Draining the Swamp

[Haggis@wk]

That was mean.

Members of US Congress Get Richer Despite Sour Economy. Recessions, like taxes, are for the little people.

[jamiebk]

There is a reason why Meg Whitman spent $144,000,000 in her bid to be Governor.......

[piqaboo]

It was mean.
I must have been inspired by Carly Fiorino. Thank goodness she lost. What a 'doesnt play well with others' kinda person. sheesh.

[Haggis@wk]

Someone got the message on 11/02

In the 2011 House budget, the groups found that House Democrats requested 18,189 earmarks, which would cost the taxpayers a total of $51.7 billion, while House Republicans requested just 241 earmarks, for a total of $1 billion.

[Haggis@wk]

Consider it drained

[analog]

i cant see that picture - maybe expand it a little?

a.

[Haggis@wk]

No, it's a shot of the removal of Pelosi's "Speaker of the House" sign from her office

[Haggis@wk]

Former Ted Kennedy Staffer convicted of stealing for the Senate


Write your own jokes

[Haggis@wk]

Idaho's “superintendent of public instruction,” has proposed some measures that the teachers’ union doesn’t like, at all. And his opponents have made sure that he feels good and threatened.

Someone went to his mother’s house – his mother’s. Someone slashed his tires and spray-painted a threat onto the door. As reported in this article, Luna has said, “Family and personal property are off-limits. You don’t cross that line . . .” Yes, they do.

In Wisconsin, the schoolteachers and other “public employee” beauties are going to the homes of Republican lawmakers, screaming, denouncing, etc. The situation has gotten very bad. We know where you live.
Yesterday, Sen. Randy Hopper, reported that Republican lawmakers have received threats, and credible ones: threats to their physical well-being. They are not disclosing their movements, whether they are sleeping in their own homes. They are working with law enforcement on how best to protect themselves and their families.

Two points come to me immediately

1. Have fun folks. You are establishing precedents that will return on you threefold.

2. I never want to hear from the Left about “civility” again. Ever.

[Shapley]

Isn't it ironic that, while in Egypt and elsewhere the people are taking to the streets to oppose the will of the government, in America the government is taking to the streets to oppose the will of the people?

[piqaboo]

This sort of thing is so very wrong.

Someone went to his mother’s house – his mother’s. Someone slashed his tires and spray-painted a threat onto the door.

i often think that if we spent more time minding our manners, we'd need fewer laws.

[Haggis@wk]

SHOCKER: Rep. Alcee Hastings Sued for Sexual Harassment of Former Aide.

“The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, also accuses Hastings of retaliating against Packer after she rebuffed him — threatening her job with the panel and marginalizing her.”

Who’d have expected anything like that from a former federal judge who was impeached for corruption? Sadly, he fits right in in Congress . . .

[Shapley]

The 'President's House' in Philadelphia - a disgraceful monument to politics, prejudice, and 'white guilt'

"PHILADELPHIA — The convulsive currents that roil the telling of American history have become so familiar that they now seem an inseparable part of the story itself. Here is a nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to a proposition of human equality, that, for much of its first century of life, countenanced slavery, institutionally supported it and economically profited from it. The years that followed have been marked by repair, reform and reversals; recompense, recrimination and reinterpretation. Extraordinary ideals and achievements have been countered by extraordinary failings and flaws, only to be countered yet again, each turn yielding another round of debates.

"Videos about the lives of slaves and servants play on outdoor video screens above mock fireplaces.And here, in this city where the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed; where a $300 million Independence National Historical Park has been created, leading from the National Constitution Center to Independence Hall; and where the Liberty Bell, as a symbol of the nation’s ideals, draws well over a million visitors a year, a great opportunity existed to explore these primal tensions more closely on a site adjacent to the Liberty Bell Center in Independence park. Unfortunately, those opportunities have been squandered in “The President’s House: Freedom and Slavery in the Making of a New Nation” which opens on Wednesday."

[dai bread]

Once again I am left wondering just who are the indigenous people of the U.S?

[Selma in Sandy Eggo]

Once again I am left wondering just who are the indigenous people of the U.S?

