912 Patriots of Lower Bucks - Your Daily Updates ALL in ONE Place!
January 14, 2013
Meeting on Tue at 7 pm at Erwin's Country Kitchen on Brownsville Rd in Trevose - Patriots-Lower Bucks
Quote:
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." ~Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
"I ask, Sir, what is the militia? It is the whole people. To disarm the people is the best and most effectual way to enslave them."
~ George Mason, Speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention, 1788
The Battle of Athens Tennessee 1946
This is where we may be headed. Tyrannical government will not be tolerated by "We the People". The 2nd Amendment is non negotiable.
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Citizens for Constitutional Government Meeting
This Tuesday, January 15, 6:30-8:30pm
Quakertown Library, 401 W. Mill St., Quakertown
Agenda: Full length video by Tenth Amendment Center "NULLIFICATION: THE RIGHTFUL REMEDY"
Followed by Open Discussion on States Rights & Nullification - what YOU can do about it
Update on the "Fiscal Cliff" bill: how did your Representatives vote?
Information on upcoming Rallies to support the Second Amendment & the March for Life
Note:
Starting this month the Bucks County libraries are charging for use of their rooms: our cost for this meeting $105 - please come prepared to help us cover this cost if you are able (although we are not allowed to officially collect contributions during the meeting)
Volunteer opportunities for those who want to stay active include Legislative Liaison committee, Issues research, Community outreach at community events or to targeted groups like youth, Letter-writing, Website/social media assistance and many more. Please sign up on our Volunteer Opportunities Sheet. We need YOU.
FREE and OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.....PLEASE INVITE YOUR FRIENDS
10 January 2013
The twilight of America
Published in: Melanie's Blog
I think this is what is called a slam dunk. Barack Obama has now proposed filling the three positions in the US administration most concerned with the security of the nation and the defense of the free world, those at State, Defense and the CIA, by three men who have all taken up positions which can only strengthen those who threaten the security of America and the survival of the free world.
Criticizing Islam considered national security threat
Spanish authorities threaten to deport Christian to certain death for speaking out
by Taylor Rose
WASHINGTON - As tensions continue to surge over the expansion of Shariah law both in the Middle East and in Europe, a new speech rights case has emerged in Spain where an ex-Muslim Christian convert is threatened with deportation for speaking out against Islam.
Imran Farasat, who was interviewed by WND, is a Pakistani Christian who converted from Islam in 2004, after, he said, "I realized that what I was following for 26 years of my life is not a religion but in reality is a political dictatorship which persecutes and teaches to persecute through the orders and teachings of a self-proclaimed prophet (Muhammad)."
After his conversion to Christianity, he began to speak out against Islam. He told WND, "Muslims are involved everywhere in terrorism. Christians are being persecuted in Islamic countries to the maximum level of torture and suffering and Islam is trying to invade the Western world and kill our values. Who will stop this all?"
In his legal fight, he's represented by The Legal Project, which describes itself as working "...to protect the right in the West to freely discuss Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding."
It has a large, transnational clientele that "includes authors, bloggers, journals and politicians."
He adds on a more personal note that it is the tenets of his Christian faith that lead him to resist Islam.
"It is the time that the citizens of the Western world should stand up and speak the truth against something what is wrong. [The] Bible teaches us to speak the truth in any situation. And for me the truth is that Islam is a man-made religion which was created in order to govern the world. It has several contradictions in itself. It teaches killing (Jihad), hate non-Muslims, discriminate women, rule the world at any price etc...."
It's time to lift ourselves off the mat, shake off the cobwebs, get reoriented, and start to fight back, to fight for our principles, to fight for our great nation.
It's time to honestly assess the conservative movement's priorities and to forge the way ahead.
That's why our friends at the National Review Institute are sponsoring an important, must-attend conference this January 25-27 in Washington, a critical summit where we can meet, talk, and forge The Future of Conservatism.
Your participation is vital. The National Review Institute's conservative summit will feature a tremendous line-up of leading conservatives and libertarians (and even a controversial figure or two) who will take part in developing a new and revitalized message for our movement. Confirmed speakers to date include
Gov. Scott Walker (WI), Gov. Bobby Jindal (LA), Gov. Bob McDonnell (VA), Rep. Paul Ryan (WI), Sen. Ted Cruz (TX), AG Ken Cuccinelli (VA), Mark Steyn, William Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, Jim DeMint, Larry Kudlow, Laura Ingraham, Hugh Hewitt, Jonah Goldberg, Michael Mukasey, Artur Davis, Rich Lowry, Mona Charen, Ralph Reed, Monica Crowley, Joe Scarborough, Mia Love, Robert Costa, Andrew McCarthy, John Allison, James Pethokoukis, Harold Hamm, Arthur Brooks, Maggie Gallagher, Kellyanne Conway, Kathryn Lopez, Reihan Salam, Mark Krikorian, Jay Nordlinger, John O'Sullivan, Heather Higgins, Peter Thiel, Darcy Olsen, Rob Long, Charles Kesler, Ed Whelan, John Podhoretz, John Fund, Ross Douthat, John Hood, Yuval Levin, Amity Shlaes, Tim Phillips, Travis Brown, and many more.
Be there as we listen to, engage, talk with, and derive inspiration from top conservative thinkers, writers, and politicians. The Future of Conservatism Summit will be a critical and memorable gathering, where wide-ranging discussion and debate will forge a successful vision for the movement and the cause of liberty.
The cost for the Summit, which includes participation in all events (receptions on Friday and Saturday nights, dinner on Saturday, breakfast on Saturday and Sunday, lunch on Saturday and Sunday, plus panel sessions, debates, speeches, and "Night Owls") is only $250 a person (which doesn't even cover the per-person food bill!).
The agenda / itinerary is still being finalized as new speakers are being added, but here are some highlights:
Lunch speeches Governors Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal, Senator Ted Cruz, and former Congressman Artur Davis
Dinner speeches by Jim DeMint and Bill Bennett
Breakfast speeches by Congressman Paul Ryan and Gov. Bob McDonnell
Rich Lowry discusses the state of the movement with Charles Krauthammer
a Saturday "Night Owl" with Mark Steyn, Jonah Goldberg
a Friday "Night Owl" with Laura Ingraham, Kathryn Lopez, Monica Crowley, Mona Charen, and Mia Love
Larry Kudlow hosts a panel on "The Way Out of the Fiscal Mess"
Hugh Hewitt and Mark Krikorian debating immigration policy
Panels on "Selling Capitalism," the Constitution, what's being achieved in the states, demographics, energy, foreign policy, marriage,
and much more
If you've been to a previous NRI Summit, you know how invigorating they can be. They are -- and later this month will once again be -- an ideal opportunity to learn, to contribute, to network, to energize.
Please join us (NRI has made this especially affordable so you can attend). Get complete (developing) information www.nrinstitute.org/summit. You can also register there.
And you can get a special rate on a great hotel room at the Omni Shoreham Hotel -- do that here.
"FrackNation," a film by investigative journalist Phelim McAleer, will be broadcast on Jan. 22, 2012 at 9 p.m. ET according to The Hollywood Reporter. AXS TV is a cable network owned by Mark Cuban, Ryan Seacrest and entertainment companies AEG and CAA.
In a press release, McAleer said of the film, "FrackNation has been described as the first 'pro-fracking film.' I would describe it as pro-journalism and pro-truth. It asks hard questions of the environmental movement and its campaigns. And they seem to not like difficult questions."
In the film, McAleer travels across the U.S. and interviews people on both sides of the fracking issue, including farmers who have leased their property for natural gas drilling and say it is safe, as well as others who want to lease their lands, but cannot due to bans on the practice. He also scrutinizes claims made by Josh Fox, the anti-fracking filmmaker of Gasland.
The new documentary film was funded through Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website, and was co-directed by McAleer, his wife Ann McElhinney and their colleague Magdalena Segieda. "FrackNation's" debut will come just a couple weeks after the anti-fracking drama "Promised Land" starring Matt Damon and John Krasinski hits movie theaters nationwide.
The timing is intentional and meant to urge debate following "Promised Land's" release, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Cuban said "Of course the timing is relevant."
"Promised Land" will merely be the newest entertainment media attempt to demonize the practice of fracking, following episodes of TV programs like "Rizzoli & Isles." The U.S. news media, when they talk about fracking also often portray it negatively. The New York Times ran an entire series of misleading reports in 2011 about fracking and continued to attack the process, even after the paper's ombudsman criticized the Times' coverage.
McAleer has made two previous documentaries, Not Evil Just Wrong and Mine Your Own Business.
WHETHER YOU ARE A GUN OWNER OR NOT, YOU MUST READ THE FOLLOWING:
The recent tragedy in Newtown, CT has shocked our country and left us all with an emptiness in our hearts. The media and liberal politicians are using this act of evil to demonize the 2nd Amendment and all of those that support it. The politicians and media that are now calling for landmark gun control do so not out of genuine concern for safety, but rather to exploit a tragedy for their own self-serving agenda. It is yet another step in their ultimate goal of weakening the American citizenry and consolidating power into the federal government. Their actions are disingenuous in the process of developing meaningful solutions so that events such as Newtown, CT are never repeated.
It is reported that Sen. Feinstein (D-CA) will introduce a bill on January 22 that will affect up to 75% of all currently owned guns. This bill could require current gun owners to register their guns into a new national database and then force owners to pay an annual tax in order to keep their guns. In addition, the bill would ban the production and/or sale of many firearms and require that they be surrendered to the government upon the owner's death and not be able to be transferred to living relatives, etc. Gun registration has historically been a precursor to gun confiscation. We need not even consider past totalitarian regimes to confirm this; consider San Francisco, NYC, Australia and the UK where gun ownership is essentially banned. Basically overnight, millions of law-abiding, tax-paying, U.S. citizens would be forced to either obey an illegal law or be deemed a criminal.
Even if you are not a gun owner, you can see how such far reaching legislation is in violation of the Constitution and would give the government unprecedented power making us all subjects rather than citizens. Further, President Obama is threatening to circumvent Congress and use Executive Orders to pass legislation!!!
Please contact your representatives and tell them to vote "No" on Sen. Feinstein's Bill. Here is a list of officials and their phone numbers and corresponding websites that you can cut and paste in your browser:
In addition, here is some information that may prove helpful in your contact with them:
According to the FBI in areas where right to carry have been implemented gun crimes have been reduced and the converse is also a fact. A prime example of the decrease after the right to carry is Florida, Texas and Michigan; After the handgun ban Chicago saw an increase in handgun murders and DC saw an increase in murder rate after the handgun ban.
Dr. Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, estimated that approximately 2.5 million people used their gun in self-defense or to prevent crime each year, often by merely displaying a weapon. The incidents that Kleck studied generally did not involve the firing of the gun and he estimates that as many as 1.9 million of those instances involved a handgun. The National Rifle Association regularly reprints locally-published stories of ordinary citizens whose lives were saved by their guns.
In the international scene, the homicide rate in England and Wales has averaged 52% higher since the outset of the 1968 gun control law and 15% higher since the outset of the 1997 handgun ban. In Australia, five years after the gun ban assault rose 49.2 percent, robbery rose 6.2 percent rape increased 29.9 percent and overall Australia's violent crime rose 42.2 percent. At the same time, U.S. violent crime decreased 31.8 percent: rape dropped 19.2 percent; robbery decreased 33.2 percent; aggravated assault dropped 32.2 percent.
Schools(like the Friend's school where President Obama's children attend, in addition to the Secret Service), celebrities, politicians and other wealthy are protected by armed guards and are not attacked. Essentially the one percenters are the ones who can afford this protection.
In Israel, teachers are armed and there are no school shootings.
Yours in Liberty, The Kitchen Table Patriots Team
All girls and women need to see this short video
911 Caller Without Gun in Home Invasion
Eric Holder: Gun Owners Should 'Cower' in Shame Like Smokers
The hot new video at MRCTV.org is 1995 footage of Attorney General Eric Holder, when he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. In his remarks before the Woman's National Democratic Club, broadcast by CSPAN 2, Holder said people should be ashamed to own guns, just the way that cigarette smokes now "cower outside of buildings" to smoke.
"What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable, it's not hip to carry a gun anymore, in the way in which we've changed our attitudes about cigarettes. You know, when I was growing up, people smoked all the time. Both my parents did. But over time, we changed the way that people thought about smoking, so now we have people who cower outside of buildings and kind of smoke in private and don't want to admit it." Laughter followed. (Video below)
Friendship Fire Hall - 610 South 2nd Avenue, Lebanon PA, 17042
January 26th from 9:00 to 12:00.
Registration will take place from 9:00 to 9:30 and then the Seminar will begin at 9:30 sharp. John Anthony's presentation is 90 minutes long and this will be followed by William O'Neal's presentation on the success of his efforts in dealing with Sustainable Development in Upper and Lower Makefield.
If you choose to pay the registration for this event in advance you can send payment to
Sue Rodkey (Treasurer)
814 Walnut Street
Lebanon PA, 17042
Cost is $20/person or $30/couple - Twp Supervisors get in free.
Make checks payable to The Lebanon 9-12 Project.
Please RSVP to us, central.montco.ptpp@gmail.com if you want to go so I can give them a headcount.
Sam Rohrer, President of the PA Pastors Network, will be speaking at the Coalition for Advancing Freedom's January meeting.
January 22, 2013 at 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Hilton Garden Inn, 815 East Blatimore Pike (Rt 1), Kennett Square, Pa
U.S. Senator Pat Toomey is proud of our men and women in uniform currently serving to protect the United States. He understands how important it is that we continue to provide quality medical care and other benefits to all veterans, both those who served decades ago and those just returning from fighting in the war against terrorism.
Since joining the Senate, Sen. Toomey has worked to help our veterans obtain the services and benefits they rightfully deserve. He also recognizes the need to address administrative problems at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and will work with all stakeholders to help ensure that veterans receive first-rate service.
During the last Congress, Sen. Toomey supported several proposals that address these issues. Sen. Toomey voted in favor of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2012 (H.R. 2055), which provided $128 billion for the VA for fiscal year 2012 - a 6 percent increase from fiscal year 2011 levels.
With the unemployment rate for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at more than 12 percent, we must ensure that veterans coming home from the battlefield will return to employment and new opportunities. Sen. Toomey voted in support of the 3 Percent Withholding Repeal and Job Creation Act (H.R. 674) that created a tax credit for employers who hire unemployed veterans. The bill also provides $1,473 a month for one year to cover college or vocational school tuition for unemployed veterans.
Sen. Toomey introduced a bill (S. 3316) to create a one-year pilot program to help veterans find jobs based on their military experience. The pilot job search program, which would be conducted at the Labor Department's One-Stop Centers, would provide new tools for veterans to find jobs online. The new tools would match veterans with available jobs based on the skills they've gained in the military, and employers would be able to post vacancies. The bill was cosponsored by Senator Burr of North Carolina, a senior member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
A June 2011 Government Accountability Office report found serious inadequacies in measures to prevent sexual assault in VA facilities, due to underreporting, poor oversight and lack of adequate security. In response, Sen. Toomey introduced the Veterans Sexual Assault Prevention Act (S. 1689) to protect VA facility patients from sexual assault. Sen. Toomey's measure, which has been signed into law, mandates a new standard of care and protection for patients at VA facilities, including new reporting procedures, an oversight system, and enhanced physical security measures.
Additionally, Senator Toomey introduced a bill (S. 3640) to require the Transportation Security Administration to work with the VA and local charities to distribute unclaimed clothing left at airport security checkpoints to homeless and needy veterans and their families. His bill passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives. The legislation is pending signature by the President.
Senator Toomey is deeply concerned about the backlog of veterans' disabilities claims. VA's annual claims are expected to reach 1,250,000 in 2013, an increase of almost 60 percent since 2005. He has asked the VA to inform him about how VA will accomplish its strategic goal that no claim will be more than 125 days old in 2015.
Sen. Toomey is a member of several Senate military caucuses, including the bipartisan Senate Veterans Jobs Caucus, the Senate National Guard Caucus, the Senate Army Caucus and the Senate Special Operations Caucus.
During his third year in the Senate, Sen. Toomey will continue to support sensible legislation protecting the welfare of our veterans. He also welcomes veterans to contact him for help with federal programs and services. For more information about assistance available for veterans, please visit the senator's website at http://toomey.senate.gov.
AAA warns E15 gasoline could cause car damage
Gary Strauss, USA TODAY November 30, 2012
E15, a higher blend of ethanol and gasoline, has rolled out in a handful of states. But its use in older vehicles is generating warnings from AAA, which says E15 could be harmful to pre-2012 vehicles.
The AAA says the Environmental Protection Agency and gasoline retailers should halt the sale of E15, a new ethanol blend that could damage millions of vehicles and void car warranties.
AAA, which issued its warning Friday, says just 12 million of more than 240 million cars, trucks and SUVs now in use have manufacturers' approval for E15. Flex-fuel vehicles, 2012 and newer General Motors vehicles, 2013 Fords and 2001 and later model Porsches are the exceptions, according to AAA, the nation's largest motorist group, with 53.5 million members.
"It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle," AAA President and CEO Robert Darbelnet tells USA TODAY. "Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers."
On Monday, President Barack Obama nominated former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be his next Secretary of Defense in succession to Leon Panetta. Chuck Hagel's record is one of being a frightening and dangerous apologist for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizballah, as well as for the Iranian terrorist regime, while being arguably one of the most vicious and hostile critics of Israel. The ZOA believes that appointing Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary would also serve to confirm the fears that many have that President Obama is no friend of Israel and is not serious about stopping Iran's nuclear program.
ACTION:
Please call your U.S. Senators to urge President Obama not to nominate Chuck Hagel and to vote against his appointment if Hagel's name goes forward for Secretary of Defense. You can reach all U.S. Senators through the Capitol Hill switchboard: 202-224-3121.
Call Sen. Casey 202-224-6324
Call Sen. Toomey 202-224-4254
New Jersey:
Call Sen. Lautenberg 202-224-3224
Call Sen. Menendez 202-224-4744
Delaware:
Call Sen. Carper 202-224-2441
Call Sen. Coons 202-224-5042
BACKGROUND:
In 2009, Hagel signed a letter urging President Obama to begin direct negotiations with Hamas, a U.S. designated terrorist group committed in its Charter to the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews, a position President Obama has not taken up.
In a 2006 interview with former Middle East negotiator Aaron David Miller, Hagel said that "the Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people" on Capitol Hill ('Hagel named to intelligence board,' Jewish Telegraphic Agency, October 29, 2009).
In July 2006, at the outbreak of the Lebanon war, Hagel argued against giving Israel the time to break Hizballah, urging instead an immediate ceasefire ('Key Republican breaks with Bush on Mideast,' CNN.com, July 31, 2006).
