The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

If a Republican did this, it would be broadcast as evidence of how the filthy plutocrats were out of touch with the common man....

...but since it is Democrat and the faves of a fawning media were being feted...no big deal.

There was a party in the East Room of the White House Saturday night, an affair attended by a reported 500 people, a lavish celebration with celebrities galore, appearances by some of the world's most popular performers, lots of dancing and powerful government officials, including, of course, the most powerful official of all, the President of the United States. And the White House wants to make sure you know as little as possible about it.

The event was First Lady Michelle Obama's 50th birthday party. According to reports in People,the Chicago Tribune, TMZ, US Magazine, and elsewhere, among of the attendees were, in no particular order: Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, James Taylor, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight, Janelle Monae, Mary J. Blige, Angela Bassett, Courtney Vance, Herbie Hancock, Samuel L. Jackson, Grant Hill, Alonzo Mourning, Ledisi, Emmett Smith, Star Jones, Al Roker, Steve Harvey, Magic Johnson, Billie Jean King, Michael Jordan, Angela Bassett, Jennifer Hudson, Gayle King, Ahmad Rashad, Kal Penn, and Ashley Judd. Among the current and former government officials attending were Joe Biden, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Susan Rice, Eric Holder, and Kathleen Sebelius.

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It's not easy to enforce discipline on successful, wealthy, and famous people used to having their own way. But the White House apparently did not want to see photos of the first lady's glittery gala circulating around the Internet. So it imposed a strict rule: No cellphones. "Guests were told not to bring cellphones with them, and there was a cellphone check-in area for those who did," reported the Chicago Tribune. "Signs at the party told guests: No cellphones, no social media." People magazine added: "Guests had been greeted by a 'cell phone check' table where they deposited their camera phones on arrival and it was understood that this was not an occasion for Tweeting party photos or Facebooking details." The publications cited sources who insisted on anonymity for fear of White House reprisal.

"So great was the secrecy surrounding the party," the Tribune reported, "that guests were handed an invitation — on their way out, the sources said."

So far, the crackdown appears to have been a success. Although a few attendees have tweeted that they had a great time, or that they danced until their feet could take no more, the Web has not been filled with photos of the first lady's extravagant celebration. Perhaps some will appear; maybe the White House will even release an official photo. But it's unlikely the public will see much.

Why the secrecy, especially for an event involving so many well-known people? Maybe the Obamas just wanted a little privacy for an important occasion in the first lady's life, although having 500 guests, including some of the most famous people on the planet, is perhaps not the best way to achieve that goal. Or maybe, since the president has announced he is devoting the rest of his time in office to an "inequality agenda," the White House felt photos of a champagne-soaked, star-studded party would be somewhat off-message. But the Obamas are well-off, accomplished people. They can have a big party if they want (and if they pay for it). Why hide it?

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news....

...for at least after re-election when it's too late.

Rush Limbaugh

//So the Washington Post today has a very long story -- for them, by their standards.  I mean, it's thousands of words.  So let me nutshell it for you.  Let me sum it up for you.  The Washington Post, through diligent journalistic efforts (otherwise known as hard work) has uncovered evidence that the White House knew about the Secret Service's prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia.

Now, this happened back in 2011.  The White House knew about this, despite the White House claims to the contrary at the time.  Old Jay Carney, the spokeskid, clearly went out there and told a whopper about it. (shuffling papers) I'm looking at the sound bite roster.  I thought we had it.  It doesn't matter.  Everybody remembers Jay Carney went out and totally denied it at the White House.  They were as shocked by it as anybody else.

It turns out they knew. //

Washington Post: A"ides knew of possible White House link to Cartagena, Colombia, prostitution scandal."

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is no bad news...

...and the media makes sure that there is no bad news by not being interested in whether attacks on Americans were caused by a failure of the Democrat White House. [Jake Tapper being the exception.]

This is a pretty remarkable piece of video, as is this, but the transcript provided at Tapper's Political Punch fills in the blanks.

Two points: The first is how careful Carney's language is when discussing the news that the White House might have been warned about the embassy attacks in advance. Notice how Carney keeps his answer in the realm of "actionable intelligence" and intelligence that could "prevent" theattacks. He doesn't say there was "no" warning or "no" intelligence. And as we already know, there were threats from al-Qaeda against Americans in Libya just a day or two before we lost four Americans.

