I Wonder If Our Friends In Connellsville Know About This

For years a banner hung in the auditorium of a public High School in Cranston, Rhode Island.  It was the official school prayer until the Supreme Court banned state sponsored prayer in 1962.  Since then the banner remained affixed to the wall.  Here is the text:

Our Heavenly Father.

Grant us each day the desire to do our best. To grow mentally and morally as well as physically. To be kind and helpful to our classmates and teachers. To be honest with ourselves as well as with others. Help us to be good sports and smile when we lose as well as when we win. Teach us the value of true friendship. Help us always to conduct ourselves so as to bring credit to Cranston High School West.

Amen.

You can see the banner here.  While the general ideas laid out in the "prayer" aren't that offensive (it is, let's remember simply a prayer "to do our best" and to "help us be good sports" and so on), what is offensive is that it's an official prayer to God hung in a public school.

After the ACLU and a local high schooler named Jessica Ahlquist filed a lawsuit objecting,  the judge in this case ordered it removed, writing:

The Supreme Court has traditionally drawn a clear line between government conduct which might be acceptable in some settings and the conduct which is prohibited in public schools. In Van Orden, where the Supreme Court held that a monument displaying the Ten Commandments was acceptable on the 44-acre grounds of the Texas State Capitol, the Court underscored this distinction:

This case, moreover, is distinguishable from instances where the Court has found Ten Commandments displays impermissible. The display is not on the grounds of a public school, where, given the impressionability of the young, government must exercise particular care in separating church and state.

And what happened to Jessica?

The good Christians of Cranston, Rhode Island objected:

She is 16, the daughter of a firefighter and a nurse, a self-proclaimed nerd who loves Harry Potter and Facebook. But Jessica Ahlquist is also an outspoken atheist who has incensed this heavily Roman Catholic city with a successful lawsuit to get a prayer removed from the wall of her high school auditorium, where it has hung for 49 years.

A federal judge ruled this month that the prayer’s presence at Cranston High School West was unconstitutional, concluding that it violated the principle of government neutrality in religion. In the weeks since, residents have crowded school board meetings to demand an appeal, Jessica has received online threats and the police have escorted her at school, and Cranston, a dense city of 80,000 just south of Providence, has throbbed with raw emotion.

State Representative Peter G. Palumbo, a Democrat from Cranston, called Jessica “an evil little thing” on a popular talk radio show. Three separate florists refused to deliver her roses sent from a national atheist group. The group, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, has filed a complaint with the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights.

Not exactly a WWJD moment for them, I'm afraid.

More recently, however, Jessica's received another award:

Since her successful challenge last year of a prayer banner at Cranston High School West, Jessica Ahlquist has been traveling the country speaking about First Amendment rights.

But not until now has she been invited to speak at the Playboy Mansion.

Ahlquist, 17, is scheduled to speak at the Playboy Mansion in Holmby Hills, CA on May 22nd where she will receive a Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award. The award in the Education category -- $5,000 cash and a commemorative plaque -- is for Ahlquist's "courageous and successful lawsuit" in the Cranston prayer banner case, a publicist for the foundation said in a statement.

She won. This "evil little thing" won for religious freedom. For everyone.

I wonder if our friends in Connellsville and New Kensington know about this.

News Foils

First, let's look at a typical climate science denial from the Braintrust at the Tribune-Review:

During an unusually chilly Memorial Day weekend, which felt more like a brisk Labor Day weekend, a New York ski resort near the Vermont border reported up to 3 feet of snow. Writes Roger L. Simon of PJ Media, “Somewhere Al Gore is gnashing his teeth, while concocting another speech to tell us that cooling actually means warming or some such palaver.”

Now let's look at what they're actually saying up in Vermont - this was from early February:

The three Vermont legislative committees picked the right day last week to hold a joint hearing on the effects of climate change on businesses.  Some people were late after having to pick their way through the remnants of overnight freezing rain. As the hearing progressed, temperatures outdoors rose toward record heights. Weather forecasters talked of flood and wind alerts, and warned of plunging temperatures the next day.  The consensus among the 40 or so people who testified at Wednesday’s hearing was not so much that we must adapt to climate change in the future, but that we’re being forced to adapt already, and we must continue.  The most challenging part of the adaptation is not the warmer, wetter climate we’re increasingly experiencing. What is particularly vexing are the wild, odd swings in temperature and precipitation — the kind that were going on outside the Vermont Statehouse as lawmakers and witnesses spoke — that make planning, producing and stability more difficult.  [Emphasis added]

Wild, odd swings in temperature and precipitation like 3 feet of snow on Memorial Day?