December 2005: Hagel was one of only 27 senators who refused to sign a letter to President Bush urging him to pressure the Palestinian Authority (PA) to ban terrorist groups from participating in Palestinian legislative elections.
June 2004, Hagel refused to sign a letter urging President Bush to highlight Iran's nuclear program at the G-8 summit and was one of only two senators in to vote against renewal of the Libya-Iran sanctions act.
November 2001: Hagel was one of only 11 senators who refused to sign a letter urging President Bush not to meet with the late Yasser Arafat until his forces ended the violence against Israel.
In July 2001, Hagel was one of only two senators to vote against extending the original Iranian sanctions bill.
October 2000: Hagel was one of only four senators who refused to sign a Senate letter in support of Israel.
This month, hundreds of thousands of Americans will march on Washington, D.C., in defense of the nearly 56 million babies killed in the womb since the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion 40 years ago - and now even the millions who can't travel the nation's capital will flood the offices of President Obama, key government officials and mainstream news media with as many as 2 million empty red envelopes bearing a very clear message:
"This envelope represents one child who died in abortion. It is empty, a life taken that was unable to offer anything to the world. Responsibility and life begin at conception."
Jan. 22, 2013, is the 40th memorial of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Now that day has been designated Red Envelope Day as Americans plan to send a visual expression of moral outrage deep into the halls of Congress, beyond the marble columns of the Supreme Court and into the Oval Office.
Red Envelope Day 2013 gives participants the choice to send red envelopes to:
I know there is a lot going on and many are over whelmed. But please keep in mind that is the objective. Cloward and Piven - over load the people so they become so over whelmed they give in and give up. So just keep this in mind. A lot of what is going on is to divert our attention from the real issue. BENGHAZI.
PLEASE purchase 10 postcards. PLEASE ask EVERYONE you know and all members of your group to purchase just 10 postcards and send them to Representative Darrell Issa.
Examples of what you can put on the card are:
WE DEMAND TO KNOW WHO GAVE THE ORDER TO STAND DOWN IN BENGHAZI and PROSECUTE THEM TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW
"WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION OF BENGHAZI
"WE THE PEOPLE" DEMAND TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT BENGHAZI
Use one of the statements, use them all or make up your own but please just 10 postcards from the post office or purchase Gadsden postcards from agenda21today.com. You can buy just a couple or you can buy 1000 for $85 (includes shipping in the USA).
Phone calls are also recommended. Just think if we and everyone we knew sent 10 postcards and made 1 phone call to Rep. Issa it might just make a difference.
Representative Darrell Issa
Washington DC Office * 2347 Rayburn House Office Building * Washington, DC 20515 * Phone: 202-225-3906 * Fax: 202-225-3303
The stamp for a post card is 32 cents. That is $3.20 for postage on 10 cards. My Gadsden cards ARE IN THE MAIL. Please let me know if you decide to participate. Let me know if you are getting a group together for a postcard writing campaign to Rep. Issa.
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government - lest it come to dominate our lives and interests"- Patrick Henry
To fix "THE SYSYEM" We must become "THE SYSTEM" - k. bracken
"The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice." - Barack Hussein Obama
"The man who speaks to you of sacrifice, speaks of slaves and masters. And intends to be the master." - Ayn Rand
If you want to understand what is happening to our beloved country please watch this important movie. Please share it with everyone.
Yes, it's true: You can support ACT! for America-at no cost to you!An important message from Guy Rodgers, Executive Director
The next time you make an online purchase of almost anything, you could be helping ACT! for America-at no cost to you.
Sound too good to be true? It isn't.
All you have to do is sign up for "iGive"-a program that's been around since 1997.
The concept is as powerful as it is simple.
Every time an iGive member makes an online purchase at over 1,000 brand-name stores, a percentage of that purchase is donated to that person's charity of choice.
And with the holidays just around the corner, you could be helping ACT! for America with every gift you buy!
The concept isn't new. In the mid-1990s many supporters of non-profit organizations signed up with long distance telephone programs where a percentage of their bill was donated to their charity of choice.
But our investigation of iGive has convinced us that this program has an ease of use and sophistication that we find remarkable.
Imagine booking a hotel room on Orbitz-and having 1.6% of that purchase price donated to ACT! for America.
Or buying an Xbox at Best Buy-and having 1.2% of the purchase price donated to ACT! for America.
The same goes for buying merchandise at Amazon, Bath and Body Works, Advance Auto Parts, Game Stop, Kmart, Home Depot, Holiday Inn, Old Navy, NASCAR Superstore, Overstock.com, Mattel, J.C. Penney, Office Max, QVC, Radio Shack, Shoe Carnival, Pottery Barn-and on and on the list goes.
In other words, every time you make a purchase of merchandise you would buy anyway, you would be financially supporting ACT! for America!
All you have to do is log on below and follow the directions to create your account and download the iGive "button." (Note: downloading the "button" is key).
When I was first informed of iGive, I was skeptical. I've seen these ideas come and go. Often, they're too good to be true. Or there are all kinds of glitches and problems.
So I spent hours researching.
I looked at online customer reviews (which were very good). I read all of iGive's fine print, such as Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. I signed up and even emailed two tech support questions to see how good their tech support was.
And the more I dug, the more I liked what I saw. For instance, both of my tech support questions were responded to within 60 minutes. How often does THAT happen?
As you know from our Patriot Partner program, we're all about encouraging a lot of people to each do a little-to do something. When everyone does a little, together we accomplish a lot.
So consider what could happen.
If just 1% of ACT! for America members each purchased just $400 in merchandise in 2013, from all the available outlets, and the average percentage donated to ACT! was 1.5%, the total amount donated back to ACT! for America would be...
...$15,000. That's a lot of money, wouldn't you agree?
And if you were one of those ACT! for America members, it wouldn't cost you one thin dime to help ACT! for America receive $15,000.
If this idea really caught on, and eventually 5% of our members made purchases with iGive, that $15,000 could explode to $50,000, $75,000 or more!
What's more, that 1.5% figure might be low. Many of the merchants offer percentage donations that are much higher. One printer inkjet company I looked at offered 13%!
Every merchant website you visit tells you right at the top what percentage of your purchase price will be donated to ACT! for America.
Just think what we could accomplish with an extra $15,000, $50,000 or $75,000 in our fight against radical Islam!
One of the things I most wanted to know was their Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Check it out for yourself. I confirmed the terms with a company representative. And I like what I learned. As security-conscious as I am, I have no hesitation using the service-and I'm already doing so.
I know there are many people out there who would love to support ACT! for America, or give more than they're giving, but in these tough economic times they simply can't.
Well, here's a way that everyone who believes in our mission can easily support what we're doing-at no cost to them.
It doesn't get any better than that.
There are already chapter leaders who have signed up for the program, and the feedback I have been getting from them has been all positive. They love the idea and many of them are already using it.
So please, join me and these ACT! for America chapter leaders who are already signed up and using the iGive service.
Yours for a safe and free America
Guy Rodgers
Dear Fellow Conservative,
Registration for CPAC 2013 is now open! The American Conservative Union's legendary annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is scheduled for March 14-16, 2013 at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center.
Register Now for CPAC 2013 Don't miss your chance to help take our country back to the right. To register now and reserve your space, visit conservative.org.
Join the Celebration In honor of CPAC's 40th Anniversary, we look forward to joining conservatives from across the nation for CPAC 2013, celebrating the accomplishments of the movement while also energizing the next generation of conservatives.
New Location CPAC 2013 boasts a new location at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center. Complimentary CPAC shuttle busses to and from the Gaylord Center will be available at convenient locations across the National Capitol Region. Details will be released in the coming weeks; please visit conservative.org for updates.
CPAC Past & Present The ACU has hosted CPAC in the Nation's Capital since 1973, and it now stands as the largest annual gathering of conservatives in the country. Additionally, the ACU this year hosted two regional CPACs designed to energize and mobilize Midwest and Mountain West conservatives, giving them the tools needed to defeat the liberal agenda in 2012 while also highlighting rising conservative stars and issues in the region. Stay tuned for details on 2013 regional CPAC locations!
Interested in Sponsoring CPAC 2013? National and local partners are critical to achieving a successful event. CPAC 2013 provides an excellent platform to promote your message and network with the leaders and activists who are on the frontlines of the conservative movement. We invite you to review the special opportunities available to join the action at CPAC 2013 by visiting conservative.org.
This email was sent by: American Conservative Union 1331 H. St., NW Washington, DC, 20005,
The Great Betrayal: Obama's Wars and the War in Iraq
Jul 18th, 2012
Daniel Greenfield's new Freedom Center pamphlet,The Great Betrayal: Obama's Wars and the War in Iraq, is an effort to understand the politics of the "war on terror" which has now reached a final punctuation point with the U.S. decision to speed its withdrawal from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan (where success was once deemed so crucial to national security), and to practice an incoherent form of regime change in Libya while ignoring more serious threats in Syria and Iran.
The war on terror began, Greenfield shows, as an admirable bipartisan commitment soon after the tragedy of 9/11-an effort to transcend party lines not only to punish those who attacked our country but also to interrupt planning for further attacks and try to stop the international spread of the Islamic jihad behind the attacks. But the Democratic Party, with the honorable exception of a few individuals like Richard Gephardt and Joe Lieberman, turned its back on a war soon after authorizing it, and did so at a time when American troops were facing hostile enemy fire.
Although Senate Democrats on the intelligence oversight committee had been granted access to every piece of data available to the White House, they now accused President Bush of tricking them to secure their approval. In fact, their own about-face was entirely dictated by political considerations when a Sixties antiwar activist, Howard Dean, surged ahead in the Democratic primary polls and it appeared for a moment that Americans were on the side of retreat and capitulation.
Although regime change in Iraq had been official U.S. policy since Bill Clinton signed the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, Democratic senators such as John Kerry who only months earlier had supported the war effort now launched demoralizing attacks on the American commander-in-chief and his troops in the field, stigmatizing it as "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." If the truth was the first casualty of their war against the Bush administration, the second casualty was the principle of bi-partisanship that had guided foreign policy debates throughout the Cold War, the principle that "politics stops at the water's edge." Now partisan politics trumped security.
The unrestrained attacks on the Iraq War as illegal and unjustified went largely unanswered by Republicans who failed to call the Democratic saboteurs of the nation's war effort to account or to decry the risk their cynical attacks posed to American servicemen and women on the battlefield. As Greenfield demonstrates, the Democrats' partisanship had consequences not only in Iraq but elsewhere in the region: the paralysis that resulted from their "anti-war" campaign led straight to the destruction of Lebanon and the installation of a terrorist army, Hezbollah, there as a regime within a regime. And it emboldened an overtly Islamofascist regime in Iran not only to supply the IEDs responsible for most of our troop fatalities in Iraq but also to proceed with a nuclear program aimed directly at Israel and the West.
The Great Betrayal shows that Barack Obama's abandonment of Iraq is a betrayal of all the Americans and Iraqis who gave their lives to establish freedom in that country. And the result of his policies in Afghanistan has been as disastrous. While the President presented his rationale for pursuing war there as the pursuit of al-Qaeda, after abandoning his "surge" (which resulted in two thirds of all America's Afghan casualties there and the resurgence of the Taliban allies of al-Qaeda), he blithely prepared for withdrawal as if national objectives had been met.
Order your copy of The Great Betrayal today by clicking here.
Individuals sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood's sinister agenda have infiltrated the Obama Administration.
Brainwashed by the Muslim Students Association and then propelled in to the position of Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the David Horowitz Freedom Center tracks the path of Huma Abedin and other Muslim sympathizers who have navigated their way into positions of great influence in the Obama Administration. Everything is revealed in the explosive new Freedom Center pamphlet, "The Muslim Brotherhood in the Obama Administration," written by Frank Gaffney, national security expert who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center is committed to educating the public on the Muslim Brotherhood's sinister Agenda. That is why we are giving away this pamphlet for FREE.
Visit our website, www.hillsdale.edu, for more information about Hillsdale College.
Hello Patriots!
I am fired up tonight!!! I just came back from the General Wayne Tea Party meeting (excellent group), and I can't believe some of the things that I was hearing from PA State Rep. Warren Kampf. With all due respect to the Representative, he does seem like a really nice guy, but we had a very passionate conversation and I did not like what he had to say. I'll posted a YouTube video that I took below. We need people in office with backbones that have strong principles that will not cave in to others that want to strip our freedoms away. I'm paraphrasing this, but he said he was so worried about pleasing everyone and getting election votes and that's why he can't stick to constitutional principles. They believe that extremism (the constitution) is bad, and its just in the way, and it makes things harder to accomplish if they stick to its guidelines and believe in Liberty. There are not 2 parties in Harrisburg, there is only one! A Republican majority? Like hell there is! More like a majority of cowards. I asked Kampf several questions. Here's a breakdown of just "one" question that I asked him about Obamacare...
(Paraphrasing)
Me: Representative Kampf, can we count on your support to stop Obamacare in PA?
Kampf: NO
Me: Will you support a bill to stop Obamacare?
Kampf: NO
Me: Will you support Nullification?
Kampf: NO, and I don't believe in that. Obamacare is the law of the land and the Supreme Court is the Supreme law.
Me: No it isn't. Our government was set up with certain checks and balances for a reason. The supreme court does not have the final say. Do you support the 10th Amendment?
Kampf: Federal law is federal law and we just have to deal with it.
Me: Did you read the US Constitution?
(No answer from Kampf)
In Liberty & Solidarity,
HERE'S THE YOUTUBE VIDEO:
PA State Rep Slams States Rights - Tea Party threatens to sue journalist over 1st amendment rights
Indicted businessman: Utah A.G. tied to alleged scheme
Jeremy Johnson says new A.G. brokered attempt to derail federal investigation.
By Tom Harvey and Robert Gehrke
The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: January 12, 2013
Embattled St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson says new Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped broker a deal in 2010 in which Johnson believed he was to pay Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid $600,000 to make a federal investigation into Johnson's company go away.
But when the federal government filed a lawsuit Johnson thought he had paid to quash, he demanded Swallow return some of the $250,000 initial payment. Then, just days before the Nov. 6 election, Johnson engaged in a frenetic but unsuccessful effort to get Swallow to drop out of the race, saying information about what Johnson called a "bribe" would come out and force the Republican's resignation if he became attorney general.
Johnson's allegations come less than a week after Swallow took the oath of office. Federal agents have interviewed several Utahns about Johnson's relationship with Swallow, among other issues, according to those interviewed. The FBI would not comment.
Johnson said he does not know if any of the money he paid in the deal actually reached anyone connected to Reid.
Reid's office declined to comment, spokeswoman Kristen Orthman said Friday.
For the past 20 years, Louie Giglio has not focused on homosexuality. In fact, the controversy is a distraction from his important focus today on human trafficking. But gay rights activists are outraged that he dared say something twenty years ago that was then, as it is now, mainstream within Christian orthodoxy. It is something I agree with him on. It is something that, twenty years ago, would not have caused the outrage it is now causing.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 notes, "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths." Secularists peddling a secular agenda in the name of tolerance have declared Truth to be myth and myth to be truth. They hear what they want to hear and condemn what they do not understand as intolerance. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
2. "When they outlaw guns, only outlaws (and tyrants) will have guns..."
Despite union bosses lying to their members in 2008 about Barack Obama's gun-control desires, according to his legislative record, he apparently would rather have a person killed in their own homes than have them defend themselves with a gun.
Not surprisingly, in keeping with their standard of not letting a good crisis go to waste, Obama and his left-wing cronies have launched a full-on frontal assault on Americans' right to keep and bear arms.
3.Over 1,000 Educators Apply for Armed Teacher Training
The Buckeye Firearms Association (BFA) announced in a January 9 release that over 1,000 educators have applied for its partner foundation's Armed Teacher Training Program first publicized December 20, 2012. Applications are still being accepted via online survey.
"The original intent was to simply offer free firearm training to 24 teachers in order to show that teachers could be an effective deterrent to mass murder in schools," BFA wrote.
In the wake of the mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, interest from teachers and other school employees was much higher than the pro-Second Amendment group anticipated. . . . please click here for the rest of the post →
Piers Morgan is one of many people who seem to think the word "murder" must always be preceded by the word "gun," even though "gun" is not defined as an adjective in my dictionary More
With the inevitable continuation of the current rate of corruption and decay it is only a matter of time before the groundwork is complete and our Caesar takes center stage More
Facts -- they just don't matter like they used to. Neither does the Constitution, if you listen to Joe Biden, Governor Cuomo, and other politicians grabbing the microphones to take advantage of the low information voters' short attention span. ...»
In this tale of two men, one finds in microcosm the dilemma we face in a world of pain and transgression. In a sense more real than we at times can fathom, we are both Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert. ...»
AT Cartoon: False Idol
On Greta, Sessions Details Lew's History Of False Statements
NRA: The Untold Story of Gun Confiscation After Katrina
Larry Ward To CNN: If Blacks Had Guns, They Never Would Have Been Slaves
Thanks to the modern educatonal system, the child has been conditioned to expect continual parenting, either from natural parents or from the ersatz parent-State. And children do grow up.......»
Sometimes, committees simply lose their minds. This is clearly the case with the National Father's Day Council. The council has, unbelievably, voted to make Bill Clinton Father of the Year. ...»
Conservatives need to return to what built the conservative movement. We must now explain all over again to today's generation of voters how their tax dollars are being thrown away. ...»
Let me translate: this was a big f-you to conservatives. In English this means: "liberals can act like punks, while conservatives speak up at their own peril." ...»
Criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million Americans each year use guns for self-defense and that 400,000 of them say they would have been killed if they hadn't been armed. That's 400,000 a year....»
Do we already have gun laws on the books? Of course. We just need a few more, and as soon as we further restrict the millions of law-abiding citizens who have not committed crimes, these crimes will stop. ...»
Health Insurance Premiums Sky Rocket Ahead Of Obamacare Law Kicking In
Judge Napolitano: Trillion Dollar Coin Proposal "Would Be Economically Catastrophic"
'Morning Joe' Hosts Clash Over Lack Of Women In Obama Administration
WaPo?? The Racist Redskins Name 2 + Medicine 4 + Executive Orders 1 + Cliff Deal Didn't Touch Rich 1
HAGEL: TERRORISTS ATTACK BECAUSE THEY LACK HOPE. CLAIMS PALESTINIANS 'CHAINED DOWN MANY, MANY YEARS'
Terrorism is not a belief but instead is a response to despair and a lack of hope, argued Chuck Hagel in unreported remarks during a 2007 senate hearing.
"But when people have no hope, when there's despair, little else matters," said Hagel.
