Lamentations of Their Women:

CNN Cries over GOP Wave

So, continuing the leftist post-election trend going back to at least 2000 in Florida, CNN has decided that the only way the GOP won this election was through cheating.  How?  By violating campaign finance laws, in spirit if not in fact.

Their logic goes something like this: Campaign finance laws forbid specific candidate campaigns from coordinating with super-PACs and other non-candidate organizations.  "Someone" was tweeting what looked like poling data.  Since every Dick, Jane, and Harry wouldn't have been able to decode the tweet, it MUST be collusion.

Now they don't know who "Someone" was.  And by their own admission, they didn't find out before the accounts were deleted.  That would seem to be a hole in their case, but maybe that's just me.

Now, there are lots of problems with the whole article, so you should read it for yourself.  But I was taken by two things.  The first was the almost reflexive "they cheated!" reaction.

This article took some time to research.  The twitter accounts they reference were not widely known, so this wasn't something that was "general knowledge."  They had to have been looking for it.

Yet it is not Republicans who are known campaign finance law violators, unlike several prominent Democrats, the President among them (remember 2008 and not checking if donations were foreign?  Making a campaign speech on foreign soil?  Yeah- not legal.)

Projection, as they say, is not just a river in Egypt.

The other thing that I noticed was they spend a whole lot of time saying, basically, "Those wascawy Wepubwicans!  They used Twitter effectivwy! That must be iweagle!"  And then, for support they go to leftists.

Case in point, this quote:

"It might not be legal.  It's a cutting edge practice that, to my knowledge, the Federal Election Commission has never before addressed to explicitly determine its legality or permissibility."

That comes from one Paul S. Ryan, cited as "senior counsel at the Campaign Legal Center."

CNN references the Campaign Legal Center as "a nonpartisan organization," but, this being CNN, I figured I'd double-check their math.  If you follow that link above, it goes to the CLC's "Election Center."  Among their blurbs are "what the Court got wrong in [Citizen's United]," and bragging that their president played "an incredibly important role" as the "'personal lawyer' to comedian Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central's 'The Colbert Report.'"

Does anyone seriously think that a center which sees being the "personal lawyer" for the Colbert Report and opposing Citizen's United is "nonpartisan?"  Seriously?

But the best part of that quote might be the idea that the FEC should have to rule on whether something is "explicitly" legal.  Umm... that's not how the law works.  Something is legal unless it is "explicitly" illegal.  Murder?  Explicitly illegal.  We don't have to ask if any given killing is "explicitly" legal.  It is legal (assumed innocent) until it is proven to be illegal.

This is how leftists work.  Does anyone seriously think we'd be hearing anything about this if it had been Democrats and they had won an historic majority?

Perhaps the best part is the end of the article, wherein CNN acknowledges that, yes, this is probably legal.  I'll leave with that quote (emphasis mine):

Despite the questionable nature of the Twitter communications, experts doubt the FEC will do much to act. Members of the commission have been deadlocked along party lines for years and attorneys for these groups often develop legal arguments before engaging in such practices to avoid acting outside the bounds of the law, Ryan said. 

"In many instances, we have very sophisticated political players with really good lawyers who know where the legal lines are and know where to push them to their client's advantage," he said.

Liberal Idiots

As BenK over at the Ace of Spades HQ says, "One Group Of People Getting Screwed By Obamacare That I Don't Feel Sorry For In The Least."

It turns out that many colleges and universities are cutting the hours of their adjunct (read: part-time) professors, to keep them below the 30 hr/wk Obamacare eligibility line.  Surprising absolutely no one with a brain, colleges and universities are moving to protect their bottom lines as much as possible.  However, this seems to have surprised the supposedly highly-educated college staff.

From the article:

“I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law,” Mr. Balla said. “In education, we’re working for the public good, we are public employees at a public institution; we should be the first ones to uphold the law, to set the example.”

A couple of things with this.  First off, you are not working for the public good, and you are not public employees.  You are working for a paycheck, as proven by your grousing about a smaller paycheck, and you are a private employee.  This is true even of State system Universities.  Public employees are police, firefighters, and politicians.  You don't want to be a "public employee," Mr. Balla.

More important, though, is this line: "I think it goes against the spirit of the [health-care] law."  You see, Mr. Balla supported Obamacare (I'm guessing, but it seems pretty evident) because it would give "People" (read: "him") "Free" (read: Employer paid) health insurance.  He never once considered that employers, whether his beloved colleges or the local Stop-and-Rob, or the local burger joint, might look at the requirements of the law and decide the best way to protect their bottom line would be to have as few people eligible for insurance as possible.

Put simply, there is no such thing as "the spirit" of any law.  Laws are written down very carefully.  It is true that the more complicated a law is, the more loopholes and exceptions will exist.  But there is no requirement for any employer to keep people on at 30+ hours per week.  If you want to test this, do something that is technically illegal, but is within "the spirit of the law," for instance: speeding.

Traffic laws, especially speed limit laws, we are told are to "ensure our safety."  So it stands to reason that the "spirit" of speed limit laws is "drive a safe speed."  Well, on an open stretch of highway with no other traffic, a safe speed might well be 90 miles per hour.  Indeed, it might be safer than the actual posted speed limit of 65 or 70 MPH, because by driving faster you're actually on the road less, meaning there is less time for something to go wrong.  Try explaining that when the State Trooper pulls you over for doing 20 miles over the speed limit.

Laws are written explicitly.  Anyone who believes they can write a law, or that any law has been written, such that it will be enforced based on its "spirit" is a fool, a shyster, or both.  In this case, I believe Mr. Balla is both.  He's a shyster because he thought it was a nifty trick to get the government to force his employer to provide insurance despite his part time status.  He's a fool because he believed that would work.