Big firms that sell recommendations on how to vote in corporate elections are losing some of their relevance, as companies more aggressively court key investors.

SoftBank is readying a plan to allow the U.S. government an unusual level of influence over the operations of Sprint, a concession to ease security concerns raised by the proposed cross-border takeover.

Sales of foreclosed homes fell in April, and the number of properties on the market rose at the start of the spring selling season, suggesting further improvement in the housing market this year.

A more detailed look at China's economic performance in 2012 shows it tipped further off balance, relying more than ever on credit-fueled investment, a trend it had tried to rein in.

Private-sector activity in the euro zone declined again in May, a development that is likely to add to calls for further action by the European Central Bank and governments to boost growth.

Ahead of the Tape: Profits never go out of fashion. Sadly, the same can't be said for the wares on display at Gap and its competitors.

Lois Lerner, the IRS official who refused to testify at a House hearing, faces criticism over the agency's practice of singling out conservative groups and her Federal Elections Commission history. Lawmakers Voice Frustration as IRS Official Refuses to Testify, Others Reveal LittleVIDEO: Lerner: 'I Did Nothing Wrong' OPINION: Chicago-Style Politics on Full Display in IRS, Other Scandals

DOJ Used 'Espionage Act' in Calling Reporter 'Co-Conspirator'OPINION: Assault on First Amendment Needs to StopJudge Apologizes for Lag in Unsealing Documents in Leak CaseVIDEO: Why Scandal Matters

Brave Woman Tried to Reason With Attackers Before Cops Arrived VIDEO: Attackers Kill Man on Busy London Street in Broad Daylight Man Killed by FBI Reportedly Linked to Boston Bomber, Triple Murder

FOX NEWS POLL: Most Voters Want Guantanamo Kept Open Obama Administration Says Drone Strikes Have Killed 4 AmericansVIDEO: Drones Kill 4 Americans READ: Attorney General Holder's Letter to Congressional Leaders

It was Wednesday, shortly before Senator Rand Paul’s bravura 13-hour filibuster, the Jimmy Stewart star turn in Paul’s crusade to have the Constitution ban a bogeyman of his own making: the killing of American citizens on American soil by America’s armed forces — a scandal that clearly cries out for action, having occurred exactly zero times in the 20 years since jihadists commenced hostilities by bombing the World Trade Center.

At a hearing of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Ted Cruz was grilling Attorney General Eric Holder. Cruz seemed beside himself — in the theatrical spirit of the day — over Holder’s refusal to concede that the imaginary use of lethal force conjured up by Paul would be, under any and all circumstances, unconstitutional. The attorney general preferred the fuzzier term “inappropriate” — at least until Senator Cruz finally browbeat him into saying that by “inappropriate” he meant “unconstitutional.”

Keep reading this post . . .

Around the Pentagon, the budget cutters have put away their knives and are reaching for axes. In times like these, every service naturally circles the wagons around its share of the budget pie. The stress is so great that otherwise smart people take incredibly silly stands. Last week, for instance, the former chief of naval operations, Admiral Gary Roughead, published a paper that calls for cutting the Army in half and leaving the Navy’s budget untouched. He sums up the logic for this advice in a few simple words: “The force we propose accepts risk in the burden we are placing on our Army and Marine Corps.” Admiral Roughead, unfortunately, fails to tell us what risk he is accepting in the nation’s behalf. Let me do it for him. The risk he is taking on is summed up in one word: defeat.

A combined Air Force–Navy effort popularly known as Air-Sea Battle takes a seemingly more reasoned approach. At its base, Air-Sea Battle calls for purchasing expensive new weapons (lots of them) so as to clear the sea-lanes of enemies (that don’t yet exist), and to be able to fight through any enemy’s air and coastal defenses. These proposals, however, fail to answer a huge strategic question: To what purpose? After you have opened the sea-lanes and broken through an enemy’s defense, what do you do if that enemy refuses to surrender? In the past, we carried out these missions in order to open the door for the Army and Marines to enter a country and defeat an enemy force.

Keep reading this post . . .