I guess we have to talk again about the differences between CLIMATE and WEATHER.  From NASA:

Weather is basically the way the atmosphere is behaving, mainly with respect to its effects upon life and human activities. The difference between weather and climate is that weather consists of the short-term (minutes to months) changes in the atmosphere. Most people think of weather in terms of temperature, humidity, precipitation, cloudiness, brightness, visibility, wind, and atmospheric pressure, as in high and low pressure.

In most places, weather can change from minute-to-minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day, and season-to-season. Climate, however, is the average of weather over time and space. An easy way to remember the difference is that climate is what you expect, like a very hot summer, and weather is what you get, like a hot day with pop-up thunderstorms.

Speaking of which, did you know that the Weather Channel is forecasting 81 degrees for Whiteface Mountain today?

 That's the place that had the 3 feet of snow earlier this week.

Odd swings in temperature and precipitation due to climate change.  Yep, it's all there.

No, Not THAT!!!

UPDATE: This post and this post PROVE BEYOND ALL DOUBT that Maria and I spend absolutely no time coordinating our blogging efforts!  Go to her post first.

On May 27, Politico posted this:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann may be the congresswoman with nine lives. But 2014 could be the gravest threat to her political career yet.

The bomb-throwing conservative and onetime Republican presidential candidate is girding for what promises to be a ferocious reelection contest. Awaiting Bachmann is a serious Democratic opponent who has the full backing of his national party and a suburban Twin Cities electorate that six months ago nearly tossed her out of office.

The most glaring problem for Bachmann, though, may be a swirl of investigations into her campaign finances. The Federal Election Commission and the Office of Congressional Ethics are investigating whether her campaign concealed payments to an Iowa state senator who did work for her 2012 presidential bid. (A state ethics law bars senators from doing paid campaign work.)

And late last week, Minnpost.com reported that the FBI would be joining the investigation and interviewing a former Bachmann chief of staff.

And here's what Minnpost.com reported:

The FBI is investigating complaints of alleged campaign finance violations in Rep. Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign.

The FBI joins the Office of Congressional Ethics, the Federal Elections Commission and an Iowa state Senate ethics committee in probing whether Bachmann's presidential campaign paid an Iowa state senator from her MichelePAC, a fund that should not have been used for campaign expenses, and whether the state senator stole the email list of an Iowa home-school group from another Bachmann staffer, Barbara Hekki, prior to the Iowa caucuses in January, 2012.

They also reported (a few paragraphs later):

The entry of the FBI into the investigation raises the possibility that there were potential criminal violations. In addition to the alleged theft of the home-school list, the FBI is said to be looking into the campaign's demand that certain former employees, whose pay was withheld at the end of the campaign, sign non-disclosure agreements before receiving their compensation.

The very next day, this video was posted on youtube:


And this came from the AP early this morning:

Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, a conservative firebrand and a favorite of tea party Republicans, said Wednesday she will not run for another term in the U.S. House.

While in situations like this it's always good to remember the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.  We should not not automatically assume that the ethics probes or the FBI investigation or the near loss last time of her seat had anything whatsoever to do with her decision not to run this time.

She even says so in her video.

So we simply know it's true simply because she said it.  I mean when has Michelle Bachmann ever said anything untrue before?

Break Out the Champagne: Michele Bachmann Won't Seek Re-election Next Year!

Michele Bachmann pulls a Ravenstahl and announces she will not seek re-election next year. And, just like Lil Mayor Luke, she says it's in no way due to any pending investigations or because she can't win another term. Uh-uh, nope, not at all.

 

You can take a trip down memory lane of 2pj posts about Ms. Bachmann here.

The Party Of Reagan?

Senator Bob Dole doesn't think so.

