Pray that this temporary committee be shown grace on how to resolve the issues that go to the very core of our existence as a nation. How we spend our money is a reflection of what we cherish and where we  place importance. Ask the Lord to give grace to our leaders in order to fund the programs that a righteous nation should value most.  

"In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" (Acts 20:35)

"And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:19)

They have been meeting for two months, poring over concepts and ideas already hashed out by three other groups over the past year. 

But nine days before their deadline, members of the congressional "super committee" created to forge a deficit reduction deal indicated Sunday that they remain hung up on basic issues of tax and entitlement reform that have previously stymied agreement.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., declined to take sides Monday on a proposal for higher tax revenues backed by fellow Republicans on Congress' super committee, yet expressed confidence the panel would agree on a deficit-reduction plan of at least $1.2 trillion by a Nov. 23 deadline.

A proposal for $300 billion in higher taxes has stirred grumbling within the ranks of congressional Republicans, for whom opposition to such measures has been political bedrock for more than two decades.

Two of the party's presidential hopefuls said Monday they would not support any committee deficit-reduction plan that includes higher taxes.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, campaigning in Iowa, said he would "do everything in my power to defeat" any such proposal.

A spokesman for Rick Perry said the Texas governor "wants to look at details but if those details include a tax increase he's not going to be for it. He does not favor higher taxes," added David Miner.

Additionally, officials said that Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., who outlined the plan last week in a closed-door meeting of four Republicans and three Democrats, has encountered criticism from fellow conservatives despite strong credentials as an opponent of higher taxes. "There's been a little bit, but it's been pretty muted," his spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik, said of the response.

Cantor's spokeswoman turned aside several emailed requests for the majority leader's views on the proposal. She said he hadn't seen the plan, and she referred to his comments at a news conference earlier in the day when he told reporters, "I'm not going to be opining as to any reports, hypotheticals or anything connected with their work."

Despite that pledge, Cantor was bullish in predicting agreement before the deadline and adding that a fallback requirement to cut $1.2 trillion from domestic and defense programs wouldn't be triggered.

Liberal Democrats are highly reluctant to agree to curbs on programs the party has long been identified with, and last week members on the super committee jettisoned an earlier proposal to slow the rise in cost-of-living benefits for Social Security recipients.

The same goes for conservatives, many of whom fear the possible political cost of changing their positions in order to pursue a less-than-certain bipartisan compromise on deficit reduction.

Many GOP office holders have signed a pledge circulated by Americans for Tax Reform not to vote for higher taxes. The organization is led by Grover Norquist, a conservative activist, although in comments to reporters Cantor suggested that influence by an outsider isn't the dominant concern.

"It's not about Grover Norquist. It's about commitments that people made to the electorate they represent, the people that sent them here. That's what it's about," he said.

Republicans on the committee hailed Toomey's proposal last week as a breakthrough and a concession that could open the way to a deal.

Democrats were dismissive, saying it amounted to a tax cut in disguise for the wealthy - the very taxpayers that they and Obama say should pay more. According to numerous officials, Toomey's proposal envisioned an additional $250 billion in revenue emerging from a sweeping revision of the tax code that would bring the top rate down from 35 percent to 28 percent while reducing or eliminating many commonly used itemized deductions.

"Balance doesn't mean `half-right, half-wrong,' he wrote, referring to Obama's calls for a deficit-cutting plan that includes higher taxes and spending cuts."It means you don't fall over." Jordan is chairman of the Republican Study Committee, an organization of conservative GOP members of the House. (Contributors: CNN, Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor, Wikipedia)

Ask the Lord to give wisdom to those senators that love truth. Pray that their love for the truth will overcome those who suppress the illegal actions of those responsible for this corruption. Ask the Lord to expose the hidden agendas of those suppressing the truth in this investigation. Thank the Lord for those truths that have already come into the light.

"...no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and this is their vindication from me," declares the LORD." (Isaiah 54:17)

A group of congressmen yesterday called on Eric Holder to immediately resign because of Operation Fast and Furious, saying the Attorney General Holder did not tell the truth about the controversial "gun-walking" program. 