I shall leave it to others to argue the legal and constitutional questions surrounding drones, but they are not without practical application. For the last couple of years, Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security, has had Predator drones patrolling the U.S. border. No, silly, not the southern border. The northern one. You gotta be able to prioritize, right? At Derby Line, Vt., the international frontier runs through the middle of the town library and its second-floor opera house. If memory serves, the stage and the best seats are in Canada, but the concession stand and the cheap seats are in America. Despite the zealots of Homeland Security’s best efforts at afflicting residents of this cross-border community with ever more obstacles to daily life, I don’t recall seeing any Predator drones hovering over Non-Fiction E–L. But, if there are, I’m sure they’re entirely capable of identifying which delinquent borrower is a Quebecer and which a Vermonter before dispatching a Hellfire missile to vaporize him in front of the Large Print Romance shelves.

I’m a long, long way from Rand Paul’s view of the world (I’m basically a 19th-century imperialist a hundred years past sell-by date), but I’m far from sanguine about America’s drone fever. For all its advantages to this administration — no awkward prisoners to be housed at Gitmo, no military casualties for the evening news — the unheard, unseen, unmanned drone raining down death from the skies confirms for those on the receiving end al-Qaeda’s critique of its enemies: As they see it, we have the best technology and the worst will; we choose aerial assassination and its attendant collateral damage because we are risk-averse, and so remote, antiseptic, long-distance, computer-programmed warfare is all that we can bear. Our technological strength betrays our psychological weakness.

Keep reading this post . . .

We are now firmly ensconced in the brutal Age of the Sequester, and things in America are grave. The federal government, we learned on Wednesday, is so strapped for cash that the president has been forced to cut off the People’s access to the home he’s borrowing from them. He didn’t want to have to do this, naturally — “particularly during the popular spring touring season.” But then Congress just had to go and acquiesce in measures that the president himself had suggested and signed into law. How beastly! We axed 2.6 percent from a $44.8 trillion budget, and now the president can’t even afford the $18,000 per week necessary to retain the seven staff members who facilitate citizens’ enjoying self-guided tours around the White House.

The executive mansion is not in that much trouble, of course. It’s certainly not in sufficiently dire straits for Air Force One ($181,757 per hour) to be grounded, or to see the executive chef ($100,000 per year) furloughed, or to cut back on the hours of the three full-time White House calligraphers ($277,050 per year for the trio), or to limit the invaluable work of the chief of staff to the president’s dog ($102,000 per year), or to trim his ridiculous motorcade ($2.2 million). If Ellen DeGeneres wants another dancercize session or Spain holds another clothing sale, the first family will be there before you can say “citizen executive.” Fear ye not, serfs: Austerity may be the word of the week, but the president is by no means in any danger of being forced to live like the president of a republic instead of like a king.

Keep reading this post . . .

So here we are in the early dawn of the Age of Sequester, and the howls of rage are strangely subdued. Sure, Robert Reich is jumping up and down, and a few members of the bobblehead-pundit set are doing their thing, but, so far, there is no widespread public outcry over the “cuts”—which aren’t really cuts, of course, in most cases. Politically speaking, the sequester is a far tamer beast than, say, the Clinton–Gingrich government shutdown, an episode during which Republicans got burned, and burned but good.

As one insightful observer put it, the very modest reduction in the growth of government spending is roughly equivalent to an alcoholic switching from Guinness Extra Stout to Heineken Light, and while the ripples of economic anguish may be felt acutely by those closest to the federal cash flow — government employees and contractors — the general public seems at the moment to be taking the suspension of White House tours in stride.

Keep reading this post . . .

This week, the world was rocked by the news that an infant born in Mississippi with HIV has apparently been cured: The child tested positive for the disease several times in the first month after her birth, while she was receiving aggressive antiretroviral (ARV) treatment, but now, at the age of 23 months, she shows no sign of HIV.

This development points to a hopeful way forward for infants who contract HIV during gestation or at birth, but almost all of them live not in Mississippi, but in places like Mali and Namibia. Yet thanks to the United States government and private benefactors, prompted by President George W. Bush, many of those children and their mothers do have access to some HIV/AIDS treatment programs.

Keep reading this post . . .

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(CNSNews.com) ? The Internal Revenue Service, under fire for i

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(CNSNews.com) ? A bipartisan group of House members introduced legislation on Wednesday to protect journalists from government snooping.

