busted a ring of corrupt Pakistani officials who were selling passports and visas that would allow buyers to enter Britain along with Pakistan’s Olympic team, and perhaps even gain access to the Olympic stadium.

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

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In 2006, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori, told the New York Times that Episcopalians were not interested in “replenishing their ranks by having children.” Instead, the church “[encouraged] people to pay attention to the stewardship of the earth and not use more than their portion.”

Is it possible to nominate an institution for a Darwin Award?

Since 2000, the Episcopal Church has lost 23 percent of its members. At this rate, there will be no Episcopalians in 26 years.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that….

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When deficits are high, Congress has even more incentive than usual to indulge in unfunded mandates. That way it can deliver the spending programs and other government goodies that voters like, and without adding to the deficit. Of course, this is because states and the private sector bear the burden instead.

Fred Thompson, upon being elected Senator: ‘To show you how new I am in Washington, the other day I went out and by mistake spent some of my own money.’

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This is the new political America, where bullying runs rampant. Chick-Fil-A had never discriminated against gay and lesbian patrons or employees. There are no allegations that it had. But that won’t stop people from invading its places of business to make political statements. And that won’t stop liberal heavy-hitters from discriminating against it using the power of government.

It is not enough, for the Left, that you act morally, even according to their standards. It is equally vital that you publicly acknowledge that their standards are correct, and that you agree with them. Anything less is not enough.

No wonder the Left loves Islam. They have the same approach to life.

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No shit, Sherlock. Spending money like a drunken sailor didn’t help, either.

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Try this thought experiment: You decide to donate money to Mitt Romney. You want change in the Oval Office, so you engage in your democratic right to send a check.

Several days later, President Barack Obama, the most powerful man on the planet, singles you out by name. His campaign brands you a Romney donor, shames you for “betting against America,” and accuses you of having a “less-than-reputable” record. The message from the man who controls the Justice Department (which can indict you), the SEC (which can fine you), and the IRS (which can audit you), is clear: You made a mistake donating that money.

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

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Hey, let’s do things the European way!

Cecile Duflot, the country’s 37-year-old housing minister, was subjected to the barrage of abuse while wearing a flowery summer dress in the National Assembly in Paris.

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ said Ms Duflot, adding: ‘Obviously, more gentlemen than ladies’. Leering and shouting accompanied her every word, along with ‘phwoooaarr…’ noises.

Ms Duflot infamously wore jeans at a cabinet meeting earlier this year, but her dress was a conservative one.

She said after her ordeal: ‘I have worked in the building trade and I have never seen something like that. This tells you something about some MPs. I think of their wives.’

Uh … maybe not….

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Long before the age of government-mandated low-flush toilets and low-wattage light bulbs, William F. Buckley captured the essence of modern nanny-state liberalism with his comment that a liberal is someone who wants to reach in and turn down your shower.

But God help you if you even think about touching his. This is why Hollywood liberals feel no pain criticizing other people for their environmental sins while driving around in Hummers, lighting their mansions with enough electricity for a small city (Hey there, Algore!), and jetting across the country and around the world to attend ‘climate change’ events.

I get the idea behind “smart meters,” and like them in the abstract.  But a lot of people understand that smart meters may be the first step to enabling the Thermocrats to dial back your power usage remotely if they think you are using “too much” electricity to, say, keep yourself cool during hot summer afternoons.  Utilities already try to persuade people to volunteer to allow them to cycle off your appliances remotely during periods of peak demand in return for a slight discount on your bill.  But things that start out voluntary have a way of becoming mandatory with liberals, and smart meters are a step to enhancing the power of environmentalist Thermocrats.

That this is in the back of their minds is readily apparent from the fact that installation of the meters is mandatory — as is the extra charge for said meters on your monthly bill.

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Voter fraud in a city run by Democrats? Why, that’s just The American Way! Who could object to that?

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It’s official: The name of the British ‘Conservative’ Party is now as much of an oxymoron as that of the American ‘Democratic’ Party.

An amazing achievement.

Dymphna explains precisely how Senator John McCain is an incompetent asshole.

Senator John McCain’s ill-advised and uninformed intrusion into a subject he has failed to examine is alarming in the extreme. Sad to say, this behavior on Senator McCain’s part is an example of the Republican Party at its stumbling worst — rampaging inside the tent instead of performing the due diligence required for our country’s security.

And that is pretty much everything you need to know about John McCain.

Charles Coulombe looks at the Episcopal Church … quickly, before it disappears.

How could this citadel of comfort and style seemingly transmogrify into today’s screaming freak show? Well, as with so much of our national life, chronology would seemingly place the change in the 1960s. In Episcopalians’ case, the blame falls in the lap of two bishops: San Francisco’s James Pike and New York’s Paul Moore. The former’s heresy trial in 1967 ended with the verdict that there is no such thing as heresy in the Episcopal Church, absolving that body from any need to conform to doctrinal norms. The latter led the Church away from its former status as “the Republican Party at prayer” into a new wonderland of social and political radicalism. That Bishop Moore was emblematic of the Church’s changes is shown by the touching story his daughter wrote of her posthumous meeting with his longtime clandestine male lover.

