Boehner wants Geithner out of the center of the economic storm - TheHill.com

Boehner wants Geithner out of the center of the economic storm - TheHill.com

Is The New Yorker’s Navy SEAL Cover Story Fake?

Is The New Yorker’s Navy SEAL Cover Story Fake?
Note: see related piece at noquarter.com

» A Lack of Leadership: The Root of the S&P Downgrade - Big Government

» A Lack of Leadership: The Root of the S&P Downgrade - Big Government

As Senate Votes, McConnell Declares Tea Party 'Won,' Reid says Tea Party 'Disconcerting' - The Note

As Senate Votes, McConnell Declares Tea Party 'Won,' Reid says Tea Party 'Disconcerting' - The Note

Obama Reflects On Debt Fight: Didn't Need This "Manufactured Crisis"

Obama Reflects On Debt Fight: Didn't Need This "Manufactured Crisis"

Republican states balancing their budgets

◼ Their success should be a model for overspenders in Washington - Frank Donatelli -The Washington Times

At a time when Washington continues to struggle to trim deficits that approach $1.5 trillion annually, Republican-led states, along with a few Democratic officials, continue to take the tough steps necessary to balance their state budgets without tax increases. Here are a few of those states and the policies they have put in place to achieve these impressive results:

In Virginia, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell stood firm against tax increases last year and balanced his state’s two-year budget. Virginia taxpayers were rewarded when Mr. McDonnell recently announced a surplus of $311 million for the fiscal year just completed because of higher-than-expected tax receipts....

In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal and the first Republican legislative majority since Reconstruction passed a $25 billion budget that closed a $1.5 billion hole without tax increases.....

Missouri’s Republican-dominated legislature adopted a 2012 state spending plan of $23.2 billion - $500 million lower than last year. This figure includes an additional $170 million of cuts implemented by Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, making Missouri an example of bipartisan cooperation in spending restraint....

At least two states saw no such bipartisan cooperation, yet in both cases, small-government forces triumphed. In North Carolina, the first Republican legislative majority since the 19th century enacted a balanced-budget plan that closed a $2.5 billion deficit (12 percent of the total budget) and allowed “temporary” sales and income tax increases enacted by the Democratic majority in 2009 to expire....

In Minnesota, the Republican majority faced off against the very liberal Gov. Mark Dayton. Mr. Dayton, of course, proposed to increase taxes on the “wealthy.” The Legislature stood firm against any tax increases, resulting in a shutdown of state government for nearly three weeks. The final agreement closed a $5 billion deficit without raising taxes... MORE at the link

What led to `Project Gunwalker'?

◼ What led to `Project Gunwalker'? - Pauline Arrillaga/The Associated Press at Breitbart

Ten days before Christmas, ATF agent John Dodson awoke, got his morning coffee, switched on the TV news—and heard the words he had dreaded every day of every month he had been a member of the gun-trafficking investigative team called the Group VII Strike Force.
A Border Patrol agent had been shot dead in a gun battle with suspected bandits. The agent was 40, only months older than Dodson himself, another ex-military man who chose to serve his country by working for the U.S. government....

Seven months later, Fast and Furious has fast become a political thorn for the Obama administration, prompting calls for the resignation of ATF's acting director, stirring the debate over gun control and straining relations with Mexican officials. Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General to look into what happened, and Obama has vowed to take "appropriate actions."

Meanwhile, a parade of ATF agents have come forward, offering astonishing testimony in condemnation of their own employer over a probe they now call embarrassing, shameful, dumbfounding. They include some of the Group VII agents, including Dodson, Casa and Alt, but also another Phoenix-based supervisor, an ATF intelligence specialist and three Mexico-based agents.

"Put bluntly, it is inconceivable in my mind ... to allow firearms to disappear at all," Darren Gil, the former ATF attache to Mexico, testified Tuesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "It is even more inconceivable that a competent ATF special agent would allow firearms to cross an international border, knowing that they are ultimately destined for the hands of the worst of the worst criminals...." (Read the rest)


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EDITOR'S NOTE—This story is based on interviews with ATF agents, past and present; gun dealers who cooperated in Fast and Furious; court records in the Fast and Furious case; the testimony of current and former ATF agents before congressional committees and to congressional investigators; and a review of internal ATF emails and investigative documents assembled as part of the congressional inquiry into Fast and Furious as well as government strategy documents and reports regarding ATF's approach to gun probes.
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Pauline Arrillaga, a Phoenix-based national writer for The Associated Press, can be reached at features(at)ap.org.

◼ THE ASSOCIATED PRESS COVERS GUNWALKER - PowerLine