OH, YIPPEE!: “This fall, the Internal Revenue Service plans to revive the practice of randomly targeting thousands of taxpayers for audits, even when the agency has no reason to suspect wrongdoing.” - Wall Street Journal, 6/16/07
ZERO TOLERANCE…FOR COMMON SENSE
“Fifth-graders in California who adorned their mortarboards with tiny toy plastic soldiers this week to support troops in Iraq were forced to cut off their miniature weapons.”
- Associated Press, 6/16/07
THAT DIDN’T TAKE LONG
“The Democrats, flush from their 2006 election gains, took over Congress in January, promising to end the legislative stalemate and pass a sweeping agenda for reform. Nearly six months later, they have backpedaled on their promises of reform; they’ve made little progress on major legislation; their job-approval ratings have taken a nosedive; and there’s talk for the first time that House Democrats could lose seats to the Republicans in 2008.”
- Columnist Donald Lambro
A REAL JOHNNY-COME-LATELY
“If the Democrats want to test us, that’s why they give the president the veto. I’m looking forward to vetoing excessive spending, and I’m looking forward to having the United States Congress support my veto.”
- President Bush, who neglected to explain why he failed to veto excessive spending for the last SIX years of his presidency
SUICIDE RUN
“In two presidential campaigns now, McCain has proven himself adept at what is becoming his signature maneuver: the suicidal assault directly into the teeth of key Republican interest groups and beliefs.”
- Columnist Rich Lowry
NET REALITY
“The network neutrality clock has been ticking for more than 41/2 years. In those years since big-content companies such as eBay and Yahoo! first asked the Federal Communications Commission to impose network neutrality regulations, there has not been a single incident of a cable or phone company blocking access to a lawful website.”
- Phil Kerpen of the Internet Freedom Coalition
“The cable industry asked the FCC Friday to leave the Internet unregulated, saying it is network flexibility that has prompted hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in network build-outs and upgrades. Filing comments in the FCC’s inquiry into network neutrality, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association argued that mandating ‘net neutrality’ is unnecessary and counterproductive.”
- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/15/07
HORDES OF LAWYERS
“In 1978, noting that the number of US lawyers had increased to 462,000, Time magazine rued the way laws and lawsuits were taking over American life, making it ever more difficult for people of goodwill to rely on custom and common sense in settling differences. If that was true then, how much more so today, when the ‘hordes of lawyers’ have swollen to nearly 1 million? A century ago, there was 1 lawyer for every 714 Americans. Today the ratio is 1 to 288.”
- Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby
KILL THE TIGER
“Back when Joe Camel was public enemy number one, skeptics warned that Tony the Tiger would be next. Well, we’re almost there: Last Thursday, Kellogg Co. announced it would stop using licensed characters like Shrek for marketing, unless the food in question meets certain nutrition benchmarks for sugar, fat and calories.
“…This retreat comes after the Naderite Center for Science in the Public Interest and the more recently minted Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood threatened a lawsuit against Kellogg and Nickelodeon for marketing junk foods to children, or what is alleged to be ‘multimedia brainwashing.’ The claim is that kids are vulnerable to ‘slick advertising,’ though the last time we checked not many kids were buying their own breakfast food.”
- Wall Street Journal editorial, 6/18/07
THE MOTHER OF ALL FRIVOLOUS LAWSUITS
“It all began two years ago when (attorney Roy) Pearson walked into Custom Cleaners, a Northeast D.C. establishment owned by Jin Chung, Soo Chung and Ki Chung. He laid down $10.50 to have a pair of pants altered. The results dissatisfied him: The job wasn’t finished on time, and he says the pants he was given were someone else’s, which the Chungs deny. He demanded $1,150 for a new suit; the Chungs demurred. So it was off to court, with the claimed damages subject to alterations, in an expansive direction.
“How billowy did those damages get? Well, it seems Mr. Pearson needed to be paid for 10 years’ worth of weekend car rentals so that he could patronize a different dry cleaner. He wanted $500,000 for emotional distress and–though representing himself–$542,000 in legal fees.
“Best of all, he claimed that the signs on display at Custom Cleaners, ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ and ‘Same Day Service,’ were fraudulent, entitling him to damages of $1,500 each per day under D.C. consumer law. He multiplied 12 violations by three defendants by 1,200 days, and soon was up over $65 million (later cut to a mere $54 million).”
- Walter Olson of the Manhattan Institute
THE UNION LABEL
“Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to hold a vote this Wednesday on perhaps the most unpopular element of the Democratic agenda,” writes John Fund of the Wall Street Journal this morning. “Under the so-called card-check bill, a company would no longer have the right to demand a secret-ballot election to certify a union, thus stripping 140 million American workers of the right to decide in private whether to organize.”
Posted on June 18th, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
“This fall, the Internal Revenue Service plans to revive the practice of randomly targeting thousands of taxpayers for audits, even when the agency has no reason to suspect wrongdoing.”
As much as I can’t stand some of the comments made by Ron Paul, it’s this kind of thing that makes me continue to like a lot of what he stands for.
Hordes of Lawyers; Absurd and an expose’ on liers.
As Robert Bork, who backed mightly tort reform, sues the Yale Club for $1m because he tripped on the way to the diaz. You would think that he was burned over 80% of his body when his Pinto was rear ended.
Crazy old white men. That includes Bush who only vetoed a stem cell bill in 7 years.