Depends on which rubber ruler you're using as a time scale, and what cultural markers you're using to define "U.S.".
The "native" or "indigenous" populations, those which were present prior to Columbus' Caribbean landfall, were those that immigrated by foot from Asia over the Bering landbridge while it was available (a really long time ago, before global warming flooded it, and you shouldn't get me started on that topic), had been present in the Americas for a disputed number of thousands of years. There are a number of separate racial and language groups present in North America; I presume that the same is true of Central and South America. They all share the common trait of being not-European. All the rest are historical recent additions, from the entire rest of the planet.

The cultural base of U.S. society is firmly rooted in the English culture that was established in the East Coast colonies, and the legal structures that were established there. All the other cultural additions had to adapt to that base. It usually takes about three generations to smooth out the bumps.

In terms of being a natural-born citizen, an American from birth, if one is born in the U.S., or is born to U.S. citizen(s) anywhere, that baby is a citizen.

So: Indigenous people. In one sense: any group that was here prior to European colonization. In another sense, there are none. All our ancestors came from somewhere else.

[Haggis@wk]

or is born to U.S. citizen(s) anywhere, that baby is a citizen

Not automatically and not always. When I was a kid military families whose children were born abroad had to apply to the U.S. Embassy in that country for a certification of naturalization and had to provide information that the birth was to parents who were abroad on U.S. government business. In those days children born to American parents who weren't abroad on government business had to leap through several additional hoops to gain citizenship for their children.

Although the "citizenship by birth" rules were complex in the past, the February 2001 Child Citizenship Act (CCA) kinda, sorta simplified the process. Now, a child who is under the age of 18, was born outside the U.S., and has at least one U.S. citizen parent automatically acquires U.S. citizenship upon entry into the country as an immigrant. No further paperwork is necessary. The parent may request a Certificate of Citizenship and U.S. Passport for the child if proof of the baby's American-ness is desired.

But this process only applies to children permanently residing in the U.S. If the child is under 18, was born outside the United States, but lives abroad in the physical and legal custody of a U.S. citizen parent or U.S. citizen grandparent, the parent or grandparent must apply for naturalization of the child. In addition, more criteria must be met.

The U.S. citizen parent or grandparent must have been physically present in the U.S. for five years before the child's birth, at least two of which were after age fourteen. Further, the child must be temporarily present in the U.S. for the naturalization process and to recite the oath of allegiance. Of course, if the child is too young to understand the oath, this requirement may be waived.

So even with this new law overseas births of children of Americans can still cause problems.

[Haggis@wk]

IS YOUR CONGRESSMAN (OR CONGRESSWOMAN) TRADING ON INSIDE INFORMATION?

“There’s not even a way to prosecute this under the law; it is at best ambiguous whether it’s even a crime for our legislators to trade based on their inside information (the way it is for every single other person in the country). And even if it were decided that it is a crime, I encountered a reluctance among government officials to even talk about the subject, which suggests that it would be difficult to get anyone to bring a case.”

Which is funny, because federal prosecutors can be quite creative when they have the desire to be so. For example, even if the Supreme Court holds that a GPS tracker placed on a citizen’s car isn’t a violation of privacy, I’ll bet that if I stuck one on the U.S. Attorney’s car, they’d find something to charge me with. But where members of Congress — who control budgets — are concerned, the wellsprings of creativity suddenly dry up. It’s almost enough to make me doubt whether we live under the rule of law.

[Giant Communist Robot]

IS YOUR CONGRESSMAN (OR CONGRESSWOMAN) TRADING ON INSIDE INFORMATION?

Of course they are. The very reason they made this legal for them is so they could do it.

[Haggis@wk]

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Pelosi Leads List Of Conflict Of Interest Dems.

“As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the ‘greedy’ fiends of the financial crisis, they’ve lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi’s just the latest example. The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version.”

[jamiebk]

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Pelosi Leads List Of Conflict Of Interest Dems.

“As Democrats demonize Wall Street CEOs as the ‘greedy’ fiends of the financial crisis, they’ve lined their own pockets — both before and after the crisis. Nancy Pelosi’s just the latest example. The former House speaker allegedly gamed financial reforms to boost her personal stock portfolio. The brewing scandal is complicated, but here’s the Reader’s Digest version.”

Yeah...and Boehner is right behind her...