Back in 2011, Politico noticed that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s pledge that she doesn’t take PAC money is meaningless, because her own PAC accepts donations from other PACs.

A Campaign Spot reader points out that her PAC still collects, and in fact seeks, PAC donations. Back in 2011, her spokesman claimed Wasserman Shultz had not had “any involvement with the PAC since becoming DNC chair.” I guess that’s changed, since she’s now hosting their fundraising breakfasts. The invite:

Notice that the invitation helpfully mentions she’s on the Appropriations Committee.

From the Tuesday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Morning Jolt reader Dexter flew through Miami recently and encountered this sign:

Notice that NO ONE HAS BEEN FURLOUGHED YET.

For a short furlough of a covered employee, the law (5 U.S.C. 7513) gives a covered employee the following rights:

At least 30 calendar days advance written notice by the agency stating the specific reasons for the proposed action. (Typically, the reasons for the action would involve a lack of work or funds.) The 30 calendar day period begins upon an employee’s receipt of the written notice. Therefore, agencies should plan accordingly to allow time for mailing the notice when hand-delivery is not possible.

As you know, it has been 19 days since the sequestration was announced.

So either someone broke the law and furloughed Customs and Border Protection employees without thirty days notice, or this sign is pre-emptive. Of course, the sign is in past tense, “staffing has been reduced.”

Gee, what else happened at Miami airports last month?

“The lines were not going to get better, they were going to get worse, “said Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, “and that prediction came true.” The congresswoman toured local airports Monday to witness the delays firsthand. She called the situation “unacceptable.”

…While he toured the airport with Napolitano and U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, [Democratic Rep. Joe] Garcia noted that half of the 72 booths at the international-passenger checkpoint were unstaffed on Wednesday.

Giant delays, and signs blaming sequestration furloughs that haven’t taken effect yet, one month after the chair of the Democratic National Committee comes to tour and declare the situation unacceptable? What an amazingly convenient sequence of events.

UPDATE: For a comparison to elsewhere in the government, a reader familiar with the Department of Defense tells me, “First furlough notices for DoD are due this Thursday – so it will be another 30 days from then…late April.”

The Morning Jolt for today is full of debate reaction, but also a longer look at a topic that got only a brief mention last night – our current policy of using drones and a presidential “kill list” of targeted terrorists:

Kill Lists, Drone Attacks – Debbie Doesn’t Pay Attention to Those Things

Over at Reason, they spotlight Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a member of Congress and chair of the Democratic National Committee, appearing to have absolutely no idea about President Obama’s “kill list.”

WeAreChange.org, an independent journalism outfit, snagged a quick interview with Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, at last week’s presidential debate.

The National Defense Authorization Act, infinite detention, the prosecution of journalists and similar expressions of executive authority (none of which were actually brought up in the debate) are some of We Are Change’s pet issues. When they attempt to get Wasserman Schultz to talk about the NDAA she won’t bite. She’s obviously in the “spin room” to spin the debate in President Barack Obama’s favor and certainly isn’t going to do something crazy like talk actual policy.

But when Luke Rudkowski brings up Obama’s “kill list” of terrorist targets he’s working to take out — due process be damned — the conversation turns amazingly, awesomely awful real fast. Wasserman Schultz purports to have no idea what this list even is. She may be playing dumb, but her facial expressions in the video lead me to believe that she thinks she’s being punked and that Rudkowski is some sort of Borat knockoff.

“If you missed this in Headlines this weekend, or even if you glanced at it in Headlines but didn’t watch the clip, stop what you’re doing and watch now,” urges Allahpundit. “My assumption always with DWS is that she knows the truth but is happy to lie to any extent her party needs, which is why you and I know her as America’s most lifelike talking-points robot. Not this time, though. Her ignorance is palpably genuine; she reacts the way you’d expect her to react if this guy had asked her where the government got the thermite used to blow up the World Trade Center. Two things here. One: Needless to say, this is no boutique counterterrorism issue. She’s not being asked whether she knows how many people work for JSOC, for instance. She’s being asked about the president maintaining a list of people to be targeted for death by U.S. intelligence, one of whom was a U.S. citizen. A member of Congress, not to mention chairman of the DNC, should probably have an opinion on that, no?

