What is it that the left and the Old Media said about the Tea Party movement? Didn’t they say it was not really filled with regular folks and didn’t they say it was not really a grass roots level effort because some nefarious “top-down” Republican groups were secretly behind the whole thing? That’s what Paul Krugman said in The New York Times. So did Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi — after someone taught her was “astroturf” even was, that is. In fact, the whole left-wing Old Media establishment attacked the tea party movement as some fake, manufactured thing and claimed that it wasn’t peopled by regular folks like you and me. All you need do is put “astroturf” and “tea party” in a search engine and you’ll get thousands of hits revealing the left’s unhinged response to the tea parties.

So, since they seem to want us to believe that they hate “astroturf,” will the left-wing press get all upset that this “coffee party” effort really IS Astroturf? Will the Old Media explode in calls of “astroturf” as it did during the early phases of the tea party movement? Or will they pretend that this coffee party business is real grass roots and report on the effort based on that false assumption. Already it seems as though the coffee party effort is not meeting any real scrutiny and I just got an email that proves the essential “top-down” style upon which this effort is built.

Of course, we know the charge that the tea party movement is astroturf is untrue. While groups like Dick Armey’s Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and a few others did rush to add their voices to the tea party events held all across the country last year (and continue to today) they neither originated the movement, nor did they invent the scope of events, nor did they control the message in any way. In fact they had to scramble to have any part in it at all. Even the big group’s efforts were ad hoc early on.

I know this because I was there in Chicago as the whole thing began and I saw when, where and how the larger national organizations arrived on the scene and it was later not earlier that it happened. I have, for instance, known Eric Odom, one of the early organizers of a large Chicago tea party event, since 2006. I watched as he staged the first big Chicago tea party and helped him build the effort in my own small way. (Odom now runs American Liberty Alliance.) I also have ties to AFP and Americans for Tax Reform and others and watched as they all began to line up behind the tea party movement. The big groups were late comers, for sure.

But all that aside, we can also discount this “astroturf” accusation by looking at the tea party groups today. Even still, there is no national tea party group and the various local tea parties are not united as one. Each group across the land is autonomous and operate at various levels of effectiveness and organization. Some are deeply involved in their local politics, others are barely hanging together as a web-based communication tool.

Now comes this coffee party USA group claiming to be non-partisan. Frank Ross of BigGovernment.com did a great job proving that the creator of this “coffee party” business was really a big Obama operative. No thanks to the Old Media we quickly found out that Annabel Park, the coffee party originator, is an Obama operative and works for The New York Times as a “strategy analyst.” So, it was created by an Obama operative and member of the Old Media, but this was conveniently absent from early reporting on the coffee party phenomenon.

And now comes the first nationwide effort of this coffee party thingamajig and, surprise, surprise, it is also run by perpetual out-of-towners. Here in Chicago the coffee party is not being run by anyone here meaning it is being floated by outsiders, astroturfers, not grass roots locals like the tea party groups are.

Today I received this email alerting me to a “coffee party” kick-off event being held in Chicago where a local Chicagoan that stumbled upon the thing even admits openly that it isn’t being run by anyone local. In his personal email meant to drum up local support for this astroturf effort, the emailer (whose name I will not release) says, “Clearly, this organization is not led by someone from Chicago.” Why? Because the first event was planned to be held during the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day Parade one of City’s biggest local party days. As the emailer scoffs, “Otherwise they would know that we’d all be at a huge parade on this day and instead of drinking coffee we’d be drinking green beer.”

As the emailer says, it is plain that no one from Chicago is actually part of this faux grass roots “coffee party” business or they’d have chosen a different day to try to kick-off their thingamajig. Chicago’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade is one of the biggest city wide party days of the year and no one will be much interested in politics that day, for sure!

In all, this is a classic example of outsiders, a perfect example of astroturf. Will the Old Media take notice?

Text of the email:

From: XXX XXX
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010 01:43 PM
To: ‘XXX XXX’
Subject: Coffee Party USA Kick-Off – Saturday, March 13

Friends and Colleagues (some of you may receive this email twice – my apologies),

I hope you all can join me at the Coffee Party USA kick-off on Saturday, March 13 at Charmers Cafe, 1500 W. Jarvis in Rogers Park – 10:30 AM. Clearly, this organization is not led by someone from Chicago. Otherwise they would know that we’d all be at a huge parade on this day and instead of drinking coffee we’d be drinking green beer.

