Under the leadership of Attorney General Eric Holder, the Obama Department of Justice has been on a rampage against the states, hauling them into court over a range of issues.  Among the most notable attacks are against states’ voter identification laws.  Texas, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Florida, Arizona and others have been sued by the chief federal law enforcement officer – charging that requiring a photo id to cast a ballot was among other things, racist, attacking the poor, the elderly, etc.  The reality is far, far different.  Besides multiple ballots cast by single individuals and voting by people who do not live in the state they’re voting in, illegal immigrants, dead people, felons, and others not legally entitled to vote are doing so.

Never mind that the TSA requires government issued photo id to board an airplane.  As does every state for obtaining a marriage license, driving a car, purchasing alcohol, etc.  Those complaining the loudest about how Republicans are meanies trying to stop blacks and poor from voting are the Democrats – the Obama administration in particular.  Oddly, the Democratic National Convention requires a photo id to obtain credentials to access the convention.

Meanwhile, Eric Holder successfully sued the state of Ohio over early voting for burdened military – a state law specifically designed to help deployed military enjoy their right to vote.  The United States Department of Justice under the leadership of the Commander in Chief of the United States armed forces – President Barack Obama – fought and won to stop early voting accommodations for military members.  A judge more recently ruled that the early voting must be opened to everyone, that there is nothing special about being in the military.

Now comes word that the 2009 law, signed by President Obama to help military voters overseas, is severely underfunded.

The Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act was passed by Congress in 2009 and signed into law by President Barack Obama and was supposed to make it easier for both soldiers deployed overseas and U.S. citizens living abroad to cast ballots back in their home states.

One of the key provisions required each military branch to create an installation voting assistance office (IVAO) for every military base outside an immediate combat zone.

But the Pentagon’s inspector general, the military’s internal watchdog, reported Tuesday it got a disappointing result when it tried to locate such voting assistance offices on each installation earlier this year.

“Results were clear. Our attempts to contact IVAOs failed about 50 percent of the time,” the inspector general reported. “We concluded the Services had not established all the IVAOs as intended by the MOVE Act because, among other issues, the funding was not available.

Wrapped up in identity politics, Obama and the left will trot out the military when they need the optics, but when it becomes more politically expedient, will hold them hostage by making sure defense spending takes a massive, unprecedented cut if Republicans don’t agree to increase social welfare spending by some arbitrary deadline.  ObamaCare?  Not for our men, women, and families in uniform.  Obama wants massive cuts to TriCare for active duty and retired military.

The left and their media lapdogs howl that Republicans and conservatives are out to suppress the poor, latino, gay, black, purple, triangle-head, and pink canary vote.  There is one group disenfranchised, whose vote is actively and quietly being suppressed by the left, the one group whose sacrifice should bring us to move heaven and earth to ensure their vote counts: those who are serving our country in uniform.  It is the least we can do for those who volunteer to make the largest sacrifice for our freedom.

Image: usmilitary.com

The Obama administration and presidential campaign have long sought new lows in politics.  One notable example is around their attacks on private citizens.  One such citizen is former Democrat, turned Republican, entrepreneur Sheldon Adelson.  A recent ad by the Obama machine charges that Republicans are funded by a few uber-wealthy individuals, while Obama is simply a man of the people supported by small donors.

Flyover Country would humbly submit the following, er corrections, to the Obama campaign’s propaganda.

h/t @joelpollak, Big Government

“Sarah Palin has shown a lot of backbone in the Governor’s office in Alaska and the Democrats hate it,” said [Democratic Strategist Hilary] Rosen. “So what do they do? They call for her resignation. They throw at her document requests that are impossible to respond to. They throw more and more at her to distract her from doing the things that actually the the people of Alaska hired her to do.”

…

Or maybe that’s not what Hilary Rosen said about the efforts of Darryl Issa and others in Congress to get to the bottom of Fast and Furious:

“Eric Holder has shown a lot of backbone in the Justice in the Justice Department and the Republicans hate it,” said Rosen. “So what do they do? They call for his resignation. They throw at him document requests that are impossible to respond to. They throw more and more at him to distract him from doing the things that actually the president and the people hired him to do.”

Suppose there wasn’t a dead border patrol agent, and quite likely a dead ATF agent.  Suppose there weren’t 300+ dead Mexican citizens, all killed by guns Eric Holder and the justice department supplied to the drug cartels.  Suppose, just for the sake of Rosen’s argument that Issa was a political hack out to get Obama — which I do not believe to be the case whatsoever — what goes around comes around, Hilary?  Let’s go back in our time machine for a moment, shall we ….

