Today I found this article on the Yahoo aggregater. It was picked up from The Nation. The author, Peter Rothberg, sounds a clarion call for immediate action to fight proposed new rules the IRS has proposed. His article says these rules will make it easier for tax preparers to sell personal tax return information to third parties.
Except that isn't what the rule says at all. The proposed rule changes, in fact, make it much tougher for tax preparers to sell information. Further, what Rothberg does not mention is that tax preparers already have the ability to sell that information if you give them permission to. The new rules will make it harder to do what they already can do, not easier.
Mr. Rothberg is engaging in misdirection by omission. His article is a good example of why you should always question what "activists" tell you.
So I called in dead. Two people in Waterloo, Iowa have been arrested for publishing a fake obituary.
James Ralph Snyder, 36, and Mary Jo Elizabeth Jensen, 33, both of Waterloo, participated in the scam by filing an obituary saying Jensen's 17-year-old son had died, police said.
Snyder was charged with tampering with records. Jensen was charged with being an accessory after the fact.
………..
Snyder and Jensen, who worked at Tyson Foods in Waterloo, started taking time off of work in December saying her son was sick and in a hospital, police said.
They said the plot escalated and Tyson officials were told the teenager was on life support and eventually had died.
Company officials asked the couple to verify their absence from work and Snyder took the obituary to the newspaper, police said.
The son told police about the plan, records show.
I take it these two are not the sharpest tools in the shed. Authorities were alerted to the scam when people saw the "dead" son walking around a local mall. It is unclear whether it was reported as a ghost sighting…..
A short while ago pranksters from MIT managed to kidnap the California Institute of Technology's cannon. It was a beautifully executed plan where fake movers used forged documents to get past campus police.
Caltech didn't do anywhere near as well in their retrieval effort. First they wanted to use a helicopter. The FAA put that one away. Then they had an overly elaborate and completely unworkable plan to erect some scaffolding. That didn't work. They ended up doing the rescue in broad daylight, accompanied by jeering students from MIT. In the end, they got the cannon, though.
They vow to top the MIT prank.
This report from Britain is very discouraging. Four "animal rights activists" have admitted to police that they had conducted a six year long campaign against a family run farm that raised guinea pigs for medical research.
David Hall and Partners who ran the family business at the Darley Oaks Farm in central England, endured abuse, death threats and firebomb attacks during one of the UK's most sustained harassment campaigns by animal rights groups.
In the worst incident, in October 2004, the grave of Gladys Hammond, mother-in-law of one of the co-owners who had died in 1997 aged 82, was dug up and her remains stolen.
The body has never been recovered.
Get that? These freaks stole the body of an old woman. How sick is this? These people are not "activists". They are terrorists and they should be dealt with accordingly.
Make me very, very angry. In today's Washington Post, Richard Cohen writes approvingly of the retired generals who have lately decided to speak out. He calls Iraq a quagmire, a disaster. He wants serving members of the armed forces to speak out on what's really going on.
Maybe Mr. Cohen should stop reading his own paper for news of what's going on in Iraq. Let's put this very, very clearly. If Iraq was the disaster that the MSM wants you to believe it is, reenlistments would be going down. Period. They are not and in fact are exceeding targets by 15%. That alone completely disproves Mr. Cohen's contentions.
Is this war stressful on the troops? Of course it is. Is it dangerous for the men and women serving there? Only an idiot would think otherwise. It is hard on the families waiting back here in the US. I daresay I would know how hard it is a great deal better than Mr. Cohen.
While Cohen admires the three generals who have spoken out, I do not. Nor to I admire someone like Mr. Cohen. For all of these men, their cheap political shots to further their own agendas endanger every man and women wearing our uniform. They endanger my son and I take it very personally.
Let me clue you in to another forgotten lesson from Vietnam, Mr. Cohen. The North Vietnamese did not win the war. We Americans lost it. The media helped us lose it here at home. And they are trying to do so again.
Carry On America has a similar take on this.
Interesting piece in the Washington Post today. As always, it's very sympathetic toward the illegal immigrants who have been so vocal. Yet they also are starting to report that there are politicians who are getting frustrated. They focused on Republicans, saying some were getting frustrated with the President. They stuck in one detail, though, that should make any careful reader pause. They mentioned that one Republican lawmaker was being inundated with calls demanding a crackdown on illegals.
How much do you want to bet the Democrats are getting the same thing? Two thirds of the legal citizens of this country want something done to secure the borders.
Better listen to the people on this, both parties will get hurt by this issue.
