Some of what I see are still on the Kid's side of the tally. What You See vs. What Your Kids See [7 Pics] | Bit Rebels

What You See vs. What Your Kids See

Article By Diana Adams March 30, 2011

According to a study on New Science by Dr. Jim Stone at the University of Sheffield, UK, children really do see things differently. Apparently children do not see objects in a fully grown-up way until they are about 13 years old. There are many things that are learned about how we interpret what we see visually. You can read more about this study on New Scientist.

Jeff Wysaski knows all about how kids view things differently than adults. His adult vs. kid comparisons on pleated-jeans really made me laugh. It’s amazing how seeing pictures like this can bring back so many memories. If you would like to see the whole collection, go to What We See vs. What Kids See. Suddenly I have the urge to go jump on the bed.

[Go to the above link]

Time to Unmask Muhammad

Time to Unmask Muhammad | FrontPage Magazine

Editor’s note: Below is an English translation of an op-ed piece that Geert Wilders published in the Dutch magazine “HP/De Tijd” on March 30, 2011.

To know why Islam is a mortal danger one must not only consider the Koran but also the character of Muhammad, who conceived the Koran and the entirety of Islam.

The Koran is not just a book. Muslims believe that Allah himself wrote it and that it was dictated to Muhammad in the original version, the Umm al-Kitab, which is kept on a table in heaven. Consequently one cannot argue with the contents. Who would dare to disagree with what Allah himself has written? This explains much of Muhammadan behaviour, from the violence of jihad to the hatred and persecution of Jews, Christians and other non-Muslims and apostates. What we in the West regard as abnormal, is perfectly normal for Islam.

A second insuperable problem with Islam is the figure of Muhammad. He is not just anyone. He is al-insan al-kamil, the perfect man. To become a Muslim one must pronounce the Shahada (the Muslim creed). By pronouncing the Shahada one testifies that there is no god that can be worshipped except Allah, and one testifies that Muhammad is his servant and messenger.

The Koran, and hence Allah, lays down that Muhammad’s life must be imitated. The consequences of this are horrendous and can be witnessed on a daily basis.

[Read the full article at the above link.]

No matter how hard the BATFE tried to sell thousands of arms to Mexico, U.S. admits that Mexican cartels get military weaponry from Central America

The PJ Tatler » U.S. admits that Mexican cartels get military weaponry from Central America

Here’s a breaking story that’s only reported by Central American media and Fox.

The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico’s drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.

Inventory includes grenades and rocket launchers, necessary items for beating the Mexican army.

This corroborates an LA Times report from early 2009, which catalogued “hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets…”

The U.S. still blames American gun owners, by asserting that American guns “fuel” Mexico’s drug war. Even President Obama asserts: “More than 90 percent of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the United States.”

In statistics, “sampling error” essentially means that a small subset isn’t representative of the entire group.

In 2008, Mexico confiscated 30,000 firearms from drug cartels. Out of this, they selected 24% (7,200) to send to the U.S. for tracing. Of these, the ATF was able to trace 4,000. Of the 4,000, 3,480 (87%) were American.

Actually, 90% of all cartel guns are not American. (For more, read here.)

Why would cartels spend over $1,000–plus a background check and smuggling risks–for a decent American semi-automatic rifle, when they can buy 4-5 fully automatic AK-47s for the same price on the black market?

Posted at 11:12 am on March 30th, 2011

Born out of the Unions of Retired Teachers - Those who can't, take from all of us! The American Association for Retiree Plunder

The American Spectator : The American Association for Retiree Plunder

By David Catron on 3.30.11 @ 6:09AM

For those of us who toil in the vineyards of health care finance it has long been obvious that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is, for all intents and purposes, an insurance company disguised as an advocacy group. Thus, it was something of surprise when AARP announced its support for ObamaCare in the fall of 2009. Why would a financial conglomerate so dependent on insurance-related revenue endorse a bill that promised to wreck the health insurance industry? Then, the penny dropped. One of the ways the Democrats proposed to "pay" for their health care law was by cutting the Medicare Advantage (MA) program by $200 billion. This would inevitably drive many carriers out of the MA market and herd millions of seniors back to the more expensive coverage of traditional Medicare. ...