As the broadcast network evening newscasts on Friday reported on Sarah Palin’s decision to resign as Alaska’s Governor, they gave little attention to the toll taken on the Governor by the onslaught of frivolous lawsuits from her political enemies. But, by contrast, FNC gave much of the credit for Palin’s decision to these lawsuits that have tied up the Governor’s time and forced her family to spend a fortune in legal expenses.

On Friday’s Fox Report, FNC correspondent Carl Cameron informed viewers: “Those ethics complaints have all been dropped or dismissed, and yet they’ve taken a toll and she acknowledged as much earlier.” Then came a soundbite of Palin from her news conference, which was partially played on the CBS Evening News but not on ABC or NBC. Palin:

Todd and I, we’re looking at more than half a million dollars in legal bills just in order to set the record straight. And what about the people who offer up these silly accusations? It doesn’t cost them a dime. … My staff and I spend most of our days, we’re dealing with this stuff instead of progressing our state now.

Jenny Erikson pointed out a key truism the other day, as I and many others have said, “You always know what liberals are up to by what they accuse conservatives of doing.”

The basic premise of Seeking a Friend revolves around the end of the world, as one might have gathered from the title.  A huge astroid is heading for earth, and the last ditch effort failed when 12 astronauts died enroute to do who knows what to the 7-mile wide rock.  Everyone has three weeks to live, what will you do with your last 21 days?

I nearly walked out after about the first 20 minutes or so.  A morose Dodge Peterson, played by Steve Carrel, is morbid, and even more uncomfortable than Michael Scott could hope to be.  In one of the early scenes after his girlfriend leaves him, Dodge visits a friend who spends most of the time berating his wife.  At a party later, the same husband helps his 6 year old daughter down an adult beverage, telling her “ride through the burn, honey, ride through the burn.”

Keira Knightley is the narcoleptic (hyper-somniac), pot smoking hipster Penny, who suddenly realizes that all of her meaningless short-term relationships have led her to New York, an ocean away from her family back in England.  She still has “meaningless, end-of-the-world” sex with Dodge.

If the first twenty minutes wasn’t mind-numbing enough, toward the end of the film Dodge shows up on the front step of his estranged father’s (Martin Sheen) house.  The ensuing awkward and cliche “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you son / Don’t talk about mom” is forced on the audience.  Penny watches a tender moment where dad and son are on the porch swing playing their harmonicas together, but the earlier argument was simply too unbelievable to get past.

Yes, Dodge and Penny find each other and fall in love, the ones that they were meant to be with all along, but the whole thing feels forced and one dimensional.  In the end, everyone dies.

In a bid to get the film over with and spare us additional agony, the writers provide one of the few redeeming qualities of this film. They decided that the scientists had gotten it wrong – the asteroid would arrive a week early.

Larry replied with a series of tweets asked Lemon for clarification, offering to correct the record, and inviting Lemon to come on to the Dennis Miller radio show as a guest to explain how Larry failed.  As of this time, Lemon has still not responded.

Flyover Country has put the Breitbart.tv video next to the same video as posted by on the liberal site Crooks and Liars:

What say you, @DonLemonCNN? Will you hide behind your camera and your keyboard, or will you man up? You made a public, serious accusation against another person. Own your words.

A few days ago, a Texas father caught a man in the act of molesting the father’s 4 year old daughter.  In defense of his child, the father punched the attacker in the head to the point where the man died.  In their report, CNN mocks the residents of Shiner, Texas who would have done the same thing for their children.

The reporter admonishes us not to rush to judgement quite yet. “We don’t know all the details of this case,” she says, as if that has ever stopped the media from wild speculation, or jumping to conclusions before.  She wants to know from the Sheriff if dad should be charged.  In a veiled warning to viewers the local authorities can’t be trusted, that a small town might be incapable of fairness in this case, her voiceover informs us “Sheriff Harmon [pause for emphasis] has children, too.”

No where in the nearly 90 second package does the reporter inquire or even seem interested in the well-being of the father or his daughter.  Not once does she even feign concern that a child has been irreparably damaged.  She wishes to prove a point about how “these people” take matters into their own hands.

“The people of Shiner don’t need a jury on this one.  We couldn’t find a single person who thinks the father should be locked up.”  Please CNN, interview someone from your part of the country that thinks a father protecting his precious daughter, a girl not even old enough to go to school yet, should be incarcerated for ending the life of a man who before his very eyes is violating his little girl.  She never hints the father’s devastation not only at what happened to his daughter, but remorse for what he did to the man.

Yet, this reporter from the “most trusted name in news” demonstrates a complete lack of compassion for the family, with her big-city leftist hubris driving the narrative.

The undertone is quite clear: Flyover Country folk are backward hillbillies, and wild west justice prevails.