'AARON KLEIN RADIO' No. 1 IN NEW YORK CITY. ACHIEVES RARE RATINGS MILESTONE IN COMPETITIVE MARKET
"Aaron Klein Investigative Radio," broadcast on New York's WABC, achieved a ratings milestone in the latest rankings, becoming No. 1 on the AM dial in New York City in his time slot.
Klein's program, regularly rated among the top three AM programs in its time slot, bested all other AM stations in the highly competitive New York market in December, scoring higher than even the difficult-to-beat all news stations.
The show archived a rare 7.0 share in the Portable People Meter, or PPM, ratings for last month.
I'm a Tea Partier! I'm also a lifelong Republican as was my father, a Chicago Packard dealer Service Manager in the Capone Era. We even owned Machine Gun Mike McGurk's '29 Packard coupe for a while. Dad said he got to vote against that SOB Roosevelt 4 times!
I went to Tea Party meetings on 3 occasions - 3 different groups. I attended a big rally here in Bakersfield where John Boehner and my Congressman Kevin McCarthy attended and were denied an opportunity to speak. They never forgave the Tea Party. It was such a stupid move, but that's history... and I believe we've been paying for it with the Establishment ever since - with Carl Rove as the resident strategist. I got to share some thoughts with several gays from the local college who came to protest. We got along fine even if we didn't agree.
A news release from Attorney Orly Taitz reveals Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has distributed for a February 15th conference of the Court, Taitz's Obama eligibility challenge of Noonan et al v Bowen. (5) The February hearing of the Court is intended to decide the merits of Ms. Taitz's challenge to Obama's eligibility to hold the office of President. The filed action will present evidence of the following:
1. Barack Obama used a last name not legally his
2. Obama permitted the use of a forged Selective Service application
3. Obama permitted the use of forged long form and short form birth certificates
4. Obama used a Connecticut social security number which was never assigned to him according to E-Verify and SSNUS (4)
The New York Times' David Brooks opined that the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the position of Secretary of Defense (SOD) is in fact a cover for Barack Obama's dismantling of the Military. The President must raid the Medicare and Pentagon budgets to pay for the domestic programs planned for his welfare state. By placing a likeminded traveler like Hagel in the top position at the Pentagon, Obama will have a yes man to dismantle the military and further the One's socialist agenda. Since Hagel is a Republican (in name only) Obama will have the perfect political cover to raid the defense budget and give it to the low information voters who will blindly help Democrats destroy this nation. (1)
Global Zero
Global Zero is an international movement demanding the elimination of all nuclear weapons. Sen. Hagel co-authored a report last may calling for severe cuts in the U.S, nuclear arsenal. (3)(4) As the ... Continue Reading:Dismantling the Military- Obama style
Though it's doubtful anyone will hear much about it, neither lawmakers, judges or even a president has the constitutional authority to infringe upon the inalienable right of the American people to keep and bear arms.
One hundred thirty eight years ago, the Supreme Court wrote that the right to keep and bear arms "...is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." (1)
The case was the United States v Cruikshank and the Court made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms is an inalienable right, God-given and independent of any mandatory approbation by men or their laws for its force and legitimacy
The Founders were so certain as to the absolute nature of these inalienable rights in the Bill of Rights that Alexander Hamilton suggested in Federalist No. 84 that it was unnecessary even ... Continue Reading:It's time gun owners declare Victory in the 2nd Amendment war
My heart is broken, deeply broken. Is there no one in Illinois who has the moral compunction to stand up to the corruption known as Chicago? Will any Illinois person of honor come forward to put a stop to what is going on? When I received an anonymous E-mail about the Land of Lincoln-where our governors make our license plates-I couldn't laugh any more. You see, there always has been a perverse sort of gallows humor, perhaps even misplaced sense of pride associated with Chicago. When I tell people here in Florida that I'm from near Chicago, I sense that I have assumed a different status in their eyes. One guy even stepped back, suddenly refusing to interrupt me anymore!
As the current Illinois, all-Democrat-legislature tried every way possible to pass a series of unconstitutional gun bans last week, "...three sitting [Illinois] lawmakers [were] facing criminal charges." (1) All Democrats from Chicago, they include ... Continue Reading:Just don't tell them you're from Chicago!
Bang for your buck: that's what the Freedom Center provides. Ammunition for the culture war against the Left: that's what your contribution buys. So please act now and help us in the fight we are waging on many fronts for America's future. America is under assault from within and without. There is no time to lose.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
In Washington D.C., the office of the Honorable Joseph Biden was busy phoning up everyone from Mothers Against Pointy Things to the Gay Communist Gun Club of America to Wal-Mart to invite them down for a serious no-holds-barred discussion about doing to the Bill of Rights what his boss had done to the economy.
Meanwhile over in Chicago, the 13th corpse was being scraped off the sidewalk. In just nine days, Obama's hometown, one of them anyway, was already 15% ahead of last year's whopping murder rate. East of Second City, in the city that would be Chicago if it wasn't for a lot of money and a Republican mayor, one of the city's liberal judges gave civil rights activists a late Christmas present with a verdict against the NYPD's 'Stop and Frisk" program in the Bronx.
The Bronx is the part of New York City voted most likely to be Detroit. An ironic fate for a borough that built the city's biggest zoo and botanical garden as a way of keeping the riffraff out of what was once an exclusive area. It's the place where you are mostly likely to shoot or be shot at. The Bronx is one of the smallest borough of the five, but it's number one in murders, rapes and robberies.
New York's Finest commute to work from Staten Island, where the homicide rate is less than half that of the Bronx. In the 40th Precinct (you may know its neighbor, the 41st Precinct from the movie, Fort Apache, The Bronx) last year there were 12 murders, 21 rapes, 476 robberies, 387 felony assaults, 1,337 misdemeanor assaults, 62 shooting victims and a partridge in a pear tree.
That's not too bad considering that there were 72 murders there in 1990. In 1998, after 4 years of Giuliani, 72 murders had become 15. The two forces that transformed the 40th from a really bad place to just a bad place were aggressive policework and gentrification. The aggressive policework wasn't pretty, but it made the gentrification possible and kept New York City from turning into Newark or Chicago.
Stop and Frisk, which is just what it sounds like, allowed police to stop suspects and frisk them just on suspicion that they might be up to something bad. It's one of those programs that upsets people on both sides of the aisle, but it happens to work because it lets police stop gangbangers before they bang and lowers the murder rate to something you can actually live through.
Civil rights groups have been protesting against Stop and Frisk for years because it's racist, in the sense that it tends to take place outside dilapidated Bronx apartment buildings rather than Upper East Side high rises. For the 40th Precinct, civil rights group statistics show that 17,690 stops were made, and of those stopped, 9.200 were black, 6,039 were Hispanic, 119 were white, 63 were Asian and 15 were American Indians. Considering the lack of major tribes in the five boroughs, it is a testament to the NYPD's dedication to diversity that they were able to find and frisk that many Native Americans.
Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog
CRIMINALS HATE GUNS
Criminals hate guns. Whether it's the street mugger, the corrupt CEO or the dirty politician, they hate the idea that any of their victims might be armed.
Mugging an armed man is dangerous. Throwing an armed man out of his home is dangerous. Repressing an armed man is dangerous.
If your lifestyle is built around imposing your will on other people by force, it helps if your targets are disarmed.
Obama is a criminal. Obama hates guns.
OUT OF AFRICA
Borders are an illusion in Africa. No more than paper mirages that cannot be seen from the air or the roads where a thousand ethnic groups with dreams of glory move back and forth, striving and feuding, until the blood begins to flow.
Al Qaeda now has its own Alqaedastan in Northern Mali, a territory the size of Texas. Al Qaeda began its true war against the West in Africa. The continent which wavers between a Christian and Muslim majority is to Islamic Colonialism in the 21st Century what it was to European Colonialism in the 19th Century. But the Muslim colonizers were here first, ferrying cargoes of slaves into caves and then selling them in the slave markets of Gao.
Around the core of Koranic students who memorize verses and preach death, is a larger outer ring that consists of sociopaths, stray killers, hustlers, junkies and young men looking for adventure and a group that is organized enough to feed them and provide them with a spot on the ground floor of a shiny new Emirate where women have no rights and their weapons are the only law that counts.
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said on a radio program Wednesday that going to jail may be an effective way to protest a mandate tied to ObamaCare that requires employers to provide contraceptive coverage.
The Iranian government thinks the Obama administration's efforts to reach a negotiated solution with Iran and normalize relations have bought it time to reach the nuclear capability it has today.
Here's the dirty little secret - for all their hysterical anti-gun rhetoric, the gun grabbers really don't care about saving lives - what they care about is power.
When bankruptcy results from irresponsible behavior, there is shame, or should be. Those undergoing it shouldn't be trusted with authority or power until they demonstrate change.
Illegal aliens received a Christmas gift when the chief of ICE released new guidelines for local police who might think it was their job to cooperate with ICE by detaining illegal aliens stopped for probably cause.
North Korea's regime loves technology - but on its own terms, for carefully restricted use, for specially selected purposes, which boil down to keeping the Kim regime in power.
For roughly the past 40 years, budget experts on both the right and the left have acknowledged that the US is on an unsustainable spending path that simply can not continue.
"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same." ~ Ronald Reagan
Family Security Foundation, Inc. 2020 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., #298 Washington, D.C. 20006
Chaffetz: State Dept Hiding Benghazi Survivors
Islam 'Helped to Shape' CIA Nominee John Brennan's World View
President Obama is soon to begin his FORCED AMNESTY for 12-20 Million ( mainly Mexican ) ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS as reported on FOX NEWS TODAY.
Group owners, please bring this back to your members. Copy it, blog it. We must not let Obama dump 12-20 Million illegal immigrants plus their 30-45 Million relatives into the United States which would forever hurt Our Country and Our Citizens !
Obama continues to work with La Raza ( The RACE ) on ways to get AMNESTY for as MANY of the 12-20 MILLION ( Mainly Mexican ) Illegal Immigrants as possible SO THEY CAN THEN BRING IN 30 to 45 MILLION more of their Spanish speaking family members to make a future ENDLESS STREAM of new relatives mainly from Mexico, as possible. That's right, each one here that gets their Amnesty FILLED with ENDLESS WAIVERS to make it easy. Those "Amnesty people" get to bring ALL their relatives in the United States for American's to pay for with OUR taxes, Our Jobs and Our Lives.
The Illegals will be working over time on Blogs ( often pretending to be Americans ) , Phone calls to Politicians ( pretending to be Americans ) Donations for pro-Amnesty politicians, Amnesty parades and Obama will be using his left-wing media to spread bogus propaganda to pull at the heart strings of enough real Americans to get Amnesty. These illegals will say, do, pretend and act to get Amnesty. Amnesty is the Mexican Reconquista dream. The war on America is about to begin !! The Democrats think that Amnesty means more votes, and don't care how it actually hurts ALL Americans no matter what party they belong to. The illegals will work hard to take what you have. And WE MUST WORK HARDER !!!
So, your thinking. What can I do ? I urge all of you to do something every day ! Members feel free to post ideas. Here are things ANY AMERICAN HERE can do. Remember, Illegal Immigration hurts EVERYONE regardless what party you belong to. Illegals don't care what party you belong to when they steal your jobs, your ID's, your car, break into your house, selling drugs, hurting your children.
Ok, what can I do ?
(1) Blog Blog Blog....On the end of each YAHOO NEWS story it gives you the option to make a "comment"..... Post ALL the negative aspects of massive Amnesty for illegal Immigrants.
(2) Call ( Call OFTEN ! ) your local and national politicians. Be polite but firm and remind them YOU are the American voter. Illegals do it all the time pretending to be an American...
(3) Email your politicians OFTEN.
(4) Join NumbersUSA.com who provides FREE FAX messages for your Politicians.
(5) Donate to groups like NumbersUSA.com and FairUS.org
(6) Write Editorials in local news papers.
(7) Remind people by word of mouth that Amnesty for 12-20 Million ( Mainly Mexican) illegals means hey can BRING IN 30-45 MILLION of their relatives.
(8) Call talk radio stations including stations that support illegal immigration. Let EVERY AMERICAN UNDERSTAND that The Dream Act is a BACK DOOR TROJAN AMNESTY designed to let criminal illegal immigrants USE their children ( up to young adults ) to bring in 30-45 Million of their relatives who are here and in Mexico.
(9) Be the expert. Google Mexican Reconquista. Google Mexican Aztlan. Study illegal immigration and tell people, family, friends the true dangers of illegal immigration.
(10) Make leaflets to expose Illegal Immigration for what it is. Then go to kinkos, staples and copy them cheap... hen drop them off in doors, on cars, etc etc etc...
Talking Points:
*Every day Americans are KILLED by Illegal Immigrants across the USA.....
* We have 22 Million Americans OUT of work or needing better jobs and Obama wants to bring in TENS of MILLIONS more mainly Mexican illegals to compete and take away MORE American jobs.....
* The United States is BROKE and Obama wants to bring in TENS of MILLIONS of Family members through Amnesty and give Benefits to 12-20 Million mainly Mexican illegals who are here already for YOU to pay for with LOSS of YOUR benefits and HIGHER taxes.......
* Our Jails are FILLED with TENS of THOUSANDS of illegals a year who have been caught hurting American Citizens.....
* Most of our ILLEGAL drugs are brought in on he SAME routes and often carried on the backs of the million illegals that cross into the USA each year..............
* Mexicans are taught MEXICAN RECONQUISTA and MEXICAN AZTLAN in Mexico prior to entering the USA illegally.
* NO OTHER group in History has FORCED Americans to press #2 for English and print EVERYTHING in THEIR Language. Even teaching HEIR Children in Spanish, unlike ALL OTHER people who come to America.
* Illegal Immigrants cost the USA BILLIONS and BILLIONS of US dollars a year including FOOD STAMPS, Housing, Welfare and other programs to assist ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS.
* Each time an Illegal immigrant has a baby in the USA, Americans are FORCED to pay for tha baby for 18 YEARS and later the baby is used to bring in ALL their relatives into the United States.
* The Added Billions of dollars to Obama care for these 12-20 Million Amnesty Illegals plus their 30-45 Million parasite relatives will cause a URGE burden and surge in costs to the United States...
* Amnesty means they get YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY, YOUR retirement benefits, ALLLLLL the Benefits YOU paid into your whole lives !!
protectourbordernow@yahoogroups.com
Steve Hampton
DONT SURRENDER YOUR COUNRY !!! The Illegals will be working VERY hard to TAKE what YOU have !
Friday, January 11
Steele's Competitive Bidding Resolution Was Ignored at RNC in 2011-2012 Election Cycle
In July 2009, after Michael Steele took over as chair of the Republican National Committee, the 168 members of the RNC passed a "Resolution in Support of Good Governance" that required the chair to conduct competitive bids for all contracts that exceeded $100,000 in value.
Steele apparently observed the resolution. Current RNC chair Reince Priebus appears to be ignoring it.
CNN's Morgan Slams Down Constitution, Calls It 'Your Little Book' More
Land of The Freebies, Home of the Enslaved
News from The Hill:
Senate Dems: We'll back Obama if he raises debt limit unilaterally By Alexander Bolton
Senate Democratic leaders have sent a letter to President Obama pledging their support if he raises the debt ceiling unilaterally in the face of Republican resistance.
Support has been growing among Democrats in Congress for Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment or another legal justification for expanding the nation's borrowing authority without congressional approval.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." --Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
On Thursday, we began a critical push for American Patriots across this great nation to pledge: "We, the People, affirm that we will support and defend Liberty as 'endowed by our Creator,' enshrined in our Constitution and empowered by its Second Amendment, against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Please take a moment and join the thousands of your countrymen who answered the call. Share it with your family, friends and colleagues via social media and email, as well. Let's stay ahead of the curve. (Take the 2A pledge! CLICK HERE.)
The Left certainly won't relent in their effort to destroy Liberty. Neither should we tire of pledging all that we have to defend it, as Mark Alexander did yesterday when he made public his intention to resist the Left's unconstitutional assault on our Second Amendment.
Threats to our God-given right "to keep and bear Arms" abound. Chief in the news has been the renewed defensive weapons ban to be introduced by Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) on Jan. 22, conveniently close to the State of the Union address. We outlined last week just how atrocious this bill is. Feinstein plans to redefine "assault weapons" to apply to a wider and entirely subjective list of firearms, which will be subject to invasive registration procedures and forfeiture upon death of their owners. Of course, these firearms would better be defined as "defensive" rather than "assault weapons." But the senator's radiant incompetence about the subject of guns is eclipsed only by her utter lack of respect for the Bill of Rights.
We strongly urge you to contact your senators and representatives, as well as GOP leadership in both houses, to express your opposition to this and any other gun grab.
Meanwhile, Vice President Joe Biden has been leading a task force (read: tragedy exploitation team) to determine what draconian measures will be "necessary" to restrict and confiscate guns in an effort to provide the illusion of safety. He plans to announce his findings next Tuesday.
"The president is going to act," Biden warned, mentioning executive orders as a possible avenue. Biden also advocated for the destruction of Liberty as a "moral issue." And since the Left operates under the presumption that the ends justify any means, Biden said that if these actions "result in only saving one life, they're worth taking." In the case of Feinstein's legislation or any executive order, however, they'd be lucky if it actually did save one life. Of course, saving lives isn't the real agenda of the Abortion Party, is it?
The feds aren't the only ones making a target of the Bill of Rights, either. Last week, we noted that Illinois and New York both are working on expansive gun bans. On Wednesday, New York Democrat Gov. Andrew Cuomo proposed "the toughest assault weapons ban in the nation", asserting, "We respect hunters and sportsmen. This is not taking away people's guns. I own a gun. I own a Remington shotgun. I've hunted. I've shot. That's not what this is about. It's about ending the unnecessary risk of high-capacity assault rifles. No one hunts with an assault rifle! No one needs 10 bullets to kill a deer!"
A word to the wise: Whenever a politician says, "I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment" or "hunting and sport shooting" and then adds a "but" or some other caveat, beware. That's how the 1994 ban passed -- hunters and sport shooters decided the bill didn't affect them, and we all lost a large measure of Liberty.
Neighboring New Jersey Democrats introduced an astonishing 18 civilian disarmament bills this week. Likewise, the New England states of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island are joining the tyrannical bandwagon, as is Colorado, which expects to see 14 to 20 gun bills in the wake of its own tragic murders in Aurora last July. And Chicago, the murder capital of the nation in part because of its strict gun laws, will soon propose even more.
There is some hope, however. Wyoming is considering a bill that would specifically nullify "any federal law which attempts to ban a semi-automatic firearm or to limit the size of a magazine of a firearm or other limitation on firearms in this state." We would only suggest that they expand their definition to include any unconstitutional federal gun legislation. There are other states on the side of Liberty, too.