Permit me to offer two of the greatest paragraphs Glenn Greenwald has ever written:

Anyone who observes politics closely has a very low bar of expectations. It’s almost inevitable to become cynical – even jaded – about just how inept and inane top Washington officials are. Still, even processing this through those lowly standards, I just find this staggering. Staggering and repellent. This is an elected official in Congress, the body that the Constitution designed to impose checks on the president’s abuses of power, and she does not have the foggiest idea what is happening in the White House, and obviously does not care in the slightest, because the person doing it is part of the party she leads.

One expects corrupt partisan loyalty from people like Wasserman Schultz, eager to excuse anything and everything a Democratic president does. That’s a total abdication of her duty as a member of Congress, but that’s par for the course. But one does not expect this level of ignorance, the ability to stay entirely unaware of one of the most extremist powers a president has claimed in US history, trumpeted on the front-page of the New York Times and virtually everywhere else.

So do we on the Right have any hesitation about our current policy of drone strikes overseas? Don’t get me wrong, my sense is that every time some jihadist who wants to kill Americans encounters the business end of a Hellfire missile, it’s good news and it’s Miller time for the forces of justice and freedom.

But you figure that picking out which guy on the ground is the bad guy, and who’s within the blast range, is a really tough call. Is the jihadist du jour worth the risk to the civilians around him? What if there are kids around? How much blood does an Islamist terrorist have to have on his hands to make it worth killing some civilians in the process? Is there a formula for this?

So when you see a story like this…

President Barack Obama told CNN last month that a target must meet “very tight and very strict standards,” and John Brennan, the president’s top counter-terrorism adviser, said in April that in “exceedingly rare” cases, civilians have been “accidentally injured, or worse, killed in these strikes.”

In contrast to more conservative U.S. statements, the Stanford/NYU report — titled “Living Under Drones” — offers starker figures published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, an independent organization based at City University in London.

“TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 – 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 – 881 were civilians, including 176 children. TBIJ reports that these strikes also injured an additional 1,228 – 1,362 individuals,” according to the Stanford/NYU study.

Based on interviews with witnesses, victims and experts, the report accuses the CIA of “double-striking” a target, moments after the initial hit, thereby killing first responders.

Some of that is probably predictable lefty anti-war carping, but not all of it. This is a topic that is extraordinarily controversial in the overseas press, but little noticed as a serious issue here in the United States. You might argue that this is evidence that our press is not ideologically biased so much as partisan biased; liberals outside the United States are outraged by this policy (and a few inside, but not many), but the American mainstream media isn’t interested in giving Obama’s decisions much scrutiny – can’t have the voters thinking the Munificent Sun-King Lightworker is killing innocent civilians on his watch.

DNC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz criticized the Republicans for attending parties in Tampa on Monday night, and declared that for the remaining nights of the convention, “certainly in the face of millions getting battered by a storm, they could have been less crass and been a little bit more muted.”

She did not comment on the propriety of doing a Reddit chat or holding campaign rallies “in the face of millions getting battered by a storm.”

From the midweek edition of the Morning Jolt . . .

What You Ought to Know About Swiss Bank Accounts

With Mitt Romney’s old Swiss bank account the latest to be cast in the role of Emmanuel Goldstein by the Obama campaign and its allies — displacing ATMs, stay-at-home moms, and cynicism itself in the constantly shifting locus of evil in the modern world — I began to wonder how many people have Swiss bank accounts.