You have to watch the videos linked above again, especially the second, to understand my second point. Tapper did his best to grill Carney and pin him down, but he was on his own. Look at the other White House correspondents in that room. Not a single one has any energy and certainly no desire to get to the bottom of the only question that should matter today: Were the murders of these four Americans preventable?

Other than Tapper, no one wants the answer and they're not even willing to make news in pushing for an answer.

Might hurt Obama.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as the fact that the Noble Peace Prize Winner has sued more "whistle-blowers" than all other administrations in American history.

Glen Greenwald writes:

The always-tenacious Jake Tapper (see this superb grilling of White House spokesman Jay Carney about the Awlaki assassination) sat in the White House briefing room today. He watched as Carney praised the heroism of two reporters killed this morning in Syria and then waxed poetic on the Vital Importance of Journalism. That led Tapper to want to know how the White House can reconcile its claimed reverence for journalism with its unprecedented war on whistleblowers, and began his inquiry with this question:

TAPPER: The White House keeps praising these journalists who are — who’ve been killed –

CARNEY: I don’t know about “keep” — I think -

TAPPER: You’ve done it, Vice President Biden did it in a statement. How does that square with the fact that this administration has been so aggressively trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistleblowers to court?

You’re — currently I think that you’ve invoked it the sixth time, and before the Obama administration, it had only been used three times in history. You’re — this is the sixth time — you’re suing a CIA officer for allegedly providing information in 2009 about CIA torture. Certainly that’s something that’s in the public interest of the United States. The administration is taking this person to court. There just seems to be disconnect here. You want aggressive journalism abroad; you just don’t want it in the United States.

That question is unanswerable, but see the transcript here as Carney struggles to provide a response while Tapper repeatedly insists on an actual answer.

What the hey?

I thought that kind of thing only happened under Evil Republicans.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

Americans are still dropping out of the work force at a record pace:

The jobs report showed the unemployment rate dropping a bit, to 7.6 percent. But the number of jobs created — 88,000 — was far less than expected, and a big reason the unemployment rate fell is because nearly half a million people dropped out of the workforce.

The media is obligingly carrying the Democrats' water by pointing at the sequester, which allows them to ignore the factor that is more important since it kicked in with the first paycheck in the New Year, namely the  increase in payroll taxes. 

Also in the "The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news" file, Walter Russell Mead writes:

We are, however, thrilled that we don’t have a Republican in the White House, because if we did, the press would be incessantly yammering about this bad news until we were all sick of it. As it is, they are likely to say as little as possible about what appears to be a massive failure of economic policy and go back to covering the really important issues, like gay marriage.

If a Republican president got very busy on social issues at a time of economic stagnation and disappointment, there would be earnest hand-wringing of the “What’s Wrong with Kansas” variety about how American rubes were being diverted from their true economic interests by the skillful manipulation of emotionally charged social issues and identity politics. This would be taken as a sign of the cynicism of the ruling party and the clueless credulity of the hypnotized voters.

Fortunately, we aren’t going to have to listen to any of that depressing rhetoric now. Social issues are good and important; economic questions like jobs and incomes and growth are a distraction from the real business of the people.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

Atlantic magazine opines that Obama POW trade "weakens the rule of law."

What's alarming is the unlawful way that the Obama administration carried out the swap. The law requires 30 days' notice to Congress before a Gitmo detainee is transferred or released. The White House has now brazenly flouted that requirement. And the precedent being set by Team Obama is problematic in the same ways as the executive-branch power grabs that happened during the Bush Administration. In fact, Senator Obama was a critic of the logic he has now shamelessly adopted. He decried signing statements, for example, but cites a signing statement of his own as if it is a defense against violating the plain text of what he signed.

The illegality of the Obama Administration's actions is underscored by the way their story keeps changing. The White House began by hinting that the 30-day notification requirement is unconstitutional. But it is unwilling to press that claim. Its current position is that Congress didn't intend the law to say what it says.

It must be dawning on the media that in two years there could be a Republican in the White House and they need some credibility to go on the attack again.

After all, what's different about this time and the re-writing of Obamacare or Immigration Law or using the IRS to attack political enemies or stonewalling the release of information on Benghazi?

The nice thing about having a Democrat inthe White House is that there is never any bad news...

...like scandals involving the "loss" of 2 years of Lois Lerner's emails.