We often recall the words of Samuel Adams, who said, "It does not take a majority to prevail ... but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." If we wish to preserve our Liberty, and that of our posterity, we must be tireless and we must remain intent on setting those brushfires of freedom. You can start by affirming the Second Amendment and getting others to do the same. We must win this battle.
The Truth About 'Assault Weapons'
For the facts about so-called "assault weapons" -- what they really are and what they really aren't -- this site is about as informative as it gets.
"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." --Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Patriots, I call on you to pledge: "We, the People, affirm that we will support and defend Liberty as 'endowed by our Creator,' enshrined in our Constitution and empowered by its Second Amendment, against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Sign the 2A pledge!
Though tens of millions of American Patriots have already said it, the time has come for one of us to go to the mountaintop and shout it so the whole world can hear it.
I hereby make this public declaration: In keeping with the oath I have taken in the service of my country, I will "support and defend" Liberty as "endowed by our Creator" and enshrined in our Constitution, "against all enemies, foreign and domestic." Accordingly, I will NOT comply with any defensive weapons ban instituted by executive order, legislative action or judicial diktat, which violates the innate human right to defend self and Liberty, as empowered by "the right of the People to keep and bear arms."
What does this mean?
I will neither register with, nor surrender to the government, any weapon in my possession. I further declare that I am not in possession of weapon, weapon component or ammunition that has not been lawfully acquired for lawful purposes, including defense of self and family, home and property, and most importantly, defense of Liberty in accordance with the Second Amendment.
I have spoken with my family and our Patriot Team about the potential consequences of this public declaration, both for our families and for our company. They fully understand the implications of my very public declaration of civil disobedience in defense of Liberty and Rule of Law. They understand that I have and will abide, first and foremost, by my oath to support and defend our Constitution -- the very oath that Barack Obama and his NeoCom cadres have solemnly sworn, but stand in abject violation of same.
Since publishing the first issue of The Patriot Post more than 16 years ago, I have made clear that one constitutional prohibition on the central government trumps all others, and that is the proscription against federal infringement of "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms."
Indeed, Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story wrote, in his eminent "Commentaries on the Constitution," "The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them."
Story was James Madison's appointee to the High Court, and Madison himself wrote in Federalist No. 46, "The ultimate authority ... resides in the people alone. ... The advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation ... forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition."
Just after Obama's re-election, I warned that he would attempt to render neutral the only substantive obstacle between Liberty and his avowed political agenda of "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" -- the Second Amendment.
I noted that, per their standard political playbook, the socialists and their Leftmedia promoters would wait on some tragic murder spree, and, in keeping with Obama's game plan to "never let a serious crisis go to waste," use that event as fodder to seize guns.
A month after writing those words, a mentally deranged sociopath used a firearm to kill children and adults in a Connecticut elementary school. Before the bodies of murdered children had even been removed from Sandy Hook Elementary, Obama was, shamefully, stacking their coffins to use as a soapbox for his latest and greatest assault on the Second Amendment -- a renewed effort to not only ban the future sale of many defensive weapons, but register them in order to eventually confiscate them.
On Friday, the Obama administration responded to the wave of secession petitions that spread online following the November elections. See how the White House respondedHERE.
A Utah businessman is rocking both state and national politics after claiming Utah Attorney General John Swallow helped him broker a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make a federal investigation into his company quietly disappear. See the latest on this storyHERE.
On Thursday, MSNBC personality and radio host Ed Schultz made the bold claim that the U.S. has �never had a civilian stop a shooting,� while arguing against having armed personnel in schools. Schultz's claim was easily debunked. See the evidenceHERE.
Using Sherlock Holmes' storied brainpower as a launching point, Mastermind shows how we can sharpen our thought processes to become more aware, more logical, and more efficient. Dig into this fascinating case right HERE.
Eighth-grader Matt DeMember made a very big splash with an incredible, nothing-but-net, backwards basketball throw. The shot happened in the last seconds of a church youth basketball game in Maryland, beating the buzzer and sending the crowd into a tizzy. Watch itHERE.
After discussing Pastor Louie Giglio�s recent decision to remove himself from Obama�s choice of benediction speakers, MSNBC's Lawrence O�Donnell launched into a tirade against the Bible and its presence at the historical event. See O'Donnell's rant and his demand that Obama exclude the BibleHERE.
Saturday night's Miss America pageant offered a host of fascinating revelations about beauty pageants in general and offered some curious insights into the minds of the contestants. Go backstage and discover why this is not called a "Brains Pageant"HERE.
If any of the news of the week got you down, consider this your reward: A delightful video of a puppy teaching its younger � and much smaller � pal to walk down the stairs. Watch 6-month-old Simon show 8-week-old Daisy the finer points of mastering stairsHERE.
Think you know your way around the English language? Even the best of us can stumble over the proper pronunciation of a word here and there. Mental Floss has highlighted 11 words we�re particularly prone to get wrong. See them HERE.
For the purpose of this article, we�ll focus on AR-15s since it is what CBS calls �the most popular rifle in America� and one often designated an �assault� rifle. An AR-15 is the civilian equivalent to the military�s M-16. So what�s the difference? Find outHERE.
On Thursday, Conservative author Ben Shapiro accused CNN�s Piers Morgan of �standing on the graves of the children� who died in Newtown, Conn. in his opposition to guns. Watch the tense interviewHERE.
During a Friday broadcast of MSNBC�s �NowWith Alex Wagner�, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell explained why he thinks it was a �good thing� that the shooting spree in Newtown, Conn., that left 26 people dead, including 20 children, was �so horrific.� Watch the videoHERE.
Attorney General Eric Holder made headlines this week after it was discovered that he once said gun owners should be "shamed" into giving up their firearms. TheBlaze�s S.E. Cupp was not impressed with Holder's remarks. Watch the segment from "Real News" HERE.
It�s one thing to ask Americans if they believe in the legalization of gay marriage, but it�s an entirely different matter to ask if acting out on same-sex attraction is sinful. With opinions continuously evolving on the matter, it seems the public has become more accepting of same-sex unions � but what about the purported moral issues associated with homosexuality? See the results of a LifeWay survey on this topicHERE.
From TheBlaze Contributor's page: Monica Crowley, Ph.D., is a Fox News Contributor, host of the nationally syndicated �Monica Crowley Show,� and the author of What the (Bleep) Just Happened? Read Monica's breakdown of down President Obama's two controversial cabinet nominationsHERE.
Earlier this week we learned (thanks to an on-air confession) that NBC weatherman Al Roker �pooped� his pants during a visit to the White House. It only took a matter of days for the auto-tuning geniuses to turn Roker�s oversharing into a catchy little song. Watch the videoHERE.
�Protecting my family from worst-case violence is NOW my highest priority. Yet relying on a firearm today can be a huge mistake. The solution I found protects my family... and can protect yours, too. >>Here�s how.>>�
Western Australia is experiencing a spate of extreme weather. From raging wildfires to a category 3 cyclone, the 'Land Down Under" probably did not need a massive dust storm. But they got one. See the stunning images of the massive red wall of dust hitting near Perth on the Western coastHERE.
Thursday night Beck unveiled yet another component in his American Dream Labs � an entire city called �Independence, USA.� Prepare to have your mind blown by the scope and detail of this amazing projectHERE.
James Yeager, CEO of Tactical Response, a firearms and tactical training company, is catching heat after he posted a fiery video about gun control. See the video with Yeager pledging, �If it goes one inch further, I�m going to start killing people�HERE.
Last week, a number of Wyoming lawmakers proposed legislation intended to protect gun owners from any future federal ban on semi-automatic rifles or high capacity magazines. The �Firearms Protection Act� would make any federal law banning semi-automatic rifles or limiting magazine capacity unenforceable in Wyoming. Get the whole storyHERE.
Police have released audio from a 911 call made during a home invasion in Georgia, in which a concerned husband tells his wife to shoot a lawless intruder. Listen to the chilling audioHERE.
One curious EBAY auction featuring an item described as a Caveman's "Assault Weapon" has nine days left. It started with an opening bid of $0.99. However, you might want to rush to see it -- one internet thread claims that a similar auction was taken down by eBay. Get details on your chance to "own a piece of history"HERE.
Donald Trump wants the $5 million that Bill Maher promised to pay him if he could prove he was not the �spawn� of his mother having sexual relations with an orangutan. See if Trump's claim has any meritHERE.
It seemed to be one intrusive mouse�s lucky day. Despite being captured by the man whose bunk the mouse chose to frequent regularly, the little furry creature was taken outside and set free. And then, the 'circle of life' kicked in. Some at TheBlaze remain dubious as to the authenticity of the clip. Take a look and decide for yourselfHERE.
Glenn Beck talks more about his plans for the future and answers questions from a live studio audience. The Glenn Beck Program at 5pm ET or on-demand on TheBlaze TV.
Real News from TheBlaze -- Is the White House using religious leaders to circumvent the NRA? Tune in to Real News tonight -- 6pm ET or on-demand on TheBlaze TV.
Wilkow! -- Andrew digs into the 10th Amendment as it relates to the gun control argument.Wilkow! at 6pm ET -- only on TheBlaze TV.
A tiny, six line ad trying to sell a 1993 Ford pickup truck in a small town newspaper in Wyoming has gone viral on the Internet. Without mentioning a word about the condition, mileage, or color of the truck, the ad has gotten thousands of phone calls. Find out whyHERE.
Presidents Obama, Clinton, and Bush won because they anticipated correctly the temper of the times years before anyone else. Might Chris Christie be playing a similar long game? Is the electorate going to look vastly different four years from now, and is Christie positioning himself to take advantage?
Wage earners have been surprised to rip open their first pay envelope of 2013 to discover their check provides less take-home money than anticipated -- especially after being told the middle class was protected in the fiscal cliff agreement. Capitol Hill has no intent of bringing that missing two percent back into your paycheck.
The White House took aim at gun-rights groups with the second day of a rash of meetings intended to roll recent mass shootings into a sharp gun-control agenda for President Obama's second term. Yet with the clear current events hook at play, Biden acknowledged that current gun control propositions don't necessarily even have a link to the spate of mass shootings over the past year.
Associated Press stories on the economy and the fiscal cliff during the previous week tell us that we're in for four more years of having the so-called "essential global news network" and the rest of the establishment press tell us that we aren't really seeing what we can see right in front of us. Whom do you believe about the economy, the press or your lying eyes?
In a remarkable discovery, archaeologists are revealing unique artifacts that Jesus himself may have viewed ... and certainly some among the thousands he fed with the loaves and fishes viewed them.
If the stones in this first century synagogue being excavated along the shore of the Sea of Galilee could talk ...
A citizen's group isn't waiting for the courts to sort out whether the National Defense Authorization Act provision permitting the indefinite detention of American citizens is constitutional.
It isn't pinning its hopes on the few states that have pledged to resist the federal government's jackboot tactics.
It's fighting back now ... while there's still time.
In 2003, Rush Limbaugh lost his position as a NFL commentator because an observation about a black quarterback was construed as "racist."
In 2010, NPR's Juan Williams was fired for a comment about his concerns when boarding a plane with Muslim passengers.
In 2013, in the heated environment following the massacre of school children in Newtown, Conn., CNN's Piers Morgan hosted a panel in which the idea of shooting an outspoken opponent of gun control with an "assault rifle" was approvingly discussed.
Today's decision by the Alabama Supreme Court is not going to make Planned Parenthood very happy ... and Judge Roy Moore hasn't even been sworn in as chief justice yet.
Call them the new bitter clingers ... elites with armed-to-the-teeth security who won't give up the weapons they believe they're entitled to for their safety ... but who want everyone else to give up theirs.
Self-important liberals are his lawful prey ... ACORN fraudsters ... Democrat operatives plotting vote fraud ...
In the present scramble to gut the Second Amendment, Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe has found a new target-rich environment for his next undercover video exposé ...
Despite Barack Obama's increasing dependence on executive orders to govern by fiat and the distress it causes many Americans concerned about their shrinking liberties, there's one arena where's he's losing big time ...
If millions of law-abiding Americans giving up their guns will cause the small number of criminals amongst us to abandon their gun violence, why not apply that logic internationally?
All the U.S. has to do is give up its nukes, and the rogue states of Iran and North Korea will respond in kind.
Stop laughing -- THIS power player is seriously proposing just that ...
Why isn't the media reporting THIS violence in schools?
Here's another reason to have armed teachers or security personnel on every school campus ... it could protect your children from serious harm ... but don't expect to hear politicians or the media condemn these villains the way they attack law-abiding gun owners.
And no one with the legal authority to do anything about it is serious about returning millions of illegal aliens to their countries of origin ... unless they commit a serious crime.
What? An illegal can be convicted of THIS and the courts still won't let him be deported?
Hey, Chicago! How are those gun laws workin' for you?
If you live in Chicago, with some of the toughest gun-control laws in the America and one of the nation's highest murder rates, you might welcome Sen. Diane Feinstein's bill to severely restrict access to what she calls "assault weapons."
But don't count on it making a meaningful dent in your city's homicide rate ... and watch out for this weapon that killed about as many people as rifles did last year. It's legally available to anyone who wants to buy it -- even minors and felons.
Given all the concerns over gun violence against innocents and the administration's demonization of the National Rifle Association, you'd think Barack Obama would be more circumspect about whom he gives money to.
Would you want your tax dollars funding a group singing the praises of Adam Lanza or James Holmes?
ALAN KEYES - "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." (President Franklin Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address)... (more)
FRED HUTCHISON, RA ANALYST - Those who believe that man has an innate nature and design generally oppose abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, stem-cell research, and cloning, because these things are contrary to nature and the value of life. Those who follow the prevailing ideas of the science establishment generally are in favor of abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, etc., and are part of a gathering culture of death. Why is this?... (more)
WEEKLY STANDARD - Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns. "The president is going to act," said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. "There are executive orders, there's executive action that can be taken... (more)
POLITICKER - National Rifle Association President David Keene gave a rare post-Newtown interview on the Brooklyn GOP Radio podcast this evening in which he responded to Governor Andrew Cuomo's vow to bring New York some of the "toughest" gun control laws in the country. Mr. Keene began by taking issue with Governor Cuomo's prediction that other states would follow New York's example and pass similar laws... (more)
JOSEPH FARAH - Sometimes you have to get away from your country for a little while to get a little perspective on what's happening. While I spend a little time this week in the center of the world, I can't help but think about the fate of my country. With practically all debate and discussion in the U.S. dominated by the recent election, guns, money and liberty, I have found four quotes from historical figures that, I believe, explain the throes of freedom's extinction facing America... (more)
ASSOCIATED PRESS - Officials in a small Utah town want to make sure every head of household has a firearm and knows how to use it, and they want to give school teachers training with guns too. Spring City Councilman Neil Sorensen first proposed an ordinance requiring a gun in every household in the town of 1,000... (more)
WORLDNETDAILY - While concern has mounted that former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel's nomination to be secretary of defense should be blocked because of past expressed hostility for Israel, little attention has been given to CIA-nominee John Brennan's view of Islam... (more)
PAUL A. BYRNE, M.D. - Life on earth continues until true death. Prior to the desire to get organs for transplantation, no one was declared dead with a beating heart, circulation, or breathing. Every organ for transplantation is taken from a living person. Would anyone with common sense believe that a cadaver, a dead body, would have organs that could be transplanted?... (more)
GARY BAUER - In two weeks, America will mark the 40th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision creating a constitutional right to abortion and legalizing most abortions. Much will be written about the consequences of that decision. While both sides of the debate will insist they are winning, abortion rights advocates will have a difficult time claiming any kind of victory... (more)
REZA KAHLILI - Iran successfully has built a nuclear bomb with the help of Russia and North Korea and has enough weapons-grade uranium and plutonium for more, according to a source in the Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit... (more)
JOSEPH FARAH - Today I am staying in a kibbutz guest house on the Sea of Galilee -- the first day of weeklong trip to the Holy Land. I haven't been here since 1991. Prior to that, in the 1980s, I had made trips to Israel and other Middle East countries as an Arab-American correspondent for the Hearst Newspaper... (more)
JONAH GOLDBERG - It's official. President Obama has named former senator Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.) as his nominee for secretary of defense. Hence, we may be in store for the worst defense-secretary-nomination fight since George H. W. Bush's failed appointment of Senator John Tower (R., Texas) more than 20 years ago... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - The Washington think tank overseen by President Obama's defense secretary-designate predicts that Iran one day will be a "natural partner" for the United States and could possess nuclear weapons. It also puts the onus on Israel to make peace with Palestinians, many of whom are governed by Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist group bent on the destruction of the Jewish state... (more)
JEROME R. CORSI - John Brennan, the Obama counter-terrorism adviser nominated this week to head the CIA, played a controversial role in what many suspect was an effort to sanitize Obama's passport records... (more)
MICHELLE MALKIN - Egypt's terror-coddling president, Mohamed Morsi, has repeated his arrogant demand that America free convicted 1993 World Trade Center mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman. I'd like to report that President Obama repeated his unequivocal rejection of the Muslim Brotherhood leader's entreaties. But as of this writing, no such public statement or restatement yet exists... (more)
WORLDNETDAILY - Is Barack Obama consciously attempting to bankrupt the United States? WND senior staff reporter Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D., makes this claim in a new ebook just published, "Obama's Plan to Bankrupt the USA: The Cloward-Piven Theory."... (more)
NEW YORK POST - Just call him Al Gorezeera. Yesterday morning, the still shell shocked staff at Current TV was called to an all hands staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, which was teleconferenced to their offices in LA and NYC, to meet their new bosses... (more)
PHILIP KLEIN - This weekend, the New York Times reported on a development that's completely unsurprising to critics of President Obama's national health care law... (more)
THOMAS SOWELL - Many years ago, as a young man, I read a very interesting book about the rise of the Communists to power in China. In the last chapter, the author tried to explain why and how this had happened. Among the factors he cited were the country's educators. That struck me as odd, and not very plausible, at the time. But the passing years have made that seem less and less odd, and more and more plausible... (more)
WASHINGTON TIMES - Technologies advanced as the solution to the purported global warming problem are catching fire -- just not in the way intended. Bureaucrats are quickly learning that their regulatory offerings designed to entreat Mother Nature into bestowing cooler temperatures upon the planet have created environmental hazards of their own... (more)
No Oxygen, Please, for This Show By L. Brent Bozell III The Oxygen network -- that supposedly uplifting women's channel founded in 2000 by Oprah Winfrey -- is now owned by the cable giant Comcast, so a very large wave of public shame is the only hope we have that the proposed reality show, "All My Baby's Mamas," gets canceled.
