Veterans Administration Mendacity

It just keeps on keepin’ on.

Officials at the Michael E DeBakey VA Medical Center in Houston and its associated clinics altered records to make it appear that hundreds of appointments canceled by staff were really called off by patients, according to the VA’s Office of Inspector General.  The federal audit determined the changes were made to hide unacceptable wait times as VA hospitals around the country were under fire for neglecting patients.

This was for the 12 months ending June of last year, but it’s still after widespread corruption at VA facilities across the nation had been exposed.  No one in VA management, apparently, cares a whit about the veterans in their supposed care.

Veteranos Administratio delende est.

Democrat Crocodile Tears and Gun Control

Congressman Louie Gohmert (R, TX) confronted Democrats during their gun control sit-in [Wednesday] night, shouting instead about the threat of radical Islam.

“Radical Islam killed these people!” he yelled during a speech by [Congressman (D, CA) Brad Sherman…referring to the Orlando terror attack.

A…Democrat…participating in the temper tantrum sit-in shouted back Don’t let terrorists have a gun! which only shows the disingenuousness of the House Democrats, if not their outright dishonesty.  That response is only a cynically offered straw man, and the Democrats should be encouraged to keep their dollies to themselves.

No one is arguing for letting terrorists—Islamic or otherwise—have guns.  The question, as Democrats know full well, is confronting and destroying terrorists like those that inflicted Orlando, San Bernardino, and on and on.  The first step in this is recognizing terrorism when it occurs and not pretending these are gun crimes so excuses for disarming Americans can be manufactured.  The second step in recognizing this is recognizing who the terrorists are and not pretending they’re isolated gun-toting criminals.  The third step in this is protecting the rights of honest Americans’ ability to defend themselves.

But as Gohmert put in a subsequent interview with Fox and Friends [emphasis added]

They were violating just a whole myriad of rules, and it didn’t matter at all.

Indeed, nor rule nor law matters to Democrats when they are inconvenient to Democrats out to make political points for personal political gain.

Keep it in mind this fall.

Wear It Proudly

The American Association of University Professors has decided to “place on its censure list” the University of Missouri-Columbia for the latter’s temerity in firing Melissa Click—of student journalist assault infamy—for her misbehavior.

The university should make this action by the AAUP a part of its marketing and fund-raising campaigns.  The censure of an organization that actively supports the misbehavior of one of its own is a thing about which the UoM-C can be proud and about which it should brag.

Tragedy Equals Excuse to Inflict Gun Controls

That’s the focus and modus operandi of the Democrats.

Congressional Democrats are renewing their push for gun control measures in the wake of the Orlando terror massacre, arguing the best way to prevent suspected terrorists from carrying out acts of violence is to legally limit their access to firearms.

They’re right this far—certainly such limits would be a large help.  The problem is how to do it without disarming American citizens.  And that leads to the real problem: Democrats don’t care about American citizens and our right—our obligation—to defend ourselves and each other.  Democrats just want us disarmed.

Here’s an example of Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D, NY) disingenuousness:

If the FBI believes there is a reasonable chance someone is going to use a gun in a terrorist attack, it should be able to make that determination and block the sale.  If it had that belief about the shooter in Orlando, it should have had the authority to act. But it couldn’t, so we will never know what could have been.

Never mind that if the victims in the Orlando bar or passersby on the street outside had been allowed to be armed, the casualty list would have been far smaller.  No, Schumer’s…foolishness…is here: he carefully elided any definition of “reasonable.”  He carefully omitted to define the parameters of “that belief.”  We’re just supposed to trust his Progressive government.  We’re just supposed to trust a DoJ that strenuously objects to its lawyers being disciplined for lying in open court.  We’re supposed to trust an FBI that demands a backdoor into private citizens’ private communications encryption algorithms and that studiously couldn’t find any criminal wrong-doing in the IRS’ targeting groups of Americans in disfavor with the Progressive government.  Sure.

It doesn’t get any more cynical than that.  Elections have consequences.

Democrats, Gun Control, and Cynical Uses of Tragedy

In Ohio on Tuesday, former Governor Ted Strickland, a Democrat running for the Senate, called on Republican Senator Rob Portman to reverse his position on the watch list legislation from Ms Feinstein [Democratic Senator from California].

“The constant has been that these crimes are committed with guns—and that our leaders in Washington like Senator Portman are not taking simple, common sense steps to keep weapons out of the hands of those who would do us harm,” Mr Strickland wrote in a Medium post.

This is disingenuous on its face.  The constant is that these crimes were committed in gun-free zones, where both the victims and others present were completely unarmed and had no way to protect themselves—which the killers knew.

Strickland knows this full well, but in the words (without too much deviation from the original) of an earlier Obama advisor, Strickland will never let a tragedy go to waste.