Here he is being interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News this past Sunday:


Thanks to Think Progress for a transcript:

WALLACE: You describe the GOP of your generation as Eisenhower Republicans, moderate Republicans. Could people like you, even Ronald Reagan — could you make it in today’s Republican Party.

DOLE: I doubt it. Reagan couldn’t have made it. Certainly Nixon couldn’t have made it, 'cause he had ideas. We might have made it, but I doubt it.

Understandably, while this story's made its way onto much of the left leaning news sources (talkingpointsmemo, americablog, and so on), I was wondering if there was any (ANY) echo on any conservative blogs.

Well, my friends, take a look at this from the American Conservative.  After quoting Dole's interview with Wallace about how Reagan "couldn't have made it" in the contemporary GOP, W. James Antell III writes:

This has become a common refrain among a certain kind of Republican. Jeb Bush said much the same thing, throwing his father into the mix of party elders who would be out of step with today’s GOP.

Dole’s legislative accomplishments ranged from being part of the bipartisan majorities that passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to playing a key role in the passage of the Reagan economic program. The Republicans of his era were more temperamentally conservative, even if less ideologically so. They believed in balanced budgets and would have been horrified to hear a party leader say “deficits don’t matter.”

Newt Gingrich, who became Dole’s partner in crime during the GOP Congress of 1995-96, is a good example of the party’s evolved brand. He led Republicans to their first House majority in 40 years, displaying a creativity that past Republican leaders conspicuously lacked. But he was undone by his excesses, cultivating an image of partisanship, over-the-top statements, and a penchant for unpopular crusades.

Today’s GOP is as much Gingrich’s party as Reagan’s or Nixon’s. Chest-beating often replaces prudence, the party frequently makes use of both libertarian and traditionalist themes without taking either of them very seriously.

Um thanks, Newt?

But at least that's rational - check this out from breitbart.com.  Guess what?  Instead of countering Dole's argument (and positing some evidence that Reagan WOULD be welcome in the contemporary GOP, they just BASH DOLE INSTEAD:

Dole complained that he would not make it in today's Republican Party. However, Dole could not make it in 1976 on the bottom of the GOP presidential ticket against when the Party ran against Jimmy Carter or the top of the ticket 20 years later when he ran against Bill Clinton.

And that's hardly surprising considering the state of the contemporary GOP.

Memorial Day, 2013

Springboro Ohio, Creationism and the Tea Party Dogwhistles

We'll start here, at Fox News:

A proposal by an Ohio school district to add creationism to a list of controversial topics deemed appropriate for classroom discussion has ignited a debate over the separation of church and state among parents and a civil rights group.

The Springboro Board of Education took comments on the proposal at a meeting Thursday night attended by parents, students and teachers. Some parents urged the board to abandon the plan, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio sent a letter to the board, saying the policy would violate the separation of church and state.

"Basically they would be teaching creationism to counteract the teaching of evolution," ACLU spokesman Nick Worner said Friday. "Anytime that you promote or teach the beliefs of one religion over all other religions or beliefs in a public school classroom, that's a problem."

And Fox later gives us some details:

According to the school district website, "evolution/creation," ''pro-life/abortion," contraception/abstinence, legalization of drugs, gun rights, and global warming would be among the topics added to a list of "controversial issues."

Many "areas of study involve issues on which differing positions are held by individuals or groups," and all sides of an issue should be explored "fully and fairly," the proposal says.

Remember the list of topics in that first paragraph. It'll become more important later.  The ACLU of Ohio sent a letter to the Springboro Board of Education outlining the constitutional issues surrounding the proposals - actually there are two policy changes.  One for policy 8800 and the other for policy 2240.  It is the second, Policy 2240, that dabbles in creationism.

My first question was the context of where these "controversial issues" would be discussed.  If it was in a "social studies" or "contemporary issues" class, then what's the problem?  As long as the facts are presented as facts (evolution=science, creationism=religion) then what's the problem?

It's how the board fails to limit the discussion in that way, is the problem.  From the ACLU letter:

This policy appears to explicitly permit the teaching of creationism because "evolution" is on the "controversial issues" list and equal facts for the opposing viewpoint means classroom time spent on the religious theory of intelligent design (or creation science). It has been firmly established that this practice is unconstitutional, in violation of the Establishment Clause.

