Brian Koenig

A high school in Utah was recently fined $15,000 by the federal government for inadvertently leaving a soda vending machine running during lunchtime. The school uses its soda and snack sales to help fund its arts programs.

Of course, thanks to the Obama administration’s ever-expanding Nanny State, Davis High School had to shut down its vending machines.

Unfortunately, school officials overlooked the soda machine in the school bookstore. When the feds caught the school in the dastardly act of making carbonated beverages available to students at midday, they forced the school to pay back its entire federal school lunch subsidy of $15,000.

It will take all of this year’s revenue from the vending machines — and then some — to pay that fine. That money will, therefore, no longer be available for music, school plays, and other programs. But the folks inside the Beltway will be able to pat themselves on the back for having “done something” to prevent childhood obesity.

Interesting, because I thought the feds were supposed to terminate those heedless school sports programs and start encouraging art and science education — you know, programs that “teach,” not hand out “false dreams” to young people.

The only problem is that the students are unlikely to do without their sweets just because they can’t get them at school. As Davis High principal Dee Burton told Salt Lake City’s KUTV, “The misconception is if we don’t let kids buy candy and pop, we drive them to the cafeteria. It doesn’t drive them to the cafeteria; it drives them off campus” to the corner gas station or nearby grocery store, where they can get what they want at lower prices and at no benefit to the school.

It’s called survival of the fittest (yes, pun intended).

While the ban on soda sales during lunch is clear, the rest of the law is, as Burton put it, “vague and open to interpretation.” He noted that “you can buy before lunch starts a carbonated beverage, buy school lunch, sit down in the cafeteria, eat the school lunch and not be in violation.” You just can’t buy the beverage on school grounds during the lunch period. In addition, sports drinks such as Gatorade (14 grams of sugar per serving) may be sold during lunch.

Hmm, “vague and open to interpretation,” just like every other federal law. That’s how the government operates — the more obscure the rules are written, the more revenue they rake in. And, most importantly, the more power they have to wield over the American people.

Nebraska is, undoubtedly, a blood-red state. But still, Deb Fischer leading Bob Kerrey in the 2012 Senate race by a whopping 18 points? That’s pretty intense.

Kerrey held two terms in the Senate and another one as governor, meaning, his recognition is hardly diminutive. Conversely, Fischer lagged behind Republican rivals Stenberg and Bruning only weeks ago. She’s pretty green, and she’s leaving her Democratic foe in the dust.

State Senator Deb Fischer holds an 18-point lead over Democrat Bob Kerrey in the first Rasmussen Reports survey of the Nebraska U.S. Senate race since her upset win in last week’s state Republican primary.

A new telephone survey of Likely Voters in Nebraska shows Fischer with 56% support to 38% for Kerrey who is trying to reclaim the Senate seat he retired from in 2001. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and three percent (3%) are undecided.

The question, of course, is whether Fischer will fall victim to the recent insurgent-primary trend that plagued former candidates like Angle and O’Donnell. Let’s hope not.

Here’s an update for Breitbart’s Obama, “born in Kenya” story. According to the website-cache site archive.org, Dystel & Goderich — Obama’s literary agents — on its website was using the Obama “born in Kenya, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii” bio until April 2007, only two months after he launched his presidential campaign.

Archive.org reveals the Dystel website showing the following bio as of April 3, 2007:

BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Kenya to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.

By April 21, 2007, Obama’s bio magically changed to say he was born in Hawaii:

BARACK OBAMA is the junior Democratic senator from Illinois and was the dynamic keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He was also the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. He was born in Hawaii to an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister and was raised in Indonesia, Hawaii, and Chicago. His first book, DREAMS FROM MY FATHER: A STORY OF RACE AND INHERITANCE, has been a long time New York Times bestseller.

Stay tuned for more updates…

Yet, I presume, black liberation theologists like Al Sharpton and those in the New Black Panther Party still believe George Zimmerman is a racist murderer and Trayvon Martin is an innocent 17-year-old black “child” who spent his evenings skipping around neighborhoods with skittles and iced tea.

The cuts, gashes, and blood gouging the back of Zimmerman’s head might not be enough. And, I’m only assuming, the fact that Martin’s autopsy report found the drug THC in his system the night of his death will probably not be enough either.

The autopsy report shows traces of the drug THC, which is found in marijuana, in Martin’s blood and urine.

The autopsy also shows that Zimmerman shot Martin from a distance of between 1 inch and 18 inches away, bolstering Zimmerman’s claim that he shot Martin during a struggle that landed Zimmerman on his back, Martin straddling him and banging Zimmerman’s head on the ground.

Martin’s autopsy report also revealed that there was a quarter-inch by half-inch abrasion on the left fourth finger of Martin, another indication of a possible struggle. The teen, who lived in Miami, was in Sanford while serving a suspension for a bag of marijuana being discovered in his possession.

Like I said, it’s still not going to be enough for the mainstream media and all the liberal kooks who continue to exploit this charade as racial warfare.

The Breitbart.com “Vetting” series continues, and the latest evidence is, well, rather damning, as some 1991 promotion material delivered by Obama’s literary agency, Acton and Dystel, notes, in the President’s bio, that Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.”