So, let’s compromise… after a cup of coffee and civil dialogue on the important political issues in our communities we will go next door for one of those beers at the Poitin Stil – a quaint Irish Bar.

If you can’t make the coffee party at Charmers Cafe, join us for beers at xxxxxxxx.(ed: I excise this bit so as to not help them advertise their coffee party event)

The Mission of Coffee Party USA is to give voice to Americans who want cooperation in government and bring civility and open discussion to the national political debates that are dividing our communities and our country.

I have attached the press release and poster for this event. Below is an excerpt from the press release:

The Coffee Party movement gives voice to Americans who want to see cooperation in government, and welcomes everyone to the table. “We are purely grassroots movement, independent of any party, corporation, or lobbying organization. That is our strength and we plan to use it to facilitate a collaborative process that would encourage people to come together as a community, checking party affiliation at the door,” said Annabel Park, the founder of Coffee Party USA.

Call if you have questions:
(xxx) xxx.xxx

Yep, classic astroturf.

(H/T Chicago News Bench)

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Northrop Grumman won the deal in 2008, but Boeing protested to the Government Accountability Office that the military had unfairly changed the specifications to favor Northrop Grumman. Before the 2008 deal was made, then-Washington governor Chris Gregoire said that Congress should investigate if Boeing lost.

Gregoire said that her protests against Boeing losing weren’t about politics, but that she thought politicians should get involved if Boeing lost.

“I just think we win if it’s done absolutely without politics… …If we don’t win, then I think there’ll be a lot of questions… …how could they not have gotten this?”

Indeed, a number of Senators and representatives, including those from Washington State, but none who had experience as military buyers, did complain when the American company Northrop Grumman won. 39 representatives sent a letter to Obama last year supporting Boeing.

Apparently those Senators were angry about the 48,000 jobs that the contract would have created had it stood.

Boeing’s lobbying website says that we need to support Boeing, because it will create American jobs, even though their victory will kill 48,000 American jobs that would have been provided by the American company Northrop Grumman. I say “kill” just because Boeing is pushing a strange bit of moral self-righteousness by saying that they will create American jobs when in fact both companies will.

Not that American jobs are what’s important about a tanker, anyway. And speaking as an American, I’m kind of confused about how basing a contract solely on American jobs, not on quality or cost, will help the American taxpayer.

Boeing originally won the tanker contract way back in 2001, but their contract was later canceled after a collusion investigation that resulted in a former-Boeing executive being sentenced to jail.

The EU has complained about the bidding process.

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The California Teachers Association spent $211,849,298 on lobbying and political spending to get its way in California in 2009. Along with the CTA, the Calif. State Council of Service Employees and 13 other organizations spent a total of one billion dollars on political lobbying of the State House at Sacramento. All of these special interests have helped push California to the brink of insolvency.

But, according to the California Fair Political Practices Commission, the two unions mentioned above far and away top the spending of the other top lobbying spenders in California. The next closest in spending was the Big Pharma clocking in at $104,912,997 on its political spending with various and sundry Indian casino groups whose spending was in the less than $85,000,000 range.

Commission Chairman Ross Johnson said in a press release, “This tsunami of special interest spending drowns out the voices of average voters and intimidates political opponents and elected officials alike.”

The FPPC fully details the spending of these special interests and unions evoking outrage and proving why voter’s will is meaningless to politicians, not just in California, but across the country.

Here, for instance, is how the FPPC breaks down the teachers union spending:

• Ballot Measures: $144,116,835
• Candidates: $16,716,386
• Political Parties: $6,613,834
• Other Campaign Committees: $5,885,936
• TOTAL SPENT INFLUENCE VOTERS: $173,332,991
• TOTAL SPENT LOBBYING OFFICIALS: $38,516,307
• GRAND TOTAL SPENT: $211,849,298

On one level, one might ask why such spending is so wrong? After all, even The Federalist Papers spoke of “factions,” “interests,” and associations of voters getting together to influence their representatives in Congress. Why should a real American be all upset over such spending meant to influence Congress? Shouldn’t lobbying be considered a quintessentially American political convention?

