Rome Reports presents a report from a march to the Vatican for the pro-life cause, and interview two of my friends as part of the report. LiveAction’s Lila Rose took part in the Rome demonstration, as did Fr. Marcel Guarnizo, and they certainly weren’t the only notables. Pope Francis himself greeted the marchers and encouraged them to keep fighting for life and an end to abortion:

I’d have been there, but I don’t think my feet have recovered yet from the papal conclave. I’m kidding, of course, but it’s great to see Lila and Fr. Marcel on the front lines — and the Pope greeting and encouraging them.

Will this kill our chances for all sorts of double-entendre jokes over the next few months?  If true, it’s certainly going to raise questions about Anthony Weiner’s ability to attract support — if even his wife’s closest friends aren’t getting on board:

Bill and Hillary Clinton will not support Anthony Weiner in his dream of becoming mayor even though they love his wife, Huma Abedin, sources say. “The Clintons wish Weiner would just disappear. Every time he pops up, it’s a reminder of Bill’s scandal withMonica Lewinsky, and it isn’t helpful to Hillary’s hopes for 2016,” one Democrat told Page Six. Abedin has worked for the former US senator and secretary of state for many years, and traveled with her as her “body woman,” her closest aide. It is believed that Abedin is still on the Clintons’ payroll although she isn’t working at the Clinton Foundation. Abedin will no doubt be one of Hillary’s first hires for her presidential campaign team. “The Clintons love Huma. She has a job for life, no matter how much of an embarrassment her husband is,” said our source.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka is upset that Walmart is offering jobs to returning military veterans.

“After facing enemies abroad, is an $8.81 an hour part-time job the best we can offer returning veterans?” asks Trumka.

He’s right. Veterans deserve more than $8.81 an hour. And I know a place where they can do much better, get amazing benefits and not have to work nearly as hard.

How about earning $29,000 as an intern?

$33,000 as a cafeteria clerk?

$39,000 as an “evening cleaner?”

$54,000 as a general office clerk?

$59,500 as an office machine operator?

$72,000 as a web assistant?

$73,000 as a security guard?

$77,000 as a driver/general assistant?

$90,000 as a cook?

$96,000 as a car wash manager?

And all that is before we even begin to talk about the professional positions. Veterans, don’t settle for Walmart. Head over to AFL-CIO headquarters in Washington, DC and start living the good life.

Every vote counts, y’all:

A school board election for the Lytle ISD has been decided by one vote. It was the only vote.

The San Antonio Express-News reports Christina Mercado has won her race as District 1 representative on the Lytle School District by collecting the only vote cast in Saturday’s election for the open board seat.

Mercado’s challenger, Patty Cortez, received no votes.

You know the song, but you’ve never experienced it like this.

Ouch:

Just how long and cold of a winter have we had in Minnesota? While the temperatures have finally risen to early-spring levels in the Twin Cities, it’s still cold in Mille Lacs even two weeks into May.  In fact, what little warming they’ve had may have contributed to a bizarre ice attack on lakefront resort homes this weekend. One visitor took video of the stunning glacial flow from a video phone, and the language gets NSFW when the ice hits the houses:

The Star Tribune has dramatic photos as well. WCCO offered this report on the “ice tsunami”:

Around 9:30 a.m., people watched in disbelief as ice crawled into doors and windows at Izatys Resort. Winds as strong as 40 miles per hour pushed the wall of ice onto the southeastern shorelines. …

The Department of Natural Resources says about ten miles of shoreline are covered in ice, with some mountains of ice as tall as 30 feet.

They’re using heavy equipment to move the ice, which has caused damage to several doors and windows.

Ice was still pushed up against homes Saturday night, and in some cases giant rocks and dirt from the lake were also pushed onto shore. Neighbors told WCCO that it was frightening to watch the ice advance.

Just to remind everyone … this took place on May 11th, not March 11th or February 11th.

Take heart, patriots and Tea Party people. It’s not just you who the IRS decided to politically target in 2011 and 2012. If you were part of a group that was pro-Israel, you had a higher likelihood of auditory scrutiny as well.

Exit question: When Barack Obama has lost Joe Klein, the New Yorker, Maureen Dowd, when CBS News’ Scott Pelley gives speeches in horror that mainstream media is getting the big stories wrong over and over again, when arch-liberal Ruth Bader Ginsberg is saying maybe the Court overreached on Roe V. Wade, you have to wonder if maybe, just maybe, the tide is finally beginning to turn in this country for the better. Or am I just being too optimistic?

I’ll go read Allahpundit for a while. That should even me out.

Yes, yes, but what are the sample splits? Just kidding!  Rasmussen has good news for moms today — expect a call or visit from 95% of your kids:

Most mothers should expect a visit or a phone call today, even though Mother’s Day has slipped in importance in recent years.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 64% of American Adults whose mothers are still alive will visit them for Mother’s Day. Another 31% plan on calling their mothers in honor of the day. Just four percent (4%) with living mothers plan on doing neither of those things.