The booklet, which was sent out to “business colleagues” in various publishing markets, contains a biography of Obama, and it also promotes the President’s first book, Journeys in Black and White, which he abandoned, and later wrote Dreams from My Father instead. Here’s how the bio reads:

Barack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.  The son of an American anthropologist and a Kenyan finance minister, he attended Columbia University and worked as a financial journalist and editor for Business International Corporation.   He served as project coordinator in Harlem for the New York Public Interest Research Group, and was Executive Director of the Developing Communities Project in Chicago’s South Side. His commitment to social and racial issues will be evident in his first book, Journeys in Black and White.

While Jay Acton no longer represents the President, Jane Dystel still has Obama listed on her website as one of her clients.

Acton [Obama's agent], who spoke to Breitbart News by telephone, confirmed precise details of the booklet and said that it cost the agency tens of thousands of dollars to produce.

He indicated that while “almost nobody” wrote his or her own biography, the non-athletes in the booklet, whom “the agents deal[t] with on a daily basis,” were “probably” approached to approve the text as presented.

Dystel did not respond to numerous requests for comment, via email and telephone. Her assistant told Breitbart News that Dystel “does not answer questions about Obama.”

The errant Obama biography in the Acton & Dystel booklet does not contradict the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate. Moreover, several contemporaneous accounts of Obama’s background describe Obama as having been born in Hawaii.
The biography does, however, fit a pattern in which Obama — or the people representing and supporting him — manipulate his public persona.

OK, so the bio might not disprove Obama’s birth certificate; but it certainly contradicts it. Which is interesting, because the info had to come from somewhere. Generally the individual being biographized provides all the pertinent information — like, say, where the author was born and raised — to the biographer. At least, I think that’s how it works.

Or, maybe Obama was pulling an Elizabeth Warren “fauxcahontas” stunt, in which he could get a million-dollar book deal for his “cultured” Kenyan heritage.

Obama’s former relationship with Reverend Wright is creeping back under the media spotlight, thanks to a damning new revelation that shows a close friend of the President offering Mr. Wright a $150,000 bounty to shut him up in 2008.

This, obviously, is newsworthy, and especially relevant now that the 2012 election season is in full force. Consequently, a conglomerate of bigwig Republican strategists is coordinating with a conservative billionaire to launch possibly the most revealing campaigns of the new super PAC era.

In other words, this might screw Obama in a really bad way.

The plan, which is awaiting approval, calls for running commercials linking Mr. Obama to incendiary comments by his former spiritual adviser, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose race-related sermons made him a highly charged figure in the 2008 campaign.

“The world is about to see Jeremiah Wright and understand his influence on Barack Obama for the first time in a big, attention-arresting way,” says the proposal, which was overseen by Fred Davis and commissioned by Joe Ricketts, the founder of the brokerage firm TD Ameritrade. Mr. Ricketts is increasingly putting his fortune to work in conservative politics.

The $10 million plan, one of several being studied by Mr. Ricketts, includes preparations for how to respond to the charges of race-baiting it envisions if it highlights Mr. Obama’s former ties to Mr. Wright, who espouses what is known as “black liberation theology.”

The Democrats are up in arms, and it’s precisely why they bitch and moan for their beloved campaign finance reform.  Because, you know, the less money floating around the elections, the less chance for scandal.

Maybe the Kennedy curse is not a fable. Medical examiners are beginning the autopsy on Mary Kennedy’s death, the estranged wife of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who was recently found dead in her New York home. I know you’re not supposed to bet on the possibility that someone committed suicide, but I’m throwing 10 dollars on the table.

“We know from a history of this family, it’s very hard being a Kennedy, either being a blood Kennedy or being married to one,” Kennedy biographer Laurence Leamer said yesterday on CNN. “The overwhelming celebrity, the attention, the obligations, the expectations that you’re supposed to do something with your life. It’s very, very hard.”

Maybe it’s their skewed political ideologies.

In 1968, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. was assassinated in California while making a run for the White House. His death came more than four years after his brother, President John F. Kennedy, also died at the hands of an assassin.

More than three decades later in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette, died when a plane he was piloting crashed in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. David Kennedy died of a drug overdose and Michael Kennedy was killed in a skiing accident.

Weird, indeed. Maybe this will be a message to the Rockefellers.

It’s pretty bold, that is, for Obama to tell John Boehner that he has no intention to cut spending in return for another debt ceiling increase. It’s the debt ceiling debacle Part II, and, again, there’s no plan for trimming — at least a teensy-beetsy bit — America’s expanding welfare state.

According to a readout of the meeting from the Speaker’s office, Boehner asked Obama if he was proposing that Congress increase the debt limit without corresponding spending cuts. The president replied, “Yes,” the Boehner aide said. At that point, Boehner told Obama, “As long as I’m around here, I’m not going to allow a debt-ceiling increase without doing something serious about the debt.”

Shortly after the meeting, White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the president warned the leadership that he would not allow a repeat of last August’s debt-ceiling “debacle,” which led to a downgrade in the U.S. credit rating.

It didn’t take a prophet to see this bullcrap coming. It was seen from miles away. Last summer, Obama and the Democrats punted the debt can down the street, assuring that they’d go chase it in the coming months.

But they’re still lounging, which can only mean one thing: Next stop, European-style fiscal apocalypse.