The ranking Republican on the Democratic controlled Senate Judiciary Committee says the Justice Department has refused to make available 11 of 12 department witnesses called by the panel for transcribed interviews in the ongoing investigation of the botched Fast and Furious weapons operation.

U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley said that despite the department's promises of good faith cooperation in the probe, only one witness has been provided so far - former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Arizona, who resigned in August after taking responsibility for his mistakes during testimony about Fast and Furious before a House committee. 

"The department has refused to schedule interviews with any of the other 11 witnesses. That's not the good-faith cooperation I was promised, and it is unacceptable," said Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican. "If this controversy has taught us anything, it is that you have to talk directly to the people who know the facts.

"If Congress had relied on the department's official talking points, we still wouldn't know the truth today," he said Thursday during the committee's executive business meeting.

Senator Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, have been investigating the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Fast and Furious operation for several months.

They discovered that more than 2,000 weapons illegally purchased by "straw buyers" at Arizona gun shops, including hundreds of AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles, were allowed to be walked to drug smugglers in Mexico.

More than 1,400 of the weapons are still unaccounted for. Two AK-47s purchased at a gun shop in Glendale, Ariz., were discovered at the site of the shooting death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian A. Terry, killed during a gunfight with Mexican bandits just north of the border near Nogales, Ariz.

Senator Grassley also noted that during a Justice Department oversight hearing Tuesday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. "shifted slightly" from a denial in May that gun-walking had occurred during the Fast and Furious operation to "a wait-and-see position," noting that he didn't know if guns had been walked and would wait for the results of an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General.

"We have come a long way since May," Senator Grassley said.

Eric Holder finally admitted that the whistle-blowers were right all along, about gun-walking in Fast and Furious. Senator Grassley said that he was pleased Holder was no longer trying to deny the obvious.

"Attorney General Eric Holder cannot avoid responsibility for his involvement with a government program that directly led to the tragic death of a decorated Border Patrol agent," Labrador said. "As our nation's top enforcer of the principles of law and justice, Mr. Holder has now lost credibility and should step down immediately." 

(Contributor: Politico, Washington Times)

"Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed". (John 3:20)

When the Cold War abruptly ended in 1991, Vyacheslav Danilenko was a Soviet weapons scientist in need of a new line of work. At 57, he had three decades of experience inside a top-secret nuclear facility and one marketable skill: the ability to make objects blow up with nanosecond precision.

Danilenko struggled to become a businessman, traveling through Europe and even to the United States to promote an idea for using explosives to create synthetic diamonds. Finally, he turned to Iran, a country that could fully appreciate the bomb maker's special mix of experience and talents.

Fifteen years later, the Russian scientist has emerged as a central character in the still-unfolding mystery that is Iran's nuclear program. A report last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency highlighted the role of a "foreign expert" - identified by Western diplomats close to the U.N. nuclear agency as Danilenko - in Iran's efforts to gain expertise in disciplines essential to building a nuclear warhead.

No bomb was built, the diplomats say. But help from foreign scientists such as Danilenko enabled Iran to leapfrog over technical hurdles that otherwise could have taken years to overcome, according to former and current U.N. officials, Western diplomats and weapons experts.

Such assistance also provided a trail of evidence that the IAEA's investigators were later able to follow. Documents and other records - and, in the case of Danilenko, interviews - would offer a rare glimpse inside a highly secretive program hidden within Iranian universities and civilian institutions, the officials and experts said.

"It remains for Danilenko to explain his assistance to Iran," said David Albright, a former U.N. inspector who has tracked the investigation of the Russian scientist over several years. "At the very least, Danilenko should have known exactly why the Iranians were interested in his research and expertise. The IAEA information suggests he has provided more than he has admitted."

U.N. investigators would eventually match Danilenko's published research on detonators with designs produced by Iranian scientists working for the Physics Research Center. In one striking example, a 1992 paper co-authored by Danilenko describes a fiber-optic instrument that measures precisely when a shock wave arrives along thousands of different points along the surface of a sphere. Iran conducted at least one major test of such an instrument in 2003, the year after Danilenko stopped his visits to Iran.