//Writing yesterday about the IRS’s amazing loss of more than two years of Lois Lerner’s emails (“Where’d they go? They were here just a minute ago!”), I wondered in passing how the Extended White House Public Relations Office, e.g., the New York Times, MSNBC, et al. would handle the news. The Nixon White House, you’ll recall, found quite a lot of the morning’s scrambled on its collective countenance when 18 and 1/2 minutes of audio tape somehow—somehow!—went missing as the Watergate scandal unfolded around the president. 

What a godsend to the guardians of our “Right to Know” Watergate was! Day after day, week after week, month after month, the front pages and editorial pages of our former Paper of Record were full of stern admonitions about that egregious abuse of executive power. You could not look at the paper without a synesthetic shudder: Reading it, you could almost hear them licking their chops as their prey—the dastardly Richard Nixon—came ever closer to his doom.

So how does the New York Times handle this extraordinary loss of two years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails?  (“Really, they were here just a minute ago. We were just about to hand them over to Congress when, gosh darn, they just vanished.  Damndest thing.”)

This will amaze you, I know, but it is true: the New York Times  today devotes zero words to the story. Take a look at the front page here:  Nothing. There are a couple of articles about Iraq’s descent into chaos—Iraq, the country whose transformation Joe Biden, in 2010, called one of the “greatest achievements” of the Obama administration. “I’ve been there 17 times now,” the vice president told Larry King.  “I know every one of the major players in all of the segments of that society. It’s impressed me. I’ve been impressed how they have been deciding to use the political process rather than guns to settle their differences.” But I digress . . .

What else do we have on the front page?  Warnings about a connection between obesity and liver disease. Something about the tea party in the aftermath of David Brat’s upset victory in Virginia and a story about restauranteurs upset by apps bypassing maitre d’s in securing good tables at posh eateries. The public has a right to know these things. There is also advance word about a coming article about the entertainer “Beyoncé the Boundless” (they teach alliteration in J school), the soccer games in Brazil, and sundry other topics.

What about the missing emails?  Nary a word on the front page. Or the next page. Or the next or the next.  The editorial page has a stern piece about “The Soros Cycle of Endless Cash”—oh, wait, no, it’s not about the left-wing billionaire George Soros. My mistake. What he does with his money is his business. It’s about—can you guess?—yes! The Koch brothers, the men the Times just loves to hate. But about the missing emails in one of the most disgusting political scandals in recent times, the deployment of the IRS with its virtually unlimited powers, against political opponents of the administration? Nothing. Nada. Rien.//

If we believe that they are not crooks, then we should fairly conclude that they are too incompetent to handle foreign policy or health care or the border or the government.

The really nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there never is any bad news.

PJ Tattler points out:

Libyan Rebels Round Up Black Africans


The latest bad news for Obama from Libya where we learned earlier that a leader of the rebels we support is a member of Al Qaeda. Now we learn that the rebels are rounding up Black Africans there. AP says they are being held in makeshift jails , suspected of working for Gaddafi. African leaders have protested this action,

Unlike the Iraq invasion where Congress almost unanimously supported President Bush’ initiative, this military action was begun by Obama entirely on his own initiative. Remember that

because I’d be surprised if the media reminds anyone.

Omelettes, eggs, breakage, etc., but it's fair to point out that if the Democrats were not in the White House there would be protests in front of the White House.

Now that Mitt Romney is as "Likeable" as Obama...

..."likeability" - which was not on the presidental matrix until Obama - is no longer something the press is interested in.

Convenient, eh what?

Jennifer Rubin remarks:

Around the time of the Republican National Convention, the single word on the lips of most of the press corps was “likability.” Mitt Romney did not have it. We have never elected someone with such a negative image. He was a stiff. He was a boring rich guy. Yeah, the economy stinks, but President Obama has “likability.”

Well, the economy still stinks. But the likability gap is gone, although the press is mum about a fundamental shift in the public perception of the GOP nominee. Looking at the RealClearPolitics average, Obama is in positive territory with a favorable to unfavorable split of 50.8 percent to 45.4 percent. Mitt Romney’s numbers are statistically the same. He has a 49.2 percent to 44.4 favorable/unfavorable split.

The Romney image created by the Obama ad bombardment was unlikable, but the actual candidate turned out to be an astonishingly decent person and extremely capable. The clash between the cartoon Romney and the real Romney seems to have jolted the electorate.