?Freedom of the press is a foundational freedom upon whic

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In Connecticut, reported Wednesday?s New Haven Register, ?Some Democratic state lawmakers are proposing to raise the 1 percent tax on such products to match the state's 6.35 percent sales tax, making Connecticut one of nearly two dozen states to extend sales taxes to downloaded products.? When I read this on the train earlier, I couldn?t help but whistle the tune from the 1952 revival of the Kaufman/Ryskind/Gershwins musical Of Thee I Sing, the ?Senatorial Roll Call,? where lawmakers merrily break out singing:

The people think they've got taxation. Ha! Ha! Ha! Just wait for further legislation. Ha! Ha! Ha! Today is really full of laughter. Ho! Ho! Ho! Compared to what will follow after! Ho! Ho! Ho! With fury though you may be seething. Ha! Ha! Ha! Just wait until we tax your breathing. Ha! Ha! Ha!

On taxes, None relaxes When this happy group convenes! Be it payroll, be it income- We are gathered here to sink ?em. Till there's no one with a nickel in his jeans. If you think you've got taxation, Wait for further legislation, And you'll find out what taxation really means! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

By the way, Morrie Ryskind wrote many pieces for National Review, including two in the 1955 premier issue. 

You can always rely on the administration of Barack Obama, a former constitutional-law lecturer (or as his résumé-inflating fans put it, "professor"), to do the sleazy thing when it comes to the Constitution the president is sworn to defend. Thus, the performance on Wednesday of Lois Lerner, chief of the Obama IRS?s Conservative Harassment Division, before the House oversight committee.

There?s an old scam criminal defendants occasionally pull. They give a bit of exculpatory direct testimony -- just enough to gaze plaintively at the jurors and swear, cross-their-hearts, that they are pure as the driven snow. Then, just as the moment of submitting to cross-examination approaches, they announce that, even though they're really, truly innocent, they just can't answer the mean prosecutor?s questions -- on advice of counsel, of course, in reliance on the Fifth Amendment.

Everyone familiar with this area of the law knows that this is contemptuous conduct. To testify, by definition, is to agree to submit to cross-examination. Once you begin to answer questions -- i.e., to testify -- you waive your right not to testify -- i.e., not to answer questions.

In a trial, the judge does not put up with such shenanigans, which are, after all, a fraud on the process. The court rules that, by giving exculpatory testimony on direct examination, the defendant has waived his Fifth Amendment privilege; therefore, the defendant is directed to answer the prosecutor?s questions on cross-examination. If he persists in refusing to answer, he is held in contempt. Thereafter, each refusal to answer is a separate contempt, for which the defendant can (a) be jailed by the judge (until he relents and agrees to be cross-examined), and (b) later prosecuted by the government, because contempt is an indictable crime, too.

The point of the scam is obvious. The defendant wants to get his proclamation of innocence out in the public domain -- maybe it will influence a juror or two. Lerner is not on trial (not yet, anyway) but her tactic had the desired effect: all day long the networks have been running loops of her assertions of innocence.

In this situation, the prosecutor has a choice to make. Option 1: Move to have the testimony stricken. But though the Court will grant this motion, it really does not cure the problem. After all, the jury has already heard the testimony; even if the jurors are told not to consider it, they may be influenced by it. Thus, Option 2: Be prepared to ask numerous pointed questions showing the various weaknesses in the claim of innocence, and put the defendant in the position, every single time, of refusing to answer these questions.

The main disappointment this morning was Chairman Darrell Issa?s stunning unpreparedness. Representative Issa is not a lawyer, but one must assume he has access to decent legal advice as chairman of the House oversight committee (in addition to being a member of the judiciary committee). An experienced lawyer could see this stunt coming a mile away. Indeed, the press reported all day on Tuesday that Lerner would take the Fifth.

Again, there are two obvious ways to handle the dilemma Issa found himself in. Option 1: Before permitting Lerner to read her self-serving statement into the record (and the cameras), you put her under oath and ask her, with her lawyer standing next to her, whether she intends to refuse to answer the committee?s questions; if she and counsel indicate that that?s the plan, you can either dismiss her there and then, or ask her a few questions to demonstrate that she will take the Fifth -- but in either event, you don?t let her read her opening statement.

Or there?s Option 2: You let her read her statement, but then be ready to go with about 30 or 40 pointed questions designed to show how crooked she appears to be and thus how suspect her protestations of innocence are. When you do that, Mr. Chairman, your questions and her refusals to answer go on the TV news loop, too, and they make the administration look every bit as terrible as it deserves to look.

Chairman Issa clearly did not know what to do, resorted to neither option, and ended up with the worst of both worlds: Lerner got her self-serving statement out and then was not pounded by exacting, factual questions. Fortunately, South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy, an excellent prosecutor in his former life, interrupted the proceedings to explain exactly what Lerner was trying to pull and why it was a willful perversion of the truth-seeking process. (And that made the loop, too.)