Is Hagel out of the Mainstream? By Patrick J. Buchanan Where, exactly, is the mainstream on foreign policy in 2013? How many Americans today are saying that what we did in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan was worth doing and should serve as America's model for dealing with Syria and Iran?
EBT Abuse: The Cash-for-Drunkards Program By Michelle Malkin From New York to New Mexico and across the dependent plains, welfare recipients are getting sauced on the public dime. But while politicians pay lip service to cutting government waste, fraud and abuse, they're doing very little in practice to stop the EBT party excesses. Where's the compassion for taxpayers?
This Time I Mean It By Rich Galen The Federal Government is apparently right up to date on the flu situation. The Department of Health and Human Services (of which both FDA and CDC are subsets) has a 360+ page "Pandemic Flu Plan" that was last updated in 2005 when Mike Leavitt was Secretary. This, like the $16 trillion national debt, global warming, and asteroids flying too close to the Earth, is probably George W. Bush's fault.
The White House Has No Authority to Infringe Second Amendment Rights
(Jerome R. Corsi/Tea Party) -Why is Barack Obama planning to take the oath of office a second time, swearing to preserve, protect, and defend the U.S. Constitution ...(more)
On Friday, millions of Americans began getting a taste of higher taxes as the expiration of the payroll tax holiday took a bigger bite out of their paychecks, leaving them with less cash in their wallets.
Gabriella Hoffman, a 21-year-old nonprofit worker, told Fox News ...(more)
When the Supreme Court, or any other court for that matter, makes a ruling in a case they first look for precedent, in other words to see if there has been a court decision rendered on the same subject in the past and usually ...(more)
The White House has responded to a handful of petitions calling for various states to be given the right to secede from the United States, calling for unity and participatory government instead.
"In a nation of 300 million people - each with their own set of deeply-held beliefs ...(more)
Petition to Try Feinstein For Treason Reaches Threshold. Will Obama administration ignore controversial issue again? A petition to try California Senator Dianne Feinstein for treason as a response to her efforts to pass draconian gun control legislation has surpassed the required number of signatures that now mandates ...(more)
On his Friday radio show, conservative talker and Fox News host Sean Hannity warned that the United States may fall apart if tax rates remain high ...(more)
Despite campaign statements calculated to make Barack Obama sound sympathetic to the Constitution's Second Amendment, his history reveals another attitude.
Critics of Obama say he simply hates guns ...(more)
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is mobilizing for a massive four-front conflict with President Barack Obama over the Constitution and gun rights after a made-for-TV meeting today at the White House between Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, and a top NRA operative ...(more)
"You come in here, brandish your little book as if I don't know what's in there-"
"My little book? That's the Constitution of the United States. It's our founding document, Piers."...(more)
NRA Gears Up for Gun Control Fight with White House
This column by ACRU Senior Legal Analyst Ken Klukowski was published on January 10, 2012 on Breitbart.com.
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) is mobilizing for a massive four-front conflict with President Barack Obama over the Constitution and gun rights after a made-for-TV meeting today at the White House between Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, and a top NRA operative.
Obama appointed Biden--who throughout his career has opposed gun rights--to lead his gun-control task force after the horribly tragic Newtown shooting. Biden and Holder met Thursday with Jim Baker, director of the Federal Affairs Division of the NRA's political arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. The meeting took place in the Old Executive Office Building, part of the White House complex adjacent to the West Wing.
This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published January 9, 2013 on The American Spectator website.
Fundamental, structural, entitlement reforms, proven to work in the real world, would provide far better benefits for seniors and the poor, while slashing future entitlement spending. Indeed, over the long run, such reforms could reduce federal spending by half as a percent of GDP.
"Structural" reform means changing the way the programs operate. As I explain below, future federal spending would be reduced far more through such structural reforms than by trying to cut future benefits for seniors and the poor (which will never be politically feasible anyway).
ACRU amicus briefs supported them in San Diego Lawsuit
"We're proud to have stood by the Scouts in this crucial case," said ACRU Chairman and CEO Susan A. Carleson. "This is a major victory for the Scouts and for our constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms of association and religion."
January 10, 2013 -- A unanimous Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel on Dec. 22 reversed a federal district judge's order to evict the Boy Scouts from their longtime camp and local headquarters in San Diego's Balboa Park.
The ruling came in a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 2001 on behalf of a lesbian couple and an agnostic couple, who disagreed with the Boy Scouts' requirement that members and leaders profess a belief in God and be "morally straight."
President Obama's Re-Election Is Powerful Evidence of Democracy Failure
This column by ACRU General Counsel and Senior Fellow for the Carleson Center for Public Policy (CCPP) Peter Ferrara was published January 3, 2013 on Forbes.com.
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions....Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome's, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.'"
-- Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 B.C.)
Market failure is the doctrine that describes when the market fails to operate efficiently and maximize economic growth and prosperity for all. That is held to result when the market suffers from inadequate or inaccurate information delivery, inadequate or insufficient competition, principal-agent problems (where agents fail to represent the interests of their principals), and externalities (where market actors fail to bear the costs of their actions or choices), among other problems.
I'm speechless... Related posts: Elementary School Kids Indoctrinated About Obama's Incredible Awesomeness Elementary school in Michigan celebrates MLK day 2012 with an... Romney Donor On Obama's Enemies List: They're Stalking My Kids Romney donor Frank VanderSloot, one of the eight men detailed...
Top Gun Grabbers In The House Of Representatives Exposed
Jan 12, 2013 01:38 pm We as a people seem to now be wondering if our Congress will ever do anything right. We saw the article posted by Tim Brown entitled "Ten New Gun Bills Introduced On First Day of Congress". We then began reading, only to see names that looked funny doing this, so we looked up to find [...]
Video: Progressive Radio Host Calls For Mass Killing Of Birthers
Jan 12, 2013 01:30 pm
People like Mike Malloy spare us from having to expose crazy progressives for who they are; they are doing a fine job of that themselves. Related posts: Left-Wing Radio Host Calls South "Crackerland" LEE PAPA: Who's saying she's hurting Obama because of the... Radio Host Destroys Romney Mouthpiece Mitt Romney was scheduled to be in [...]
Jan 12, 2013 01:27 pm The New York Times' David Brooks opined that the nomination of Chuck Hagel to the position of Secretary of Defense (SOD) is in fact a cover for Barack Obama's dismantling of the Military. The President must raid the Medicare and Pentagon budgets to pay for the domestic programs planned for his welfare state. By placing [...]
Video: Former Dem Gov: "The Good Thing About Newtown Is, It Was So Horrific"
Jan 12, 2013 01:20 pm
Proof former Governor Ed Rendell (D-PA) is a terrible human being... Related posts: Top Democrat Criticizes Obama's Campaign Tactics An honest liberal? Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell criticized Obama's... 1950's Movie Shows Where To Start Fixing Our Newtown Culture As the Sandy Hook students returned to class recently, the...
Jan 12, 2013 01:08 pm If we were to evaluate the ideology of the Left, we would find a common thread that runs through all flavors of Marxist, Socialist, Communist, and Progressive Democratic beliefs; and that is that death is integral with the inculcation of their philosophies. The Germans, Russians, and Chinese used a brutal implementation of their beliefs as [...]
Video: John Kerry Carries A Rosary, But Is Okay With Abortions!
Jan 12, 2013 01:00 pm
John Kerry fits right in with the Chicago Mob; he takes every advantage that he can, both legal as well as illegal, like when he tried to dodge a $500,000.00 tax bill on his $7,000,000.00 yacht. Related posts: John Kerry - Media Should Not Give Equal Time To Tea Party The bigots of big government [...]
Jan 12, 2013 12:50 pm I received an email recently, saying that twenty-two percent, or eleven of our fifty states (not fifty-seven, as our President thinks) have more people on welfare than working for survival. Is it any wonder that our nation is both broke and broken? Yes, there are those who are unable to earn a living and need [...]
Jan 12, 2013 12:40 pm EDITOR'S NOTE: Barack Obama's involvement in the DeMar Second Amendment case previously was reported in Chapter 9 of Jerome R. Corsi's "The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." NEW YORK - Despite campaign statements calculated to make Barack Obama sound sympathetic to the Constitution's Second Amendment, his history reveals another attitude. Critics of Obama [...]
Video: Farrakhan On 'Django Unchained': 'It's Preparation For Race War'
Jan 12, 2013 12:39 pm
In an interview with Dr. Boyce Watkins, Louis Farrakhan shares his candid perspective on "Django Unchained." His comments occur around the 5-minute mark. Related posts: Crowd Laughs As Chicago Teachers Union President Talks About Killing The Rich The anti-rich comments occur around the 4 minute mark. Why... Farrakhan: 'Sad That Mexico Lost California, Arizona, Colorado, [...]
Jan 12, 2013 12:32 pm A spokesman for a South Carolina school district announced an investigation into one high school teacher who allegedly took down an American flag and stomped on it in front of students. "It was not a spontaneous act but one he worked into the lesson," the representative said, adding there is "sufficient evidence that the teacher [...]
Video: Chilling 911 Call Of Woman Shooting Home Invader
Jan 12, 2013 12:24 pm One of the most heart raising 911 calls we have ever heard... Related posts: Obama's Chickens Have Come Home To Roost Barack Hussein Obama's strategy in dealing with radical Islamists around... This Chilling Economic Report Is Getting Passed Around By CEOs Over an early-morning coffee with the chief executive of an...
Jan 12, 2013 12:20 pm Thought Experiment: A compassionate federal government (not this one) passes revolutionary legislation creating "Enhanced Self-defense Zones" (ESZs) where "Stand Your Ground" transforms into "Defend Your Turf" for inner-city, Mexican Border, and rural communities with extraordinarily high violent crime rates. Imagine the feds considering citizens grown enough and moral enough to mow down thugs foreign and [...]
Joe Miller, Schaeffer Cox, And The FBI Informant Who Handcuffed Tony Hopfinger
Jan 12, 2013 12:17 pm With the conviction and sentencing of Fairbanks Militia Leader Schaeffer Cox several days ago, the left-leaning media organizations have again resurrected speculation about Joe Miller's connections to not only Mr. Cox but also to the federal informant who was largely responsible for Cox's demise, Bill Fulton. Joe's spokesman reports that in the last two days he's [...]
Jan 12, 2013 12:12 pm American Black men are seduced into being shock troops for a very anti-social philosophy. For decades, this anti-social philosophy used Black criminals, until recently, to force concessions from a majority White society. We were cast as modern barbarians at America's gates, but America is no longer a majority White nation. Her president is a visibly [...]
Texas Lt. Gov.: Fund Weapons Training For Teachers
Jan 12, 2013 11:58 am AUSTIN, Texas (Official Wire) - Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst called Friday for state-funded, specialized firearms training for teachers and administrators to guard against school shootings. Dewhurst, a Republican, said school districts would nominate who they wanted to carry weapons on campus. The training would be more extensive than what is currently required for a [...]
Sen. Rand Paul In The Mideast: '... I Am Not Anti-Israel'
Jan 12, 2013 11:36 am JERUSALEM - On the seventh day of his Holy Land tour, Sen. Rand Paul continued to walk a fine line between expressing support for Israel while avoiding the impression that his support for the Jewish state is uncritical and self-serving. The Kentucky senator shares his father's limited government principles but says his eight days in Israel - one of which [...]
Jan 12, 2013 11:32 am WASHINGTON (Official Wire) - President Barack Obama's top Democratic allies in the Senate advised him Friday to consider "any lawful steps" to make sure the government does not default of its debts and spur an economic crisis - even if it means acting without approval by Congress. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is among those [...]
Part 2 of Western Journalism's video series on the Obama Administration's and Senate's Report on the attack on the Benghazi consulate. Click here for Part 1. The Obama Administration's "Benghazi Accountability Report" was a sham that didn't actually answer any questions; didn't address why four Americans were left to die; didn't address the entire "protest [...]
Jan 11, 2013 01:19 pm It's even worse than we previously thought. A retired four-star admiral is now claiming that Barack Obama intentionally conspired with America's enemies to stage a bogus attack and the kidnapping of an American ambassador so he could "negotiate" the release of a "hostage" and bolster his mediocre approval ratings just prior to the election! The [...]
Video: MASTERFUL: Breitbart's Ben Shapiro TORCHES Piers Morgan
Jan 11, 2013 01:10 pm
Breitbart's Ben Shapiro: 2nd Amendment is for protection against usurpatious government. Related posts: Ted Nugent To Piers Morgan-Kiss My Ass! Ted Nugent does what he does best-puts the Left in... Piers Morgan: Bible, Constitution 'Inherently Flawed' Piers Morgan, the "man without a country," as there is...
It's Time Patriots Declare Victory In The 2nd Amendment War
Jan 11, 2013 01:04 pm Though it's doubtful anyone will hear much about it, neither lawmakers, judges, or even a president has the constitutional authority to infringe upon the inalienable right of the American people to keep and bear arms. One hundred thirty eight years ago, the Supreme Court wrote that the right to keep and bear arms "...is not [...]
Video: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell Attacks God, Christians, And The Bible
Jan 11, 2013 12:55 pm
He just might be the worst person on MSNBC after making these comments... Related posts: Savage Bombs While Bullying Christians And Bashing The Bible Gay anti-bullying spokesperson Dan Savage belittled, berated, and bullied Christians,... MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Struggles To Defend Debunked Attacks On Romney Honestly, watching this, I felt bad for Andrea Mitchell. She...
As governments at the local, state, and federal level move to strip Americans of their freedom and their protection, Stewart Rhodes, founder of Oathkeepers, has a very strong warning as to where this may lead. Related posts: Government The "Guilty Accomplice" Of Sandy Hook Killer Strange, isn't it, that cowardly mass killers never seem to... [...]
Video: Want To Know Why Our Country Is In Such A Mess?
Jan 11, 2013 12:42 pm
Because we put unqualified people into a position of power and we tend to keep them there!! Related posts: Romney: Vote For Love Of Country, Not Revenge Romney the other night in West Chester, Ohio: "Did you... Liberal Talking Head To Tea Party: America's Not Your Country Anymore Liberal talking head Sam Donaldson running his [...]
Video: Want To Know Why Our Country Is In Such A Mess?
Jan 11, 2013 12:42 pm
Because we put unqualified people into a position of power and we tend to keep them there!! Related posts: Romney: Vote For Love Of Country, Not Revenge Romney the other night in West Chester, Ohio: "Did you... Liberal Talking Head To Tea Party: America's Not Your Country Anymore Liberal talking head Sam Donaldson running his [...]
Video: Napolitano: Obama Wants To Go Beyond Current Gun Control Proposals
Jan 11, 2013 12:28 pm
Last night on Fox News' Special Report, Judge Andrew Napolitano agreed with host Bret Baier that the Obama Administration wants to go further in restricting the Second Amendment than the current proposals they are floating to the press. Related posts: Judge Napolitano On The 2012 Election, Obamacare, And The Future Of Liberty "Those of us [...]
Violent, Mentally Ill Inmates Shown Graphic Violence And Sex
Jan 11, 2013 12:21 pm Despite the consistent protests of at least one female guard, inmates at a maximum-security prison in Iowa have been allowed to view movies with graphic depictions of violent murder and sex. The prison is home to mentally ill criminals, including murderers and sex offenders; and officials apparently feel they deserve an opportunity to watch movies [...]
Video: Does Obama Have Authority To Bypass Congress On Debt Ceiling?
Jan 11, 2013 12:10 pm
Ben Swann's latest reality check, asking if Obama has the constitutional right to uphold America's credit, regardless of Congressional action. Related posts: Video: Congressman Calls Obama's Debt Ceiling Proposal "An Impeachable Act" Not all Republicans are rolling over in the face of... Dem. Rep: Debt-ceiling Blank Check Is Like Emancipation Proclamation Democrats, injecting race into [...]
Video: Trump Threatens To Sue Obama Supporter Bill Maher
Jan 11, 2013 11:56 am
Trump to Hannity: I'll sue Bill Maher if he doesn't pay $5 million for birth certificate challenge. Related posts: Half Of Obama's SuperPAC Money In Feb Came From Bill Maher Half of the $2 million that President Obama's Super PAC... Bill Maher: Calling Sarah Palin A "C-nt" Is Best Part Of My Routine Video of [...]
Video: Why Jack Lew 'Must Never' Be Treasury Secretary
Jan 11, 2013 11:44 am Sen. Jeff Sessions explains his staunch opposition to Pres. Obama's pick to succeed Tim Geithner. Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Related posts: Energy Secretary Refuses To Apologize For Solyndra Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com... Continue to Post... Dick Morris: We Had 48 Hours' Warning Of The Libyan Attack And Obama Did Nothing Does [...]
Jan 11, 2013 11:30 am WASHINGTON (OfficialWire) - President Barack Obama has signed into law a bill granting lifetime Secret Service protection to former presidents and their wives. The measure Obama signed Thursday applies to presidents elected after Jan. 1, 1997, specifically Obama and former President George W. Bush. It reverses a 1994 law that ended Secret Service protection 10 [...]
Obama Golfed With Former Rezko Crony On Hawaii Vacation
Jan 11, 2013 11:19 am During his recent vacation in Hawaii, President Barack Obama golfed with the former business partner of Tony Rezko. Rezko was an Obama fundraiser who is in jail for fraud and corruption. Rezko also was involved in a questionable land deal in which he sold then state-Senator Obama a piece of land that he had just [...]
Jan 11, 2013 11:15 am WASHINGTON (OfficialWire) - Republican opposition to Chuck Hagel as the next defense secretary swelled from inside and outside the Senate Thursday as a former Senate colleague launched a campaign to block his nomination. Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who served for a decade with Hagel, said his grassroots organization, Patriot Voices, will lead a [...]
Jan 11, 2013 11:13 am One of the items on Obama's second term agenda is to root out traditionally Christian chaplains from the military. He sees them as bigots unworthy of conscience protections. Like Chick-fil-A, they don't uphold Obama's "values." Obama's mouthpieces in the military have already blurted this out. In 2010, Admiral Michael Mullen told a Christian chaplain who [...]
Jan 11, 2013 11:06 am The puzzle of the Chuck Hagel nomination for defense secretary is that you normally choose someone of the other party for your Cabinet to indicate a move to the center, but, as The Post's editorial board pointed out, Hagel's foreign policy views are to the left of Barack Obama's, let alone the GOP's. Indeed, they [...]
Jan 11, 2013 10:58 am GUANGZHOU, China (OfficialWire) - China's new Communist Party leaders want to appear more open, but they're not about to give up control of the media. That's the lesson of a dustup involving an influential newspaper whose staff briefly rebelled against especially heavy-handed censorship. The staff of Southern Weekly returned to work after some controls were [...]