But what Americans don't know is… that the AARP brand dominates the private Medicare insurance market." As Rep. Boustany phrased it, "In light of AARP's dependence on its income from insurance products, there is good reason to question whether AARP is primarily looking out for seniors or just its own bottom line."

Indeed there is. Only about 20% of its $1.3 billion in annual revenue comes from membership dues. In other words, AARP earns nearly $1 billion per year by endorsing various products and services sold to its members. More than 65% of that tsunami of cash arrives in the coffers of this "seniors' lobby" in the form ofroyalty payments "for lending its name to policies sold to its members by private insurers." Thus, it seems reasonable for the members of the Ways and Means Committee to ascertain how AARP's financial interests affect its ostensible mission of "enhancing seniors' quality of life." Curiously, when Charlie Rangel (D-NY) was the Chairman of the committee, neither he nor his fellow Democrats showed any interest in such apparent conflicts of interest.

In fact, when they held the majority in the House, the Democrats were so sanguine about AARP's motives that they awarded the organization a huge grant in their infamous "porkulus" legislation. AARPreceived"an $18 million grant in the economic stimulus package for a job training program that has not created any jobs." More to the point, the Democrats granted AARP a long list of special dispensations from the most onerous features of ObamaCare. As Chris Jacobs of the Republican Policy Committee has noted, AARP received exemptions from the prohibition on pre-existing condition exclusions and the $500,000 cap on executive compensation for insurance industry executives. ...

[Read the full article at above link.]

The president accepted a transparency award in a closed, undisclosed meeting. Not a secret anymore

POLITICO 44: Not a secret anymore

President Obama finally and quietly accepted his “transparency” award from the open government community this week — in a closed, undisclosed meeting at the White House on Monday.
The secret presentation happened almost two weeks after the White House inexplicably postponed the ceremony, which was expected to be open to the press pool.
This time, Obama met quietly in the Oval Office with Gary Bass of OMB Watch, Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, Danielle Brian of the Project on Government Oversight, Lucy Dalglish of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Patrice McDermott of OpenTheGovernment.org, without disclosing the meeting on his public schedule or letting photographers or print reporters into the room.

[Read more at above link.]

CHEVY VOLT: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

CHEVY VOLT: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors – Forbes.com « Snow Report Blog

[full short blog] MARCH 17, 2011

tags: Atlas Shrugged, New, Obama, Obama Motors, Politics

by MB Snow

Chevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

Patrick Michaels, 03.16.11, 06:00 PM EDT

Who is going to buy all these cars?

The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.

This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.

At least that’s what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that the internal combustion engine in the machine only served as a generator, kicking in when the overnight-charged lithium-ion batteries began to run down. GM has continually revised downward its estimates of how far the machine would go before the gas engine fired, and now says 25 to 50 miles.

It turns out that the premium-fuel fired engine does drive the wheels–when the battery is very low or when the vehicle is at most freeway speeds. So the Volt really isn’t a pure electric car after all. I’m sure that the people who designed the car knew how it ran, and so did their managers.

Why then the need to keep this so quiet? It’s doubtful that GM would have gotten such a subsidy if it had been revealed that the car would do much of its freeway cruising with a gas engine powering the wheels. While the Volt is more complicated than the Prius, and has a longer battery-only range, a hybrid is a hybrid, and the Prius no longer qualifies for a tax credit.

via Chevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors – Forbes.com.

Naming a low performance car after a brilliant scientist doesn't make it overcome it's shortcomings. The episode was fair as I saw it. ♘

Tesla Sues ‘Top Gear’ for Libel - Hannah Elliott - De Luxe - Forbes

Tesla Sues ‘Top Gear’ for Libel

Mar. 30 2011 Hannah Elliott

[Excerpts, read the article a above link.]

Tesla Motors has filed a claim suing the BBC television program “Top Gear” for libel and malicious falsehood.

The Silicon Valley, Calif.-based automotive company says in the claim that the Top Gear review of its Tesla Roadster “contained lies and misinformation about the Roadster’s performance, behaviour and reliability.” Tesla says it is taking legal action after attempts to contact the BBC went ignored....