The Supreme Court of the United States has unequivocally held that so-called "balanced treatment" laws and policies which gave equal class time to evolution and creationism were unconstitutional because they served no secular purpose and instead had a primary purpose of advancing a particular religious viewpoint.

Now here's the text from Policy 2240:

The role of the teacher in the presentation o f assigned issues is vitally important. All sides of the issue should be given to the students in a dispassionate manner. The goal is for the students to be taught to think clearly on all matters of importance, and to make decisions in the light of all the material that has been presented or can be researched on the issues.

Giving sympathetic "science" teachers the room to do the "both sides" of the "teaching the controversy" thing.

But there's another point that Fox left out.  Here's the complete text of the "controversial issues" from the policy:

For purposes of this policy, controversial issues include: religion when not used in a historical or factual context , sex education, legalization of drugs, evolution/creation, pro-life/abortion, contraception/abstinence, conservatism/liberalism, politics, gun rights, global warming and climate change, UN Agenda 21 and sustainable development, and any other topic on which opposing points of view have been promulgated by responsible opinion and/or likely to arouse both support and opposition in the community.[Emphasis in original.]

There's a dogwhistle in there, signaling to Springboro's Tea Party element. Did you see it?

It's the UN Agenda 21.  And to the folks at crazie central (aka World Net Daily) it's:

...a 40-chapter U.N. program to introduce fascism worldwide in the guise of environmental regulation.

Confusing, until you take a look at the last time this happened in Springboro:

Kelly Kohls, who was elected in Springboro on a platform of fiscal responsibility two years ago, requested last week the district’s curriculum director look into ways of providing “supplemental” instruction dealing with creationism. Fellow member, Scott Anderson, who was elected with Kohls when the district was struggling financially, supports his colleague’s idea.

And:

Kohls is the head of the Warren County Tea Party. Although she said her desire to teach creationism is not directly related to the emerging political movement, it’s not inconsistent with Tea Party ideals.

“My input on creationism has everything with me being a parent and not a member of the Tea Party,” she said. “We are motivated people who want to change the course of this country. Eliminating God from our public lives I think is a mistake and is why we have gone in the direction of spending beyond our means.”

Of course Kelly Kohls is still on the Board.

Happy Birthday, Bob!

Bob Dylan is 72 years old today.

In his honor, let's listen:


And:


And:


And then finally:


Considering the election of this week, that last one may or may not be poignant.

Elections Have Consequences

Sometimes good ones.

The Ellwood City Ledger's Eric Poole describes what's going on in Ellwood City regarding that Nativity Scene that keeps popping up (Note: there's lotsa names floating in Poole's paragraphs so I've bolded them all for clarity):

During a forum last month for Ellwood City Council candidates, David DeCaria appeared – at least in my estimation – to have talked himself out of a job.

In response to what might have been the biggest controversy of 2012, DeCaria said the borough was right to move the borough’s Nativity scene off the municipal building’s front lawn.

And let’s be clear about it, he didn’t dance around the matter the way council members Anthony “Lefty” DeCarbo and Judith Dici did by saying they would have liked to keep the display where it was, but a threatened lawsuit by the Madison, Wisc.-based Freedom From Religion Foundation forced the move.

DeCaria said the Nativity shouldn’t have been on public property in the first place because it violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause. He’s right about that, by the way. But saying it seemed like a sure way to lose a Republican primary in Ellwood City, not that he cared.

And:

Conversely, had I been publicly handicapping Tuesday’s borough council primary vote, I would have thought Michael “Mundo” Parisi, probably the town’s loudest proponent for returning the Nativity to borough property, would have benefited from a stand that seemed wildly popular.

The night before Tuesday’s election, I told Jim Arkett, who advocated fighting those meddling atheists from Wisconsin, that I thought his support for the tradition would help him win a Democratic nomination.

And finally:

Arkett finished outside the crucial top four Tuesday and failed to get a Democratic nomination. Rocco “Rocky” Ierino, who lent his support for keeping the Nativity display on borough property, finished flat last among the Democratic candidates.