Maybe it’s a little churlish to point this out, though:

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Americans believe being a mother is the most important job for a woman in today’s world, showing no change from last year but down from previous years. Twenty-four percent (24%) say being a mother is not a woman’s most important job, while another 17% are undecided. Twenty-eight percent (28%) of women say being a mother is not the most important role for a woman in today’s world, a view shared by 20% of men.

By comparison, 71% of all adults believe being a father is the most important role for a man to fill in today’s world.

It’s good to see a renewed focus on the need for fathers who take the job seriously.  Today, though, their job is to wait on wives hand and foot, find brunch lines that aren’t too long, and quit griping about honey-do lists for a day.

Just don’t send this post to my wife, please.

Happy Mothers Day to all our Hot Air moms!

I’ll be appearing on tonight’s Tom Sullivan Show on Fox Business News at 7 pm ET, with repeats at 10 ET and tomorrow at 3am, 5am, & 7pm ET. Topics will include the sharp decrease in gun violence, the issue of increasing disability claims, and Mark Sanford’s return to Congress.

Be sure to watch, and follow Tom and his producer John Karcher on Twitter!

“Why do you need Google on your face?” Scott Stein notes that Google already has had some privacy issues in the past. Frankly, I’m more concerned with the safety issues. Stein notes that the proliferation of smartphones already has drivers texting and e-mailing when they should be watching the road, and this won’t improve that problem by much.

But what about the surveillance issue and privacy? That’s going to be a big question, but not as big as the price tag:

$1500 to look like the Borg? Pass, at least for now. I wear prescription specs and have no desire to wear contact lenses (my astigmatism doesn’t make me a great candidate for them anyway), so I won’t be trying out Google Glasses any time soon.  I don’t think it will take too long, though, before these become as ubiquitous on the street as people with Bluetooth earpieces holding phone conversations.

Speaking of which, I recently joked that twenty years ago, we assumed anyone walking around talking to no one in particular was crazy; now we just assume they’re on a cell phone call.  How about people who stare at you for no discernible reason in the age of Google Glasses?  Do we assume they’re lost in thought, as we do now, or videotaping us?

Distractions, distractions. The editors at the Washington Post castigate the IRS and demand a full and independent inquiry in their lead editorial today, and immediately reject any proposal that allows the agency to investigate itself over their admission that they targeted groups for scrutiny based on their political affiliations.  They also pose a question near the end that’s worth pondering, emphasis mine:

Did some officials hope never to reveal this wrongdoing? Did others hope it could quickly get lost in the weekend news cycle? Misguided, if so. We hope to hear Democratic leaders as well as Republican ones loudly saying so.

Actually, one would have to be nuts to think this will disappear over a weekend news cycle.  Rather than getting lost in other news, it actually reinforces an emerging pattern of executive-branch intimidation that exists in the Benghazi scandal and the Inspectors General corps, most recently regarding Afghanistan reconstruction funds, and more.

That doesn’t mean some organizations won’t try to downplay it in the hopes it will go away:

Not front page material in the Grey Lady’s news judgment.  But good enough for page A-11.  With the third paragraph reassuring readers that an agency spokesperson had insisted

… that the move was not driven by politics, but she added, “We made some mistakes; some people didn’t use good judgment.”

Compare that to the WaPo’s much more skeptical tone in the editorial:

The agency said that it now has rules in place to make sure this sort of thing never happens again. How could such basic safeguards not have existed in the first place? And what are the new rules? In response to our questions, officials did not say.

So what did the Times’ editorial have to say?  Er …. nothing.  The persecution of conservative groups by the IRS wasn’t enough to get the Gray Lady’s editors interested, apparently.

This is a curious story, and not just for the obvious irony:

Italy has a massive unemployment problem. So why do they need immigrants to flood into the country in order to meet the pizza demand? Is this “a job Italians won’t do,” or is it a sign of perverse incentives that make being unemployed more attractive than working in a pizzeria? Is it because it costs too much to hire, for tax and regulatory reasons? I’m genuinely puzzled, and not just because my first job was working in a pizza shop.  It’s not that awful to make pizzas.

By the way, I agree with the American tourists interviewed in the spot.  With only a couple of exceptions, the pizza in Italy (or Rome, at least) is superior to most of what one finds in the US.

With much due respect to my friend Ed, I think his post about Gallup’s new poll on abortion and Gosnell buries the lede.  While Gallup’s data on the Gosnell trial and the media coverage thereof is certainly interesting, I was more struck by the attitudes it measured on the larger question of when abortion should be legal:

- A solid 58 percent majority of adults believes abortion should be legal (a) never, or (b) “only in a few” circumstances.   By contrast, just 39 percent hold the traditional “pro-choice” view that abortion should be legal in “all” or “most” cases.

- Among those selecting one of the two pro-life options (never or rarely legal) are 57 percent of women (!) and 57 percent of young people.

- Americans are overwhelmingly opposed to second (64 percent) and third (80 percent) trimester abortions.  Lila Rose, call your office.

