BOOM!! Harry Reid goes Nuclear; blows up Senate #Filibuster rules

They did it:

RT @ryangrim: Boxer votes, followed by Reid, which makes 51. Nuke is detonated.

— Arthur Delaney (@ArthurDelaneyHP) November 21, 2013

Yes, we’re back to the Nuclear Option!, and no, we’re not discussing Iran (for once).

What is it? From Legal Insurrection:

“…The “nuclear option” refers to a move by the majority party in Senate — in this case the Democrats — to change the Senate rules to allow most executive branch and judicial nominations to be approved with a simple majority – 51 votes — rather than the 60 votes now required. Under the current rules, the minority party can block a nomination with just 41 votes, commonly called a filibuster…”

Worst lawsuit ever? “Woman kills her 3 kids, then seeks $$$ from Wrongful Death Settlement”

We’ve mentioned ludicrous lawsuits before, but this one just might top the list.

From last month, courtesy of the Times Union:

A mentally disturbed suburban New York woman who drowned her three young children in a bathtub in 2008 wants a cut of $350,000 in wrongful death settlements obtained by the children’s fathers, attorneys said…

Is it just me, or does this smack of the old joke about chutzpah, where the kid kills his mother and father, and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he’s an orphan?

Tragically, this isn’t a joke:

The Divider-In-Chief stirring the Racial Pot, once again…

We’ve already covered the Zimmerman trial recently, and weren’t planning on revisiting the issue. However, after President Obama came out for his absolutely bizarre 17-minute speech on Trayvon Martin, I can’t let his remarks go unchallenged in this space.

If you missed his address, you can watch it here. My primary criticism is the counter-productiveness of re-injecting race into a topic where race was already determined during the trial to have had no impact whatsoever.

That, and the stark implication from the President of the United States that the jury verdict was completely, 100% wrong.

Crime is Crime

A terrible crime took place in our home today. Part of a beloved animal’s face was violently torn away, including one eye. His guts were left all over the floor at the foot of the stairs. Was it a vicious act of hate? An accident? A misunderstanding?

Does it matter?  Our granddaughter’s feline BFF is permanently disfigured, whatever the motive behind the attack.

Tigger after cosmetic surgery. Pre-surgery photos have been omitted as too upsetting for most audiences.

I’m not sure which of our two furry family members is responsible for this brutal assault, although I have my suspicions. My mind reels with questions:

• If the canine perpetrator is brought to justice, shall we charge him or her with a hate crime, since the victim was a member of the cat family, historic enemies of dogs?
• And could it be proven?
• If so, should the penalty be more severe?

The Tyranny of Arbitrary Laws

Is the United States still the “Land Of The Free”? Well, most of us certainly go through our day believing we are.

Part of that belief is an assumption that, as long as we don’t try to do something wrong, illicit, or illegal, we won’t run afoul of the law. We also assume that if someone DOES blatantly break the law, they’ll be punished for it. Quickly and fairly, those people will be carted off to jail.

In years past both of those may have been safe assumptions, yet increasingly they’re no longer the case.

We’re seeing reports almost daily: from the incarceration of the 19-year-old young man who cracked a joke (in extremely bad taste, I agree, but still …just a joke) on Facebook, to the arrest of the 8th-grade kid who refused to remove his NRA t-shirt, to the non-arrest of David Gregory when he openly flouted the actual gun laws of Washington DC late last year.

When kids are threatened with jail for merely wearing clothes, and TV personalities are excused for breaking the law because prosecuting them “would not promote public safety…”, we’ve established two sets of laws:

Steven Crowder vs. Eric #Holder (VIDEO)

An excellent video (below) from comedian Steven Crowder: it’s imaginative, funny, … but more than a little troubling.

Primarily ’cause it’s true, or true enough.

Why IS Holder still running our Department of Justice, instead of experiencing the hospitality of our maximum-security prison system?? That we can even ask the question gives away the answer: lawlessness abounds in this Administration, with weaselly Eric Holder apparently running point.

And Crowder’s video notwithstanding, THAT’s not funny at all:

Obama admits he doesn’t have authority to “drone” American citizens… sorta

This just in, via Allahpundit:

Strictly speaking, Eric Holder already acknowledged this yesterday after three agonizing minutes of Ted Cruz teasing it out of him. But Rand Paul wanted a formal statement from the White House as a condition of ending his filibuster.

And now, apparently, he’s got it:

Media struggles to spin Obama’s newly affirmed “License To Kill” as a positive

Abu Ghraib.

NSA wire-tapping.

Guantanamo Bay.

Water-boarding.

Remember all these golden hits from not that long ago (plus a host of others) which the Left carped about DAILY? Remember the claims that Bush was a tyrant/dictator/fascist/Nazi? That he was a war-mongering war criminal who really, really loved war? That the United States should be the world’s buddy, and shouldn’t do things like forcibly extracting information from terrorists, or listen in on conversations between terrorists, ’cause THAT would be an egregious governmental overreach?

That is sooooo yesterday.

In light of the news which we just touched on earlier, the media’s reaction has been somewhat of a mixed bag. Certainly there’s been surprise from some on the Left, and it can’t be ignored that the leaked 16-page ‘White Paper‘ was brought to light via NBCnews.com. But it remains to be seen if this will engender even a fraction of the vitriol that was trained on G. W. Bush and the War on Terror before their guy took over the shop.