Top Gear has denied* any wrongdoing and plans to “vigorously” defend the claim.

Here is the gist of the claim, taken from Tesla documentation:

In the episode, Tesla Roadsters are depicted as suffering several critical “breakdowns” during track driving. Host Jeremy Clarkson concludes the episode by saying that the Roadster doesn’t work.

Specifically, Top Gear misrepresented that:

1.The Roadster ran out of charge and had to be pushed into the Top Gear hangar by 4 men.
2.The Roadster’s true range is only 55 miles per charge (not 211).
3.One Roadster’s motor overheated and was completely immobilized as a result.
4.The other Roadster’s brakes were broken, rendering the car undriveable.
5.That neither of the two Roadsters provided to Top Gear was available for test driving due to these problems.

The breakdowns were staged and the statements are untrue. Yet the programme’s lies are repeatedly and consistently re-broadcast to hundreds of millions of viewers worldwide on BBC television and web sites, and on other TV channels via syndication; the show is available on the internet, and is for sale on Top Gear DVD’s around the world.

Word so far is that Tesla is asking in the suit for Top Gear to stop rebroadcasting the episode and to change its review.

Follow me on Twitter: @HannahElliott

*BBC denies rigging Top Gear Tesla Roadster car race

March 30, 2011

The BBC is being sued by the makers of the electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, over claims a race on Top Gear was rigged.

Tesla Motors claims the test set up by Jeremy Clarkson on a 2008 edition of the show was rigged to make it look like the Tesla ran out of power when racing a petrol powered Lotus.

The Tesla Roadster is the world's fastest production electric car.

A Top Gear spokesman said the BBC would be "vigorously defending" the claim.

On the programme Jeremy Clarkson claimed: "Although Tesla say it'll do 200 miles, we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles."

'Driven aggressively'

But in a statement on its website, Tesla said the Roadster's miles per charge had been certified at 211 miles by a third party European Union (EU) test.

It argued that because the car was "driven aggressively" on Top Gear the charge didn't last as long, but that if driven "mindfully" charges could last for 313 miles.

The statement also disagreed with several other elements of the show.

A Top Gear spokeswoman said: "We can confirm that we have received notification that Tesla have issued proceedings against the BBC.

"The BBC stands by the programme and will be vigorously defending this claim."

Did Tesla say "driven mindfully," or did they mean 'minimally.'

Good Primer on the FAQ About Japan's Nuclear Power Plant Crisis : TreeHugger

Mini-FAQ About Japan's Nuclear Power Plant Crisis : TreeHugger

by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada on 03.14.11

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Photo: GFDL

Latest Update: Japan's Nuclear Crisis: 2 Weeks After the Mega-Quake & Tsunami(March 25, 2011)

How Bad is Japan's Nuclear Problem?
There is a lot that is being said and written about Japan's earthquake-damaged nuclear power plants right now. Sadly, unless there's a big catastrophe, few people care to learn about nuclear power, so when things go wrong, people aren't sure what is going on and this can lead to panic. I'm no nuclear expert myself, but in this post I will share what I've learned about this situation and answer the most pressing questions that people might have ("Can it blow up? Is it another Chernobyl") to the best of my knowledge.

The bottom image shows an explosion that was probably caused by the venting of gases to reduce pressure. At high temperature, water splits into hydrogen and oxygen, so it can cause these types of explosions. Photo: Wikipedia

Can Japan's nuclear power plants explode like a nuclear bomb?

Thankfully, it is physically impossible for a nuclear power plant to explode like a nuclear bomb. It simply doesn't have the right kinds of materials: A fission bomb uses highly enriched uranium or plutonium (90%+ of U-235 or Pu-239), while a nuclear power station generally uses Uranium that is only enriched to around 5% (sometimes up to 20% in smaller research reactors). A nuclear power station also lacks all the other mechanisms that are necessary to create a nuclear explosion (like for example the implosion or gun-type assembly configurations that allow supercritical mass to be reached).

What is a 'meltdown'?

When you get right down to it, a nuclear power plant is very sophisticated way to boil water. Controlled fission in the core generates heat, which creates steam that spins turbines.