Pro-lifers are regularly sneered at as “extremists” by people who support taxpayer-subsidized, purely elective, late-term abortion-on-demand.  Perhaps these statistics will give the sneerers pause, if only for a fleeting moment.  Opposing abortion in all or most cases isn’t merely mainstream, it’s a majority position.  Also, this question is often cast as a “women’s rights” issue.  It seems tens of millions of American women must have missed that memo, as did a majority of young voters, who are supposed to be charging to the left on all  “social issues.”

Congress and DC both taking a stab at getting the change to happen? Daniel Synder don’t care:

Daniel Snyder is owner of the Washington pro football team he grew up adoring. Would he ever consider changing the team name that many American Indians and others believe is a racial slur?

“We will never change the name of the team,” Snyder told USA TODAY Sports this week. “As a lifelong Redskins fan, and I think that the Redskins fans understand the great tradition and what it’s all about and what it means, so we feel pretty fortunate to be just working on next season.”

What if his football team loses an ongoing federal trademark lawsuit? Would he consider changing it then?

“We’ll never change the name,” he said. “It’s that simple. NEVER — you can use caps.”

Via both RCP and my brother Jason Mattera, who played this for me last night while guest-hosting the Jerry Doyle show.  Now that people can get their own health insurance through ObamaCare, Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) says in a hearing, they don’t have to marry badly for their health … or something:

“It’s an interesting angle, to talk about people who really only have jobs for the health insurance as being one angle to that. I had a friend who got married to the wrong person just so she could have heath insurance. So, we’ll also have a lot of less bad marriages as a result of this,” Rep. Janice Hahn (D-CA) said at a Small Business subcommittee hearing on Health and Technology on Thursday.

So, ObamaCare cures stupidity.  Is there no end to its brilliance?

By the way, Jason and I had a lot of fun during the show in recalling our bachelor days, when we used to impress women at nightclubs by talking about the size of our health insurance plans. Unfortunately, that ended up with us arguing about who had the biggest pharmacy coverage, and that just never ends well.

This is an unexpected development:

Texas authorities are launching a criminal investigation into last month’s deadly fertilizer distribution facility explosion in West, Texas, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Friday.

The announcement was made on the same day authorities arrested Bryce Reed, a West emergency volunteer who was a first-responder to the disaster.

Authorities have not tied the arrest to the deadly blast.

McLennan County sheriff’s records clerk Betty Duncan told CNN that Reed was arrested for possession of a destructive device, booked early Friday, and is in the custody of U.S. Marshals.

One thing might not have anything to do with the other; it could just be a coincidence.  On the other hand ….

On Monday, the state fire marshal’s office said it ruled out four potential causes: weather, natural causes, anhydrous ammonium, and ammonium nitrate in a rail car.

The fire began in the fertilizer and seed building, but authorities still were trying to figure out the exact spot, the fire marshal’s office said Monday.

The blast happened about 20 minutes after the first report of a fire at the fertilizer facility. It registered on seismographs as a magnitude-2.1 earthquake and could be felt 50 miles away.

Keep an eye on this story, perhaps especially on the federal involvement.  Until now, no one had intimated that this might be a deliberate act.

The voiceover and visual effects may be a tad melodramatic, but this video gets to the heart of the Hicks/Clinton element of the Benghazi scandal:

I tend to agree with Byron York, who argues that while the cover-up and thoroughly white-washed talking points are important, the real story is what happened as the Benghazi raid unfolded:

There are three issues in the Benghazi matter.  The first is whether the administration reacted properly to the growing threat to American diplomats in Libya in the months leading up to September 11.  The second is whether the administration reacted properly during the attack itself.  And the third is whether the administration covered up its actions in the days, weeks, and months after the attack. Many Republicans have been fixated on the cover-up, mostly because of the obvious falsehood of UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s statements in the days after the attack.  But by far the most consequential issue in the Benghazi matter is what the administration did during the attack itself.  In those hours, American lives were at risk, and there are real questions about whether the U.S. military did everything it could to save them.

Then again, a strong case can be made that the lead-up to the attack is just as damning and confounding.  We now know that Amb. Stevens was in Benghazi (a) at the behest of Sec. Clinton, (b) on a hugely symbolic day, (c) in an exceedingly dangerous city, (d) at a compound that had twice been attacked previously, and (e) in a country to which high-level administration officials had repeatedly denied requested security upgrades.  Stage two of this outrage — the attack itself — likely never would have transpired if any one of those factors had been different.

I’ll be guest hosting Hugh Hewitt’s nationally-syndicated radio program this evening, which airs live from 6-9 pm ET.  Confirmed guests include Mark Steyn, National Review’s Charles W. Cooke, James Lileks, RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, and our very own Mary Katharine Ham.  We’re also efforting a member of the House Oversight Committee.  As you might imagine, the show will be Benghazi-heavy, although we’ll hit a number of other subjects, too.  I hope you’ll tune in!

UPDATE – Hugh has posted the transcripts of my discussions with Steyn, Sen. Rubio, Rep. Jordan and Priebus.

I haven’t read the book and I’m not sure I’m nerdy enough to appreciate the movie, as nerdy as I am. But it’s not a superhero flick, and that’s all that matters. Two thumbs up.