Such instruments have few, if any, applications outside nuclear warhead design, weapons experts say.

 In private conversations, however, the scientist allowed that he "could not exclude that his information was used for other purposes," the ISIS report said. In that sense, the institute said, Danilenko's experience is similar to that of numerous other former weapons scientists who ended up traveling abroad to work in a country with nuclear aspirations. Of the dozens of similar cases studied by the institute, each began with an offer of "more benign assistance that provided a plausible cover for their secret assistance." 

"A finger has been pointed at Israel over a 2010 explosion at Iran's Shahab facility and an attack earlier the same year that killed one of Iran's top nuclear physicists. Other less newsworthy explosions have also occurred in Iran associated with its nuclear or military facilities. It appears that Monday's explosions in Iran was yet another subtle, but not so subtle reminder that Israel intends to seek every possible option before direct confrontation to protect itself from Iran's nuclear armed future aggressions. The UK Guardian reports that Israel's intelligence agency, the Mossad, was behind the blast at the Bid Ganeh military base that killed Iran's leading missile developer and 16 others." (Contributors: Capitol Hill Prayer Partners, The Washington Post article written by Joby Warrick, Bill Wilson's The Daily Jot)  

To read the complete story from the Washington Post <click here>.

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them." (Romans 1:18-19)

"Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man-and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things." (Romans 1:22-23)

"For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due." (Romans 1:26-27)

The Senate Judiciary Committee took the unprecedented step Thursday of voting to repeal a federal law that defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman and allows states to disregard same-sex unions from other states.

However, (and that's a big however) the Respect for Marriage Act may have reached the end of its consideration in this session of Congress: Senate Republicans expressed doubt that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, would dare bring up such a controversial bill before an election, especially with only 31 supporters.

The good news is that Reid knows he would "face a revolution in his own caucus" if he scheduled a vote on this bill, said Sen. John Cornyn, Texas Republican.

Regardless of its immediate fate, Thursday's 10-8 party-line vote in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), was viewed as a victory for the Sodom and Gomorrah styled marriage advocates in America.

DOMA discriminates against more than 131,000 married homosexuals in six states and the District of Columbia by denying them federal benefits, said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat and lead sponsor of the bill. This callous regard for scriptural truth should come as no surprise to informed citizens.

"This unfairness must end," said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat. Repealing DOMA "would provide for the equal treatment of all lawful marriages in this country."

If the bill passes and DOMA is repealed, "states that recognize only traditional marriages will be required to honor homosexual marriages for purposes of federal law," warns Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican and Judiciary's ranking member.

Thursday's discussion evoked emotional responses from several senators.

Obama has said DOMA is unconstitutional and ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the legislation in court. By doing so, Obama set himself above the law of the land. He is obligated to serve and uphold the laws of Congress. He does not have the authority to interpret the laws and call them unconstitutional. That is the responsibility of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Press Secretary Jay Carney added that Obama is "proud to support" the homosexual legislation. This comment should not come as a surprise and should not be forgotten when the majority of Americans are asked to vote next November.

In 1996, DOMA passed with large margins of support from both parties, including still-serving senators, and was signed into law. Forty states have since passed their own DOMAs and the vast majority of God fearing Americans continue to support normal and God ordained marriage, not the model of Sodom and Gomorrah. (Contributors: IFA, The Washington Times, CBN)

"For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, 'Abba, Father.'" (Rom 8:15)

"These (false teachers) are fountains without water, clouds driven by a storm, to whom the blackest darkness is kept forever. For speaking arrogant nonsense, they entice - through the lusts of the flesh, through indecencies - the ones who have indeed escaped from those living in delusion, promising them freedom, though themselves being slaves of corruption - for one is a slave to whatever overcomes him." (2 Pet 2:17-19)

The sharply divided Supreme Court practically guaranteed political fireworks by agreeing on Monday to decide the constitutionality of Obama's signature Affordable Care Act right in the heat of the 2012 election. Here is a guide to the Supreme Court's "biggest case of the century":

What's the time frame for the ACA ruling? The Supreme Court will hear 5 1/2 hours of oral arguments over two days in March or April 2012, and hand down its decision before the end of June - right in the midst of the presidential campaign.