When a big earthquake hits, nuclear power plants are programmed to automatically shut down. But even after the fission reaction in the core is stopped, it takes a certain time for the radioactive byproducts to decay and cool down. If something - in this case a huge earthquake and tsunami double hit - prevents the cooling system from pumping water to the core and the emergency cooling system is prevented from kicking in, it can get hot enough to melt. In the very worst cases, part of the containment building, which envelops the reactor vessel which itself contains the fuel rods (it's like a russian doll of buildings), can partially melt, but containment buildings are designed to withstand the high pressures and high temperatures that occur in a meltdown, so in principle they should hold and allow the fuel rods to cool down safely over the next days.

Is a repeat of what happened at Chernobyl likely?

It appears extremely unlikely because the Japanese nuclear power plants, as well as all nuclear power plants now in operation around the world, are designed very differently from the plant that exploded in Ukraine in 1986. The crucial difference is that the soviet reactor was not inside any kind of hard containment vessel. This means that when it failed, the high pressure couldn't be contained, which caused steam explosions that destroyed the reactor building and caused fires that sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. Chernobyl didn't explode like a nuclear bomb, it was closer to a "dirty bomb", which is a conventional bomb that spreads radioactive material around. The Japanese nukes have containment buildings and some seem to already have been vented to reduce the pressure inside.

What kind of radiation exposure can be expected, and what are the potential health effects?

Matt just did a post about this very thing, so I suggest you go check it out. The good news is that potential exposure seems extremely low even for people who are close and likely to remain so.

See also: Timeline of the Fukushima nuclear accidents

If you like this article, you can follow me on Twitter (@Michael_GR) and Stumbleupon (THMike). Thanks.

More on Japan's Nuclear Power Plants
Important Questions About the Crisis at Japanese Nuclear Power Plants
How Much Radiation Exposure Do You Normally Get Every Year?
Nuclear Reactions To Japan's Crisis From Around The World
Nuclear Threat Worsens as Japan Response to Earthquake and Tsunami Damage Continues
Nuclear Blast From The Past: Tectonics of Science, Politics, War & Climate Change

No Longer "Forlorn Hope" Near-record Sierra snow good news to parched Calif

Donner Party Memorial

The height of the top of the stone is about 28 feet, which was the height of the snow the winter The Donner Party camped at Donner Lake.

The News Tribune (Lite) - Near-record Sierra snow good news to parched Calif

Absurdly deep is how Sierra residents and travelers might describe this season's snowfall, which is setting records at some ski resorts and nearing records at official gauging stations.

The last round of storms that blew across much of the 400-mile-long range during the weekend added several feet to what has become a snowpack of historic proportions, and one that promises an end to California's lingering drought.

After state water officials release the results of their latest snow survey Wednesday afternoon, Gov. Jerry Brown is expected to officially declare the drought over, said Evan Westrup, a spokesman for the governor's office. Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide drought in June 2008 and a state of emergency because of low water levels in February 2009.

The accumulations are measured two ways: current snow on the ground and accumulated snow for the season, which began with the first storms last fall.

More than 61 feet of snow has fallen in the Sierra high country so far this season, second only to the 1950-51 season when a total of 65 feet fell, according to records kept by the California Department of Transportation. While spring has arrived, the Sierra typically gets some snow in April, bringing the prospect of an all-time record.

Seasonal snow accumulation records already have been set at some ski resorts, including Squaw Valley USA near the north shore of Lake Tahoe, Heavenly Mountain Resort on the lake's south side and Mammoth Mountain, the sprawling Eastern Sierra resort that attracts Southern California skiers and snowboarders.

At Squaw Valley, home of the 1960 Winter Olympics, ski patrol guides had to create tunnels just to reach their warming huts and avalanches broke out windows at two lift stations, said Wes Schimmelpfenning, 68, who has been a patrolman there for 48 years. Nearly 59 feet of snow has fallen there so far this winter, beating the old record by 29 inches. ...

...Old railroad records dating to 1879 put the deepest accumulation near Donner Summit at 66 feet in 1938. The most snow on the ground at any one time was 31 feet, in both 1880 and 1890.