As for the media, the intellectual dishonesty should no longer surprise us, but it is disconcerting nevertheless. Romney’s unlikability is not only news but a media obsession. When he solves that issue, mum’s the word.

It is not unlike the Libya phenomenon. When Libya means a Romney gaffe, it is front-page news. When Libya is a shining example of “leading from behind,” it is fair game. But when Libya becomes a story about serial misrepresentations by the Obama administration and a serious security lapse, it takes weeks for the story to migrate back to the front page — in large part due to the reporting by Eli Lake and coverage in conservative media.

Because the nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is no such thing as "bad news."

Rubin, who writes for the Washington Post, notes that the mainstream media has managed to hand alternative media a "niche market" consisting of a majority of Americans:

In each and every instance, the media’s “news judgment” coincided with the White House’s political interests. This is the most egregious aspect of mainstream bias. Mainstream reporters and liberal pundits will ignore inconvenient facts and discard attention-getting topics to fit a liberal agenda. It is one thing when commentators on the left put their fingers in their ears and hum when the Libya fiasco comes along. (Unlike the right, the left tends not to beat up on their own but rather to circle the wagons). But for the “news” to consistently ignore ”bad” news for the left is indefensible.

This is why the conservative media has flourished; it has the news that has been deliberately tossed on the discard pile by the mainstream coverage.

Morons.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news....


....and national disasters are not so disastrous.

Bush was a racist for delaying three days to visit New Orleans, but Obama and Hillary get a pass.

Let's take a trip down memory lane.

//If ever there was a contrast to make around "then-and-now" media coverage of a Republican and Democratic president put in similar situations and their respective reactions to it, this one definitely makes the Top 5.

2005: President George W. Bush's presidency is basically declared over after he waits two days to cut a vacation short to return to the White House to directly engage in relief strategy around hurricane-ravaged Katrina.  On Day 3, he would visit the Gulf Coast to survey the damage.

The headlines at the time and since have included, A compassionate Bush was absent right after Katrina, The 7 worst moments of George W. Bush’s presidency, Kanye West Rips Bush at Telethon, What If They Were White?, Jesse Jackson lashes out at Bush over Katrina response, Katrina thrusts race and poverty onto national stage: Bush and Congress under pressure to act
and An Imperfect Storm - How race shaped Bush's response to Katrina.

So it's clear how the narrative went from "Bush waited three days to visit the Gulf Coast" to "Bush is a racist who would have acted faster if white people were victims of Katrina."

Why? Because Kanye West said so.
Fast forward to August 2016 — several storms hit Louisiana, not just a hurricane — the floodwaters have created the biggest natural disaster to hit the United States since Hurricane Katrina.

At least 13 people are dead, more than 85,000 people have applied for federal disaster aid, 30,000 people needed to be rescued and 40,000 displaced. State officials report it is easily the biggest housing crunch since Sandy.

In Livingston Parish, officials report as many as 75 percent of the 52,000 homes there had been damaged by floodwaters. In Ascension Parish, water had seeped into one of every three homes.

“We’ve been through Hurricane Gustav, Katrina, Isaac and Rita, but this without a doubt is the roughest we’ve ever had in this parish,” said Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard.

A very simple question, if George W. Bush was president right now and playing golf with celebrities in one of the richest zip codes in the country, would the headlines again be everywhere that portray him as insensitive, out-of-touch, even a racist president be the same now as they were 2005? Of course they would.

Instead, President Obama continues his vacation that includes fundraising events for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the relative silence is deafening.//

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

Being deluged by stories about political scandals, unemployment, inflation, the high cost of health care, etc.is depressing and bad for the economy.

RESTON, VA – Yesterday, Judicial Watch released a new batch of IRS documents that showed “extensive pressure on the IRS by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) to shut down conservative leaning organizations.” According to an analysis from the Media Research Center, ABC, CBS, and NBC responded with exactly ZERO seconds of network news coverage. The released documents also revealed the IRS’s handling of the Tea Party applications was directed out of the agency’s DC headquarters, contrary to initial claims that blamed low-level officials in Cincinnati.