Small wonder CNN’s ratings, at a 20 year low, are in the tank.

h/t Big Journalism

Anti-war activist Janice Roberts, a 63-year-old Dorchester, Massachusetts resident, has refused to rent an apartment to Sgt. Joel Morgan, 29, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Roberts told Morgan, according to the lawsuit Morgan filed this week, that his military service presented a “conflict of interest” for her, since she was a peace activist. “Because of what you told me about the Iraq war … we are very adamant about our beliefs … it’s just not comfortable for us … and I’m sure now that you know this, it would not be comfortable for you,” Roberts said via voicemail to Morgan. “I would suggest you do the right thing and look for a place less politically active or controversial.”

Morgan, who is no longer active military, is in training to become a firefighter in Boston. “I’ve never been in that situation, so it was like, ‘I don’t understand what you mean, I just want to give you a check and rent an apartment,’” Morgan told the media.

First, let’s get the legal argument out of the way.  Roberts is unquestionably in the wrong, and should lose easily in court. She specifically singled out Sgt Morgan’s lawfully protected class in denying him housing.  Paragraph 1 of the Fair Housing for Veterans Fact Sheet from the Metropolitan Boston Housing Partnership:

What is fair housing and how does it relate to veterans?

Fair housing is a set of principles, civil laws and regulations which provide equal access and opportunity to housing for protected class members. It impacts the property owner’s policies, practices, procedures and services in terms of advertising, application, tenant selection, amenities, and termination. Under Massachusetts fair housing law, Chapter 151B, military status, which includes veterans is a protected class. Protected classes are designated groups of people and their families that are covered under fair housing law. The military status protected class covers veterans, those individuals on active duty, and those persons enrolled in the Reserves. (emphasis mine)

Sgt Morgan was shot at and risked his own life to protect this woman’s right to be an idiot.  He returns to the states and seeks out a career running into burning buildings to save lives and property.  The thrice-over hero is thanked by the hippie with veiled threats that he really shouldn’t come around, and that his money isn’t welcome in her part of town.

That’s not America.

Images: CBS Boston, Flyover Country

[On Memorial Day] we may ask our children to remember those who gave the utmost level of devotion to secure our freedoms. But we mostly don’t talk among ourselves about the fact that names are still being added to the list of the lost, names that until recently belonged to people, but now belong to memory, belong to the ages. Names that once brought smiles to parents’ faces and light to a lover’s eyes but now bring only a whistling blow to the pit of the stomach for those who loved them. Names that now signify a vast, empty, mournful space that actual people used to fill.

Read the rest of the piece

Photo: Flyover Country

Just in time for Memorial Day, some MSNBC drone named Chris Hayes has lit up the internet with his confession that dead American troops don’t quite measure up to his exacting standards for what qualifies as a “hero.” Memo to Chris: they are heroes, and you don’t get a vote.

Though he may be shocked to hear it, America’s fighting men and women don’t care whether Chris Hayes considers their fallen comrades heroes or not. First, there’s the practical matter that almost no one – in uniform or out – watches MSNBC or the roster of progressive meat puppets that fill the short stretches between endless reruns of “Lock Up.”

Care about Chris Hayes’s comfort level? They don’t even know this leftist twerp exists.

But on a deeper level, our troops don’t do what they do to impress the likes of Chris Hayes – though he is perfectly willing to make his living in the shadow of their sacrifice. In the scheme of things, Chris Hayes’s views are important only as an object lesson in what our progressive elites really think about our military.

This is what NBC and the rest of the liberal elitist types think of our military.  As Kurt points out later in his article, they simply don’t say it because their guy is in office right now, and because Americans – even those who weren’t there – remember how the left treated Vietnam veterans when they came home, and rightly react viscerally.

Chris Hayes might not think our troops are heroes.  I might think he’s a self-absorbed, myopic, ungrateful whelp who couldn’t possibly fathom the sacrifice that provides and ensures his freedom to bloviate on television.

Read the rest of Kurt’s piece

Image: lizstaub/Photobucket

That isn’t what caught my attention, however.  Notice how the following statement is constructed.

Students now will likely have to be covered through their parents’ policy, though Reuters reported that fewer than 2000 of the school’s 2,500 students had been buying insurance from the university.

Let me rephrase what Reuters just reported and what the Fox story said.  Fewer than 4 out of 5, less than 80%, of the student population had been buying health insurance through the university.  Or, over 75% of the university’s students had been buying insurance from the university.  (Obviously, it could be just 1% (any number less than 80%) of the students on the university health plan, but for the sake of being reasonable we know that isn’t the case here or they would have reported that.)

Reuters is covering for ObamaCare.  They carefully worded the statement to make it seem like not very many students were using this insurance, so it really isn’t that big of a deal for the university to be dropping it.  In fact, a massively overwhelming majority of the students participated in the program.

Clever, but we in the new media see you, democrat media complex.  We see you.

#war.