There is one reason and one reason only that this situation is detrimental to our Republic and it isn’t that lobbying exists. It is because government is too powerful and has been allowed to take on too much authority. Lobbying wouldn’t be the problem it is if government didn’t have the power it has to warp and destroy our lives, the power that these lobbying groups court.

Of course, where it specifically relates to the teachers and the service employees unions we are talking about organizations that shouldn’t even be allowed to exist at all. There should be no such thing as a public employees union as the existence of these entities is wholly against the health of our Republic. Still, that aside, if government didn’t have so much power, even these illicit public employees unions wouldn’t be as destructive as they are.

Of course, California, as always, is just the worst, most obscene example of this outrage of Big Government. The truth is that every state in the union is drowning in this sort of morass to one degree or another.

The solution to all of this is to take power away from government.

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House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

Mark Tapscott explains this in a nutshell:

Each bill that comes before the House for a vote on final passage must be given a rule that determines things like whether the minority would be able to offer amendments to it from the floor.

In the Slaughter Solution, the rule would declare that the House “deems” the Senate version of Obamacare to have been passed by the House. House members would still have to vote on whether to accept the rule, but House members would be able to say they only voted for a rule, not for the bill itself.

Here is what they are hoping for:

Democrats who think the Senate bill doesn’t sufficiently limit abortion rights would never have to be on record as having voted for it. (Because the Senate abortion language can’t be fixed in [the reconciliation bill] for procedural reasons, some Democratic aides say there is talk about a later bill that would handle these issues.)

What a transparent Congress we have. I’m glad they drained the swamp. On the bright side, if Democrats do this you can all but call it a Republican Congress next year.

Michelle Malkin has the call to action!

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We send our young adults to university to be educated in the ways of the world, we all know. Following that well-worn path, young James Schackleford decided on the publicly funded Florida Atlantic University for his edification and boy did he learn a lesson about modern education last week. Mr. Schackleford learned that the FAU administration prefers on its campus Islamic terrorist supporters over representatives of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom organization. He also learned that it’s open season on all conservatives at our American universities.

At the Boca Raton campus Mr. Schackleford determined that his school needed a chapter of YAF, a 40-year-old conservative student organization, and so gathered a few like-minded students to meet with YAF State Director Daniel P. Diaz to discuss how they should proceed on organizing a chapter in the school.

As the few gathered were meeting, university administrator *David Blank burst into the room and demanded that they cease their meeting and vacate the room. According to the YAF press release, Mr. Diaz asked for an additional 15 minutes to finish and Blank acquiesced to the request. But the 15-minute grant was short lived.

Upon hearing Diaz address the liberal bias on the FAU campus, Blank stopped the meeting again and boorishly ordered the students to vacate the meeting room. Blank the shut off the room lights, tore down the group’s promotional posters, and called the campus police.

It didn’t end there. According to YAF, the campus police arrived and began to harass the students and Mr. Diaz outside as they were in the process of leaving the campus. The police demanded to see student IDs and then menacingly followed YAF rep. Diaz to his car.

Police told Diaz that they were investigating a “possible trespassing charge,” and then loudly joked that Diaz “probably had tea bags hanging out the back of his car” as Diaz prepared to leave.

Diaz says that the whole incident is proof positive of why a conservative group is needed at Florida Atlantic University.

“If we were a Marxist, Socialist or Liberal group they would have let us finish our meeting, but the university officials and police harassed us because we are conservatives. This was the exact liberal bias on campus that I was discussing in the meeting that these future YAFers experienced firsthand. The university is no longer a place of open discussion and freedom of expression, but a breeding ground of intolerance for conservative beliefs.”

One question immediately comes to mind over this incident: did student organizer Schackleford and YAF representative Diaz officially reserve a room at FAU for their informal meeting? I asked Diaz this very question.

Diaz told me that since it was an informal meeting that should have been over rather quickly, Mr. Schackleford did not think that he needed to officially reserve a room through the university staff. In fact, according to Diaz, himself a former FAU student, such unscheduled meetings occur all the time.