Meanwhile, on the Republican side, Parisi finished in next-to-last place, well behind DeCaria, who earned one of the four GOP nominations. DeCarbo and Dici won Democratic nominations.

Basically, lotsa folks who in one way or another want the unconstitutional nativity display on public grounds won't be on the ballot in the fall.  As Poole concludes:

Regardless of what happens in November, it’s a virtual certainty that the issue won’t be revisited next year when a new council takes office. And that new council might not be all that new. All four incumbents won nominations Tuesday.

Let's hear it for the Constitution and the Separation of Church and State in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania!

Well This Is Embarrassing...

Hey anyone remember when the Tribune-Review was using Alex Jones' Infowars as a credible information source?

Then, the braintrust published a bit o' paranoia about how the guv'ment is buying up all the ammo.

Now Alex Jones is exposing the guv'ment's secret weather controlling technology:



From Mediamatters:

On the May 21 edition of The Alex Jones Show, a caller asked Jones whether he was planning to cover how government technology may be behind a recent spate of sinkholes. After laying out how insurance companies use weather modification to avoid having to pay ski resorts for lack of snow, Jones said that "of course there's weather weapon stuff going on -- we had floods in Texas like fifteen years ago, killed thirty-something people in one night. Turned out it was the Air Force."

Following a long tangent, Jones returned to the caller's subject. While he explained that "natural tornadoes" do exist and that he's not sure if a government "weather weapon" was involved in the Oklahoma disaster, Jones warned nonetheless that the government "can create and steer groups of tornadoes."

Yea, the braintrust knows where to get the good info - Alex Jones' Infowars!

To show you how good Alex is at digging through the guv'ment code, he mentions how in "Title 50 Chapter 32 Subsection 1528 Paragraph b":

...allows chemical biological radiological or any other testing, even lethal on citizens unsuspecting. The government claims it's allowed to kill us.  In the main title it says it's illegal but in the subtitle it says unless for law enforcement or research purposes.

The thing is...(and you know where this is going, right?) there is no subsection 1528 of Title 50 Chapter 32.

Either Jones misquoted some other place in the code or he's making it up.

Yea, the braintrust really knows where to get the good info - Alex Jones' Infowars!

Peduto Wins.

From KDKA:

Longtime City Councilman Bill Peduto has won the Democratic nomination for mayor, defeating former state auditor general Jack Wagner and state Rep. Jake Wheatley.

A repost:

You still have an hour...

VOTE!

VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!

It's important.

More Credibility Problems For Stephen Hayes

And, of course, his friends on the Tribune-Review Editorial Board.

Remember this?  It's my blogpost deconstructing this Trib editorial where the braintrust presents us with this:

The Weekly Standard's Stephen F. Hayes writes that emails sent during that process make it “clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public.”

The world has since learned (with the White House release of the entire email chain) that Hayes got it wrong.

Wrong.  Stephen Hayes was wrong on Benghazi.

From Mediamatters:

The idea that [State Department spokeswoman Victoria] Nuland's overriding concern was political -- and that her concern was shared by the White House -- is key to the notion of a "cover-up" by the administration. Hayes' articles came to that assumption based on incomplete information and misrepresentation of emails between agencies.

But, just saying it isn't nearly enough - how do they support their assertion?  This is how:

In a follow-up article for the May 20 edition of The Weekly Standard, Hayes kept pushing the idea that Nuland's concern was solely political, and misrepresented an email to UN ambassador Susan Rice to make the argument that the talking points were edited to reflect that concern. The National Security Council Deputies Committee met on September 15 to work out the various agencies' issues with the Benghazi talking points, and a summary of that meeting was emailed to Rice.

And then MediaMatters show its work.  They start with how Hayes described that email:

The proceedings were summarized in an email to U.N. ambassador Rice shortly after the meeting ended. The subject line read: "SVTS on Movie/Protests/violence." The name of the sender is redacted, but whoever it was had an email address suggesting a job working for the United States at the United Nations.

