Recent reports detailed 157 visits by former IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to the White House during the time when the IRS was targeting President Obama’s political enemies for extra scrutiny. This is amazing when you consider that Shulman visited the White House more than any cabinet member – the Secretary of State, the Secretary of…
NSA Collecting Call Data From Millions Of Verizon Customers
Remember when President Obama was against this sort of thing? “This administration…puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide,” then-Senator Obama said in 2007. “I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and…
With The Chancellor Leaving, Let's Talk About North Dakota's Problematic University Presidents
Scoring their second victory over a chancellor of the North Dakota University System in less than a decade, the state’s university presidents have to be feeling pretty full of themselves. Yet, even as Chancellor Hamid Shirvani departs (golden parachute planted squarely on his back), the problems in the state’s university system remains. And those problems…
Off-Shore Wind Power Companies Collecting More In Federal Subsidies Than They Pay In Federal Royalties
The Obama administration spends a lot of its time sandbagging and attacking fossil-fuel energy development while spending a lot of tax dollars promoting so-called “green” energy. This is little better, from a moral standpoint, than picking and choosing which groups or individuals will get audited by the IRS based on their political ideology, but I…
There Have Been More Than 73 Million Firearm Background Checks Under President Obama
It’s not news that there’s been a huge spike in gun sales under President Obama – Americans have been buying up guns since the earliest days of his term – but it does look as though the trend is slowing a bit towards the end of his time in office: CNS News – There have…
Duane Sand Still Raising Funds For His 2012 Primary Campaign, Runs Afoul Of FEC
Duane Sand is the Republican politician who seems to be running for one federal office or another every single election cycle. He ran for the Senate in 2000, for the House in 2004 and 2008, and the Senate again in 2012. In that last cycle, Sand skipped the NDGOP’s endorsement convention and ran against fellow…
"We've Never Seen A Generation This Educated Also Be This Unemployed"
The quote above from from an Atlantic article about youth unemployment in the European Union. Not, thankfully, America. But still, the picture in the EU is grim, and you have to wonder how much behind the curve America is on this front: The EU unemployment rate set a new all-time high of 12.2 percent, according…
Is It The Government's Place To Pick And Choose?
The City of Minot will be getting another Walmart location thanks to the city council approving the store’s plans to build it. The location will be on the north side of the city, which will be nice for the folks who live there. For a long time the commerce centers of the centers have been…
Despite Getting Fired Chancellor Shirvani Will Get Two More Pay Raises
According to Chancellor Hamid Shirvani’s separation agreement, he’ll be on administrative leave starting July 14th of 2013 and, starting January 2nd of 2014, he’ll cease being an officer in the North Dakota University System. But Chancellor Shirvani will continue to get paid until June 30th of 2015, and will even get two pay raises during…
First You Subsidize Them, Then You Work For Them
In the Washington Examiner today Tim Carney uses former Byron Dorgan staffer Elizabeth Gore as an example of the revolving door between the power brokers in Washington DC and the companies the funnel taxpayer subsidies to. Byron Dorgan, when he was a U.S. senator, directed taxpayer money to clean-coal research. Elizabeth Gore, Dorgan’s chief of…