Read more:http://www.thenewstribune.com/2011/03/30/v-lite/1605041/near-record-sierra-snow-good-news.html#ixzz1I6XjhHfu

Political Perversity does not end with the vote. Bench Brawl in Wisconsin

Such lovely, tidy farms and sick, disgusting minds. ♘

Bench Brawl in Wisconsin - The Editors - National Review Online

The Left long ago stopped pretending that court proceedings were anything other than exercises in raw-power politics, and so they’ve taken their fight against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker to the state supreme court — not in the form of a lawsuit, but in the form of a multimillion-dollar intervention into an election to a ten-year term on the court.

Wisconsin supreme court justice David Prosser went to bed one night a respected former prosecutor, and woke up the next morning the target of a $3 million union-run smear campaign, falsely accused of being an enabler of pedophiles.

[Read the full editorial at the above link.]

Black Rapist Denied Jury of Black Rapists

VDARE.com: Blog Articles » Black Rapist Denied Jury of Black Rapists

Black Rapist Denied Jury of Black Rapists

Posted By Anonymous Attorney On 28 March 2011

The Supreme Court has just “benchslapped” the notoriously nutty Ninth Circuit for voiding the conviction of a black rapist who whined that the jury contained but a single African-American.

Fueling the rapist’s challenge was the Batson v. Kentucky case, which, as I’ve written before, makes zero sense. Its holding is basically that a potential juror in a criminal case cannot be excluded solely for racial reasons, a rule admittedly based more on a “racial dignity” rationale than a Constitutional right.

Because ultimately, the prosecutor wants blacks struck for the same reason the defense lawyer wants them on. Both assume that the they’ll acquit the black defendant. Both are unabashedly engaging in the exact same racial generalization: a black juror is more likely to sympathize with a black defendant, suspect the police of being racist, etc. So it’s no more “racist” for the prosecutor to get his way than for the defense attorney to get his.

But of course, in America, “racist” isn’t so much defined as the making of racial generalizations, it’s defined as those racial generalizations that hurt blacks. Or other current minorities. Blacks, in other words, are arguing not that they’ve got the right to a “fair” jury, but one that will vote their way.

In a country where the black Attorney General speaks of “my people” – and does not mean “the American people” — it’s not unexpected racial partisanship.

Obama on Non-Criminal Illegal Aliens: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’ (in Voting for Me illegally!)

Obama on Non-Criminal Illegal Aliens: We Don’t Want to Deport Them; 'We Want Them To Succeed’ | CNSnews.com

Well Funded by the "Non-Taxed" Crony-Liberal Ultra-Rich - Media Matters boot camp readies liberal policy wonks for the camera’s close-up

Media Matters boot camp readies liberal policy wonks for the camera’s close-up - The Washington Post

[Excerpt, read the artcle at the above link.]

By Jason Horowitz, Tuesday, March 22, 8:15 PM

“I’m here to be intensely trained,” Lee Brenner announced as he came through the door of a discreet building near Dupont Circle.

The brick carriage house is usually the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America, but for a few days in the middle of March, the left-wing organization Media Matters for America converted it into a partisan boot camp where rebel forces were trained for combat on Fox News. Over four grueling days, Harvard-honed instructors drilled a dozen softie policy wonks, molding them into an elite unit of smiling, succinct and well-coiffed talking heads.

Since its inception in August 2009, the Progressive Talent Initiative, or PTI, has trained nearly 100 pundits who have appeared 800 times on television and radio. Media Matters uses that metric to pitch donors for more contributions, but its leadership believes that the surge of camera-ready liberals has recaptured lost ground in the media wars against conservatives.

“There was a chronic imbalance,” said David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, which picks up the entire cost of the course. “We didn’t just want to accept that this is the way it is.” Brock is a former conservative writer at the American Spectator who was instrumental in efforts to discredit Anita Hill and to oust Bill Clinton, and who made a sharp left turn a decade ago.

The primary mission of Media Matters, he said, is to obsessively monitor Fox News and call attention to its distortions. But now it’s moving into the operational phase, transforming from observers to shock troops. The organization, he said, had to “professionalize the training and booking” of a left-leaning counterpoise.