Jan 11, 2013 10:32 am At 1.2 billion, India's population is poised to pass China's (1.3 billion), but one frequently overlooked fact is that one quarter of India's inhabitants are considered outcasts or "untouchables" - commonly known as Dalits - who are considered subhuman. The notorious caste system of India places the 400 million Indians (about 100 million more than [...]
Jan 11, 2013 10:26 am The school shooting in Connecticut last month has provoked a slew of hysterical calls for gun control in the United States. Big surprise, I know. What makes the calls for "regulation" and "sensible gun laws" somewhat unique this time around is the focus on mental illness. The fact that the Connecticut shooter is alleged to [...]
The conventional wisdom has it that Chuck Schumer holds the key to the confirmation prospects of Chuck Hagel. The conventional wisdom may well be correct. As one of its purveyors, Politico, explains, "If Schumer were to oppose Hagel, it would almost certainly amount to a fatal blow to his candidacy since a number of pro-Israel Democrats who are squeamish about the nominee could very well be influenced by the No. 3 Democrat's position." But if Schumer supports Hagel, his status as a Senate leader and supporter of Israel would provide the cover necessary for Democrats to back Hagel with near (or actual) unanimity.
According to Politico, several sources say Schumer has told senators it would be "very hard" for him to support Hagel because of his positions on Israel over the years. And last week, he reportedly told allies and power brokers in the Jewish community that he's uneasy about Hagel's nomination.
So what will Schumer do? My guess is that, assuming that Hagel successfully goes through the motions of a confirmation conversion on issues relating to Israel-Iran and assuming no new information harmful to Hagel emerges, Schumer will vote to confirm, if Obama needs his vote. In my view, Schumer is a Party loyalist before he is a supporter of Israel. Or, as Hagel might put it, Schumer is the Senator from Democratic left-liberalism (and, above all, from Chuck Schumer's aspiration to power), not the Senator from Israel. So I would expect enough posturing to avoid alienating Jewish voters in a big way, followed by a vote that will keep him on the good side of the president and the left.
Given Schumer's centrality in this matter, wouldn't you think that the White House obtained a clear signal of probable support from Schumer before proceeding with the Hagel nomination? I would have, and perhaps it did - maybe the "Hamlet" act we're about to witness will be a charade.
If the White House nominated Hagel without some kind of positive signal from Schumer, he may be sufficiently offended to make Obama sweat this one out. But that's not the same thing as being offended enough to sink Hagel.
Even if Hagel isn't confirmed, a significant amount of damage has already occurred due to the fact that Obama wants Hagel at the Pentagon. After all, it's Obama, not Hagel, who will set our foreign and defense policies. And the signal from Obama to Iran sent by the Hagel nomination is the same regardless of whether Hagel is confirmed.
Nonetheless, with Hagel in the cabinet, Obama would receive a steady stream of bad advice (some of it anti-Israeli) and the Pentagon likely would be poorly managed. But I'm not betting on Schumer to stand in the way of these consequences.
I've been thinking about bureaucracy a bit more than usual the last few days, and hence this remark of Churchill's seems useful in our fiscally challenging times:
There is no surer method of economizing and saving money than in the reduction of the number of officials.
I bid a 50 percent cut in non-military government agencies. The only downside here is that most federal agencies would become more productive if you cut their staff, which would be bad.
Meanwhile, apropos my item in The Sunday Spindle about "No Labels" bipartisan hooey, herewith another useful gem from Sir Winston:
I have noticed that whenever a distinguished politician declares that a particular question is above Party, what he really means is that everybody, without distinction of Party, shall vote for him.
Wait-how the heck did my spindle fill up again so quickly after emptying it out yesterday? Oh well. Always too much going on.
1. Someone at the Obama White House actually has a sense of humor. In response to a petition calling for the U.S. to build a Star Wars-style "Death Star," the White House issued a response: "This Isn't the Petition Response You're Looking For." (The author, Paul Shawcross, is actually an OMB drone-even more remarkable.)
The Administration shares your desire for job creation and a strong national defense, but a Death Star isn't on the horizon. Here are a few reasons:
The construction of the Death Star has been estimated to cost more than $850,000,000,000,000,000. We're working hard to reduce the deficit, not expand it.
The Administration does not support blowing up planets.
Why would we spend countless taxpayer dollars on a Death Star with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship?
Pejman Yousefzadeh (who sounds like he could be a Star Wars character: "But Obi Won, Count Yousefzadeh says the trade deal is a fraud!") is not impressed:
Building a Death Star . . . should build oodles of jobs according to Keynesian theory, and Keynesians ought to be outraged that this administration is failing to take the principles spelled out in the General Theory of Employment to the next level. Indeed, I daresay that Keynesians ought to find the administration's lack of faith in their principles disturbing. . .
In any event, now that the administration has come out against the construction of a Death Star, I propose that we get private enterprise involved to construct it. I look forward to the day when we can point with pride to the creation of the Death Star, and then tell the Obama administration that they didn't build that; someone else made that happen.
Of course, the obvious irony here is that the Obama Administration has already built the Death Star for the American economy, as people pointed out early on:
2. Obama goes to the Lew? Can we really have a Treasury Secretary who will put a Lewd signature on our dollar bills? I mean really, I know penmanship isn't taught any more, but having a signature fit only for a Hostess cupcake is a sign that the Decline of the West is nearly complete. (Naturally, there's already a "Jack Lew Signature Generator" to go along with the all-important "Tom Friedman Op-Ed Column Generator.")
Jack Lew's actual signature coming soon to our dollar bills?
Separated at birth? Does Lew moonlight for Hostess?
3. Know any advanced undergraduate or graduate students in need of remedial (or supplemental) instruction about the American Founding? The Claremont Institute's annual Publius Fellows Program is now accepting applications for this summer's program. See this link for further details and a downloadable application.
4. The Population Bomb Wet Firecracker. The news media is slowly starting to catch up to a story that has long been evident to people who pay attention: that the most significant global demographic transition, under way for several decades now, is going to deliver declining population in a few more decades. People like the late Julian Simon, Nick Eberstadt, and me, have been on this for a long time now. Good to see that Slate.com is starting to figure it out:
[T]he rate of global population growth has slowed. And it's expected to keep slowing. Indeed, according to experts' best estimates, the total population of Earth will stop growing within the lifespan of people alive today.
And then it will fall.
This is good news in some ways, but will wreak havoc on social insurance programs that rely on an expanding base of younger workers to support old-age entitlement programs. Don't be surprised to wake up one day forty or fifty years from now and seeing liberals-yes, liberals-bemoaning the birth dearth. In fact, the Slate piece previews what might be the liberal meme of 2075:
On the bright side, the long-dreaded resource shortage may turn out not to be a problem at all. On the not-so-bright side, the demographic shift toward more retirees and fewer workers could throw the rest of the world into the kind of interminable economic stagnation that Japan is experiencing right now.
And in the long term-on the order of centuries-we could be looking at the literal extinction of humanity.
Paul Ehrlich, call your office. I love it that no matter what is happening to humanity, we're always doomed in the end.
5. From No Labels to No Mojo. Oh isn't this cute: those nice, Kumbaya-singing "post-partisan" people at No Labels are trying to shed their "centrist" image by. . . well what exactly isn't quite clear from this Yahoo News account. Sounds like they're now going to try to "break gridlock" by . . . compromising. Let's see, let's see, where have I heard that word "compromising" before? Oh yes, that's it! It's called "politics," and it's something people in a place called "Congress" do from time to time without supervision from the benighted membership of No Labels, on those rare instances when "gridlock," otherwise known as "checks and balances" and protections of individual rights, isn't rightly in the way of government doing something extremely stupid, instead of just something routinely stupid.
The one idea in the article is a "No Budget, No Pay" act. Sounds fine, except that California, which historically has gone without budgets for months in years past, adopted this measure recently. So budgets aren't late any more. They're passed on time now, but they're completely phony, and everyone knows it. With a Congress that, unlike California, can borrow unlimited amounts of money, does anyone really think a "No Budget, No Pay" Act will really amount to a significant reform? Even Harry Reid could figure out his way through this one.
There ought to be truth-in-labeling for No Labels. Something like "No Brains."
Besides which, let's say it all together: Long Live Gridlock!
6. I saved the best for last. This headline explains itself: "Student at All-Women's College Wants to Stay at School After Adding Penis." The school paper describes this as a "thorny issue." Plus this: "The prospect of the transgender student living on campus has angered some alumnae." Sounds like fodder for a Judd Apatow movie. Sometimes you just can't make stuff up.
The 2012 elections placed Minnesota in the hands of a Democratic governor in conjunction with a Democratic legislature for the first time in a generation. Republican governors and legislators have prevented a lot of damage to the state that would otherwise have taken place. The state's Democrats now mean to satisfy the pent-up demand to give it to us good and hard. They have big plans for us. In her biweekly Star Tribune column our friend Katherine Kersten reports on one development and raises a red flag:
[E]very Minnesotan with a child in public or private school should understand that there's more going on here than meets the eye. Antibullying legislation is coming early in the session; its final shape is unknown. But the legislative goalposts were set in August 2012 by Gov. Mark Dayton's Task Force on the Prevention of School Bullying, whose report announced recommendations on the shape a new law should take.
The task force called for throwing out Minnesota's current, "local control" antibullying law - which requires every school board to adopt a written policy "prohibiting intimidation and bullying of any student" - and replacing it with a sweeping new statewide antibullying regime administered from St. Paul.
That regime would include an expansive new definition of bullying; a comprehensive, mandatory antibullying policy for all public and private schools; "multi-cultural/anti-bias" education for all pre-K-12 students and annual training in antibullying strategies for all teachers, school staff and volunteers; the promotion of "values, attitudes and behaviors" that "understand the nature of human sexuality," and a new "school climate center" at the Minnesota Department of Education.
Kathy adds the following telling details by way of background:
The campaign for antibullying legislation is driven not by a dramatic escalation in bullying but by a crusade to use the power of the state to shape your 10-year-old's attitudes and beliefs about sexuality and family structure. The drive is being led by OutFront Minnesota - the state's most prominent LGBT group, whose legal director was a member of the governor's task force and whose executive director also directs the "Safe Schools for All Coalition."
The governor's task force gives the green light to activist groups like OutFront to move into public and private schools. It calls for "actively enlisting ... community-based advocacy groups" to "chang[e] peer and community norms" and develop bullying-intervention strategies.
Not surprisingly, the task force's proposed new antibullying regime would not treat all children equally, despite lip service to this goal. Instead, it focuses on students in "protected classes," including sexual orientation and "gender identity or expression."
Under the task force's vague and overbroad definitions of bullying and harassment, students could be punished for "direct or indirect interactions" that other students -especially those in protected groups - claim to find "humiliating" or "offensive," that have a "detrimental effect" on their "social or emotional health," or even that promote a "perceived imbalance of power."
By this standard, a student who voices reservations about same-sex marriage could be accused of bullying LGBT students.
We get a sense of what may be on the horizon from "Welcoming Schools" - a K-5 "antibullying" program developed by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay and transgender advocacy group. The program was scheduled to be piloted at Hale Community School in Minneapolis in 2008.
"Welcoming Schools" had little to do with bullying, and much to do with ensuring that kids as young as age 5 submit to the group's orthodoxy on sexuality and family structure.
The curriculum advised teachers not to call students "boys and girls," on grounds this can create "internal dissonance" in some children. It called for students to read books like "Sissy Duckling," and to be evaluated on "whether or not [they] feel comfortable making choices outside gender expectations." Kids in grades three to five "acted out" being members of nontraditional families, including same-sex-headed families.
In lesson after lesson, teachers were instructed to urge their students - ages 5 to 11 - to reject traditional views on sexuality and family structure as hurtful "stereotypes," and to use group exercises and classic indoctrination techniques to pressure them to adopt the curriculum designers' attitudes and beliefs.
At Hale, parent concerns prompted removal of some of the curriculum's most controversial aspects.
The governor's task force recommendations could entail serious consequences for dissenting students. The report includes language suggesting that students who express views that others consider offensive could be referred for "counseling" or "mental health needs."
The activists gathering at the State Capitol march under the banner of tolerance. Yet many seek to use state power to impose their own beliefs on others - including parents who exercise their rights of conscience by choosing private schools that teach Christian, Jewish or Muslim beliefs on sexuality.
Yesterday's champions of tolerance, it seems, are becoming the bullies of today.
You got a problem with that? Democrats in Minnesota give new meaning to the dangers of "bullying." There ought to be a law indeed. In the meantime, forewarned is forearmed.
Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them
Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.
Heh. But really, the logic is hard to argue with. Schools are gun-free zones because we care so much about our children's safety, right? Well, unless your children go to, say, Sidwell Friends. No need to take any risks where really important kids are concerned! Follow the link above to sign the petition, which has nearly 18,000 signatures so far.
Yesterday four Democratic senators-Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, Patty Murray and Chuck Schumer-wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to take all "lawful steps" to increase the debt limit, with or without the Republicans. Byron York points out that all four of these Democrats voted against increasing the debt limit in 2006. At that time, the Democrats pretended to be outraged by the deficits of the Bush administration, which were less than one-half the size of the deficits the Democrats have run up under Obama. In 2006-ancient history, apparently-the Democrats had no concern about the parade of horribles they are now trotting out.
The senators wrote:
As you know, Republican leaders are threatening to bring on an economic catastrophe unless Democrats make deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
This is untrue, unfortunately.
Defaulting on America's legal obligations would undermine the American economy and spread global economic havoc.
Why are they talking about default? Default is constitutionally prohibited by the 14th Amendment. The federal government's cash flow is more than ample to pay all interest on the national debt and to retire bonds as they mature. Other spending would have to be cut, to be sure; but default will not, and cannot, happen.
In the event that Republicans make good on their threat by failing to act, or by moving unilaterally to pass a debt limit extension only as part of unbalanced or unreasonable legislation....
The senators telegraph here what they are really afraid of: the House may pass legislation that extends the debt limit along with spending cuts-cuts that will no doubt seem reasonable, not "unreasonable" or "unbalanced," to voters. I believed that the Republicans wouldn't be able to get much in exchange for increasing the debt limit because the threat not to do so lacks credibility, but this letter suggests that the Democrats are more worried than I thought.
...we believe you must be willing to take any lawful steps to ensure that America does not break its promises and trigger a global economic crisis-without Congressional approval, if necessary.
This is a puzzler. What "lawful steps" could Obama take "without Congressional approval" that would permit racking up more debt? Article I of the Constitution gives Congress the exclusive "Power...To borrow Money on the credit of the United States." Obama has no such authority. Are the senators urging Obama to violate the Constitution? Or perhaps to pursue the trillion-dollar platinum coin gambit? It is impossible to say.
For all these reasons, we support your view that extension of the debt limit is not something for which Democrats should have to negotiate.
Sure. They want it for nothing, just like Obama wanted tax increases for nothing. The Dems say they are willing to negotiate, they just don't want the GOP to have any bargaining power:
At the same time, as a separate matter, we agree about the importance of developing a broad, bipartisan agreement on fiscal policy that strengthens our economy and reduces our long-term budget deficit.
I think the strategy is to wait until the Democrats take the House, and then strike a "broad, bipartisan agreement" on higher taxes and spending. In the meantime, the Democrats intend to obstruct any change whatsoever in our rapidly-deteriorating fiscal landscape.
As you have said, any such agreement must treat all Americans fairly and include not just responsible spending cuts...
Those would be cuts to the defense budget.
...but additional revenue from the wealthy and the elimination of wasteful tax breaks.
But wait! Didn't Obama just get higher income and investment taxes on everyone earning over $250,000, precisely the higher taxes on the "rich" he has always said he wanted? The Democrats' greed is never satisfied.
We therefore hope that you will continue to insist that the entire budget be on the table, and that any agreement be fully balanced and fair.
It would be a wonderful thing if the entire budget were on the table, but that isn't what the Democrats have in mind. Still, the Democrats' evident concern about the debt limit, manifested not just by this letter but by the trillion-dollar coin and other half-baked ideas that are being taken seriously by Democrats, suggests that more of the budget might be on the table than we once thought possible.
I'm late in offering notice of the passing on Wednesday of James Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for his development of public choice theory. I was fortunate to meet Buchanan on a couple of occasions (usually Mont Pelerin Society meetings overseas), and long profited from deploying public choice analysis of nanny state madness.
Public choice theory can be summarized in a number of fairly simple ways, such as the less-than-difficult-to-grasp notion that "public servants" are just as self-interested as the private interests they tax or regulate. Or the derivative, known as "rent-seeking," whereby private interests use the cloak of "public interest" to extract a profit by securing subsidies (wind power) or supporting regulatory barriers against competition (like the taxi industry's crusade against Ubercars). I've written before here about the "bootleggers and Baptists" analogy for understanding public choice. The main point is, public choice explains powerfully how "government failure" is likely to be more pervasive and difficult to correct than "market failure." Indeed, look how hard it is to get rid of completely indefensible wind power subsidies.
Yet somehow liberals have a hard time grasping public choice. Matt Yglesias of Slate.com confesses that "Buchanan is responsible for some deep, hard to understand, and relatively inaccessible ideas and I am not understanding them or appreciating their depth." The irony here is that Yglesias is one liberal who got the outrage of the Ubercar story, and attacked it on grounds drawn directly from Buchanan. So perhaps there's hope for him.
Less clear is whether many high-octane libertarians appreciate some of the limits to Buchanan's teaching. A flaw in public choice is that for some of its adherents, that fact that it explains many political phenomena very well gets pushed to the extreme of thinking it can explain all political phenomena, thus making it another species of social science reductionism-usually a mistake of the Left. And sometimes this gives rise to bad remedies; in Buchanan's case, I heard him give papers more than once advocating the legitimization of secession. Clearly he had moved beyond the realm of economics, and too often when this happens it displays the severe limitations of economics as a window to the essential questions of political philosophy.
Allan Bloom
This problem was never more on display than in one of the most extraordinary intellectual clashes I was ever lucky enough to witness: In 1988 (I think it was 88), Buchanan, fresh off his Nobel Prize, came to Claremont, where he appeared on a panel with Allan Bloom, fresh off the blockbuster publication of The Closing of the American Mind. Although it was a very gentlemanly and polite disputation, I thought the flamboyant Bloom ran circles around Buchanan, in substance as well as style. I have an edited version of Bloom's presentation, which doesn't capture the impression he made in person. So I'll interpolate a little. Part of Bloom's opening went such:
"Abundant modesty aside, I would like to offer my credentials, theoretical and practical, to comment on political economy. The economists I've known at the University of Chicago have always liked to ask me the question-which is the American question-'If you're so smart, how come you're not rich?'''