How split is the court? Right down the middle. Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan are liberals. Kagan has been exposed by just-released email conversations expressing elation at the vote count for support of the health care plan, which many deem oppressive and even Marxist. These justices are widely expected to support Obama's law. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Chief Justice John Roberts are conservative. Swing voter Anthony Kennedy could go either way - and is often the court's deciding vote. Kagan should be removed from participation in the Supreme Court decision based on the recently uncovered bias.

What have lower courts ruled? Four federal appeals courts have weighed in on the law, with two - in Washington, D.C., and Michigan - upholding the ACA's individual mandate, the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit court striking it down (but arguing that the lack of a mandate didn't bring down the rest of the law), and the Virginia-based 4th Circuit citing the Anti-Injunction Act to dismiss the case. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the 11th Circuit appeal. None of the lower court judges have endorsed the Medicaid part of the case.  

What exactly is the court deciding on "ObamaCare"? Whether the law can even be challenged, or if the Anti-Injunction Act - which prevents taxpayers from challenging a tax or penalty before it goes into effect - pushes any legal challenge back to 2015, after the individual mandate (which requires Americans to obtain health insurance) kicks in. Then, the justices will decide if the individual mandate is constitutional. If the mandate is ruled unconstitutional, the court will decide whether that invalidates the entire Affordable Care Act. Finally, to the surprise of just about everybody, the justices agreed to decide if the law's expansion of Medicaid is an infringement on states' rights.

What's the Medicaid issue about? The ACA extends Medicaid - a state-administered health care program largely paid for with federal funds - to include low-income adults. Republican officials in 26 states argue that that amounts to federal coercion, since states that fail to comply will lose all their Medicaid funding. Since no lower court judge bought that argument, it's a real stunner the Supreme Court took up the issue. Well, it's probably out of courtesy to the 26 states, says Ilya Shapiro at Cato @ Liberty. But "as a practical matter, this could be a bigger deal than the individual mandate." Congress attaches "plenty of strings to the grants it gives states," and if the justices side with the 26 states, it could cripple Congress' future ability to tie the money it doles out to policy issues.

What are the arguments for striking the law down? The central question with the individual mandate is whether the Constitution's Commerce Clause allows Congress to regulate not just interstate economic activity, but also what opponents call economic "inactivity" - in this case, not buying health insurance. Does punishing Americans for not purchasing health insurance lie outside Congress' power "to regulate commerce"? Opponents say the ACA is a massive overreach of that constitutional authority.

Any guesses on how the justices will rule? There's no consensus among court-watchers. ACA opponents should be cheered by the "whopping 5.5 hours of oral argument," instead of the typical one hour, says Orin Kerr at The Volokh Conspiracy. Clearly, at least some justices are taking the challenges very seriously. "Kennedy will be the decider," says Harvard's Noah Feldman at Bloomberg, and he'll probably be persuaded that it's best to kick the issue down the road, or even uphold the law. "You don't need a law degree to know how the Supreme Court is going to vote, says Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker, "just know which way the wind is blowing." If "Obama looks like a lame duck" when the court decides the case, Kennedy will be more likely to undo the president's signature issue. If Obama "looks like a winner," "ObamaCare" will probably win, too. (Contributing sources: The Week, Washington Times, CNSNews, Bloomberg View, Cato, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New Yorker, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, SCOTUSblog, Slate, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Volokh Conspiracy) 

"Partnering with CHRIST for REVIVAL 

In the Middle East AND America" 

Saturday Morning, 11.19.11 

7:30-11am Eastern, 6:30-10am Central, 5:30-9am Mountain,
4:30-8am Pacific, 3:30-7am Alaska, 1:30-5am Hawaii   

www.PrayerSurgeNow.blogspot.com  prayersurgenow@gmail.com  

Conference Call Number & Code  

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4:30-6:15 am Pacific & 7:30-9:15 am Eastern  

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