According to the email, several officials in the meeting shared the concern of Nuland, who was not part of the deliberations, that the CIA's talking points might lead to criticism that the State Department had ignored the CIA's warning about an attack. Mike Morell, deputy director of the CIA, agreed to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to edit the talking points. At the time, Sullivan was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department's director of policy planning; he is now the top national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden. Denis McDonough, then a top national security adviser to Obama and now his chief of staff, deferred on Rhodes's behalf to Sullivan. [Bolding in Mediamatters original]

And then they show what the email actually said:

HPSCI [House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence] request: Late this week, CIA Director Petraeus gave the HPSCI a "hots [sic] spots" briefing and was asked for unclassified talking points that its members could use about the incident in Benghazi. (Apparently NCTC Director Matt Olson received a similar committee [sic] from a congressional committee.) The first draft apparently seemed unsuitable (based on conversations on the SVTS and afterwards) because they seemed to encourage the reader to infer incorrectly that the CIA had warned about a specific attack on our embassy. On SVTS, Morell noted that these points were not good and he had taken a heavy editing hand to them. He noted that he would be happy to work with Jake Sullivan and Rhodes to develop appropriate talking points. McDonough, on Rhodes's behalf, deferred to Sullivan. It was agreed that Jake would work closely with the intelligence community (within a small group) to finalize points on Saturday that could be shared with HPSCI. I spoke to Jake immediately after the SVTS and noted that you were doing the Sunday morning shows and would need to be aware of the final posture that these points took. He committed to ensure that we were updated in advance of the Sunday shows. I specifically mentioned [REDACTED] as the one coordinating your preparations for the shows and also strongly encouraged him to loop in [REDACTED] during the process. [Bolding in Mediamatters original]

And they point out what should be obvious:

It makes no mention of perceived criticism of the State Department.

And thus, Hayes got it wrong.  The "defend Clinton's State Department" part of Hayes' (and the rest of the right wing media's) "cover-up" argument dissolves completely.

And if Hayes got it wrong, then the braintrust got it wrong.

Will we be seeing a correction/clarification any time soon?

Some Follow-Up On Those Susquehanna Poll Numbers

There's a little more to say about the Susquehanna poll out a few days ago.  Mostly about the remaining undecideds.  From Keystone Politics:

The final poll of the Pittsburgh Mayor race, from Susquehanna, shows Bill Peduto leading Jack Wagner by 9 points, 42-33.

But wait aren’t there a lot of undecided voters? Sure, there still are about 16% undecided, but when the pollsters pushed them to say which way they’re leaning, Wagner only gets 20% of them. With the soft supporters included, Peduto still has a 7-point lead – safely above the poll’s +/-4.88% margin of error.

I have to add a slight "Yes, but..." here.  In an election of this size (a municipal election where the margin of victory might be a few thousand if not a few hundred votes) nothing is "safely above" or assured.  The worst thing would be for a voter to assume that because these numbers point in one direction that his or her the race is over.  (And this is true for either camp, Wagner or Peduto.)

Moving on:

Wagner would need to win 80% of the undecided voters to overtake Peduto’s lead. Could that happen? It’s unlikely in the extreme.

But it's still possible.  There's only one solution for this situation:  VOTE!

At this point it's all about GOTV - the candidate with the better Get Out The Vote organization will probably win.

It's really very simple.

Let's Redd Up City Hall: Vote for Bill Peduto Tomorrow!

Help Bill make a clean sweep!

In less then 24 hours, you can change Pittsburgh. You can make this the city we know it can be!

The Peduto Phenomenon

I have no idea who these people are but since they're in tune when they break into harmony, I will assume one or more of them have some musical training.


I am also assuming they're proscuito, voluto, menudo, potato Peduto supporters.

I haven't been able to find any similarly kewl Wagner videos.

Not So Fast, My Friends

It should not be surprising to readers of this blog that the editorial board of the Tribune-Review routinely misleads its audience by only presenting part of the story when it tries to make some point.

What's only surprising about this example is how much they mislead over such a short amount of text:

Acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, forced to resign in the conservative-targeting scandal, was set to leave that post anyway, as early as June. Ooooh, talk about “forceful” action, eh? [Bolding in original.}

Let's take a trip to an actual news source to see how much they left out.  While still spinning the "ain't so much 'fired' meme" ABC does fill out some telling details:

It appeared that President Obama had taken decisive action late Wednesday when he announced that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew had demanded the resignation of acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller amid the growing scandal over targeting conservative groups. But it turns out that Miller was subject to a term limit that would have forced him out of the job in three weeks.