Media Matters selected the coterie of attractive, articulate participants from 100 applicants, the largest pool so far. All in mid-career, the class included liberal think tank directors, former Capitol Hill staffers and presidential campaign aides, a pollster, a university professor, a combat veteran and contestants from both “American Idol” and “The Apprentice.”

Brenner, a former producer of CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer” and political director at MySpace, had recently founded a digital communications firm called FastFWD Group and an online magazine called HyperVocal.com.

To observe the training, The Post agreed to withhold the names of participants who asked not to be identified, which many of them did when instructors warned that a public alliance with Media Matters could jeopardize their chances of getting booked on Fox. Since Brenner said he had already criticized Fox on the record, he for one was willing to risk alienating “On the Record With Greta Van Susteren.”

[Full artcle at the above link.]

Speaking Softly and Carrying a Big Stick! In the Reagan Mold: 10 Conservative Men in Hollywood

I wonder if they all started out thinking they were 'Liberals' who turned into liberals? ♘

NewsReal Blog » In the Reagan Mold: 10 Conservative Men in Hollywood

A re-post from last year, Posted By Walter Hudson On September 9, 2010

Hollywood has a well deserved reputation for so-called liberalism. As frustrating as it may be for mainstream America to cope with an entertainment industry which is often fundamentally opposed to its traditions and values, it is not difficult to understand why leftist thought is so attractive to entertainers.

Several years ago, my family celebrated a special occasion by taking a Caribbean cruise. Over the course of the five day journey, I noted a revealing change among my fellow passengers. On the first day, travelers accepted the royal treatment with grace and gratitude. It didn’t take long, however, for people to get used to having their way. As the trip wound down to the last couple of nights, what had earlier been gracious acceptance among the passengers turned into impatient demanding. The threshold for satisfaction had risen significantly.

If such a shift in expectation and deposition can take place over a five day cruise, imagine the effect of months and years of adulation, priming, primping, and accommodation. That is the experience of not just celebrities, but many producers and executives behind the scenes inHollywood. It is therefore little wonder why they tend toward elitism. When you come to believe you have greater intrinsic worth than those around you, it’s a small step from there toward the statist characteristic of the Left.

That said, it is remarkable when folks retain their humility and manifest conservatism in spite of the star treatment. We here recognize such exceptions to the Hollywood rule, successful stars who break from the leftist ranks to stand up for tradition and individuality.

Go to the above link to se the list and comments.

This is what is meant by "Gun Control" by the administration!? The Scandal of ‘Gun-Walking’

The Scandal of ‘Gun-Walking’ - Jim Geraghty & Cam Edwards - National Review Online

March 28, 2011 [Excerpts, full article is a above link.]

Why did the Justice Department allow Mexican cartels to purchase 2,500 U.S.-made guns?

Why did the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives stand by and watch as guns were transported across our southern border to Mexico, to be used by violent drug cartels?

The phenomenon of “gunwalking” appears to be a standard sting-operation tactic that in this case has gone wildly awry. The idea was that federal authorities would approve firearms purchases that seemed suspicious, and then monitor the buyers to see where the guns ended up. But the scale of the purchases was massive, and the agents on the ground kept anxiously waiting for the order to stop monitoring and intervene, according to stunning accounts from ATF agents and documentation uncovered by CBS News and other sources. As early asMarch 2010, ATF agents were finding the “monitored” firearms in the hands of suspected criminals in Mexico. One ATF e-mail reported,“Our subjects purchased 359 firearms during March alone,” including “numerous Barrett .50 caliber rifles.” ......