No we did not reserve a room. When I was a student at the university when a room wasn’t being occupied one could go in and meet or study, and as long they left before the next scheduled group arrived they would be ok. After asking around that is how it still is.

In retrospect it was an obvious lapse in judgment not to officially reserve a room. Or perhaps they should have met off campus.

However, that small lapse in judgment does not absolve this oppressive, over-the-top reaction that university administrator David Blank exhibited. After all, not long ago Florida Atlantic University hosted a whole slew of Islamic terror supporters on campus. In 2006, for instance, the Muslim students group at FAU hosted an event at which appeared Hamas and Hezbollah supporter, Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan; alleged Neo-Nazi, William Baker; and potential co-conspirator of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, Siraj Wahhaj.

Apparently it’s perfectly O.K., as far as the FAU administration is concerned, to have Islamofascist terror given full-throated support on its campus but it is a serious no-no to talk about organizing a patriotic American conservative student’s organization there.

Perhaps Mr. Diaz is right in his contention that a YAF chapter is sorely needed at Florida Atlantic University?

*David Blank appears to be the Event Planning Specialist for the Student Union at FAU. He can be reached at dblank@fau.edu.

(Updated to correct that it was Mr. Diaz that asked for the additional 15 minutes to finish the meeting. Originally I had Mr. Schackleford asking for the time extenuation.)

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First-term Democratic Congressman Debbie Halvorson (Ill., 14th District) was the recipient of $60,000 in political donations from the ethically compromised New York Representative Charlie Rangel, recently deposed Chairmen of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Rangel was found guilty of multiple violations of House ethics rules that have gone on for decades and because of the mess he’s made of his ethical standing the long-time New York Rep. was forced to “agree” to step aside as Ways and Means Chairman this week. But even as Rangel was busy feathering his nest the congressman was also shoveling money to other representatives in a likely bid to bribe them to look the other way from his troubled ethics.

The Washington Examiner has a great list of pols that accepted Rangel’s tainted money that it is calling the “Dirty Money Watch.” But the Examiner is missing at least one person on that list: Illinois’ Debbie Halvorson.

Halvorson took $60,000 from Charlie Rangel and her Republican challenger has called for her to return that tainted money or at least donate it to worthy charities. GOP nominee Adam Kinzinger has been calling for Halvorson to relinquish this money all week.

At first Halvorson promised to shed the dirty Rangel cash but has today backtracked from this promise. Instead of donating the whole $60,000 that Rangel gave her, she is now only going to donate $16,000 to charity. That means that Halvorson is keeping $45,000 of Rangel’s dirty money.

Kinzinger says that Halvorson must not think Rangel’s dirty money is so bad after all. Says, Kinzinger:

Congresswoman Halvorson had an opportunity to show the people of Illinois that she is serious about ethics but once again, she has chosen to stand side-by-side with ethically challenged politicians for the benefit of her own political career. She is talking out of both sides of her mouth that would make even Rod Blagojevich proud. It is time for her to stop being disingenuous with her constituents and donate all cash associated with Charlie Rangel. Action speaks louder than words and we are well past the point of trusting her words. We need to demand action.

While Democrats across the nation are running for the hills from Rangel, Debbie Halvorson seems at ease surrounded by the valley of corruption whether it is in Washington or Springfield,” said Kinzinger. “It is high time we start representing the needs of the people and not the needs of reelection campaign accounts.

It also seems that Rangel’s money at least bought some loyalty from Halvorson. She voted against removing Rangel from his chairmanship. One suspects that this is precisely why Rangel was doling out cash to his Democrat colleagues in the first place. Well, it worked with Halvorson.

Let’s hope that Illinois’ 14th District can get a fresh start with an exciting new representative by sending Adam Kinzinger to Congress.

http://www.electadam.com/

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A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job-creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development.

As for that pre-Hopey Change concept of consent of the governed:

President Obama could enact the plans in this memo with just the stroke of a pen, without any input from the communities affected by it.

The land grabs are to be justified by unilaterally designating them as “monuments” under the Teddy Roosevelt era Antiquities Act. The government has its eye on over 13.5 million acres, including

a 58,000-acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to “avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.”

But our land isn’t being stolen just for the animals. The thoroughly debunked global warming hoax once again comes into play.