In the year since the scandal broke, numerous major developments have gone completely unreported by the Big Three. Examples include:

• On August 2, FoxNews.com reported that House Oversight chairman Darrell Issa had accused acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel of blocking the committee’s investigation. Network coverage: Zero.
• On September 4, CNN’s Drew Griffin reported that documents showed Lerner’s original story blaming low-level employees was a lie. Network coverage: Zero.
• On September 11, 2013 the Wall Street Journal exhibited how Lerner’s own e-mails implied a liberal political agenda at work. Network coverage: Zero.
• On September 18, 2013, a front-page analysis published by USA Today confirmed the targeting of conservatives. ZERO seconds of coverage.
• At the end of March 2014, the New York Times noted that the House committee was still being frustrated by non-cooperation from the IRS. Network coverage: Zero.
• And, an April 7, 2014 staff report by the House Oversight and Government Reform committee thoroughly demolished what remained of the notion that both sides had been targeted. Network coverage: Zero.
• Finally on May 7, 2014, The House of Representatives voted to hold disgraced IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress. Total network coverage? 15 seconds on Good Morning America. Zero on CBS and NBC.

It's a good thing we have a Nobel Prize winner as president instead of that cowboy....

//Putin Lashes Out as Poland Cites Invasion Threat//

That can't be good.

But, hey, it doesn't matter!

Nothing matters as long as we have a Democrat in the White House because ....

...the nice thing about having a Democrat is in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there are no scandals.

20 Questions the press would ask a Democrat:

1) Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan "described himself as mujahedeen" and yelled “Allahu Akbar” as he murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers. As Commander-In-Chief, do you agree with the Department of Defense report that labeled that killing as "workplace violence" or was that an act of terrorism?

2) Do you regret aggravating racial tensions in America by inserting yourself into the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case by saying, "If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon?

3) Americans died in Benghazi and it’s a "phony scandal" -- Would you tell a mother who lost a son there that it was a "phony scandal?"

4) If it's legal for you to unilaterally delay the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's Employer Mandate without Congress having a say, couldn't a Republican President legally choose to unilaterally delay or stop the entire bill?

5) How can the American people trust the federal government to have their private data on file when we already know unreliable people like Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning are being given access to that data? Beyond that, given that your administration has refused to come clean about what you're doing and has been caught lying on more than a few different issues, how can the American people just take your word for it when you say that private information about American citizens you have no right to view isn't being looked at anyway?

16) If Al-Qaeda has been decimated and it’s on the run, why have we had to recently close down 22 embassies and consulates because of the threat from Al-Qaeda?

17) The IRS is still flagging and holding Tea Party applications. So not only was the IRS's behavior a problem, it still is a problem today. Why did your administration allow this to happen, why haven't you taken action to fix the problems at the IRS, and what are you going to do to ensure that the IRS doesn't continue to target your political opponents on your watch?

18) How do you justify going on extravagant vacations and sending hundreds of millions to the Egyptians and Palestinians when you're cancelling Easter Egg rolls at the White House and pleading poverty because of the sequester?. Aren't you deliberately sabotaging parts of government that are popular with the country to give the false impression that the sequester is having a serious impact on government spending?

19) To this day, we still don't know what you were doing during the Benghazi attack, what directives you issued, why your administration lied about what was going on, whether you had good reason to have such lax security in the first place, and whether Americans troops could have potentially arrived in time to save the lives of the men who died. When is your administration going to come clean so that the families of the men who lost their lives can have some peace?

20) In 2012, you said, "We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way." Since Detroit has now gone bankrupt, do you think that bet is still paying off or did the American people waste billions of dollars for nothing? Do you think you deserve any blame for Detroit going bankrupt? How about unions? Are they a significant part of the problem in Detroit?

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as a member of a core constituency of the ruling party physically attacking the opposition party.

ABC, NBC and CBS ignore union thugs' attack on Fox News contributor.

And then there is this:

You can click on the link and scroll down past the point at which my screen shot cuts off, but you won’t see a single story about the IBEW union man’s assault on Steven Crowder. You won’t see any stories about the union thugs’ intentional destruction of Americans for Prosperity’s tent, with people inside. You won’t see any stories about the Michigan Democratic Party’s threat of “blood,” which came from a Democrat state rep and was tweeted out on the Michigan Democratic caucus’ official twitter feed. You won’t see any of that. Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s threat of civil war didn’t make the cut either. The Obama White House’s refusal to condemn the violence also gets no mention. Notice the photos, too. The union folks look calm and reasonable. The frame of the union man punching Steven Crowder ought to be there, but it isn’t.
 

But when Gabby Giffords was shot by an unaffiliated lunatic, the press was all over the Sarah Palin/Tea Party connection.