Miller, a 25-year career IRS employee, was appointed acting commissioner on November 9, 2012. According to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, his 210-day term would have set his last day in that post as June 8.

This does not mean that Miller is not paying a price. His intention had been to go back to his job as Deputy Commissioner for Services and Enforcement, a position that put him in charge of the tax exempt unit at the center of a scandal over targeting conservative groups.

This statute makes it clear Miller could not remain acting IRS commissioner unless he was proactively reappointed as acting commissioner for another 210 days, or Obama nominated a permanent commissioner allowing Miller to remain in the job until that person was confirmed.

So Obama could have tried to appoint him to another 210 days (and let's be honest, that would have been a foolish thing to do considering) or Miller could have remained acting commissioner while his replacement was confirmed.  In any event he planned on remaining in the IRS to a position that would have overseen the unit at the center of the scandal.

Instead, he resigned completely from the agency (and let's be honest, that was the right thing to do considering).

Now go back to read what the braintrust presented to you.  They left out the part about how Miller was planning on staying with the IRS after his 210 days was up, didn't they?

How much does that change the meaning of their all too short blurb?

Alot, doesn't it?

Hardly surprising, coming from Scaife's braintrust.

More Momentum For Peduto

From the Tribune-Review:

City Councilman Bill Peduto grabbed the front-runner status he once claimed to have in the Pittsburgh mayoral race, seizing on growing disapproval of chief opponent Jack Wagner in the campaign's bitter, final weeks, a Tribune-Review poll shows.

Peduto surged ahead of Wagner to stake a 42 percent to 33 percent lead among 400 likely voters a week before the decisive Democratic primary on Tuesday, according to the poll by Susquehanna Polling and Research. The poll shows a 9-point gain for Peduto, 48, of Point Breeze and a 7-point drop for Wagner, 65, of Beechview since an April 1-2 survey by the Harrisburg firm.

The Trib even has some art work to illustrate the swing if you wanna go see it.

The context of the earlier poll is important.  If we sort by the change in percentage points between the two polls, we might be able to see where support was lost and where it was gained.

• Peduto - 9 point gain (up to 42 from 33 percent)
• Wheatley - 2 point gain (up to 6 from 4 percent)
• Undecided - 4 point loss (down to 16 from 20 percent)
• Wagner - 7 point loss (down to 33 from 40 percent)
• Richardson - No change
• Other - No change

The big looser, then, according to this poll has to be Jack Wagner.  Of the overall shift of 11 points (what Peduto and Wheatley "gained" and what Wagner and the Undecideds "lost") more than half came from Wagner.

The Trib presents a few ideas why:

“It looks to me like whatever the Wagner folks have done might have backfired,” said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research. “All the movement has clearly gone to Peduto.”

And:

Mudslinging that punctuated advertising during the past three weeks, including an anti-Peduto ad from a Republican consultant hired by a Ravenstahl political committee, impacted Wagner's popularity.

“The credibility of the mayor at this point is rapidly decreasing, and that has hurt Jack Wagner,” said Gerald Shuster, a political analyst with the University of Pittsburgh. He said Wagner has not distanced himself from Ravenstahl as a federal investigation of city spending moves closer to the mayor's office.

The Trib quoted a Wagner spokesman saying that they'd "disavowed" the Ravenstahl ads.  You remember, those, right? The swiftboat ads?  It looks like Luke's swiftboat ads damaged Wagner's credibility.

Another really smart move from the soon-to-be former boy-mayor.

But of course, none of this means anything if Pittsburgh's Democrats don't vote.  So:

Both campaigns said they would focus on Sunday and Monday on “get out the vote” efforts, noting that voter turnout could make the difference. Peduto will “be out on the street,” Toler said, and Wagner scheduled 20 events between Friday and Tuesday to allow him and about 400 volunteers to meet people, Abbott said.

GO VOTE ON TUESDAY!

Hey Pittsburgh! Do you believe?

  "Be the change that you wish to see in the world."