One last thing. Ms. Lerner also predictably did a song-and-dance about how the Fifth Amendment privilege is designed to protect innocent people, and how no one should think she?s guilty of any wrongdoing just because she has declined to explain herself. This is part untrue and fully disingenuous.

The Fifth Amendment privilege is not designed to protect the innocent. The innocent do not need protection from the truth (just from the IRS). The privilege is designed to protect the bedrock principle that the burden of proof is always on the government and, derivatively, that a person is never required to prove his innocence. (No surprise, I suppose, that an IRS official is unfamiliar with these foundational pillars of Anglo-American law.) And though Lerner, ever mindful of the cameras, went out of her way to avoid saying so, the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination can be asserted in good faith only if the person has reason to believe a truthful answer could tend to incriminate her.

Hopefully, Chairman Issa learns how to do this dance. The music doesn?t sound like it will be stopping any time soon.

On Special Report, Charles Krauthammer attempted to explain IRS official Lois Lerner?s choice to plead the Fifth before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform -- but observed that by making a ?substantive statement? on the issues before the Committee, ?She clearly gave up her Fifth Amendment right, if not entirely, at least on the things she said: ?I didn?t break any laws, I didn?t break any of the regulations, I did nothing wrong.? On those she must speak with the Committee.?

He also criticized committee chairman Darrell Issa for his handling Lerner?s brief appearance ?weakly and with such uncertainty.?

I hate to say it, but unless Kevin changes his mind, the next mayor of New York City is probably going to be a Democrat. And I strongly suspect that Anthony Weiner is the most reasonable and tough-minded of the bunch. (I know this constitutes a harsh condemnation of New York City politics.)

Wow.

This week the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down Arizona?s law prohibiting abortion at or after 20 weeks of pregnancy -- a law that was based on uncontroverted medical evidence that abortion?s risks to maternal health increase dramatically at 20 weeks gestation.

It is universally accepted that risks to maternal health from abortion increase as pregnancy progresses. There is no debate on that fact, and peer-reviewed evidence utilized by the Arizona Legislature demonstrated that abortion imposes significant risks of harm beginning at 20 weeks gestation. 

In fact, in his concurring opinion in this case, Isaacson v. Horne, Judge Andrew J. Kleinfeld noted that the risks are indeed considerably greater after 20 weeks, and that the state presented substantial medical evidence to support its legislative findings.

In other words, a woman seeking an abortion at 20 weeks is 35 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester. At 21 weeks or more -- still before the child becomes viable -- she is 91 times more likely to die from abortion than she was in the first trimester.

These are the same numbers relied upon by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. In fact, in its ?Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States,? Guttmacher emphasizes the increased risk of death by setting it apart in the text, because the numbers are actually quite startling:

The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every one million abortions at or before eight weeks to one per 29,000 at 16?20 weeks -- and one per 11,000 at 21 or more weeks.

But these data did not matter to the three-judge panel in Isaacson. That panel strictly applied the ?viability? rule stemming from Roe v. Wade, claiming that no state can prohibit abortion before viability (around 23 to 24 weeks), regardless of whether later-term abortion substantially increases the mother?s risk of death. 

The Ninth Circuit?s stance, albeit incorrect, is clear: Despite the fact that both sides agree that abortion at or after 20 weeks greatly increases the risk of maternal death, the ?right? to abortion is more important than the lives of women.

But such adherence to a strict ?viability? rule is not at all what the U.S. Supreme Court intended.

In fact, the Court made clear in Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and Gonzales v. Carhart that the state has a legitimate interest in protecting maternal health from the outset of pregnancy -- not just from the time the unborn child reaches viability.

And this legitimate interest in protecting maternal health is emphasized by the Court?s reasoning in the Gonzales decision, which concluded that state legislatures are to be given ?wide discretion? to regulate abortion when there is ?medical uncertainty? as to the safety of the procedure.

Here, there is no ?medical uncertainty.? It is undisputed that the risk of complications and even death increases substantially at and after 20 weeks gestation. But the Ninth Circuit clung to the outdated ?viability rule? while ignoring portions of Supreme Court?s abortion jurisprudence that did not comport with its desired result.