But we can always trust the left for sane discourse, as evidenced by this writer at Gawker who defends the attack on Steve Crowder, because, you know, Crowder is on the wrong side and so from a political standpoint is an "unperson."

*Sheesh*

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...and no one gets the vapors when Obama signs bill restricting protests in the presence of Very Important Politicians.

On March 21, 2012, President Obama signed HR 347 into law. According to this article, HR 347 lowers the intent requirement from intentional to wilful and extends the scope of the Secret Service's ability to arrest people who protest against politicians with Secret Service protection:

President Obama signed bill H.R. 347 (also known as the Federal Restricted Buildings and Grounds Improvement Act of 2011) into law on March 9th, amid numerous protests from the Occupy movement, as well as other agencies. HR 347 is a modification from Senate bill S. 1794, which restricted people from entering or blocking public areas that have been closed off by Secret Service while a person under their protection is passing through. The law also included major public events, such as the Inaguration and Presidential campaigns.

The new law, which passed the House with a vote of 399-3, extends the original law by adding more protected areas within Washington D.C, and removing the word “willfully,” from the paragraph stating that protesters can be prosecuted if they enter the area “willfully and knowingly.”

Representative Justin Amash, R-Michigan, explains this change by saying:

“ The bill expands current law to make it a crime to enter or remain in an area where an official is visiting even if the person does not know it’s illegal to be in that area and has no reason to suspect its illegal.”

This is either a bold affront against the First Amendment or a sensible revision of existing law.

Obviously, inasmuch as a Democrat signed it, it's no problem either way. The ACLU - which gets the vapors if a single cross casts a shadow on public property - is taking a laid back attitude to HR 347.

Without getting too much into the weeds, most crimes require the government to prove a certain state of mind. Under the original language of the law, you had to act "willfully and knowingly" when committing the crime. In short, you had to know your conduct was illegal. Under H.R. 347, you will simply need to act "knowingly," which here would mean that you know you're in a restricted area, but not necessarily that you're committing a crime.

Any time the government lowers the intent requirement, it makes it easier for a prosecutor to prove her case, and it gives law enforcement more discretion when enforcing the law. To be sure, this is of concern to the ACLU. We will monitor the implementation of H.R. 347 for any abuse or misuse.

Also, while H.R. 347, on its own, is only of incremental importance, it could be misused as part of a larger move by the Secret Service and others to suppress lawful protest by relegating it to particular locations at a public event. These "free speech zones" are frequently used to target certain viewpoints or to keep protesters away from the cameras. Although H.R. 347 doesn't directly address free speech zones, it is part of the set of laws that make this conduct possible, and should be seen in this context.

Rest assured we'll be keeping an eye on how this law will be interpreted and used by law enforcement — especially in light of the coming elections.

Well, that's mature.

Remember how the Patriot Act was an offense against all that was decent? Now the Secret Service can cordone off any space around the president and its mostly "all good."

It's nice when a Democrat is in office and we don't get hysterical about unconstitutional restrictions on Free Speech.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is no bad news.

Thank goodness we have a Democrat in the White House. Otherwise, America's seniors would be facing a serious crisis.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...and that the idea of "'war crimes' is so 'last decade.'"

Glenn Reynolds catches this one:

HOPEY-CHANGEY! U.S. Drone Tweets Reveal “Double-Tap” Plan.“Known as the ‘double tap,’ the tactic involves bombing a target multiple times in relatively quick succession, meaning that the second strike often strikes first responders.” I doubt the first responders in Taliban country are firemen and EMTs, though.

But hey, who cares? We’ve got a Democrat in the White House. It can’t really be a “war crime” unless the President is a Republican.
 

 Besides the President is a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for "just being awesome."

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news.

Obama's Foreign Policy is Working!!!

//Once again, be very glad we don’t have a Republican president right now. If we did, we would be treated to a merciless media pounding, night-and-day, on the series of strategic failures, mistakes and false starts that have characterized America’s war strategy in Afghanistan since 2009. We’d be getting constant reminders of how the President, who repeatedly said that this was a just war that America had to win, and who told us that we should vote for him because he wouldn’t let anything distract him from the vital task of winning said war, hasn’t managed to win it, or even end it, after six long years.