In Nevada, the Obama administration might make another monument in the Heart of the Great Basin because it, supposedly, is a “center of climate change scientific research.”

Also, the government needs to seize land to assure that it isn’t used to meet our energy needs.

In Colorado, the government is considering designating the Vermillion Basin as a monument because it is “currently under the threat of oil and gas development.”

Think of the jobs that could be created were this land to be used productively instead of turned over to the lizards and prairie chickens.

The progressive authoritarians controlling the federal government are quite literally stealing our country away from us.

On tips from J and LouieLouie. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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Watching your government at work can be an appalling spectacle. Politicians posture and bicker, and not much gets done. It’s gotten so bad—or at least seems so bad—that pundits are beginning to wonder if the system is broken in some fundamental way and to cast about for a big fix. Some little fixes might help—reforming the Senate filibuster would be a start. But the nation is not about to have a constitutional convention, and we don’t need one. The Founders got it right, more or less, some 220 years ago, when they created a system of checks and balances that permits the exercise of power while protecting the rights of individuals and political minorities.

The problem is not the system. It’s us—our “got mine” culture of entitlement. Politicians, never known for their bravery, precisely represent the people. Our leaders are paralyzed by the very thought of asking their constituents to make short-term sacrifices for long-term rewards. They cannot bring themselves to raise taxes on the middle class or cut Social Security and medical benefits for the elderly. They’d get clobbered at the polls. So any day of reckoning gets put off, and put off again, and the debts pile up.

Hmmmm. While this certainly involves right leaning people to some degree, I’d say it is a 70-30 split, with liberals and their entitlement mentality as the primary target of the second paragraph, and the main problems. And you can certainly tell that it was written by a liberal, since Evan Thomas, the story writer, links an unwillingness to raise taxes on the middle class with debt reduction, instead of reducing the outrageous spending the Democrats have engaged in since retaking Congress in 2007.

Thomas then goes on to discuss Americans spending too much, becoming fatties, and grade inflation, before he goes on to partially blame the 60’s and others (the following is all one paragraph, broken up)

It is hard to know exactly how or when we got this self-indulgent. The ’60s are partly to blame. The triumph of individual and civil rights, a wondrous fulfillment of the true meaning of the Constitution, was too often perverted into an “I got my rights” sense of victimhood.

Weren’t the majority of the hippies with those attitudes on the Left?

The noble push of the New Deal and the Great Society to fight poverty and illness, particularly among the very old and very young, hardened into the nonsensical defiance some tea partiers show when they shout, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”

Say what? The “noble” New Deal and Great Society were exactly the types of government programs that perpetuate a sense of entitlement, particularly among left leaning Americans. As far as the second part, personally, I’ve never seen anything like that at a TEA Party. Have you? I suspect that was simply thrown in there because Evan realized he was primarily blaming liberals.

The casting off of conformity and explosion of free expression contributed to the sour and selfish “Me Decade” of the 1970s. The spurt of economic activity in the 1980s and ’90s spawned a generation of Gordon Gekkos on Wall Street and profligate spenders in the shopping malls of America (financed and enabled in part by more frugal Chinese buying American debt).

Got that? Upward mobility = bad.

But lately, politicians seem to have lost the most essential element of the art of governing—meaningful compromise. In its pure form, compromise means mutual sacrifice. On Capitol Hill, there is only getting: politicians will vote for a bill if they get something, like a tax cut for an interest group or a pork-barrel project for their district. But they are not willing to give up anything.

Wait, I thought it was “We The People” who were the problem? Virtually everything in the last 6 paragraphs is about the problems with politicians, while the first 4 blame We The People. Of course, there is a problem with We The People, in that it is a very difficult choice to vote against a wishy washy Republican, which allows a Democrat to gain the seat, and visa versa. A way of holding them accountable. Of course, what the Left wants when they hold their folks accountable is more entitlements, more federal spending, more control and regulation, all the things that perpetuate an elected class that is more about pandering, rather than governance.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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has not only spent his political capital, but is running a deficit. Mocked by the right every time he pops up, he is no longer in a position to convince anyone who isn’t already convinced — especially when he writes for our most liberal daily newspaper.