The only time most Americans encounter the term is at the movies, when the villainous mercenary inevitably says to his sinister employers, “yes, yes, I will make sure the bomb explodes/our target is assassinated/Mister Bond ends up in a water tank with sharks with lasers on their head& — but only after the money is wired into my Swiss bank account!” This line aims to show that in addition to being a dangerous, cold-blooded mass murderer, this villain is greedy, and not even a true believer in the evil cause. He isn’t even willing to offer a line of credit to the sinister employers. His focus on his payment for the dangerous work he’s about to do is persistently demonized by those charitable, selfless, low-paid Hollywood types; his villainy is demonstrated by his focus on money, unlike the noble, heroic Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, who had the decency to inherit a billion dollars or so from their parents.

Judging from pop culture, the clientele hanging around the lobby of a Swiss bank looks like Batman’s rogues gallery. “Ah, Mr. Stromberg, can I interest you in some of our long-term CDs?”

In fact, I’m going to quote TV Tropes directly:

No self-respecting big-money criminal would stash his loot in anything but a legendarily secretive Swiss bank account. In the hands of particularly lazy thriller writers, merely possessing a Swiss bank account is proof positive that a person is up to no good.

In real life, the usefulness of these numbered accounts is limited, due to how hard it is to get one nowadays . . . The Swiss, well aware of their banks’ increasing reputation as havens for no-good-niks (not particularly helped by their willingness to stash Nazi Gold, though they were originally formed to help people hide money from the Gestapo), require numerous references and a general OK from the person’s country of origin.

Yeah, but it’s not like Obama hangs around particularly lazy thriller writers, the kind of people who would write up hackneyed, axe-grinding drivel like this . . .

The intrigue begins when the Republican White House nominates Carl Satcher, an old foe that protagonist Sen. Elizabeth Fischer Lind defeated for his Senate seat, to be secretary of homeland security. During confirmation hearings, Elizabeth tries to debate his extreme views on antiterrorism and draconian stance on civil liberties. Meanwhile, a story about the Linds’ private finances is leaked, offering much fodder for Republicans and the media. As the fight escalates, Elizabeth’s staff swings into crisis mode while FBI director Douglas Brewer suspects more ominous doings are afoot.

Wait, that’s from Sen. Barbara Boxer’s second thriller novel. Yes, she wrote two.

Anyway, I was wondering how many Americans have Swiss bank accounts, and Matt Welch of Reason is here to help:

Do you know who else once had a Swiss bank account? I mean, besides Hitler? Various U.S. military veterans, dual-national citizens who haven’t lived or worked in America for decades, and panicked retirees who are trying to cope with new tax rules imposed capriciously by a revenue-hungry Congress and president in 2010. Thousands of such Americans are getting bounced out of their existing Swiss accounts and denied new ones, even if they live and work in Geneva for one of the city’s many international non-governmental organizations.

You can read dozens of their testimonies in this April 2012 letter [PDF] to the Internal Revenue Service from American Citizens Abroad, including this story from an American retiree who has lived in Geneva (where he worked at the U.S. secretariat for the United Nations’ International Labor Office) for all but four years since 1973 . . .

The utterly fantastic article offers all kinds of actual facts — you know, the sort of thing journalists used to do, before they outsourced all of that stuff to the opposition research staff of the DNC — and is joyous in the way that it ritually disembowels the phony populism of the likes of Sen. Dick Durbin.

Remember at the top of this article when Dick Durbin criticized people who “believe the Swiss franc is stronger than the American dollar”? Well, it is. Ten years ago a greenback reliably got you more than 1.40 Swiss francs, but the dollar was down to 0.86 when the Swiss National Bank announced a currency peg to the Euro last September. Though that helped break the fall, the buck still hasn’t clawed its way back above the 1.00-franc mark since, and I would be comfortable wagering that another decade from now it will be closer to 0.50.

Is Dick Durbin protecting his million-dollar portfolio through a buy-American-only strategy? Hell no, he isn’t — why, just right there I can see such asset items as “ING Clarion Global Real Estate Income,” and “Matthews Asia Dividend Investor,” and “Morgan Stanley Emerging Markets Domestic.” Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Switzerland is an unusually stable country with an unusually sound fiscal track record and an unusually strong banking sector. I would be shocked if any $100 million American didn’t have at least some stake in a country that has long been one of the largest foreign investors in the United States.