At this point Bloom paused and took a big drag on his ubiquitous cigarette (those were the good old days) and with perfect comic timing and delivery answered:
"Well, I am now."
It's not possible to summarize Bloom's argument very well in a short blog post. Suffice it to say he made a respectful and subtle critique of economics as an impressive and important social science but whose methodology had severed it from being able to speak to the deepest issues of human nature and justice. Maybe this one line conveys the flavor: "It seems to me that the willingness to die for something always mucks up rational-choice theory." Boom! Buchanan was helpless in the face of this.
Buchanan's work will live on and deepen our understanding of the dysfunctions of modern government. It gives us the tools to aid in serious reform. But as the Bloom critique shows, we must always beware the mistake of mistaking the larger or bright part of something for the whole of something.
I like Scott's occasional "spindle-clearing" posts, since I have the same problem of noteworthy items piling up and not enough time to give them each their due in separate short posts. So here's a few items sitting in my In-Box at the moment:
1. So let's see if I understand the big media transaction of the last couple of weeks, which apparently goes like this: Qatar sells us oil and gas and petrochemicals-all very useful things-and we sell them back . . . CurrentTV?!?! Sounds to me like we're still exploiting the "developing" world. Time for a new bumper sticker: End Al Gore Imperialism! (Hey Qatar, have I got a deal for you. There's this thing called MSNBC you could get real cheap. And Newsweek is still available. I hear "Brooklyn Bridge Media Group" is also for sale.)
2. Biden-mania: Did Slow-Joe really say "there's no silver bullet for gun violence"? Yes, he really did. Please please Joe-you have to run for President in 2016. We'll need the laughs after four more years of Obama.
3. Speaking of laughs, have you caught wind of the latest new genre of comedy writing: spoof Amazon product reviews. It's been going on for a while now, but in recent weeks seems to have passed the proverbial tipping point, to where there's plainly an active community of people who live just for this. Check out the reviews for the banana slicer, the Playmobil Security Checkpoint (recommended to ages 4 - 7, in other words, ideal for real TSA agent training), rabbit meat, David Hasselhoff records (oh my!) and even BIC pens. The banana slicer, rabbit, and Hasselhoff records are real, but the security checkpoint is a fake product-Fake, but accurate!!, as the old saying goes. Still, here's the first review:
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger's shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger's scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said "that's the worst security ever!". But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital.
The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I've heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I'll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).
4. We should be for the $1 trillion coin idea. Here's why: Lots of people say that even if legal, the markets would react very adversely to adding another trillion dollars to our debt in this way. But why should the markets feel any better if we add another trillion dollars to our debt by a vote of Congress? The trillion dollar coin gambit would clarify that we're nowhere close to getting serious about our debt crisis. Better if the markets speed up the moment of reckoning with some stern signals now. (This item, by the way, is not a joke.)
The Weekly Winston will be up this afternoon. Latest Green Weenie tomorrow.
A truly instructional toy.
Reviewers are disappointed the set doesn't come with this function
In the fall of 2010 Bill Steigerwald retraced John Steinbeck's trip around the United States as recounted in Travels With Charley. He set up a blog - Travels Without Charley - to tell the "story of the long trip [he's] been taking with John Steinbeck and his ghost." He concluded that Steinbeck's "book is not just full of fiction; it's also a dishonest account of his iconic journey and what he really thought about America."
Steigerwald summarized his findings in the Reason article "Sorry, Charley."I took Steigerwald's findings regarding Steinbeck's book to be the bad news he had to report. Here was the good news:
America is big, beautiful, empty, safe, clean, and unfairly blessed with natural and human resources. I met only a few hundred of my fellow 309 million citizens last fall, but to a person they were friendly and helpful. And despite a depressed economy, the gauntlet of beautiful homes and shiny pickup trucks, RVs, boats, and snowmobiles I passed through day after day testified to the democratization of the material riches that the wealthy Steinbeck had decried.
From cell phone towers to Hyundai dealerships and Walmarts, I saw modern things that would have amazed, shocked, or offended Steinbeck. Yet what surprised me most was what might have surprised him most too: how little change has taken place on the Steinbeck Highway in the last 50 years. From the fishing villages of Maine to the redwoods of California to the Mississippi Delta, I drove by hundreds of towns and farms and crossroads that looked almost exactly like they did when Steinbeck passed through.
In a parallel universe, this would be a big news story:
Let's pretend that in the spring of 2012 Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, John Engler of the Business Roundtable, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity, and Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association began to organize an assembly of right-leaning groups.
Let's pretend that in the months since there had been not one but two meetings where these luminaries joined with representatives of Christians United For Israel, the American Enterprise Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Tea Party Express, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, and the American Petroleum Institute to discuss strategy and promote a series of "structural reforms" that would make it easier for them to advance conservative goals in Congress.
Let's pretend that by the time of the second meeting, which was held within sight of the White House, the coalition had grown to encompass some 36 different interest groups pledging millions of dollars.
How much press coverage would be devoted to this fictive cabal?
Newspapers would be printing special editions. But what if the same thing happens on the Left? Yawn:
[I]s it not unreasonable to assume that our pretend meeting of the vast right-wing conspiracy would attract far more scrutiny than was devoted to the actual, real-life, believe-it-or-not inaugural meetings of the progressive "Democracy Initiative"? After all, no one seemed to know anything about those meetings, held in June and December 2012, until a writer for Mother Jones named Andy Kroll broke the story on Wednesday. As of this writing exactly two other people, a blogger for the Washington Monthly and a blogger for The Ed Show, have picked up Kroll's story.
The rest of what is too generously called the "mainstream media" has not said a word.
Well, to be fair, it's been a busy week, what with the campaign against guns and all. Plus, Kim Kardashian is pregnant.
Brune is the executive director of the Sierra Club and former executive director of the more radical Rainforest Action Network. Radford runs Greenpeace. Cohen is the president of the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America, "the largest telecommunications union in the world." Jealous is the president and chief executive officer of the NAACP. Their "conversations in recent years" about the malign influence of conservative donors in politics developed into the "invite-only and off-the-record" meetings in June and December, where representatives of "30 to 35 groups" pledged "a total of millions of dollars and dozens of organizers to form a united front" on the issues of "getting big money out of politics, expanding the voting rolls while fighting voter ID laws, and rewriting Senate rules to curb the use of the filibuster to block legislation." The most recent meeting was held at the headquarters of the 3-million-strong National Education Association, which is less than half a dozen blocks north of where President Barack Obama works. ...
Who showed up to the progressive retreat? Again, it is hard to say because Kroll does not divulge all of the participants. Can't alert the enemy to your every move, I suppose. But here in alphabetical order are the groups he does mention: the AFL-CIO, the Center for American Progress, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Color of Change, Common Cause, Demos, the Friends of the Earth, the League of Conservation Voters, Mother Jones (in a "non-editorial" capacity!), National People's Action, the National Wildlife Federation, People for the American Way, the Piper Fund, Public Campaign, the Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and Voto Latino. Brune of the Sierra Club predicts there will be 50 participating organizations by spring.
There is, as Matthew Continetti notes, a certain irony in the idea that "an association of organizations with combined revenue of more than a billion dollars is launching a campaign to get 'big money out of politics.'" In truth, no one wants to get money out of politics, but a lot of people want to get their opponents' money out of politics.
Money per se is a neutral value, but there is, for this purpose, a difference between clean money and dirty money. Clean money is contributed voluntarily out of political or philosophical conviction. Dirty money is money that is not contributed voluntarily, but is extracted from union members and taxpayers against their will. It is dirty money, in my view, that we should get out of politics.
In a piece called "Austerity and National Character," Anne Applebaum compares the pursuit of austerity in Latvia and Greece. In Latvia, she reports, the Latvian government responded to the crash of 2008 by slashing public spending, firing a third of its civil service, and reducing the salaries of those who remained. GDP fell by 24 percent in two years, but is now growing at more than 5 percent. Meanwhile, the budget deficit has been reduced dramatically.
According to Applebaum, there were no protests or strikes during the two year downturn. In fact, the Latvians reelected the prime minister who imposed austerity.
In Greece, of course, things have proceeded differently. Smaller budgets cuts led to strikes and riots. And the country has gone through several governments. The immediate drop in GDP was less than in Latvia (18 percent), but there has been no recovery.
Applebaum acknowledges differences in the nature of the two countries' austerity program. Latvia hit bureaucrats hard and pensioners less so. And the government made its cuts right away. Greece protected its bureaucrats and made cuts slowly, without ever convincing creditors it was serious.
But Applebaum insists that history, culture, and national psychology were also at work in both nations. Latvians are used to hardship and fiercely independent. Greeks, she says, are politically divided and used to being bailed out. Then too, one country is Northern; the other Southern, which may make a psychological difference.
With the U.S. massively in debt, we might ask whether, in terms of psychology and character, we are more like Greece or more like Latvia. Once, it would have been clear to me that we are more like Latvia. Now, I suspect we are more like Greece.
Consider the recent "fiscal cliff" episode. A mechanism designed to force Congress to reduce significantly the national debt produced legislation that will increase it. Why? At root, as I argued here, because the public isn't willing to sacrifice anything in the name of debt reduction.
The left wants to tax the public more, not in order to reduce the debt but to finance big government. But the public won't accept higher taxes except on the wealthy. That's why Obama had to announce in advance that he would not increase taxes on those making less than $250,000.. . .[T]he president basically lost the game before it began.
Conservatives want entitlement reform and spending cuts. But the public wants Medicare and Social Security to remain as it is. That's why Republicans are so reluctant to propose specific cuts to these programs without Democratic cover which, of course, isn't forthcoming.
The public favors spending cuts in the abstract, but politicians reasonably fear that any resulting reduction in services will carry a backlash. And they fear that cuts in defense spending will result in lost jobs and (at least as far as Republican politicians are concerned) reduced national security.
In short, we are more Greek than Latvian.
Fortunately, unlike both of these European countries, we are too big to fail for a while - perhaps a long while. But if we were more like Latvia, this fact might be less consoling.
So among my liberal friends is Joel Mathis of the Philadelphia Magazine. This is one of those situations made possible in the Internet age: I've never met Joel in person, but we've spoken on the phone several times, exchange lots of emails and Facebook comments, and he's one-half of the Right-Left "Ben and Joel Podcast" with Ben Boychuk on the InfiniteMonkeys site that is always excellent. (And let's face it: "InfiniteMonkeys" is one of the greatest blog names ever. James Lileks calls it "a sparkly blog.")
Well, Joel has issued a big-time throw down today, with an PhillyMag column titled "In Defense of the Nanny State." Much of Joel's particular argument in this short column centers around the facts of U.S. mortality rates and the relationship to the lack of universal health care. This is not a new dispute, and there is a rousing debate about what wonks call "confounding variables" besides the extent of health coverage that can explain trans-national differences. I think Joel's argument is vulnerable here, but then it is a short column and not a long journal article where the qualifications and refinements are possible. But the comments on his Facebook thread making the usual objections lead us to a dead-end I think. Factual arguments are always important, of course, but more useful is the broader teaching Joel has in mind, which he states late in the column:
Why I'm a liberal? I believe you can have freedom and care about reducing income inequality. I believe you can have liberty and smaller soda sizes. I believe you can throw off tyranny and still have a smarter health care system that delivers care to more people. I'm a liberal because even though conservatives and libertarians can sometimes come up with good ideas to address these problems, mostly you sense they'd rather not be bothered. Which leaves good old-fashioned Big Government as the most likely option to actually fix stuff.
Nannies don't imprison you, after all, and they never did. Their job is to help you stand on your own.
Good for Joel for stating it directly rather than hiding behind equivocations or facile constructs. So here's my response: What conservatives find objectionable about the nanny state (or Big Government if you like-the terms are virtually interchangeable-they both mean essentially unlimited government) is that while any single state intervention may be plausible or defensible in isolation, the steady accumulation of state interventions at some point begins to be a substantive erosion of liberty, and, more importantly, begins to alter the essential character of free citizens.
Sure, am I really less of a free person if I can't buy a 32-oz soda? Or get a plastic bag in my local store? In isolation, not really. But what about when I can't buy a 32-oz soda, can't burn a fire in my home's fireplace (now an air quality regulation in many places), can't build a spiral staircase from my back deck (as I learn this morning from the San Luis Obispo County planning department), can't own a gun (New York, Chicago), can't get plastic bags at the store any more (even though I not only recycle them but reuse them for many of my own purposes), can't patronize Ubercars because the incumbent taxicab monopoly gets the city council to block the new business in the name of "consumer protection" (naturally), or can't start a small business except with great difficulty and dead-weight expense to the local bureaucracies? And on the other side of the ledger, large bureaucratic interventions like Obamacare will stifle marketplace discovery and adaptation. Part of the reason we're in the mess we're in is because of two government interventions of long standing: the tax treatment of health care (dating back to World War II), which accelerated third party payment that drives the perverse cost trends of the health care marketplace.
After a while, you're not "standing on your own" any more. The nanny hasn't put you in prison, but it has changed a lot of things in a significant way. That was the point of Tocqueville's famous passage about "What Sort of Despotism Democratic Nations Have to Fear." Most everyone quotes this paragraph from that chapter:
Thus, after taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them, and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting; it does not destroy, it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, compromises, enervates, extinguishes, dazes, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.
So far so good. People often miss the next paragraph, which is equally important:
I have always believed that this sort of regulated, mild, and peaceful servitude, whose picture I have just painted, could be combined better than one imagines with some of the external forms of freedom, and that it would not be impossible for it to be established in the very shadow of the sovereignty of the people.
Two observations. The point I'm making here-that there is a substantive cumulative effect of seriatim state interventions-is one liberals themselves make in one particular case: the environment. The formal Environmental Impact Statement process is based on the premise that while one single housing development may have a de minimis impact on the environment, the cumulative impact of one development taken together with others is significant enough to justify regulation of the individual proposed development. And this is sensible in the abstract. But why don't we apply the same scrutiny to the cumulative impact of state interventions?
Second, as we contemplate the "Europeanization" of America under the Obama worldview, let's stipulate, as Charles Murray does, that people in Europe aren't "unfree" in the ordinary sense of the word. Here's Charles, from his 2009 lecture on the subject of "The Happiness of the People" (it's an extraordinary lecture, a real tour de force worth reading in its entirety):
Not only are social democrats intellectually respectable, the European model has worked in many ways. I am delighted when I get a chance to go to Stockholm or Amsterdam, not to mention Rome or Paris. When I get there, the people don't seem to be groaning under the yoke of an evil system. Quite the contrary. There's a lot to like-a lot to love-about day-to-day life in Europe. . .
But-as Tocqueville warned, Murray thinks it has changed the character of the free peoples of Europe in ways that make them less happy: "the problem with the European model, namely [is that] it drains too much of the life from life. And that statement applies as much to the lives of janitors-even more to the lives of janitors-as it does to the lives of CEOs." Charles has some data on this he can point to.
Okay, I can hear Joel responding, All these somewhat abstract considerations are all very well and good, but what about the unemployed janitor without health insurance? Fair enough objection. But here I must suggest that once upon a time liberals got both parts of this problem, whereas today they only get the practical side. I've been drawn back lately once again to Lionel Trilling's famous book The Liberal Imagination from 1950, where he argued that reform liberalism was becoming too programmatic and organizational, and that its powerful social imagination was suffering atrophy. He revisited the theme of his famous preface in an unpublished lecture in 1974 (the year before he died), when he felt fully vindicated in predicting "this dull, repressive tendency of opinion which was coming to dominate the old ethos of liberal enlightenment" and that liberal thought (and consequently policy) was shedding its legacy as "a political position which affirmed the value of individual existence in all its variousness, complexity, and difficulty."
Instead, today we get mandates instead of moral suasion. Instead of persuading people to be responsible with their plastic bags, we ban them. Instead of persuading people they are foolish to drink 32-oz sodas, we ban them. And to conservatives this looks deeply weird, too, as well as unimaginative and hypocritical. For liberals, it's okay for a teenage girl to have an abortion-no questions asked-but not okay for her to order a 32-oz soda? Look, if more teenage girls order 32-oz sodas, fewer of them will need abortions in the first place, believe me.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller says that he will not run for reelection in 2014. Rockefeller would have been very hard-pressed to win in his increasingly conservative state, particularly against the popular Shelley Moore Capito. As I noted, in November, when Capito announced her candidacy, she leads Rockefeller in the polls. And during her congressional career, she has represented roughly 40 percent of the state's voting population.
As things stand now, Republicans need to pick up a net of six seats to take control of the Senate in 2014. It is not overly optimistic think that West Virginia will contribute to that cause. Rockefeller himself acknowledged that Democrats will have a hard time holding onto his West Virginia Senate seat.
UPDATE: Ed Morrissey mentions a possible downside to Rockefeller's decision:
[T]his means that Rockefeller doesn't have to spend the next two years looking over his shoulder and shifting to the right to protect his seat. For the next two years, Rockefeller can vote without any accountability to the more conservative voters in West Virginia.
But the aristocratic Rockefeller doesn't strike me as the bending, "accountable" type. With the possible exception of a few hot West Virginia issues, I wouldn't have expected him to shift to the right even if he had decided to run in 2014.
On January 22, two days after President Obama's second inauguaration, Israel effectively will reelect Obama's nemesis Benjamin Netanyahu. Unlike in Obama's case, the Netanyahu electoral victory will be overwhelming. And it will reflect a much more significant mandate than raising taxes on the "the wealthy."
David Horovitz, editor of the Times of Israel, accurately describes the impending Israeli mandate as the rejection of a Palestinian state, a rejection "prompted by a combination of the Palestinians' intransigence, doubletalk, hostility, and terrorism, and of Israeli Jews' security fears, historic connection, and sense of religious obligation." Ironically, rejectionism was not Netanyahu's policy; he announced his support for a "two state solution." As Horovitz says, Netayahu is "a discordant relative moderate" within his coalition.