Judge Kleinfeld?s concurring opinion provides some hope that future abortion bans predicated on medical evidence and legitimate concern for women?s health will be upheld. He implied that his hands were tied by the ?viability rule,? but noted that it is an odd rule because viability changes as medicine advances. The judge also acknowledged that the state and its amici made good arguments as to why the timeline of viability should not be the standard in abortion law.

In the meantime, what we see in the Isaacson decision is what we have expected all along: Medical data and techniques are vastly outpacing the outdated assumptions of Roe and its progeny -- and many on the bench are refusing to catch up, instead clinging incoherently to the ?right? to abortion at the expense of women?s health and welfare.

? Mailee R. Smith is staff counsel for Americans United for Life.

Unnecessary legislation watch: House Democrats (and a Republican) want to meddle in the matter of employer access to Facebook. Sure, a lot of people aren't smart about Facebook, but that's no good reason to expand government here. Let's not micromanage. We just went over this with ECPA.

How can we trust new government regulations of Cybersecurity, Obama-style, when heavily regulated utilities are doing so poorly? That's why we need a light touch, low on regulation, CISPA-style.

Let me put down here some facts that are worth returning to from time to time, as arguments over the history of Islam and Islamism are back in the news with today’s beheading in London. In debates over the history of tension between Muslims and Christians, the Crusades are often cited, out of their historical context, as the original cause of such clashes, as if | Read More »

The New York Times baldly says why (bolding mine): “One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan.” Best to have that finally on the record before said speech, eh? – Particularly since the administration needs to tread | Read More »

Right now, the Louisiana Legislature is considering legislation to force Governor Jindal to accept the Medicaid expansion portion of Obamacare, and some Republican legislators are supporting it. While I may not agree with our governor 100 percent of the time, Gov. Jindal is 100 percent right in rejecting the expansion. Over time, the Medicaid expansion will impose a greater financial burden on Louisiana?s state government, | Read More »

The best way to win a political argument is by manipulating the rhetoric used to describe the two sides in a debate.  The Democrats and the Chuck Schumer Republicans have done a marvelous job hijacking the term ?reform? and deriding those who oppose their bill to grant mass amnesty, double record immigration levels, and hamper future enforcement, as anti ?immigration reform.?  They have repeated the | Read More »

It seems that Google is constantly falling afoul of conservatives, consumers, pundits, regulators and really everyone else on earth (except for the Obama campaign) for its privacy-infringing tendencies. It got hammered for “alleged” spying in the Safarigate scandal, where it wound up agreeing to a record-breaking $22.5 million fine in connection with charges it surreptitiously tracked Apple Safari users who Google had said could opt | Read More »

"Let's face facts: the American media is in an abusive relationship with Obama."

So marvelously said Dennis Miller on Fox New's the O'Reilly Factor in a discussion about the Internal Revenue Service scandal Wednesday (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

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With the victory of disgraced former governor Mark Sanford in the recent South Carolina congressional race, there are bound to be those who would equate his supporters with Bill Clinton?s. After all, both men were unfaithful to their wives. Both men lied to their constituents about it. And both men had supporters who voted party over principle, didn?t they? Not exactly.

You still see these folks spewing out the magic term global climate change every chance they get, but just like Obama's economy, no matter how you look at the numbers, there are more people without jobs each month then the previous month. This year has been the coldest 5 months on record. At least in my area it has been the coolest spring. The forsythias have kept their yellow blossoms longer then any time I can remember. The night time temperatures are still in the 40's. And the last time I checked China was still polluting like there is no tomorrow. There are more people inhabiting the world passing gases into the atmosphere on a daily if not hourly basis.

The next time you see any of the following Senate Republicans: Lamar Alexander (TN) Roy Blunt (MO) John Boozman (AR) Richard Burr (NC)

By Dr. Gary Welton The great 20th century novelist Chaim Potok wrote, in his novel, My Name Is Asher Lev, ?You have a gift, Asher Lev. You have a responsibility.? My Mom had a gift of 89 years, 89 years to live her life; 89 years to meet her goals; 89 years. This gift of time, for Mom, for all of us, is also a responsibility. ?You have a gift. You have a responsibility.?

A 16-year old cannot see an R-rated movie without parental guidance. Many public schools prohibit a 17-year old from taking a Midol without a note from both a parent and a doctor [examples are here, here, & here].

My mother recently passed away. My father worked for the school district and my mother was a state employee. Having government employees as parents and attending awful public schools, I guess I should have been a good liberal and worshipped government instead of educating myself with math and economics. What saved my life was attending a private high school and getting a real education.

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