One of the most polite fictions in modern life is that the Episcopal Church has something to do with Christianity. But that’s okay — they no longer have to pretend.

Whether or not the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion as a whole is “faithful to the Gospel” or even merely in good taste is beyond the point. From the time of Elizabeth I, Anglicanism’s role has been to bless and approve whatever the Anglosphere’s dominant classes have wanted blessed or approved. Whenever those folk valued good manners, traditional mores, and a certain sense of style and decorum, the Anglican Church leadership complied.

But as those elite classes altered into the sideshow denizens who currently rule the West, “their” churches had to alter to suit them. Our oligarchs are not Christian in any doctrinal sense. They have no use for gender roles, for traditional family life, or indeed for reproduction itself (a bit shortsighted, given the never-ending need for bodies in uniform and obedient taxpayers). So far as many of them are concerned, there is no real distinction between human and animal life. The General Convention’s latest decrees simply put the stamp of religious approval upon the notions of our betters. Far from being a sign of America’s Episcopal Church having gone mad, these measures show she is continuing in her appointed and accustomed role.

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Earlier, writing in Newsweek, President Obama celebrated the fact that 25 percent fewer men than women graduate from college, calling it a “great accomplishment” for America. Ironically, he lamented the fact that a smaller gender disparity — 17 percent fewer women attending college than men — had once existed before Title IX was implemented. To Obama, gender disparities are only bad when they disfavor women. Under his strange idea of equality, equality means men losing out to women.

Based on a campaign promise Obama made to feminist groups in October 2008, Sommers foresaw the Obama Administration moving to artificially cap male enrollment in math and science classes to achieve gender proportionality — the way that Title IX currently caps male participation in intercollegiate athletics. The result could be a substantial reduction in the number of scientists graduating from America’s colleges and universities.

Since a college cannot force a woman to go into math or science, the only way for a college to satisfy a gender quota will be to cut the number of male math and science students, by turning male students away from their favorite subject.

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Well, that’s what happens when you’ve got a state where business is growing like a weed and the EPA will only let you generate electricity using hamster cages turned by bullocks who have been fed on organic bean sprouts from Whole Foods.

Nothing useful happened this week.

Don’t blame me — blame the world.

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Funny how that works. Since the U.S. is the only First World country that taxes money made by its citizens wherever they can be hunted down, Europeans can easily vote with their feet when countries raise their taxes to non-competitive rates. You’d think their politicians would have learned this by now — the Beatles and the Stones were doing it in the 1960s, for crying out loud — but they never do.

And it’s got to be pretty bad when Britain can be described as ‘wealth-friendly’.

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I guess they were to busy raping and pillaging on public property to #OccupyObamaFundraiser.

Watch it.

I am not making this up.

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Eduardo Saverin is the most notable tax expatriate this year. The Facebook cofounder renounced his US citizenship after learning that his earnings on the company’s IPO would be taxed upwards of $67 million. Since Singapore has no capital gains tax, Saverin moved. Now he gets to keep everything he earned. Saverin now seems interested only in Brazilian start-ups looking to get involved in the Asian market, so American companies can forget about any extra investment opportunities his wealth would have provided to them.

This was bad news for American entrepreneurs, but we saw no apologies from DC’s parasitic bureaucrats. Instead of loosening the tax collector’s death grip around our only source of economic growth, maggots such as Senator Chuck Schumer decided it’d be best to prevent wealthy expatriates from ever returning to the country.

Acts of personal sovereignty such as Rich’s and Saverin’s threaten government officials because they imply that individuals will move as they wish. It suggests that successful businessmen really will leave the farm when they’re pushed around for too long.

Used to be, people wanted to move here. Now the government has arranged things so that people want to move elsewhere.

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Now that the increasingly erratic and desperately sleazy Obama campaign has decided to cavalierly throw around the word “felony” when it comes to pushing a campaign of lies surrounding Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, this seems like a good time to jump in the wayback machine for a look at the actual convicted felons, criminals, and dubious characters who have always been associated with Barack Obama’s political life.

Pretty much low-hanging fruit when dealing with a Democrat, but still….

Freeberg nails it, as usual.

Summing it all up: The whole thing is on the honor system. If you’re not eligible to use these materials, then don’t…wink wink, nod nod.

Yeah, we know how that works.

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You’ll note how they carefully refrain from specifying just where these ‘non-EU immigrants’ came from … it is, of course, a Voice of the Crust code-word for Pakistanis and other Asian Muslims. But it wouldn’t be Politically Correct to say so.

It would also be interesting to cross-reference these ‘non-EU immigrants’ against the crime statistics. But of course no newspaper in Britain, much less the BBC, would dare to do so; in the UK you can go to jail for that sort of ‘hate crime’.