Elsewhere, Daniel Halper points out that at the DNC, real Americans invest in the state bank of India.

“Americans need to ask themselves, why does an American businessman need a Swiss bank account and secretive investments like that?” the DNC chair, a chief surrogate for President Obama’s reelection team, said on Fox News Sunday two days ago. “Just something, a thought, that I’d like to leave folks with.”

It’s been a consistent theme of Obama’s reelection strategy: Attack Romney for foreign investments he held, especially in Swiss bank accounts, “to try to promote his wealthy, out-of-touch businessman persona.”

But disclosure forms reveal that in 2010, Wasserman Schultz invested between $1,001-$15,000 in a 401k retirement fund run by Davis Financial Fund. As the fund discloses, it is invested in the Julius Baer Group Ltd. and the State Bank of India GDR Ltd., as well as other financial, insurance, bank institutions.

Why does a DNC Chair need to invest in the state bank of India like that?

I’ll let Jedediah Bila sum up: “It’s hilarious to watch the ‘Fast and Furious’ Administration shout for transparency over Romney’s bank accounts.”

The decision by the Obama administration to issue a visa to Mariela Castro, Raul Castro’s daughter, is sufficiently bad politics in Florida to get DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, as well as Democratic Florida senator Bill Nelson, denouncing it:

Did the Bush administration do the same a decade ago? Sure, but she wasn’t nearly as appreciative and enthusiastic in her gratitude:

Fidel Castro’s niece on Wednesday hailed Barack Obama’s support for gay marriage and the loosening of US-Cuba travel restrictions, saying: “I would vote for President Obama.”

Why do I foresee “Soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje” on Miami television and radio stations in the near future?

This is a pretty amazing comment in an article by Dave Weigel over at Slate:

In her fateful CNN appearance, right before she evaluated Ann Romney’s economics cred, Hilary Rosen begged the media to “just get rid of this word, ‘war on women.’ After all, “the Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it — this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using.”

On Thursday, as the Rosen saga unfolded, DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse echoed her plea for peace. “I’m not a fan of the term,” he said in an interview. “I mean, I’m sure I’ve probably used it. We all fall into these easy vernaculars . . . but we in the DNC have not been running a campaign based on the term ‘war on Women.’ That’s a myth cooked up by Republicans.”

Besides all the use of the term “war on women” by members of the House and Senate on the floor of their chambers . . . besides all the times DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz used the term . . . Well, if Woodhouse really objects to the term, maybe he should talk to his friends at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who are selling “Stop the Republican War on Women” car magnets, coffee mugs, t-shirts, posters . . .

New DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz almost makes the RNC’s job too easy:

A slogan we’re likely to see a lot of between now and 2012: “They’ll say anything to save their own jobs… but what have they done to save yours?”

The Democrats pat themselves on the back for a low bar:

If [Florida congresswoman and nominated DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz] wins the election, she will become the first woman elected by the full membership to serve as chair. There have been two other women who have served as Chair of the DNC but one was on an interim basis and one was appointed but never stood for election.

Er, she’s been named as the new chair by President Obama, and no one is running against her. How is this a genuine “election”?

Oh, that’s right, that’s how the president won his first office.

I don’t want to hear any more talk that the Republican party isn’t a big tent:

Donna Milo — a Cuban-American, conservative Republican, transgender woman running for Congress — says she doesn’t like labels. “I’m an American. I make my way on the basis of ability. My triumphs are based on my abilities, not on a label or a crutch,” said Milo, a Miami Planning Advisory Board member running to replace U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Weston, one of the House’s most liberal Democrats.

We know Wasserman Schultz is for Obamacare and higher taxes, and so it’s time this South Florida district elected the right m…. w…  person for the job!