According to the dozen ATF agents who have come forward as whistleblowers, the concept was not the half-baked idea of a rogue manager. Reported CBS: ATF Agent John Dodson and other sources say the gun walking strategy was approved all the way up to the Justice Department. The idea was to see where the guns ended up, build a big case and take down a cartel. And it was all kept secret from Mexico. ATF named the case “Fast and Furious.” Last Wednesday, President Obama said that neither he nor Attorney General Eric Holder approved the operation. But who within the Justice Department did authorize the dangerous operation? And who decided to ignore the judgment of the agents in the field? An e-mail from a group supervisor told ATF agents who were upset about the operation’s risks, “Whether you care or not, people of rank and authority at HQ are paying attention to this case and they also believe we are doing what they envisioned the Southwest Border Groups doing.” Even the gun shops themselves were wary of selling the firearms; the purchasers were paying with cash out of paper bags. But the sellers were assured by the ATF that they should go forward with the transactions. One of the purchases was for 575 semiautomatic rifles for “personal use.” One agent estimates the total number of guns purchased by suspicious buyers under ATF monitoring at 2,500; other officials put the number closer to 2,000. Nearly 800 were recovered “as a result of criminal activity on both sides of the border.” Worst of all, the guns that the ATF agents were ordered to let slip into Mexico were not merely used in cartel violence in Mexico, but were used against American citizens and law enforcement. CBS News noted: On Dec. 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terrywas gunned down. Dodson got the bad news from a colleague. According to Dodson, “They said, ‘Did you hear about the border patrol agent?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ And they said ‘Well it was one of the Fast and Furious guns.’ There’s not really much you can say after that.” Two assault rifles ATF had let go nearly a year before were found at Terry’s murder. Only after Terry’s death did the ATF round up and charge 34 individuals believed to be involved with moving the guns across the border. "Gun Walking", is that like BS Walks? The revelations are a new wrinkle in the strange record of the Obama administration when it comes to guns. President Obama’s record in the Illinois state senate and the U.S. Senate demonstrates a hostility to the Second Amendment. He is accurately characterized as an anti-gun president, who selected an anti-gun vice president, an anti-gun secretary of state, and an anti-gun attorney general. Shortly after he was confirmed, Attorney General Eric Holder stated that the Obama administration would seek to reinstate the assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004. But that proposal spurred quick and vehement opposition from 65 pro-gun House Democrats, making passage of a new ban all but impossible. Since then, when President Obama has mentioned the word “guns,” it has usually been in appearances with the Mexican president, talking about the need for “an enforcement strategy that slows the flow of guns into Mexico.” With the president himself talking about the need to stop guns from crossing the border,why would the ATF allow just that to happen? Why would they take such an enormous risk of harming innocent life in both Mexico and the United States, to say nothing of risking exactly the sort of embarrassment and outrage that the current revelations are generating? What made this operation worth overruling the objections of the agents on the ground monitoring the transactions? What we know about the “gun-walking” operation is already deeply troubling; nothing less than a full investigation to the satisfaction of the whistleblowers, Grassley, and Issa will suffice. The facts at present point to a dangerous and extraordinarily risky operation executed without the knowledge or consent of the top officials in our government, accurate claims initially falsely denied, and whisteblowers dismissed and ignored by the official watchdogs. — Jim Geraghty writes the Campaign Spot on NRO. Cam Edwards hosts NRANews’s Cam & Company on Sirius XM from 9 p.m. to midnight weeknights.

LA Sheriff who testified before Congress has ties to terror-linked CAIR - where he has fundraisers!

Baca has a dog in this hunt!

LA Sheriff who testified before Congress has ties to terror-linked CAIR « Creeping Sharia

Posted on March 28, 2011 by creeping

via Jim Kouri at NWV New:

The only law enforcement official called to testify at the controversial congressional hearing on Muslim radicalization on March 17 is allegedly “tight” with an Islamic group that raised money for Hamas and was a co-conspirator in a federal terror-finance trial, according to a public-interest legal organization that investigates and prosecutes public corruption.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca advocated on behalf of Muslims at the highly-publicized hearing, conducted before Congress Peter King (R-NY) and the House Committee on Homeland Security, which he now chairs.

Baca testimony was not surprising, since being elected to run the nation’s largest sheriff’s department, he regularly attends fundraisers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to meet the goals of his agency’s Muslim Community Affairs Division.

First elected in 1999, Baca joined forces with CAIR to stay on “positive terms” with the Muslim community after the 9/11 attacks. Nevermind that the group was founded in 1994 by three Middle Eastern extremists — Omar Ahmad, Nihad Awad and Rafeeq Jaber — who ran the American propaganda wing of Hamas known then as the Islamic Association for Palestine.

[continues at above link]