Fortunately for us, there is a Democrat in the White House who, by and large, the press likes and wants to succeed. Thus our newspapers and television screens are blessedly free from invective, derision and snark when it comes to news from Afghanistan. Witness the measured lede we get from the NYT:
Months after President Obama formally declared that the United States’ long war against the Taliban was over in Afghanistan, the American military is regularly conducting airstrikes against low-level insurgent forces and sending Special Operations troops directly into harm’s way under the guise of “training and advising.”

In justifying the continued presence of the American forces in Afghanistan, administration officials have insisted that the troops’ role is relegated to counterterrorism, defined as tracking down the remnants of Al Qaeda and other global terrorist groups, and training and advising the Afghan security forces who have assumed the bulk of the fight.
In public, officials have emphasized that the Taliban are not being targeted unless it is for “force protection” — where the insurgents were immediately threatening American forces.
President Obama has been permitted to fail in Afghanistan quietly and off center stage. We hear nothing anymore about the months of agonized reflection before choosing strategies that didn’t accomplish their goals. We never see mentions of his 2008 campaign rhetoric about Afghanistan—”the necessary war”—against which we might be asked to measure what has actually been achieved.//

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that the awful news is surprisingly good.

James Taranto observes:

One minuscule compensation for an awful economy is that, with a Democrat in the White House, it makes for some rather amusing journalism as putatively objective reporters try to put the best face on bad news. This Associated Press headline, previewing tomorrow's unemployment numbers, is a classic of the genre: "Layoffs of Census Workers Will Distort Jobs Data."


"The census began hiring more workers last year," the AP notes. "It added about 500,000 this spring." The census is wrapping up, leaving many of those workers back on the unemployment rolls. Take the headline literally, and the AP is promising that things will get back to normal in the spring of 2020, when the government hires hundreds of thousands of temps for the next census. Until then, the employment stats will look worse than they actually are.

It's all a matter of perspective, though. Who's to say that the 3 months out of 120 when the census is going on is "normal" and other 117 months are "distorted"? You could even make a case that the hiring of census workers distorted the job numbers, making them look better than they actually are.

The nice thing about having a Democrat in the White House is that there is never any bad news...

...such as an Obama appointee sexually harassing her male employees.

You have to wonder if journalists are looking forward to going back to work in January?

Here's the story:

The chief of staff for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office has resigned, following allegations of “lewd” conduct.

Suzanne Barr, who worked with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona, denied the charges contained in a lawsuit filed against DHS and the secretary, claiming she was resigning to avoid tarnishing the reputation of ICE and prevent a distraction from interfering with the work of the agency.

The lawsuit alleges a “frat house atmosphere” at ICE.

Fox News:

The resignation comes nearly three weeks after Barr went on leave over the allegations. The questions about Barr’s conduct were first raised in a lawsuit filed by an ICE official against Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano — the lawsuit, which alleged discrimination and retaliation, listed among the complaints that Barr cultivated a “frat-house”-style work environment.

That accusation was supplemented by two affidavits recounting incidents allegedly involving Barr in 2009.

In the affidavits, one of the ICE employees claimed that in October 2009, while in a discussion about Halloween plans, the individual witnessed Barr turn to a senior ICE employee and say: “You a sexy” (expletive deleted).

“She then looked at his crotch and asked, ‘How long is it anyway?’” according to the affidavit.

“Several employees laughed nervously,” the affidavit said. The names of the workers making the claims were redacted.

The other account recalled a trip to Colombia in late 2009, attended by Morton, Barr and Ray Parmer, who is ICE special agent in charge for Homeland Security Investigations in New Orleans.

The account said Parmer and Barr were “drinking heavily” at the house of the deputy chief of mission for the U.S. Embassy there. It said Parmer took the BlackBerry of another employee, Peter Vincent, and sent “lewd messages” to Barr.

The affidavit went on to say: “During this party, Suzanne Barr approached me and offered to” perform oral sex.

In her letter to Morton, Barr defended herself and said the accusations are not true.

“With time I am confident that the truth will prevail. The allegations against me are unfounded and without any merit, and I am confident that my reputation will be restored,” she wrote. “I am equally confident that the agency will continue to flourish and grow. The men and women who risk their lives will continue to enjoy great success and I hope that my resignation will allow them to again focus on that which is most important.”

A real party girl, that one. And how much do you want to bet her “resignation” was engineered in Chicago at Obama campaign headquarters?

The Department of Justice is trying to get the lawsuit squelched on the basis that there was no claim of retaliation. One thing is sure, the Obama administration would like this matter to go away and not bother them until after the election.