Horovitz calls this outcome a "dramatic imminent shift," and he attributes it not to the Israeli electorate moving right, but to the popularity of a right that has become "far-right." However, Rick Richman offers a persuasive refutation:
The Israeli left has also moved right, and its own shift has been even more dramatic. In "We Gave Peace a Chance," Daniel Gordis notes that what destroyed the Israeli left was four years of the "Palestinian Terror War (mistakenly called the second intifada)," which disabused Israelis of the idea that the Palestinian leadership wanted a deal, and the fact that Arabs have become ever more candid about their ultimate goal, with Mahmoud Abbas telling Egyptian TV "he would never, in a thousand years, recognize a Jewish state." Gordis writes that "Israelis across the spectrum are acknowledging what they used to only whisper: the old paradigm is dying"
Accordingly, says Richman, the "dramatic imminent shift" is not a shift, but a realization; not imminent, but rather what happened over many years; and not dramatic, but rather the slow accumulation of many events:
(1) the barbaric terror war against Israeli civilians, commenced after the first Israeli offer of a state; (2) the Palestinian rejection of the Clinton Parameters, after Israel formally accepted them; (3) the Palestinian failure to carry out even Phase I of the three-phase Roadmap; (4) the transformation of Gaza into Hamastan after Israel withdrew every settler and soldier; (5) the election of Hamas in 2006 and the Hamas coup in 2007; (6) two rocket wars from Judenrein Gaza, and the continuing prospect of more; (7) the year-long negotiation in the Annapolis Process that produced still another offer of a state, from which Abbas walked away; (8) Abbas's announcement in 2009 that he would do nothing without a construction freeze, followed by his doing nothing after he got one; (9) the continual "reconciliation" attempts by Abbas with the terrorist group he promised to dismantle; (10) his failure to give a Bir Zeit speech to match Netanyahu's Bar-Ilan one; (11) the inability of the Palestinians to hold an election, much less build the institutions of a peaceful democratic state; (12) the violation of their express Oslo commitments with repeated end-runs at the UN; (13) a Palestinian society, media and educational system steeped in anti-Semitism. . . .
Given all of this, Richman credits the Israeli democracy for reacting not with a "dramatic imminent shift" but with repeated efforts, over more than a decade, to give the Palestinians a state if they would recognize a Jewish one with defensible borders. He notes that "four prime ministers from three different parties (representing the left, center, and right) tried, and each met the same response."
Now, Israel will opt for realism and finally take "no" for an answer from the Palestinians.
If you want a conventional liberal/realist view of Obama's coalescing second term foreign policy team, you probably can't do better than to take a look at David Ignatius's Washington Post column comparing Barack Obama with Dwight Eisenhower. I won't say anything more about it other than that it has caused me a slight setback in my anger management therapy.
For a more realistic assessment of the "realists," such as they are, let us turn to Barry Rubin. In "Noxious nominations: Four horsemen of the American foreign policy apocalypse" Rubin lets it rip. The four horsemen are Obama and his nominees John Kerry at State, Chuck Hagel at Defense and John Brennan at the CIA. Rubin is good on all of them, particularly so on Brennan:
-Their ideas and views are horrible. This is especially so on Middle Eastern issues but how good are they on anything else? True, they are all hostile to Israel but this isn't the first time people who think that way held high office. Far worse is that they are pro-Islamist as well as being dim-witted about U.S. interests in a way no foreign policy team has been in the century since America walked onto the world stage.
Brennan is no less than the father of the pro-Islamist policy. What Obama is saying is this: My policy of backing Islamists has worked so well, including in Egypt, that we need to do even more! All those analogies to 1930s' appeasement are an understatement. Nobody in the British leadership said, "I have a great idea. Let's help fascist regimes take power and then they'll be our friends and become more moderate! That's the equivalent of what Brennan does.
-They are all stupid people. Some friends said I shouldn't write this because it is a subjective judgment and sounds mean-spirited. But honest, it's true. Nobody would ever say that their predecessors-Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and David Petraeus-were not intelligent and accomplished. But these guys are simply not in that category. Smart people can make bad judgments; regular people with common sense often make bad judgments less often. But stupid, arrogant people with terrible ideas are a disaster.
Brennan's only life accomplishment has been to propose backing radical Islamists. As a reward he isn't just being made head of intelligence for the Middle East but for the whole world! Has Brennan any proven administrative skill? Any knowledge of other parts of the world? No. All he has is a proximity to Obama and a very bad policy concept. What's especially ironic here is that by now the Islamist policy has clearly failed and a lot of people are having second thoughts.
With Brennan running the CIA, though, do you think there will be critical intelligence evaluations of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hizballah, or even Hamas? Is the CIA going to warn U.S. leaders about the repression against women, Christians, and moderates? Will there be warnings that Islamists are taking over Syria or reports on Islamist involvement in killing Americans in Benghazi? Can we have confidence about U.S. policy toward Iran?
To get some insight into his thinking, consider the incident in which a left-wing reporter, forgetting there were people listening, reminded Brennan that in an earlier private conversation he admitted favoring engagement not only with the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah but also the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Ask yourself this question: when an American intelligence chief told Congress that the Muslim Brotherhood was a moderate, secular group who approved that line of argument?
That's a rhetorical question, but I'm thinking that, in addition to Brennan, David Ignatius may very well be the answer. Rubin in any event has much more in his excellent column, all of it worthy of your attention.
Friday, January 11, 2013
To: Friends & Supporters
From: Gary L. Bauer
Obama/Biden "Attack On Second Amendment"
As expected, yesterday's meeting between Vice President Joe Biden and the National Rifle Association was little more than a White House photo op. Leaders of the NRA emerged to say it was not a two-way discussion, and that the only purpose of the meeting was to provide cover for Democrats so they could say, "The White House reached out to the NRA." Right -- the same way the White House "reached out" to Republicans during the Obamacare debate.
Following the meeting, the NRA released a blistering statement accusing the Obama White House of planning to "attack" the Second Amendment. Here is an excerpt:
"We were disappointed with how little this meeting had to do with keeping our children safe and how much it had to do with an agenda to attack the Second Amendment. While claiming that no policy proposals would be 'prejudged,' this Task Force spent most of its time on proposed restrictions on lawful firearms owners -- honest, taxpaying, hardworking Americans. It is unfortunate that this Administration continues to insist on pushing failed solutions to our nation's most pressing problems. We will not allow law-abiding gun owners to be blamed for the acts of criminals and madmen."
Yesterday the Washington Post reported that the Obama White House was "working with its allies on a well-financed campaign ... to shift public opinion toward stricter gun laws and provide political cover to lawmakers who end up voting for ... restrictions on firearms." It is just one more example of this White House being in perpetual campaign mode -- viewing everything through the lens of the next election. But what might this campaign look like?
Attorney General Eric Holder has a few ideas. He once suggested that a massive PR campaign was needed to shame gun owners like smokers. Holder said the campaign needs to "really brainwash people to think about guns in a vastly different way."
Listen To The People
After the Newtown shootings, the political left and its media allies predictably demanded more restrictions on your Second Amendment rights. I wrote Wednesday that subsequent polling indicated that the liberals were out-of-touch with public opinion. For example, a December 2012 poll by the Washington Post found that only 32% of respondents favored "passing stricter gun-control laws," while 49% preferred "stricter enforcement of existing laws."
The NRA also put forth a solution -- armed guards in schools. As the NRA's Executive Director Wayne LaPierre succinctly stated:
"We care about our money, so we protect our banks with armed guards. ...We care about the President, so we protect him with armed Secret Service agents. Members of Congress work in offices surrounded by armed Capitol Police officers. Yet when it comes to the most beloved, innocent and vulnerable members of the American family -- our children -- we as a society leave them utterly defenseless."
But Big Media elites mocked the idea. They said, "The solution to guns in schools is not more guns." Once again, it's the elites who are out of touch, unable to distinguish between the good guys with guns and the bad guys with guns.
Last month, a Gallup poll found that new gun control legislation ranked fourth on a list of ideas to prevent school shootings. "Increasing the police presence at schools" was the most popular idea.
Yesterday the Associated Press reported that parents in Newtown, Connecticut, as well as some school administrators strongly favor maintaining the police presence at area schools.
Let's hope the politicians in Washington can stop pontificating and plotting against the Second Amendment and start listening to the American people.
Taxpayers Lose With Lew
Senator Lindsey Graham aptly described Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense as a petty, "in your face" move. You can describe Obama's nomination of Jack Lew to head the Treasury Department the same way.
John Carney, a senior editor of CNBC.com, has a posted a very revealing article about the "pointed message" Obama is sending with Lew's appointment. Lew's nomination can only be seen as intentionally antagonistic, and part of Obama's effort to "pick fights with Congress."
Lew is a liberal loyalist, an Obama "yes" man, who does not get along at all with congressional Republicans. The reason why Joe Biden was called in to cut a deal on the fiscal cliff negotiations was that Sen. Mitch McConnell could not work with Lew anymore. In prior negotiations on the debt limit, Lew repeatedly insisted on raising taxes at every opportunity. Even when he was open to GOP ideas on spending cuts, he would never accept them without tax hikes.
By nominating Lew, Obama is sending a clear signal that he has no intention of finding common ground with congressional Republicans on spending.
When Lew's name was announced, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) unleashed an uncharacteristic broadside, saying, "Jack Lew must never be Secretary of Treasury." What would cause Sen. Sessions to make such an emphatic statement? Two years ago, as Obama's budget director, Lew testified that Obama's budget "will get us ... to the point where we can look the American people in the eye and say we're not adding to the debt anymore."
Keep in mind, friends, that Barack Obama has run trillion-dollar deficits every year of his administration, and the national debt has increased from $10 trillion to more than $16 trillion. In fact, Obama is now demanding another increase in the debt limit because his budgets HAVE NOT gotten us anywhere near the point of not adding to the debt.
Now Obama wants to give Jack Lew a promotion! Taxpayers stand to lose a lot more if Lew and Obama get their way in future negotiations.
You, Too, Can File A Treason Complaint Against Obama
But Navy Veteran Walther Fitzpatrick III simply didn't file a Treason Complaint against Barack Obama, he's encouraging others to do the same. Fitzpatrick says that it's a very simply process and he's willing to walk others, who contact him through his website, how exactly how to file a complaint.
Treasury Says It Balanced Budget in December-But Borrowed $96B on Dec. 31 to Hit Debt Limit During Fiscal Cliff Negotiations By Terence P. Jeffrey CNSNews.com
In its monthly statement for December, released Friday, the U.S. Treasury says the federal government balanced its budget during the month, bringing in roughly $270 billion in revenues while making roughly $270 billion in expenditures.
John Kerry's 'Bromance' With Syrian Dictator Could Be Raised At Confirmation
Kerry Comments On Assad May Draw Scrutiny Associated Press/World Net Daily
Sen. John Kerry has held up Syria as a country that could bring peace and stability to the Mideast and predicted that the now-disgraced government of President Bashar Assad would pursue a legitimate relationship with the United States. Those assertions are certain to draw scrutiny at Kerry's confirmation hearing to be secretary of state as Assad's brutal crackdown has plunged his country into civil war.
Harry Reid's Reputation Smoking Again--Just Sayin'
Yet Another Scandal for Harry Reid? By Carol Platt Liebau TownHall.com
New questions are being asked about the ethics of Sen. Harry Reid; a Utah businessman is alleging that his state's attorney general demanded $600,000 as a bribe to Reid in exchange for dismissal of a federal investigation.
California attorney Orly Taitz is reporting: "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States John Roberts scheduled a case by attorney Orly Taitz dealing with Barack Hussein Obama's use of forged IDs to be heard in conference before the full Supreme Court."
Biden: Obama Will Act On Guns, Can Use Executive Orders By Eric Scheiner CNSNews.com
Vice President Joe Biden told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that President Obama is going to take action on gun control and that he can do it through "executive orders."
American Dollars Buying Ode To Bin Laden By John Rosenthal WorldNetDaily
A new video has emerged showing a large crowd of supporters of the Syrian rebellion singing an apparent ode to the 9/11 attacks that celebrates Osama bin Laden as "America's worst nightmare."
President Obama Criticized For White Male Cabinet Thomson/Reuters/NewsMax.com
The first black U.S. president is coming under fire from some of his own Democratic Party for naming a stream of white men to key cabinet and leadership posts in his second administration.
University Uses Grant to Target Term "Illegal Alien"
Between the gift giving and celebrating with family over the holidays, you may have missed an attack on the First Amendment - or at least the latest effort to take political correctness to the next level. Full Story
Guilty Plea by Illegal Alien in Total Theft of Woman's Identity
An illegal immigrant accused of assuming the persona of a Texas teacher pleaded guilty Monday in a case that put a face on the growing crime of "total identity theft." Full Story
Immigration Enforcement and the Kitchen Sink
Doris Meissner, former head of Bill Clinton's immigration agency writes in today's Washington Post about a study issued by the Migration Policy Institute, that she co-authored. Full Story
Gun Control Fight May Edge Immigration Debate for House
Amnesty supporters are beginning to worry that their fight could slip behind a cause that wasn't even an issue during the election: gun control. Full Story
Believe President Obama on Immigration: He Will Not Enforce Most Laws Even After an Amnesty
As the 113th Congress is sworn in on Thursday, one of the most important legislative battles on the horizon is over immigration reform. Full Story
China set a record with its investments around the world in 2012. And in the United States, China shattered its previous investment record.
Before people start panicking, it's important to know: This is not a bad thing.
First, let's put it in perspective. Chinese investment is still very, very small as compared to the size of the U.S. economy. At the national level, the stock of investment is barely $50 billion-which sounds large, but is negligible compared to a stock of American wealth of more than $60 trillion.
No one's "taking over" anything. In fact, more Chinese investment is a good thing. It creates jobs; it benefits companies, and it should be welcomed. It also gives us more leverage to push for a more open Chinese market, which continues to be a major problem.
Globally, the U.S. can compete and win with China in terms of economic influence, but we have to be willing to play. We have to be willing to expand our trade and investment in both directions.
The Heritage Foundation offers the only public dataset of Chinese outward investment, tracking the country's investments of $100 million or more since 2005. Using our interactive map, you can see where the flow of investment is going-by country and by sectors, including technology, transportation, agriculture, real estate, metals, etc.
Energy continues to attract the most Chinese money, while North America became the most popular destination for Chinese firms in 2012. Australia also remains a top destination for Chinese investment.
Protecting America
Now, while additional investment that supports American jobs is welcome, we have to be smart. We need to make sure that Chinese companies doing business here don't undermine competition, because they get so much support from their government. If our laws are adequate to do this, we should not hesitate to enforce them. If they need to be modified, that process will take some time, so we should start now.
There are protections in place for U.S. interests, and if these need strengthening, then the U.S. government should address those needs. America alreadyhas a structure in place to:
Safeguard technology: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is tasked with keeping foreign entities from acquiring technology that could harm American interests. It should continue to investigate and bar any transactions it finds harmful.
Ensure that Chinese firms behave differently here than at home: The Securities and Exchange Commission is currently responding to a failure to disclose financial information by some Chinese firms that sell stock here. This kind of action must continue.Chinese entities operating in the U.S. or selling stock here must follow American law or be forced to depart.
Chinese investment in the U.S. is no reason to get nervous. It boosts our economy and should prompt us to secure top-flight trade and investment agreements across the Pacific and around the world.
It's also important to note that this trend won't last forever. North America has jumped to the forefront of Chinese business activity, but this development is likely to be temporary: The pattern over time is for Chinese enterprises to move as a group from region to region. The U.S. should take this opportunity both to welcome Chinese investment and to respond to it according to our laws and values.
Golden state leaders expressed shock and dismay today when the State Treasury announced that income tax revenues for the last quarter had dropped to near zero in spite of a recent increase in the effective income tax rate to 100%.
"This is not possible" said a visibly shaken Governor Jerry Brown as he sunbathed under a full moon at the state capitol. "Before every one of the umpteen-odd times my administration has raised taxes, we've commissioned studies by prestigious universities on the potential effects. Each of those studies concluded people really don't care about tax rates and that quality-of-life issues, like being able to sing Kumbaya on the beach while stoned, are more important to the public.
Vice President Joe Biden is making a list of recommendations for a weapons ban that will be submitted to President Obama on Tuesday, but is the president really unsure of what he plans to do? Unlikely. Glenn argues that this is all an act, and the president already knows exactly what he's going to do. They were just waiting for the right opportunity to take advantage of a crisis. Glenn reacts to Biden's list on radio today.
Glenn rips ESPN over Musburger apology
Glenn, Pat & Stu debated who is the bigger weasel: the GOP or ESPN? By now most people have seen the awkward clip of Brent Musburger fawning over the girlfriend of Alabama's star QB during the BCS National Championship game. ESPN has a growing history of spinelessness: 'chink in the armor' writer fired, Rob Parker fired, Rush fired. What does this all mean for free speech? Glenn explains on radio.
5pm ET - The Glenn Beck Program: The last few days Glenn has unveiled his ambitious plans for 2013 and beyond. Tonight, Glenn answers YOUR questions about everything you've seen this week.
6pm ET -Real News: Is the White House using religious leaders to circumvent the NRA?
7pm ET - Wilkow!: Andrew digs into the 10th Amendment as it relates to the gun control argument.
Saturday @ 10pm ET -The B.S. of A.:Brian and the gang deal with a few impatient congressman, Glenn Beck has more ideas, and a discarded Christmas tree is angry.
Glenn unveils his most ambitious visionary dream: Independence
Last night on TheBlaze TV, Glenn unveiled his big vision, the project he will be working on indefinitely. The size and scope of it is absolutely stunning and could easily be compared to Disney-sized dreaming. But can it be done? See the incredible plans from TV last night.
Piers Morgan gets owned by Ben Shapiro, refers to Constitution as "your little book." See the full interview HERE.
Glenn on O'Reilly : I consider it a badge of honor
Cable king Bill O'Reilly interviewed Glenn last night on The O'Reilly Factor and pressed him for the details on his bid for Current TV. Glenn said he considered it a "badge of honor" that Al Gorezeera is more offended with him than he is of the woman stoning, homosexual killing, Osama bin Laden supporting network that is Al Jazeera. WATCH
TheBlaze Radio Network launches new morning show with Doc Thompson
With the latest addition to TheBlaze Radio, you can now start your mornings with Doc Thompson! Weekdays from 6:00-9:00am ET, tune into The Morning Blaze with Doc Thompson, followed by Glenn's radio program, Pat & Stu, Jay Severin, and more! And starting TOMORROW listen to The Buck Sexton Show every Saturday from noon to 3pm ET. Get the full lineup HERE.
More-On Trivia's most epic season ever?
Glenn has been doing More-On Trivia for over a decade and declared on radio that this year has featured some of the most epic callers in the history of the game. Today was no different as one caller declared himself a 'dumbass from Boston' while another decided to treat the audience to the hottest music from Bollywood. WATCH
Glenn's e-book thriller series: Great news! The sixth episode in the WRATH & RIGHTEOUSNESS e-book series has been released! There are ten episodes in total (about 5-6 full books worth of content), and we're releasing them over the course of about one year. Download episodes 1-5 to catch up, then get the latest installment in the series HERE. Have a question or comment about the series? Visit our FAQ page.
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Golden state leaders expressed shock and dismay today when the State Treasury announced that income tax revenues for the last quarter had dropped to near zero in spite of a recent increase in the effective income tax rate to 100%.
Biden is making a list, sending to Obama
