There is a considerable amount of chatter amid the blog-o-sphere for an interview Hugh Hewitt had with former Clinton White House Counsel Lanny Davis. [ Transcript here ]

Most of the attention has focused on the final segment question where Hewitt challenges Davis to summarize Hillary’s accomplishments as Secretary of State, and Davis cannot name one:

LANNY DAVIS: … more time, which is at some point, at some point, if she runs for president, Benghazi and every other issue she’s being criticized for, and I happen to believe that there are only a handful of people that hold Benghazi against her. I don’t think that that’s a serious political issue for her.

HUGH HEWITT: Okay, then give me one more thing.

DAVIS: But she’s got to do it. She’s got to do it if she runs for president. And she knows that.

HEWITT: All right, one question, you’ve got a minute. Summarize for me what she accomplished as Secretary of State.

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Outside the DC beltway bubble I guess taxpayers are now “ordinary Americans”.  That would make the non-taxpayer(s), non-ordinary Americans.   Strange world we live in where the majority views have to be quantified, or defined so, as to reach beyond the propaganda…..

Note to DC and liberals:    WE OUTNUMBER YOU !

(Via Breitbart)  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) announced Friday that throughout 2013 his three campaign arms raised $4.16 million.

Cruz made the massive haul over 2013 through his re-election committee, Ted Cruz for Senate, his joint fundraising committee, Ted Cruz Victory Committee, and his leadership PAC, the Jobs, Growth & Freedom Fund.

About $1.5 million of this fundraising happened in the fourth quarter of 2013. This began during the government shutdown caused by Democrats’ and President Obama’s refusal to compromise on Obamacare after Cruz’s stand, with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) at his side, against the unpopular healthcare law. Conventional wisdom inside the beltway was that Americans disapproved of Cruz’s and Lee’s tactics, but these fundraising details are yet another indicator that ordinary Americans craved someone who would stand up against Obamacare on their behalf.   (read more)

Often times when conversations turn to the dictates emanating from Washington DC you hear the word “they”.   As you read the following article from The Hill, may I draw your attention to the inherent arrogance contained within the framework.

GOP wing forming half of the “Gang of Ocho”

(Via The Hill) Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-Fla.) political stock is rated a buy by major Republican fundraisers in Washington, who are bullish on Rubio’s future as a 2016 presidential candidate.

A group of Republican fundraising heavyweights and wise men in Washington’s business community are solidly behind Rubio, and see him not only as someone who could win the White House, but someone they can work with.

The fundraisers include Bill Paxon, a former New York lawmaker who is now a senior adviser at Akin Gump; Dirk Van Dongen, the president of the National Wholesalers Association; and Wayne Berman, a big-time donor with a knack for picking winning candidates in presidential primaries. (more…)

First Lady Michelle Obama took a jab at rural Americans during a speech she delivered to Democrats at the posh Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco, according to a White House transcript of her remarks.

Her comments came as she was imploring the high-dollars donors to dig deep and “max out” their checking accounts.

“Leave San Francisco,” she told the laughing audience. “Leave this bastion. Go out in the wilderness. And roll up your sleeves because we know that those person-to-person contacts, those calls and doors knocked on, all of that can also mean the difference between victory and defeat.”  (link)

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The articulation of the rebel alliance captured:

For the value within the backstory GO HERE

SPLODEY HEAD DEFCON Level 4 –  Progressives rush to hide this in the liberal “Keep This From The Media” file.

(Volokh Conspiracy Blog – Via Washington Post)  There was a small furor yesterday over an MSNBC staffer’s intolerant views of conservatives and the political right. Erik Wemple at the Post published MSNBC’s apology, which announces that a staffer was fired. You can also follow the dispute at New York Magazine, Reason, Michele Malkin, Instapundit, and Gateway Pundit (which captured the fullest screenshot of the now-scrubbed tweet).

My interest today is not in what happened or in the responses of MSNBC and the people it insulted, but rather in the substance of the claim: that people on the right side of the political spectrum would be opposed to mixed-race families including an adopted child.  This follows a somewhat similar MSNBC kerfuffle over jokes implying that an African-American grandchild was somehow out of place in a Romney family photo.

I thought perhaps a little academic light might clear up some of the press’s ignorance about adopted and step-families in America (the Romney case). (more…)

The Hard Bigotry of Forced Lower Expectations !

The school is predominantly Black and Hispanic.  Minorities make up more than two-thirds of the student body; Whites / Asians a mere 28%.

The higher academic functioning kindergartners were mostly white/asian.  It was mostly white parents who were engaged with the academic success of their child and enrolling them in the additional gifted program.

Absent of enough high level academically functioning blacks the gifted program lacked diversity.          So the school shut it down.

NEW YORK – A popular gifted program will get the axe after Ditmas Park school officials chose diversity over exclusivity.

Citing a lack of diversity, PS 139 Principal Mary McDonald informed parents in a letter that the Students of Academic Rigor and two other in-house programs would no longer accept applications for incoming kindergartners.

“Our Kindergarten classes will be heterogeneously grouped to reflect the diversity of our student body and the community we live in,” McDonald told parents in a letter posted on the photo-sharing site flickr and obtained by Ditmas Park Corner.

More than two thirds of the school’s roughly 1,000 students are black or hispanic while Asian-American and white students made up 28%, according to Education Dept. records. (more…)

President Obama claims marijuana drug law enforcement is full of racism.   President Obama also directly defends James Clapper’s lies before congress, and more:

What stands out to you?

(New York Times) The former Port Authority official who personally oversaw the lane closings on the George Washington Bridge in the scandal now swirling around Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said on Friday that the governor knew about the lane closings when they were happening.

In a letter released by his lawyer, the official, David Wildstein, a high school friend of Mr. Christie’s who was appointed with the governor’s blessing at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which controls the bridge, described the order to close the lanes as “the Christie administration’s order” and said “evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” three weeks ago.  (continue reading)