It started, of course, with the vicious lies told about Gore during the 2000 presidential campaign, the most notorious of which was that he claimed to have “invented the internet” … the smear campaign that almost certainly cost Gore the presidency.

You don’t get much more vicious than poking fun at a blowhard politician for indulging in excessive self-promotion. It’s almost as mean as saying that skunks stink.

The hate stirred up by that effort has long since congealed into conventional wisdom. Now, whenever Gore speaks out on climate change, he is subjected to withering, fact-free scorn. It has its effect on those trying to figure out the truth. Go ahead. Feel the hate:

“Do you think of your breathing passages as spewing sh*t?” sneered Ann Althouse, referring to Gore’s use of an “open sewer” metaphor.

Another rightwing blogger, Van Helsing, wrote that Gore had emerged “to demand totalitarian restrictions on economic activity in the name of a crisis that clearly does not exist”.

And Andrew Breitbart’s notorious Big Journalism site ran a commentary by Kyle-Anne Shiver, who said of Gore, “His life as a jet-setting, Nobel Peace Prize-sharing, Oscar-brandishing celebrity is on the line. Without the people’s diehard faith in his religion of global warming, Al will be forced to trade his lifestyle of the mega-rich-and-famous for an ignominious and expensive defense of never-ending lawsuits brought by enraged sucker governments and private investors.”

Not to worry, moonbats. Another hero has arisen to take up the burden of rescuing the polar bears from our freedom and prosperity:

But if Gore’s effectiveness as a climate-change activist has expired, there is nevertheless reason to hope. Because there, in the same edition of the Sunday Times, just a few inches away, was columnist Tom Friedman’s interview with the ghost of climate change present, South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham—living proof that it is possible for a conservative Republican not only to be sane, but to work toward real solutions to actual problems.

Grahamnesty is praised for wanting to shut down Club Gitmo (which would be a big propaganda coup for Muslim terrorists and their liberal enablers), for backing racist radical Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, and most of all, for conspiring with the disgraceful Hanoi John Kerry to drive millions of jobs overseas in the name of the global warming hoax with Tax & Charade. They might also have mentioned his support for shamnesty, his denunciation of those who want our border defended as “bigots” who need to “shut up,” his alliance with sinister hard left financier George Soros, the delight he took in Dems taking over the Senate, and his support for leaping toward communism by nationalizing banks.

With uncharacteristic understatement, the Guardian admits that Goober is “well to the left of many South Carolina Republicans.” Fortunately, Tea Partiers are on to Graham; as is the Republican Party of Charleston. Less fortunately, there’s nothing voters can do about him until 2014. Maybe he’ll pull a Specter by then.

On a tip from Floccinaucinihilipilificator. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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“This is the typically regressive fear tactic that you expect from anybody named Cheney,” said Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at the Bush era military commissions, who has been a critic of the commission system…
Neal Katyal, who Davis faced off with in the Hamdan case, “was a very talented and dedicated attorney – he was the perfect choice for [his position as deputy Solicitor General," said Davis. "To try to impugn his character or imply he’s part of the 'Al Qaeda Nine' or whatever is just outrageous."
"Back in the 18th century after the Boston Massacre, we provided a zealous defense [to British soldiers], and a lot of people there have the same view,” he said.

With Eric Holder stonewalling Congress, I think conflict of interest is a perfectly legitimate question.

As the GOP sees it, there are two issues involved. The first is the nature of the Justice Department lawyers’ work on behalf of detainees. Republicans aren’t questioning whether terrorist detainees are entitled to attorneys; the courts have said they are, so they have attorneys. The question is whether those very lawyers should then turn around and handle detainee issues for the Justice Department.
Private lawyers can choose to take or not take cases. Sometimes they make their decisions based on money, sometimes on principle, sometimes because they are sympathetic to the accused. The lawyers who worked with the terrorist detainees chose to represent people who are making war on the United States. That’s certainly their right, but it’s entirely reasonable to ask whether they should now be working on detainee issues at the Justice Department.

Look, this terrorist coddling mentality has got to go, and we most definitely can’t have these weak sympathies seeping into positions like these. Legitimate concerns need to be answered. You may think the ad is over the top, but I’m thankful Liz’s group is exposing Holder.

Hat tip: Hot Air

[edited for spelling]

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